Chapter Text

What Comes After

Note to Reader: This chapter can be read without spoilers for upcoming chapters...

Please, read first work in series, Good Things Come, prior to proceeding to Chapter 2.

Chapter 1

He moved slowly, tiptoeing between the rows of bedrolls and bunks in the narrow room, careful not to brush too close to an arm or a foot that protruded into the floorspace. Rhythmic snoring and regular breathing sounds filled the space.

Even in this darkness he could see the shapes of sleeping bodies and twisted clothing and featureless heads poking out of the smooth silhouettes of blankets where they lay, littered across the old, weathered floor. Under his shoes he could feel the grooved edges of the wooden planks where they were frequently walked upon and spooned in the center, and he carefully set his foot on the spots he figured would cause the least noise as he traversed the room. He didn’t want to wake anyone just yet.

Somewhere inside him the urge rang silent alarms: He had to get it first. He had to do it. Now. He wouldn’t get a second chance.

A sound of dry earth and grass crunching outside signaled the nearing guard making his patrol around the old, neglected buildings. He could see the torch the tall man carried as its flame cast long, glowy light between the slats in the shell of the fragile domicile. The light outside moved across the wall. He brushed a curl of hair away that had fallen over his eyes as he turned his head to follow its path. It came nearer, but the light it cast breached into the building in narrow lines and those lines of light crept long rows of it into the room and swept in the opposite direction as the source’s angle of entry changed about the perimeter. The torch’s movement halted. The invading lines of light landed, finally, on the far wall, to the exact spot he knew he needed, highlighting the space he sought like the big, red “X” that also marked the pirate’s treasure on a map he had seen earlier in a book.

He cast his eyes down at the path inside the dwelling and realized that it, too, was now more easily visible, and he crept more speedily between the sleeping people there to reach the opposite side of the room. He heard the man outside speaking as another set of footsteps approached from the opposite end.

“Anything?” The man asked.

“Nothing.” A woman responded.

“I still don’t like it,” he told her as a second torch flared from the first and lit brightly and hovered in the air near it, likely in the woman’s hand.

“I know. I can feel the hair on the back of my neck is raised, and the skin on my arms has become gooseflesh,” she told him. “I placed a few wards and traps.”

Finally, he stood before the long line of stocked shelves, stacked floor to ceiling and high up above his head, and he peered up at the gathering of items that lay across it. He reached up to the shelf above his shoulders and carefully moved things to the side that he knew would be worthless to him - bundles of clothing, satchels of scrolls, a pack with a gathering of apples inside that he had to keep from tumbling down to the floor when he shifted it.

“Well, keep an eye out. Something’s off tonight. Even the animals have gone silent,” the man outside told her as his light crossed to the other side of the woman’s torch and continued on to a place beyond the wall of the building.

“I noticed, too. I woke some of the others to start their patrols early. Be safe,” she told him, and soon her footsteps could be heard travelling back the way the man had come. Both orbs of light danced away from the wall, and any slivers that made it into the room left with them, plunging him deeper in darkness.

Keep going, the urge rang again. He didn’t have time to let his eyes re-adjust.

He came up on the tips of his toes and his fingers grazed the smooth, leather saddlebag at the back, well weathered and tattered at the edges and the stitching - he could tell without seeing it - was fraying at the seams of the pouches. He even knew the object’s true color despite never having seen it in the light of day. With a little bit of shifting here and there, he was able to free the heavy saddlebag from its place on the shelf above him.

Placing the saddlebag on the floor by his feet, he struggled undoing the ties that kept the flaps closed. He pulled at them until he could loosen the flap enough and slide a hand inside the small opening. That accomplished, his fingers sifted rather clumsily through the random items inside. Rough cloth - no. Potion bottles - no. Something metallic cut into a fingertip and he gasped quietly, wrenching his hand free to bring his finger to his mouth and suck the pain away. He used his other hand and yanked on the ties of the second pouch of the saddlebag and reached inside. A waterskin - no. Another bladder of liquid - no. A small, metal filigree flask - no.

Then he felt it.

The oh-so-soft fur was heaven for his fingers. He grabbed hold of the small, fur pouch and pulled it through the opening of the saddlebag and held it tightly to his chest. He left the saddlebag on the floor and turned and made his way back across the room, past the many sleeping people, until he reached the door on the other side. He peeked through the slats in the wall and, when he was sure that he didn’t see or hear anyone around, he lifted the latch and slid the door open a crack and slipped out into the night air. Moonlight fell from above and he found that it was somehow brighter here than inside the dark building he was exiting. He left the door without closing it behind him.

Staying low, he crept to the next building and found the opening in the foundation he had used earlier and crawled his way back in. He felt his shoulders and ribs catch on the jagged wood and he sucked in air and twisted his body to wriggle past it to get inside, pulling at his clothing as it frayed where it caught. Once he knew he was safe within, he tucked himself in the corner where a bit of moonlight trickled in through a hole in the roof, and he opened his hands to look at the fur pouch. He ran his fingers over the purse, brushing the animal pelt that made up the small bag. He squeezed it between his hands and felt something hard inside. Something unexpected.

He pulled open the ties that cinched the purse closed and reached in, pulling out a large, brass ring. The amber-colored topaz stone in the center twinkled in the moonlight and felt cold to the touch, and he traced the black lines that ran from the circular stone to the ring’s edges and around the length of the band. The ring was mesmerizing.

“Someone’s been here!” the man from earlier shouted from the other building. A loud clanging came abruptly and rang the alarm for the camp.

From his corner in the small space he saw heads pop up from the bedrolls across the darkened room. Sleepy cries came from around him, blending with the new sounds of fighting from outside as he heard yelling and banging that echoed as magic clapped and metal pinged against armor.

The noise of cracking wood sounded above him and he looked upwards and saw that his previous view of the moon was suddenly covered by the shadow of a person perched on the roof above him. Wooden pieces started to fall onto his head. He tucked the ring into his shoe and skittered across the floor to escape from under the tearing roof. He ignored the screams of the others as they ran to the opposite wall, witnessing, the same as he did, when the roof gave way and burst inwards as a shower of splinters and a man fell from the now larger hole. The man landed with knees bent and hardly a sound, ending up crouched to the floor in the precise spot where he had been sitting a mere moment prior.

Despite the shouts from outside and the fear of the other inhabitants in this room, neither he nor the man uttered a sound. As the man stood from his knelt position and the moonlit shadow of his lithe figure unfolded across the floor, he realized that the figure looming high above him was the one he knew. It was the real-life image of the one he had seen over and over again in his mind’s eye.

The form rapidly approached them, reaching for them, and appeared more rigid and tense than what he had known. Yet, his swift actions were recognizably careful and gentle as he snatched them up.

Though his red eyes that glowed as he looked down on them were jarring and wholly unfamiliar, the silver-white hair and sharp features were the same.

He came for him. It was all so surreal.

He had finally come for him… For them all.

Please, read first work in series, Good Things Come, prior to proceeding to Chapter 2.

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 2

sel Ponovleno-Oloth

“Your actions are beginning to make me think that you actually enjoy The Pit, Kelbryn,” Astarion announced to the young elf from his seat at the head of the mahogany table within the large hall on the main floor of the Arcane tower. The arcane braziers blazed brightly and filled the black room with cool lighting. As was procedure in the city of sel Ponovleno-Oloth, all of the doors and windows to the tower were closed for the Council hearings throughout their morning spent in the great hall, the magical, steel barricades in use. 

The last prisoner on their schedule remained within. He stood at the opposite end of the long table from the seated seven Council members. His black, shoulder length hair was unkempt and his shirt ripped of its sleeves. The rest of his barely-worn green tunic hung from its vampire spawn owner, crumpled and stained from the few recent nights he spent imprisoned. The spawn had slept on an uncomfortable slab of stone for a bed in the jail that existed deep in the mines, and so dirt smudged the knees and hips of his tan breeches and clung all over his bare feet where he stood on the black marble of the hall. He waited with his wrists shackled, the thick, iron cuffs of which had been dipped in silver. The vampire spawn shifted his arms and hands frequently, the tinkling of the metal echoing in the large space, and he winced visibly from the silver that made contact with his wrists.

Tav stood beside him in her full, shining Adamantine armor, a ready Paladin with her shield at her back and sword on her side, present as an added voice and arm of justice when needed. She was like this for most prisoners and often took part in their hearings. The jail warden Felara watched from behind her, and the lead sentinel Malakai stood posted at the prisoner's opposite side.

“That assumption is incorrect,” the young elf replied.

Astarion quirked a brow. “Is that so? Then, by all means, explain to us what the truth of the matter is in your case,” Astarion said and he stood and motioned to the others seated along the long sides of the table also engaged in the hearing. He paced between the table and the bright elevator at the center of the hall, the blue light from the cylindrical shaft almost making his silver curls and pale skin appear to glow as he spoke again, “Because I feel like we've done everything we can to make you comfortable here. Much more so than you ever were in the dungeons, isn't that right?”

“Yes, my Lord,” Kelbryn said and lowered his chin and his eyes looked to the floor. 

“Then tell us, please, because we need to understand your actions.” Astarion folded his arms across his chest, careful not to crimp the black silk blouse, and leaned a hip against the tall segment of black bricks that made up a section of armrest in the bench that encircled the elevator. “Citizens of sel Ponovleno-Oloth get items based on request. After many years since having established this city, they are never denied their needs, and those that contribute within our city are rarely denied their wants. As you well know, we barter and broker deals and money only with visitors or outside merchants. There is no need for money between ourselves. Have any requests been submitted by him with the aides of your office, Yousen?” Astarion kept his eyes on Kelbryn and crossed a long leg of his sleek, black pants and fine shoe across his other leg.

“No, he has not,” Yousen declared from his seat at the table.

“And any requests for topside access to explore or for excursions must be approved by Medical or our Gur representative.” Still, he kept his eyes locked onto Kelbryn. “Dalyria? Gandrel?”

“No,” Dalyria replied.

“None from him, saer,” Gandrel responded with a sigh as he leaned back in his chair and frowned at the prisoner.

“Interesting,” Astarion stated nonchalantly from his relaxed position. “And yet, with each of these opportunities available to you, you chose to steal valuables from your multiple neighbors, run from the guards, and force Leon to sign an order to the sentries for your search and arrest. You were caught during a brawl when you next resisted after they discovered you topside,” Astarion looked over his shoulder at Leon who was also seated at the table near his back where he stood. “Is that correct?”

“Yes, my Lord,” Leon grunted as he, too, looked upon the shackled prisoner.

Astarion returned and smiled disarmingly at Kelbryn. “And this is not your first time in front of me with similar accusations, is it, Kelbryn?”

Kelbryn glanced up from under his eyelids at Astarion, but pressed his lips together in a thin line. Tav nudged the wayward, undead elf.

“No, saer,” he uttered after a moment.

“No.” Astarion echoed. “How many times has he been arrested, Malakai? Include this one.”

The tiefling lead sentry replied, “Six, my Lord.”

Astarion quirked an eyebrow at the prisoner. “I see, so a habitual offender, then?”

“It would appear that way,” Malakai replied.

“And exactly how many times has he been put in The Pit?” Astarion asked the studious drow warden that stood behind Tav.

“Only the once, my Lord,” Felara answered from behind Kelbryn. Astarion motioned for her to continue, so she did. “His first sentence to The Pit was fulfilled without incident at one month. Afterwards, he completed the mandatory rehabilitation over the course of his six months with us in the general prison.”

“How long since his release from the prison?”

“Less than a month, saer,” she replied.

“Then you must have liked it there and desire to go back,” he stated matter-of-factly to Kelbryn.

Kelbryn’s face shot up from the floor to look at Astarion. “No, saer, I didn't like it there. I don't want to go back. Please.” His words begged their leader, but his voice was steadier than it should have been if he were truly afraid, Astarion noted.

“But here we are again,” Astarion uncrossed his arms and raised his hands, palms up, and gestured to the room, “in this hall, after you have broken our laws, once again. Were you meeting someone topside?” 

The prisoner shook his head rapidly. “No, my Lord.”

Finally, an emotion, Astarion thought, and he lifted from the bench and turned an ear towards Kelbryn. “We have yet to hear your reasons... I'm waiting.”

“I- I don’t know,” the young elf stammered, and his chest heaved.

Astarion turned to face Kelbryn then. He heard the quiet sighs of disappointment at his back from members of their Council.

“How old were you when you were turned, Kelbryn?” he asked.

“Twenty-two, saer,” he told him. “And I was in Cazador’s dungeon for three years.”

Astarion saw the same sadness he felt pass across Tav’s face as she looked over at him. Her eyes met Astarion’s and in them he saw something else. Pity. 

“How would you describe Cazador’s dungeon, where you spent those three years?” Gandrel interjected. 

Astarion watched the fog as it passed over Kelbryn’s copper eyes before he witnessed him lower his gaze back to the dark floor. Astarion turned and smirked at his friend and decided he would play this game, too. Gandrel inclined his head at Astarion, urging the course along.

“Cold. Dirty. Dark. Evil,” the boy said shakily. “And we were so sick and starved. Sometimes tortured. It was like a Hell we couldn’t wake up from.” Kelbryn looked up then and his eyes were red-rimmed and tearing. “And then you and Tav came and set us all free and brought us here. You made our lives better!” he cried.

“And yet you are taking these gifts they have given us for granted,” Aurelia spoke up from the table. "This new, long life and new opportunities.” 

“There are true criminals locked in the ‘eternal’ depths of the stone quarry penitentiary - The Pit,” announced the dark-haired, female vampire spawn from her seat beside Leon. As an elected official to the Council whose position it was to represent the population made up of counties created from Cazador's dungeons, Sylfalra knew firsthand of Kelbryn’s experience. “They chose imprisonment over death. Over their community.” Her human, almond-shaped eyes, absent of any epicanthal folds and filled with large, red irises, squinted at Kelbryn as she analyzed him. “And I don’t think you’re one of them. Not really.”

“You’re pissing it away, young man,” Gandrel told him. “You’re headed the right way for a sentence of an eternity in the deepest, darkest section of The Pit. Or your eternal sleep, if that’s what you want.”

"And while you spent your short time there,” warden Felara added from behind him, “you never even glimpsed the permanent residence sector of The Eternal Pit that saers Gandrel and Sylfalra reference.”

“Kelbryn, everyone at this table, in this room even, has spent the last twelve years creating a better society for us vampire spawn,” Astarion said and walked back to his chair at the head of the table, but he remained standing. “And you’ve managed to live amongst the Gur and other living beings we shelter who chose to make this place their home.” He feigned concern, “Oh, but you haven’t tried to bite any of them in that time, have you?”

“No, my Lord,” Kelbryn straightened and raised his chin, prideful.

“I didn’t think so,” he said, still standing beside his chair. He placed his hands on the table and surveyed the faces of the six others seated at it. “Which leaves the question of what to do with our young man, here. Ideas?”

“I propose that he spend a week in The Eternal Pit, and another three weeks in The Pit,” Leon suggested, and a whimper sounded from the prisoner.

“I second the motion,” Dalyria called, “provided there is a longer-term probation which includes after release, with regular counselling for his obvious kleptomania.”

“What?!” Kelbryn yelled, and Tav gripped him firmly by the arm as he started forward. Malakai stepped closer to him. Both of their armor ticked with their movements.

“All in favor?” Gandrel asked.

Every hand at the table raised in agreement.

“The motion is carried,” Tav announced as she pulled the prisoner closer to her to pass him to the lead sentry. “The sentencing is made. Malakai, return the prisoner to the jail cell to await transfer.” 

“NO! I can’t go down there again!” Kelbryn cried, the tears falling down his face as his sentencing came to a close.

“You are on very thin ice, Kelbryn,” Astarion narrowed his eyes and trained his stern features onto him. Tav held Kelbryn steady while Astarion addressed him. “You were but a child when-”

“I AM NOT A CHILD!” Kelbryn screeched at the Council.

In a flash and with preternatural speed, in less time than it took for Kelbryn to inhale his next breath, an Astarion-shaped blur leapt onto the table and charged forward across the room and stepped down to the floor again off the other side of the conference table. He abruptly halted and appeared in focus with his nose a finger’s width from Kelbryn’s, perilous danger surging from his crimson eyes as he glared at him.

Kelbryn’s entire body flinched at the action. If not for Tav holding him forward he was sure to have shrunk back from the threatening presence that so swiftly and unexpectedly entered his space and filled his area of sight. 

“I am both your elder and your Lord. You are a child until I say you are not,” Astarion declared ominously. “And if, once you are released from this short and unusual punishment we have decided for you as a last attempt to rehabilitate you and integrate you into our society, you stand before this Council again, I will not be so lenient next time.” Astarion’s near-feral eyes looked the young man up and down as he stood before him. His silver, perfectly coiffed curls maintained their structure, holding every strand of hair perfectly in place, as always, despite his recent flight across the room. “I endured Cazador’s - special - torments for two-hundred years. I took his last breath from him,” he seethed. “I will not hesitate to tear your thumb from your non-dominant hand as part of your penalty, branding you as a thief, prior to throwing you into the Eternal Pit with the other wolves that slink away their unending years in that isolation. You can ask them when you visit how I did it to those who are down there now. Do. Not. Test. Me.”

“N-no, my Lord. I apologize,” Kelbryn panted, his back rigid with fear and supported against Tav’s front.

“Good,” Astarion said pleasantly then, and he stood upright, regaining his regal countenance. “While you are serving your sentence, I want you to remember what I just said.”

“Yes, my Lord, saer,” Kelbryn exhaled, tipping his head in a bow towards his elder.

“And Kelbryn,” Astarion prodded.

“Y-yes, saer?” Kelbryn straightened and watched him, mindful of his next move.

“You may not know why it is that you have these urges to do these things and steal and rebel against authority, but I want you to remember something else for me, will you?”

“Of course, saer.”

“As an elf, you are still quite young and will be stuck in this phase for a great deal of your long life due to your age at your turning. Even though you don’t know why you crave these activities, I want you to remember what I’ve said to you here, now. I want you to remember and know, with every fiber of your being, why you shouldn’t do these things anymore, and vividly recall what fate I’ve told you awaits you if you continue.”

“I shall r-remember,” Kelbryn said solemnly and nodded.

Astarion gestured to Malakai to take the dismissed prisoner.

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 3

The large, tiefling sentry and prison warden Felara walked together with Kelbryn towards the Arcane tower main entry and the stairs that led to the large courtyard. Felara bowed her head to Tav and the other Council members and then closed the large door behind them as they exited from the tower’s great hall.

Tav turned to Astarion then and they walked together to join the others at the conference table. “Was that really necessary? About that bit with the thumbs?” Tav chuckled.

“I thought it was great!” Yousen exclaimed as he hopped down from his tall chair. “I would’ve shat my pants if I were him!” He nudged Gandrel at his side and pointed to Astarion as he approached, “I just knew the two of you were up to something, you scoundrels! I’ve never been happier to let something play out.” He let out a chortle.

“I’ll reach out to the custody sergeant for the Eternal penitentiary,” Leon sighed as he informed them, his tone weary and serious. “I shall have Kelbryn room with Gruknar for his week there. He’s truly a giant, but a teddybear and only wanted his peace and quiet and chose to live there of his own volition. He's very much a force none will tempt and a peacekeeper in his sector. He would help us with Kelbryn and keep him safe.”

“He is precisely the ‘inmate’ I was thinking of when I threatened to remove Kelbryn’s thumb,” Astarion told him then turned to Tav, “Gruknar and several other inmates lost their thumbs in a bulette-riding competition they held there over a period of several years. Since I allowed the entertainment that then cost them their thumbs when they strapped themselves to the beast in the dangerous and odd rodeo, I gathered he could help establish and continue the ruse as I presented it to Kelbryn.”

“If the point was to scare him straight, I think this might be your greatest success yet,” Aurelia praised him as she, Leon, and Sylfalra each collected their papers and rose from their chairs. They walked together to the other side of the table where Dalyria and Gandrel remained seated beside one another.

“We shall see,” Dalyria told them as she stood, also piling her papers to place into her satchel. Her face soured as she glanced at Astarion. “Though my scrolls on the table could have done without the shoe-print, Astarion,” she remarked before her calm features returned to her. Then to Gandrel as she patted him on the shoulder, “I’ll see you later at the clinic?”

“Certainly. I won’t let Astarion keep me so busy this time.” He smirked up at her.

“Oh, no,” Astarion quickly scoffed at his friend, “You can’t keep pointing at me for your inability to keep time, you old bloodbag! Your brain and eyes work perfectly fine, Gandrel. Keep blaming me and you’ll be surprised to so quickly find yourself at the bottom of a set of stairs.”

“Such attacks from someone claiming to be my friend!” Gandrel laughed and pushed his chair back from the table and held his hand out to Astarion.

“Old habits die hard, Gandrel. Surely you know that,” Astarion snorted as he gave him his arm. He waved off Dalyria with his other hand and she left the great hall on the tails of Leon, Aurelia, and Yousen as they neared the grand doors and chatted pleasantly amongst themselves.

Gandrel eased up from his seated position, taking advantage of Astarion’s offer of strength as he strained to get upright. He gingerly stepped away from the chair and Astarion’s arm kept him steady as he slowly adjusted his weight from his good left leg and onto his right leg that had been amputated above the knee.

His upper thigh was strapped tightly with leather belts over a leather sleeve and further encased in a metal contraption he still despised. It was a new leg, complete with articulating knee and ankle, that Zanner of the Gondians fabricated for him, with the aid of Barcus of the Ironhand Gnomes, so that he might be more independent.

Gandrel had hobbled about the Underdark for well over a year on a peg leg and relied on a single crutch under one arm for stability. Unfortunately, it was the wooden peg leg and the crutch both that had given him blisters, deepening sores, and months of new infections that his aging body had great difficulty overcoming, even with the healing potions and all the tricks that Dalyria could muster.

Astarion let Gandrel lead them towards the elevator access and the two women followed behind.

Sylfalra turned to Tav, her red, almond-shaped eyes turning sorrowful. “I hope Kelbryn does well this time. He was a good kid. I don't know what triggered him to start acting out over the last few years. It saddens me.”

“He never got the chance to rebel against his elders as an elf,” Astarion informed her from in front as he guided Gandrel across the marble floor. “He was turned quite young for an elf, and then imprisoned and tortured. His actions at this time show he is finally feeling comfortable and has accepted this as his home. I only hope that, despite vampirism halting his aging, he somehow outgrows this natural elven stage. We can only point the way.”

“And do a little trickery to make that point, isn’t that right, my friend?” Gandrel prodded. Astarion gave a laugh.

“A little innocent trickery towards what hopes to be a good outcome shouldn’t be mocked, you invalid,” he scolded.

“Ha! You are anything but innocent, vampire,” Gandrel scoffed at him.

“Excuse me?!” Astarion said in his best mocked outrage. “But I've been on my best behavior. You all know it.” When only laughter sounded in response, “To each to their own, I suppose... Although, I am right.”

“Yes, my love,” Tav snickered, finally commenting, “I agree.”

“Well, I shall let you all be for your ritual luncheon,” Sylfalra told them. “I’ll likely get some more information from the citizens that Kelbryn stole from and see if I can dig up any other motivations for the thefts. Perhaps doing some asking around might give us something else to work with. I’ll dismiss the guards outside the tower when I leave.” Sylfalra said her quick goodbyes to the trio and made her way to the main doors to trail after the others.

Tav circled the men and inserted her key into the arcane lock of the bright blue and hammered gold elevator. The magical door folded and opened for them. Gandrel took tentative steps into the lift, grasping Astarion’s forearm as he swung his new leg over the small gap in the floor. The contraption clicked and whined as it bent and then the mechanism whirred again as he set the foot down.

“I hate this godsforsaken thing.”

“I don’t know,” Tav uttered, “but it looks much more comfortable than the one you were using before. It seems to cushion your leg better. And you won’t need the crutch once you get used to it.”

“My leg itself is far more comfortable, yes,” Gandrel admitted. “There’s a cushion wrap inside the leathers that is imbued with cool, soothing magic and feels almost like jelly against my stump. And the leather straps are snug around that and not right up against my leg.”

“That should help with the sores, then, won’t it?” Tav asked him as she looked over the side of the contraption. She waved her key over the rune for their living quarters and the elevator whisked them to that level.

“It should, in all likelihood,” he responded and sighed. “But getting around sel Ponovleno-Oloth will be a challenge until I obtain a walking stick now that Dalyria tells me I am banned from using my crutch.”

“Well, until then, you can rely on your friends, Gandrel.” Tav stepped out of the lift and turned to her left and opened one of the large, double wood-blocked doors to her and Astarion’s kitchen and living area.

Astarion led Gandrel to one of the chairs at the table and, once Gandrel was settled, went to the cabinet to fetch him a pitcher of ale. After closing the door behind them, Tav set her shield and sword against the wall and removed her adamantine gauntlets and gloves and set them on the end table. She unfastened her adamantine pauldrons and chestplate, hefted them off along with her adamantine greaves and set them in the cushioned armchair beside the door.

“I just can’t shake the feeling that my leg is still there,” he told them as Tav stretched in her tunic and breeches, finally freed from her armor. “After this many years have passed, you would think I could tell my body that my toes aren’t cramping because there are no toes there to be cramping anymore.”

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again,” Tav told Gandrel while she cleansed her hands in the washbasin. She reached into the cupboard and pulled out the cured ham and began cutting slices from it and from the hard cheese beside it for herself and their human friend. “You’re so very fortunate not to have died. That poison from the Yuan-ti abomination you fought five years ago nearly killed you at least twice if not three times over!”

Astarion remained silent as he listened to their conversation. He set a pewter cup in front of Gandrel and another to the empty seat beside him. He poured some cool ale from the pitcher into both cups and set the pitcher onto the table. He walked back to the counter and pulled two apples from the wooden bowl there and took a knife from the knife block and cut them into pieces and laid the bits out onto two wooden plates on the countertop beside Tav.

“You almost died that first time when it attacked you and the poison destroyed the structures of your leg, and again, later, when the poison wrecked your organs as you fought to clear what was left of it.” Tav set the slices of ham and hard cheeses onto the plates Astarion had set out for them both. She turned with the plates in hand and took them to the table and set one down in front of Gandrel and another in front of her place next to the pewter cup Astarion had filled for her. “If Dalyria hadn’t performed surgery to remove that necrotic kidney later on, there’s no way you would have survived.” She sat at the table next to Gandrel, then reached out and grabbed his hand. “You were sick for so long, Gandrel. That poison wrecked your body and did some real damage. It still needs time to heal. You’ve already gained so much strength back with the regular treatments Dalyria concocted. You seem to be needing those far less than you were last year.”

“You were at death’s door far too much for my liking.” Astarion straightened and cleared his throat, “Chessa and Kass almost lost their father. And as soon as Dalyria recommended we find a different setup for your leg to decrease your wounds and improve mobility, Barcus and the Gondians were the best option I could think of,” Astarion reminded him as he sat beside Tav. “They were happy to help us. You’ll likely be running around the Underdark by this time next year thanks to that thing! Please, my friend, just take the time your body needs.”

“Such friends I have in the both of you,” Gandrel smirked pleasantly at them across the table. “There are so many Gur that retired here, now, this cavernous life feels like a home I never thought we would ever have. I thought wandering and adventuring would be all we would ever know.” He and Tav took a few careful bites of their food.

“And there were no ulterior motives in them coming to live here with thousands of newly-released and rabid vampires, I’m sure,” Astarion remarked snidely. Tav smirked at him over her meal.

Gandrel nearly choked on his food with a laugh, “Yes, I’m sure many of them thought to keep watch and even enforce their justice upon you all, but you proved to quickly organize your own government and laws very early on just prior to the declaration officially naming the city sel Ponovleno-Oloth. The two of you even put a stop to Petras and his mob when they went on an incensed hunt. I think, more than anything, that’s what won you over with Ulma and the others. That, and protecting as well as caring for our little ones.”

“They have been model citizens,” Astarion told him.

“And helping to raise them as part of our own little family has been a pleasure, Gandrel,” Tav stated. “Even though you few of the Gur allowed the ceremony and knew it was Helm’s blessing and the gift of my blood as his grandchild that they needed to drink, everyone else celebrated what information we gave them - that we had come across the rare, blessed magic from Cazador’s stash of hoarded relics that would allow them to age into adulthood.” Tav smiled as she remembered. “All of sel Ponovleno-Oloth welcomed them into house Ancunín, especially after hearing of our private ceremony between ourselves and the Gur parents and Ulma. Even if it couldn’t reverse anyone’s curse of vampirism, that the children could grow and mature was celebrated in the streets!”

“Oh,” Astarion interjected, “Speaking of Ulma… That reminds me…” and he lifted from the table and walked out of the room in the direction of their library and private bedroom suite. Tav and Gandrel continued to eat while they chatted.

“That alone drove one group of parents to come and live here in safety with their little ones. That you opened your guest suite to them and allowed them to see for themselves… as unexpected as it was, it was a gift,” he told her.

“Andrik and Misha could not have continued without the love of their parents,” she remarked. “And that they relocated here and brought with them their knowledge of textiles and tanning of skins. Andrik has made the best apprentice under his father. And Misha helped smoke this very ham from his mother in the meat locker!”

“Ah, but they will continue their parents’ work long after we are in the ground,” Gandrel uttered, more somber as he finished the meat on his plate. “I only wish that, at the time, teenage Vanja’s parents hadn’t decided his date of turning was the day he was dead to them and moved on to another Gur tribe. At least he found a place here with a new family that cared for him in the agrarian collective.”

“We helped him here in any way he needed. All of them deserved whatever chances we could afford them.”

“Gods! Really?” Astarion remarked as he entered the room carrying a long, narrow box with a chocolate silk ribbon wrapped around it. “I leave for two seconds and already you’ve got him glum?”

Gandrel looked over the parcel in Astarion’s arm and frowned.

“Don’t be so sour, Gandrel. It’ll spoil the fun!” he told him as he crossed the room and handed him the gift. Gandrel raised his eyes skeptically at Astarion as he took the package. Astarion scoffed knowingly at the human, “No more surprises. You have my word.”

“Ha! I never thought I would expect to hear promises from a vampire and believe them,” he joked as he pulled on the satin ribbon.

“There’s something to be thankful for,” Astarion teased, “that I’m not a ‘true’ vampire.”

“Ah, yes,” Gandrel teased back as he unfolded the linen inside of the box, “or our association would be quite different, indeed.”

“I am neither a ‘true’ vampire, nor the vampire ascendant. Therefore, I am under no delusions, don’t you worry.” Astarion stood beside Tav as he watched him.

Gandrel pulled a long, sleek, cherry-stained walking stick from the box. He moved the sturdy, oak item in his hands as he examined the intricately carved boar’s head on the anterior of the handle. He ran his fingers over the fine metal inlay that circled down the cane’s shaft and his eyes began to tear as he read the script engraved upon it, “Moonmaiden that guides me, nourish my midnight soul and comfort my Gur spirit.” He gasped and looked to his friends. “Oh, my, this is beautiful. How…?”

“Halsin carved the cane,” Tav told him. “He used a piece of old oak that had been ripped from an ancient tree in a storm near a Selûnite prayer site in old Reithwin.”

“From there, we sent it to Ulma,” Astarion added, “and she and the rest of your Gur tribe fixed the blade that’s hidden inside to the handle, and they added the ornate metal inscription and also blessed it.”

“I shall be the envy of any Gur I pass with this creation.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Astarion quipped, “even with that garish, clunking leg and that shiny walking stick, I bet I still get more stares walking down a street than you.”

“Ah, my friend,” Gandrel chuckled, though his voice cracked with the surge of emotion as he fixed the cane in one hand and planted the tip to the floor and tested its stability under his hand. “I knew someday I would find a reason to keep you around.”

Gandrel’s cane is based on the image:

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 4

He heard the uptick of the man’s heartbeat from the loft above. Time slowed all around him. A reverberating clack sounded and he shifted in response.

The arrow sliced through the air, whizzing narrowly by his olive, freckled cheek as he tilted his head. The feather from its end tickled through his tousled, blonde curls above his ear as it passed.

He trained his gaze onto the origin of the arrow and caught sight of the crossbow in the shadowed loft overhead. A pleased and devilish smirk lifted the corner of his slim mouth as he looked up at the archer from the ground. The old floorboards creaked beneath the archer’s feet as he leaned back on his heels to steady himself as his position was revealed to his mark - there was no more hiding.

From the ground to the loft beside the archer, the thin man outfitted in black armor and leather casted Misty Step and blinked to the space behind him, reached around and slit the archer’s throat with the swift wave of his dark-sleeved arm, his dagger having appeared in his gloved hand from seemingly nowhere. Before the archer even recognized the action and his rough hands flew up to catch the blood pouring from his throat, the agile man cartwheeled off the edge of the loft, over the heads of the grouping of the five men and women that crowded around their sturdy leader in the center of the barn floor. The rays of sunlight sifting through the slats in the giant barn doors danced over the figure’s black costume as he passed through them, casting irregular and stuttered shadows on the barn floor and the beings below, barn dust from the hay-covered loft glittering in the light as it fell from him and his careening over the edge.

The same bloody dagger that was used to kill the archer in the barn loft was catapulted from the agile man’s gloved hand as he spun, shooting to the space in the opposite loft, and it made a sickening sound as it made contact in the throat of the other assassin as she emerged from behind the bales of hay, its rustling having given away her initial movement to the man as he still flew through the air.

The man aimed his fall and descended over the leader of the group below him. He tucked slightly as he prepared to grapple, and he caught hold of the leader’s shoulders as he collided with a loud clonk and tipped the man into his roll, and they tumbled forward from the group and past his original location that had been positioned several paces away. 

A muffled series of thuds sounded from the bodies of the two assassins as they hit the floorboards in the hay-covered loft above.

When the tussling men finally ceased rolling across the ground, the man had one black-leather-clad knee across the group leader’s chest, one arm clasped in his gloved hand at the earth, and a second dagger in his bare hand prodded at the leader’s throat as he stood with a fine boot pushing into his other forearm and pinned him to the packed dirt floor of the barn.

“Ack!” the leader squelched out, finally. The shock of his failure, at the obviously poorly executed attempt to kill the shadowy representative, hit him in the chest at the same time that the other man stood and pressed down on top of him. Not only that, but his sudden and oppressing terror at suddenly finding himself on the wrong side of a knife slithered like a snake up his spine and left his muscles as reactive to his whims as jelly. He was paralyzed in this entirely new and wholly unfamiliar situation.

“Is this how you decide to do business with us, Teegan?” the black-clad man asked from atop him as he felt time return to its normal passing, his voice a low rumble. He dipped his unblemished and smooth-skinned face menacingly close to the other man. “Because you see only myself, you think I am weaker than the group of you? That you can easily take my coin without providing the goods you promised us?”

“I’m sorry! Spectre, I’m sorry!” the gruff leader squawked hastily from beneath him, “ ‘Twas a warning shot! That’s all!”

“That’s all? Hmm,” the man called Spectre said smoothly. His features shifted in his consideration of Teegan's words. “Fine.” He stood unceremoniously and lifted from Teegan, the leader of the group of underhanded merchants, and tucked his dagger away. He loomed over him. “But that ‘warning shot’ cost you two men, and twenty-five percent of your original payment for the goods you promised.” The solid man on the ground scrambled back from his attacker and shot to his feet. 

“You can’t just-” Teegan started, but the lean man known to him as Spectre, confident and standing so casually in front of him as though this were still a friendly exchange, quickly held up his hand and made a shushing noise to stop him.

“One more word out of you other than the word ‘agreed’ will cost you one of two things….” Spectre narrowed his crimson eyes at the bulky, taller man that stood before him, “even less pay… or even fewer men to trail home behind you with your tail tucked between your legs.” He cocked his head at the merchant and shrugged a shoulder at him. He smiled villainously, revealing pretty dimples at his jaw. “But I get to choose which. Any other existing deal will be voided and we won't entertain any future transactions.”

Silence. A breath.

“Agreed,” he grumbled, yielding to him, and scrubbed the sore back of his neck with a dirty hand. He backed towards his now-useless crew of deviants meant to protect him.

“And the next time you decide you want to renegotiate for more coin or threaten us…” the svelte, blonde man called out calmly as he walked away from them to the barn doors and pushed one of them open and spilled sunlight over himself and farther into the barn’s middle, “... don’t,” Spectre said flatly. He turned to the group then, the sun shining down on him at his back and creating a halo of his blonde curls atop his head. “Because, I promise you, if there is a next time, you won’t be walking away.”

The group murmured amongst themselves as the blonde figure exited the barn and disappeared around the edge of the door.

“Oh,” Spectre popped his head back into view, and the group of beings startled, “and Teegan?” he called into the barn.

“Yes, saer?” the group leader responded warily.

“Do also remember that we are known to keep all of our promises,” he said and smiled again at the trembling man before leaving them all once again.

Spectre sleuthed his way from Moonhaven, staying hidden in one way or another while making great time as he traveled to his next appointment. He had turned invisible as soon as he left the barn with Teegan and his miscreants behind him, and he weaved silently around the outer edges of the township. 

His morning having been quite productive, he thought as he walked under the afternoon sun, he was pleased with the progress he made with Teegan and his unscrupulous merchant group. He knew as well as any other member of his family did that when Teegan sent an impromptu request to meet with payment in hand that it was an attempt at either renegotiation or assassination. In this case, it was both. And thanks to his clan, Spectre had been well-prepared. 

Their clan was known as The Eidolon. Their network had infiltrated every aspect of the seedy underbelly in Faerun over many years, working in even deeper shadows than the Zhentarim or other mercenaries dared. Loyal, inducted members of their group, known as Revenants, and other friendly agents kept them well-informed and were rewarded handsomely for their service. That his clan were known to keep their promises and were honorable despite what brutal tasks they might perform was an absolute fact no one could argue. And if anyone was caught falsifying themselves as a Revenant or a representative of The Eidolon then that individual never saw the light of day again - another promise they most assuredly kept.

That was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the workings of The Eidolon and made Teegan’s actions all the more more dense! So misguided, he deserved the single warning he got this day, Spectre chuckled to himself. And no more.

Spectre avoided any other humanoids during his journey to the bog. When not invisible, Spectre either kept to the trees or rooftops when needing to avoid others, or he blended into the found nooks of the surrounding landscape and they walked right by him.

When he caught sight of the tavern by the water’s edge at the far end of the bog that was known as “the Hag’s Lair,” named for its previous owner that had been defeated twice over by the Hero of Baldur's Gate and the structure abandoned, he knew he was in safer territory. He was certain that he could find several concealed Revenants posted to keep watch with arrows or spells trained about the property, if he truly wanted to amuse himself by outing them, which - for the moment - he did not. For the moment, he chose to bask in their safety and leisurely close the space between himself and the structure.

His clan had outfitted and ran this tavern and harbored their own in its hidden depths, far away from prying eyes. Many of their contracts started right here within the thin walls of the old Hag’s house. Through the southern door of the structure and on its other side was a path that curved alongside and out beyond the shallow bay. It led to a dock they had constructed for reaching the deeper water and was perfect for passing ships and allowed them to increase some patronage to the tavern. 

Of course, it helped for smuggling when needed, too.

While some welcome travelers came via ships to the tavern for rest and drink on their way to Moonhaven or the nearby Selûnite temple, both renovated after occupation by the goblins and the Absolutists and all of them conquered by the Hero of Baldur’s Gate, most that came specifically to the tavern to visit The Eidolon for business were those beings with requests for mercenary security, help, or safety. Even assassinations were performed when consensus was reached by the elite Founders of The Eidolon as a request came in. Some requests were denied and the inquiring individuals turned away, although their anger at being denied was rebuked solely by the reputation of The Eidolon.

The large, smelly ogre and watchman at the door to the tavern greeted him as he approached the entrance. “Hello, Spectre. Welcome home.” His nasal septum ring and various other metal piercings glinted in the light as his gravelly voice spoke the words.

“Good afternoon, Lump,” Spectre pleasantly said as he approached the strangely intelligent ogre.  “How are things today? Are we feeding you well?”

“As usual, I get my meat when I ask for it and can also pick my choice of the fallen to devour, particularly those who defy The Eidolon, but your coin is more than sufficient for now. I am well.”

“Glad to hear. Keep up the good work,” he said as he stepped over the threshold.

“Good?! Ha! You have quite the wit, Spectre,” the ogre joked at his back and elicited a soft chuckle from Spectre.

Upon entering the tavern, he smelled the savory aroma of large game and other fare that always cooked over the spit at the great hearth and walked down the levels to the bottom in the center of the large house-turned-tavern. He ignored the servers and few obnoxious patrons that yelled obscenities from their various rotunda-styled balconies above and laughed with abandon as drink sloshed around them. Most were drunkards already deep in their cups by midday, and Spectre paid them no mind once he determined none were paying him attention in turn.

The human barkeep tending bar at the circular counter at the bottom of the structure at its back nodded as he approached, and, after signaling a nod in response, Spectre slipped through the door positioned at the side of the massive hearth to enter the storage area behind.

From the storage room, he opened a secret panel in the wall and turned the corner. He proceeded down a set of steps and encountered Lump’s two brothers Chock and Fank keeping watch at the next access point at the base of the stairs. The yellow glow radiating from the ichor entrapped in roots and vines here at the walls drew in gnats and similarly-colored fireflies and made the ogres’ skin appear a more vivid, vibrant green.

“Friend!” Chock slowly called out in his signature cheery and deep growl as his single eye caught sight of him and he pointed a large hand at him. His torn leather and bone-adorned eye patch surprisingly stayed in place despite the bobbing his head did atop his neck as he looked for the bag he knew Spectre carried. 

“Friend, you bring food? No chicken.” Fank made a disgruntled face and pointed his rough, tree-sized club at him in warning.

“Hello, Chock! Yeah, Fank, you know I did,” Spectre grinned at the big, green gluttons as he reached into his bag of holding and pulled out two decently-sized legs of smoked pork he had swiped on his way into Moonhaven in the dark of early morning. If Teegan or his crew had managed to steal his bag from him during their ‘renegotiation,’ they would have been sorely disappointed at its contents - Spectre delighted at the thought.

He tossed the ham hocks to the ogres, providing them with their occasional treat. It was in addition to what food they got regularly from the tavern and had become sort of a ritual when he came from his daytime excursions. 

“Enjoy, you two.” He didn’t wait for the giants to begin biting and sucking the meat from the bone. Spectre continued forward and deeper into the dimly lit cellar beneath the tavern and left the slurping sounds fading behind him.

He could hear the indistinct chatter coming from the alcoves in the cellar, alcoves that once retained tormented souls tricked by the hag's warped promises. There was still an ominous chill in this level of the cellar, the walls still slick with grime and glazed from the centuries of soot and steam released from the hag's potion cauldron that had sat in the center of this level, the only evidence that remained of the hag's magic and left slowly to decay amidst the newer activities within.

The inner workings of The Eidolon started here. Well, technically, they started in the world outside, but here is where The Eidolon began taking advantages. Talented Revenants, exactly half of them donned in light armor as ordered and ready for any action if needed, mapped entire plans at tables and desks scattered about the central floor and the alcoves, compiling and networking intel they acquired throughout the Sword Coast, Faerun, and beyond. All incoming requests and activities were submitted to the elite Revenants, even to the Founders, and heavily weighed based on promise, profit, risk, and in what way it would benefit The Eidolon in future.

The Revenants here recognized Spectre but stayed out of his way, respecting his high status as a Founder within The Eidolon and not wishing to interfere in his activities or interrupt his path as he traversed their space. He continued on through the double, massive iron security doors and into the cavern behind them, passing two heavily armored guards and two spellcasters that saluted him from their posts where their orders were to both secure and defend the doors as well as protect the other Revenants there.

The air whipped at him from his right as he passed the newest section of tunnel that connected at the right side just beyond the large security doors. A single heavily armed guard stood at the open entrance here, as well. 

Upon determining the Hag’s residence as the location for their base of operations, The Eidolon had excavated two entire wings of multi-forked tunnels which contained dormitories for the Revenants. The wings had been quarried deep into the neighboring mountain, and air flow was circulated by a series of rotating fans that were fastened into the ceiling at every juncture as the dormitory hallways descended deeper into the earth. The fans used a combination of magic and alchemical components that triggered them to activate in order to circulate air in response to moisture and the amount of nitrogen and sulfur dioxide that leached and released from the soil in a few of its tortuous corridors. The tunnel walls and ceilings were encased in a velvet mesh of greenery that flourished in darkness and clung to the surfaces within the halls of the dormitory wings, a necessary component that also fed on the moisture and carbon dioxide within and released oxygen in turn. Looking beyond the guard and down the first visible corridor section as he passed, he could see the few yellow ichor lights twinkling, along with their own interested swarms of fireflies as they hovered around the glowing lights and vegetation.

The large room in the next space held expansive and multi-level rock platforms and The Eidolon had constructed walkways connecting them, flooring and balconies as well to extend some of the rock structures, and other spaces for bookkeeping and even storage for goods existed for their clan inside the giant cavern. While this area wasn't as busy as the previous section, the Revenants or their activities here were no less important when compared to the previous room.

Spectre slinked through the lower aisles between the rock pillars and under the wooden walkways and beyond entire, high walls of stashed goods until he reached the far end and the waterfall that fell into a ravine below and was windowed by the rock walls. He reached behind a giant tree root that clung to a jagged outcropping of rock and triggered the hidden mechanism that then split the rushing water and opened a path to the tunnels that ran deeper into the earth.

He jumped across the ravine and landed between four heavily armored Revenant reinforcements, each of them poised and battle-ready, that also guarded this deep access to The Eidolon base where a handful of devoted Revenants and the most elite of the clan resided. The guards had initially responded to the opening of the waterfall, prepared for battle. Recognizing Spectre, they then saluted him and returned to their positions at attention and closed the waterfall behind him.

Spectre descended the gnarled path amidst the thick, deep roots and arches and columns of rock that littered the long tunnel as it twisted further downwards. He avoided the few gas-traps that existed along this part of the footpath to deter intruders, even flitting across upper ledges using Misty Step.

Spectre passed other scattered hatches along the bare walls and tangled root networks of this main tunnel as he descended further into the Hag’s old lair. These other niches and recesses had been carved into the walls for added housing reserved for those most trusted elite Revenants, those most devoted to their cause. He continued moving past ladders that had been bolted to the walls for easier access to the small living spaces from varied heights. 

He maintained quiet in the long passage, aware that many Revenants housed in this quarter were more active after nightfall and were likely sleeping the day away. He traversed a ledge across from a warped door made up of contorted and knotted, wooden roots and that was carved with the likeness of a face, its eyes glaring deadlike into the wide tunnel.

He passed from the long tunnel at last, having weaved through the final cluster of petrified vegetation and stalactites and stalagmites like passing shark’s teeth as he reached the mouth and exited the open maw to a wider room that led to the base for the elite Revenants. Spectre saw a movement of white in his periphery. To his left, in a nook created by a fallen boulder, he saw silver-white curls atop a body that wore a fine, black silk blouse and black cotton slacks. He knew those white curls and fit, elven figure as those of Astarion Ancunín.

What is he doing there? he thought.

This underground room - the Hall Chamber - was used by The Eidolon elites for gatherings and information sessions and disseminating orders amongst the gathered to issue to all other Revenants. Its walkways were formed by rock ledges against the cavern’s outermost walls and formed a large circle as it descended, a funnel that directed any foot traffic downwards, ending at the wooden door to the elite Revenant’s structure at the bottom - the highly classified War Room of the Founders of The Eidolon. Sounds of river water reached Spectre’s ears as the aquifer rushed beneath the great opening around which the walkway encircled as it slanted downwards to the wooden door.

Spectre scanned the expansive room and saw no one else there with them. No guards, no Revenants. Just himself watching Astarion as he plucked a rare moss from the corner where it formed in the crevice beside the long-fallen boulder. 

Spectre shifted to a lighter, stealthier stance and pulled his blade into his gloved hand. He turned invisible and began to approach Astarion from behind.

Astarion turned then and looked down towards the door of the structure beneath him before scanning the remainder of the Hall. He turned again and made his way closer to the tunnel entry and where Spectre had only just exited. Spectre flattened himself to the rock wall and watched him with great interest as he observed Astarion placing the moss into a satchel at his hip. Astarion walked past him and back into the twisted tunnel and jumped up onto a higher ledge. Spectre crept up the path behind him, ever watchful of Astarion and of his own movement, intent at making no sound whatsoever.

From his place on the ledge, Astarion leapt across to the ridge on which the carved face of the dead tree-giant was situated. Spectre watched him pull a dark, almost tribal and antiquated mask from his pack and place it over his face. He then walked through the face of the door as though it were nothing but mist.

Spectre quickly cast Misty Step and rematerialized at the door. He prowled forward and he knew he was close enough behind Astarion when he was able to pass through the door the same as the prey he stalked. 

On the other side and in the small, earthen chamber with exposed roots hanging from its roof, he continued to follow Astarion. Astarion removed his mask and put it away as he walked up a path towards a mushroom circle that emanated a strong pulse of magic. Spectre could feel the pull of the dark magic at its center and knew it was an ancient gateway.

Astarion stood near the mushroom circle but did not enter. He brushed an ungloved hand through his perfectly coiffed silver curls and looked down at his silk-sleeved forearms and brushed remnants of broken moss and rock dust from them and then looked around himself before turning his gaze back to the mushroom circle.

He was waiting.

The mushroom circle filled with blue and purple and yellow light and swirled together into a vortex that whooshed to life in the center as something started to travel through it. The buzzing sound came louder as the occupant riding the magical vortex approached this side of the ancient gateway. Astarion appeared to be focused on the scene in front of him.

Spectre took his moment and held a firm grip of his dagger - he would vanquish him here and now when he least expected it.

He sprang forward and pounced at Astarion’s back, aiming his dagger as he flew at him.

In a blur of movement, Astarion suddenly ducked into a crouch and grabbed hold of Spectre’s blade arm as it passed over him and pulled him over his head and threw his attacker face first to the earthen floor at his feet beside the whirring mushroom circle. He yanked Spectre’s foot as it came down also and folded Spectre’s legs onto his back and locked his lithe legs with his arms as he stepped on his neck and held him there with a fine, slender shoe.

“Nice try, Spectre,” Astarion told him as he displayed a wide mouth with bright, white fangs.

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 5

“What in the Nine Hells?!” Tav yelled as she stepped from the mushroom circle and approached them. The vortex behind her closed and the mushroom circle’s colors faded and it resumed its inane appearance. She pulled the sleeves up on her tunic and exposed her forearms and gripped her hands into fists. “Are you alright?!”

Astarion laughed loudly, keeping his eyes on the face at his foot.

“I’m fine, Mother,” Spectre choked from beneath Astarion’s shoe, one side of his face pressed against the dirt. “I almost had you!” he called up to Astarion from the ground.

Astarion lifted his foot from their son and dropped his hold of his legs and they fell to the earthen floor. “Yes, you almost had me, Finlay,” he mocked cheerily as he took a step backwards, “but you were not successful.”

“Fin,” Tav reached down and pulled their son to his feet. She held his face between her hands a moment to look him over before she brushed the dirt from his cheek, revealing his freckles.  “I’ll never understand this game the two of you play all the time. I mean, I understand it, but… oh, you know what I mean.” She ruffled the curls atop his blonde head. He waved her hands from his face and she let out an exasperated sigh. Tav lowered her arms and held his shoulders in both her hands. He was taller than her, almost as tall as Astarion, and she could still hardly believe it. Their young man.

Finlay turned his head to Astarion and called over to him, “What gave me away?”

Astarion said nothing, merely folded his arms across his chest and grinned. He shook his head at him while Tav brushed more dirt from the front of Finlay’s dark leather armor.

“Come on!” Finlay begged as he spun from Tav and stepped away from his mother’s reach. “What gave me away this time?”

“So it truly doesn’t matter if you stab one another, then?” Tav asked them both.

“No,” their male voices replied in unison, their eyes locked on one another. Tav scoffed in response and crossed her own arms across her chest and waited for them to finish their repetitive and exhausting exchange.

“Father,” Finlay prodded with a smirk, “how will I learn if you don’t tell me?” By the so-subtle shift in the smug look on Astarion’s face, Finlay knew he had won. 

Without a word and keeping the same expression on his face, Astarion stepped forward and reached for Finlay’s wrists. He pulled both of Finlay’s hands up and pushed them close to his son's face and held them there.

“What?” Finlay asked him, looking back and forth between his hands and Astarion. He waggled the fingers of his gloved hand and then his bare hand, looking for some trace of whatever his father was trying to show him.

Astarion didn’t move, didn’t respond, didn’t allow any more hints. He just stood there, holding Finlay’s wrists. A second later he rolled his eyes at him and looked to Finlay’s hands and quirked a knowing eyebrow as he looked back into his son’s face, urging him to figure it out for himself.

At his father’s persistent silence, Finlay sighed with irritation and took in a deep breath through his nose. His eyes suddenly widened with recognition as he quickly blew out the air from his lungs and he brought his fingers closer to his nostrils and took another deep inhale. “No way!” he yelled at Astarion.

“What?” Tav asked them both.

Finlay spun to his mother and Astarion chuckled from behind him. “I smell like godsdamned ham!” he told his mother and laughed at himself then.

“I don’t smell anything,” she told them both.

Finlay lowered his hands and turned them over in front of himself and gazed down at them, huffing the air from a slightly farther distance as he tested for the smell again.

“You wouldn’t,” Astarion replied from behind Finlay. “Vampire noses are far superior at detecting scents, same as how our ears are better at hearing.” He stepped forward to stand in front of both Tav and Finlay. He asked Finlay, “You were good and truly silent, but you fed the ogres again, didn’t you?” 

Finlay dropped his hands, finally, and nodded at him. His blonde curls fell over his olive forehead and one dropped partially into his eyes. He brushed it back.

“I know. I smelled you as soon as you entered the Hall Chamber when I was gathering the rare moss Dalyria had asked me for,” he informed him as he grinned. “It only grows in dark areas that have been exposed to hag magic. I figured I would arrive early to get it before your mother joined us.”

“I was expecting to see you both in the War Room at the bottom,” Finlay told his parents. “I finished the meeting with Teegan early, so I thought I beat you there. But I entered the Hall Chamber and there you were, standing in the corner, pulling moss from a rock.” 

“And, of course, you couldn’t resist getting the jump on your father,” Tav snickered knowingly and eyed Astarion, “and I can’t say I blame you. We don’t get many opportunities to catch him by surprise.”

Astarion winked at her in response, the grin still plastered on his face.

“But I was so worried about you,” Tav told Finlay, then she glared at Astarion, “sending a seventeen-year-old alone to meet a bully like Teegan.” 

“He looks older than seventeen, though.” Astarion grabbed hold of Tav’s arm and pulled her into him to embrace her. “They all look older than their natural ages, my dear. They matured quickly; I think it’s because they drank of your nourishing blood, my love.” He kissed her on the nose and she smiled squintily up at him.

“That doesn’t mean his mind is any older, though, Astarion,” she huffed up at him. To Finlay, “How did it go?”

“The intel we got on him was accurate. I got to Moonhaven and then the barn hours before dawn, like you told me to, Father. I hid in the rafters and was quite bored for some time … When they came in just before dawn I went invisible. As you suspected, they arrived several hours before the proposed meeting time to prepare for my arrival,” Finlay laughed then. “Teegan gave orders to them and told the archer and daggerist assassins where to hide and even what signal he would give them for when to kill me.”

“I should kill him,” Astarion sneered. He felt Tav’s arm at his back grip firmly into his side, signalling her own agreement with his statement despite her silence.

“I was ready to do it if needed, and I took out the archer and the daggerist,” he told them, “but I scared Teegan half to death when I instantly wiped out his assassins, and also got us a twenty-five percent discount on the items to boot!” he exclaimed, his fangs shining brightly with his smile. His smile twisted and his red eyes darkened as he told them of his threatening Teegan, “I promised to kill him if he attempted to renegotiate or pull shit with The Eidolon again.”

“Good,” Tav told him. “But I’m glad you weren’t harmed.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Finlay asked her, astonished. “After all the training Father’s put me through over the years?!”

“Son,” Astarion’s tone suddenly became serious, “all training does is help limit mistakes and increase chances of success. Not everything can go one-hundred percent to plan.” Astarion reached for one of Finlay’s wrists and brought it up into view. “For instance: ham,” he joked, finally.

Finlay playfully swung a fist at his father’s shoulder then and Tav grabbed it mid-air and pulled him into a group hug with the two of them.

~

Only the Founders of The Eidolon were present within the deep and secretive War Room situated at the base of the Hall Chamber. Finlay stood flanked on either side by Astarion and Tav as they faced the table between themselves and the other Founders. 

Opposite them was their appointed Lieutenant Commander Aric, a half-elf rogue with shorn lavender hair and distinct, thick, black, smudged-kohl-style tattoos that covered both of his eyes and arched upwards like large wings from the outer corners to his hairline. Experienced in military tactics and subterfuge within the Parliament in Baldur’s Gate long ago and prior to his turning, Aric helped lead The Eidolon and Revenants under Tav and Astarion. As one of the vampire spawn that had been brought to Cazador by Dalyria shortly after she herself was turned, he had been an infatuation for her in life and of which Cazador would come to take sinister advantage. 

Dalyria knew Aric from the Parliament in Baldur’s Gate and, at one time, the two had been in close company and near to courtship, the only delay being their commitment to their professional roles. After obeying Cazador's command to lure him into his clutches and next witnessing him be torn away from her, Dalyria had been devastated at Aric’s loss and her will to fight her captor disappeared with him. 

She had thought her own position within the Parliament as Physician General was the reason Cazador came when she caught illness from one of her patients and lay on her deathbed and then he had made her into his spawn and kept her at his side. Freed and together, Aric and Dalyria were able to work out that it was likely that Cazador had taken interest in her, in her near-death to provide her with immortal life, and sought to make her into a useful puppet. That, in actuality, his primary goal was to reach Aric and hide his disappearance from Parliament while he used any knowledge gained to his great advantage.

Dalyria came to know from Aric that Cazador had kept him as his spawn in the dungeons and compelled him to reveal Baldur's Gate secrets that would aid him in his endeavors for both wealth and power within the city. Cazador even used Aric’s affection for Dalyria to improve upon his torture as the realization occurred to Aric, furthered by Cazador's sadistic prompting, that she was just as much a prisoner as he was and there would be little mercy to be found from Cazador's masochistic whims. There was no escape, not even in death, for they would merely be revived after each time expiring.

Once Aric’s usefulness to Cazador was ended and any remaining secrets divulged, he was tossed into a deeper section of the dungeon like garbage to be forgotten, although not before his back was scrawled with the marks of the Rite, too. After traveling with the other freed vampire spawn to relocate to the Underdark, Aric sought her out immediately and they found friendship in one another again. Dalyria and Aric eventually rekindled their romantic relationship and were subsequently married within the following year.

Aric led the War Room session for Tav and Astarion, and unfolded a map across the table for all to view. He proudly wore his black, rogue armor with ornate, silver rivets across the dark leather. His station within the Founders of The Eidolon was also presented by the intricate, gold filigree that scalloped across his metal pauldrons with their vibrant, green color that nearly matched that of the ichor lanterns above them.

“The reports are getting buried by the wealthy that wish to hide their own activities. But we think we traced them to their home area,” Aric informed everyone as he pointed to the map. 

“We tracked the vampire spawn to a brothel in Waterdeep,” Sevashnia added from where she stood at Aric's side, “where a patron and their paid escort for the evening both mysteriously went missing.” The druid ranger then lit the ichor lights to a brighter glow in the space above them within the War Room, her blue-black hair tied in its braid of smaller braids that snaked down her shoulder and deep, dewy, copper-toned skin shining under the brighter light. Her animal companion - a peregrine hawk named Sokíl - sat on her opposite shoulder and appeared to also observe them. Halsin had met Sevashnia while healing the lands near Moonrise Tower and Reithwin after the Shadow Curse was broken. After a year-and-a-half at his side aiding Thaniel and the land in their recovery, Halsin recommended her to Tav to aid in the formation of The Eidolon and she had become a valuable asset in many of their efforts. Sokíl, a blue-black bird with a cream crest and feet freckled with the same blue-black as his dorsal feathers, frequently assisted in reconnaissance. 

Bialaer leaned his gray elbows forward onto the edge of the table to better view the map from his position on the other side of Aric. A rock gnome and long-trusted friend to Zanner Toobin, he was brought into the Founders early on when they required his skills within The Eidolon’s tunnels and security systems. While by this time he managed their home base and all the workings within, he could be counted upon to add his technical and engineering skills to various defenses they encountered.

“There were no witnesses?” All eyes shifted to Tav at her question. Although, within The Eidolon Tav was known by the codename Harpy, their General and head of The Eidolon. She wore her complete Helldusk armor whenever she was visible by non-elite Revenants or when active in battle. Her comrades were cautious not to flaunt her auburn hair and famous Hero of Baldur’s Gate and Paladin image as she fought from the shadows with The Eidolon and their clandestine operations. Witnessing her superhuman strength, well-practiced battle skills, and relentless drive against her enemies made her terrifying on their own. However, her image as a faceless, dark leader of The Eidolon in the complete Helldusk armor with horns and clad in the unholy, fossilized and gold-tinged skulls and bones of the demonic dead, its origins and crafting from deep in Avernus, was a truly terrible sight and struck horror into those who caught a glimpse of her. 

“Despite the fact that each had their own… ah… company,” Aric winced at the inference, the black tattoos that swept upwards blinked black eyelids as he winced,  “their attention towards the incident would seem to have been fixated elsewhere. Of course, those witnesses further diverted the investigation for their own privacy and reputations at court. No one is looking for the missing few.”

Astarion pointed to the map and gave a quizzical expression “And there are reports of others also missing from Waterdeep?” 

“It appears to be so,” he responded. “They’re scattered and attempts were made to bury them, but in digging in the right places we found the reports.”

Astarion shook his head. “They are awfully brazen to be taking citizens from such a city as Waterdeep. Not to mention so many people with deep, deep pockets.”

“Have you tracked them to their nest, as well?” Tav inquired. 

“Not yet,” Sevashnia informed them, “but we’re closing in. We should have it in a matter of days.”

“Well,” Astarion added and brought his hand to his chin as he looked over the map, concerned, “Waterdeep is certainly big enough to disappear into. And it has plenty of amusements on offer during the hours of darkness…” He waved his other hand over a section of map. “Have a scout Revenant watch around here. I suspect it might be easier to skulk back into the shadows in this area.”

“Yes, Wraith, you are correct,” he said, calling Astarion by his codename within The Eidolon.

As Commander Wraith when he was visible to anyone outside of the elite Revenants within The Eidolon, Astarion’s identity, too, would be hidden underneath a black cowl with his crimson eyes and face obscured behind an intimidating and reflective, black skull mask. All of this atop his sleek, Black Hand armor with a deep, blood-red sash, identifying him as another leader and Founder of The Eidolon. 

“It appears that several low-level servants have begun going missing in that quarter of Waterdeep. I already have Revenants posted,” Aric stated.

“They must be getting desperate,” Bialaer commented.

“Or lazy,” Astarion corrected as he raised his chin, “because they think that no one notices their patterns.”

“Well,” Aric’s lip twisted upwards, “we noticed.”

“But only because we were looking,” Finlay chimed in.

“Exactly,” Tav added, “and we have to be certain we keep hidden to maintain that element of surprise.”

“Yes, saer,” Sevashnia stated, nodding, “we are ever careful.”  Sokíl gave a well-timed chirp from her shoulder.

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 6: CREATURE COMFORTS (part 1)

The loud crack sounded from somewhere close and then rumbled across the earth.

“Oh, this is glorious!” Tav called to Astarion as she looked upwards at an ominous night sky full of menacing clouds.

Astarion leaned a shoulder against the post from where he stood in safety underneath the awning of the cottage. He swirled his goblet of wine, sharing Tav’s glee from a distance, a pleasant smirk on his own face before he lifted the goblet to his lips and drank of the smooth, fragrant liquid inside. He watched as she twirled under the falling rain, her arms wide and face aimed at the sky, the fat drops of water saturating everything from her hair to her clothing, and he could see her tantalizing little underclothes beneath the fabric of her white tunic. The tunic plastered wetly to her body and became sheer, revealing the round, succulent flesh cradled in the lace fabric underneath.

“Leave it to you,” he laughed to her as he stared intently at where her top clung to her, “to never have gotten the sense to come in from the rain.”

“But it’s so fresh! And the smell of rain in a storm is so wonderful!” she sang as she finally stood still under the falling water and ran her hands over her loose but drenched, auburn mane to smooth it back and down, settling her hands on her own shoulders as she opened her mouth to catch some of the rain.

“Yes, my dear,” he said, and he turned and set his goblet back down onto the candle-lit table next to Tav’s dinner plate she had abandoned. They had only just settled on the patio for her meal when the squall had come to form so unexpectedly and the rain started to fall on the grass lawn in front of the cottage. Tav had shot up from the table and ran out from under the porch awning to play in the storm.

“This is the only thing I miss while living in the Underdark,” she told him, her eyes closed as more rain plopped across her face. “Well, this and seeing flocks of flying birds.”

“I am well aware, my love,” he said as he disappeared into the cottage and returned with a large terrycloth towel for her. He held the plush towel to the black silk shirt upon his chest in one arm and reached to sip another bit of wine. He sat on his chair beside the table, crossing a leg over his other knee as he watched her a bit longer, and placed the towel on his lap, trapping it under a forearm while he leaned back in his chair and leisurely gulped from the goblet again. He leaned down and brushed a bug from the lower leg of his black trousers and raised himself back up to resume his observation of Tav.

The corners of his lips raised with amusement as he witnessed the little side-to-side hops she performed as she pranced and whirled herself about in the rain for another quarter hour, occasionally pulling the teal lock of hair at her left temple and tucking it behind her ear as she so often did.

As less rain fell, a streak of lightning cut through the clouds and lit up the sky and the trees and area around their little cottage in the wilderness.  Tav startled at the clap of thunder as it sounded again in the distance and roiled away. She sighed happily and gave one last twirl, her eyes closed as she faced the dark heavens above her, and then she ambled lazily back to the porch where Astarion waited. He stood on the porch at the top of the steps, with the towel held between his open arms and waiting to fold her into its fuffiness.

Tav practically purred as she nuzzled into Astarion’s chest from within the towel. He tipped her chin upwards and leaned in to kiss her softly on the lips. “Mmmmm,” she hummed into the kiss.

Astarion pulled back to gaze down upon her. “Hmmm?” he mocked with a hummed question down to her. “And you haven’t even tasted my cooking yet,” he teased and a fang glinted down at her in the soft candlelight.

She turned her head to glance at the table then and back to his face, her hand pressed to her mouth as she looked up at him, concern furrowing her brow. “Oh, Astarion!” she gasped, and with the high pitch of her voice emphasizing her regret,“I’m so sorry! I let it get ruined! I took too long!”

He chuckled down at her and patted her back from outside the towel he held wrapped around her. “Not to worry, Darling.” He rubbed the tension from her back with one hand. “You gave me the sun, so I should at least allow you time to enjoy the rain.”

“But you spent so much time on such a lovely meal,” she muttered as she tucked her face under his chin and hugged him.

“Certainly, it’s not the first, nor shall it be the last meal I will cook that’s to be left uneaten,” he declared without malice.

Tav pulled from his grip then. “I’ll still eat it, Love,” she told him and pulled back and wrapped the towel around her torso and made her way to her seat at the table. She sat, not giving him the chance to be chivalrous with her chair a second time this evening, and she motioned for him to join her as she scooted her chair closer to the table.

She ate the now-cold meal of filet mignon and roasted carrots he had made for her while he re-heated her tin cup of soup with a little flare of ignis magic from his hand underneath the cup as he held it and watched her. He was both determined and a little bit glad that after her dance in the storm she would consume at least one thing he had made that might warm her. He twirled the liquid inside the cup and they both sat in pleasant silence. 

After some time passed and her plate finished, she drank the remainder of the blush wine in her goblet, still leaving plenty for later in the bottle that he had bought for her, and she set it down and looked at him. “That was delicious.”

“You can hardly expect me to believe you,” he grinned at her. “The filet must have been tough and carrots turned to mush by the time you sat to eat.” He passed the tin cup of soup to her. “Here. This will be better.”

She took the heated cup in both hands and leaned back in her chair and brought a knee to her chest as she settled. She sipped lightly and then beamed at him as she moved the cup away from her face. “Ooh! That. Is. Yummy! Split pea soup, but what is that flavor?” She ran her tongue about inside her mouth as she tasted.

Astarion's features suddenly turned ominous. He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “I was hoping you wouldn't notice the poison…. You have mere moments to live.”

Tav barked out a loud laugh and threw her cloth napkin at his face.

Astarion’s façade cracked and broke into a sheepish smirk as the napkin fell to the table. “Yenna sent me the recipe for her split-pea soup. I remembered how you liked it in camp. I added a splash more cream than her recipe called for and what you’re tasting is the mint leaves I foraged and added for extra flavor notes.”

“It’s delectable!”

“I am pleased you like it.”

“You’re getting to be a real chef. Though, it must be strange not being able to taste what you’re cooking.” Tav reached out a hand to him atop the table.

Astarion shrugged as he accepted her hand in his. “I can smell it well enough to know it should taste good.”

“So how is Yenna?”

“She is well. She seemed quite happy living with Shadowheart and helping her take care of her little farm. She has become a full-time caregiver to Shadowheart's mother. Emmeline has gotten much worse, apparently. The dementia has taken a heavy toll and sometimes she calls Yenna ‘Jenevelle.’”

“Shadowheart's birth name?”

“The very same,” he sighed. “But you know Yenna, she is taking it in stride.”

“Perhaps,” Tav cocked her head in thought, “Yenna gets great satisfaction in aiding Shadowheart this way, especially with all the animals, but I'm sure it also allows her some sense of closure for losing her own mother.”

“One can only hope. Although…” Astarion continued, his voice raising an octave at the last syllable and his eyebrow wagging suggestively at her. He whispered as he lowered his mouth to Tav's ear, “I get the distinct impression that dear Yenna has a little crush on our dark cleric.” He sat back in his chair, a smug look on his face answering Tav’s expression of surprise.

“What?!” Tav chuckled. “Yenna’s only….” Tav turned her head as she counted the years.

“She's twenty-two years old, Tav! And Shadowheart is still a young half-elf. I think it's perfect if it happens,” he told her, and she nodded and smiled in agreement as she lifted her cup to her lips again.

They looked out over the wilderness and watched as the storm moved farther and farther away with each passing moment. Tav sipped her soup until there wasn’t a drop left. The lightning still flashed intermittently and backlit the trees in the distance and the thunder rumbled along as the storm left them far behind.

“Fancy a walk, my dear?” he asked her, finally.

“Of course. Let me just change my tunic,” she said as she stood.

Astarion remained seated while she went into the cottage and returned in a crisp, clean blouse. He took her hand again and he led her to the path that weaved through the black night and between the trees off the side of the cabin.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed our evening here. I should like to tell you … that I bought this little cottage and adjacent tract of land from the old man that lived here.”

 “You did what?” Tav stopped walking then.

“Keep walking, dearest,” he pulled her along the path.

“Why would you do that?” she said as she kept pace beside him.

“Because it was important that we own it,” he told her.

“Important? In what way?”

He didn’t respond. He knew she hadn’t noticed yet. She wasn’t paying attention.

As they met the edge of the wooded area and stepped past the line of trees, the space opened up and, although it was quite dark without the moon, the sky was wide and lit with a smattering of twinkling stars that had slowly revealed themselves after the dark nimbus rolled away.

“Is that … is that the ocean?” she asked, surprised, as the scent of saltwater hit her at last.

“It is,” he answered, finally. “Come.”

Astarion led her further into the open area and they crested a small, grassy knoll and came to overlook a large tidal lagoon. Tav’s gaze followed the banks of the inlet and she could see where it opened up to the larger salt-water body. A gentle wake could be heard on the shores beyond it. 

She was still gaping at the shimmering water when she realized Astarion had dipped behind the largest of the few boulders nearest to the lagoon. When he returned, he was carrying another plush towel and sat it atop a natural shelf along the boulder. 

“I had a small, magically hidden and secured cabinet installed into the other side of this rock for linens and things. There’s nothing around for many kilometers; we own it all. The sigil circle for fast travel hidden behind the cottage that we used to arrive here is attuned only to us. So this is our own little, private beach. The fisherman was quite old and I offered him more than enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life,” he told her. “What do you think?”

“Astarion… I don’t know what to say.” Her eyes scanned around them.

“Well, do you at least like it?” He watched her with a mix of confusion and concern as he waited for her to tell him what she thought. With her silence he felt a chill run up the length of his spine as a gust of wind swept past him, bringing with it the idea that she might oppose his choice of property or maybe the waterway wasn’t to her liking. Or maybe she wouldn’t want to swim in a lagoon like this… Or…

“Astarion, I love it!” she vocalized at last, her voice bright with emotion, and he felt the air he was holding whoosh out of his lungs.

She rushed to him and wrapped her arms around his neck and brought his head down so she could kiss him.

Hard.

Astarion gripped her waist and held her hips to press her flush against him. Her body melded to his so perfectly.

“I love you,” she told him as she pressed his forehead down against hers.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” he grinned down at her. “Go for a swim, my siren,” he said and gestured with his head in the direction of the water. “It certainly smells better than the Festering Cove that you go to with the Koa-toa under the tower back home.” Reluctantly, he released his grip on her and turned her to face the lagoon. He needed her focus to be on that swim. Not on him.

Tav laughed. “SO much better!” She pulled back from him and quickly lifted her tunic over her head, revealing her lace brazier atop an hourglass figure and freckled, alabaster skin marked with several jagged scars she wore as war trophies. Astarion watched her. He knew those scars. Each of them.

Intimately.

Tav removed her boots and brought her gaze to meet his. She moved at a more purposeful, careful, measured pace and let him watch her - and she observed his scarlet eyes that roved over her skin - as she ever so slowly wriggled out of her breeches and then tantalizingly slipped her underthings down… down… down her body to the ground.

“Careful, Love,” he whispered huskily, “or you won’t make it into the water.” Astarion cleared his throat.

“Where’s the fun in being careful, vampire?” she teased as she stood naked in front of him and trailed a finger across her chest, brushing some of her auburn hair aside with it.

“You little scoundrel, you,” he croaked.

She winked at him and then took off and darted for the water, knowing full well it would incite a chase. Tav knew she could make it into the lagoon before he snatched her if she used a little bit of her magic.

Tav laughed when she felt his pursuit at her back and squealed loudly in triumph before she dove into the lagoon. She felt the safety of the water as soon as she entered it. The naturally saline liquid enveloped her like home and caressed her skin as she poured through it.

In a way, she felt cheated by the knowledge that Astarion couldn’t enter the ocean at all. As much as she liked the game and to lure him to her, she resented the fact that he could never enter the ocean with her, the currents and tides being the very “running water” that would injure a vampire. He had the same issue with the rain, the cleansing flow of liquid representing the antithesis to his “unholy” being. 

Tav summoned heat through her arteries as she signaled the change. She felt the warmth in her spine and her hamstrings as they knit together, and the gray aura enveloped her legs and would settle to become her thick outer layer of sleek, hydrodynamic epidermis. She felt her human toes stretch and her lower body elongated into her natural form while she breathed in the briny, clear liquid. It rejuvenated her tired cells as her fin spread and her gray, more elegant and yet porpoise-like tail and its pinkish belly formed completely and pulsed in the water. She circled about, quickly sluicing as she stretched more, and found that the wide lagoon was quite a bit deeper than she anticipated. 

Despite the glorious sensation of unfurling her fins while submerged in her natural environment after so long a time, Tav greatly regretted leaving a frustrated Astarion waiting for her on the beach. While he could enter the water in the cove where the Koa-toa lived, as well as the waveless waterway around the tower in the Underdark - and it thrilled her so very much whenever he joined her! - the heavy minerals and placid water there offered Tav a peculiarly stifling sensation. Although she was able to fulfill her occasional physical need to change into her true form in those places, she felt heavier in them and slower, as though there was less oxygen available and without the cleansing element that the correct level of sodium provided she felt an invisible film develop on her surfaces that narrowly betrayed her natural buoyancy. It was nothing compared to the ocean or salty water in which she was born. But it was something.

Still, nothing compared to the ocean.

She made a quick loop and traversed into the cooler depths, seeking to soothe the last of her heated tissues from her transformation.

Tav heard a piercing, loud ZAP sound from above and halted when a wall of light suddenly appeared near the outlet to the much larger ocean. She could still see the light as it held a large, blocky shape in the distance and diffused through the liquid from its source to where she floated within the lagoon’s depth. It cast her own shadow behind her.

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 7: CREATURE COMFORTS (part2)

Worried for Astarion, she hurtled up to the surface to investigate. Moments before she broke into the air above, a sudden splash came from behind her and she felt strong, bare arms close around her, and that forceful descent pulled her back down within a grappling hold. Without leverage to release the grip from her, Tav thrashed her tail and pushed against the arms, twisting and then propelling herself and her assailant back up to the surface. She maintained focus to at least see what had happened to Astarion before she would return to the depths and slam the person to the sandy and (if she had a choice) rock-littered bottom, and then maybe she would be satisfied after vindictively drowning the one whose arms were around her.

At the time their heads breached into the air, she expected to hear the being at her back gulp great breaths into their lungs. When a familiar and easy laugh echoed in her ear instead, she stilled immediately. She felt the arms holding her release her and she spun to face him.

“Astarion?!” she squawked at him as he wiped the water from his face that she had thrown at him with her spin. “How in the Hells?!” she spat. Her adrenaline still at its peak, she rapidly surveyed the area for threats, but there was no one around them and no change to the landscape other than the large wall of violet, shimmering light that stood at the mouth of the lagoon.

“Surprise!” he announced delightedly as he waded the water in front of her. His silver curls shone lavender and his crimson eyes sparkled at her under the distant light.

“How are you not in searing pain right now?” she sputtered as her aquamarine and silver eyes checked him for discomfort. He was naked as well, but seemed to happily tread the water beside her.

Astarion raised a hand above the water and pointed to the bright wall of light. “I went to see Rolan and told him of your affinity towards the ocean and my own cursed limitations,” he explained as she faced him again. “With his recommendations and then ideas for finding a place such as this,” he waved his hand and motioned to the entirety of the area around them, “I purchased as many scrolls of a modified, lengthy version of the Prismatic Wall spell that I could get my hands on. I asked for the violet variety in particular.” He laughed, “Because, if anyone besides us looks upon this light, they are temporarily blinded. Rolan gave me such looks at my order… Everyone apparently figures that the only thing I have on my mind is depraved, carnal lust!” Astarion cleared his throat as he explained, “I chose the violet spell, because - in truth - its blinding properties will both alert us and give you time to change form before their sight is restored.”

Tav stared at him. “I don’t understand what that has to do with your-” she began.

“My love, it’s a wall,” he interrupted her. “Don’t you see? It stops the flow of water into the lagoon. This is a simple salt-water pool when that is in place.” To emphasize his point he raised his arms above his head with a flourish and submerged himself and popped back up with a broad smile of fangs and teeth as he cocked his head at her in silly triumph. He flipped his flattened curls back into some semblance of place after saturating them from going under.

“Happy anniversary, Darling,” he said as he beamed at her.

Tav’s heart swelled in her chest and took her breath from her. She eagerly reached forward and pulled herself into his arms then and covered his mouth with hers. She closed her eyes and kissed the salt from his lips and felt his arms settle around her and hug her tightly to him in the water, feeling her mate's cool body pinned along her siren skin while within her element, and it was the epitome of happiness for her.

Astarion squeezed his eyes shut and clasped onto her  - his siren. He kept her hot, bare breasts pressed to his own, cool chest and felt her heartbeat pounding rapidly against it. He tickled and traced her back along the transition of skin below her waist with one hand, eliciting a shiver from Tav as he caressed the sensitive skin there. He trailed his other hand up her back, over her neck, and wove his fingers into her hair to press her mouth more firmly to his and hold her there.

They sank into the clear water.

Neither of them breathed. Neither of them needed to.

Tav’s muscular tail pulsed with her climbing arousal and propelled and spiraled them over and over one another and deeper into the water as their tongues stroked each other’s mouths. Astarion maintained his grip, his hand at her head lowering to wrap across her upper back to her opposite shoulder. He clung tightly to her and he rode with her. His other hand at her lower back traced the transition of skin around her waist to her front and swept lower. When his fingers found the slit beneath the front of her pelvis and slipped into the already slickened folds and curled into the sweet space within, Tav arched up against him and her head flew back.

Bubbles escaped from her lips with her silent sigh and tumbled upwards to the surface.

Astarion held her tightly to him with one arm and sank his fangs into her skin and felt her quiver from within his grasp. He sipped her unique, hyperoxygenated, ambrosial blood from her slender neck. It seeped into his system and warmed him and lit a fire deep within his chest that flared to ignite a dormant bonfire he kept, always, that represented his raging need to possess her. All of her. Completely. His limbs trembled with the strain to do nothing more than simply hold Tav against himself and pleasure her as he was.

Her siren blood often did this to him. Over the years Astarion had learned to temper the all-encompassing temptation he had to ruthlessly take her, take from her, and hastily feed on Tav in this form once he tasted her each time, as unparalleled and insanely delicious as she was for a vampire's meal and twice as much a true rarity. 

Oh, but her siren blood might as well have been divine nectar, he noted as he swallowed the small samples he took in his mouth.

His back touched a section of soft sand at the bottom of the lagoon and she pressed him down into it, her tail continuing to drive them, forcefully, into the seabed as though there were more to explore beneath it.

Her maneuver was completely involuntary, Astarion remembered from experiencing it in the cove near home during their many years together. It had been very much the same all other times; it was how she trapped him there, her natural instinct to draw her prey down with her and drown them in the most desolate and obliterative depths of the ocean.

It was a singular benefit of his being immortal and made him, for once, grateful for his vampirism… to be able to experience this with her. From the very first time she had taken him to the watery floor of their cove in the Underdark and imprisoned him there beneath her, he hadn't worried. He was intrigued, but he hadn't panicked. They trusted each other with their own lives and safety, completely, since Cazador and the Netherbrain twelve years ago.

Astarion was, as ever, only eager to be able to accept her the same way she had accepted him from the start.

Tav growled low from her own throat as her desire for her mate climbed and heat rose within her as his fingers stroked. She felt the fluttering in her core as Astarion worked her and brought her closer to orgasm. She twisted them over in the water again and hovered parallel to the sandy bottom of the lagoon, keeping him pinned to her body but above her, ready to carry him off. Her tail continued to undulate and they moved slowly, tightly circling along the bottom of the lagoon as she pressed herself needily into his hand with her movements. From her lips Tav whined out the start of a moan that Astarion felt resonate through her chest, and she gripped him more tightly.

Tav’s fingers grew dark, ebony talons. Claws formed that were a stark contrast to her alabaster skin. They dug into Astarion’s back and shallowly pierced him where she clutched onto him.

Astarion experienced pleasure along with the pain she inflicted when she crushed and anchored him to her, and the gouging into his flesh became another reminder to hold himself back lest he take her too quickly for his own delights. Although, while thrusting his fingers into her engorged folds and massaging an important bundle of nerves within her, feeling her body writhing and her inner walls pulsing at his fingers, knowing he had his siren teetering on the edge of keeping control of herself thrilled him all the more and his erection grew harder as he ground his hips against her smooth body. He squeezed her to that firmness that ached to find her center, and, though he indulgently rutted against her, Astarion resisted the ongoing urge to gulp her blood greedily and instead savored her from where he remained latched at her neck.

Tav could taste a hint of their mingled blood in her own mouth as the water crept in where more air bubbles escaped as she moaned a low rumble within the water from his fine ministrations. She rhythmically rocked her pelvis into him and felt his thick hardness against her thigh, his mouth against her throat, and each pulse of her blood as he slowly took more from her and his hand also gave her more thrilling sensations in return. She detached one clawed hand and reached up and touched her palm to his throat. Her talons lightly scratched against his neck. She didn’t squeeze, merely caressed, gently feeling each slow swallow as he carefully suckled her own precious, hyperoxygenated, and vital fluid from her. 

Tav’s eyes burned silver as they glowed brightly against the dark water. Her body thrummed and vibrated with siren magic, instinct driving her as she felt herself nearing crescendo. She felt her sensitive, lubricated entrance as she throbbed and pulsed against his fingers, and the internal spasms and sensations heightened with his every loving stroke. Her movements mimicking the speed with which his digits now plucked the hidden chords within her, Tav's tail thrashed in the water and sped them faster.

She pulled him along the sandy bottom as it curved towards the more shallow water where she would normally feed on her prey and deposit the carcass. 

Astarion’s mouth vibrated against her skin with his own snarl as his masterful fingers worked vigorously within her and spurned her further towards her peak, tasting in his mouth how much sweeter she became the closer he pushed her.

He wanted more, so he gave to her in turn.

Upon reaching the shallows, Tav felt the ultrahot explosion jolt through from her center and a blinding sensation of electricity dispersed from it and flooded through her and she shattered finally, her entire body going taut and spastic when she came in his arms. She arched and her tail swept upwards behind her. An ear-piercing song escaped her lips under the water, muffling it to a sweet scream only he could hear. The sound enveloped him and his proverbial bonfire to consume her burned brightly in its wake. It affected him greatly, but he steadfastly pulsed his fingers to help Tav to ride out the delicious waves of her climax. He held her as her body tremored and shook in his arms with her climactic echoes, pushing her against his own throbbing that he grounded into her hip, surrendering only a little as his own throat growled back at her and he grappled onto her with every bit of feral strength he bore in his arms and with his teeth.

The moment that Tav’s song ended he felt her talons retract from his back and she went entirely limp and slumped in Astarion’s hold. He released his mouth from her neck and slipped his hand from her sex as she started to drift. He cradled her gently against him when she brought her face down to his chest and nestled into him. Motionless, they floated for a moment under the shallow water, driftless without any currents or tides, until she stirred and wrapped her arms around his bare chest and lifted her silver-glowing eyes to his dark and pupil-blown, crimson ones.

Astarion bent and kissed her gently on the mouth. He caressed her back lightly, leisurely despite the flame still raging within him, as he settled his feet into the sandy floor. He stood and lifted their heads above the surface of the water and walked slowly through it to land, her dark, muscular tail trailing behind him.

Tav wrapped her arms around his neck and she rose and returned to kissing him. Her predatory desire sated, she shifted forms and lifted her hips to wrap her lean thighs around Astarion’s waist as she nipped tenderly at his lips. She squeezed with her legs and pressed herself against his hardness, causing him to groan and lean into her kisses. She pulled at his shoulders and slid her soft, wet sex up along his erect length and he nearly lost his footing in the water at the delicious friction.

Astarion moved to hold Tav’s rounded buttocks firmly with both hands and squeezed, pulling her sensitive crease against his erection again, more firmly this time and causing Tav to whimper sweetly into his mouth. He lowered himself down to his knees in the seabed within the shallows and settled her onto his lap, the water tickling up to her ribs. She licked at his lips as she kissed him, tasting him and the salt from his skin. She straddled him as his fingers kneaded and then Astarion firmly gripped her haunches to position her. His ardent mouth continued exploring hers, his ears drinking in the sound of her aroused and pounding heartbeat, louder and no longer muffled by the water. With trembling arms, Astarion lifted her body slightly and pulled her down over his shaft.

Tav released a long, sweet sigh, shivering as he filled and stretched her, and the easy, slick motion was enough to make his abdomen twitch. Astarion resisted the urge to pump his own hips, and he moved from her mouth to lick along the bruised marks on her neck where he had fed. Her syrupy blood had oozed slightly and mingled with the saltiness atop her skin and awakened his taste buds over his tongue.

He now understood her love of salt-dusted chocolates.

“Mmm,” he purred to her as his tongue passed over the wounds.

He felt her vagina hug him tightly. In slow, languid strokes, he lifted her again and moved her over him and pushed his cock back into her.

If this wasn’t bliss, he didn’t know what was.

Again he did it and hissed out a breath in satisfaction, and again she sighed, this time into his ear as she scratched her human fingers into his scalp. Her hot breath hit his ear. He felt her tongue run over the same ear, eliciting a tremor that rolled down his spine and he vibrated. He inhaled sharply.

Gods!...  More than bliss!

Astarion needed more of her.

He made love to her slowly. Again and again he plunged into her, gliding her over himself the way he wanted to… No… needed to! Worshipping her and pulling her with him as he became more encouraged with each gasp she uttered, further enticed by every rapid beat of her resonating pulse as he heard her precious blood move within her - his treasure.

With each whine from her lips, he yearned still for more and held her to him and a tightening sensation rose from low in his abdomen. As he moaned into her ear, he felt her heat squeeze him tighter. His name bursting from her lips drove him to pull her down harder and buck her faster upon his lap. The sounds she made, from both her mouth and from how her racing heart pumped within her, they made him all the more ravenous. More frenzied. His mind hit the border of turning savage, and he laid into her while somehow still reining himself back.

He growled, called out her name as he reached a sweet spot inside of her, her sounds informing him it was the perfect place for her, too. The water around them pulsed as he moved her and ground deeply into her, hitting it over and over again until the tension inside of him built and he felt ready to explode. 

Astarion kept going. He grunted, almost snarled, at each pass as he clung to her, arced into her, and got louder when he felt her inner spasms that had begun and finally peaked and clenched hard around him, and he chased this feeling that she alone could milk from him when she came.

Tav's human voice cried out loudly for him then, and oh, how he craved her!

Suddenly sensing he was close and with his fingers bruising her as she rode him through her own orgasm, her hands clutching his neck and shoulders, Astarion lost to his vampiric urge to claim her and leaned her back slightly and sank his painfully aching fangs deep into her left breast, right above her beating heart that thundered like drums in his ears. Without drinking, he secured his fangs there and bobbed with her rapid movements, his own muscles winding tighter. The churning water rinsed the blood that trickled down Tav's chest from his mouth, her voice gasping wildly in his ear.

The scent of Tav's arousal within her honeyed blood, the mixing and mingling of it with the tang of seawater, the fluttering of her feminine heat pressing around him, with the sounds of impassioned moans from Tav's lips and the hammering of her blood-filled heart beneath her breast that remained clamped in his mouth - these things overwhelmed Astarion’s senses. This wildness unmade him and yet bound him all at once.

To her, his soul sang from inside of him.

Only ever to her.

He pulled hard on her then, unrestrained, voracious, and utterly possessive. He crushed her down over him and simultaneously pushed, burying himself as best he could within her, and kept her there in place, finally, seeking a depth - a closeness - that they both yearned for. Tav’s cries as she shuddered her own, quick second orgasm while wrapped completely around him in every way brought him to an unimaginable high and catapulted him over the edge. He hit a violent release and spilled himself inside her at last with a loud, long, guttural moan into her breast. He pulsed against her delicate walls long after reaching his climax and felt himself continue throbbing within her.

Astarion remained enclosed in her arms while also deep inside of her, every fiber quaking, and he heaved rapid sighs into her punctured skin where he stayed locked onto her in ecstasy. Around his still-buried fangs, Tav’s sweet blood dripped slowly over his tongue and tasted like dessert, and she panted into his ear and pressed her lips to his temple while trembling from within his vice-like grip where he kept her at his own mercy.

He wasn't letting go anytime soon.

He was hers. She was his.

Equally dark creatures, they belonged to each other.

~

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 8

Finlay sat up in his bed and ran a hand through his blonde curls as he swung his legs over the side. He yawned wide, fangs mawing at the empty air. The elevator’s floor panel on this bottom level shed its dim, blue light upwards. It painted shadows of his desk and table and its contents across the floor of his living space in the alcove atop the small set of stairs as the azure glow emanated from the base level. The soft radiance of fungi and low-lit candles in wall sconces marked the wooden stairs and walkways along the outer walls.

Fin rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Another dreamless slumber, he grumbled internally. It had been ages. While his body was rested and ready for his morning training, he felt that his mind was near to clawing at the confines of his skull. If he couldn’t dream, he figured, at least he could feed. He would skip training today and allow himself a peaceful day while the irritably dreamless quiet lasted.

Finlay rose from his bed and crossed the wooden flooring of his basement alcove within the tower. He opened his tall wardrobe and pulled out his casual dayclothes and threw them onto the bed. He pulled open the set of drawers inside the armoire and took out his brown, leather glove and walked with it over to his bed and set it atop of his pile of clothing. He stripped his pajama bottoms and pulled on and tied the waistcord of the cotton braies before pulling his soft, brown, suede breeches up over them. He shoved his arms and upper body up into the forest green, linen shirt and tucked the tails and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows. He left the ties loose at the shallow V of its neck.

Finlay sat on the bed, then. He bent forward and slipped his leather boots on, strapping them over the bottoms of his pants, and curled his toes into the fur-lined insoles and straightened himself upon the bed. Finlay looked over and huffed at the single, mostly-fingerless glove that lay atop the bedding beside him. It was both a blessing and his own burden to bear.

He looked down at his right hand and the greenish discoloration marking his olive skin underneath the large, brass ring that he always wore over his middle finger. The amber-colored topaz glinted at him in the low light of his quarters. He ran his finger across the cold surface of the gemstone and felt the black grooves that fanned like a starburst from the gem and led to encircle the ring’s band.

He was only six years old when he learned the significance of his ring.

“This ring is very special,” Astarion told him as he knelt in front of young Finlay. “Never take it off. Never let anyone know that you have it. Never.” The expression of concern across Astarion’s face and in his smooth voice had pressed the seriousness of their situation to him.

Fin had been part of their close family for only eight months, he remembered.

Tav sat in her nightgown on the floor with young Finlay seated in her lap, rocking him gently with her on top of her crossed and folded legs, her arms hugging tightly around his middle. Tav had her face pressed into his back where she still wept at having to chase her then-six-year-old, adopted and undead son early that morning. Tav was still reeling from the terror she felt when she thought she was about to see their son burst into dust as he ran out into the early morning sunshine. 

They were in Baldur’s Gate and had planned to sleep for the day at Oskar and Lady Jannath’s mansion during a trip; he didn’t recall why they were there, and perhaps he wasn’t supposed to know it. All Finlay remembered was that was where they were.

He had crept out of bed and was playing “Lord of the Castle” in the bright, great hall amongst the regal paintings and the standing armor there before much of the house had risen. Through the window pane he had caught sight of a butterfly on the roses in the sunlit garden behind the mansion and had gone out to chase it. He had no real idea, in spite of having been instructed prior to this particular visit topside, what the sun meant to him since becoming a vampire spawn.

Upon awakening and realizing that Finlay wasn’t in the room with them, Tav had left Astarion in bed and gone downstairs to search and caught sight of him as he giggled and flung open the lower garden door and ran outside.

Awakened by the sound of his screaming partner, Astarion, dressed in only his terrycloth drawstring pants, had rushed to her side but was halted, unable to leave the safety of the mansion without first drinking from Tav. Fin would come to learn much later that part of Helm’s gift to them as the Heroes of Baldur’s Gate was their connected souls and that Astarion had to drink from Tav to be gifted with six hours of being unaffected by sunlight - another secret Finlay would keep. 

It meant that Astarion was powerless that morning and forced to wait at the door and watch with equal worry while Tav retrieved young Finlay from his spot down the path and raced back to him at the mansion’s doorway. Tav had covered Finlay with her body and as much of her linen shift as she could wrap over him as she ran. Astarion swung and slammed the garden door shut and had next ushered them quickly back into their bedroom in Oskar and Lady Jannath’s mansion, dismissing the servants and Lady Jannath when they all came running. Astarion lied and told them that Finlay had fallen down the great stairs but would be fine, and then closed them into the room and bolted the door behind them.

Tav had collapsed to her bottom on the floor inside the room and cradled Finlay and wept into him, and Astarion darted and knelt in front of him to check him all over. Finlay learned much later on that Astarion was prepared to open Tav’s wrist with his teeth to enable Finlay to feed and quickly restore his health if needed. Tav had later confirmed that she would have allowed it without a second thought in order to save their son.

Only then did young Finlay understand that he had truly become their son. While all of the vampiric Gur children were formally part of house Ancunín and were provided their eternal protection, only he and teen Vanja were considered orphans. Vanja had eagerly accepted a home with another family he had grown close to in their short time together, which left only Finlay to become Tav and Astarion’s own.

Young Fin had stared, bleary and wide-eyed, up at his adopted father as he checked him all over, not understanding why so much commotion was being made after his escape into the garden. 

Astarion had crouched in front of him and Tav back in the safety of their room and asked Finlay if anything was hurting him and he had only shaken his head that nothing did. His father had next run his hand over Tav’s head behind Finlay’s back to reassure her before he returned and grabbed Fin's little hands as part of his close and continuing examination of him, and Astarion felt the heat coming from the topaz gemstone in the ring on his finger.

He examined the ring Fin had looped with twine to secure it over his own thumb - his treasure he wore as he played “Lord of the Castle.”

Finlay had never before - and never since - seen the look of utter shock on Astarion’s usually-unreadable face. (Although, he would come to learn the subtlety that was Astarion’s mannerisms as he grew and paid much closer attention.) That’s when Astarion softened towards Fin and instructed him to keep the ring, always. To always wear it and keep it hidden and secret. “There is no other ring like it anywhere,” he told him as he stared into his little face. “It’s called the Ring of The Sunwalker.”

Finlay had felt Tav’s head suddenly rise from his back and heard her sniffle, and watched as Astarion nodded at her in confirmation at his words and shared a silent, knowing look with her over his shoulder before he addressed Fin again.

 “Vampires - even supposed good, friendly ones - would kill all three of us to take it from you, Fin,” Astarion stressed to him again as he gently held both of his hands. “This is very important. It must be our secret. Forever. Do you understand?”

What had happened next felt very near to a fairy tale ending for that day, much like in any story he had ever read as a child: they slept a while longer and then, when they woke him for the afternoon, they had him get dressed. They helped him secure the ring to his finger and wrapped and covered his hand with a bandage, and took him out into the sunlight; they went sightseeing and shopping around Baldur’s Gate… as a family!

He remembered the people greeting them on the street that recognized the Heroes and praised “their precious, little boy,” even going so far as to comment he looked much like his father, attributing his naturally olive skin tone as simply having a tan. “I see you've been to the beach, my boy,” someone told him, which was untrue, of course. He remembered seeing the stall vendors and going to visit Rolan at Sorcererous Sundries and playing with the magical animals and beings there. They visited Dammon and he got to watch him work the hot metal against the anvil and present the sentry and guard armor alterations using samples and drawings for Tav and Astarion.

They took him to the temple dedicated to Umberlee and asked him what he thought of the waveservants there. They asked him to explain when he said that they weren’t real mermaids. When they asked him why, they laughed when he told them that “real mermaids should have tails,” although he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why that was the least bit humorous. He was serious!

At the end of their day, they stopped by Danthelion’s Dancing Axe in Wyrm’s Crossing and asked for a specially-made glove for Finlay to hide the ring over his small hand. Grumpy and gruff-voiced Entharl Danthelion was sweet to Tav, and Tav and Astarion told Fin that he, alone, could be trusted to help him conceal the ring behind his gloves. 

Finlay was uncertain if the old dwarf had taken a liking to him as a young boy, or if it was the large amount of coin he was offered for this task that made him kind to him whenever he appeared at the Dancing Axe shop thereafter. It mattered little since, with Astarion and Tav’s approval, Finlay often provided him with other contracts within The Eidolon to outfit many of the Revenants.

From Fin’s first meeting with Entharl Danthelion, from that first day that he slipped one of Entharl’s butter-smooth gloves over his unblemished skin, Finlay always wore a mostly-fingerless glove on his right hand. There were new gloves made as he aged, and the ring was also moved to his middle finger and re-sized using a cotton wrapping around the ring as he grew and matured until no longer needing the cloth spacer.

Upon their return to the Underdark following that memorable outing topside, he told other vampire spawn within sel Ponovleno-Oloth what Tav and Astarion told him to: that he had gotten his hand stuck in an opening and a ray of sunlight disfigured his hand during their trip and it hurt him to touch it so he kept his hand covered. Even when the other spawn, including the Gur children, asked to see it, he refused. Not even Dalyria was allowed to examine it, and, when she pressured Astarion, Astarion had told her that “even Tav’s blood couldn’t heal it, so better to just leave it alone” and she relented. Years passed and - after Astarion had personally trained him and he was able - when he became the Founder known as Spectre within The Eidolon, old Entharl again made his distinct leather armor and completed the set of ebony gauntlets with a single, full, black glove to obscure the ring.

As Spectre, none of the elite within The Eidolon who knew of Tav and Astarion's identities cared how he was able to walk in the sun, figuring he had grown to inherit a gift bestowed by Helm due to his parents. Even Aric and Dalyria had accepted this fact, and, with the only exception of Dalyria, his activities in the sun were knowledge restricted only to the elite within The Eidolon. Otherwise, the being known as Finlay Ancunín, Lord prince of sel Ponovleno-Oloth, was a vampire spawn that hid from sunlight, the same as the others did.

Finlay picked his fine, suede-lined glove up from the bed and slipped it onto his right hand and wrist and he tightened the leather bindings over it to strap it in place. He waggled his fingers to test his ties; the skin of his thumb from the tip to the first knuckle and the fingertips to the first two knuckles of his other fingers remained exposed and visible. The bulk of the glove at the back of his hand hid the ring well.

He fastened his wide, brown leather belt that was typical for people of his particular Gur tribe over his waist, and he further secured to his thigh the scabbard attached from it with the lower, second belt, his dagger safely nestled within it at his side. Finlay lifted his right arm into the single, brown, leather pauldron decorated with silver embroidery that announced him as his Lord’s son and fit it in place over his shoulder with the leather belt across his chest and fastened it, also.

Now, it’s time to feed, he thought to himself and stood.

~

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 9

Finlay wove through the small crowds of villagers on his way towards the apothecary shop that was located near Dalyria’s clinic at the center of their city. He passed them both and turned the next corner and, around the back of the apothecary, he entered the wide building with the large, loudly painted sign that read “Donation Center.” He opened the door and heard the bell signal overhead that a customer had entered.

He caught the scent of blood and disinfectant that wafted throughout the large waiting room.

Finlay’s stomach grumbled and a sharp, familiar, and near-penetrating pang hit within it - the persistent hunger was something they all had to accept with their undead curse, and they could only lessen it to a degree with frequent, small meals of blood. Though, when Fin had stopped to consider it years ago, he noted that Astarion seemed somewhat less affected than he was, and Finlay and the other Gur children were only slightly less affected than almost every other spawn. For his theory, he could only attribute the cause to a single source, and he certainly wasn't going to question it for fear of drawing unnecessary attention to his family.

At the opposite end of the large waiting room from Finlay was Chessa. Chessa stood behind the long counter and took a citizenship card from the shorter, older, gray-haired woman standing in front of her. Chessa checked the card over. She pulled a piece of paper off of the stack beside her and stamped it as well as the woman’s card and wrote the woman’s information across the paper leaflet. She smiled pleasantly at the woman, and with pale fingers she handed her card back to her in addition to the leaflet and instructed her to have a seat.

The woman folded the card and leaflet into the book she carried and closed it. The woman turned and faced Finlay then and her eyes caught on and took in the silver-embroidered pauldron over his shoulder. He heard the uptick of her heartbeat when she recognized it. She looked at him with her light brown eyes and smiled politely. She pulled on her petite, kirtle dress and gave a slight curtsy and bowed her head, awaiting his acknowledging nod in return before she passed him to take her chair along the wall by the door.

“Good morning, Finlay!” Chessa called from behind the counter, and she turned the dial on her stamper to the next number.

“Good morning, Chess.” He smiled in greeting and stepped forward.

“Next?” a male voice called. Finlay turned his head and saw that a dwarf, a fellow vampire spawn, wearing an apron had stepped from the back of the room through the fabric curtain off to the side of the counter. The dwarf smiled warmly at the woman in the waiting area. Finlay heard her shuffle as she rose and calmly followed the man through the curtained opening. 

Finlay could hear the sounds of many dozens of heartbeats pumping indiscriminately from inside the great room on the other side of the curtain. Some were rapid, and others were languid and restful. Given the nature of this clinic, he was pleased to know that there were trusted city guards patrolling inside, maintaining the safety of those that provided life-sustaining blood donations for the many vampire spawn that made up the majority of their population in sel Ponovleno-Oloth.

“Hungry?” Chessa asked Finlay, bringing his attention back to her, and tilted her blonde head towards him, her chin-length haircut tossing with the movement.

“Aren’t we always?” he joked. Fin produced his citizenship card from a fold at the underside of his pauldron and placed it on the counter in front of her.

“You know I don’t need that, Finlay. I know who you are.” Chessa ignored his card on the counter and leaned her head to the side and inclined it towards him and whispered ever-so-softly, “and I’ve told you before that it entitles you to more if you have need of it.”

“And I’ve told you,” he said in his normal volume and with a laugh, “that I’ll follow the rules, the same as everyone else.”

Chessa snickered then and her hand took his card in her palm and she lifted it. “Chivalrous to the last.”

“If I’ve a choice,” he told her as another vampire spawn in the form of a short, male human with spiky, blue, fingerlength hair atop his head waltzed up from behind the curtain and took his place beside Chessa at the desk.

Chessa rolled her eyes at Finlay. “I’m logging this and then going on break, Leenan,” she told her coworker, who nodded at her and then grinned suggestively at Finlay.

Finlay ignored Leenan and watched Chessa pull a large ledger from under the counter. She plopped it onto the countertop and opened the heavy volume and wrote his information into the next open line. Beside it, under the “consumed” column she wrote, “2 units.”

“Come on then, my Lord,” she said in mocked tones and left the book and led him, not through the curtain, but past it to the door on the far wall from the end of the long counter. She opened it and stepped to the side and motioned for him to enter. The sound of soft, distant music flowed through the opening.

Finlay crossed the threshold and turned and stepped down from the landing on the other side of the door and descended the stone steps to the basement level that had been carved into the stone beneath the depository. At the bottom of the stairs he exited another doorway and on the other side, flanking the doorway, were two armed sentries. They saluted him as he entered. Their duty was to keep watch over the downstairs facility, maintain order, and be available if the two guards that paroled the upstairs donation floor had need of them.

While the vampire spawn could freely feed on the many chickens and rabbits bred for that purpose since Tav's implementation of that process when they first settled their city, there were strict laws for donations of humanoid blood and how often and what quantity a vampire spawn could partake of those donations. This barroom, though relaxed in atmosphere for their benefit, was strictly regulated.

And no vampire's teeth were permitted to puncture the skin of a humanoid being within their city unless there was mutual consent as well as approval with official license issued by the Council, as was the case for Astarion and Tav. Tav had also implemented the ruling that the donor humanoid of any such license should be expected to undergo both unscheduled and scheduled physical examination at the medical clinic with Dalyria to ensure their own health and safety. The paladin that she was, Tav did not exclude herself from that mandate, either.

The city harbored and accepted many living beings that also had to submit to at least annual physical examinations, including those from the Gur tribe that Finlay, Chessa, Gandrel, and the other Gur children had been part of prior to Cazador. As was any vampire spawn within their walls, all citizens were required to follow the laws set by the Council within sel Ponovleno-Oloth.

Various individuals in Baldur’s Gate and the surrounding villages who hit hard times and became homeless or were wrongly accused, or merely required safety, were vetted by contacts of Tav and Astarion prior to being directed to sel Ponovleno-Oloth and revealing its existence. Contacts like Thrumbo, Blurg, Omeluum, even Counsellor Florrick and Jahiera and a select trusted few of the Harpers, they all screened any potential citizens, and any visiting merchants for that matter, as well.

Any individual that requested asylum or citizenship was required to give two units of blood twice per week, and in return they were provided with healing potions after each donation, as well as ongoing food rations, medical attention, shelter, and, if they required more than that, a position of employment while within sel Ponovleno-Oloth. That citizenship card was proof of “currency.” Many Gur and Harpers alike had retired to the city rather than continue their adventuring, and they became productive, pleasant additions to their society.

If they didn’t… well, that was Astarion’s, Tav’s, and the Council’s problem.

Gandrel had become a member of their Council early on and still continued adventuring. That was, at least, until he could adventure no longer and was put upon to retire completely from that nomadic, monster-hunting life. At early construction and remodeling within the beginnings of the city, Gandrel had acquired his very own home here to live with his daughters, far in advance of the incident that poisoned his leg and nearly took his life. His blood poisoning further exempted him from blood donations since he required ongoing and frequent cleansing treatments with Dalyria at the clinic. As an established member of their city as well as an original Council member, he was provided such allowances.

Moving past the sentries at this side of the entrance, Finlay scanned the large, gray-stone barroom and saw many vampire spawn patrons seated at tables throughout the space for the tail end of their breakfast hour, not that this part of the facility ever truly closed. Such was the nature - and hunger - of vampires.

Finlay noted that a vampire’s dark-vision ability was a significant advantage in this overall ill-lit room. 

The entire hall was decorated in black and red and gold. While he figured it might be a bit garish to some, it was far easier to clean those colors of any spilled blood and blood products or wine. In keeping with the color scheme and theme of the room, black, velvet tablecloths adorned the many circular tables littered across the room. Red sconces lined the stone walls and red votive candleholders sat atop every table. The red curtains with black and gold fringe drew the eye to them as a focal point of the great room and lined the small stage along the wall towards the front of the building with a thin, long crevice in front. The narrow fissure was filled with mirror-glass stones amidst a low and narrow fire to brighten up the stage and performers. On the stage stood a bard, another fellow vampire spawn, beside her undead minstrel friend as he played a gentle harp and she crooned softly to the room.

Chessa led Finlay to his usual, shadowy corner booth at the back of the room that kept everything and everyone in view. The table had a tactical advantage in that no one could approach it without being in full view of the seated individual, and it was reserved specifically for him and his father, should he ever decide to visit this place.

Often, Astarion would make an appearance but only drank wine from a flashy goblet, having no need for the blood on offer thanks to his generous Paladin. He came anyway. He told Fin that it was important to be seen with some regularity within the community in one aspect or another, even if he kept himself apart from activities.

Finlay, though he enjoyed feeding on the rabbits and had quite a few furs and fur-lined clothing to show for it and had presented their meat to Tav or Gandrel and other remnants to designated artisans within the city, he knew as well as any of them that there was something more fulfilling and regenerative held within the blood of thinking creatures. It was the entire reason behind the donation center upstairs and the regulations and other laws that provided for the addition of living humanoids into sel Ponovleno-Oloth.

“Join me, won’t you?” he asked Chessa as he slid into the roomy booth.

“I had hoped to, although I’ve already had my blood ration yesterday,” she replied and sat across from him. She waved to the violet-skinned tiefling server and silently motioned that Finlay would have his full, two units, and the lanky server nodded his horned head and spun back to the service hall to obtain it from the stores. He returned with a large, golden goblet that was his father’s favorite, and set it in front of Finlay with a short bow.

Finlay didn't concern himself with the thought his father might arrive and request a drink from his favorite cup. He and Tav had gone off for their anniversary to celebrate together, and from there would head to Waterdeep to meet with Sevashnia and join the other Revenants in their covert search for the missing victims of another vampire Lord.

“So how is Papa?” he asked Chessa as he nodded in thanks to the server who then left them to their conversation. He used the familiar nickname of the friendly, Gur man that had frequently made trips to the Underdark to spend time with all of the Gur children-turned-vampire-spawn, his daughters Chessa and Kass especially. Gandrel had been a regular face that helped ease their transitions into sel Ponovleno-Oloth since their very first days freed from the prison under that wretched palace. He often brought the children letters from loved ones or toys to play with since they were the only children within the city.

Finay had received no such letters or other greetings or heard any word from members within his tribe, Papa Gandrel being the only link he maintained to the Gur during his childhood.

“He seems better of late,” she informed him as he carefully sipped the full-bodied, thick liquid from his goblet. 

The sharp hunger from the bottom of Finlay's stomach eased at the first sip of the fresh blood.

“He still resents the treatments and, now, his new metal appendage. But that walking stick your parents gifted him with is his new pride and joy!” she said with a smile. “He’s been showing that off to everyone he meets.”

Finlay grinned wide into his cup, pleased. Gandrel was like an uncle to him ever since before the death of his own biological parents to a nasty and devastating case of typhus that rapidly swept through their camp when he was only four years old. There were limited healing potions within their community and a handful of his people didn’t survive despite what healing magic others offered them. In such a close-knit grouping of people, the infection was an epidemic that some merely endured and survived.

His biological parents weren’t so fortunate.

He wasn’t sure at the time how he knew the disease would hit them or even that his parents were soon to die. As a four-year-old he knew only that, where there was life shining down from their faces one minute, suddenly the next day he saw only blank voids in their eyes and empty, hollow smiles upon gray faces. Fortunately for him and his Mama both, the other mothers were there to soothe him when his perplexed Mama was beside herself with worry trying to calm her wailing toddler. He regretted that her final months with him prior to catching the inevitable infection were so traumatic with his howling. On the heels of that turmoil she would lose her mind to the fever and his little-remembered “Dada” and her both succumbed to the illness days apart.

“He deserves such a beautiful thing,” he told Chessa as he set the goblet down and fingered the smooth, golden stem. “He is also fortunate to have you and Kass taking care of him at home, as he took care of all three of us within the camp. Papa has done so much good here, but I’m glad he has someone like Dalyria to help heal him and keep him as well as he can be after everything.”

Gandrel was the one who would smile upon him as he made a mess of his porridge he was given from another of the mothers, and he knelt to hold his hand while seated at the campfire after dusk. The other parents tolerated him and the other children kept to themselves, unlike Chessa and her younger sister Kass who included him in play and conversation, although they were several years older and he was still too stunned to speak after the trauma of seeing his folks’ death before it even touched them and then took them from him. Afterwards, Finlay had only done as much to communicate as mimed and pointed and waved, but rarely smiled, too afraid he was about to lose someone else he cared about or that would care for him.

“You know, Kass and I were talking about that very thing after the last of Papa’s sores had healed,” she stated, and looked at her fingers tapping upon the velvet tablecloth between them, her eyes lowered to observe the flickering of the tiny votive candle there. “How fortunate he’s been to live here and how grateful we are to have him still with us.”

“Well, it’s true,” he said, flatly.

“You know, Finlay, if it weren’t for you, I don’t think he would be here at all….” she glanced at him from under lowered eyelids, her face unreadable.

“Oh? How’s that?” he asked, and lifted the goblet and swirled the liquid inside and watched it circle, something he witnessed his father do when he was contemplating how he would respond to a particular statement that lurked to edge its way under his skin and might reveal a hint of hidden agenda to the other person.

“When Ulma had asked for scouts to trail the suspected vampires within Baldur's Gate, we were so angry at you.”

“At me? Why?” he questioned, and he bent to take a sip of the red liquid in the goblet.

“You don’t remember?” she asked, but Fin knew that it wasn’t really a question.

“Chessa,” he laughingly remarked into the cup between sips, “I was five.” He licked the smooth blood from his lips and swallowed it down.

“At Ulma’s announcement to the tribe, Papa wasn’t going to respond to her call for volunteers. You grabbed his hand and pulled at him with all of your little strength and pointed him to volunteer.”

“I did?” he scoffed into the goblet. Of course he did. He remembered.

“Yes,” she informed him, as though he didn’t already know where she was going with her comments. Her hand pointedly fingered the top of the table. “And if you hadn’t pushed him to do it, he never would have caught sight of that idiot Petras with one of Cazador’s victims. He wouldn’t have followed them to Cazador’s palace. He wouldn’t have seen him emerge with Dalyria and seen Dalyria do the same. He wouldn't have told the others in our tribe and taught them what to watch for.”

“What are you trying to say, Chessa? Are you also trying to blame me for us getting abducted?” He set his goblet down and leaned back against the wall of the booth, scowling at her.

“No…. I just…” she sighed and clasped her hands together and looked at him. Her copper eyes carefully passed over his face. “Finlay, if you hadn’t pushed him into doing it, then he wouldn’t have been so instrumental in being able to trace us to and track Astarion in the first place. He never would have learned about him from the Gur hunters he had taught to watch for their predatory behavior patterns he had witnessed.” Her words came out rushed and breathy as she leaned over the table towards him and continued, “He would never have met Astarion and Tav, and there’s no telling how it would have gone with one of the other, less patient hunters.” She shook her head at him. “Our abduction was all Cazador’s doing, all part of his diabolical plan. We all know it from Amanita Szarr’s manuscript. We were always going to be here.” She shivered. “Of course, certainly, I hope here, but we could have been elsewhere as vampire spawn, or killed in the ritual. But… But Papa,” she tensed and gritted her teeth, “Papa would have volunteered for the Yuan-ti abomination hunt anyway, and if Dalyria and this place weren’t here for him to turn to...” she trailed off and squeezed her eyes shut and brought her arms behind the table to her sides. She straightened her spine. “I wanted to thank you.” The words spilled from her lips but she didn’t open her eyes and didn’t move.

Finlay blinked at her and he felt the tension he was holding in his spine relax just a little.

Chessa sat up and leaned back. She opened her eyes. “Even though it’s been a while since he first got sick, we started talking about it and… well… Kass and I both wanted to thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” he said, and he meant it. “I didn’t do anything special, Chessa.”

“But you did, Finlay,” she leaned forward, pressing her point. “It’s almost like you knew it was important,” she stabbed her finger against the top of the table again.

“Chessa, I was only five,” he sipped from his cup again. “I had no way of knowing,” he lied.

~

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 10: Waterdeep

“Oh, Tav! The mere sight of you feels to my eyes like water to the parched wanderer in the desert!” Gale called from the left-open doorway as he rapidly descended the brick stairs, arms wide to meet his friend climbing the steps to his home.

A great smile pasted itself upon her face at hearing her academic friend. Tav pulled her heavy pack higher onto her shoulder and reached out one arm to accept his hug. Tav’s other hand she placed over her eyes to shield her face from the bright, mid-day sun glaring down on them.

“Gale, I’ve missed you!” Tav told him as he folded his arms around her and squeezed her tightly, knocking her arm into her face. She huffed out a laugh into the softness of his deep, indigo cardigan.

“And I you, my dear friend! I trust you had a pleasant journey?” He said to her and then looked over Tav’s head at Astarion who took their remaining luggage from the carriage attendant. Without stopping to let her reply, he continued speaking: "Although, I wish you would have let me whisk you across that long distance using a portal. Your bones must be so very weary,” he told her as he pulled back to grip both of her shoulders and looked at her face. He beamed down at her affectionately and took her jaw and cupped it in both of his hands, his eyes twinkling at her. “My, but I bet you have a craving for a hot bath with some decadent oils, and a large glass of a beautiful wine… and a soft bed!”

“Aha!” Tav choked up at him, “you caught me! Because that’s exactly what I’m wanting right about now. That, and some of your fine, home cooked delicacies, my dear, Professor Dekarios!”

“Well, you’re a fortunate friend, indeed,” Gale said as he released her. He reached a hand to lift her overstuffed pack from her shoulder, ever the gentleman, but then immediately set it back down onto her shoulder with an unsteady laugh. He made a sheepish face at her pack and shrugged in apology at his own lesser strength.

Tav smirked knowingly up at him.

Astarion walked up to the back of Tav then, their travel chest under his arm and their much lighter backpacks hanging in both of his hands, “And why then, pray tell, is she so fortunate?”

“Hmm?” Gale’s face lifted and leveled at Astarion’s “Oh!..erm... Sorry!” His gaze returned to Tav, “because I happen to have a lovely prime rib that I made for the two of us tonight, along with some seafood bouillabaisse that shall be heated on a low simmer as a starter, and a platter full of a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables for you whenever you’d like them during your stay.” He motioned up the stairs with one arm, nodding to Astarion, “And only several of the best vintages of wine I could procure for you, too, Astarion. Welcome, my precious friends!”

“As gracious a host as ever there was, Gale! Thank you!” Tav exclaimed as she passed Gale and climbed the remaining steps to enter the house.

“And where is ‘the unavoidable Morena Dekarios,’ Gale?” Astarion asked with a cheeky grin as he stepped up beside him. “I thought for certain she would be here fawning all over Tav the same way she was at our visit last season.”

“Do come in, Astarion! And, certainly, Mother loves our girl as much as we do,...” Gale turned and led him up the stairs and into the wide, circular foyer.

“Quite,” he sneered cautiously at his back.

“But we have the tower entirely to ourselves, which promises more relaxed conversation! Sadly, Mother had to take a trip to see my second cousins only a few days ago,” Gale told them both as the men joined Tav in the foyer at the center of the black double rings of terrazzo tile on the creamy, marble flooring near the base of the staircase in the opulent hall.

“Did she, now? Pity,” Astarion feigned interest and did his best not to sound too sarcastic as he flirted in his sinister fashion with Gale’s gayety.

“Yes, it is,” declared the winged, cat-like creature as she flapped down the stairwell to land on the woven iron bannister and joined in on the conversation.

“Good afternoon, Tara,” Tav smiled at the now perched and pretty tressym that resembled a dark, marbled calico with caramel wings.

 “She would have loved to see you, Tav,” Tara said to Tav. “And hello, again, Mr. Ancunín.”

“Tara,” he nodded in greeting at Gale’s familiar.

Gale captured Tav’s attention and pointed to recent decorative changes in the adjacent formal dining room and they began walking away from the foyer with him jabbering into her ear. Tav slid her pack from her shoulder and placed it carefully on the floor at the edge of the foyer as she followed Gale who was still recounting the ideas he had and improvements he made as he showed her the room.

“If you would follow me,” Tara instructed Astarion who stared at their backs, “I can show you where to set down those heavy things. Mr. Dekarios has been so eager for your arrival.”

“Much appreciated, Tara,” Astarion said politely. “And, I’m sure,” he quietly breathed the words, eyeing the two of them and walling off a strain of biting and bitter thoughts as he trudged upwards and lost sight of them. He pushed on with the baggage and followed the flying feline up the white, marble stairwell and followed the curve in the ornate, swooping black iron of the balustrades that wove along the edges like intricate vines, complete with small, interspersed white flowers. 

As much as the sunlight in Waterdeep and the appearance of the elegant stairwell within Gale’s tower and other warm decor pleased him, he very much missed the dark comfort and opulence of their own tower back home. 

Home, he sighed. As the travel chest shifted under his arm and he lifted one foot in front of the other upon the steps in the spiraling stairwell, he also sorely missed their brightly lit lift.

He remembered from his initial visit to Gale's “tower” in Waterdeep, the outside of the home appeared to those who looked upon it as a simple townhouse. Situated along the waterfront of Deepwater Harbor in the refined and reputable corner of Castle Ward, the back of the building overlooked the far edge of the docks, and the Honorable Knight statue that also stood watch over the bay could be seen towering above the rooftops there. Although Astarion knew the area from his prior excursions throughout the city, he mused that there weren't too many streets between Gale's residence and the rough and riotous Dock Ward, making it the perfect location for him and Tav to be nearer to the Revenants surveying that area.

However, no matter the location or outside appearance of Gale's home, the inside belonged to another dimension that Gale had created. Entry into the edifice accessed a true wizard’s tower that was impenetrable without his explicit approval, and one that was certainly expected by his peers to house such a famed wizard of renown. This meant that it was also infinitely far more spacious and held many more and beautifully decorated rooms than its outer shell could hint to contain.

Tara led Astarion up the winding, grand staircase, past Gale’s large, oaken door to his master suite that he had told them a long time ago had also retained an outer doorway that accessed the true balcony over the harbor out the back of the building within Waterdeep. Why that particular view would be one Gale would pick for his own bedroom when he had the option of choosing from infinite possibilities was far beyond Astarion’s ability to guess - the wizard had strange tastes that sometimes bordered on mediocre despite his claim at being an elite wizard and enjoying the finer things. Astarion could think of far more creative vistas to place at his own bedroom balcony if given the chance. He sneered quietly to himself at the ideas he might have.

What a waste, Astarion thought as he turned with the curve in the staircase and upon the next landing followed Tara down a short hallway to a large, ivory-painted door with a golden doorknob. Tara settled atop the light oak credenza with gold-dusted leaves along the edges that sat beside it and folded her wings closed. 

“Here we are,” she told him. 

Astarion stood a moment and looked at the hallway and considered the distance from Gale’s own room.

“Am I mistaken in thinking that this isn’t the same room we had during our prior visit?” he asked as he carefully placed the backpacks onto the floor in front of the closed door and settled the travel chest beside them.

“Of course not, Mr. Ancunín,” Tara informed him, “as I’m certain you are aware, Mr. Dekarios has the ability to change the tower floorplan at his whim. Only the decor needs shifting or, in some cases, to be purchased to furnish the rooms with such a change, as he has done here.”

This, from a wizard who managed to get stuck in his own portal, Astarion snorted at the thought.

“Delightful. And what is the reason for the change?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. However, Mr. Dekarios spent a great deal of thought as he conjured this room. I shall leave you to unpack yours and Ms. Tav’s items. I trust you can find your way back to the parlor downstairs?” Tara asked him. 

“Certainly, Tara. I shall see you downstairs.”

Tara nodded and opened her wings and lifted herself into the air. The familiar glided across the hall and over the edge of the iron railing and gracefully dropped down into the space below.

Astarion reached out and turned the golden doorknob on the guest room door to enter the large space on the other side. The door swung open and a strange sensation coiled its way up his spine. An unease he sensed from earlier watching Tav and Gale walk off together and leaning close to one another magnified and prodded at him from within his chest. He disliked that feeling as it swarmed around his thoughts of Tav and dug deep into his thoughts of Gale, troubling him as though the two were sharing a secret he was left out of knowing. An inkling nagged at the back of his brain when it reached it. He mentally brushed it away, but traces clung to him and festered and he thought only to get the baggage settled inside and he could rejoin Tav in the parlor and hold onto her and her nearness would wash the vexing sentiments from him.

Stepping inside, Astarion halted and his back seized as the coil sprung in his internal trap and the resulting distrust and jealousy took hold of him. He blinked at the room a moment, reaching for a way to make sense of the bedchamber, his vision traveling over every wall, scrutinizing.

Astarion felt his fingers grip air as he formed claws that ultimately desired Gale’s neck to be clutched inside them!

He spun from the room and vaulted over the trunk in the hall, the force of his swinging arm that had tugged at the doorknob as he passed it slamming the door closed behind him. He raced down the stairs, his agile legs taking them two, even three, at a time.

When he strode quickly across the marble floor and came upon Tav and Gale laughing, standing near one another in the parlor beside the fireplace beyond the doorway from the formal dining room, he took hold of Gale’s cardigan and lifted him up off of the floor, and thrusted him hard against the wall and pressed into him there.

Tav yelled at Astarion and stepped to intervene, but he stopped her with a piercing, red glare.

“That had better be a joke, you sneaky wizard!” he growled at a stunned and frozen Gale, Astarion's clawed fists clutching the indigo cardigan as he held him aloft and ruby eyes glinting scornfully.

A deafening pop sounded from the far side of the room and a flash of orange light blasted into Astarion. He was catapulted into the air and an abruptly-released and stupified Gale slid down the wall to a near-seated position on the fine rug at the floor. Astarion landed on his back atop the settee with a loud thud and looked over to witness an angry Tara with her body stiff and poised after her defense of her friend.

Tav rushed to Gale to check him and screamed at Astarion over her shoulder, “What is wrong with you?!” She lifted Gale gently from his crouched position at the floor and steadied him.

“Believe me when I say I have no idea what he’s on about,” Gale muttered to Tav and looked utterly flummoxed at Astarion and stood, straightening his cardigan over his trousers and keeping Tav between the two of them as he did so and made a motion to instruct Tara to stand down.

Astarion righted himself from the settee and angrily paced closer to the two of them. A hissing sounded from Tara and Astarion stopped advancing and puffed loudly at them all. 

He pointed his finger angrily at Gale. “He’s trying to kill me!” he yelled through bared fangs, the noise echoing throughout the parlor and into the large, marble rooms he had marched through.

“What?! What are you saying?!” Tav exclaimed and flailed her gaze between them. “Gale?!” Tav urgently inquired her friend at the wall, astonished.

 Gale barked at him over top of her head, “Where would you get such an insane notion?!”

“From our guest room that you so carefully concocted and conjured, friend,” Astarion snapped.

~

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 11

“There was nothing friendly about what you just did to me,” Gale loudly retorted at Astarion from across the parlor. “But I’ll humor you - at least for the time being while we,” he motioned between Tav and himself, “work to find reason in this. Let us call that a momentary lapse in judgement, shall we?”

“You can keep your moments, Gale!” Astarion hurtled back at him. He rapidly cooled the fire that spewed from him and regained some composure and twisted another sharp but calm barb at Gale. “But we’re not here to talk about your tragic love life,” he told him, his tone full of sass and vinegar.

“Astarion! Please!” Tav scolded. “Would you just tell us what this is all about?” She placed her hand to her forehead and approached him, at last.

“Why don’t you let Gale explain it?” he snorted haughtily, his nose in the air.

Tav stood close to him and settled a gentle palm on his chest to soothe him. Astarion brought an arm up reflexively and placed his hand on her hip and his own unconscious and unexpected motion at contact jolted him. He glanced down at her, as though finally seeing her. He frowned.

He could feel himself floundering. He searched her face, his expression unreservedly caught in the frown and his heart pleading with her.

Could she hear it?

“For the love of…” Gale uttered, exasperated. He waved his hands rapidly in a dismissive gesture. “Explain what?! Astarion, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but that's all I have to offer, I fear, until you start making sense.”

“Astarion,” Tav asked him, her voice softer and lulling, “you said you figured it was because of our guest room?” With her open hand, Tav grabbed his fisted hand balled at his side, her other palm still atop his chest. He absorbed the tranquility her nearness suddenly radiated to him. The frown dissipated and he nodded. “Then should I go see?”

“Lead on,” he muttered, though he had no idea how the words had managed to pass his lips.

“Yes, please do,” Gale added. “This begs investigation. And within my own tower, no less! Such calamity,” he shook his head with the words. “After you both,” he said and followed behind them as Tav pulled Astarion to the stairs.

She lifted her heavy pack from the floor in the foyer with her free hand as she passed it and hefted it over her shoulder and brought it with them. Tara trotted on the ground and followed their path on foot, purposefully keeping close proximity to Gale.

Tav approached the guest room in front of Astarion. She glanced at his face when she stopped in front of their luggage and then to their hands. “I’m going to move these things.” He bobbed his head once at her in understanding. She released his hand and stooped to shuffle the travel trunk and backpacks to the side to make way for all of them to walk comfortably into the guest room. When she stood she looked at Astarion. He motioned his hands for her to proceed into the room; he would follow.

Gale and Tara waited patiently behind Astarion until he and Tav entered the room.

Tav stepped across the threshold and set her pack on the floor and took in the grand guest suite. Her eyes went wide. Her jaw dropped. She heard the others enter the room behind her.

It was stunning.

The long, warm, and dark, wooden floorboards ran longwise from the door to the other side of the bedchamber, extending it into a sitting area at the far side. There were multiple groupings of beautifully carved, silver candelabras throughout the room.

The room was dotted with white, plush, fur rugs. One rug sat at the base of a long, giant cedar chest of drawers at the left, and another round rug lay at the distant side underneath a curved, tufted sofa covered in rich velvet fabric of a muted sapphire color. The largest of the white, fur rugs anchored the giant, plush bed atop it. The black platform that the thick mattress rested on held shelves with a handful of books and various oversized seashells as bookends. The gigantic, black headboard to the bed was carved and framed with large, embellished curves that scooped across the top and around the padding, which was the same fabric and tufted as the sofa.

Tav paced forward as she studied the room.

The bed was situated only five or six steps into the room on the right, with the chest of drawers to the left. Tav looked up and saw that, at the point of the room where one would pass the bed, the dark blue ceiling above it ended in a gray and white carved trim and crown molding. Beyond that barrier of trim, the ceiling became whole, wide panels of thick glass, extending across to the opposite wall and covering the entire other side of the room. More than half of the room was made up of only windows and a large, circular formation of clear windows opened up to the sky above them. Above her the sun shone down and illuminated all of the white trim and crown molding and panels they encased along the dark, blue painted walls behind her. Shadows cast from the trim and molding that framed every window panel fell beautifully upon the pristine floor.

Tav walked across the room and looked out the grand wall of windows and saw that one of the windows was actually a door and led outside to a balcony against a wall of rock with a floor of grayish-blue, slate stone. The balcony was surrounded in a heavy balustrade of thick, carved, gray stone with a flat, wide toprail of the same stone.

Both the windowed room and the balcony towered high above the area outside as if from the face of a cliff and looked out over an expansive and gray sea that surged and white water rolled and crashed against a series of tall, scattered black rocks beneath the room. Tav gasped and turned back to the small group behind her.

“Gale! This is absolutely gorgeous!” she gushed.

Gale appeared to blush but only smiled at her. “I’m ever so pleased that you like it.”

It was perfect for her.

For her, she thought.

Tav looked about the room again and studied the windows, and then her eyes looked behind Gale and found Astarion who was leaned back against the wall by the door, one of his knees bent and with the shoe of that foot settled precariously against some delicate wall molding there. His arms were crossed over his chest as he waited, and his chin lowered as he watched her intently.

“But, surely,” she told Gale, “....surely you can see why this is a problem for Astarion, Gale.” She waved an arm up at the sun that shone brightly down into the room - the bedchamber that at least half was made into a solarium as a result of so many panes of glass.

There were no shutters. No panels of draperies. Just a great, big wall and a ceiling made up of windows.

Gale’s features widened, opening in shock. The color drained from his face. “I’ve neglected the curtains!” Gale pirouetted to speak to Astarion behind him. “Oh, Astarion! I owe you an apology! Can you forgive me? I simply cannot believe how I ever forgot them.”

Astarion didn’t move. He kept his chin low as his crimson eyes glowered at Gale. “The most famed wizard in the lands … forgot?” he said softly. “You mean you forgot about the one thing that could end me forevermore?” Astarion pushed off from the wall then and took a step towards Gale. His voice went up an octave as he stared unblinking and angrily into the wizard’s eyes, and his voice pealed sarcastically,  “...HOW?”

“Oh, Mr. Dekarios,” Tara chided from the floor. “Whatever will we do with you?”

Without missing a beat, Astarion said, “I can think of a few things,” his eyes not having left Gale’s.

Tav laughed then and all eyes shifted to her, the sunlight creating a halo and highlighting the red of her dark auburn hair. She had her hand covering her mouth as she giggled.

Astarion quirked an eyebrow at her and tilted his head, wondering if she had lost her mind. He glanced at Gale who did the same and looked over at him as well. Their equally confounded expressions just made her giggle harder.

“Oh, my, but I am sorry.” Tav shook her head and walked towards them. “You’ll have to forgive me. I think I’m just far too exhausted right now.”

“Oh… Oh! Of course!” Gale exhaled. “The two of you get settled and rest. I shall go and obtain the curtains and have them ready to put up and then there will be no issues with sunlight, I assure you, Astarion!” Gale spoke over Tav’s shoulder at him as she backed him and Tara from the room and out into the hall. She bent to pick up the travel trunk. “Dinner will be ready whenever you come downstairs,” he said to her as she slid one of the backpacks into the room with her foot. Then the other one as she carried the trunk into the room with her. 

“Thank you so much, Gale,” Tav said to him as she sat the trunk down by the wall inside the door.  “Astarion has several hours of daylight abilities left, so we will be fine until then.” She began closing the door and Astarion could see Gale’s head bobbing to maintain conversation with her through the door as it slowly closed.

“Certainly!” he said through the still-closing door. “Let me know if you need any-”

Click.

Tav turned and leaned back against the closed door and smiled wide at Astarion.

They stared at one another, unchanged.

“You find this amusing?” Astarion asked, breaking the silence between them. “Do you not see how serious this is for me?” he testily pleaded from where he stood beside the bed. “While we didn't share with the others your nature or all of what Helm rewarded us with, the truth is that our studious Professor Dekarios does understand that my drinking your blood gift allows me limited time in the sun. And that I must eventually return to the shadows. I am still a vampire, after all.”

He watched her silently approach him. She kept smiling and her eyes stayed with him until she walked past him.

Tav went to the balcony door and opened it. The continuous, roaring sound of the crashing waves and the smell of seaspray rushed into the bedchamber. Astarion stood silent a moment and watched her breathe deeply of the scented air before she returned to him beside the bed, leaving the balcony door open to let the sounds continue to fill the room. 

“My dear,” he continued and gazed at her where she stopped in front of him, “I know you’re enjoying this, but how can you not see that he wants me out of the picture? That he wants you all to himself? I know for a fact that he’s wanted it for quite a long while.” He tipped her chin up to him with one hand and spoke more softly to her, “I think, even after all this time, he resents your choice of lover.”

Tav blinked her aquamarine and silver-speckled eyes up at him and continued to smile. She appeared greatly unfazed and, at this point, damned near euphoric, and it was starting to piss him off.

“Excuse me?” he asked her, astonished, his voice traveling over higher pitches with his frustration. “Did you not hear anything I just said?”

“I heard you,” she replied smoothly up at him, undaunted. “I’d much rather we didn’t talk about Gale, though. Neither about him nor of the crush we both know he has on me.” She pressed herself against Astarion's front and kissed him on the jaw. “I chose you to love. I want… you.”

His features took on a stern appearance as he leaned his neck back and surveyed her. “If you're trying to encourage me into having sex with you, you're failing abysmally.” Although, he wasn't about to admit to her that he was comforted by her words, and already felt himself stirring against her.

Regardless, he figured she already knew, anyhow.

Tav stepped back from him then and started to turn, “Well, perhaps if I went to Gale and asked him-”

“Ha!” Astarion laughed but snatched her by the waist and pulled her back into him. He made a show of his fangs at her before leaning in closer. He touched his nose to the side of hers and whispered, “Do that and I'm sure you can look forward to long, passionate nights … of conversation in the library.” 

She held him close to her and he rested his arms around her. “That’s a very old joke,” she whispered, her lips feathering against his as she spoke to him. 

“It is. And still true.” His dark, crimson eyes went to the door for a moment and then returned to her. “I believe it also went something like, ‘Gale of Waterdeep: a limp passion.’” He chortled as his hands lowered and caressed her rear.

Ignoring his comments about Gale, Tav wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to kiss her. She released his neck from within her hands during her hungry kiss and reached to pull his hips into hers and ground him into her.

He broke away from her kisses to joke, loudly and sarcastically, his face aimed up at the ceiling and blowing out in false exasperation with falling shoulders, “Godsdamn it! Fine!” He grinned salaciously down at her before he promptly returned to her waiting mouth, which elicited another short giggle from Tav. She kept her face turned up to him as her hands reached to untie his trousers and backed him up to the bed. He laughed as he was pushed down to sit. “So eager!” he exclaimed. “You’re delicious,” he purred up at her as she loomed over him, her attention focused solely on him, and she began undoing the ties of her own wrap-around blouse.

Oh, yes. She's lovely.

“Shhh,” she shushed him and inclined her head towards the door. She grinned seductively. “We only have a few hours of your sunlight abilities left, and I want to enjoy you in this bedroom. Now,” she told him as she pulled the blouse from her body and reached for the straps of her boots.

Astarion smirked devilishly at her and eyed her creamy skin from his place on the bed. “Should I now be thanking Gale for conjuring a room that so clearly turns you on?” He sneered through a wicked smile.

Her persistent grin fell, finally, and she glared at him. “And if you know what’s good for you, you had better be silent,” she directed him as she pulled her boots off and forcefully threw them to the hardwood floor with two, loud, successive thumps in warning.

“Oh, Darling,” he crooned contentedly, his smile widening and feeling quite amused with her as she climbed atop him, “don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Tav's lips crashed over his, swallowing his chuckle as they fell back onto the mattress.

~

Chapter Text

What Comes After

Chapter 12

The smell of the sea and the roar of the crashing waves brought Tav back from the deep, paralyzing sleep that felt upon awakening as though her mind had been born from a void of nothingness and sparked suddenly to life. She slowly opened heavy eyelids and saw a clear, black sky full of bright, twinkling stars above her. Tav took a sharp breath in, groggy and only for a moment alarmed and hesitant to discover on what beach she had lingered and left herself vulnerable before fatigue had overtaken her.

As her vision focused and she saw the lines that held the glass panes that sheltered her from the night sky above, she remembered where she was. 

Tav arched her back and lengthened her spine, extending her arms up over her head and languidly traced and brushed the velour fabric atop the headboard with her fingertips. She sighed as she felt the cool, silken bedding under her and thick, warm duvet bundled about her. Her body ached and at the same time felt untroubled, having become both serenely and completely fulfilled from how her lover had taken her, many times, to bliss and then held her before she slipped into sleep in his glorious and perfect arms.

She stared into the night sky from the dim bedroom and was reminded that she also rested in a chamber created just for her, much to Astarion’s chagrin. She hoped her words - as well as her dutiful and dedicated acts towards him earlier in this very bed - had dispelled his worry. It had appeared to her to be so, at least, and she smiled as she recalled everything she had very much enjoyed subjecting him to, loving him thoroughly until he had become a sweaty, squirming, whimpering mess beneath her and she had given him release time and again.

She relished having turned him into a veritable puddle in ecstasy. The soreness between her legs throbbed at the thought and she clenched her thighs together. Of course, she had taken pleasure in it, too.

He deserved every blessed moment of their lives to be doted on and lavished in whatever devotion she could offer, she thought. Astarion always seemed so surprised to be on the receiving end, even after their time together. As the first person he trusted and truly desired, as equally thankful and honored as she was, she felt he deserved her attention exceedingly more. For all of the times he was denied affection, let alone compassion, in his already long life, she would give him everything, even if he didn't ask her for it. Within their eternity she would deny him nothing, and she would serve him with the conviction that he was more than entitled to every emotional and physical intimacy she could offer in retribution for all the care he was forced to provide to anyone else. From the moment he fully accepted her and made love to her as a siren beneath their tower, Tav decided that she would give of herself every day if she could.

She stretched her arm and her leg out to the side, searching for Astarion. She reached and the space beside her seemed to go on and on, proving that, to her dismay, there was no other body with her in bed.

Tav vaguely recalled opening her eyes to more, warm daylight and Astarion telling her he was leaving the bed for the duration of the evening when the sun was still out, knowing her daily blood gift was soon to expire and he would be at risk. But he had returned as the sun had set and, in her hazy awareness, he had kissed her deeply and brought her to return to his chest in the darkness and she had fallen back to sleep within the shelter of his arms.

She lifted her head and looked over at the folded corner of the duvet and the exposed and crumpled - but empty - place beside her where Astarion had clearly slept for a period of time. She scanned the room and peered out through the open balcony door and found that she was, indeed, alone. A rumbling noise came from her stomach and reminded her that she had skipped luncheon and, by the looks of things, supper, as well.

Oh, but the appetite she had had! She snickered quietly to herself.

She lazily scanned the room again, admiring the decor. Poor, sweet Gale, she thought. She did adore her friend.

Tav rolled herself up and out of the bed and ran her fingers through her hair, leaving it loose and in chunky waves about her shoulders and back. She slipped on her soft, black, terrycloth robe that Astarion had thoughtfully laid out for her and that had been a gift from him at an early anniversary in the Underdark. He had personally embroidered the right breast of the robe with a beautiful and intricate approximation of her own tailfin outlined in metallic silver thread. While only they knew it was depicting hers, he had made it possible to confuse it as an elaborate, not to mention broader, dolphin’s tail. Astarion had created it to appear as though it were splashing down into her name, written in decorative, teal script as though a body of water.

He must have dug the robe out from their things in their trunk for her to find.

Tav grinned into the fabric as she hugged herself into the sentimental garment, knowing that every seemingly subtle action Astarion performed was purposeful. The man had made a point; she knew he had placed this item as though she needed a reminder of his affection, of their history, when she awoke alone in this new room conjured for her by Gale. Though she didn’t need to be reminded of Astarion’s love for her as he may have thought, she was grateful for the silent gesture.

She crossed the room to a door that promised to be an adjacent bathing chamber. Opening the door, Tav felt just as awestruck at this room as she had been upon entering the bedchamber for the first time.

Gray, slate stone, same as the stone on the balcony outside, covered the floor in this space. The walls and ceiling were stone and cavern-like, as though the entire depth of the room itself were carved smoothly into the cliff face by the elements outside. The long vanity sat across from the door and over it hung a long, silver mirror and there was plenty of room for at least three people to stand at it and gaze into their own reflection without crowding each other's counter space. 

Multiple groupings of many lit pillar candles littered the top of the vanity, and the counter atop the vanity was the same creamy marble as the grand staircase of the tower’s foyer and it glistened brightly in the otherwise dark room. The wood of the vanity was drenched in the same muted-sapphire color as the sofa and headboard from the bedchamber.

On the same wall as the door there was a small, inset nook beside her and with an indoor version of an outhouse that, rather than a chamber pot, was a black, marble toilet that appeared to have pipes similar to her own arcane tower to release waste somewhere outside and away from the beautiful space. Tav quickly availed herself of that aspect of the room and looked on the rest with continued fascination as she finished and stood again.

Tav crossed to the basin atop the vanity and cleansed her hands.

The long vanity stretched across the room in front of her and, where it ended, a long, oval and giant, black, marble pool was recessed into the slate floor beside the great series of floor-to-cieling windows that viewed out over the ocean, the same as the sitting area within the bedchamber.

Long tendrils of twisting and undulating vapors rose from the clear water within the full pool.

Tav gleefully raced to the windows and opened two of the panels there to let the sound and scent of the sea into the room. She took a handful of rose petals and a vial of sandalwood oil from the bathing box at the edge of the vanity counter and sprinkled them into the tub. She replaced the vial back to the scent box and took a handful of coarse salt and flicked her wrist and scattered it about the surface, also. She watched it dissolve as she undid the tie of her robe. Tav quickly removed and placed her robe onto the countertop and stepped down the marble steps into the steamy pool of water at the base of the long windows.

She groaned loudly as she sank into the hot liquid, finding the dark, marble steps easily beneath her feet as she descended. The heat penetrated deeply and soothed her aching muscles. She moved and floated on her back through the tub, pulling herself slowly through the steamy water.

The sounds of the raging sea outside was like comforting music to her, and she chose to shift to her siren form and float in the deep and obscenely long pool of water within the bathing chamber. She felt her tail lengthen from her toes and unfold, her natural form also receiving comfort from the heated water despite the lack of true salinity within the long basin as her thicker muscles and tissues knit together. She hissed delightedly as her face dropped lower and she submerged herself fully and sank to the bottom of the bath. She stretched her long siren form within the tub, testing its length, and for a moment was thrilled that she could only barely touch both of the ends at the same time between her fingers and the tips of her fin - the tub was so very long.

Then her abdomen growled out a roiling, gurgling and angry noise and she remembered her missed meals.

Tav rolled herself sideways several times within the water, and she curled her arms and tail into herself before stretching again, and she initiated the change back to her human form. As soon as she was able, she planted her feet to the bottom, stood, and then waded to the steps and emerged from the beautiful bath, her flesh pink from the hot, penetrating water. She dried herself with a plush towel that hung from the nearby wall and resigned to dress into some fresh underwear and a set of comfortable, linen pajamas that she had to dig out from her bag in the bedchamber.

Newly dressed, Tav covered herself and tied her plush robe over her and made for the door to head downstairs and see what might be left of the meal that Gale had offered her earlier in the day. Another loud series of near-painful rumbling came from within her abdomen at the thought of food, leading her to pad faster down the stairs before the hunger pains became nauseating.

Tav crossed the dining room and stumbled with her shock and nearly fell through the prismatic projection of Gale that startled her, standing there inside the entryway to the parlor. Tav spun on her heels as she caught herself and looked at the bright and glowing copy of Gale as he turned to face her.

“Good evening, Tav!” he said mechanically and smiled brightly as Gale had done earlier at her arrival. “I am a magical projection of Gale of Waterdeep!”

“No shit?!” Tav breathed. She tightened the waist of her robe and looked about the room to see if anyone else was present.

“Certainly!” the projection responded, as though she had actually asked a question. “I am entrusted with the task of waking Gale of Waterdeep should you arise for nocturnal sustenance,” the projection told her. “Furthermore, prior to informing your host, I am tasked to also impart to you guidance in that the nourishment you seek is held in suspension until your host would release it to you. Until he descends to the kitchen to perform the aforementioned magics, please partake of the refreshment available on the table here. Thank you!” 

With that, the magical projection radiated light even brighter than before, and then it burst like a soapy bubble and a smattering of glittering particles showered the space around where it had stood and disappeared completely.

“Alright, then,” Tav mumbled to herself and she turned to the tray of vegetables on the side table that she decided to pass on for now. She poured herself a goblet of spiced wine and sat comfortably on the settee and waited.

A few minutes passed, and she could hear Gale’s large door to his master suite open and his slippers as he scuttled and scuffed his way down the marble steps in the foyer and hastily made his way to her.

The sleepy wizard shuffled into the parlor wearing a long, purple paisley robe with a burgundy, corduroy collar and smiled squintily at her when he entered the parlor, rubbing a bogey from one red eye and yawning widely. 

Has he been drinking? Tav wondered. She saw the bags under both his red and weary eyes. Yes, but she decided to overlook it for now.

“Good morning, Tav! You were in quite a deep slumber, according to Astarion,” he told her and motioned for her to follow him to the kitchen with her drink. 

That he was alone with Astarion is enough to lead him to drink heavily! “You were alone with him? And you’re still alive?” Tav joked as she rose from the settee and followed him through the doorway to the next room, watching his slightly lopsided, fatigued gait in front of her.

The heavy, earth tones in the kitchen radiated warmth along with the fire that roared within the large, sandstone hearth against the far wall opposite where she stood near the table in the center of the tall room. The hearth drew the eye as a focal point due to its giant size and was flanked on either side by long upper and lower cabinets of rustic walnut with long, deep grains. Heavy, iron sconces and lovely artwork depicting far-off, exotic locales adorned every wall. Two, beautiful, tall credenzas made of glass and the same rustic walnut as the countertops and meant to display the fragile dinnerware and other expensive service pieces that sat inside it flanked the door along the wall behind her.

Gale cleared his throat as he strode past the table. “Of course! While you rested, Astarion and I had a few, quiet hours of idle chatting while reading and drinking wine…” Gale paused and brought a hand to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Ugh… a good quantity of wine…” He shook his head, then righted himself and continued. “But he told me to tell you he went to scout with the Revenants tonight and not to worry about him. During our conversation I gleaned more about what brings you here to Waterdeep. Astonishing! A vampire lord hiding here! And the cover-up of all those missing?! Horrible thing, that!”

“Now that we appear to know how they operate, we just have to find where they’re taking the missing.”

“Well, no being understands better than the two of you, most assuredly! Astarion said your team would find them. He also told me you would be famished when you awoke. Now, have a seat here and I will deliver that prime rib that I promised you.”

“Gale, I’m so sorry,” she told him as she sat upon a stool at the heavy, wooden table in the center of his masculine kitchen. “You slaved over a lovely meal and I slept the entire day and most of the night away.”

“Think nothing of it, my friend,” he said and with a wide, showy grin and the flick of a wrist he produced from the air a large plate with a beautiful slab of juicy, pink prime rib that made Tav’s mouth water at the sight. He set the plate down in front of her and with the flick of his other wrist, he brought into that hand another, smaller plate that held a steaming potato with a large dollop of butter and a whopping pile of soured cream atop it. Beside that on the plate were slices of grilled peaches garnished with cinnamon and nutmeg. “You had such a long trip to Waterdeep, it was my pleasure to ensure you had a fulfilling meal ready for whenever you desired it.” He set the second plate beside her and sat across from her. “No matter when you decided to eat, of course! Although, it certainly appeared as though you needed the respite.” He winked at her and a linen napkin and a set of silverware popped into existence beside her hand. She picked it up and smiled at him.

“Honestly, Tav,” he told her and his tone turned more serious, “sometimes I miss our little group, but I don’t know how you could even contemplate taking to the road after the journey we were on together. Hells,” he let out a laugh and watched Tav begin determinedly cutting into the meal in front of her, “I might find myself at times missing how we used to rough it with you, but that’s not owing at all to the experience of it! It’s the company, rather, that gives me nostalgia.” Gale set his chin atop his hand and leaned his elbow onto the table and observed her.

The meat nearly melted in her mouth as she began to chew - Tav closed her eyes - and it went down just as smoothly. She took a sip of her spiced wine so that she could look at Gale over the top of the vessel.

“Gale, I miss you, too. I miss all of you,” she told him as she set the goblet back down. “But Astarion had his reasons for wanting us to take a carriage to Waterdeep. We had a stop to make along the way.” She continued to cut and place large pieces of meat into her mouth and ate, savoring the richness of it.

She was more of a true predator than any of them had ever imagined, and, even now, only Astarion knew the truth about her. Red meat and pork, for obvious reasons, had always been her favorites over fish. But, since what felt to her like many lifetimes ago, after she took on the form of a human on land she had also learned to enjoy the saltier and sweeter foods as rich delicacies to her system.

Tav took another bite.

“And?” Gale inquired. “Did you accomplish everything you set out to do along your journey?”

The food warmed her insides, but Tav couldn’t help it and the additional warmth that radiated within her chest and from her heart at the reminder of her time in the lagoon with Astarion made her blush just a little. “I think we did,” she said into her goblet as she drank again. She set the goblet down and continued with her steak.

“I just don’t think it fair to you,” he told her and straightened atop his stool at the table. “After overcoming every hardship and experience that we did, all the weight of every choice relating to the illithid and Absolute on your masterful shoulders, and that along with calming the fears of your companions and uplifting us and supporting us while also catering to our needs, you managed to get us through all of that, and saved many along our arduous journey.” He took her resting hand in his and squeezed gently. “All of Faerun owes you its gratitude, in fact. And now you’re helping Astarion rule the other vampire spawn along with an entire city, while also keeping order and commanding a secretive society?” Gale squinted and raised a quizzical brow at her, his eyes glinting at her, his figure haloed by the firelight from the hearth. “It’s quite obvious as to the reasons you’re so exhausted.”

“Gale,” Tav swallowed, “I’m fine, really. I was just worn out.” She pulled her hand from his and looked down at the large plate, empty of meat. “And hungry, apparently,” she laughed. She scooted the finished plate away and pulled the plate containing the potato and peaches closer to her.

They sat in silence for a while, but Tav felt Gale’s unasked questions festering inside him from across the table and could see her friend holding back to allow her to feast. She hoped he would relax after having provided for her, watching her slake her hunger and thirst. He eyed her as she savored every next bite of the creamy, topped potato and pieced from the lightly caramelized sweetness of the grilled peaches.

“Tav,” he told her, breaking the silence and he tapped his fingers, absentmindedly drumming them lightly on the tabletop, “I’m concerned you aren’t taking care of yourself.” Gale cleared his throat. “You’ve spent twelve years in the Underdark. Why don’t you stay here a bit longer and give yourself a vacation from all of that?”

“Oh, Gale,” Tav said and pushed the half-eaten potato and peaches away, suddenly full. She straightened. “The guest suite you conjured for me is gorgeous and I adore it immensely. You truly knew what to add to spoil me and for me to feel at home in it while we’re staying here. And that magical, heated bathtub…?!” Tav motioned to her still-damp tresses that hung loose over her shoulders in waves. She pulled at her teal lock of hair and flipped it back with a grin. “Divine.”

It was Gale’s turn to blush, then, and he nodded, thanking her. “You must know, Tav, I modelled it solely with you in mind. As soon as you contacted me and said you would be here for an extended period, I got to task immediately. So many nights around the campfire you regaled us with tales of the mercenaries you sailed with prior to becoming a Paladin. Your affinity of the sea was never in question, so how could I not draw from nautical inspiration when considering your accomodations?” He laughed to himself. “In truth, I owe a great many things to you for all you’ve been to me: a leader, a confidant, a friend. Throughout our adventure, you liked so many things about me I’d have sooner discarded….Your generosity is quite wonderful. Where would I be if not for you?” He shook his head. “Dead, I’m certain. All of us would be, in actuality.”

“Gale, I-” she began to argue.

“No, I mean it.” He reached and held her hand again. She let him and looked upon it as he continued. “I was utterly depleted after Mystra. It was easier to stare at the celestial abyss than recognise the emptiness within myself. Easier to pretend my destiny lay among such stars, than to work to salvage a life on solid ground. You changed all that. If not for you I would have destroyed myself along with the armed orb that I housed in my chest, either aimed at the Netherbrain or something less threatening.” 

He let out an uneasy laugh. “I could have remained trapped within that portal you pulled me from when first we met, and, at one time, I even resigned  to let myself wither there purposefully, not releasing the explosion by accident within proximity of innocents for being unable to feed it items imbued with magic. But you even gave me those… and the hope I thought I had long abandoned. Without you…. Without your intervention… your care and understanding… I doubt I would have discovered the courage to stand before Mystra, let alone argue my worth to her and rid myself of that Netherese poison in nearly a single step. Without you my existence would be entirely nil.”

He waited a beat before he spoke again. “Please, take me up on the offer, Tav.” His dark, red-rimmed eyes pleaded with her. “What more can I do for you? If you would allow me such grace…. You need rest. Let Astarion and Gandrel take care of things, and Finlay can, too, now that he’s old enough.” 

“I can’t, Gale.”

“I would advise care and caution, then, Tav.” He paused for a moment, his expression cycling through what appeared to be concern, acceptance, and then grief. He spoke again, his voice coming out sullen and almost unrecognizable as it cracked, and he forced out the words, “My shining Tav, do you not yet grieve the sun?” 

Tav took in a sharp breath, shocked at how directly he had asked the question and knowing full well where he intended the conversation to go afterwards. “I have time in the sun, Gale. We arrived, both Astarion and myself, during the full, midday light,” she told him, her voice steady and sharp.

“You give of yourself too freely, Tav. You give your blood to him to share a fragment of daylight with him. If only….” He shook his head slightly, squeezed his eyes shut, and then when he looked upon her again, she saw his renewed determination sparkle within him. “Stay here with me, Tav, please,” he begged, his upper body hunched and leaning slightly over the table between them. “Just to rest… only for a little while…” He took a deep breath, but next let out, in a whisper, “I miss you terribly.”

“Gale, you’re magnificent,” she softly told him, a sadness lacing her words. “You are and always have been worth so much more than what you thought,” she told him. “You took yourself for granted and placed too much weight on what you thought Mystra wanted of you. I was delighted by every conversation with you during our adventuring. You are sweet, warm, and intelligent. Capable. Compassionate.” She smiled pleasantly at him, her lips closed but upturned slightly, and she moved and squeezed his hand between both of hers. “I valued your counsel on so many things, my friend.”

“But it wasn’t enough for you, was it?” Gale sighed and a sour expression took hold of his features. “I never was a match for those rakish charms… He was quite literally created to make others swoon. Practiced it boldly, even. A skill he perfected over centuries, and you seemed to resist well enough at first. And he still ensnared you. He caught you on those cunning, sharp fangs of his… like a fish on a hook.” 

The analogy stung. The thought that he wouldn't know how accurate his words truly were pierced her to her core.

At her silence, Gale let out a breath so heavy that it sounded as though it were dragging his soul out his mouth, and the taint of alcohol bit the air from his exhale. Then he spewed the tormenting thoughts that swam in his hangover, “I thought, with time, he… or you… would tire of that seduction, that the pretense would wear thin… but I … I’m still not quite enough?” he quietly asked her as he stared at her hands covering his. He didn’t want to see the rejection on her face. Not again. 

“Please, my wonderful Gale, don’t do this… There are things you don’t understand about my relationship with Astarion.”

“‘My wonderful’...” Gale repeated and let out a light, cynical laugh and slowly - gently - turned his head side to side. He leered at the table that might as well have been a mountain that separated them. “I know you’re not someone to abandon the one you promised yourself to. I admire everything about you, Tav. Undeniably.”

How could he? No, she thought in an instant. Impossible. He still thought Astarion a monster from what little of him Astarion let show.

Gale had softened over time to Astarion, Tav noted, even claimed to have misjudged him, and told him so given all they had accomplished together. However, he still saw the sharp edges Astarion placed between himself and the world. But her?

If he learned… 

Gale sniffled as he held back the tears that threatened him and glassy, red eyes looked up at her, finally, “I know that you chose him… And far be it from me, of course, to question you-”

“Then don’t,” abruptly came Astarion’s gruff, irritated and low, male voice from the doorway.

~