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Chapter Text

Astarion needed quiet.

Since his last dalliance with their dream visitor, Gale’s idiot tadpole avatar had taken up a gong in the illithid hivemind, never allowing the last echo to fade before the next low vibration flowed out over their meadow of shared thoughts. This droning “experiment in telepathic stability” was for the good of the hivemind, Gale insisted at knife-point, though Astarion couldn’t tell any gods-damned difference in the drone of the others’ emotional impressions rubbing up against his heart. He continued to be privy to the trampling ideas and urges from the others, overtaking his thoughts.

Very often his mind was on the influence of his Master, how his first few decades under the psychic control of Cazador Szarr had reshaped his body to serve alien whims. Death had rendered him inert within the prison of flesh bent-backed for another’s indefatigable will. Spawn of the man, he, Astarion, was subsumed. Rather alike to this whole business with the tadpoles, vampiric influence.

He was going to kill the wizard to get some fucking peace, damn the crater it would leave.

Astarion rotated the vision of Gale’s limp, bleeding corpse in his mind’s eye and sighed wistfully. He imagined the light disappearing from those arrogant eyes. Hopefully Gale received the message, but his avatar remained focused on the conjured gong. Astarion was used to being ignored by the others in the hivemind.

He imagined stabbing Gale’s corpse again. If only things were so simple. If only all the rest of them were dead, he could get some fucking quiet.

Gale’s avatar split into two Gales. The copy raised a flute to his lips and, because no god would ever look upon Astarion with a breath of mercy, a sequence of unfortunate notes whinged tepidly through the meadow. Karlach’s jogging avatar, representative of her endlessly racing thoughts, threw coins to the Gales’ feet as she passed, whooping.

Wyll, dear Wyll, at last demanded quiet. Gale’s piping subsided. At least someone was on Astarion’s side. That Wyll. Gods, was that man ever the horizon and what lies beyond. Elegance and courtesy, and that knowing smile.

Gale’s gong-ringing resumed the moment Wyll’s attention was drawn away. In his tent, Astarion groaned. Telepathically accosted: this was a conspiracy to make life hellish for him in particular. They were all inclined to bully him, and Gale especially, now that the man had sniffed out a weakness in Astarion’s hold over Morgan’s favor. Gale may conceal his needling under the “healing” guise of this mental concoction of insufferable stimuli, but Astarion’s redoubled misery when he tried to help revealed the wizard’s true intentions, no matter how much of the paladin he put on. Gale treated Astarion like a magical phenomenon more than like a man, and to the boy prodigy a vampire was a specimen of arcane interest to be studied and cataloged.

Astarion could maim him and leave him in an inn somewhere. He didn’t have to kill him outright. But even sidelining the man, Morgan would get upset over losing her wizard. And Astarion should probably, maybe avoid doing anything else to upset Morgan.

When Astarion heard her, rarely enough, in the hivemind, she was still frosty and disappointed. She still looked his way from time to time. Her mind’s interest swayed across the hivemind towards him. He wasn’t entirely without hope.

In his tent, Astarion opened a book and turned its pages, but Morgan was all he saw. His catch was making a break for it; he would put a stop to that.

Her interest was sexual, of course. No doubt she missed the bliss only he could conjure on her body, finding little purchase as she turned her harlot’s tricks on Gale. Gale, of all people. Wyll he would have understood, Wyll was everything youths dreamed of. Morgan couldn’t be more than… He struggled to think in terms of human lifespans. Fifty, perhaps? Forty? He remembered watching, swilling the bitter wine in his cup, at the tieflings’ celebration when she made her try for Halsin. The randy old bear had kept her at arm’s length, shockingly enough. But he’d heard the hulking man’s enormous veins pulsing, blood pumping desperately quick then carefully breathed to regularity. Morgan had been fliratious from the first.

If he wasn’t careful, he’d be expelled permanently. Condemned to obscurity.

And now Gale. She wanted Gale.

Sudden, swift, his banishment from her side.

Morgan was typical of a human woman, a whoreish and ravenous lover. Sloppy, Astarion’s Master had sneered of that short-lived and fervent race. Once he’d got her on her back, Morgan had raised her chin and opened her legs and Astarion had been delighted by her naked enthusiasm, her ambition to suck him off, drool slathering down her chin and neck. Her ardency to sit him back and suck him up in her tight, hot hole.

Could Gale keep up? The man described sex like embroidery plucked into silk. What Morgan’s raw, nasty appetite demanded, Gale would approach with studious banality, Astarion told himself. His certainty did not flag. Very doubtful whatever she got from Gale would keep her from coming back.

Whatever her mouth said, her cunt would bring her around.

…

… What she felt towards him now wasn’t hatred. He could work with not-hatred.

It was the little things, like not killing her wizard. He would claw his way back into Morgan’s good graces. Astarion’s patience could be tried, and withstand the trial. Astarion would not plug Gale’s psychic ass with his own astral flute.

Vulture.

If it weren’t for Gale, Astarion would have Morgan’s neck under his hands this very night. How alike to Pale Petras the wizard proved himself, swooping in to pick off the prize bint only after the table was many rounds in its cups. Astarion would make Gale understand the precarity of his momentary command over Morgan’s affections.

Three nights passed in the Underdark after the incident with the stupid flower, then six. Ten nights, not a drop of blood left in his stash. Only ten jars in reserve? Sloppy. Stupid.

He failed to kill an eerie wildcat with frog’s eyes and too many teeth, nearly lost a leg, and hid atop a mushroom until the beast got bored and ran off. Flat on his back, grimacing while a potion darned his femur, he contemplated the sounds of easy prey and told himself it made no difference what he ate, so long as he ate. The vermin in the walls would serve well enough.

So he broke a little body and took all its blood. But the blood wouldn’t stay in him. It happened again, his stomach upended itself over a cliff and he was left empty and wanting.

So he’d thrown up a few rats! Astarion missed wringing bird necks, that was all. It felt good to drink birds down, fluttery hearts and clouds and treetops.

Nights exactly like days. Hungry.

This was nothing. He repeated it in the hours of painful craving: it’s been much, much worse. He’d known hunger. Before he’d had his first taste of Morgan’s blood, he’d known hunger like a pit to the hells.

Only… he hadn’t understood what that hunger meant, not entirely. Not until the fullness offered by the blood of thinking things had answered the pit in him with something like satiety. His hunger in ignorance had been bearable by necessity. The hunger in him from knowing what he could have, now, was heinous. Now, his body knew what deprivation took from him — power, strength and speed, accuracy in his every cut.

And now he was sick somehow, and even the power of spawn fed on animal blood retreated from his sinew.

But there was plenty to drink. Meals moved in the walls on tiny toes, easy to break.

He simply needed quiet.

The alien bitch’s thoughts often dominated the illithid hivemind and Lae’zel thought often of beating him when his swings missed. She had been beaten and she’d learned, her poorly-controlled tadpole asserted. There was no better mentor of improvement than the fear of physical reprisal.

Without blood at all, his strength waned, and he missed more often.

He yearned for bats. The thought of crushing it, preparing to make the body breaking in his hands the body of Cazador breaking — he’d revel in it, if only the bastards weren’t so quick. The drought in his gut hurt. Flapping and squeaking in the rocks hung like daggers overhead.

Plenty, plenty to drink.

He revisited scars under the nails where Cazador had excavated with blades. Sometimes he could hurt himself so sharply he’d be able to black out for an hour. Quiet.

Get blood on your own, she’d snapped at him, the words a cold drowning panic sluicing through his nerves. And he would get it. He could get it, he didn’t need her. For the most part, she was busy with Wyll. The two of them were making a place in the hivemind for Shadowheart, helping her hold her own against the power of the others’ tadpoles, building a mental haven with the appearance of a gazebo to conjure some barrier for her shifting, strained and confused thoughts.

The same offer for a little peace of mind was not extended to Astarion. They wished to keep him flattened in the hivemind, tortured under Gale’s lectures and Lae’zel’s threats. Even Wyll’s thoughts ran rampant when the battle was joined at its thickest, sickening sincerity in the poet wondering if the wounds Astarion endured hurt, considering the flesh was dead. Was the skin unfeeling?

His dead flesh felt plenty. Pain was a constant. The longer he went without blood, the further a queer numbness spread through his corpse — but pain was constant. Pleasant sensations? Those had a way of retreating away from his nerves. But pain was a matter of survival. Self-preservation alarms, to notify his Master of the puppet’s failure.

If he was losing his grip here, moving a bit stiffly there, and missing a shot or two, was the cacophony from the chorus really necessary to spell out what it would mean for him to get gored through the stomach again?

The racket of the others’ thoughts grew in the evenings. Sometimes the guardian of their dreams tried to come to Astarion, and he would pull from trance exhausted and angry, staring up at the burial mound of the world stacked up overhead.

He needed quiet.

The pleasant flush of Morgan’s blood in his corpse had changed his understanding of his body and his undead existence that he knew so little of. Her blood had delivered him from the grave, and then she had retreated. He needed back at her sweet little neck. He caught himself staring at it, over and over. She’d been pliable to the trade of sweat and blood. She’d been pliable until she wasn’t. Gale had pounced in to soothe her when the Sussur flower had drained away her magic, turning pique and fury onto Astarion for whatever little offhand comment he’d made in the moment and framing him as the bad guy. Because of Gale, Morgan had told Astarion to fuck off.

But he would get her back.

He said it over and over. He sat unmoving in the hours when the others were sleeping or tranced and listened to the streams of blood burrowing in the cave walls. And the hunger pressed menacingly close to the surface.

What he wouldn’t give for a deer, a boar.

He fumbled, he dodged too slowly. He had to hunt soon, he put it off and put it off.

One day, his palms went numb. His fingers, seeking out the story his face told the others, found sunken eyes, cutting cheekbones, crinkled neck. He was getting hungrier all the time. His eyes and hearing lost their sharpness, and this he could not abide. He succumbed to the need.

He decided to go out before Lae’zel roused her hireling corps. The alien bitch had fashioned herself an expert in “timeless travel,” as she called it. She kept the sleeping races on a schedule in the Underdark alike to the passage of days and nights. Astarion didn’t want to dodge her army of mercenaries once they were up and about, breaking camp underfoot.

It was off to a bad start from the first.

Lae’zel was awake and polishing a massive weapon. Her cattish eyes flicked up to observe him, and she jerked her head in way he’d come to understand was some sort of greeting, or expression of disdain, or both.

She didn’t speak, but her thoughts were loud in the hivemind as he turned away: “If he makes me as slow as he has become, I will have no choice but to cut him from my path.”

Astarion watched her over his shoulder as he took to the shadows.

“He is weak. He is weak, and a danger to our cause. I will gut him myself, if he fails again. I will tear his innards out with the very daggers he drops.”

He’d just drain enough to calm the tremors in his hands.

He kept an eye on the alien bitch until she was obscured behind a giant mushroom.

When she was out of sight, silence finally blanketed him. In the sudden, blissful quiet, Astarion heard a rock kicked. He turned to find himself faced with a giant mushroom of another sort.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake — Halsin.”

“Out on the hunt?”

The enormous wood elf greeted him with a soft smile and a warmth in his voice that set Astarion’s nerves on edge. The man was completely fucking nude. He shifted a bulging sack from one shoulder to the other.

“Hunting, yes. Mushroom picking, you know.” Astarion shifted his hip forward and gestured down. “Airing out? Not looking for a place to bathe, after all this time?”

The big, naked man was unmoved by the allusion to his pungent presence, as stoic as ever. Halsin hmm’ed with a small frown down at his long cock and hairy, low-hanging nuts shining with musk.

“A bath would be most pleasant, truth be told. I’ll take advantage of the basin while I’m here.” Good humor played in Halsin’s twinkling eyes, lingering on the jut of Astarion’s ass. “I am glad to see you whole!” He paused, and Astarion had the unpleasant feeling of being diagnosed. “Although, you don’t look quite hale.”

“Well I’m dead,” Astarion snapped. He gestured to the mysterious bag. “Come to finally pull your weight with the team?”

Halsin adopted the long-suffering mien of a man wounded by the burdens of all he carried.

“Though I take rest tonight in your camp with provisions, I must continue on to attend my duties elsewhere. After an evening around the fires, I shall take my leave as the others stir. Now, I’ve potatoes to get to Lae’zel, before she sends her corps after me.” He grinned. “Unless you’d like a companion on your hunt?”

“I don’t need help,” Astarion snarled.

“How fares Morgan?” Halsin asked his retreating back. The knowledge that this big nasty ogreish slut smelled her absence on him infuriated Astarion.

“Find out yourself,” Astarion grumbled. “And put some fucking clothes on!”

The Underdark made sounds jump and rebound in odd ways, and the skittering and burrowing of prey was omnipresent, but at least the hivemind was distant and near-silent. Just a breeze, far away. He didn’t have to go far before he found what he was after. It skittered into a corner, an easy catch. It was fat.

He stopped seeing one rat and saw two. The feeling of nausea was on him so he turned and retched, got nothing up, retched again. The sensation of his esophagus hurling itself up his throat was overwhelming, like a drumbeat. The rat was gone. He was floating over his own shoulder, watching himself stand. He felt nothing. Nothing.

So much to drink, like a sea.

He… couldn’t. The simple fact of it stared him in the face. He’d lost it again, the ability to hunt and drain rats. There were pricks of fucking tears at the corners of his eyes. Because, he had been able to drain them on the beach and in the forest, so what had happened? What else was there to hunt? What would he do? He was craving, needing, hungering, and suddenly he couldn’t do anything about it. Cazador would have just made him, he just had to pretend — He cursed the rat and most of all cursed this despicable place so far away from the light of the sun. That’s what was ruining him, casting him into a deeper despair than his usual character. The nearness of those early memories, of resisting, of the newness of the subjugation to Cazador’s will. It was hearing the tiny fluttering heartbeats all the time and not being able to bring himself to drink without coughing up blood through his teeth.

He indulged an hour or two of sulking fear, but the answer resolved itself clearly: he was in the tiniest of binds, wasn’t he? If one well dried up, another must be tapped.

After the peaceful quiet of the world beyond telepathic range, the return to his consciousness of the full brunt of the hivemind made it hard for Astarion to trust his senses. He didn’t notice the bucket in his path. He kicked it. It rolled to the cook-fire. He stumbled and caught himself. Fuck. Gale stopped the bucket with his foot, trying to meet his eyes with that quizzical, insulting gaze of a man studying a strange dog.

Ignoring Gale, Astarion looked for her and found her beside the fire surrounded by junk. He hid his trembling hands.

Morgan was wrapping her hair up and pushing pins down to hold the buns. She was looking at him, though her eyes gave him nothing to guess at her mood. He hated that. Was she worried, contented, angry?

He didn’t need to force Morgan to open her veins. He would ask nicely. This was the hunt he was made for, after all.

“Hey,” Morgan greeted him when he got closer. Her voice was pretty, he had to admit. At least she had that, since her looks were rather unfortunate, donkey-faced as she was with a nose like a sheer cliff, splotched head to toe with freckles and moles. Sauntering to ply her, he threw his confidence under his feet and angled himself to display all of it for her pleasure. He could sway her tonight, he’d done it before. And when she was blissfully speared, he’d have the answer to his hunger right there, no rats required: her delicious spotted neck pulsing, ripe with the sweet gift of her blood.

Chapter Text

Lae’zel commanded a small army of hirelings to carry out her vision for the lay of their camp under enormous glowing mushrooms. The taut sinew of her muscles angled and flexed. She was alien to Morgan, true, but still so beautiful. She hefted a crate easily up on one shoulder and the sorcerer had to drop her gaze or risk a wild magic surge. Damn.

Four backpacks and their contents littered the ground in front of Morgan. She moved potions, arrows, scrolls, weapons, and trinkets from piles to pockets. Sifting through junk and treasures took time, but she didn’t mind the work of rubbing a cloth over the necklaces, testing the edges of the blades, or reading inscriptions on scrolls and instructions for dosage on potions.

Morgan held up a book for Gale. “I could get twenty gold for this.”

Over at the cook-fire, he squinted and leaned.

She read out the title and author.

He shrugged. “Trash. All yours.”

“Great.” Fifty, sixty. Eighty. The hirelings came by and collected the loot for storage. Lae’zel’s method of tracking inventory was meticulous, every little thing accounted for and deposited in its place. When it was all sold it would be a weight off Morgan’s mind. And, well, a weight off Karlach’s back. She caught Gale looking and ducked her head.

The awkwardness Morgan felt towards Gale had been relieved somewhat since she’d turned Astarion away, but eventually she’d have to find a way to let Gale down. First she’d had some kind of drunken conversation with him back at the tieflings’ celebration, which she didn’t exactly remember all the details of, and then he’d started throwing longing looks over at her when she’d let Astarion get intimate. So, she knew she had to clear the air. Morgan owed it to him. She didn’t want to lose his friendship. He’d been the first to step in when she’d felt that horrible, familiar logjam in her magic caused by the Sussur flower. He’d offered the comfort that she needed and recognized the distress that losing her flow of magic caused.

Even if he hadn’t understood everything about her panic, Gale had been reliable when Morgan needed a friend’s kindness most.

The hollow thock of kicked metal brought Morgan’s attention up out of her hoard. She saw the bucket rolling and watched Astarion and Gale mirror the same disdainful look for one another. Please let them not fight again in this gods-damned cave.

Her magic dipped a fingertip into the alert pool of Gale’s mind and heard him thinking, He’d best not trip like that when his daggers come out.

Oh — Astarion tripped.

That made sense. Astarion had been notably slower and weaker in battle. Lae’zel had made sure everyone noticed. The alien ranted steadily all about how Astarion’s series of missed blows had caused them all to risk fatal wounds against the giant spiders.

Since the Underdark was proving a difficult terrain for a vampire to hunt enough food to survive, it was probably time to intervene.

Astarion’s threat still sat like a terrible reminder of that day in the back of Morgan’s mind. Really, that flower had kept her so scared, even causing nightmares. She’d remembered that feeling of being held back. The things done to her in her childhood to stymie her magic’s unwieldy manifestations still stung keenly. And when they’d encountered the Susser bloom in the wild, Morgan had felt the Weave abandon her. Gale guided her away, reassuring her. That had been the only thing that helped her pull herself together.

So, Astarion hadn’t come sniffing around her tent in a while, not since. She’d told him to eat on his own. And anyway, the last time he’d lain in her bedroll, he hadn’t been able to stop himself taking a snide jab at her looks. Prettyboys were all the same.

Morgan’s only response that last night they’d slept together had been telling him to get out, too annoyed and near asleep, and still floating from her orgasms, to bother getting heated about it. As if she cared about her scarred face. It didn’t stop every man she encountered from thinking about bending her over tables, bouncing her through fences, groping her under her clothes. She understood the tactic all prettyboys used: try undercutting her confidence, then make sure it was him building her back up.

She was wise to the dance. And even though she couldn’t read his mind since the undead brain yielded nothing to her magic, Astarion had made it evident that he was no different. All he wanted was her body, all he wanted was her blood.

She dipped back into Gale’s thoughts and heard him think, If she goes back to him after that kettle of fish, weather it bravely. Look at him, by Mystra’s pearls! You’d do the same, good gods.

Morgan sighed. At least Astarion, gorgeous as he was, wasn’t completely unskilled as a mercenary. He was actually a pretty adequate assassin, and showed promise of greater strength if given the chance to grow. And the party needed him hale for the fights ahead. And… and he was good at making her squirm, even though he really slathered the posturing on too thick for her to take him seriously. She’d been convinced he was going to be awful in bed. The types to brag like that usually couldn’t last. But, he’d given her his attention like he meant it once they got between the sheets.

At least he was hot. She’d have it out with him about what he’d said, but internally, she forgave the ass. She greeted him, “Hey.”

Chapter Text

Uncomfortable tightness kept prickling through the sludge of the dull flesh at the ends of his fingers, inside his nostrils, down his dry throat and into his empty, craving stomach. Yet despite his distraction, he sensed something different in her, in her look.

In the stirring of his memories he suspected: something about her was unusual. He tried to focus.

“You can drink from me. Did you hear me? I said you can drink from me if you need blood.”

“Beg pardon?” He hid his shock under a placid mask while, internally, jubilation rushed.

“I’m inviting you back tonight.” She pushed her cleavage forward and tucked her long hair behind her ears. “Think you’ll like eating fresh human blood again, it’s been a while now.”

He smirked. Oh, she was really stupid. He’d done nothing to earn this, but he cast some joke to run alongside the easy exchange: your bed or mine, who’s on top, milk and honey. He kept hearing rats run overhead. He wasn’t really there for most of the conversation, and then when he wandered back in, she was looking at him with an expression he struggled to read. It could frighten a man when the boss won’t slip a tell. Not that Astarion was afraid of her, exactly. Far greater his fear of what she could choose to withhold, and her will to withhold it.

“You can relax more when you ask for blood in the future, by the way. I understand. Blood is something you need. And I am telling you, I will help you. So don’t put yourself in danger hunting down here, where there isn’t enough to hunt. Where you can’t get enough to…” She faded off, as she sometimes did. Her brows formed two perfectly drawn lines when she scrunched her face up to think. She was aging so quickly. “When you can’t get enough to hunt, do you lose your heightened powers? Why does a little amount of my blood make you act the way you act when you’ve exsanguinated a bear?”

“I… I have enough to hunt.” He admitted, beside himself with the unnerving nature of her question. “I don’t know. Nothing makes me feel like your blood does. It’s…” The blood of thinking things? Something unique to her? He’d had nothing to compare. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. Well. My tent.”

I will provide aid, if needed, by means of a lesser restoration, Shadowheart’s disapproving thoughts treaded over the tadpole hivemind.

Get out, Morgan replied over Astarion’s slur.

Chapter Text

Morgan tapped the tadpole hivemind to summon Shadowheart’s consciousness to attention. The acolyte’s avatar jumped guiltily, then resolved into a posture more stubborn.

“You know he doesn’t like it when you get judgmental over the tadpoles.”

Shadowheart scoffed. “It’s where you two are flirting with your death and his loss of control out in the open. Of course I disapprove.”

“Can you disapprove from inside the Shelter? Because your thoughts intruded where we could overhear.”

“Is it necessary for me to cloister my mind simply so the vampire in our party can’t guess I won’t approve of him draining blood? You can’t be serious. I am rather inclined to believe he expects my attitude, considering he is a parasite.”

“Wyll is literally a monster hunter, and he’s more accepting of that side of Astarion than you are. Vampire spawn have the choice of acting monstrously, just like the rest of us.” Morgan made it pointed, so the worshiper of Shar would hear her ire.

“Why are you taking him back? Why do you have no standards for men?” Shadowheart’s thoughts flowed sharply onto Morgan.

“What men would I want, if I had standards? He was a jackass, I know, I know,” Morgan placated.

Shadowheart’s thoughts flowed fast and unfiltered. “He insulted you. Insulted your relationship. You showed weakness, however momentary, and for that he spoke so callously towards you… I was glad when you turned him away. The Sussur flower pushed you to a place I never see you go. I felt Gale’s concern so urgently throughout the hivemind. I’m just glad you had the reassurance of our decorated Wizard of Waterdeep to help set things right. Your low, sweet voice trembling with fear I so rarely hear you admit to feeling, and Astarion twisting the knife…” The acolyte’s thoughts fragmented after that, and her presence retreated.

Morgan similarly retreated into her own thoughts.

Get your magic back. I’m not with you for your personality.

“I won’t be talked to like that. Even if you think it’s a joke,” she’d answered Astarion when she’d gotten her breath back.

Morgan remembered warmth, leaning back on the support of Gale’s hold on her, and his soothing reassurances: her relationship to the Weave would come back, all of it.

It hadn’t been the right thing to say. Not to Morgan, Morgan knew all too well the Weave reconnecting to her body would come. She feared it coming as a surge. But it had been a comfort, having Gale care, having him try.

“Get blood on your own.” She hadn’t exploded at him. She’d kept her expression firm. “From now, don’t expect to bed me. Don’t expect to bite me.”

The Sussur flower’s cork in the well of her magic brought up memories she wouldn’t share with Gale or Shadowheart. Morgan ordered her thoughts, visualizing them in rows and columns and then erecting protective shells around her secrets. The guardian of their dreams taught much to willing students and Morgan was a natural at catching on to the subtle minutiae of its instructions. Her reflexive familiarity with the interior minds of others had made her a quick study in working her magic alongside the power offered by mindflayer telepathy.

The wild magic surge had manifested a distant, airy song. No fire. No teleportation, that was a relief, she hated broken arms more than anything. And it was only a single stanza that left a haunted tone, and not a bevy of stacked wild magic surges, that was a relief also. The Sussur flower hadn’t closed off her magic that long. It had felt longer because of the power of those memories, being made to wear the Sussur blossom-derived pendant. Memories that went traipsing off with her senses.

When she renewed the summoning within the hivemind, she admitted, “I was hurt,” in the thoughts she allowed to remain accessible to Shadowheart. “I was expecting something else from him. I told him so.”

“Why would you go back to Astarion now, back to his belief that he has nothing whatsoever for which he should apologize?”

“I needed some time. I took it. I said no, and now I want to say yes. Please don’t antagonize him.”

Shadowheart relented, sighing. “If this act makes him happy… that does bring a glow to both of you that I can’t help but want to stay within the warmth of. I’m sorry.”

“Okay. You’re doing just fine now keeping this conversation between you and me. Even if the others could be listening in, we all deserve some pretense of privacy despite being connected to a hivemind.” Morgan lectured. “Next time if you’ve prepared the restoration, won’t you speak of it to me alone?”

“Yes. Yes. I will remember that this is important to you, I don’t mean to sound dismissive.” Yet more of Shadowheart’s thoughts pressed forward, escaped through the sieve of her mind. “Don’t you feel you are babying his feelings?”

“No,” Morgan answered. “I am not starting shit, which is something I wish I could say for you.”

Morgan broke off her control of the telepathic link.

She took a moment to moderate the tone of her thoughts. Shadowheart struggled with her tadpole’s presence among stronger, temporally-consistent personalities joined in their forced illithid kinship. Whether she meant to reveal every thought or not, Morgan didn’t hold it against her that she’d hit a nerve. Maybe Morgan was protective of Astarion, but she wasn’t going to talk that through with Shadowheart.

Morgan renewed the summoning of Shadowheart’s consciousness, face-to-face. “Whatever I feel about Astarion’s feelings, I know how he acts when he’s pissed off, and how he acts when he’s upset. That was clearly a very troubled man, struggling with something. I think he was acting ill. And you made him feel ashamed for reaching out for help. He needs blood like we need food, this is his food. That’s all I have to say.”

Shadowheart, to her credit, showed contrition at once. “Oh. Yes… Yes of course. I’ll be more mindful. I shall make a point to remember that distinction, as his healer.” Her avatar breathed in quickly and seemed on the precipice of saying something more, but then the image within the hivemind scattered into diffuse light.

Morgan waved across the meadow at Gale and Gale’s band. There were five of them now, the gong, one ringing an array of gleaming bells, another with a harp, a fiddler, and a drummer. The Gales waved back. The faint trickle of his music sounded off-key, but Morgan had definitely noticed a difference in the control the others exerted. Astarion’s was calm as ever, rarely felt, Shadowheart was near-omniscient, Gale’s and Wyll’s as tightly controlled as Morgan’s own. There was a spirit of competition there, she was satisfied to feel she could come out ahead. The construction of the Shelter, under the tutelage of their dream visitor, had taken shape most strongly through the three of them exerting influence. Lae’zel and Karlach’s tadpoles seemed to not abstract their existence, creating in some instances exact copies moving and acting as they moved and acted in real life. Their mental impressions, ideas, and physical sensations all ran the risk of pressing unexpectedly into their shared consciousness. The experiment with music seemed to be improving that side of things.

Morgan crossed camp to listen in on Shadowheart’s thoughts. She wasn’t surprised to find jealousy. Then, amusingly, the desire to join. Oh. Oh of course. Right.

Chapter Text

The sense of something he’d missed, something he’d forgotten, followed him to the boudoir. Nothing left but time to kill. He carved each curl on his head and freshened with perfume. There was no new hair to shave, no long nails to clip, yet he pored over the details of his appearance as if his body was still growing and living. In Cazador’s mansion, the preening had been cosmetic and rote. Here in his unrelentingly nasty wilderness, each day presented new challenges in the upkeep of appearances. Dirt and mud, mites and fleas, blood, viscera, pollen, fur, rust, leaves, piss, weird mushroom spores — he sought each filthy little detail and expunged it. When he was finished with the cloth and soap, he was certain of the purity of his face and costume.

He stood in front of the empty mirror. Pristine.

He swaggered to her tent, dropped to his knees, and said all the right things to get her pressed up against his chest and opening her legs like a bitch.

“I’m so sorry, strudel, sugar icing, my whipped cream.” He floated through the motions. Touch the ear; although, she was human, so perhaps he could skip that part. Except she whimpered when he nibbled her earlobe, so it was best to be thorough, licking and letting his teeth graze over the round, blunted shell of her ear. Arms wrapping around, hands pressing up her back, squeezing the shoulders. Caress the neck, the décolletage, the breast. Her breath catching with just a light brush to each nipple, before hands go soft as silk down to snatch the curve of the hip. Pull her by the hip — a little force, just to get her blood hot. Growling on her ear, “I’ve so much to make up for. Shall I begin here? Or here?”

Her hands were on his body too. Nothing he felt, all of it numb, dead flesh. She flipped him on his back and straddled his hips. Her tits wobbled above him, dragging his eyes appreciatively to take in all of her bosom filling out a plunging top. Each plump tit perfectly cupped and swaying temptingly overhead. Her human features never seemed to catch the light quite perfectly. Cazador had never wanted humans, as Astarion had so enjoyed needling Petras. Ugly things, the vampire lord had sneered about the common rabble, heavy and fleshy, exaggerated physiques like hers, always aging so quickly most everything sagged, always so passionate and needy with their fast-burning fire.

Get it over with already. His hand down her pants, into her underclothes.

He stopped suddenly. The scent reached him. He pushed up, away.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He removed his fingers from her folds. Glimmering like a jewel in the light from the oil lamp, he watched the purple-red blood of her menses drip from his nails, down around the curve of his palm, onto his wrist.

Her face screwed up unpleasantly. “Ew, sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It’s alright.” He was struck by the scent of it, rich and complex, inviting him to its qualities like the draw of a particularly fine wine. “Cazador would request this. I thought, earlier… I remembered it, although I couldn’t quite put my sense together. But Cazador would be distracted for days if I could bring him someone menstruating. Why, he’d hardly beat anybody! Discarded us, until the bleeding stopped. Rare… Quite the delicacy, he claimed. Selûnethon.”

“Moon’s blood. Okay… Everything you tell me about him is a little bit weirder than the last thing.” Morgan pushed him back. “It’s fine, you don’t have to do anything down there. You can — eurgh, oh - you’re — you’re eating that. Oh. Woww… you ate it…”

Astarion ignored her. He pressed his tongue to the drip on his wrist. He followed the trail up his wrist, into the divot of his palm, then shoved his fingers deep in his mouth and sucked.

Nothing so simple as ecstasy fuzzed from his ears to his toes. It was sensation, and a great deal of it. Oh —

He’d forgotten what the soul felt like, alighting the body’s fire.

He lifted her off his lap and laid her back on her bedroll, dropped between her thighs, hooked her panties aside, and closed his mouth over her source.

Blood flooded him and he indulged a rabid, thoughtless gluttony on her body.

He felt the tug on his shirt collar and dragged his head up obediently, lost for a moment before he realized it was her. She was telling him something. He could barely hear over the roar of blood pressing in his gut.

Feeling soaked the tips of his fingers again. The yawn in his belly, the blush of his cheeks, sang with power.

“You can have it from my neck. You really don’t have to do that, drink dirty blood.”

He hoped his smile was pleasant enough. He was a patient man whose patience could be tried. He’d set out to prove it so he tried to not sound snippy. “Darling, I haven’t felt such an appetite in ages. I’m absolutely famished. And that tasted better than anything I remember. I find myself presented with a most intriguing feast, and with a profound new understanding of my former master’s predilection for bedmates inflicted with this condition. You taste, in a word, divine.”

“You like it.”

“Yes.” He tracked both her eyes, vigilant for the sign of her disapproval. But it did not come. She was disgusted, and a little amused, but he caught the moment she considered, on the other side of her revulsion, the pleasure he promised to provide should she allow him to drink her down.

“If you’re sure. I guess.”

“There’s little I could say to help you understand just how sure.” He smirked. The weight of her whore legs dropped open in his arms. “All I want is for you to drift in a dream of pleasure, while I enjoy this.” He eyed her hungrily, sopped up a drip of red out of her cunt onto his tongue. It slid hot and vital down his throat. The drink hit him, slammed into him an awareness of his body’s strength. He lost all sense of weakness, made flush with a throbbing that threatened to overwhelm him, make him — make him —

He realized his hips were bouncing off the bedroll. His dick was hard and straining up. He felt the wet spot on his briefs and his cheeks burned.

Astarion jerked his head up, eyes pressed tightly shut. A convoluted lust dragged him into uncomfortable self-consciousness. He forced his hands to relax and his toes to uncurl. He reprimanded his hips to stillness. The ache in his loins surprised him. It was welcome, but premature. He focused his energy on riding his tongue as deep into her as he could possibly get. Tasting her was like draining the firmament of rain.

All too soon that realized his nipples were so hard, and so unused to arousal, they were too sensitive against the fabric of his shirt. Irritated by these persistent interruptions of his body, he rose to his knees. He lifted her, spared a smirk for her squeal, and then bowed his head to drink from her core like a chalice held to his lips. She started making little sounds, which pleased him and confirmed she enjoyed being consumed as much as he was enjoying eating her. It could be endearing, the way she reached to hold onto his arms. Clinging on and whimpering, her eyes rolling up, she wasn’t shy about instructing him where to suck and stroke.

He massaged her plump breast and the curve of her belly, and pressed on the thicket over her womb. She whined and pushed her hips into his mouth. The things she gasped were vulgar. He was able to swallow her, again and again. Delving around her labia, his tongue found every drop in the folds without and within her depths. Her wetness flooded his mouth. He swallowed as much as he could as fast as he was able but when he stimulated her core she flowed, and he felt the hot, sticky blood drip from the sides of his mouth, down his chin and neck.

A faint alarm about his white shirt rang in the back of his mind, but truth be told he wanted elbows-deep in her mess. Stains could be scrubbed.

He wondered if she might allow him to stay latched after her sex had peaked. The thought filled him with giddy desire at a promise of fullness threateningly near. He could simply open his mouth beneath her like a drunkard at the tap. Buried in the delicious scent of her cunt, he drank deeper. The metallic grit of her menses, now watered down with her clear arousal, was fire to the vampiric vessel of his flesh. It was like fast-beating wings moving in the skin under his hands, his arms, his heart — oh, his heart, he felt there was a flutter in his heart — hot and good, the pressure of wanting in his loins had mounted so intensely he was struggling to ignore it now.

“Want you,” Morgan whispered, “in me.”

Then she gasped his name, and he couldn’t take it anymore. The pressure of laces over his crotch held his erection tight, uncomfortably so. He loosened the laces to relieve some pressure, and his cock fell forward free and aching for her touch. They shifted their bodies together, rolling and groping, and he stuck her with it.

She was attractive for a human woman, he had to admit. Her fat tits bounced in an overstated display. Her hips closed down on his lap. Astarion wrapped his hand around as much of one of her tits as he could hold, tightening his grip and watching her chase her pleasure. She was utterly without pretense. His balls clenched with the fire she’d fed into him. Pressure rose up his length. She rode him well, the slut. For having lived so little, she was an adroit cocksucker, and an excellent lay. His nuts were so tight, he was certain humiliation was already a thrust away. Unfamiliar jolts of nerves lit him with fire. Her hot wet heat sucked him in. Then it was on him: a black, vital silence, then the burst of his orgasm. She touched the side of his face beside his eye. It actually felt nice, how her thumb caressed his brow.

His head dropped. He meant to kiss her.

“Ew!” Morgan pushed him away. “No. Gross, no. You’re… your mouth is covered in me, in my moon’s blood. Ick, haha! No.”

Whatever. Dazed by the strength of his peak, a stomach pang told him he had made a hole to fill in his appetite. He pulled out and went down to dine again on her bleeding core. His cock pulsed hard again when his lips found her soft folds. Mouthfuls dripped from her. She was oozing with his cum, white next to red. Drinking from her was like being a new man, like being revived. Each swallow made him feel warm.

Chapter Text

Morgan coughed back a snicker. The man above her was just like any other.

Before she knew what was happening, he’d cum, pulled out, and shoved his mouth back between her legs. Without waiting to clean her out first. Ew, she thought. She heard a quiet, muffled, “Ahh,” from him, and his shoulders sagged.

Morgan, having tasted a lot of cum, knew it could be sweet, or more often, filled with salt and ill humors, smoke and drink, sweat and burn. What was it like for him to taste his own cum? He’d pumped inside her and now his tongue probed deep. His lips dragged on her aching, cum-coated skin in kiss after kiss after kiss.

Astarion tongued the pulsing swell of her clit just the way she liked. He really didn’t seem to mind getting a mouthful of his own semen mixed in with her moon’s blood. He lapped at her labia and slid his tongue deep, filling her hole with the appendage. Happy to burrow in nose-deep through his own spend, all to get to her blood.

It wasn’t that Astarion disappointed her in bed before, it was just that it took a lot to impress Morgan. His fucking on a normal day was attentive and athletic. He moved how she needed him to move. He didn’t need to breathe. He went at everything with studied elegance and prowess, typical high elf. Leering at her body, typical high elf, but at least he made no attempt to hide it. He liked what he saw and she knew exactly how to move to stimulate his appetite. Astarion clearly esteemed what he thought he could do for women in bed.

But before, for all his skill, he’d withheld rawness. Now he was raw. This finally impressed Morgan: his front completely covered with her blood, his eyes closed rapturously. His eyelashes were ridiculously long, she thought in a halo of rising ecstasy from his mouth. His fingers were covered with blood and tracing blood everywhere else he touched — the bedding, his shirt. There were red stains from the mess dripping down his chin, and red stains on his pants where he kept adjusting his erection. She would have to get him out of those pants. His beautiful body — she was so used to seeing it move with grace and poise, it excited her to see him rutting, shaking like a heat-stricken animal.

Morgan traced a finger alongside his eye. His eyelids fluttered open. He studied her sharply, closed his eyes again. It pressed in her heart when he leaned into her touch.

He opened his jaw wide, and a fat drop of her red blood slid down his throat. He draped his tongue out and let the drop roll all the way down out of sight, without swallowing. A soft whine escaped him.

He let down his weight on the touch of her finger alongside his head and forced out words meant to butter her up. She liked hearing him so obviously distracted, losing a little bit to brute wanting for her body. “You haven’t cum. I’ve practically… used you for my recreation. How crass of me, darling, not to attend you first. And after I made such promises of reformation. I’ll have you, now.”

“Oh, ready to have another go at it?” She giggled. “Hold me here.” His hands, when she guided them, were uncharacteristically warm.

He put her on her back, his hand on her tit just how she needed it, and his dick in her at just the right angle.

She started to get loud.

“Ah, no, darling,” he cooed. “Sweet, lewd little crumpet, we can’t have you hollering to wake the neighbors.”

Neither of them wanted to acknowledge the awarenesses turned away from them through the discomfiting connection of the tadpoles. That no one heard was a fantasy, and at the moment it was one Morgan found incredibly hot.

Also she felt his cock jump inside her when she taunted him, “Shut me up then, if you can. Make me be quiet.”

Her heart jumped when he thrust hard in her and then withdrew, leaned back, unclasped the metal buckle at his waist, and let his belt fall off his hips into his hand. He shoved his pants away. Morgan watched his shoulders dip as he moved. His cock swayed. Ethereally pretty, her man.

Astarion folded his belt over, slipped his fingers into her cheek, and pressed searchingly into her mouth. She opened obediently. He placed the two layers of leather flat between her teeth. She bit down.

Her moans became quiet, insistent whines. He told her in a whisper close to her ear, “The whole camp will find out, everyone will hear you. Everyone will know you’re a slut who loves getting fucked. They’ll know unless you shut up, unless you keep quiet. Shhh. Quiet for me. Not a sound.” The rumble in his voice, pitched low, pushed out awareness of everything else.

His thighs were cold when they brushed against her. His dick squeezed on the sensitive mound within and without her core, the pressure sending pulses of cresting pleasure up and down her spine. She’d been aching earlier, and now as his tip massaged within her body, relief radiated warm and good through her loins and legs. She moaned, bit hard on his belt, breathed in sharply through her nose.

“No screams. Good. Finally, a night without your saucy little taunts. Not tonight.” He laughed in a whisper at the way her core grabbed on his dick when his words hit just right. “Hush. Hush. Now. No begging, now. Good, quietly, and quietly…”

Hair raised all over her arms and the back of her neck. His sing-song purr went through her heart and down to her core. His invocations to silence rumbled directly in her ear and she felt her body clench and roll for him.

“Feelsh… ‘oogh…” she slurred softly, and he smirked. He tightened the pull of the belt on her mouth.

“Ah, ah, shhhh,” he shushed.

She wheezed around the gag and felt spit building up. The pressure of the belt flat on her tongue made her drool. Her mess coated the tart, musky leather gripped in her teeth.

His hips smacked and his length worked in and out and Morgan bit back her cries. Eventually she surrendered to his cajoling, and in the quiet between them her own breath was loud through her nose. She was drowning in the thunderous beating of her heart. Her hips moved to drag him in deeper. She raised her legs and locked her ankles together behind him.

“Quiet,” his hips jerked harshly as he repeated his invocation with a little more force than necessary, himself a little louder than he possibly should be, given the scenario they were playing out. Morgan smirked. “Quiet,” he repeated in a quiet groan directly beside her ear. “Quietly, cum, shhh, that’s right, just like that. Hush…”

Her insides clenched. Rushes of fulfilled desire pulsed outward from her core. She rolled her hips up, claiming him deeper, feeling her cramps subside under soothing waves of orgasm. The shape of him inside her felt good to grip around, to rub within her, angled on her sweet spot. She came in silence, tasting leather.

Chapter Text

Morgan’s chin and neck were coated in a nasty layer of drool. He admired his handiwork. Thoroughly limp. She panted needfully. His length flexed pre out in a silky, bobbing thread. He watched Morgan struggle to recover her words and composure.

She wriggled her hips to indicate he should withdraw. He pulled out, scooted down, and ducked between her legs for another taste.

“Bitch, ah-ah,” she gasped as she tugged on his collar. “Towel me off first.”

“Use your — ”

He gestured, flippant and stung by her tone, angrier at her order. Her magic, he meant.

“I am tired,” pointedly. “Give me your shirt, then.” She flapped her wrist and closed her legs.

He felt a flush rise up his neck.

He raised his fingers to touch it — his skin was almost warm. His skin.

He sat up and removed his shirt obediently.

Her sleepy eyes widened. “I meant like… your sleeve, but okay. I’m not complaining.”

Still in his sleeves, his shirt turned inside out over his arms, he shook his head. He patted her mouth and chin dry. “Sorry, crumble-cake. How boorish of me. I’ve been a poor reformer. My manners scampered off somewhere.”

“That’s not like, unusual for you. It’s okay.”

He sniffed. “Do you always insult your bitches, or am I uniquely deserving of ridicule?”

She giggled. Her fingers drifted to him with gentle touches on his chest.

“You were fucking rude to me when my magic was taken. And don’t — don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t say you’re sorry just so I’ll be nice again.”

He kept his bearings. “My apologies aren’t enough? What can I offer you — another flight of ecstasy?”

“Be sincere,” she begged.

He watched her face for signs of her mood, in case it had soured. She had not struck him yet, ever, but his body tensed with its practiced anticipation nonetheless.

“That’s not the first time my magic was suppressed.” She set him at ease, looking away. “When it happens, after, there’s a lot that can go wrong. I was afraid of losing my magic, but I was also afraid of what might happen when it came back.

“If my wild magic surges, so much destruction can come about before I have any idea it’s happening. The accidents it can cause… after being bottled up, it could hurt all of you. It could hurt you, and that would be the worst thing.

“I needed help and you didn’t give a shit, and I got pissed because I expected the kind of reaction Gale had. Gale was there to step in and be what I needed.” Her eyes moved across his face, searching for his tells. He had noticed she did this when she would read the minds of their living companions. She wanted to know how he would take what she said next, and wanted to give him exactly what he needed to hear to agree with her. But she had to guess what he wanted, because his brain was in a corpse. So she had been completely unaware of the sentiment he’d expressed, and that it was the truth. That he continued on feeling that way, truthfully. “But next time, if I can ask it of you, I want you to be the person I need. I want to think that, when I’m weakest I could hear your voice telling me it’s going to be okay. I want you to stand beside me.”

“I will,” he said quickly. “I can certainly try. It’s what I owe you. Although I can’t say I can help you with your wild magic surges. I suppose that’s one reason to keep the wizard around. But…” He finished cleaning up the drool on her neck, and felt relieved as he spoke and realized his words were true, “I want to help you in what ways I can. And if that means soothing your fears, then, well… when you are frightened I will endeavor to bring a worthy offering of myself to the fore.”

Morgan smirked at him, which made something unexpected squeeze hard in his chest. She giggled. “I’m going to sleep now.” She kissed the tips of her fingers one by one, then pressed each finger to his nose, his forehead, and his closed eyes left and right. Her extraordinarily delicate touch brushed his eyelashes. “I wanna suck your cock so bad right now,” she admitted, “but… I also don’t want to. And I don’t want to kiss you because it’s gross. To me. I don’t want to taste my moon’s blood. Like. At all. But you can go ahead.” She waved a lazy hand at his hard crotch. “Jerk it on me while I sleep.”

He smirked. “You let me get away with murder, darling.”

“I’m really generous, yeah.”

“I’m glad we talked about everything.” His mouth was moving along into the confession before he’d entirely resolved to make it. “About… the whole, moment I insulted you in front of everyone. You were entirely right to withdraw from our arrangement. I can’t pretend it hasn’t been eating me up. Things have got a bit… desperate, is the thing. I have enough to hunt, but I can’t seem to get what I need, in the end. Until you. You’re everything I need. With or without magic.”

“Okay, that sounds nice.” She yawned. “Your boner is jumping, you should shove it between my tits after I fall asleep.”

“Oh, you are a delight,” he crooned. “Have you taken any sedatives?”

“Oh, good question. Hmm…” her voice was softened by her nearness to sleep. “Only one of the pink vials Gale gives us, at dinner.”

“Those aren’t sedatives. Do you just drink whatever the wizard brews for you?”

“No…” she whined. “Please, we have to be awake so early tomorrow. I have to sleep, it’s not like it is for you, I can’t choose to not. Use me if you want and cum on my tits, not in me. Eat as much as you like. Just clean me up, after. I’m tired. Goodnight.”

And, as humans were wont to do, she turned on her side and drifted off into a peaceful, blissful sleep.

As only an idiot would, she had chosen to sleep, utterly blasé to the peril, in the presence of a hungry vampire.

Astarion looked at her exposed body. Curled up, feet pressed together. Defenseless. Her chest rose and fell in even, relaxed breaths. Her neck rose and fell with her heart’s pulse. Peaceful as a lamb.

He relished the uncontested dominance this state of hers afforded him.

Eat as much as you like, she’d invited him.

He stared at her, his sleeping victim. He reached behind himself and filled his hole. He massaged himself to his core, finding the bud of his prostate and pressing evenly. He hoped to expediently relieve the pressure in his prick.

But expediency eluded him, and the strength of wanting had built up so thick and deep in his body it surprised him to realize the full extent of his presence within himself. His soul flickered all over where her blood had flowed.

She snorted and snored.

He started to feel something else, something besides guilt and besides lust.

His ears burned hotly and his fingers curled and uncurled.

He was going to have to finish himself. A jerk or two, that should do it. He tested nudging her with his knee if she’d roll on her back. She moved easily to his suggestion. The globes on her chest swayed and sagged. He wondered if she’d bedded elves before and permitted them to perform similar acts of debauchery on her sleeping form. It wasn’t so uncommon for humans to get their rocks off over the fantasy of their bodies being used and taken while their minds traversed the realms of dreams. She was so accommodating now, he imagined the hands that might have puppeted her before.

He knelt over her chest and tested the heft of her tit in his free hand.

She didn’t stir, and her breathing continued, and her eyes remained closed.

It stayed that way, her asleep and him fondling her breast, until he felt a jolt of pressure from his unattended length so keenly he gasped aloud.

He paused and checked her. The sound he’d made had seemed so loud to his own ears. But she was unmoved, unknowing. He hadn’t woken her.

He resumed pounding his hole from behind. Her snoring filled the air. And then he heard himself groan, which merited another check on her alertness. He was trying, and failing miserably, to be quiet. Still, she slept on, and he was free to do as he pleased.

He gripped his dick and stroked it against her soft round warm tit. She sighed and licked her lips. Had she been trained to be used for oral in sleep?

He could use the tadpole to check and see if she feigned sleep, he recognized the suggestion of the so-called guardian in his skull.

Stay out of this. Get out, he snapped his willpower to the fore. The powerful, jealous ownership he felt over her vulnerable body disciplined the alien impulse.

That had been so easy. Easy.

The undercurrent of the tadpole hivemind with the others was small, distant. He'd become complacent, resigned to being trampled over in that cramped mental space.

Fuck. He resented every moment Cazador had withheld this sustenance, the blood 0f thinking things. The state Astarion had been held in for years, he realized now as power coursed through him, was intentional disability. There was no moment that he was not suffering from that lack. Now he had it… and Gods, it felt good. It felt like nearing the end of hunger, like a promise of satiety. More than that, it felt like being awake after centuries asleep. It felt like having the prowess of supernatural strength and agility at his disposal. The colors of the present were crisp to him now. Memories of tortures, surfacing in rare moments he allowed his thoughts to wander undisciplined, felt small as well, transformed on his inner landscape into tortures visited upon a defenseless man: a weak, starved spawn.

He was not starved now.

And there was more for the taking. As soon as he indulged this little distraction gliding in his palm, he could latch and feed until she woke in the morning.

The way his dick jumped in his grip surprised him. How long had it been since he’d jerked off of his own volition? He… didn’t remember, another obscured, absent hole in his memory ripped open by decades of control. Ah, well; though he’d certainly have polished the banister in his lifetime before he lost his will to Cazador, there was no recollection of a living young man’s self-pleasure anywhere in his brain. It had been smoothed over by experiences that came after.

Alone in his mind, he felt free to slow his fingers over his length. To seek, gently, the ridges and rounds where he most enjoyed touch. Rat blood could inflate his dick to purpose as a working rod in the boudoir, but Morgan’s blood made his cock throb with a rolling, pleasant ache, and self-lubrication coated his tip. He slowed to explore this responsiveness to touch in spite of himself, and discovered how enjoyable light circles could feel as he watched the lazy sway of her fat tit.

He manipulated himself front and back. The sensations of his body shocked him with waves of unexpected intensity, and he leaked a steady stream of pre. He groaned and angled the wet spot on her heavy, sweaty breast. He brushed his tip on the thick knob of her erect nipple. He gasped and felt spit coating his throat.

He beat himself off on her sleeping form and her unconscious body shook enticingly. Fragile little doll, all soft warm living flesh, bruisable and dead to the world.

He built and built, but his crest retreated.

It was not his first time receiving consent from a victim. And in the end that’s what they all were, and that’s what Morgan was: his victim.

Morgan treated him like any other man. She treated him like any other man because he’d tricked her.

Morgan fell asleep in front of him like a maiden fresh to the evils of this world. She was an idiot, inviting a vampire to bite her until he had taken whatever he wished: what he wished was to drain her dry. She knew nothing of vampires, and believed whatever he proclaimed.

His cock in his hand and his fingers massaging his prostate brought his end near.

If he didn’t time it right, it would be so easy to kill her. He could swallow the whole of a boar, the whole of a bear, in seconds. Restraining the empty hole in his belly from exsanguinating her required a great deal of effort. He’d promised he would never do such a thing. And he’d made other promises about how he felt and who he meant to be to her, promises that were lies.

It was exactly what he’d needed to do to survive, and still… yet still…

Cum pressed up his length.

Well. He had her here under false pretenses.

Desperately, he imagined shoving his cock through her yielding, catty lips and seeing her sleepy, pretty eyes blink up at him. He remembered her slurring, “Feelsh goodh…”

He cried out once.

His spend gushed and covered her bare tit. He beat his load out. It felt so good to surrender to the work of coaxing each slam of pleasure. Blissful silence roared into his mind: no thought at all.

He returned to himself and the sound of her snoring. He wanted to drop his head between her thighs and renew the vital connection to her life made by his hunger, and take freely from her bleeding core. He dipped his handkerchief into the wash water, draped the cloth on her warming-brick, massaged up a lather of sage soap, then patted her freckled chest clean.

Chapter Text

Morgan woke on a clenching, floating feeling she recognized as the aftershocks of a mid-sleep orgasm. Her nipples felt tight and hard, and she opened her mouth expectantly. She was dazed; no pink light signaled morning had come, but she felt refreshed and rested.

Then she remembered they were in the Underdark. The man between her legs had his arms wrapped possessively around her. She lifted herself to look down at him, and was greeted with a vision in red.

He’d gotten dressed in his clothes. It looked like he’d used them as towels to mop up a stabbing, first. The sight of him with his shirt covered in blood, lost in a daze… he’d been a glutton on her overnight bleeding. He’d made his mouth her catch-cloth, then got sloppy. The result was a carnage of red. She was wet between her legs. She remembered soft, dazed waves infusing her dreams, felt her hips and legs gone loose and buzzy. His scent, soap, and sweat.

He lapped at her cunt and drank down a red gush. Morgan had to fall back, covering her eyes with her pillow and trying not to let the surge of wild magic crest over — but that so rarely went right, trying to control it.

Her wild magic surged —

and something in the surrounds altered.

She didn’t know what, at first.

She stilled; Astarion noticed and paused.

“What’s happened, my little pecan-pie?”

Before she could answer, they both were brought under the leash of authority from Lae’zel’s tadpole over the hivemind. Her voice flooded into Morgan and Astarion’s corrupted brains, controlling the attention of all.

“SHADOWHEART HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED INTO BOVINE SHAPE, AND RUNS FOR THE HILLS. FAN OUT IN SEARCH OF THE PANICKED KAIN’YANK.”

Through the agony of the worms’ twisting, Astarion somehow giggled between Morgan’s thighs. The wriggling deep in Morgan’s brain felt too awful for her to laugh. She just wanted it to end, and was gathering control of her tadpole to dominate over Lae’zel when, through the pressured imposition of the hivemind, they all saw Wyll return to camp with a calmed Shadowheart-lamb cradled sleepily in his arms.

Wyll’s warm voice filled the meadow. “Not able to slip past the Blade. Everything is all right now, Lae’zel. Shadowheart, you’ll be back to normal in no time.”

Lae’zel cut her use of the tadpoles and her overbearing presence retreated.

The sickening waves of worms pulsating subsided slowly for Morgan. She whined and cradled her forehead.

Astarion sighed. “Poor pudding.”

He returned to gnawing on her mound. He’d fed all night and was still acting ravenous. There wasn’t a spot on his chin or neck that wasn’t completely coated in blood. His mouth, chin, cheeks, neck, chest, his shirt.

“Morning, my… cherry tart,” she tested awkwardly.

He laughed under the bloody waterfall staining his front.

“As glad as I am to welcome you from another successful slumber, I fear this means last call has come and gone. Am I to take it so?” He pressed a kiss to the side of her clit. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes crinkled cutely as he beamed up at her. He looked heavier, flush with life, and hopeful until she closed her legs. He pointedly took his handkerchief, washed and warm, and toweled her clean of stains.

She invited him, “You’re welcome to come feed again tonight, by the way.”

“You’re too kind. I was hoping you would say that.”

“And then every month, for a week, I guess it’s nice to feel that I’m not suffering for nothing. Shadowheart just skips it, but I’m allergic to the herb… What?”

“What did you say?”

“I’m allergic — ”

“Before that.”

“Every month for a week? Um — my bleeding is really heavy for a little bit like last night. And probably tomorrow night. Then not as heavy. By the way you — your shirt….”

Astarion stared at her. “You’re quite sincere? Every month, just like that?”

“Yeah. My moms told me that’s why it’s called that, the moon’s blood. It comes around with the moon. You didn’t learn about it?”

“I only remember what Cazador told me. He said it was rare. A matter of serendipity.”

“Umm, maybe it could happen less often for elves.” Morgan wondered. She’d grown up only living with humans, all alike in the shared burden of shaving and bearing the next generation, separated out as moms in the Father’s experiment. “Most people choose to skip it if they can. It’s a really easy tea, made of a common enough weed.” She’d had to spend hours out under the hot sun pulling it up and burning it, taking every chance to secret some leaves into her pockets to give where needed.

“Every month,” he repeated softly.

His red eyes wide and bright with euphoria, his shock, made her giggle. “I can tell you’re real broken up about it.” She looked at the soft rise of his full belly, and grinned. “Hey, why don’t you ever piss? Do you like, absorb the blood?”

Astarion’s smirk locked in rigid irritation, and he simply snorted, turned, and ducked out of the tent, looking like that, before she could stop him.

She overheard him run into Halsin first and peeked out of her tent. The Archdruid approached Astarion with a towel. Morgan heard in his mind, Heavy scent of menses. Covered in it. Ate like a hog at the trough.

She shoved her face in her pillow and kicked her feet on the bedroll.

The crackling of fire and the smell of searing fat nearby told her Lae’zel had the hirelings serving breakfast. As soon as she stopped blushing, she’d go and eat.

Shadowheart pulled the tent open and let herself in.

“Don’t just come in — !” Morgan started to tell her.

“A sheep.” Laced with accusation.

“When I get excited shit goes off with magic nearby, you know that! The further away you camped, the safer you’d have been. It could have been a fireball.”

Shadowheart’s hands shone with the blessing of cure. She rolled her eyes.

Morgan shook her head. “You don’t have to, actually. He didn’t bite me. You don’t know?”

“Where did all the blood come from, then?”

“We didn’t murder anyone, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I’m not! It’s — ”

“I’m kidding. You don’t need to act like you don’t know.” Morgan shrugged. “We don’t really get privacy, do we?”

“I’m surprised that bothers you. With how often Gale protests your invasions of his thoughts, we’re all acquainted with you having rather lax tenets as to the sanctity of privacy.”

“I deserve that.” Morgan sighed.

“I prevailed upon Halsin to distract me last night when the… impressions from the hivemind became somewhat overwhelming. So, while the sensations you both shared were quite… strong, the particulars of how you passed the evening remain yours and yours alone. At least, from me. However the others use their tadpoles, I wouldn’t have the presence of mind to know.” She cast her eyes down, demure. “I didn’t think you had hurt anyone, really! Only, usually that’s the only time I see Astarion smile, after murder.”

“He was smiling?” Morgan hugged her knees up tight. She buried her grin in her blanket.

“Perhaps I might offer the occasional aperitif myself, keep him fed, should my moon’s blood prevails over my usual dose. There are times I forget, take it too late, and then it creeps in unannounced. Astarion’s appetite would be useful, in such circumstances.”

“You! After all that you said about my foolishness?” Morgan teased. “Vampires not so dangerous as you thought?”

“Well! If you’re hale and he’s stuffed, it’s quite neat, isn’t it?” Shadowheart shrugged. Morgan skimmed the top of the woman’s thoughts and heard her nervously wonder, Is this how it’s done, girl’s gossip? Am I doing it right?

Morgan leaned in conspiratorially. “I didn’t want him to go down on me bleeding, at first. But he was fast. He was very enthusiastic. It helped with my cramps, actually.” She pressed her lower belly, searching for the familiar pangs, and found none. “Wow, yeah. He actually did a lot of good for them, I can barely feel the fluttering.”

Shadowheart’s eyes widened. “So, is he as good as he thinks he is?”

“Honestly? Even better.”

Shadowheart offered to brush and tie up her hair. Morgan accepted. They sat in companionable silence for a time, feeling the stray emotions from the others jutting up into the hivemind, listening to the distant conversations: Withers’ dry and long-winded explanation of something or other Gale was asking about, Karlach and Wyll bickering, Lae’zel reprimanding one of their dead retainers for misplacing something or other.

Shadowheart had finished one side of her buns, and was starting on the other, when she asked, “You have allowed Astarion to make of you a willing hunting ground, so I presume you’ve had some experience with them in the past. Tell me, what do you know of vampire spawn, Morgan?”

Morgan picked at her nails. “Umm, I wouldn’t say I’ve had experience, no. I’ve read about them though. Astarion seems like he’s pretty much exactly how I’d expect. Vampires can’t go out in sun normally, they have to drink blood, their skin is cold until it warms on yours.”

“I see…” Shadowheart’s hands were gentle as they looped her hair around into its bun. “How did you learn of them, to be confidently prepared for what to expect?”

“I don’t have it anymore, but Wyll might have a copy. It was a book. It’s called ‘Hunter’s Dark: Princess of the Rose’s Final Night.’ I traded for it from one of my best clients, I gave her a reading about this yeoman she was lusting after. It’s actually the second in a series, even though it has final in the title, there’s like eight other books that come after it. They’re kind of hard to find… What?”

Shadowheart had stopped brushing.

“Morgan. Really. Hunter’s Dark is a bodice-ripper. That’s where you learned what you know of vampires?”

Morgan’s cheeks flushed. “Uhm, yeah. It’s pretty sexy, I guess… he does rip her clothes off, yeah.”

“Morgan.” Morgan didn’t much care for her tone. Shadowheart resumed brushing with a lecture, “You’ve found comfort in this man’s arms, which I value for you both. Still, there is much to dispel in terms of the more romanticized mythmaking one would find in a book of such… questionable factual quality. Please, allow me to provide a more holistic understanding of what, exactly, a vampire is. At least allow me to help you understand why it is vampires are worthy of a great deal more caution than you have displayed thus far.”

And as Morgan listened to Shadowheart’s explanation, the prim half-elf’s distrust of Astarion was placed in a more understandable light. Morgan knew her isolation and ignorance were a danger to herself at times, but she hadn’t known just how different the reality of the monstrous vampire could be from the soft fantasy espoused in the only place she’d heard about the creatures before.

“Yes, I’m listening. You’re right, you’re right…” she answered Shadowheart when asked if it all made sense to her: predatory, parasitic killers.

Morgan’s thoughts were filled with Astarion, and her heart beat faster, and she couldn’t stop smiling down at her hands, yearning to cradle his face in them, and guide his lips to hers, and kiss him, kiss him, kiss him.

Chapter Text

Astarion left Morgan’s tent without care for the strangeness of his appearance to those he left staring. Let them see her claim drying on his clothes and skin. Gale didn’t look up from the open book beneath his elbow. Pointedly ignored. Good. Let that be the last he felt of Gale’s enmity. The victor in this contest was clear: Astarion’s place, and therefore Gale’s, had been most enjoyably elucidated by last night’s events.

Astarion felt not only full, but altered. Stray emotions and glimpses of thoughts alike were blessedly silenced in the hivemind. Lae’zel’s shout, which had caused even Morgan to wince, had sounded to him like a summer breeze, only at the corner of his thoughts, alike to the cry from a kitten mewling for its mother’s teat. The meadow where the hivemind met its avatars and mixed thoughts and feelings into a single pool no longer chained him. He brought its awareness to the fore, observed Karlach and Wyll arguing, Gale ringing his gong, and Shadowheart pulsing in and out of presence. He turned his thoughts away, and the meadow retreated from his awareness entirely. Entirely.

The power to isolate himself from the influences and tortures of the others was in this victual: Morgan’s blood warmed throughout his heart. His veins shifted, his steps felt light as flying. He went into shadow and disappeared from sight. Karlach, Wyll; his fingers felt nimble and itchy, so he relieved a coinpurse here, a bracelet there. He rifled through Lae’zel’s precious supplies and claimed whatever glinted and glowed. The ease of delving pockets, filled up with her blood!

At his tent he lifted each treasure in the dim light from mushrooms and guessed its value. One in particular, a glimmering green jewel, shone from within. The pendant would make a suitable present for Morgan, she had that long, gangly neck and a tone flattered by green. As he admired the rich color, he caught a flicker of movement in the depths and recognized the shadow of someone’s approach. He tucked the jewel away in his coffer. As he replaced the lid, a gravelly voice announced the presence he had already discerned.

“Astarion. May I intrude upon you?”

“Halsin.” Astarion secured the coffer’s lock. It snapped into place. “To what do I owe the renowned pleasure of one of your visits?”

He strained to look up at Halsin’s upper branches. The towering man was covered this time, although calling him dressed in his familiar tight leather outfit was an overstatement. The animal hide clinging to the Archdruid’s overgrown thighs left nothing to the imagination.

“I’ve prepared a basin,” Halsin offered far too magnanimously for Astarion’s tastes, holding a towel in one arm and a basket in the other.

Astarion eyed the wood elf knowingly. How fares Morgan, indeed. The old pervert likely had his nose to the wind and his hand on his meat all night.

He preened over the state of his clothes. “If you’ve the touch for taking blood out of whites, I’ll pass it over to you. Otherwise? This is a lost cause.”

“No harm in trying, however dire the circumstance.” The druid chuckled in his rough way. “I’ll take a crack at it. But the basin was meant for you. To bathe, if you’d like.”

Astarion chortled. “Hoping I’ll let you scrub my ass?”

“If asses need tending, Astarion, you command my hand.”

“Are all your people this randy, or are you especially perverted?”

“Druids?”

“Wood elves.”

Halsin laughed, ignoring Astarion’s open disdain. “When next we come into the company of others of my kind, I’ll ask on your behalf. Asking may encourage a curiosity towards you, however — they’ll wonder why you want to know in what quarter perverts gather.”

“And they will continue to wonder. I’m not one to throw myself into those sweaty piles of debauchery your people call a good time.” He sniffed, the memory bringing with it a vivid stench. “Ugh. So many unwashed pits…”

Halsin’s soft grin was insufferable. “Now what is it my father used to always say? … Ha! He’d say, ‘Hearts who lay together, bathe together.’”

“You’d like that, I’m sure.” Astarion rolled his eyes. “Where is this basin?”

The basin was nestled in a natural cave in the upper south-eastern end of the camp behind an oversize stand of pale, thorny blooms shining like the halo around a full moon. Astarion peeled away his bloodied rags.

Her blood.

The fabric had gone stiff. The blood had dried in some places in clumps. All the ways he’d watched blood dry, and still it could surprise him. He picked curiously at her menses. A small, red, clotted sphere, bowing under the pressure of his fingertip. He plucked and placed the berry on his tongue. The blood clot dissolved into a stinging, rich juice in his throat.

The tub was so hot he yelped and pulled back his foot sharply. “Hot!” He complained loudly.

“Apologies!” Halsin called back to him from the other side of the thorny barrier.

Then, Astarion’s flicked-back ears picked up also the sound of footsteps approaching. Wyll, he guessed. He listened in. Halsin said, “It’s occupied at the moment, I’ll come around and get you after. You’re third in line.”

As Astarion thought, it was Wyll replying, “Aw, third? Though, that’s no trouble if second is inclined to share. How about it?”

Astarion scoffed as Halsin shifted away the young man’s interest with his exhaustively-practiced tact.

Every lap of little waves felt like a soft caress. He sunk deeper into the water, not caring to hear the particulars of their flirtations.

Oh.

His tongue darted out. In the water, all around him rising on the steam, the fragrance of her blood.

He drank.

The water scalded him from the inside. His yelp became a cough, and he surged around and brought the water back up over the side of the tub, so violently that it drew Halsin’s concerned tone from without.

“Fine! It’s fine!” Astarion managed to croak.

He scrubbed his chest and wrung out the shirt, scrubbing until he’d filled the water with a deeper pink, settled down low, and opened his mouth. This time, he did not swallow and simply held the essence of the blood on his tongue. He stayed like that, floating entirely still, agape with wide eyes up on the dark domed cavern overhead. He concentrated on the basin as her body, and the water as her skin. He stayed perfectly still, submerged, waiting. Every drop; drain every drop… his throat grew heavy with the weight of blood trickling from the basin into his gullet. He drained the tub of her essence, of every last drop.

He was called to some semblance of sense by an alien sound in the water.

His corpse. His dead vessel, animated through strange and arcane means, a fleshly puppet for a now-distant Master.

Emanating from his body, to provide the movement of his arms and legs, the tilt of his neck, and the thoughts of his mind to become the impulses of his body, he recognized it, or thought he did. But… how? The sound of vital movement in his veins. Simulacrum of a heartbeat.

He remained thusly ensconced until shaken up to the surface by insistent, worried hands.

He came up out of the water, turned icy with the cave’s cool, tomb-like air, and eyed Halsin with annoyance.

“Do you mind?”

“When you had not answered for many hours, I came to fear for you, my friend.” To the man’s credit, earnest worry creased Halsin’s eyes.

Astarion snorted.

“Fear for a dead man’s life? You forget yourself, oh great healer.”

“You sigh and breathe, do you not? Forgive me, I am untrained in the finer points of vampire physiology. I admit to a vast ignorance on the matter, as a matter of fact.”

Halsin chuckled in what Astarion now knew was nervous embarrassment, but which he had first taken for empty-headed goodwill. He sighed, eyeing Halsin’s thick, sweaty arms. “I see. Well, I’d not have you repeatedly fail to your ignorance. Tell you what. Call on your tree daddy, or the spirits of flame, or whatever it is you Druids do, to warm up this bath. And in return, I’ll educate you on the finer points of vampire physiology.” He gestured to the now-clear water, emptied of Morgan’s washed-off blood, to indicate that the Archdruid should join him in the bath.

“You may wish to remove yourself, unless you care to risk a scalding temperature.”

“If I need to scurry off, I shall.” Astarion waved him along to speed.

Halsin’s body transformed into a molten mass of flame. When he entered the bath the icy water roiled and burst with heat. Astarion squealed and hauled up to the edge of the basin, shocked by the depth of feeling. He balanced on the edge, nursing a bruised ego more than anything else. Then he espied the basket and clambered down to go see what was tucked under its kerchief. He was pleased to find passable quality in the soaps and scents.

He held up the bottle of wine and two goblets, grinning ear to ear.

“I see this was your plan all along.”

“A hope is best prepared for,” Halsin allowed with a sheepish grin. “Another of my father’s wisdoms. I find myself speaking with his words in your presence, it seems.”

“Oh, I do hope it’s not because I remind you of him.” Astarion poured himself far more than he poured for Halsin, tested the water, and entered slowly.

He poured scents into the water with an instinctive knowledge of their qualities.

“No, you’re not much like he was. Perhaps in the curiosity you allow to soften your brow when you concentrate on something of interest there is some resemblance but,” Halsin breathed deeply and hummed as he settled into the concoction of delicate scent Astarion mixed, “you are like a mountain lion, quick and vicious.”

“Yes,” Astarion agreed, flattered. “I think I rather like that. Quick and vicious.” He tried the words out on his tongue, enjoying the taste of them more than the wine, which hit his mouth and burned vinegar. He swallowed with appreciative flourish. Halsin allowed himself a few small sips, then traded goblets with Astarion when his was emptied.

Astarion loosened his tongue as he went through the bottle, old habits and all. Though he remained sharp, drinking like this and pouring one’s heart out, it was an old routine. Easy, familiar, a good fit.

“Gale and Morgan both ask me the most ridiculous questions. About vampire physiology. What that girl just accosted me with! Why don’t I piss? And why don’t I?” He spread his arms to show them, empty. “I have no idea. Not the faintest clue. I know that I’m dead. I know I’m not alive. I know blood gives me power. And just now, underwater, I think… I might…” But it could be a phantom. Astarion wondered for a moment if it was worth preserving, the lie that could be a pulse in his veins, before plunging ahead. “I might have been fooled into believing this body’s heart can still beat. I breathe, but it’s to speak. I don’t have to. I am a corpse. My physiology is identical to what you have worked with on your autopsy table. With some few, inexplicable, illogical exceptions. And what gives me strength, is blood. Especially…” the pulse of desire that went through him flowed straight to his groin. “The blood of thinking things.”

“May I?” Halsin extended his hand.

Astarion nodded.

Halsin shifted next to him and the examination was efficient, perfunctory. The wood elf’s burly hands really were soft.

“I hear the movement, as you’ve described. But, you are correct, this is no pulse. There is a river’s flow to it.” Halsin returned to his seat. They were matched in stiffness now, Astarion noted, though Halsin treated it as was to be expected from one of his people, as an unremarkable function of the body. “I can surmise little about your nature beyond what you yourself have described. I would further venture to guess that any deeper understanding may lie outside the ken of a healer of the living. However, I will do my utmost to recall you to health, should yours falter.”

“I’m as hale as can be,” he preened. “I must say, the vintage.” He sighed into the cup. “An especially good vintage.”

“And what of your neurological symptoms, those related to the tadpole?” Halsin continued, unswayed and adopting that intent curiosity that signaled his attention would not be waylaid anytime soon. “Have you still the experience of an overwhelming cacophony of intruding impressions from the others?”

“No,” Astarion confirmed. But of course, Halsin had been interviewing all of them as he found the camp moved along the road to Moonrise, asking endless boring questions about the tadpoles and making little notes in his journal. “I don’t feel that way at all. It’s not even like how it was when I could still hunt in the wild, or the last time I drank Morgan’s blood. I feasted all night. The hivemind? The others?” He flicked his wrist to dismiss them. “My mind is at peace. Do you have an explanation for that, Druid?”

“Indeed I believe I might. The tadpole in your brain, it is not a bloodless being. I believe it requires whatever power lies naturally within the webbed structure of its bed to feed it blood to function as the others do. Your experience has always been… uniquely challenging, compared to the testimonies of the others. This is consistent with what I thought might happen, should you ever have the chance to eat your fill.”

“My fill?” Astarion scoffed. “I could eat a cow, and still not be filled. Don’t ask me how I know.”

“What about a bear?”

Ah. Astarion smirked, bared his teeth, and enjoyed the little giddy jump in his chest. “Oh, there he is. Will you be pawing at Morgan next? Really, Halsin. You’re shameless.”

“I’ll ask her first, Astarion,” he agreed. “She would have to agree, wanting to share freely. You understand.”

“I do. I have known many, many,” Astarion swigged the last of the wine from the bottom of the bottle, “many wood elves. Always underfoot in the brothel. I am well aware of how your ilk conducts their intimate affairs. I shall always,” he emphasized, “be first to her, and I’m confident you shall not be of a mind to usurp my standing.”

“That I would not,” he readily agreed. “I ask for no position above any others. That you would, I take as counsel, and would conduct myself thusly to preference you as that is your desire.”

“Good boy,” Astarion murmured, and was rewarded with a flush of cherry red and a pulse so fast the man had to steady his breathing with an audible huff.

“I take rare praise from your lips with pleasure, Astarion.”

“And I can see your dick vein throb.”

“You push and push,” the big man sighed. “I like that. But, not until we have dealt with the Shadow Curse will my mind be at its ease.”

“Morgan’s promised you’ll have your company of heroes, as you need.”

“She is generous. In many ways…” Halsin’s hazel eyes rested on him, betraying no unkindness. “Generous in her aid, generous in her faith in you. Generous with her forgiveness. I admire that in her, and I hope that you have a thorough appreciation for all she is, beyond the protective power of her magic.”

“Tsk tsk. Does no one in this sorry company keep anything to themselves?”

Halsin continued as if he hadn’t complained. “I have been cautioned against such a trusting way. Yet, I maintain that to lose sight of what even the most contentious camaraderie may one day become, given the chance to grow, would not be nature’s way. If I may take liberty to caution you, Astarion, in your dealings with Morgan, I would caution… temperance.”

“Thank you so much for your great wisdom, oh powerful Archdruid. I’m not going to take more than she can bear to part with.”

“I mean both in appetite and in comportment. But, of course,” he agreed readily, “I do not believe Morgan would entrust her blood to you, had she any fear you’d kill her in overindulgence. And, it is your nature to integrate harmoniously with your host, if I’m not mistaken. Forgive me. Despite your more than adequate tutelage, I confess I still have much to learn about vampire spawn, and your place in nature.”

“Perhaps our next physiology lesson can integrate advanced anatomy.”

“I am ever your student, Master Ancunin.”

The big man stood. Water dripped in tantalizing rivulets down the swollen length of his prodigious member. Astarion watched Halsin’s blood surge under his skin.

“You may claim the water for as long as you please, but my feet are restless to find the road underneath them. A final word. Shadowheart.”

“An odd choice. Whatever could you mean by it?”

“Her tadpole connection is as yet troubled. Moreso than your own, now, if my assessments are accurate. Those impressions which once came upon you with unmitigated fervor remain burdensome to her. It is the efforts of the others in restraining the psychic spread of their tadpole influence which shields her, to the extent it is possible to do so when her tadpole has so little purchase where her goddess delves. The so-called Shelter, which Wyll, Morgan, Gale, Karlach, and Lae’zel have all pledged to make the focus of their meditations, grows, they tell me, in the tadpole hivemind. This Shelter has been affording Shadowheart peace when it is most needed. Would you commit your efforts on her behalf, Astarion?”

“Oh, if I must. Though I don’t see what you need me for, having the coalition assembled otherwise,” he snipped.

“Do you practice your daily meditations?”

“Goodbye, Halsin.”

The Archdruid grunted, bade Astarion farewell with a salute to his god and an earnest, “May Silvanus tend you.” An honest-to-gods salute. Astarion rolled his eyes. Halsin sloshed water all over the cave floor as he left. The flap of fur shaking echoed off the rock walls, then the low rough shuffling gait of the Druid’s bear form, scraping its claws into the soft earthen cave floor, retreated. Astarion was left alone in the quiet.

Into the void, his thoughts returned to his pleasure at having removed Gale. On a lark, he popped over to Gale in the hivemind, looked him dead in the eyes, and imagined snatching the gong. He found the musical figment given over into his avatar’s hands. Gale’s bewilderment, sweet and perplexed, the moment before Astarion slammed the gong deep in the wizard’s precocious chest cavity! Aha! Gale’s avatar startled back, regarding Astarion with liefsome consternation and chagrin, the gong stuck comically through his heart. Impossible to ignore that! Astarion retreated back to himself with a hoot of satisfied laughter.

Gale’s ambitions, extinguished! And he had secured the wood elf’s cooperation, also. Halsin was typical of his race, unselfish. Perfect. It was Astarion’s prerogative to be selfish with Morgan and he had no intention of letting her go to one of the others. That woman would most certainly dally, would pass herself around, but he would secure his place beside her, without fail, and anchor her sweetness to his bitter existence.

He saw himself reaching for her, reaching into her, delving into her.

He would hold fast.

Morgan.

So, she had felt the Sussur flower before, and detested its touch. He wondered who had corked her power. Some authority over her, in her childhood? He perused memories of what she’d said of it. Very little. A religious order, perhaps? A consensus of that collective of mothers she spoke of, to whom she had been made to submit, that selfsame bloom controlling her magic. Well. He understood her furore. To be made into a dangerous entity. Yes, he understood. Her temper was sensible, when taken in its full context.

Astarion closed his eyes again, just to look at her. He pored over his memories, just to hear her offering again: come back to me, Astarion. Come and drink. A horizon was glowing there, a place his imagination had never gone. Unmapped in all his memory, a style of daydream dangerously indulgent. A fancy of walking up to a house where she waited within. A daydream of returning home to her soft embrace and giggling kisses. He indulged it, why not, swirling the water with his fingertips. All his homecomings preceded torture when it was to Cazador he returned. But with Morgan, novel possibility threatened. A tantalizing alternative of peace, wanting to be home, rushing back to have her swept up in his arms. Days that turn to weeks. Weeks that turn to months. Months that could turn into years spent beside her, until her little mortal life snuffed out. Each moment all the more precious for her human fragility.

And he’d like that, to be there with her. To have her be his homecoming. To hold her until her end.

And she might actually…. Morgan might actually invite him to come back, come back, come back… Might actually want him. Over and over. Even when his claws wounded her, his bite broke skin, his mouth betrayed the cruelty always simmering reflexive and ready on his tongue, she might still want him, might still allow him to have that seat at her right hand. All he had to do was… well, it was simple, wasn’t it: become a man worthy of her generosity.

It felt gentle and hot, how he was suddenly tilting away from himself, seeing himself from without. Mooning for a woman like a young man!

He studied Gale in his memory of the Sussur flower. He who had drawn close and doffed his cape to enclose the lady in a secure embrace. The surety of the man and his easy, soft confidence. Astarion mimed the type of thing: a tilt of the shoulder, a way of wrapping his hands on her arm, pat pat. He thought of what he’d say, what might capture the small, wobbly smile he’d jealously watched her bestow on Gale when the surge of her wild magic had added nothing to the world but a distant, sweet tune. Astarion learned the part until he felt confident he could elicit a warmer, more certain smile than that. How she saw Gale — what affection would show his own character in that same light, when next she searched for succor?

He liked this, liked thinking of her when she wasn’t around. He wanted very much to give her what she required, beyond securing the safe harbor of her esteem; he liked to keep her figure nearby in his thoughts.

He was unused to conceiving of a returning over and over that wasn’t comprised entirely of tortures. With her: gossiping, arguing, making love, feasting, drinking, hearing from her, over and over, the gift of her permission. Earning her trust. Sweet, and generous. He liked thinking of all of it.

He wanted it. More and more, he thought of everything that days, weeks, months, years could hold. He wanted it forever, if they didn’t all die tomorrow.

In the hivemind, he was able to discern Morgan’s emotions from the rest. She was happy. A flash of sensations from her body: Shadowheart brushed and twisted her hair up, and Morgan was happy because she was thinking about him.

Astarion retreated back into his own thoughts, closing out the hivemind and settling back into contemplative isolation. Even using the tadpole to pry, she’d betrayed no awareness of his psychic presence taking the quickest of peeks. So this is what the little wriggling nastiness could do, fed enough fuel. He admitted that there was much to gain from the tadpole, after all, glutted on Morgan’s blood, at least. She was a strange feast. The things he felt and saw sometimes, motivated by her blood, astounded him. Her wild magic, perhaps, dusted her ambrosia.

And he’d nearly lost her entirely, a dangerous failing of tact.

He truly had no intention of letting any corner of his mind go unexamined, now that the whole thing was his and his alone. It might be uncomfortable, but when Astarion noticed an emotion growing in his chest, and felt it was unpleasant, despite everything in him that wanted to leave the stone unturned he tugged at the tendril inside him that looked like, felt like, and undeniably was… guilt.

Not just guilt. Disgust. Keen contempt directed squarely inward.

He’d buried this particular thread deep.

He kept pulling, and found it unraveled… well, everything.

He had panicked when Gale swooped in and gave her everything he hadn’t. He’d panicked when she’d dismissed him entirely. Be more like Gale. It does irk him. Stupid, handsome Gale. Infuriating. That Gale should be upheld as a paragon to which he should strive — the ass! Does he have what comes so naturally to Gale, in himself to initiate? Yes, he must needs simply study the role, learn the lines, the motions, watch for his cues. Anything to stay beside her, whatever it takes.

Anything to get beside her, from the start. Threaten, lie, manipulate her feelings, seduce her. Make her another one of his victims.

Was he a passive observer in the performance of Cazador’s will, even now?

Dressed, moved, manipulated. He’d been the favorite, most beautiful, ripped up, mended, put-back toy in Cazador’s chest. But look around. Now? No one has told him to do anything at all.

No one compelled him to seduce Morgan, to lie. No will except his own acted in this flesh. And now, he’s not happy with it, mean little irony of having responsibility for his flesh again. For him to lie like he has been, about caring for her… it’s not right. He knows that. It’s not right. It won’t give him any kind of future with her, to start it all on a lie. The curtain closed, the lights snuffed, no one claps. This time, he’s done it all by himself. Instinct. Trained, like a dog.

Faced with the alarming prescription of his conscience, Astarion despaired down at his hands. The water looked up at him, empty of his face. Monster, the emptiness reminded him.

Days, weeks, years he could claim, if they didn’t die tomorrow. With Morgan, he wanted to act not on a spectre’s volition, but under his own aegis.

Astarion returned underwater. All he’d said. All he’d done. In the silence of his own thoughts, he could think. What, of his actions, had been him? Truly him, and not the lingering will of another?

In the dark cooling water, in the quiet cave, he meditated. If he truly could find the power to claim some heretofore unknown equality between himself and Morgan, he would seize the opportunity to make a clean breast of it. Some as-yet-unrealized dream of the truth of him, of the real him. It frightened him, that telling her the truth may push her away — but she had already forgiven him, had proven she wanted to offer him her forgiveness as long as he made it plain his efforts would be turned to doing better. He saw himself, in the dark and quiet. Bitter flaws, lies, and all… he resolved to cling to his small, pathetic hope.

A vision of himself: striving, as she in all her generosity deserved, to atone.