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Gods, but Gale’s voice was annoying.
Left to his own devices, the wizard was tediously boring, and his near-endless optimism tended to rub Astarion the wrong way. Gale was one missed magic meal away from leveling half the Sword Coast, but you’d never know to hear him talk. Every near-death experience was an adventure, but he got excited about the mundane, just as easily. He’d find some godsforsaken rock on the ground and spend the next hour talking about the craftsmanship in a stone lanceboard he had back in Waterdeep.
A well-placed ‘why are you telling me this?’ had once kept him quiet for two days, but that was worse, somehow. Tav and Karlach’s tangible disapproval aside, Gale had developed a kicked-dog demeanor that Astarion didn’t care for at all. He wasn’t sullen, a sullen silence Astarion could have handled. No, Gale had quieted down with the airs of one who had known better than to speak.
Astarion decided to fix it on the second day. They were camped out near a wizard’s abandoned tower in the underdark, just outside the range of the first mechanical sentry. Its glowing blue eye remained fixed on them in the preternatural darkness, ready to strike if they ranged too close.
Astarion would be the one taking it out. It was sort of unspoken. Someone would have to creep up on it and then attack, and of the assorted members of their little team, he was indisputably the one who combined those talents best. Still, he wasn’t looking forward to it. If the scattered burn marks on the courtyard’s flagstones were anything to go by, the little gadget packed quite a punch.
Gale was sitting on a broken stone bench not far from the fire, and Astarion dropped into place beside him, the picture of nonchalance. All of his attention would appear focused on the tightly knotted drawstrings of the leather pouch he held. “Tell me about these flowers of yours.”
“Surely even at your capacity you can detect the presence of anti-magic,” Gale said flatly. He tipped his head toward the pouch. “Isn’t that Shadowheart’s?”
“I like to think it belongs to the team.”
“Which is why she enchanted it to alert her if it was tampered with.”
“Did she?” Astarion looked toward the cavern roof, and the softly-glowing branches of the sussur tree below it. “Are you quite sure?”
“Seems like you understand the sussur flowers just fine,” Gale said, watching Astarion upend the bag into his lap. A ring dropped to the ground, rolling across the dirt. Gale’s hand flicked, and a glowing copy intercepted the ring before it reached the fire. The mage hand returned to Gale, dropping the trinket into his flesh-and-blood palm. He spent a long time pondering it in the gloom, and if he wondered why Astarion had asked a question he already knew the answer to, he didn’t do so aloud.
~~~~
Astarion wasn’t vaporized by that wizard’s tower, but it wasn’t long before another one was menacing him.
To be fair, he menaced it first.
“It feels wrong, stealing from Rolan,” Gale pouted.
Astarion would have rolled his eyes, but it tended to be a full-face maneuver and he was busy holding a pair of lockpicks between his teeth. “We should have come down here first,” he said around them. “Like I suggested. Then we could be stealing from Lorroakan.”
“I suppose that would have felt better in the moment…” Gale said. Astarion felt the third pin drop into place and was certain that would be the end of it but no, no telltale click declaring the chest his for the plundering. He switched tools, delving further, and sure enough, this lock had a fourth- a fifth! pin. Delightful.
“Either way, I’m not sure we need to open every box we come across?” Gale said hopefully, and Astarion sighed. Gale was undeterred. “I’m just saying, it is possible to walk through a crowd and leave everyone with their pockets unrummaged.”
“You use more health potions than anybody, and they aren’t free,” Astarion replied. He didn’t need to turn to see the looks pass across Gale’s face. It would be surprise, then embarrassment, then chagrin.
“I like to think I carry my weight,” the wizard protested. “You’ll recall I dispatched some githyanki for you, not too long ago?”
Astarion did remember. He’d had one at his front and two at his back and was preparing to mutter an invisibility spell and just run, when the air had suddenly been full of fire.
It wasn’t the first time Gale had done that to him, and it wouldn’t be the last, and every time, it was unnerving. Gale didn’t throw bottles of fire like Karlach did. His damage was precise. The flames chased each other playfully past Astarion’s body, swirling around the fingers of his gloves as everything for ten feet in either direction was reduced to cinders. Finishing the two surviving githyanki was practically an act of kindness at that point, and Astarion hadn’t dawdled.
“You can’t buy potions with dead gith,” he said around the picks. “Your spells save my ass, my gold saves yours.”
“It’s just that Rolan’s been through so much,” Gale says, and this time, Astarion did roll his eyes. The fourth tumbler dropped.
“Rolan’s not the only one,” he muttered. “Not all of us got snatched out of our own private towers, you know.”
Gale didn’t say anything, and Astarion didn’t look to see the blush blooming across his face. Good. Think before you speak, sometimes.
Though it wasn’t entirely Gale’s fault. Somewhere in this city was a man—a monster—that Astarion was going to need to kill before his parasitic immunity charm wore off, and he hadn’t quite figured out how to break that news to his companions yet. Some of them (not to name names) were likely to balk at the cold blooded murder of a member of Baldur’s Gate’s upper crust, vampire or no, and convincing them was going to mean relaying some stories that Astarion wasn’t particularly keen to tell.
So he just… hadn’t.
So Gale didn’t know the hellhole Astarion had been plucked out of, and didn’t know how close he was to being cast back into it, didn’t know that he kept half a dozen daylight scrolls stuffed into his belt just in case—
The fifth tumbler dropped, the stone doors of the chamber slammed shut, and then the room exploded.
The explosion happened in a specific sequence of events, which Astarion experienced thusly:
First, the lid of the trunk popped open, revealing a convoluted mass of churning clockwork. It meant nearly nothing to him, and he opened his mouth to ask the wizard if he’d seen anything like this before.
Second, Gale let out a line of profanity whose creativity and range would have impressed a veteran dockworker, and his hands began to do something yellow.
Third, a number of regularly spaced panels in the walls slid to the side. A detached part of Astarion’s mind realized that the open-mouthed gargoyles inside, once activated, would create a nearly solid layer of… something… across the room. Unfortunately, being detached, it was unable to relay a complicated aversion plan to the rest of his body. The best it was able to convey in the time allotted was “run?”
Fourth, a number of clicking sounds circled the room as the traps engaged. Astarion, praying that the projectiles were the level sort and not the splashing sort, took half a step toward a wall that was, upon inspection, far too far away. He changed course, getting only a microsecond to relish the look of surprised terror on Gale’s face before they collided bodily and were borne to the ground.
The fifth thing might have overlapped the fourth thing a bit, in retrospect, because the fifth thing that happened was that concentrated bursts of fire blasted out of the gargoyles’ mouths, and when they hit the ground at the end of thing four, Astarion was very much on fire.
He was trapped. He couldn’t roll. He couldn’t roll because someone was on top of him. Someone was straddling him, holding him down, hands pawing up and down his body—
His body was a symphony of agony and he screamed, batting the hands away from his shoulder before claws could dig into the burning flesh and rend—
A throaty clunk.
“Nine hells,” Gale cursed, and he pressed flush to Astarion’s chest as another wave of fire surged over top of them. Astarion froze, refusing to let so much as a muscle twitch against the wizard’s body. He stared up at the rolling flames, refusing to acknowledge the chestnut hair just inches from the side of his face.
His shoulder screamed, muscle rent deep (Cazador must have been feeding off him again) and how long had it been since he’d brought home prey? Weeks?
Weeks?
“Astarion?” Gale’s voice.
Gale sounded scared too, and he should be, oh, he should be, Astarion’s in enough trouble for both of them, enough trouble for all of them.
“—on you?” Gale finished, and Astarion didn’t answer, just clenched his eyes tight and there were hands on him, at his sides, at his waist, fumbling at his belt—
“Don’t,” Astarion whispered, but it won’t help him, not at this point, it’d never helped him once he was on his back. He tried to turn his head, to look at whatever was wrong with his shoulder, but a strong hand caught his jaw.
“You don’t want to do that, I think,” Gale said. His eyes were wide and his voice was earnest and there was that clunk again.
The fire raged overhead and there was weight on him, pressing him into the stone from thighs to shoulders. He couldn’t move, he didn't hope for the sun but the moon would be enough, the moon and the sky and enough air to breathe. (There isn’t air in the crypt, the air ran out months ago) and Astarion shoved at the man on top of him, clawing for the sky.
His right arm barely moved. His left hand passed through the flames in a cataclysm of misery, and he snatched it back.
“Are you quite so dedicated to being contrarian?” Gale snapped. Astarion screamed as a hand encircled his burned wrist, pinning it to the ground. “What in the world are you doing?”
Astarion stared up at him, his breath coming fast and sharp. Gale’s face was only inches from his, close enough for a loose strand of hair to brush his face.
“Don’t,” he whispered, and it came out weaker than he’d even feared. He wasn’t to whimper, if Cazador hated anything more than whining it was—
“Don’t what, Astarion?”
Thunk. “Shit!” The pressure on his burned wrist increased as Gale ducked again, and Astarion hissed through his teeth. “Focus. Do you have a healing draught on you, or not?” Gale’s words were close enough to feel warm against the shell of Astarion’s ear.
The words solidified in his mind, a match struck in the dark, only he wasn’t in the dark. He was in the catacombs beneath Lorroakan’s tower. He had a bottle on his belt that would soothe the carnage he could feel on his shoulder (and it hurt, it hurt, his heart didn’t beat but the wound pounded like a drum), he didn’t have to lay here and take it because he had his daggers—
He’d grind them to dust against the stone doors but at least he’d have them this time, last time there’d been nothing but his fingers, not that he hadn’t tried, and ohhhh, but he’d tried. He’d clawed his fingertips bloody and the stone had cared not a whit and he’d sworn if Master ever let him out he’d never run again, he’d never, he’d never, he’d never—
Hands fumbled at the buttons of his tunic and he kept his eyes clenched tight. He wasn’t in the crypt, he was home, he was in the Master’s palace and some half-drunk mark was pawing at him and he just needed to be hospitable through one quick fuck and he’d be allowed to sleep.
But no, that wasn’t right either, he wasn’t at home, he was—
He was free. He had his daggers and he’d escaped. Astarion’s fingers closed around his dagger and he rolled with a half-feral scream, coming down with his blade at the throat of the man who’d tried to—
“Gale?”
The wizard’s eyes were wide, his hands raised in surrender.
“Who… were you expecting?” he asked, attention flicking to the blade at his throat. “Are you alright? The defenses here are admirable, but they seem to be more of the instant-disintegration type than the mind-games type, the two aren’t normally combined, but—”
“Shut up!” Astarion pressed his hands to his ears, the corners of his vision flashing as his body tried expressing pain in a new format. “Stop fucking talking!”
Thunk.
Gale moved with frankly uncharacteristic quickness, grabbing Astarion by his lapels and yanking him down. Fire surged overhead as he rolled them again. This time, they went over Astarion’s bad shoulder, and he screamed loud enough to crack the stone (that doesn’t work if that worked I’d have been free weeks ago.) His vision blacked and his ears rang and he came back to awareness just in time to hear the words “Ad Lapide!” in that particularly deep voice Gale reserved for spellcasting.
Astarion’s limbs immediately locked, his hands pinned beside his head, one of Gale’s knees between his trapped thighs. He tried to thrash, to pull away, but his body was immobilized.
“Don’t,” he repeated, as the flames subsided and Gale once again began fussing with his clothes. “Please, don’t.”
“Then tell me one of these squirrelly little pockets holds your damned healing draughts!”
Astarion swallowed hard. After the morning’s nonsense, he only had one remaining. The pickpocket-proof one. “Left hip. On the—the inside.”
Gale’s hands were on him again, feeling for the tiny vial hidden beneath his clothes. There was a high ringing in Astarion’s mind, loud enough that he couldn’t even think of a quip as the wizard retrieved it. Fingers ghosting along the skin of his belly, their softness incongruous with the agony in his ruined shoulder. Tears rose in Astarion’s eyes, and he clenched them shut. He knew this game, knew what his master would ask him to do for a sip of that potion.
He wasn’t expecting to feel the bottle against his lower lip, or feel the cool, crisp taste of the potion across his tongue. He swallowed as quickly as he could, the few meagre sips sinking into his skin almost before they reached his throat. His shoulder hurt more as the damaged nerves regenerated, then less as the flesh surrounding them was soothed. When the potion ran dry, the skin was still burned and sore, but the muscles seemed more or less intact.
Thunk.
Astarion’s skin crawled beneath the weight of the body above him, his hands itched to shove himself free. He might have fought harder, if there’d been any escape for him.
“You should go,” he said quietly.
In two hundred years, he’d never warned a mark away… but in two hundred years, he’d never had one offer him healing. He’d gone to them bruised and battered and taken comfort when, more often than not, they’d done nothing but make it worse. Cazador’s arrival felt so much less sour when Astarion had just been backhanded by his victim.
“What?”
“You should go. If he—it’ll go poorly for you, if he finds you here.”
“Who, Rolan?”
Rolan, Astarion remembered. His eyes snapped open, and he scrambled at the thread of reality meandering through the panic overtaking his mind.
“Astarion, who are you talking about?”
“Let me up,” Astarion snapped. He yanked at his trapped body, barely getting a twitch in response. “Let me up, godsdamn you!”
Thunk.
Gale rolled to the side, laying on his back outside of Astarion’s peripherals. The spell remained in place. Astarion struggled harder, heedless of the flames that would sear his skin off if he did manage to rise.
“Let me UP!” he screamed, and then Gale’s stupid face was above him, his brow furrowed in highly condescending concern.
“Where do you think you are?” the wizard asked, and the usual levity was gone from his tone.
“I’m trapped in a burning crypt with Mystra’s favorite fucktoy,” Astarion snapped.
“I feel crypt is somewhat of an undeserved moniker,” Gale said, ignoring the jab. “And to keep it that way, I think I’ll let the hold stay a touch longer. Just until I get the flames under control.”
“No,” Astarion breathed. No, if Gale fumbled the disarm he could be killed, and then Astarion wouldn’t even have the entire room to be trapped in, he’d be held still as a corpse as his body starved and starved and starved and—
“No one’s going to starve,” Gale said sternly. Astarion hadn’t realized he’d been speaking out loud. “Gods above, Astarion. I’m just going to—” His face vanished from sight.
“No!” Astarion struggled harder, his breath coming fast and not fast enough. The air was thick and dusty and smelled like blood and magic, he couldn’t breathe. “Please. Let me do the traps. Let me go and give me my tools and I’ll get us out of here, I swear it. Setting them off once was a fluke, you know it was.” He yanked harder at the ropes, but of course they wouldn’t give, the headboard in the guest room was solid mahogany, it was built not to give when tested by errant little slaves, everything in this kitschy fucking house was built to trap—
Thunk.
The fire blazed overhead, because that’s right, he wasn’t at home, he was at Rolan’s. He had to hold onto that, he was never going to get out if he couldn’t remember where he was.
You’re never going to get out anyway, the stone is six inches thick. Are you going to gnaw your way through, little ratcatcher? No rats to eat here, boy, and how hungry do you think you’ll have to get, before—
“I have good news and I have bad news,” Gale said, reappearing in Astarion’s field of vision. He was blurry and awful, the scent of the blood beneath his skin sour with misplaced weave.
It might buy him a few days, at the end.
“You appear to be cursed,” Gale said, gesturing in the direction of the chest Astarion had been working on. “Though I believe I recognize it.”
“Please let me up,” Astarion whimpered. Gale looked sympathetic.
“Not until you’re back in your right mind. I don’t mind the occasional pinning, but having a knife to my throat is a bridge too far, I’m afraid.”
“What a delightful revelation,” Astarion purred. He could almost feel the ghost of Gale’s hands on him, pinning his wrists to the mattress, holding him down as he took what he wanted.
But no, that hadn’t happened, Gale had helped him, hadn’t he? Gale had healed his shoulder after Cazador had fed off it.
No, Cazador hadn’t fed off him yet, no, but he was coming, another month in this tomb, maybe six—
“Where are you, Astarion?”
“He’s coming to get me,” Astarion said softly. The thought filled him with equal parts hope and fear.
“You’re in Baldur’s Gate,” Gale said firmly. “In the lower floors of Ramazith’s Tower.” As if to illustrate the point, flames spurted across the air behind him. They seemed familiar. “Can you repeat that for me?”
Ramazith’s Tower. That was so close. The upper floors of the tower could be seen from Cazador’s ramparts. Cazador was close enough to sense him, to hear him—
Hands were on him, pushing the hair from his face, cupping his chin.
“Astarion, please. You have to hold on. Slip too far from your own mind, and you might not come back.”
Come back to me, boy. You know where you belong.
Astarion keened, his eyes darting around the room for a speaker who wasn’t there. Gale snapped his fingers, drawing Astarion’s attention back to his face.
“You’re in Baldur’s Gate. Say it.”
“I’m in Baldur’s Gate,” Astarion repeated. Gale’s eyes widened just a bit, like he hadn’t expected that to work.
“We set off a trap, do you remember?” Gods, but how was he so calm?
“We set off a trap, and now we’re buried.”
“We are not buried. We’re locked in. There’s a lever on the far side, remember?”
Now that he was focusing, Astarion could remember a lever. “I don’t see how that’s going to do us any good. We’re on this side.”
“Shadowheart and Tav know we’re here. Worst case scenario, they have to go to Rolan and tell him we snuck in. It’ll be an awkward apology, but we are not. buried.”
Show me how you apologize, boy.
Astarion swallowed hard. An apology was alright. He’d done apologies.
Not like this, you little wretch. You’ve abandoned your family, and when I find you, I’ll take it out of the skin of everyone who helped you.
“Astarion!” Gale’s voice cut through the noises Astarion was making. “We’re not buried. Say it.”
“We’re not buried.”
“We’re going to be out by suppertime.”
“We’re going to be out by—by suppertime.”
“If we can’t get the traps disarmed, what happens?”
“They’ll come for us,” Astarion recited. “He’ll let me out and I’ll just need to apologize. I just need to—” His jaw snapped shut before he could tell Gale what Cazador’s apologies tended to look like. No point scaring the man.
He’d find out soon enough anyway.
“Rolan is going to come get us out,” Gale said, like he could see Astarion drifting. He was still so calm.
“Yes. Rolan. He doesn’t hate our guts enough already.”
Gale let out a low chuckle. “No, I don’t think this is going to do us any favors in his eyes. But there’s no need to fear him, you know.”
His words were like a blanket across Astarion’s mind, staving off the static of unreality that threatened to overwhelm him.
“I’m not afraid of Rolan,” Astarion snapped. “I’m afraid of—” A bolt of fire across the room, cutting him off before he said too much. He had to keep his mouth shut. “Tell me where we are.”
“We’re in the lower floors of Rolan’s tower. Baldur’s gate. We’re safe, Astarion. The door is locked, but when you’ve shaken this off, you can get it open again. Or Tav or Shadowheart will come get us. Our friends will come find us.”
Astarion closed his eyes, listening, focusing on the words. They were what was real.
Behind them was the dripping cold of the crypt where he’d once been confined for a year. Gale’s voice got higher, lilting into Cazador’s mocking tone. Each long exhale, each wry laugh was warm across Astarion’s skin when Gale leaned in—but none of that was real. None of it was real.
Reality slowly crept back in, ushered on the wizard’s relentlessly pragmatic description of their scenario. Astarion didn't know how long it took, how many times he was called on to repeat the same mantras.
“You’re safe,” Gale said. “Don’t sit up too fast.”
Astarion didn’t sit up at all, still wary of the jetting flames that occasionally bifurcated the room. But he did move his hands, his arms, stretching them out and promising never to take it for granted again. His shoulder twinged, and the pain felt like freedom.
He retrieved his tools from where he’d dropped them. It was time to leave.
~~~~
He should have known he wouldn’t get off that easy.
For nearly three days he and Gale exchanged nothing but pleasantries and the occasional polite request for some magical assistance. Astarion began to hope that things had simply gone back to normal.
And then one night at the Elfsong, Gale came and sat beside him, with the airs of someone who had a conversation to unveil.
Goody.
Astarion let one elbow rest on the book in his lap, propping his chin against his knuckles with the practiced nonchalance of someone who would rather be anywhere else. “Yes?”
Gale sat on the edge of his own bed, across from Astarion’s, and while he’d clearly meant to address him, he wasn’t actually looking. His hands fiddled together nervously.
“Has Halsin finally suggested I join you in bed, then?” Astarion asked wryly. Gale’s face shot up, burning an absolutely delightful shade of pink.
“What? No! Halsin and I aren’t—why would you—?” He caught sight of Astarion’s grin. “Ah. You’re baiting me.”
“The sooner you’re out with it, the sooner I can get back to my reading.”
“Right. Of course. It’s just that I… I can’t shake some of the things you said to me. At Rolan’s.”
“I do have that effect on people.” Astarion wracked his muddled brain, trying to remember what Gale could possibly be talking about. The memories were fuzzy, and trying to think about them tended to leave him mired in other recollections, instead. “I’m sure I promised you something absolutely debauched, and of course I’ll do it, but you’re going to have to remind me, darling.”
Gale got redder. If his blood weren’t so acrid, Astarion might have found his mouth watering.
“It’s nothing like that. Well, I suppose it was, in a way. But not! I…” Gale took a deep breath, then exhaled quickly. “When the curse was first setting in, and you thought you were somewhere else, you were flailing, and there was fire above us, and I had to… well, I had to hold you down.”
Astarion’s body went very still. He narrowed his eyes slightly, into a sharp look that made people want to leave him alone. “Is there a point you’ll be arriving at?”
“You said ‘don’t.’ You said it to me a few times, actually, and there was this look on your face—”
Astarion’s breath caught, but he didn’t let it show on his face. Instead, he quirked his mouth up in a coy little grin. “And you suspect my virtue isn’t intact? Alas, no, Gale, the birds and bees have long since come for our friend Astari—”
“I came to apologize.” The sentence dropped like a stone into deep water, the two of them staring as it sank.
“In general, I accept, but… why? You didn’t do anything.”
“I pinned you down. If I had known, I might have been somewhat more… I don’t know.”
“Don’t bother being delicate with me, darling.”
Gods knew no one else was.
“Well, it’s good to know you’re being utterly predictable about the whole thing, at least.”
“Rehearsed this, did you?”
“What? No!” Astarion raised an eyebrow. At least, he thought he did. It was a trick he’d learned from careful practicing in the mirror, and it had been a long time since he could check his technique. “It’s just that… you thought someone was in the room with us. I thought you were hallucinating, and I didn’t put it together at the time, but you seemed rather convinced that a man was coming to—well, to hurt you, I suppose.”
“I was hallucinating, Gale,” Astarion said slowly, willing him to drop it.
“But you’re a spawn, right?”
“And what of it?”
“Come on, Astarion. Don’t make me drag this out of you.”
“Fine.” So they were having this conversation now. Astarion leaned back against the bed, propped up on his elbows. It pulled the hem of his shirt free of his trousers on one side, as intended. “What do you want to know about first? I would guess the torture, just from an academic point of view, but the rapes are sordid, and what book lover doesn’t enjoy a good story?” The blood drained from Gale’s face. Good. Astarion pretended to inspect his nails. “My master used to have me fucked on the regular for his amusement. That wasn’t the first time someone broke my collarbone and climbed on top of me. You can’t imagine my disappointment when I got the upper hand for once, only to realize it was you under my dagger. Getting to kill one of them would have been quite novel.” He flicked his eyes up to Gale, smiling sweetly. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“No!” Gale said, loud enough that the conversation across the room chilled, a number of concerned heads turning in their direction. Gale waved them off, then leaned in, his voice an quiet hiss. “Astarion, if you have a master out there looking for you, that’s something you needed to tell us!”
“Well he hasn’t shown up yet,” Astarion said sullenly. “What you didn’t know didn’t hurt you.”
They’d take a vote, he supposed. Once they learned he was the property of the Szarr family, they’d all weigh in on whether he was useful enough to outweigh the risk of continuing to harbor him. He’d done everything he could to weigh that balance in his favor, but apparently the clock had run out.
“You’re damn lucky,” Gale grumbled, and Astarion let out half a laugh. It wasn’t a word he’d use to describe himself. “Imagine he’d found you while you were scouting. We would have no idea where to begin looking for you.”
Astarion had a quip ready, but it died on his tongue.
“...what?”
The picture of eloquence.
“You are off by yourself all the time,” Gale said, and it almost sounded like an accusation. “If your sire can compel you—”
“He can’t.”
Astarion could see the curiosity fall over Gale’s features. “How do you know?”
“He had certain… rules. Rules I find myself able to break, ever since being acquainted with my little passenger.” Astarion braced himself for the questions he knew were coming. He could see them on Gale’s face. The answers presented themselves easily- cutting, brutal truths that were cruelties of their own. Answers that would make the wizard sorry he had asked.
“That’s certainly a relief,” Gale said. “If he’s unaware of that, we’ll have quite the advantage when we face him.”
Astarion blinked. “... pardon? When we what?”
“I suppose for a vampire lord it would be fitting to use the word ‘vanquish,’” Gale mused, rubbing his beard. He gestured at a stack of books and one slipped from the bottom, floating its way over. It cracked open in midair, and Gale began to paw through the pages. “Not to be insensitive, but do vampires have any weaknesses besides the obvious?”
“We’re a hardy bunch,” Astarion answered.
There must have been something in his voice, because Gale looked up from his book. He studied Astarion’s face for a moment, and Astarion found it difficult to meet his eyes. “Astarion. We took down an avatar of Myrkul. I think we can handle one vampire.” He paused, then reddened. “Though I understand why you might consider him particularly formidable, given your, ah, experiences. Which I don’t mean to diminish.”
“Keep going, you’re doing beautifully,” Astarion said dryly.
“If you wanted a rousting speech, you should have broken the news to Tav,” Gale sniped back.
“I didn’t exactly volunteer to tell you,” Astarion pointed out. “Very few of our conversations are what I’d call ‘voluntary,’ not to put too fine a point on it.”
Gale’s blush deepened, and he hunched over his book. “Then I suppose I owe you a second apology, for interfering with your impeccable dramatic timing. It must be such a hardship to have this news broken before… before…” His brow furrowed, and he looked up at Astarion. “When were you going to tell us?”
Astarion opened his mouth to say something cruel. To say ‘when I’d fucked enough of you to earn the support,’ or maybe ‘when you seemed trustworthy,’ but they felt too sharp against the inside of his mouth.
“You were… going to tell us, weren’t you?” Gale searched his face. “… you weren’t going to go after him alone, right?”
“If I had to,” Astarion said, trying to sound aloof and knowing he wasn’t pulling it off. “Like you said. I do a fair amount of scouting on my own. Maybe I’d just pop over and… and…” He meant to say it nonchalantly, but he pictured himself stepping over the threshold of the palace, of being there alone, and the knowledge that he could resist Cazador didn’t matter at all. His throat went tight. The practiced, easy cadence of his voice simply broke. “... and kill him,” he finished, the truth of his hate flowing through where his lies had failed.
“Gods know I can’t stop you, if that’s the foolhardy notion you’ve set your dark little heart on,” Gale said slowly. “But I would hope, after all these months, you know that you wouldn’t have to.”
He didn’t know that at all, actually. He’d gotten more comfortable with letting himself believe it, but know? No. He’d know when Cazador was dead.
“Enlighten me then,” he said, sitting up and leaning forward. “What would your plan be, oh mighty archmage?”
Gale told him a story, then. A story about a band of adventurers who wouldn’t hesitate to take down a creature of the darkness, who would happily risk their lives for their friend. They would bring along daylight spells and arrows of undead slaying and they would leave nothing of Astarion’s former master but a greasy pile of ash.
It was a fantasy, and Astarion would be utterly unsurprised if it stayed that way. But for once, he found that listening to Gale talk wasn’t… so bad.