Chapter Text
Xalor crouches low into the shadows, waiting. He hears the boy’s footsteps approaching as his target tries with less success to move stealthfully around the faintly glowing forest of fungi, peering around in the darkness. Xal’s muscles twitch and his claws dig into the ground in anticipation as the young Selunite drow draws closer to his hiding place. But despite the boy’s keen eyes, he doesn’t see Xal; he’s chosen his form carefully. He grins past sharp teeth, his heart beating quicker as his prey stops within feet of him.
“Nym?” The boy whisper-shouts into the dark.
Xal tenses, ready to pounce, and just as the boy turns, his eyes widening in shock as they finally lock onto his, he strikes, leaping out of the darkness.
Sorn yelps in shock as XAl, in the shape of a small pitch-black cat, slams into him with enough force to send him sprawling and then in a flash of green, releases the Wildshape, his form returning to that of a gangly young boy.
“Xal!” Sorn shouts half laughing, half outraged. “No fair with the wildshape.”
Xal laughs, sprawled on top of his friend, and pins hip playfully with an arm across his neck. “Oh come on, I got you, fair and square, Sorn.”
“He did,” says a high girlish voice as Nym hops down from her hiding place atop one of the more benign mushrooms of the Underdark. She grins at the boys.
“You should have seen your face, brother.”
Sorn scowls in irritation and Xal grins widely, pressing his arm just a little harder against his friend. “C’mon, Sorn. Yield.”
The boy rolls his eyes and sighs. “Fine, fine, I yield. Now let me up.”
“Xal’s grin widens then falters a moment. There’s a small but persistent voice in the back of his mind and he wonders how it would feel to press his arm harder against Sorn’s neck, to cut off his air supply and feel him thrash beneath him as Nym screams— Xal pulls away abruptly, and stands, holding out a hand to his friend. His victory is spoiled by the strange, darkness that coils like a viper in his gut.
“You ok?” Asks Sorn, looking at him with concern. “You look sick.”
“Yeah, yeah I just—” Xal shakes his head and forces a grin back onto his face. “We should get back though, before anyone comes looking for us.”
He isn’t lying. If his Lolthsworn family or the Selunites find them playing together… well, the spider queen and her followers aren’t known for their mercy— even towards children. Xal has often wondered lately if his Lolth blood may be the reason for the strange impulses that course through him at times…
Nym nods. “Yeah, we’ve got to get back. Our matron will be looking for us soon, Sorn. We’re supposed to train at the palace today.
Sorn’s light blue eyes dim at the mention of his matron and Xal’s heart sinks. His friends are low-born selunites and at twelve and thirteen respectively, he knows what training they’re expected to attend. Xal reaches out and takes Nym’s hand and extends the other to Sorn. He squeezes and tells them. “We’re all going to leave here soon. Things are different on the surface… I just know it.”
Sorn looks up at him, hope and doubt warring in his eyes. “Do you really think so?”
“Course!” Xal smiles. “Up there, there’s no one to tell us we can’t be friends, no one to tell us what we can and can’t do. We can be whatever and whoever we want.”
Another voice behind them hisses from the darkness and Xal’s blood freezes in his veins. “Ssso sickeningly sweet.”
Xal whirls around and meets the many-eyed gaze of the driver, flanked by the slender, red-eyed Lolthsworn matron.
He turns to his friends in horror as the drider advances a step.
“Run!”
***
The memory fades into a murky haze, fading into the hazy fog where all of Xal’s forgotten life resides and he slowly comes back into the present. He’s standing, arms outstretched, water running over his hands, his torso, streaming down him. The smell of iron is thick in his nostrils and the heavy taste of something dark and metallic on his tongue. He shakes his head in confusion and his vision clears. Then he stumbles back as he beholds the ruined mass of flesh before him. It’s not water running down Xal’s skin, coating his hands, his face, his bare chest. No, it’s thick, drying blood cooling on his skin in the chill night air. And that ruined pile of tortured flesh is… Alfira.
She stares lifelessly at the sky, or she would be staring, if her eyes hadn’t been gauged out. Glood covers every part of her ruined flesh, pooling onto the earth beneath, her entrails bloat out of a hole in her gut, and her chest… Her chest has been ripped open, her heart gone. Xal looks down at the sticky red on his hands and feels it on his tongue. He gags and falls back onto the earth, drawing his knees to his chest and rocking back and forth, even as the darkness inside him screams in joyful victory.
“Oh gods,” he whispers. He hadn’t done, this, surely he hadn’t… but the blood on his hands, the knife still grasped in his left fist. He knows the truth. He can’t stop looking at her, at the beautiful bard, who only hours ago had been playing music and laughing with Wyll and Karlach, who had been so eager to join their cause.
“Well, this is disturbing, even by my standards.”
Xal’s head whips around, his eyes locking with Astarion’s bright red stare. “I didn’t…” Xal stutters. “I mean it wasn’t.”
“Oh, I think it’s quite obvious that you did, darling.” Astarion breaks his stare and casts a cold, calculating look at the body. “My question isn’t if you did or even how, my dear, it’s why? Surely her music wasn’t that irritating.”
“I don’t remember,” croaks Xal, the admission triggering another wave of nausea deep in his gut.”
Astarion steps past him to study Alfira’s corpse more closely. “Where is her heart?”
The nausea overwhelms Xal finally and he turns to his hands and knees, vomiting.
“Ah,” Astarion says, disgust in his tone. “Found it.”
Xal looks down. His vomit is dark with congealed blood and— “Shit,” he whispers.
“Indeed.” Agrees Astarion. The vampire steps away from Alfira and Xal. His eyes are calculating, cautious. He’s worried Xal will kill him too, he realizes. Of course he is. They should all be worried, all be running. He needs to tell them, to confess to the others the evil that writhes inside him. He gets to his feet, shaking, and turns. They are in the woods but he can still see the glow of the fire through the trees. He begins to walk towards it.
“What are you doing?” Demands Astarion.
Xal turns to the elf, confused. “I need to tell the others.” He whispers.
Astarion lets out a harsh laugh. “I’m sorry, I think I must be losing my hearing. I thought you just said you were going to tell our companions that you just brutally murdered a hapless bard and ate her heart.”
Xal frowns at him. “They need to know. I’m not— Something is very wrong with me.” He turns to leave and is stopped by a hand on his arm. Astarion pulls Xal to face him and Xal stares at him in surprise.
“You tell them and they will kill you.” He says coldly.
Xal bares his teeth at Astarion, anger and fear taking hold of his heart. “Maybe they should, Astarion.”
“Don’t be so stupid,” counters the vampire.
Xal looks at him in confusion. “Why the fuck do you even care?”
Astarion’s widen slightly for a fraction of a second in an expression an expression Xal can only interpret as fear and then narrow again. “Because I need you alive, Darling. Besides being a major advantage in a fight, I’m not sure the others wouldn’t rethink their decision to keep me alive with you gone. “
Xal laughs bitterly. “So pure self-interest then, is it?”
“Naturally,” purrs the vampire.
“And if I kill you, darling?’ Xal spits sarcastically.
Astarion crosses his arms and rolls his eyes. “You’re welcome to try, my dear but believe me— I’ve been through far worse than you.” Astarion’s eyes take on a haunted quality and Xal looks at him for several long moments. He believes him, he realizes. If Astarion is willing to risk keeping Xal around, blackout murderous episodes and all…
Xal closes his eyes. “I didn’t mean to kill her.” He whispers.
“I’m sure that’s a great comfort to dear Alfira,” snaps Astarion.
Xal looks at him, his eyes narrowing and Astarion bares pointed teeth at him. “Wallow in self-pity all you like Xalor. I’m not here to hold your hand.”
“Then why ARE you here, Astarion?” He wants to scream, to stab something, to curl up into a ball and weep, to find somewhere and quiet to fade into oblivion.”
Astarion raises an eyebrow and offers him a sarcastic smile. “I’m here to help you hide the body, of course.”
***
Astarion grunts as he and Xalor swing the battered and torn remains of the bard over the cliff. He watches her corpse disappear into the darkness and glances sidelong at his murderous companion who is staring into the distance, his expression blank and unseeing… but not currently lusting for a kill, thank the gods. Perhaps being alone with the murderous freak isn’t one of his best plans but he can’t bring himself to be afraid of the drow… although he knows he really should be. He should let the Xal tell his companions what he’s done.... should kill him perhaps. Wouldn’t that be the safer thing to do? For some reason, the thought doesn’t sit well with him. He tells himself that it’s because, despite the danger Xal poses, he’s the only one likely to protect Astarion should his own, darkness threaten to overwhelm him… the only one who has shown the slightest interest in helping him get revenge on his master… besides, the idea of hurling, the murder-happy dark elf at Cazador is rather appealing… but as he looks at the blood-soaked man beside him, he feels something tighten in his chest, some old emotion, no doubt, left over by the man he used to be so very long ago. He shakes his head and sighs, pushing the strange feeling back. “Now that’s done,” he says with more levity than he feels. “We should stop by the river. I can’t help but notice that you’re absolutely covered in blood and dense as our companions are, I’m quite sure they won’t miss it.” Astarion looks down at his own camp clothes, frowning at the crimson stain on his shirt. He’ll need a quick wash too, it seems.
Xal says nothing but walks beside Astarion silently. When they reach the stream, Xal only stares at the water. “This is the part where you get in and wash off darling.” Xal says nothing, his eyes fixed somewhere beyond the sparkling water. Astarion shrugs, stripping off his shirt and pants and striding past Xal. “Well, I’m getting in before one of the others comes sniffing about.” He dips a toe into the water cautiously. He can still scarcely believe that the running water no longer burns like acid. It’s cool but not painful and he shivers as he steps deeper into the water, his bloody shirt in hand.
He’s hyper aware of the murderer behind him as Xal finally steps into the water with his own discarded trousers in hand. He hears the sharp intake of breath and turns with an eyebrow raised. “Like what you see darling?” He quips. But the drow’s burgundy eyes aren’t fixed on him with awe. He looks… concerned. Astarion’s jaw tightens as he realizes what Xal is looking at.
“Did… did he give those to you?”
“Naturally,” says Astarion tightly, the skin on his back prickling with the memory. He squeezes out his shirt, watching as the water runs red into the sparkling ripples. “It was a gift— a poem.”
Xal reaches out as though to touch the scars Astarion’s never seen but draws away when he flinches. Xal’s hand drops into the water.
“I’m sorry,” he says, eyes falling to the moon-kissed stream.
Astarion shrugs. Since the crash, he often dreams of that bloody, painful night, of his screams as his master cuts again and again into his raw flesh, as he heals him only to slice again. He swallows. “Seems like you have enough of your own scars to worry about darling. He nods pointedly at him.
Xal looks down at the crisscrossing scars on his own chest, his abdomen, and his arms, and he shrugs. “I don’t remember where they came from.”
“That sounds nice,” murmurs Astarion.
“What does it say, the poem?”
“I’ve no idea. I’ve never even seen the bloody thing.”
“You’ve never looked?”
Astarion raises a brow and gives him a pointed look and Xal blushes. “Oh right.”
“Forgot I was a monster, did you, darling?”
Xal is silent for a moment and then so softly Astarion nearly missed it over the soft gurgling of the stream. “You’re not a monster, Astarion.”
He raises a brow at the drow and smiles pointing at his fangs. “I think the fangs and the bloodthirst would beg to differ.”
Xal shakes his head and he closes his eyes, tilting his head up towards the sky and Astarion refuses to acknowledge the slight fluttering in his stomach as the moonlight baths his dark skin in its silver glow.
“It may not mean much, coming from someone who did what I just did but… you’ll never be a monster to me.”
“That’s” Astarion fumbles for once to find the correct thing to say. Naive? Pathetic? But crazed murderous bastard or not, Xal looks so gods damned soft and sincere standing naked in the moonlight and Astarion finds even he can’t find it in him to level a scathing remark. “That’s sweet,” he finishes.