Chapter Text
There’s no moment of relief, no easing to wakefulness that can be followed by any sort of clarity. Astarion’s snapping to consciousness with his body in agony and lungs feeling like they will implode in his chest. His skin feels too tight over muscles that are taught and stiff, like they haven’t moved in days. His body aches as he spasms and his back arches against whatever hard surface he’s lying on. And more than any of the pain that batters him as he writhes, he’s lanced with a burning in his throat. A thirst beyond anything he’d ever experienced before. He’s parched. He’s famished. He slams the back of his head against wooden planks as he thrashes in confusion and discomfort.
What am I lying on? It’s the first real thought he’s able to conjure as he shifts against rough, jagged splinters that are pressing against his back. He wants to open his eyes and understand where the hell he is, how the hell he got here. He blinks. He blinks again. His eyes are open. There’s nothing around him to focus on as he realizes that he’s lying in complete darkness.
He raises his hands, fingers hardly able to bend as stiff as they are, and he extends a hand forward, to almost immediately be stopped no more than a few inches from his torso. He feels more hard, splintered wood planks above him, they don’t give at all as he tests the weight of it. No, they’re not heavy, its sealed.
He kicks a foot down around his feet and he’s met with his foot and knee bang against the walls of more wood. He raises his hands passed his shoulders and is met with another wall above his head. He thrashes again, meeting nothing but solid planks that have him boxed in to a man-sized box with no opening anywhere around him. His confusion starts to shift to panic as his mind races and struggles to catch up to what is happening.
He breathes in a shaky breath and is suddenly too aware of how stale and still the air is, it almost feels like a humid sludge that fills his chest and that’s when the realization hits him, finally.
I’m in the ground. I’m buried! I’m buried!
He screams. It’s a horrible sound that upon hearing only serves to ratchet up his panic as he starts slamming palms and fists, feet and knees into the walls around him. He doesn’t think he has the capacity to slow the terrified yells escaping his throat. Please! Save me! Don’t leave me down here! I’m not dead! He doesn’t know if he’s able to speak words around the desperate sounds he makes, or if his thoughts are loud enough in the small space that they’re all he can hear.
He feels cold tears start to pour down his cheeks and down the sides of his neck which cause a disgusted shiver down his spine. He whimpers in despair and smashes the back of his head back against the floor of the coffin again. The coffin! I’m locked in my own coffin! He cries helplessly as he finally works to get a grasp on his terror.
His hands press against the walls at his sides, they’re burning hot and he knows that the skin of his hands are more than likely torn and bleeding from battering the wood around him. He breathes in a shuddering breath but can’t quite keep from trembling. He knows that he must have limited air. He only has so long to alert someone, or to break out of here.
He blinks the cold tears that are leaking from his eyes away. He groans as he represses the pain that still piercing his insides, the bone-deep exhaustion that weighs his body down to the floor, and the despair of being entombed without another soul around to hear him. I have to dig out. What other choice is there? I’ll die if I stay here.
He makes a fist and holds his breath in anticipation. There’s nothing for it, even if he were to break every bone in his hand and mash his arm to a pulp, he had to get out. Let me out! Before it’s too late.
He punches forward with all of his strength, and though the more rational part of his mind that was whispering in the back of his mind told him that there was no way he’d be strong enough to break the boards, he feels them bend and hears the warping of the wood as it’s thrust up into the earth above him.
A surge of adrenaline hits him, his body going taught and a new desperation seizing him as he throws his fist against the boards again, and hears the snap of the splinters as they break. He gasps in relief and urgency, not affording any time to the amazement that he can break out of coffin as he punches and gouges chunks of wood from above him.
He’s almost giddy as he works to widen the hole around his hands, feels a triumph as he tries to make room enough for his arms, before it all comes crashing down upon him, in the most horrible, literal way imaginable.
He has time for one shocked yelp before the roof of the coffin is caving in and the space is filling with rocks and dirt. Cold, wet soil fill his mouth and when he breathes in he can feel it get caught in his throat. His eyes burn, his body feels cold and weighed down and he feels terror anew overtake every thought or rationalization he’d had. He tries to scream again, but chokes on more dirt as it makes its way further down his throat. He’s choking, gasping, trying to flail as he loses all sense of up or down. Let me out!
He reaches forward and feels the jagged edge of the gouged coffin lid. He thrusts his arms through, digging recklessly with his hands as he claws his way through the earth, scraping his heals against the floor of the coffin as he leverages his body out of the hole in the coffin roof.
He hadn’t had time to make the hole large enough. If he was able to scream he would have as he feels sharp edges of wood pierce and rend his torso as he wedges himself out of the box and into the loose ground between it and the surface. He feels where his flesh tears on his sides, his back, around his hips as he finally frees himself.
He digs. He pushes. He fights. He can’t think around the mind-numbing horror of breaking his way out of the ground and all with a single half-breath before his mouth was clogged with clay-like mud and the feel of insects crawling deeper to the back of his throat.
He feels the chilled air as his hands break the surface, the soft pattering of rain landing on his skin as grasps at clumps of loose dirt to get his head above ground. When his head breaks through, he’s almost overwhelmed by the moonlight that hits his irises through the rain and clouds in the darkness of the cemetery. He’s able to painfully pull himself through the dirt and land on solid ground next to his grave, landing face down against the wet grass. He wretches. He coughs up and vomits dirt and blood, watching in horror and disgust as worms and beetles wriggle in the mess beneath his face.
He crawls slowly to his knees, panting into the cold night, not even noticing the fact that in a night this cold there should be billows of warm breath escaping his lips. But instead in utter relief and fright and fatigue he screams again before collapsing into a trembling ball as he weeps, unable to even be grateful he had made it through such an ordeal in the face of such ghastliness.
“Finally, you’ve rejoined the world,” he hears ahead of him.
He picks up his head, blinking into the night to see a figure slowly approaching from between scattered tombstones under the rain and moonlight. He shudders in dread, too tired to move or lift a hand in defense as the man responsible for the massacre in the alley approaches him. But the man doesn’t attack him. He rests a hand on his head and for a moment Astarion mistakes it for something tender and reassuring before fingers are threading into his hair and painfully wrenching his head back to face the man.
“You have been reborn, into something better than your former, weak self. You belong to me now,” he smiles down at Astarion who flinches but can’t break the grip on his scalp. His hands he cradles in his lap, bloodied and bruised, and useless should he be attacked again.
“I am Cazador Szarr,” the man says, “but you will ever call me ‘Master.’ Is that understood?”
Astarion feels indignation burn in him, anger at the gall of this monster to speak to him in such a way after all he’d just fought through. He knows full well that this man is the reason that he was mistaken for dead and how he ended up in the ground. He had to be. “I will not,” Astarion’s voice sounds rough and hoarse to his own ears, the first words he’s heard of his own since waking up entombed. But he holds Cazador’s gaze with a bravery only surviving near-death can give you.
Cazador scowls down at him before releasing his hair and walking past him.
Astarion turns to watch him as he passes, flinching before he can control the impulse as he brushes against Astarion’s injured side. Which should still be bleeding, shouldn’t it? He’d felt the splinters of wood digging into his flesh, and though the wound looked ugly it wasn’t the open wound he’d expected to see.
His attention is again drawn to Cazador as he steps past the fresh grave to the new tombstone at its head. Astarion sees his name carved into the stone in elegant script and he felt as though he’d been struck in the stomach, and all air left his lungs. Despite clawing from his own grave it all still felt so… unreal. But seeing his name ‘Astarion Ancunin’ etched into the stone above the fresh plot he’d had to struggle through was like struggling through the ground all over again.
Cazador placed a hand on the tombstone, “You are no longer a part of this world. Not many have had the privilege to be made spawn by me. Consider it my generosity. And a debt that you owe.”
“Spawn,” Astarion said, disbelieving, “What do you mean?”
Cazador turned to him, “Come now, boy, you are not so dull as that. What creature need feast on the blood of the living? Can melt into shadows and survive digging out of their own grave?”
Astarion blanched, his broken hands trembling in his lap, “Vampire. You’ve made me a vampire.”
Cazador smiles, “Yes. And you’re the first I’ve created to walk under the moonlight, by my grace of course. Quite the accomplishment.”
“You’ve turned others?”
“I’ve given others that showed potential the… opportunity. You are the first to make it out of the coffin and be reborn as you are.”
“What happened to the ones who couldn’t?”
Cazador sneered, “Well I suppose they’re still howling in their graves.”
Astarion shuddered violently at the thought of being left in the ground, in the dark, nothing but that horrible pain and fear to rule him for however long he was doomed to lie there.
At the thought of the pain his senses were suddenly all too aware of the hunger that never truly subsided, even while he panicked to near madness. His insides felt as though they were twisting and aching. It wasn’t like the hunger he was familiar with, not a growling belly, but an emptiness. Like his insides would wither and turn to ash unless they were revitalized. It was a beast inside of him that yearned to be sated by life. Life that ideally would have to be stolen.
Astarion bent double as the gnawing pain intensified, shaking with an effort to hold himself upright. He heard the footsteps on the wet ground as Cazador made his way back to where he was curled up pathetically against the ground. Astarion refused to look at him, one of his hands coming up to his chest as he felt a new panic seize him. My heart, I can’t feel my heartbeat! There’s nothing there! His hand groped his neck, desperately feeling for the pulse he knew he wouldn’t find. This can’t be real! He can’t stop the broken sob that tears from him, rocking back and forth, covered in dirt and grime, rain pelting him as he realizes he can’t feel the cold of the droplets.
Cazador bends down on a knee beside him, putting his mouth to his ear, “You are mine.”
\\\
Astarion can’t remember the journey from the graveyard to Cazador’s palace. It’s a dwelling of huge halls, devoid of any windows and lit only by candlelight. It’s extravagant in its auspiciousness, but the tall walls feel like a trap closing in as he numbly trails behind Cazador. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to go home and crawl into a warm bed and wake up from this nightmare. But his feet move in spite of that. Whether there’s some subtle sway that Cazador has over him now, or maybe he’s just at a loss of what to do next, he can’t bring himself to turn around. He finds himself in a parlor after following twisting halls and passing a number of closed doors. His clothes, some of his finest he realizes and not the ones he had been wearing during his attack, caked in mud and soaked through stick to his skin. He grimaces at the texture of it. He’s about to collapse into a chair before he’s halted. Not physically, it’s like there’s a wall in his mind that compels him to hold back. The feeling is like a cold leech squirming in his thoughts and he cringes into himself at the feeling.
He glances up and sees Cazador staring at him from across the room. “Strip those filthy rags off,” he says.
Astarion hesitates, glancing around the room, lit only by a couple of candelabras on tabletops, the hearth empty and cold, no other eyes in sight. But from the way Cazador looks at him, he feels exposed already. He wished he’d been paying attention as they had made their way here. He wished he knew how to get out if he ran.
What was this? He could hardly comprehend the events that brought him here. He should be dead. No, he should be home. He should have ended up in bed with someone that night. Someone. Who was it? He feels his throat tighten suddenly. He thinks back, he remembers his life in the sun, his morning route past the tailor to the Judge’s House. He remembers being beaten and bloodied, terrified as death waited to meet him in an alley. But… faces… names. He’s having a harder time with those. Fuck, no, he should know this.
He cringes again as he feels the leech in his thoughts, like a stab at his mind, a punishment, and he realizes that it’s Cazador. He’s detecting his thoughts, invading where he had no right to. And more than that, he’s forcing his way in past Astarion’s mental defense, and it feels like a violation.
“Now,” Cazador says harshly and Astarion shivers at the cold impatience behind it.
“No,” Astarion says. He meets Cazador’s gaze and lifts his head a little higher. He would not be ordered around; he didn’t have to stand for this- this condescension. This was a monster, a vampire, who’d stolen his life away. He wouldn’t answer to anything he demanded of him.
Cazador bristled, scowling at Astarion. He slowly crossed the parlor, the nonchalant way he carried himself only betrayed by the hardness of his eyes. Astarion stood his ground, refusing to cower away. He couldn’t defend himself when taken by surprise by a group of Gur, but he could defend himself against this one man, one smaller than him, one who clearly didn’t have any friends around to back his threats.
He was confident. And that was his mistake.
Cazador stood before him, eyes filled with a cold fury as he grinned at Astarion. “You are nothing now, you are clay to be molded by me,” he said lowly, “You think you stand any chance of leaving this place of your own accord? I will show you why the very thought will from this night forth be your deepest regret.”
Astarion snarled, “You bastard, you have no right to keep me here!”
He swung his fist, aiming for that cruel, twisted smile in front of him. He watched as the man cleanly sidestepped before he felt the slice of a dagger cutting between his ribs like butter. He gasped, falling forward to his knees, Cazador followed him to keep the blade lodged into his torso. As Astarion hit the ground he felt the dagger twist, felt the edges grinding against his ribs, the rip of his flesh inside and he screamed.
All thoughts of vampires being undead were not with him, panic overtook any rational thought as unbearable pain clouded his vision, his hearing, any comprehension. He felt he was dying, again, and he grasped his side with a groan. He almost expected to go into shock, he prayed for the icy numbness that would came from his overwhelmed nerves. But it didn’t come. He felt everything, in perfect clarity. And he choked on another scream as Cazador roughly yanked the blade from Astarion and stood.
“Lesson the first,” Cazador said above him, wiping the sides of his dagger clean against Astarion’s shoulder, “I am your master. You will find that should you so much as think of raising a hand against me, disobeying me in any way, that you will pray for death. You so much as think of leaving this place without my leave, and you will see what my wrath is capable of. I will always know how to find you.”
Cazador grabbed Astarion by the hair, wrenching his head back and forcing him to meet his eyes. Astarion felt fresh tears trailing down his face and his vision was filled with the cruelty of Cazador. “Lesson the second,” he continued, “forget about your previous life. It is dead, just as you are dead. I am your world now, your salvation, your only worth is what I deem it to be. You will do well to remember, boy, that you have witnessed the extent of my patience this night. I will not be so forgiving again.”
He shoved Astarion’s head down. Astarion groaned and curled into himself. He rocked himself back and forth, horrified and shaking where he kneeled against the rugs, now bloodied and covered in the mud still smeared against his legs.
He heard the footsteps as they paced around him, heard the light sound of hinges that would likely belong to a small chest, and his senses were suddenly overpowered by the most putrid smell he’d ever encountered. It burned his nose and clogged his throat, yet the gnawing hunger lashed out inside of him, desperate to be sated.
Something landed on the ground in front of him, a large rat, moldered and falling to pieces.
“Lesson the third. Eat,” said Cazador, and Astarion felt the tip of the blade press next to his spine, right over a kidney, “as I command.”
Astarion reached forward, grabbing at the rat. The flesh squished in his grasp, and he nearly vomited. He didn’t hesitate this time, feeling the dagger press more insistently into his back, and he he bit into the flesh, his canines slicing through it easily. His eyes watered as the rancid smell overtook his senses, he gagged around the flesh as congealed blood flooded his mouth and flowed down his throat, almost as if his new biology didn’t require him to gulp or swallow, just allow the lifeblood to flow into his being.
The hunger in him thrashed, ever desperate and ever demanding, and though his stomach turned, and he wanted to scream from the humiliation that was overtaking him, eyes burning and sobs threatening to stop the flow of blood, he sucked to draw more decayed blood into his mouth.
He let the hunger take over for him, took a backseat in his mind as instinct overruled any revulsion with his yearning for this first real feast of blood, if it could rightly be considered such.
The rat was drained all to quickly, and he felt the chunks of soft flesh and fur lodged in his teeth as he spit the carcass from his mouth, hacking and trying his best not to retch the meal from his stomach. He hunched forward and despite the ordeal, it wasn’t lost on him that the pain from the stab wound in his side had lessened considerably.
He felt the dagger tip drag up his spine and before he could flinch it was hooked under his collar and splitting the fabric down his back, baring his skin to Cazador. Astarion jerked from his touch, shuddering in fright and ruination.
“Now, take off those rags,” Cazador said before standing and leaving him on the ground. Astarion swallowed, tears still wetting his face, but he silently lifted his hands and tugged off the remains of the shredded, bloody shirt. He shakily climbed to his feet, unlacing his trousers and letting them fall to his ankles before kicking them aside. He wore no underclothes, the mortician probably not seeing the need on a corpse, so he stood bare and exposed in the middle of the parlor.
He wrapped his arms around himself, gripping his elbows, a shudder of disgust racking his frame as he stared down at the mutilated rat that was now framed by the last threads of a life that was no longer his own. He would no longer walk through the markets, or in the forests outside the city, he would never see the sun again. He turned his eyes to a large silver vase that was set upon one of the side tables, some unnamable desperation in his being longing for one familiar gaze, even his own. But he didn’t find it reflected on the smooth surface. Only the room behind him. His reflection was absent; he was nothing more than a ghost in a material world that had no place for him, a parasite on a plane of mortals.
He thought longingly for one kind face, one kind word. His mind came up clouded and ached with the effort to recall.
“I can’t remember anything. Anyone,” he said aloud to himself, staring into the silver vase.
“Clarity comes with the blood of thinking creatures,” Cazador said, and there was a mocking edge to his tone, “but that is a delicacy that is not meant for you. You will serve, you will submit, and should you ever think that you have the authority to drink such a thing, I will be sure to rip every fang and tooth from your mouth and leave you buried in the ground to the end of your days. Is that clear?”
Astarion nodded silently, head swimming and sobs held down in his chest that caused his breath to stutter.
He yelped in surprise as a sudden hard smack to his face had his head twisting over his shoulder, his cheek red hot and stinging. He turned wide eyes to a seething Cazador who gripped him by the chin, “Is that clear?” He spit the words with such a fury that Astarion cowered.
“Yes… master,” he said.
Cazador released him, “Good,” he raised the dagger in his hand to Astarion’s throat slowly tracing the blunt edge of the blade against his skin and Astarion closed his eyes, almost expecting the slice into his jugular, and he had no wish to watch as his blood poured from him.
He turned the blade so the edge cut the side of Astarion’s pale neck, just enough for a thin line of blood to trail down the column of his throat l. Astarion held as still as he could, squeezing his eyes shut, which for the moment Cazador didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t pull back, didn’t fight, he submitted as Cazador twisted his face side to side, looking for any resistance. He leaned in close so his lips were pressed to the shell of Astarion’s ear and chuckled at the shudder that ran through him at the contact, “There is plenty to teach you, in due time. First, we must be sure that all of this is understood. Without any room for hope or rebellion.”
Cazador drew away the blade and walked to the closed door at the end of the room, opening it as the old wood creaked. “Please join us, Godey.”
Astarion turned and leaped back with a shout of fright as a skeleton marched its way into the room, dressed in plate mail and carrying a large bull whip in one hand. Astarion tripped over one of the chairs and scrambled along the ground, crawling back as the skeleton advanced.
“Twenty minutes, Godey,” Cazador said, “then be so kind as to show him to his room,” Cazador walked out and closed the door behind him.