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1.
Astarion’s first thought seeing the cave bear behind bars isn’t well, I wonder what that tastes like. It may, however, be his second or his third thought. Of course he knows better than to voice it. Openly acknowledging himself as a vampire in front of Tav and the others feels like as much of a luxury as walking in the sun, but it’s not quite the done thing to openly contemplate taking a bite out of the healer who’s so far their best chance at taming the tadpoles.
Especially not while said healer is in the form of an enormous cave bear. With enormous claws.
(The tadpoles — surely they can be tamed. Or controlled. Or compelled. Or — something that will let Astarion stay in the sun, and out from under Cazador’s control.)
Even when he’s not a bear, Halsin the Archdruid is, first and foremost, large. And he smells better than the cave bear, though that’s not saying much. Most things smell better than cave bears. But even people who smell foul can have remarkably delicious blood. That’s one thing Astarion has had the privilege of learning. The false paladins trying to kill Karlach had reeked of Avernus and self-righteousness, but they’d tasted sweet, and no one had so much as looked at Astarion askance for biting them. Karlach had given him an approving thumbs up for draining one of them dry. A true novelty.
But the archdruid: not an enemy. Biting him is not even to be contemplated. Tav is already willing to do a spot of blood supply every week or two. It wouldn’t do trying to press his luck inviting Mr. “I Believe In The Natural Order” to do an unnatural favor for Astarion’s unnatural self.
Besides. Halsin probably tastes gamey.
2.
One would almost think the Shadow-Cursed Lands would be a little bit homey for a vampire, if one didn’t think too hard about it. But what the Shadowlands have in “you don’t have to worry about sunlight burning you to a pretty little crisp,” they make up for in “sorry about the terrible Sharran curse.” Besides, as host to a tadpole, right now Astarion doesn’t have to worry about sunlight. Every moment he’s not in daylight feels like a shameful waste, and the Shadowlands doesn’t even have lots of scurrying little mammals running about to feed on like the Underdark does.
Every single day they dally here, the tadpoles might mutiny. They might shake off the chains of whatever it is that binds them, just as they incomprehensibly helped Astarion shake off Cazador’s thralldom. He’s tried to persuade Tav that Halsin can certainly cure his lost Harper and his strange little forest child ghost friend all by himself, he’s very skilled after all, and wouldn’t our time be better spent getting some answers about the Absolute? Tav has been infuriatingly unconvinced and seems slightly to be avoiding him. Which is Tav’s own loss, as proved by the fact that his last little pointless reconnaissance mission that he went on without inviting Astarion to be his eyes and ears in the dark resulted in Gale getting a very nasty little curse-and-burn combination that he’s currently sleeping off in camp, and Lae’zel falling out the second story of a tall building in a fight with a strange little woman made of gold.
Really. It’s like Tav doesn’t have the slightest fear of everything going south before they can all figure out how to control their tadpoles. He seems perfectly content to spend the next five years here, rolling around in the cursed dust instead of getting a move on. If Astarion is going to turn into a mindflayer, it would be nice to do it outside, preferably in Baldur’s Gate, so Cazador’s can be the first brain he eats. Tav evidently feels no such sense of urgency.
So instead they’re all going to spend at least another week doing errands like some wandering band of do-gooders out of a spoiled child’s fairytale. Tav is determined to keep charting out the dark corners of a land so cursed that literally no one is alive out there who doesn’t want to kill them on sight, and Jaheira apparently asked very nicely if there was any chance they could go check on a Harper cache that somehow got overlooked, and what did Tav say? Tav did not say “No, I have more important things to do, like not turn into a mindflayer.” Tav said yes. Astarion is glowering over this and half-paying attention to Tav, who’s bent over a map. They’re all gathered on the second floor of the Last Light Inn, so at least there aren’t any more tieflings hanging around to discuss the latest installment of their personal tragedies.
“Me, Shadowheart, Wyll, and Karlach will head back to the mausoleum to keep scouting,” says Tav. “Shadowheart since we still need to know about the Sharran bits, and Wyll and Karlach to help with fighting anything we need to fight while Gale and Lae’zel rest a little longer. There’s still that Harper cache we need to check on — Halsin, Astarion, if you’re mended, I want you to check that.” Tav indicates an X on the map, near where they had entered the Shadowlands and then immediately encountered a hoard of goblins and that awful Drider. “You’ll be covering ground we’ve covered recently, so there shouldn’t be too many big surprises. But if you want numbers, ask Jaheira, and she’ll lend you a Harper or two.”
On the one hand, there’s usually strength in numbers. On the other hand, does Astarion trust any of Jaheira’s Harpers first to be more useful than troublesome, and second not to kill him when they have a chance for being vampire spawn? He likes his odds better with just Halsin.
“I wager Astarion and I will cover ground faster without having to worry about the shadow-curse afflicting the Harpers,” says Halsin. “Isobel’s protection is powerful, but too many of them have fallen despite it. But it is not my decision to make alone, and I suppose Astarion knows better the dangers of the route we’re to take.” The druid is standing behind Tav with his arms crossed. Is he four times Tav’s size? He might be four times Tav’s size. Halsin looks to Astarion, all friendly and inscrutable. “What say you, shall we alone or with friends?”
“Oh, always alone,” says Astarion. If it comes out a little flirty, he can’t be held responsible. He spent two centuries flirting under pain of death. It’s a hard habit to break.
Tav and his chosen band of fairytale do-gooders (and Shadowheart, who isn’t a do-gooder but who is unreasonably devout) depart first, while Halsin circulates amongst the various sad cases on the first floor of the inn. Astarion amuses himself sampling wines at the bar. Maybe one day he’ll find one that tastes at least like a pleasant vinegar. Once Halsin has finished his rounds, he sits next to Astarion. He’s so large he actually blots out the lamplight. “Second thoughts?” Halsin asks.
“About setting out alone? Hardly,” says Astarion. “You were right, it’s by far the better option.”
“Something besides that is the matter, then?” says the druid.
“I can’t imagine why you’d think that,” says Astarion. “What else could there be? We’re just surrounded on all sides by cursed darkness that annihilates all life, and, not content enough with that, we’re planning to pick a fight with Ketheric Thorm. And I for one, though you don’t have the privilege, have a mindflayer tadpole in my head. And with all this going on, Tav has us running around doing favors for anyone who asks nicely. Perfectly restorative conditions, I assure you.”
Halsin has the gall to laugh. “Yes, fair enough.”
“The day we finally reach Baldur’s Gate,” continues Astarion, “I’m afraid we’ll have to deafen Tav, if not knock him out entirely, to keep every wretched little urchin we cross paths with from asking an urgent favor of him. Otherwise we’ll take months to even reach the gates of the Upper City.” It’s all too easy to imagine. Clever little sorcerer that Tav may be, he still seems like the sort of simple soul one could just invite to a mysterious party at a castle and he’d obligingly show up to have his blood drained.
“Hmm. Perhaps. Or perhaps many of the friends and allies Tav has made so far will aid us more than you imagine,” says the druid, with that air of ponderous wisdom again. It doesn’t fool Astarion. Halsin may be a century older than him, but years spent as a bear shouldn’t count. “The Harpers may be of more use than you think.”
Astarion had known well enough that there were Harpers in Baldur’s Gate — Cazador had always most strenuously insisted on the importance of staying under their notice. But how useful could an organization be if it was in Baldur’s Gate and didn’t know about Cazador? That, or the Harpers knew about Cazador but weren’t doing anything about him, which, while by far the wiser course of action, would make them rather a useless ally when it came to taking him down.
Astarion sighs. “We’ll see about that. Shall we now, or would you like to check if Jaheira wants us to ask the neighbors for a cup of sugar while we’re out?”
Halsin claps Astarion’s shoulder instead of dignifying that with a response. “Now’s as good a time as any,” he says.
Outside the protection of the inn, Astarion readies his quiver for a quick draw, if needed. He counts his enchanted arrows by touch – makes sure he knows the arrows blessed with radiant magic are separate entirely from the arrows spelled to cast darkness where they land. Halsin simply looks up at the dark sky, and around their cursed dark surroundings, and says, “I thought I might take on the form of something with a keener sense of smell than my own for our journey. Have you any objection?”
“I can’t imagine why I would,” says Astarion.
“You may need to remind me of our intended direction, especially should anything interesting cross our path.”
“I think,” says Astarion, “that may be less likely here than the usual places where you’re frolicking about on all fours, unless you like your dinner mildly to moderately cursed.”
“Some creatures have stronger stomachs than others,” Halsin says mildly. “Whistle if you must, to recapture my attention. Quietly shall do it. And should I scent something I think we ought avoid, I wager you’ll know by my reaction.”
Then there’s a twist of magic, and Halsin vanishes. Astarion smells the wolf before he sees it. Halsin-as-wolf is as disproportionately large compared to a normal wolf as Halsin is to a normal elf — the form is more dire wolf than true wolf. It’s at least somewhat reassuring. Halsin-the-wolf isn’t a wolf Astarion would pick a fight with, not that he’s in the habit of picking fights with wolves.
There’s no measuring days and nights in the Shadowlands. At the inn they use an hourglasses enchanted to turn when one half runs empty and a few clocks wound religiously. The Harpers have a watch schedule that combines both these measures in some complicated way that seems like it can’t be worth the trouble. Outside the borders of the curse it could be midday or midnight, and here it would still be the same flat terrible dark. It’s quiet. That’s the other thing about the cursed lands, the silence. No wind, no birds, no fellow travelers, no delicate little streams with footpaths over them. It is dark, and it is quiet, at least until something’s actively trying to kill you. When Halsin-the-wolf bristles and growls, it makes Astarion startle. He figures the direction Halsin is staring at is where the enemies are, or are coming from, or where they will be, maybe?, and if that’s not the case then Halsin should have come up with a clearer form of wolf-based communication. Astarion scrambles up a boulder, wondering vaguely how Halsin will manage without thumbs, and crouches behind the rubble there.
Halsin-the-wolf simply jumps the height of the boulder in one easy bound. Unfair.
Six cursed… people… of some sort wander by. Two of them are tieflings, Astarion thinks, although maybe not refugees from the Grove. Or perhaps they are refugees. It’s hard to tell, from a distance, and it also doesn’t matter what they were. They’re cursed now, and practically rabid. Mindless predators. Bloodsuckers, basically. Not their fault.
When Halsin bounds down, Astarion follows with significantly less grace. Halsin snuffles around a bit before Astarion redirects him north, towards the purported location of the cache. Then they’re off again. Twice more Halsin herds them off the narrow trail, first to avoid an enormous cursed ogre, second a handful of gibbering meazels. Then it’s quiet for a long time, and the trail narrows. They’ve passed the ruined old house where the Harpers ambushed the Drider (and them, though that misunderstanding, at least, had been cleared up relatively quickly.) The cache is up a narrow trail studded with boulders, as if some enormous explosion sent the earth crumbling — which might be what happened, for all Astarion knows. There’s evidence of the old war almost everywhere. He’s considering how likely it is that there’s a working cannon somewhere in this cursed darkness when he turns some last corner right as Halsin bristles and growls.
They’ve reached the cache point, which is also the location of an apparent scrap between a group of cursed ooze creatures and a pack of shadow mastiffs. Still standing are two cursed oozes and two of the ravening dog-shades, and all four of them are staring at Astarion.
“Oh, of course,” he says. “Perfect. This was really going far too smoothly to last, wasn’t it?”
Halsin-the-wolf makes some doggish sound of amusement beside him. But then he bristles and growls, a low, bestial sound that makes the hair on the back of Astarion’s neck stand up straight. The wolf scratches the earth beneath his left paw once, twice, and that’s all the warning Astarion gets before Halsin charges.
If there’s one thing Astarion knows the value of, as far as fighting is concerned, it’s surprise, and taking advantage of it when it happens to your enemies. The more you can do that, the better. There’s no fight preferable to an ambush so perfect that your victim never even has a chance to make a move. But if forced into what other people might judgmentally call a “fair fight,” the next best thing to an ambush is someone willing to draw fire while you take your sweet time aiming from the shadows. Astarion moves in the same moment Halsin does, splitting towards the great craggy boulders that had hidden the blobs and nice little ghost doggies from them in the first place.
Between the shades and the blobs, the shades are more the threat — they can move fast. Unfortunately it’s the shades that Halsin is already tangled up in, in a snarling sort of furry brawl, and the blobs are easier to aim at without worrying about hitting the wrong four-legged target. He sends two arrows into the bulk of the closest blob before either blob reacts, and he manages a third before they start doing anything about it. The closest blob groans and dissolves into a pile of rancid-looking goo, but the remaining blob spits acid in his direction, and he ducks back behind the safe cover of the boulders. At some point a particularly wolf-y whimpering noise inspires him to bravely stick his head out just long enough to shoot the ooze still standing, if oozes can be said to stand. The thing spits slowly enough that now that there’s just one, it’s not quite so hard to dodge, so Astarion manages to down it without any more dramatics.
Halsin, on the other hand — the shadow mastiffs have cornered Halsin-the-wolf against the split in the boulders that Jaheira had described as the actual cache location. It’s hard to know with shadow creatures, but one shade looks worse for wear, the other not so much. Halsin is bleeding but still savage-looking. How do you fight two extremely large dogs while not hurting another extremely large dog-type ally? Not, Astarion thinks, entirely from range, not when they keep lunging at one another and rolling around and sometimes at a glance you can’t quite tell who’s who. He settles his bow and quiver on his back and withdraws daggers instead. When Halsin and the more lively of the two shadow mastiffs start tearing into one another, Astarion hits the other mastiff from behind — a good, solid hit, or it would be if it was a real mastiff. The thing yowls, turns, and lunges at Astarion. It’s clumsy, though, and Astarion rolls away from the hit and comes up swinging again. Eventually he gets it down, though not without it managing to claw his left forearm just enough to get the blood going.
Halsin and the last shade are still fighting — the shade looking worse for wear now, but Halsin, too. Astarion watches dumbly for longer than he should, but his breath is slow coming back to him, and his left hand slick with his own lifeless blood. The best thing to do would be strike as soon as Halsin and the shade are far enough apart that he won’t hit Halsin by accident, he thinks; he thinks this in the instant before both creatures go flying past him in a whirlwind of fur and ichor and blood, and the shade tears into Halsin, and Astarion feels a bolt of dread at the sound Halsin’s body makes, hitting the ground. It’s not a particularly lively sound.
Except then instead of a wolf there’s a very large elf, rolling onto his side and kicking the shade with the force of both feet. The shade flies backwards with a whimper, and Astarion casts glacies the moment it hits the ground. It’s a trifling bit of magic for an enemy so strong, but the cantrip does exactly as he’d hoped. It slows the creature down long enough for Halsin to get to his feet, backpedaling towards Astarion, and for Astarion to ready his bow.
“It’s almost down, I believe,” says the druid, before casting an ice bolt of his own. He doesn’t look to be bleeding, but he’s moving more slowly than usual, as if weighed down.
Already wounded and coated in ice, it’s easy to strike the shade between the eyes with an arrow. Then another arrow, just for good measure, and because you really can’t count on a headshot necessarily killing a magical enemy. Finally it goes still, then collapses. Astarion waits with bow drawn until his own blood stops pounding hollowly in his ears, until Halsin eases beside him. “It’s over,” Halsin says, and Astarion returns his bow to his back.
“I wonder what caught their attention here,” says Astarion. With the battle over he turns his own attention to the gash on his forearm. “I don’t suppose shade-cursed creatures have any more use for spell scrolls and field reports than non-cursed creatures, hmm?”
“I suspect even the most heavy of Sharran curses cannot prevent animals from protecting their territories.” Halsin sounds almost fond, the lunatic. “I’ll be feeling that fight for a day or two, but by Silvanus I think I’ll not be the worse for wear. You, Astarion — ah, you’re bleeding,” says Halsin. “Let me see.”
“It’s nothing,” Astarion says, but Halsin is already rolling up Astarion’s bloody sleeve to see the cut underneath. “Really, the shirt will take more time to mend than the wound.”
“Be that as it may, blood can only attract more attention, should there be any other shades in these parts.” Halsin traces the contours of the wound. He must already be using healing magic, because the touch barely stings. His hands are enormous. With humor, “I’d think a vampire would understand that, no?”
“Hmmph,” says Astarion. The druid isn’t entirely wrong, although Astarion and his siblings have found that their own blood, when they bleed, doesn’t have quite the same… verve as mortal blood. Otherwise they’d have probably tried to drink each other dry.
Halsin murmurs the spell, and the wound closes. It stings, and then it doesn’t; it just feels warm. Astarion mutters something like thank you, really unnecessary, mostly out of pride. It is good to limit his blood loss — the more he loses, the sooner he’ll need to drink again. Halsin seems to be contemplating something similar as he studies Astarion’s blood on his hands. “I had an odd thought as we journeyed here,” he says. “A personal question, perhaps, and you needn’t answer. But you eat as the wolf does, do you not? Rabbit and bird and boar, perhaps, on a lucky day.”
“Well, usually.” Astarion considers leering but negotiates himself down to his best imitation of an innocent smile. “Of course, I’m not above — let’s say scavenging the remains of our enemies, if they’re edible. Unlike these poor fellows we’ve just fought off.”
It’s nothing like drinking from Tav, but nothing is. Was that why Cazador had prohibited them all from even tasting thinking blood? Just another deprivation?
“That was my thought,” Halsin says slowly — he’s arriving at his actual point. “There must be provision for you, then? While you dwell here I think there is likely neither wild boar nor even rat to satisfy your hunger.”
“Oh, there were a few at the inn,” says Astarion, before he can stop himself. “Rats, I mean.”
Whatever reaction he’d vaguely hoped for out of Halsin, he doesn’t get it. The druid simply nods. “No longer, I take it?”
“They should fire that strange imperious little cat they have immediately,” says Astarion. And then, to distract from the humiliation of admitting he’s been reduced to eating rats again without even getting a smidgen of pity from the druid, “Tav does some — let’s say blood donation now and then, if things get dire.”
“That seems like not so much, for someone so active as you.”
“You might be surprised,” Astarion says. “We should attend to this cache first, but if you’re all that curious, I’ll reveal all back at camp. Or the parts I feel like revealing, at least. You might have to ask nicely for the rest.” This time the flirtatiousness is intended, although to what end, he’s not entirely certain. Another person to drink from? A roll in the hay to shake off the post-fight jitters?
Halsin raises an eyebrow — not offended, but not particularly eager. “I’ll consider that,” he says.
The cache has certainly been compromised, though not, Astarion thinks, by anything sentient. “I’m not sure how much of this is left,” he says, crouching and staring into the crevasse.
Halsin starts to scrape the dirt away. “Let us do as all good scavengers do,” he says. “We shall take what is useful to us, and leave the rest for nature’s less discerning creatures.”
“Well. Here’s to scavenging,” says Astarion, and helps as much as he can without getting too much dirt on himself.
Even though the cache has clearly been rummaged through by some cursed wildlife or shade or what-have-you, Astarion could grudgingly admit it may be useful, possibly. All the provisions have rotted, and something’s chewed up most of the logbooks and reports, but apparently the magic wrapped up in the spell scrolls scared off whatever it was that did the chewing. He doesn’t go through all of them — that can be done in the warmth and safety of the inn, thank you very much — but whoever made these scrolls was either a very powerful wizard, or stole from one.
Together they manage to pack up everything into Halsin’s pack, even the chewed-up logbooks. (“I suspect Jaheira would rather have them in her possession, even in such a compromised state,” Halsin had said. It was him carrying them, so Astarion didn’t protest.) Halsin hefts it onto his back without any discussion — not that it looks that heavy. Or that Astarion will protest. Still.
“What’s next for the trip home?” says Astarion. “A wolf again? Or the cave bear? Or, don’t tell me, you’ve got something up your sleeve that can fly?”
Halsin looks at his bare arms. “No sleeves here, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, yes, very funny,” says Astarion.
Halsin laughs as if he is. “Yes, there are a few forms I know that can offer flight. I had planned to make the return journey as I am, however. If we must fight again I would prefer choose the form to fit the fight, and my magic, like yours, is not without its limits.”
Boring and sensible. “And if we move quietly enough, perhaps we’ll simply… make it back unnoticed,” says Astarion.
“Indeed,” says Halsin. And then, “Shall we?”
It is, small mercy, a quiet trip back to the inn. There are no more opportunities to flirt or needle at Halsin, both of which are entertaining. They cross paths briefly with some great purplish cursed crow creature that squawks at them and then flees, and halfway back they hide atop a stone outcropping to avoid a few strange little imps. It’s only when he can see the light of the inn in the distance that Astarion says, impulsively, “Cazador kept us — very hungry,” he says. “All of his spawn.”
Halsin seems to consider this. “So it does not bother you, going hungry here?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” says Astarion. “But believe me, it’s bearable. No one need worry I’ll lose control and drink every drop of blood out of one of those wretched tiefling children.”
This, finally, seems to get a rise out of the druid. Halsin sighs and rolls his shoulders. Then he says, with pointed patience, the kind of patience that means I know what you’re trying to do and I won’t give you the satisfaction, “Mol can be trying, as can all children. Nevertheless it is our duty to protect them. The reassurance of your self-control is more appreciated than your callousness, Astarion.”
It’s sharp enough rebuke that Astarion actually feels slightly guilty.
Jaheira is glad to have her tattered logbooks and field reports and Harper doodles back, and she turns over half the spell scrolls to Halsin as recompense. Halsin stays at Art Cullagh’s side, somewhat pointedly, Astarion thinks. Fine. Halsin probably doesn’t taste much better than a bear anyways.
(Not that Astarion knows what bear tastes like. He’s never been that desperate, he tells himself, not before now and not now.)
At camp Astarion wiles away time at camp alone, while Gale and Lae’zel continue their convalescences in boring quiet. He files his nails. He gets bored with a book. He wonders, now and then, if he’d come at that conversation about his dietary habits somewhat differently, if Halsin might have… offered. Out of sympathy, or pity, or — though maybe he’s fooling himself — attraction. Curiosity, at least.
He considers the absence of his reflection in the mirror he keeps in camp. Gale had asked him once if he kept it as a reminder, and Astarion had been coy about it. The truth is that he’s not sure why he keeps it at all. He’d bought for a song off a tiefling in the grove, before they all set off on their doomed march to Baldur’s Gate, and getting rid of it now would feel like admitting to a weakness. Is he Halsin’s type? Or can he contort himself to seem like Halsin’s type, at least for long enough? He can remember, dimly, the sharpness of his features. He supposes that now his eyes are the same color as his siblings’ eyes, a ruddy red, not the amber of his childhood. Decades ago in Baldur’s Gate a sweet young woman had drawn him before they slept together. (Before Astarion had stolen her away for Cazador.) He hadn’t dared keep it, though, the portrait. Cazador finding it and mocking him for it was too much to bear, even in imagination.
None of it matters. He’s being absurd, thinking too much about a stuck-up druid who probably thinks of Astarion as the quintessence of a violation against nature.
And about the young woman who Cazador certainly killed not hours after she finished Astarion’s portrait.
When Tav is back Astarion will ask if he can drink from him, and when all of this is over, the tadpole is tame and the Absolute destroyed or subjugated, Astarion will take the gold he’s earned, scrounged, and stolen during the past months. And he’ll hire some of those portrait-painters constantly ingratiating themselves to nobles. He’ll have each one of them paint a portrait, and altogether that will help him remember. It will be as good as a mirror. It will have to be. He lays down to trance and tries to think no more of it all.
3.
Astarion knows, objectively, that Halsin is an extraordinarily powerful druid. He was an archdruid at one point, after all, and there probably aren’t that many of those around. It’s just easy to forget, sometimes, because Halsin has one of those mellow, trustworthy natures that makes Astarion instinctively think sucker, even when he knows Halsin’s not, and because Astarion is surrounded by complete lunatics constantly doing unbelievable things like: defying Shar, defying Mystra, defying their own warlock patrons, picking fights with the Dead Three’s chosen, et cetera. It’s convenient because they’ve promised to help him with the additional unbelievable thing of “taking down a vampire lord,” but it does have a way of distorting one’s vision of the normal way things are done.
For some reason fighting a whole hoard of doppelgangers at a circus is what reminds Astarion that the whole world is both ending and upside-down. He slits one’s throat, Tav’s bolts of magic missile are flying everywhere, and in the middle of it all, Halsin has turned into an owlbear and is stepping on the fake clown over and over.
Astarion starts laughing once the fight is over and doesn’t stop until Halsin, once more a large elf and no longer a large owlbear, comes over to check on him. “Don’t tell me you think clowns are really that funny,” says Halsin.
Tav is still wearing the clown makeup he’d donned before going on stage to help Dribbles-the-impostor with his frankly terrible routine and talking very gravely to someone who looks like she might be in charge. Shadowheart is having a conversation with a caged dilophosaurus. They’re at a circus.
“Has the cub back at camp seen you pull that one before?” Astarion asks, wiping tears from his face. “Please tell me he hasn’t, I want to see his reaction to you turning into an owlbear for the first time in front of him.”
Apparently having judged that if Astarion is having a nervous breakdown, it’s a minor one, Halsin sits down next to him. There’s less damage around them than you’d expect, given a fight between shape-shifters, a sorcerer, a recently converted Selunite cleric, and an owlbear. It’s like a bad joke. “You know,” says Halsin thoughtfully, “I’m not sure that I have. Would it be useful? That I’m not sure of. He seems quite content with Scratch as his older role model, and I’d hate to interfere with such a relationship.” Halsin speaks with the mock ponderousness of someone who’s definitely joking but willing to take the joke much further down the road.
“You’re right,” says Astarion, fighting for an even tone. “Scratch would never forgive you.”
They’ve caught Shadowheart’s eye — she wanders over with an expression Astarion can only think of as affectionate suspicion. “What are you two losing your minds over here together?” she asks. “Don’t tell me you think clowns are—”
“No, no, certainly not,” says Halsin. “Shadowheart, in your opinion, do you think my showing up to camp in owlbear form would disrupt the bond of respect and admiration that the owlbear cub has with Scratch?”
“I certainly don’t think we should risk it,” she says, and taps her lips with her finger. “I could go ask Crimson over there, my new friend the dilophosaurus. He seems to have quite a few valuable insights into animal psychology.”
Astarion tips over into laughter again, this time joined by Halsin. Tav is the one looking over at them suspiciously now, making his polite excuses to come over and join them.
“Ah, Tav,” says Halsin gravely. “We have a weighty inquiry to present you, and would appreciate your most measured counsel.”
Only Tav and Halsin were hurt during the fight — Tav bitten by the false Dribbles’s terrible dog, and Halsin scratched across the hand before wild-shaping. As a rule, Halsin gesticulates while he speaks, and now is no exception. For just a moment Astarion gets the scent of his blood — rich, and bright. Only a little bit owlbear-y. Does it wear off, he wonders? How long does it take for Halsin’s blood to simply be his own, not the blood of some shape he’s taken on? Or is it always wild and strange?
Not that it matters — Astarion thinks he’s likely made enough of a mess of things during his frantic insistence on getting to Baldur’s Gate that even though Halsin is something like a friend, he would probably sooner stake Astarion than offer up his neck.
Still. It can’t hurt to wonder.
4.
And so it goes — hiding in the dark again, without even the comfort of being alone.
The last time he’d spend in the Underdark had been with Tav and the others, scurrying about like mad to do what felt like a hundred stupid little errands for anyone with a sad story whose path Tav crossed. At the time Astarion had found it almost unbearably frustrating. What use was it doing favors for mushroom people when they had illithid tadpoles in their heads and Gur hunters on his trail and rumors to investigate about something called the Absolute? Now that all feels — so far away. Quaint. As much another life as his life before Cazador made him spawn.
He’s back now, and there are untold hundreds of other vampire spawn clumsily making the Underdark feel crowded. His siblings are the worst, if only because they’re the only other spawn who’ve really lived as spawn instead of waiting in some damned abandoned cage for decades, but their freedom is still so new to them. Astarion had the better part of a year to adapt to Not Being Under Cazador’s Thumb Forever And Ever Permanently. The rest of them — well, it’s all new.
Not all of his siblings stayed in the Underdark. Gods only know where Dalyria went, if she’s still alive — without Cazador to compel them all, perhaps Leon finally killed her? If so, good riddance. Astarion might have resented Leon for being Cazador’s favorite hunter just like the rest of them, but Dalyria obsessing about finding a cure was hardly any better. Violet struck out on her own after a few days of travel below ground (she wouldn’t have lasted a day traveling with Tav.) Yousen and Petras were both half-useless, Yousen too melancholy and Petras too overwhelmed to do much more than fret. It’s Aurelia and Leon who have taken it upon themselves to impose some order on the chaos they’ve all brought upon the Underdark — Aurelia bristling with humiliation that she’d ever believed Cazador (don’t forget you were enthralled, Leon reminds her sometimes, but it never takes); Leon the least damaged of them all, by simple virtue of being the youngest, and because it turned out he’d gotten one over on Cazador in the end by smuggling his daughter north. He doesn’t know where she is. Safer that way, he thinks, even now that Cazador is dead. Astarion admires it, even if he can’t understand it.
Sometimes it reminds him of his time in the Shadowlands — no day, no night, too many dangers, too many of the weak falling to them. In their first days in the Underdark the spawn who lost control would tear each other apart. They tried to tear Astarion and his siblings apart. To pacify them he'd hunted, for anything with running blood, and he hunts now still, no longer for Cazador but for his own kind. He spends down the gold stolen from Cazador’s palace to have cattle and swine and lame horses delivered. And, slowly, things stabilize. The spawn adapt. They make their peace with the dark, with their hungers. They make friends. Meet the myconoids. Some strike out on their own, but there’s still thousands of them, slowly settling into what must be some old drow outpost, abandoned to time or after the Absolute revealed itself and forced so many infected to transform. Astarion finds himself doing paperwork, like the magistrate he’d been so many lifetimes ago. The spawn form guilds among themselves. There’s a master blacksmith among them taking apprentices. It is both unbelievably absurd and unbelievably lonely.
Sometimes he considers inviting the others who’d stayed in the realm to visit. To see what’s going to be the city of the spawn, one day. Shadowheart would appreciate the humor of it (“I see you brought Baldur’s Gate to you, Astarion.”) Jaheira would be useful organizing them. She could teach them codes. The importance of staying with a group if you’re going to wander near somewhere there are hook horrors. Gale would probably have research ideas. He could organize a school. Write a paper.
Wyll and Tav and Karlach are still in Avernus, as best he knows. Tav will taste like sulfur when he comes back. If he comes back. Not that they’ll likely have a sure-drink-my-blood sort of relationship when they see each other again. Even if they did, Astarion isn’t starving anymore. None of them are, somehow. Still, it makes him wistful.
He doesn’t, though. Invite them. Any of them. Even Halsin, who’s likely closest, having settled more or less near the grove with his legion of orphans, at least according to Jaheira, who writes him every now and then for reasons Astarion can't fathom. It’s just the thought of actually seeing one of them again makes him think of finding some dark shadow to hide in.
Just — wouldn’t it be grand if they only ever knew him as a creature able to walk in the sun?
He’d watched them all from a distance, once he’d realized his protection from sunlight had died with his tadpole. As they all went their separate ways, battered and bruised as they were. Halsin had been bleeding. He and Shadowheart and Gale had talked together at the docks for awhile, then parted — Halsin for the Harper base. Astarion could have followed him. Asked if he could stay with the Harpers until he was ready to face his siblings in the Underdark. Asked if Halsin wouldn’t mind — just this once — offering up a little blood. Because Astarion wanted to know what he tasted like. But he didn’t ask then, and he won’t now.
+1.
Magic is a tricky thing. There are spells, enchantments, rituals — Gale could have discoursed on the differences for hours and might well have, while they were traveling, while Astarion had tuned him out. For his part Astarion had never particularly bothered learning the distinctions and differences. There were a few small magics he could cast as a high elf, but he’d had no particular talent for magic compared to other children, and even as a child he’d cared little to compete at something where he’d be starting at a disadvantage. He’d contented himself with the handful of cantrips any other high elf could cast without thinking, and he left all the studying to his compatriots who wanted to spend their lives studying dusty books and feuding over translations out of dead languages. He’d spent his energy where his natural talents seemed to lie: being clever and getting away with anything he could get away with. Even wizards could be victims of pickpockets. (Actually they were particularly tempting targets — no one seemed to get lost in their own thoughts so thoroughly as a wizard, which made their pockets easier to rifle through than you’d think.)
But even Astarion knows most spells are dispersed when their caster dies. It seems to be one of the principal reasons why people end up wanting wizards dead, over their accumulated years. But magic, tricky thing that it is, only gets trickier as the caster grows in power, and there are no small number of ways magic can be used to sink into earth or stone and change a place more permanently. The Szarr Palace is so thick with enchantments it will take a century before Cazador’s touch is truly gone from it. This is true too of the Thorm Mausoleum, the Gauntlet of Shar, so many cursed places he’s waltzed through in the past year. Including one location significantly more minor — minor enough that he’d almost forgotten it, until the Underdark and its new crowd of spawn became too suffocating and sent him wandering further and further on foot, by himself, remembering all the strange twists and turns of following Tav and the others. The strange murderous fish people. The merchant’s addled husband, stranded searching for noblestalk. The boulette. (He’d tasted that thing’s blood out of curiosity. It was singularly vile.)
And, of course, the hag. Astarion finds himself staring alone up at a cliff side studded with great, glowing mushrooms. Some of them, he remembers, are illusory, but the others lead up, and thereby out of the Underdark.
Not to somewhere much better, granted. But Astarion is so fed up that the hag’s old hut and the putrid wetlands she’d ruled over seem like they might be a nice change of scenery. Who knows, there might be red caps, or more cursed frogs — anything besides infant spawn and myconoids would be a welcome sight, even another hag.
It takes half an hour of chucking stones at the mushrooms to identify which are real and which aren’t, but all time spent alone is an improvement over the available alternatives, and once Astarion has figured out a workable path up the cliffs, he bounds up. Everything atop the cliff is exactly has he remembers it. He can almost imagine Tav around the corner, or Gale behind him, complaining about his knees. More glowing mushrooms, and illuminated flying insects, and soft dark grass. Slowly Astarion picks his way to the fairy circle he remembers. It’s still illuminated, still humming with magic, even though Auntie Ethel is, improbably, dead. Without thinking too hard about it, Astarion steps into the circle. If another hag has taken over, so be it; if so, it probably won’t attack unless Astarion provokes it.
There’s a flicker of darkness, of light, of magic, and then the air tastes different — deader, dustier, drier. Astarion smells rats, the sorts of birds that make nuisances of themselves up in the rafters, bats, and swamp rot. No fresh hag. A small mercy. No thinking life. Either a mercy or a disappointment.
Astarion explores awhile, light on his feet — Auntie Ethel had evidently reset her traps and set up some ingenious new ones before leaving for Baldur’s Gate. But it’s nothing he can’t manage with a bit of focus and finesse. Upstairs, through the fireplace, there aren't so many traps, only a few guarding potions and particularly rare ingredients. Astarion leaves them at first. It’s daytime when he first sticks his head out, and even so far from the windows, the light leaking in hurts his eyes. An entirely unwelcome reminder of how long he’s spent in the Underdark. How long it’s been since the Absolute was destroyed, and his helpful little tadpole with it. Astarion finds a slightly cleaner-than-average place in Ethel’s demented laboratory and trances until nighttime. Under safety of dark he takes stock of the first floor. Covers the windows he can. Explores the bog until just before dawn. It’s still hideous, thick with cutting vines and poison traps and red caps. It isn’t until he realizes he’d hoped for boar, or deer, or rabbits at least, that he admits to himself he’s planning on staying here.
Just for a little while. Until the company of other spawn feels bearable. A year or two. Five years, tops. They'll all still be there. They're vampires.
It’s not as if he’s slumming it, after all. Reclaiming the former lair of a powerful hag is actually perfectly respectable, if you think about it. Impressive, even. He talks to himself about this as he cleans and sets traps of his own, as if there’s anyone around he has to convince. As if any minute Tav might poke fun at him for his luxurious tastes, or Karlach might offer to help knock down a wall, or Gale might start judging what remains of Ethel’s ingredient reserve. The new, Selunite Shadowheart would probably roll her eyes and find some way to brighten the place up without, well, literally brightening it, at least with sunlight. Either Wyll or Halsin would understand and appreciate the sparsity, Astarion decides, shooing birds out from the rafters. It’s not that he misses them. It’s just that he’d spent so much time with them. And remembering someone isn’t missing them. He almost convinces himself.
He doesn’t abandon the spawn in the Underdark entirely. He goes back, sometimes. He even brings them the potions from Ethel’s stockpile that he’s moderately certain aren’t poison. To his credit, Leon doesn’t ask where it is that Astarion is sneaking off to, he just sighs and says that if Astarion can scrounge up more healing potions, they’ll be much indebted; the new spawn are still figuring out their limits and keep picking fights with things much bigger than them. Aurelia just wants romance novels. It would be churlish to deny them, when they’re letting him sort of just fuck off and completely abdicate all responsibility for the spawn, more of whom were captured by him than by Aurelia and Leon combined. The druid’s grove is still open to outsiders, if substantially less lively without the tieflings, and the halfling trader recognizes him but has the good graces not to ask too many questions about what on earth he’s doing back here. “Should I be prepared for another world-shaking calamity?” he does ask, not without humor.
“If so it won’t be my fault and I’ll not know any more about it than you, I assure you,” Astarion tells him. “I’m strictly retired from all forms of adventuring, let alone heroics.”
“Ah, that’s a shame,” says Arron. “Some of the shadow druids haven’t taken entirely to the new Archdruid’s rule here, and there’s more than a few here who’d pay to have them either talked away from the grove or dispatched of more permanently.”
Astarion does consider it. It’s not as if he hasn’t had thinking blood to drink since Tav left for Avernus, but one thing about living with several thousand spawn is that when a dozen monster hunters crash into camp trying to kill you all, once you’ve killed them, you have to share. “Well, if I run into any of my more public-minded friends, I’ll let them know,” Astarion says.
The one inconvenient thing about trading at the Grove is the bloody distance between the grove and what he’s started calling his lair. A huge jag of cliffs separates the grove and his lair, so by foot, the fastest route back is through the once-blighted village, now overgrown and crumbling, and a good hunting ground for hare and boar. It takes most of a day or night to get between the grove and wetlands, and it’s not as if Arron stays up all night, even when Astarion asks him nicely a month in advance.
It leaves Astarion forced to choose between staying the night at the grove, in the company of judgmental druids, or alone in the once-blighted village, while guarding whatever wares he has to either sell or which he’s purchased. Usually, even though it takes longer, Astarion travels to the grove overnight and trances through the day in an out-of-the-way cave where Tav had once told Zevlor he wasn’t entirely comfortable bringing down the druids just because he asked nicely, because Tav did sometimes say no to people, even if it wasn’t as often as Astarion would have. Then, once evening falls, Astarion catches Arron before he breaks down his trade station for the night, and then Astarion makes his own way back — well — home. The trip makes a day and a half altogether, just long enough that Astarion is always slightly nervous that he’ll come back and find that a fresh new hag has decided to evict him from the hag lair he claimed and cleaned up, fair and square. (Arron has promised to sell him fey flower if any ever comes his way. It’s always nice to have a backup plan.) The whole “poisonous bog” thing otherwise deters other unwanted visitors passing through, and any standard bandits or amateur vampire hunters who care to drop in and say hello are more than welcome to serve themselves up as an improvement over boar for dinner yet again.
But this time when he returns from the grove, with an hour left before dawn, he smells bear. Familiar bear. Astarion hesitates at the margin of the wetlands. If Halsin is snuffling about the bog, Astarion can probably make it downstairs to the fairy circle and into the Underdark before Halsin finds him. But the thought is absurd. Why should he avoid Halsin? He hasn’t eaten any druids recently. Arron’s tried to recruit him to eat druids and he even declined. And besides, Halsin has that sharp, sly nose — even if Astarion made it to the fairy circle, Halsin could just track him there, and he’d recognize that magic at a glance, and Astarion would be stuck explaining why he’d tried to run away instead of saying hi, hello, and offering to put on tea or whatever it was that people were supposed to do when old adventuring pals dropped in unannounced to snuffle around your bog.
Halsin hasn’t exactly left a note on the front door, but he has left a huge, muddy paw print at the top of the steps. Basically the same thing. Astarion rolls his eyes, says to no one, “Really, I’ll have to clean that,” and unpacks the wares he’d bought from Arron. He builds a fire, even if he doesn't go quite so far as to put water on to boil. It's fall above ground — Astarion hadn’t realized how much he appreciated seasons until moving underground full-time — and even once the sun rises, the hut will stay decidedly chilly.
Astarion smells Halsin before he hears him — there's no mistaking cave bear once you know it — but perhaps a quarter-hour before dawn, Halsin knocks, and is in his own towering humanoid form when Astarion opens the door. “Hello,” says Halsin. “It’s been some time. Are you well?”
Whatever question Astarion had expected, it wasn’t are you well. “Oh, you know,” says Astarion. “Still can’t walk in the sun, but Cazador’s still dead and I’m not a mindflayer. I suppose you want to come in?”
Halsin shrugs. “Far be it from me to shrink away from sleeping in the embrace of nature, below the stars. But most of nature is less poisonous than the wetlands here. I’d be much obliged to borrow the comfort of your hearth.”
“Yes, well, come in any time before the sun rises,” says Astarion. “There’s a fire, but don’t expect any other amenities.”
“You have my thanks,” says Halsin, and indeed goes straight to the fire to warm himself. “An interesting location for one such as you to settle in,” he says.
“I’m not certain how insulted I should be by that. I’m certain I should be insulted, mind you, it’s just a matter of degree,” says Astarion. Aurelia’s new hardbacks, wrapped in oilskin for protection; health potions, for the spawn trying to take down a bulette that’s started rearing its ugly head too nearby for comfort. Arron had also tucked in a few provisions, a kind but extremely pointless gesture given that Astarion is a vampire and has no use for apples and would better appreciate perhaps a discount, but he hadn’t refused them. It does mean he now has something to offer Halsin, who gratefully accepts.
“Hardly,” says Halsin. He sits beside the hearth, sets his bag aside, places Arron’s little groceries next to god-knows-what that he’s carting around in his own pack. “I suppose I had expected you to stay in the Gate, or one of the larger cities of the Underdark, perhaps. To find you instead seeking solitude — I cannot say I’m not surprised.”
“A few thousand immature vampire spawn will inspire an appreciation for solitude in even those most otherwise gregarious of creatures,” Astarion says loftily. He lays back on his own bedroll, looking up at Halsin, backlit by the fire, and devouring a hunk of cheese that would probably last more normal elves a week. He doesn’t say that being in Baldur’s Gate but confined again to the shadows would be like rubbing salt into a wound he’d otherwise forget he had, and that the noisy company of the spawn sometimes — gods help him — made him miss traveling with Tav and the others. “But what brings you here? Not this news I’ve heard of shadow druids causing trouble again, is it?”
“Hmm, not particularly. I’m curious how word of the grove’s continuing issues with — ah, of course, you go there to trade, and what better source of gossip than one who roams widely and knows so many? Arron must know.” Halsin looks more warmly amused than anything else. “No, I trust Archdruid Francesca will handle the situation as she sees fit, and I trust her judgment above mine. Too long I let the shadow druids fester among themselves, and too much power did they accrue while I led the druids of the grove as a sleepwalker would.”
It’s not self-recrimination the same way someone else would self-recriminate — there’s no bitterness, no self-loathing. Just a flat acceptance of his limitations and his failures. It probably ought to be inspiring, which means Astarion just wants to needle him a little bit. “And there was an entire hag in your backyard to boot. Selling potions in the grove, even!”
“Too right you are,” says Halsin. “The fact that she slipped our notice, even within the grove — powerful indeed. In truth the grove likely would have elected to either leave her be, or propitiate her in hopes of persuading her to trade elsewhere. I can’t say I’d have overruled them. Taking on a hag is no small thing, even for the most experienced druids of the grove.”
Dead now, though, dead as Cazador, and dead as the brain. There’s some satisfaction in that. “How plentiful are hags, exactly?” says Astarion, so casually that apparently it appears to immediately make Halsin suspicious.
“Concerned another will contest your new domain?” asks Halsin, amused. “I cannot blame you. Perhaps Ethel being truly struck down will inspire caution in any hag that might otherwise covet your dwelling. Still, better to be on the alert.”
It’s not exactly the most reassuring thing Halsin could have said, but it will do for now. “So if not the shadow druids, what does bring you here? Last I heard you were responsible for as many orphans as we have spawn in the Underdark.”
“I suspect you will not like my answer, but I shall be truthful,” says Halsin. “Tav wrote by way of Dammon, asking me to check that you hadn’t done something reckless.”
Halsin is right; he doesn’t like it. “Aw, he still cares,” says Astarion, with a syrupy coyness. “Even all the way down there in Avernus.”
“If you wanted to join them, I’m certain they’d have you,” says Halsin.
“Ugh. Gods, no. Can you imagine the smell of sulfur? It gets into everything, I’ve heard. Anyways — how did you find me?”
“I checked with your compatriots in the Underdark, who reported they weren’t particularly keen to track you down themselves, but that if I wanted to try, you seemed to be within a day’s journey from a merchant named Arron.” Halsin stretches. The sun has risen, now, and although the windows of the hut are blocked by board and blanket, enough light bleeds in to light up the movement of muscle. Why are his arms so big? What does he need that much pure strength for? He can turn into a bear if he wants to. “So I started at the grove and simply wandered until I found your scent. It took not quite so long as a week, in the end.”
Halsin out there, sniffing around for him for that long — does Astarion like that or not? He shouldn’t. “So what are you planning to report back? Rank dereliction of duty leaving the spawn to fend for themselves? That I’ve gone mad and started gardening in Auntie Ethel’s old backyard?”
Halsin does look mildly alarmed at that. “Have you? I doubt anything she’d have grown would be anything less than quite dangerous.”
“No, I haven’t gotten quite that bored yet,” says Astarion.
“Hmm, I don’t know. What would you write, in my stead?”
“To Tav? That everything’s all perfectly fine here and he shouldn’t worry a hair on his head,” says Astarion. “I’m a perfectly domesticated vampire, and all the spawn in the Underdark are much the same. Plenty of boar here, you know that.”
“Quite,” says Halsin. Then, “Don’t think that was the implication — mine or his. You turned down Cazador’s power. I think you’d not kill a person to drink from simply for the drinking them.”
The deeply, miserably annoying thing is that Halsin is right. Astarion can’t even joke about eating random passers-by anymore; it doesn’t feel right. Halsin is considering the rest of the provisions now — apples, dried fruit, cured meat. They'd all taste like ash in his mouth.
“I always wondered what you thought of me,” says Astarion, before he can stop himself. “Early, I mean. I thought a druid might inherently consider a vampire his enemy. We do — left to our own devices, we do eat quite a lot.”
Halsin considers this. He rolls the apple between his palms. “Nature gave some creatures sharper teeth — sharper appetites — than others. It is no sin for the wolf to eat what he must to live.”
“But what, then, of the vampire?” Astarion wills himself to stop asking questions he doesn’t want the answers to and make polite small talk instead. Does Halsin have a favorite orphan? A top five favorite orphans? Surely he must. But he can’t stop now. A different sort of ungovernable appetite, to know. “We’re hardly predators made by nature.”
“Yes, it is a quandary.” The druid splits the apple between his hands. His hands are enormous. “We druids concern ourselves mostly with the living, and trust the Oak Father with our dead. So what of the undead? Some at the grove would say the undead are outside the domain of nature entirely. I think not. Certainly the magic that made the first vampire was not the Oak Father's. But here you live, Astarion, in a swamp once blighted by a hag's wicked magic, and you've begun to the cull the weak of the deer and the boar grown too plentiful in the absence of predators. With time the marsh-grasses will grow thick and the waters will clear and the wolves and their brethren will return, and nature will be restored to balance. I believe that makes you part of nature, just as I am." He splits the apple again, and he eats one piece of it nearly whole. Sweet juice runs down his fingers. He has to be doing that on purpose.
"So as long as I contain myself to the sickest of the little beasties," says Astarion, "you'll, what, consider me acceptable? refrain from dragging me out into the sun just to add some dust to the ecosystem?"
Halsin laughs. "You, acceptable? I think you'd take that as an insult." He eats another huge piece of apple, then licks some juice off his wrist. "There's a distinction between hunting for sustenance and killing for pleasure. You don't need me to tell you that. The burden of your hunger is a great one, but I think you up to the task."
It’s an extremely kind thing to say. The kindest thing, perhaps, Halsin has ever said to him. There’s one thing Astarion can think to say that will make Halsin regret his words, and he shouldn’t say it, does not want to say it, has to say it. “Very pretty words.” He clears his throat. “Ah. Can I — drink your blood?”
“Certainly,” says Halsin. He finishes the apple.
Astarion had been preparing to explain himself. Apologize, possibly? Halsin has managed the one answer he hadn’t prepared for.
“Tav told me it wasn’t particularly painful,” Halsin says, as if he’s the one who needs to persuade Astarion and not the other way around. “I’m amenable now if you are, though perhaps your hunger is sated for now…?” He looks amused, damn him. “I’m entirely unopposed. Had you asked in the Shadowlands I’d have obliged — Tav said he kept thinking you’d ask, but that you kept — his words — ‘chickening out.’”
“No — no, now — if you’re certain,” says Astarion, choosing to completely ignore the second half of what Halsin said. It is a great regret that he can think of nothing clever to say.
“I suspect I’ll need some time to recover afterwards, but so long as you’ll be my willing host for a handful of days, I am at your service.” Halsin retrieves his own bedroll from his bag and spreads it out, not so far from Astarion’s, and lies down.
Astarion goes to him and — and prepares to drink.
Halsin is huge. He knows that. It’s different actually being on top of him, though — getting to Tav’s neck hadn’t required quite so much flexibility.
“I won’t take too much,” Astarion says quietly. Again, as if Halsin needs convincing, and not himself.
“I have rather more blood than Tav, I figure,” says Halsin. “I shall tell you once I need you to stop, if you haven’t had your fill.”
Which is a cocky thing to say and manages to spur Astarion to actually bite Halsin. Like the rest of him, his neck is enormous. He drinks. Halsin does not taste gamey in the slightest. Neither like bear nor wolf nor any other beast. Twice he pulls back to judge Halsin’s remaining strength, and both times Halsin merely raises an eyebrow. The second time Halsin is actually casting a spell.
Astarion feels — drunk. Not really, drunkenness never felt this pleasant. But truly sated in a way that usually requires someone to die, and instead he has Halsin beneath him, still very warm and very alive, even though Astarion has legitimately had his fill. Magic pulses beneath them — a healing spell, Astarion realizes, a high-order one. Halsin is healing himself from his blood loss even as Astarion drinks. He’s considered this. “You,” says Astarion, “taste like — sunlight.”
“Now who has the pretty words?” murmurs Halsin. His eyes are glazed over, but still sharp, and his chest rumbles beneath Astarion’s splayed legs. He touches Astarion’s mouth, rubs at the blood there. “I’m glad you asked. ‘Tis an interesting sensation. I know not what to compare it to.”
“It’s — pleasurable, for some people,” says Astarion, as if Halsin isn’t obviously all but sweating with arousal underneath him. Halsin’s fingers are still over his mouth.
Halsin closes his eyes and sighs — the magic lifts. Beneath him, Halsin breathes steadily for a long minute. Astarion should — move. But Halsin’s hand is still at his face. Halsin only opens his eyes again when he seems to have shaken off the worst of the effects — “I could imagine taking advantage of that one day,” he says.
“Not today?”
“No, I think not,” says Halsin. Evaluating him now. “But this, perhaps.” His hand goes lightly to the back of Astarion’s neck, and there is almost no pressure, but his intent is clear. Not forceful. Simply clear.
It’s not as if Astarion’s opposed. He kisses Halsin. Gets Halsin’s own blood into his mouth. Halsin traces the scars on Astarion’s back through his shirt until Astarion has had his fill of this, too. An intimacy he hadn’t realized he’d missed.
“I will, I think, have to sleep for days,” says Halsin.
Astarion’s turn to laugh. “It will be the least I can do to lend you my hearth,” he says. He sounds foolishly giddy even to his own ear.
“And then head back to the children for awhile.” He almost sounds sleepy for a moment. “I’m meant to visit Baldur’s Gate sometime, too. Jaheira insists, and I make it a habit to stay on the good side of the Harpers.”
“I’m planning to visit eventually, too. Baldur’s Gate, I mean.” Not Halsin’s orphan camp. Not quite yet. “When Leon and Aurelia don’t seem quite so overwhelmed.”
“I imagine you could accelerate that process by spending more time with them,” says Halsin, completely innocently.
“Well, there’s no rush, really,” says Astarion, which makes Halsin laugh to himself.
“Why the visit then?”
“Well, if you must know, I’d like to hire a portrait artist,” admits Astarion. “The whole reflection thing, you know. Maybe three or four of them. Sometimes they flatter, you know, even if you insist they don’t.”
Halsin laughs again. Astarion has never met anyone who laughs so much who he hasn’t also wanted to kill. For some reason when Halsin laughs it just seems like — delight running over. “Why, you should have said sooner! My skill may not rate so highly as the court portraitists, but I suspect my work at least more lively.”
“Really?” Astarion feels genuine shock. He was less surprised when Halsin basically implied he’d have happily let Astarion feed on him the day after they’d met. “Why at all would you?” He’s always pictured a young version of Halsin doing nothing but sprinting through the woods and wrestling various wild animals, not taking down portraits like a noble’s dutiful first-born daughter doing her best to acquire the aristocratic wifely skills.
“I only became a young man after the drawing of the veil,” Halsin explains, as he rises to his feet.
Astarion himself only dimly remembers the veil drawing for him, the time when finally, in his thirties, the memories of his trances were his own, and not of the elves who’d come before him.
Halsin rummages through the shelves of Ethel's old things, Astarion's new things. He thumbs through a stack of old paper, the kind Arron uses to wrap packages. "My people had a ritual used to beseech the Oak Father to let one age further as man or woman. I only proceeded once my trances were of my own memories, not the memories of men before me, to know it was my own knowledge of myself I acted upon."
Halsin sits before Astarion and smooths the plain brown paper down on the floor. He sets the charcoal swept from the fire into the mortar and pours in water, and begins to grind it down. The blood loss, and so much use of his own magic, slows him, but his voice is steady.
“As my own body changed, I found it ever harder to take on the forms of animals I’d known since I was a small child. I’d learned first the cat, the badger, the spider.” He dips his thumb into the charcoal paint he’s created, looks up at Astarion, and begins, even as he continues to talk. “The priest with whom I was closest advised I pretend as if I needed to learn my form-changing as a novice again. To take on an animal’s form, you must first understand it — truly understand it, not in the passing way we often think we understand things. I started by once more learning the form of the cat. And what better way to both develop and test one’s understanding of a form than by capturing it in an image?”
“Hmm. I learned to read and write in school,” says Astarion, but he's only teasing, and Halsin recognizes it with a smile.
“Not to cheat at cards and pick pockets?”
“That was strictly extracurricular.”
“I kept up with the practice as I aged,” says Halsin. He looks from Astarion to his paper again and again, like someone comparing two coins to judge if one is counterfeit. “There were… growing pains for me far longer than typical. Yes, you’re terribly shocked, I know.”
“I wasn’t planning on saying anything,” says Astarion, lying.
“Even now, if I must learn a new form to take on — a rare thing, certainly — this is how I begin,” says Halsin. “But it was essential for me then. I’d not even make an attempt at wild-shaping without many hours of study. My compatriots came to know me for my discipline at it, and it should be no surprise they asked for their own likenesses as well. That came with more difficulty, and I tried the patience of my friends using them as my studies. It’s a pleasure to once more have the excuse to indulge in the exercise — perhaps it is something I should teach the children.”
Astarion is entirely too sated and warm to consider teasing Halsin about how much of a mess children with charcoal paint will likely make, but he thinks about it anyways, because the longer Halsin spends with his finger-painting, the more some inexplicable nervousness builds up. What the devil is there to be nervous about? There’s clearly no concern Halsin doesn’t like what he sees. It’s not as if Astarion’s face will have changed since the last time he saw his scribbled portrait, in that rented room in Baldur’s Gate. Or since the last time he saw his face in a mirror, whenever that was.
Halsin has that unique lack of dramatic sense that is, itself, a dramatic sense. When he’s done there’s no hmm, yes, here we go, what do you think? sort of prelude. He blows at a few spots on the paper, then shows it to Astarion. “You must let me try another when I’ve access to more refined materials,” he says, “but sometimes the improvised work has more vitality than the work prepared for.”
It’s — him. He knows that. It’s still so strange how unfamiliar the face is — the angles, the swoop of hair, the line of his own brow. The improvised charcoal paint has blurred and bled in a few spots. But it’s him, in three-quarters view, staring out from old paper Arron had used to wrap up potions or books.
“It’s — it’s perfect,” he says.
“You say that only for it being your own face,” Halsin says. “If I tried my own, I'm certain you'd have some barbed artistic critique that would be entirely merited.”
It’s the perfect way to let the waver in Astarion’s voice pass by without note. It is unbelievably considerate. “I suppose you’ll just have to try,” Astarion says loftily. “A self-portrait, I mean. For my critique.”
“If you insist.” He sounds indulgent, like he’s the one who’s been doing favors all night, not the one letting a vampire drink half his blood and then painting him. “Should I hang this up somewhere? Or would you rather secret it away and never speak of it again?”
“Yes, I rather think I’d like it displayed,” says Astarion. He points at a spot of blank wall, overlooking the open space where their bedrolls are laid out. “Then you can hang yours up there, too, at least if it passes muster.”
“Ah! Now the pressure is on.” Halsin obliges, though, and hangs the charcoal sketch of Astarion across the room. In the dim half-daylight it looks softer. “With such high expectations placed upon me, I must insist on sleeping first. Else you’re likely to find my self-portrait rather marred by my falling asleep onto it.”
“And that just won’t do,” says Astarion. “Very well, I suppose I understand.”
Halsin laughs to himself as he stretches out on his own bedroll, laid scarcely a meter away from Astarion’s own. The fire has burned low, and through the slats on the windows, the light looks harsh. “Somehow I have a sinking feeling you’ll have me working on Tav and Karlach for your portrait gallery next.”
“I wasn’t planning to, but since you’ve put the idea in my head…”
Halsin groans, mock-imposed-on, but says no more. He sinks into his trance without saying another word.
The fire dies, the light outside grows brighter, whiter, but something in Astarion’s head turns over again and again. It’s a nice thought. His portrait, and the portraits of his — his friends, too. He knows their faces more keenly than his own, but, still, the reminder would be nice. He gives in and starts to plan the layout. Tav, and Halsin, and Gale and Shadowheart. Karlach and Wyll. Jaheira and Minsc will have to go into the same portrait because there’s only so much room on his wall. Maybe Aurelia and Leon, if he can talk them into it. He can almost see it. Finally his trance comes, and he sinks into a deep rest, and the memories he turns over as his body rests are almost entirely happy.