Chapter Text
The camp was in turmoil. Their motley crew of tadpole-infested strays and vagabonds had returned with Myrkul's Chosen slain, the first Netherstone firmly in their grasp and yet there was no jubilation. All but one of them were crowded around a single pale, lifeless figure.
Shadowheart was dying. Some unholy burst of necrotic magic expelled in Ketheric Thorm's death throes had felled her. No doubt a last try for vengeance on the person who had, with one act of compassionate defiance, spelled his doom.
The party had tried everything. First and foremost the moon cleric and the aasimar, who both owed the girl more than anyone. They were laying on their hands and pouring out healing magic until even the demigoddess was nearing exhaustion. The two druids were drawing whatever life force they could from earth around, even as it was itself still recovering from the shadow curse. The wizard was frantically rifling through his spell book and his scrolls looking for anything that might help. Those that had no intrinsic means to heal attempted to use potions or, like the hell-scorched tiefling, simply held the girl's hand and muttered reassurances, accompanied by the mournful whine of the dog who had selected Shadowheart as his favorite person.
It was pitiful. None of it worked. Shadowheart remained at death's door, every rattling breath sounded like it could be her last. It was as though there was a yawning void in her that swallowed all the healing magic before it could salve her body.
Minthara stood, as ever, some distance apart from the rest of the group. At the request of Tav, she had not gone with them into the mindflayer colony below Moonrise Towers and instead been given the charge to hold their position, should the absolutists try any sort of counterattack. Thus, she had not been there to see the events that led to Shadowheart's imminent demise for herself.
However, Minthara had been there in the Shadowfell. She had seen the moment this weak willed waif, this half-bred mongrel, earned the first sliver of the pride she so loved to adorn herself with. It had stirred something in Minthara. Something vague she had not had the time or leisure to interrogate, but it was stirring once again now. She glanced at the black spot on Shadowheart's limp hand. Perhaps this truly wasn't Myrkul's doing alone. Perhaps Shar, in her divine pettiness, had seen an opportunity to reclaim her former prodigy in death, or if not that, then feast on her companions' grief.
That thought, more than anything, made Minthara bristle. What a pathetic excuse for a deity, for a matron.
"I may have a remedy." She spoke with her usual impassivity, her rough voice was commanding enough on its own to be heard.
All eyes turned to her. Some in surprise or concern, some with barely contained hostility. But they were all desperate enough to hear her out, so she continued.
"There is a ritual of rejuvenation, rarely used and taught only to Lolth's most faithful. I can perform it."
The many eyes changed. Suspicion, hope, ambivalence, fear. None of them trusted her, nor should they, but they had run out of better options. One by one, their gazes shifted from her, to Shadowheart, to eventually settle on their leader, silently requesting a decision.
Tav's eyes bored into Minthara's for a long moment.
Then, a nod. One that said, do not make me regret saving you. Do not prove our suspicions justified.
Minthara approached the huddle.
"This will take many hours. I will need to be alone with her and I must not be disturbed under any circumstance."
Before she could move to pick up Shadowheart, Dame Aylin had already done it.
"I can take her," Minthara said.
Aylin shot her a look that brooked no disagreement and brushed past her.
Minthara addressed the wizard who was also, more usefully, the camp cook. "I require food. The best you have. Further, a cup of milk and a pot of water."
She turned away without waiting for a response and followed Aylin into her tent.
The aasimar had nestled Shadowheart in her bedroll and was pouring out the last of her healing magic as she brushed the sweat-slick hair from the girl's face. Delicate in a way that ought to be impossible while wearing such heavy gauntlets.
She rose to meet Minthara on her way out. "I shall stand guard and ensure no-one interrupts the procedure." She pierced Minthara with the full force of her mother's light, "but listen well, knight of darkness: I owe this brave warrior my life and my love. Should you misstep, I will not hesitate to smite thee down back into the bowels of the earth where you came from."
Minthara did not give her the satisfaction of reacting. Instead they clashed swords with their eyes, paladin to paladin.
When she deemed her threat sufficiently stated, Aylin straightened, let her wings billow briefly, enough to cause a gust of air to rush around Minthara, and marched away.
Minthara examined the girl. She was pallid, almost green in hue, drenched in fevered sweat, yet afflicted with a cold so deep it crept all the way up Minthara's arm upon touching her. Her lips and fingertips were purple, her heartbeat weak, her breathing shallow. Yet she remained, for the time being, stable, almost in a sort of stasis.
The tadpole in her brain tingled, suggesting that perhaps their astral benefactor had something to do with that, that even it was doing what it could to assist the faithless cleric.
A lucky girl indeed.
Minthara had begun to remove Shadowheart's armor when she heard heavy steps approaching the tent.
"Honk honk," Karlach announced and entered, carrying a large basin of water, which she placed down near Shadowheart's legs.
"Do you need it warm?" she asked, worried eyes on her friend.
"Yes," Minthara replied, not interrupting her task.
"Got it," Karlach dunked her bare fist into the water and let the heat from her infernal engine do the rest. In a few seconds, steam began to rise from the basin and she removed her hand. As she rose to leave, she looked like she wanted to say something, couldn't quite put the words together and simply nodded several times to herself.
Shadowheart was down to the plain black tunic and breeches she wore under her armor and Minthara was assembling the herbs and ground up fungi required when the wizard showed up with milk and a large bowl of stew. It was thick, with good lean rothé meat, mushrooms, potatoes and turnips. With some amusement Minthara noted that he seemed to have made an effort to use, if not ingredients native to the Underdark, then at least those that most evoked it, in his limited mind.
"Is there anything else I can do to help?" He asked.
"Yes, go away and let me concentrate."
He retreated without another word.
At last the distractions abated and she could begin in earnest.
First she blessed the food. She added a number of herbs and a piece of Noblestalk that she had kept in secret reserve, though she had not planned to use it in service of anyone but herself.
While she ate, she studied Shadowheart. A beautiful flower, to borrow Astarion's words, in spite of her bastardized heritage. It didn't hurt that ever since the events in the Shadowfell, she had displayed a sort of... attachment to Minthara. It was subtle, as Sharrans were trained to be, Minthara would have been very surprised to learn any of the others had noticed. Perhaps even Shadowheart hadn't noticed. But she had.
The way the girl chose to walk right behind her, spoke to her with a respect the others lacked, used support spells on her first, even when it would have made just as much sense to give them to Karlach or Lae'zel. More likely than not she was simply a cleric in a crisis of faith looking to a strong woman for stability. But regardless of the cause, Minthara didn't dislike the role. She may have been undergoing a change of creed of her own but she remained bred and groomed to lead.
She put the empty bowl aside and continued to the next step of preparation. Shadowheart had to be washed. She removed the last layers of clothing obstructing the shivering body before her, saving the hair piece for last. She quite liked it, as far as vanity items went, but the girl had to be as bare as a babe. After all, she was about to be reborn.
Removing the grime of battle with such deliberate attention was, admittedly, an indulgence. A gesture of... she was loath to use the word "kindness". "Presence" perhaps. Shadowheart was not awake, though neither was she asleep. She was drifting through a dazed semi-consciousness, eyelids occasionally fluttering almost open, lips passing breaths that were almost a voice, fingers flexing and almost reaching. As such she may have been able to feel the warm, damp towel of fine spider silk slowly gliding over her death-chilled skin, reminding her that she was still alive in the earthly realms. Besides, Minthara found it a meditative task fit to ease herself into the ritual headspace.
When she had dried off Shadowheart she moved on to prepare herself. She too stripped naked and cleaned herself, though with much less care.
She ignited the incense burner in the corner of the tent, which she had earlier filled with the appropriate saps and powders. The smell effortlessly transported her back to Menzoberranzan. To the one and only time she was privy to witness, or rather, participate in this ritual, well over a century ago.
There was only one more thing left to do before the incantation. She took a dagger and pricked Shadowheart's thumb. She squeezed it over the cup of milk but nothing came. That ought not to have been a surprise, the girl's blood was crawling through her veins like molasses, barely supplying her vital organs, much less her hands. Minthara decided to take a page out of the vampire's playbook and nicked the neck artery instead. Even from there, the strongest, most essential life stream, the blood only trickled.
She was suddenly beset by urgency. Night had fallen. Whatever effect the others' healing and the prism dweller's efforts may be having, the girl would not last. She gathered a few drops of blood in the milk and barely allowed herself a moment to linger on the spectacle of the deep red slowly intermingling with the pure white. The colors reminded her of someone she did not want to be reminded of. She put her hand over the cup and spoke another blessing before she drank the milk in one extended draw.
All was ready.
She placed one hand on Shadowheart's cold forehead and the other on her equally cold sternum. Save for the faint heartbeat, it really did feel like touching a corpse.
Minthara closed her eyes and recited the incantation once in her head before she repeated it aloud in her own native tongue.
"Praise be to the Mother, praise be to her unbreakable web, praise be to her cruel sting.
Mother Lolth, in everlasting devotion I beg of thee, let mine string bind as tightly, let mine poison be as potent.
Mother of all, let thy daughter become mother and beget another daughter in thy honor.
Let this daughter be thy prize.
Let her be worthy.
Let her be strong."
Minthara opened her eyes and gazed down at the girl whose trajectory in life she was about to irreversibly shift.
"I bequeath mine flesh to feed her, mine blood to quench her.
Her soul be mine.
My soul be thine, oh Mother."
There was no immediate response to her prayers. No glow or arcane tingle at the back of her neck. No sign she, let alone the half-breed before her, had been deemed worthy. She knew to expect this. She knew there was a chance her effort would be in vain. Indeed, most of her kind would have considered the very attempt sacrilege. Her only hope was that Lolth's disdain for Minthara would be outweighed by her infinite desire to claim mortals for herself. Particularly this mortal, who was making a habit of defying gods. Once caught in Lolth's web, there was no escape.
In one sense, she had been truthful when she had claimed to Tav and the others that it was a rejuvenation ritual. In another sense it was a rite performed by matrons and their most favored daughters to lay claim to their very souls. It was used to reinforce matrons' dominance and, in some cases, if it was performed consensually, an act of love. Hence why it was not healing, it was rejuvenation, a sort of reset. Necessary to allow the matron to assert herself in her role and the daughter to accept her in place of any previous authority figures.
Though in this particular case, Minthara would be filling a void more than replacing anyone. Really, she was doing the girl a favor even beyond saving her life.
She lifted Shadowheart's head into her lap and waited, breathing the incense-laden air deeply.
In her not quite entranced but nevertheless spiritually charged state, it was very easy to lose track of the world around her. As such, Minthara could not have said how long it took before she noticed a change, only that it felt like a substantial amount of time. What she noticed was both quite strange and not. It was not strange in that she knew what the ritual entailed and therefore what to expect but the actual experience of it was very foreign indeed.
Staring down at the uneasily resting face in her lap she began to be possessed by new instincts. First she identified them as protectiveness, which she could still comprehend as a facet of herself. She would not have become a paladin if there wasn't some part of her that felt the need to guard and protect something or someone. Gradually, however, she felt not only that she had to keep the girl safe but that she ought to give her more. Her very self, her essence.
She knew what the ritual demanded she do next and yet she was reluctant, forcing her to languish between the urge to nourish and the instinct of self-preservation.
She began to feel it physically. Her breasts were straining, as though constricted by invisible rope. Not unpleasant, in another context, but it was spreading through the rest of her until she felt like she contained too much. Too much... something, swelling her up, threatening to burst, even though her body looked the same as always.
Only when she could no longer bear it, tears prickling in the corners of her eyes, did she finally gave in and face the horror of being consumed by another.
She swallowed. It took some effort, her esophagus feeling like it was being crushed by the rest of her overfilled self. She lifted the girl's head to her breast and guided her mouth to her nipple.
It took only a few seconds for Shadowheart's primordial instincts to awaken and latch on.
Minthara couldn't contain a sigh. The relief was instant. Burying her hand in jet black hair Minthara crushed the girl against her chest and tried to keep her breathing steady.
Though still teetering on the brink of death and hardly conscious, Lolth's new daughter drank eagerly.
The strain in Minthara's body abated, but not completely, not before her breast was drained and Shadowheart released her. She considered guiding her to the other immediately but the girl was asleep. Fitful, sickly sleep, still barely distinct from death, but nevertheless sleep that promised a little of rest.
Thus, Minthara returned her head to her lap and resumed waiting.
Just when the discomfort was becoming hard to bear again, Shadowheart stirred.
This time Minthara didn't hesitate and gave her the other breast right away. If anything, the suckling was even more voracious, perhaps a first sign the girl was regaining her strength. So much so that when her greedy mouth finally let go, there was a white dribble running down her chin. It really did look like ordinary breast milk, except perhaps for the faintest magical glow, which might have just been a trick of the imagination.
But Minthara remembered that it certainly did not taste like milk. It had the creaminess of milk but the flavor was earthy, rich, yet sweet in a way that should have been dissonant but wasn't. It tasted like nothing else above or below the earth and she found herself tempted to try it again now.
She decided against it. This milk wasn't for her. So she wiped the girls chin with her thumb and then pushed it into her lax mouth. Shadowheart's tongue gathered those last drops of precious ichor before she lapsed back into slumber.
By the third time Shadowheart nursed, Minthara was floating on a cloud of contentment, not unlike the peace after a powerful orgasm. The sensation and physical shape of her body were back in concert and her mind was awash with pleasant feelings, as though Lolth herself was raining praise on her for being exactly who she was, doing what she was doing.
At this point, time and place had lost all meaning. There was only Minthara, strong, benevolent matron and her daughter, her flesh and blood, her soul, hers.
Her daughter fed and then slept and then fed again. And every time she fed she became more Minthara's.
Still, as the hours crept on, the bliss subsided, just as the strain had before it. The world returned to being, if only vaguely. And with it the knowledge that there were others. Others who might consider Shadowheart theirs to some extent or another. Minthara became aware of the Dame Aylin's presence. Far away enough that her godly aura could not interfere with anything that was happening in the safety of the tent but close enough that anyone with a modicum of arcane affinity could sense her.
Minthara remembered the aasmiar's concern for Shadowheart, how gingerly she had carried her and stroked her cheek. As if she needed more reasons to despise the woman who, in so many ways, represented her polar opposite.
She buried her nose in Shadowheart's hair as she held her close and murmured, over and over, "mine, mine, mine..."
Her darling daughter's state had much improved. She was still paler than usual, but not unnaturally so, her breath no longer rattled and her heartbeat was detectable everywhere Minthara pressed down to check. Still the ritual was not complete. She was not yet empty. And so their rhythm continued. Feed, rest, feed, rest.
She could not have said when it stopped being pleasant and became painful. Especially since there was a not so small part of her that relished pain, ritualistic pain most of all. For a time, the sting whenever the girl latched on to her with ever increasing vigor sent sparks through Minthara that gathered low in her belly, especially when her fingers regained enough strength to dig into her arms or legs for support. The girl's mind was still not properly awake but her body was and so it acted on instinct alone. And her instinct was to cling to matron.
"Mine." Minthara repeated yet again and enjoyed the tingling in her groin.
Inevitably however, her body approached its limit. Exhaustion began to supersede arousal, dull soreness pleasurable pain. Still she kept going. It was her understanding that the ritual had no fixed conclusion other than the physical separation of matron and daughter. This she was not ready for. The thought of letting Shadowheart out of her arms was akin to the thought of having a limb ripped off.
"Mine."
She was dimly aware that it had become day, though whether it was the morning after the ritual started or ten days yonder she could not fathom, when she felt something warm running over her mouth. She wiped at it with the back of her hand and saw blood. Her nose was bleeding. Bleeding on Shadowheart's cheek as she contentedly suckled.
Her arm that wasn't supporting the girl's head found a piece of cloth, which she used to wipe both their faces clean and then held under her nose to catch the blood continuously oozing forth. It abated after some minutes and she thought no more of it until a little while after that when she felt the first pounding overture of an oncoming headache. She brushed it off and carried on, but unlike the nosebleed the headache did not disappear on its own. Instead it grew stronger and was soon joined by a queasiness in her stomach, then trembling hands, then dizziness.
Minthara screwed her eyes shut and endured. She focused her attention on the sensation of Shadowheart's sleeping exhales caressing her skin.
And that was the last thing she felt before her senses left her.
She awoke, half on her back with her legs at an odd angle suggesting she had simply slumped over to one side, to the sensation of something tugging at her. The world was still spinning but her vision slowly regained focus to find Shadowheart, fruitlessly laboring at her breasts in search of more milk.
"There is none left, girl." Minthara rumbled, voice even rougher than normal from sleep and dryness.
A pair of staggeringly alive green eyes found hers. Large and unguarded in a way Minthara was proud to claim no-one else in their vicinity had ever seen. They made it hard to gauge whether Shadowheart, though clearly awake now, was entirely herself yet.
Her mouth and throat were working, straining to produce a word. Not in a manner like she had lost her ability to speak, but as though there was an internal struggle about which word she wanted to say.
"M- M- Mi- M-mummy?"
Minthara blinked. Not her preferred term of address, but the world was spinning faster than ever and she did not, in that moment, have it in her to care.
She coaxed the girl's head further up her chest and maneuvered it under her chin.
"Rest with me," she decided and let her eyes slide shut.