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After two centuries of nothing but pain, nothing but abuse, nothing but humiliation so strong that Astarion had forgotten what it felt like to be a person. After two centuries of that, Astarion walked into the sunlight and felt for the first time free.
Completely, truly free.
He didn’t feel a single tug of compulsion. Even when alloted time away from the manor out on hunts, Astarion could always feel each leash of the rules Cazador had writ upon them all. He still remained chained to the wall of Cazador’s command. Oh sometimes he’d be allowed a certain amount of lead, a certain amount of slack, but every compulsion, every command had another tangible chain he could feel as strong as anything he could hold with his own hands.
They were all gone. There were no chains on him anymore.
Astarion laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more.
His heart still seemed as still as the grave. He tested his lungs, and he didn’t need air. A quick feel around his mouth confirmed he still had fangs, and when he looked into the river, he could not see his reflection, but a look at his arms confirmed they were as pale as ever. He still remained a spawn, but he had none of the drawbacks of spawnhood. He’d finally gotten one over on Cazador, and he had those weird tentacled freaks to thank.
And then, in short order, he found allies, also courtesy of those weird tentacled freaks.
There was Lae’zel, some weird sort of alien person from the Astral Sea. She frequently threatened them all and tried to bid them haste towards finding where something was that Astarion kept mishearing as ‘crepe’ and at this point didn’t want to ask. He couldn’t eat a crepe anyway. He’d tried, and he’d thrown up normal food. That hadn’t been returned to him yet.
Gale was a wizard of theoretical skill, for all that he’d gotten himself phased into a rock. Astarion knew enough of magic to know that was indeed very difficult to do even in error, so, he supposed there was that. The tadpole had dampened his magic—dampened everyone’s skills really—and Gale could not recall any of the powerful magics he’d apparently known just a tenday ago, but he promised them all he wasn’t lying, because there was nothing worse than a liar.
Astarion had laughed nervously and then proceeded to ignore him.
Shadowheart was a cleric definitely of Shar though she wasn’t telling about it. She alternated between speaking softly but practically to Wyll and then being a horrid bitch to everyone else. Astarion adored her in principle, but she was also bitchy to Astarion, so Astarion had been rubbing the inside of her clothing with poison ivy because, bonus, poison ivy didn’t work on spawn.
And Wyll. Dashing hero monster hunter Wyll who had looked at Astarion, raised an eyebrow, and said he was more bite than bark, with enough amusement into the words to let Astarion know it had been on purpose. Astarion really, really hoped Wyll hadn’t already pegged him as a vampire. Maybe he said that to all the pale red-eyed fellows.
By all rights, Astarion should fuck off and find somewhere that didn’t have a monster hunter with a twitchy eldritch blast finger, but…
They too were kidnapped. And that was something. Astarion was unused to commonalities with people. And he didn’t want to become a mindflayer. He didn’t want the tadpole gone, but he also didn’t want to become some worse sort of monster enslaved by another even bigger monster. That would be embarrassing actually. Once was perhaps allotted in one’s life, but if it happened a second time, it was hideously tacky, and you were definitely the person to blame.
For now, the five of them clustered around the evening fire. It had been an entire ordeal of finding the right kind of wood, chopping it correctly, and setting the fire correctly, of which only Wyll seemed to know what to do. Lae’zel had been horridly embarrassed that this was something githyanki school hadn’t covered, and she’d shadowed Wyll desperately, clearly not wanting to ask again.
“There were no trees in K’liir,” Lae’zel had said a few hours ago. She eyed the trees with suspicion. “No moss, either. None of this nature.”
But the fire was up. Gale had found a cooking pot from somewhere and filled it with water that he was in the process of bringing to a boil before adding the various vegetables he’d scrounged from various packs. Wyll and Shadowheart were sitting on a fallen log, Gale crouched by the fire, and Lae’zel and Astarion were each on their own rock.
Wyll leaned forward, eyes on Lae’zel. “So how does ceremorphosis work? What’s the timeline? I heard about seven days, but I don’t know if that’s accurate. I normally hunt fiends, not aberrations.”
Astarion didn’t quite know where those categories lay either. Weren’t they both sort of weird squiggly things from beyond Faerun? And if mindflayers could infect anything, couldn’t they infect a devil? Would that be a fiend aberration? Who decided these things?
Though anyone would agree a fiend aberration was too much. Honestly pick one and stick to it. People who mixed themes always looked like new money.
“It’s seven days until you turn into a mindflayer,” Gale said. “I think before that we have time.”
“Wrong,” Lae’zel said. “We have mere hours. In the first day, in the first four hours, the tadpole burrows into the skull and consumes your brain matter. You are then already replaced. Ceremorphosis starts as an internal process and only becomes external when someone is beyond the point of saving. You are consumed, and you are discarded. The ghaik that replaces you may retain a few of your memories, but do not mistake that for being you. Your soul departs your body, and if your memories are retained, the ghaik will use that against all your former kin and allies.”
Astarion grimaced. Sort of a buzzkill, Lae’zel.
“But that’s exactly the point,” Gale said. “It’s already been half a day, and yet I don’t even have so much as a twinge of a headache. No fever. No sweating. No grayish skin or so much as clammy hands. Something seems to have delayed things. Changed things entirely, for they’ve also been interfering with our magic. Wyll, Shadowheart, and I have all suffered a strange disconnect to the Weave we are attempting to bypass.”
Lae’zel sneered. “It is possible our batch were weaklings, but we cannot assume they will not consume us. We must find a crepe as soon as possible. We must. Do you understand?”
And there it was again.
Gale held up his hands. “I do understand. I am not disagreeing with you. I don’t want this tadpole in me anymore than you do— Okay well perhaps you are the most fervent about it for cultural reasons, but I do not desire ceremorphosis. I have too much a fondness of cheese to switch my diet.”
“That’s your problem with this?” Shadowheart asked skeptically.
“Waterdeep is very diverse and culturally-minded,” Gale said.
Lae’zel spat on the ground, which Astarion agreed with. Sure he was a monster, but he’d actually rather there were fewer monsters running around the Gate. There’d been a sphinx about fifty years ago that had set up in the sewers near Cazador’s manor, and getting past her had always been a pain. More often than not Astarion couldn’t figure out whatever fucking obscure riddle she’d pulled out of her ass—half of which Astarion maintained were unsolvable on purpose—and Astarion had to run while getting vast chunks of flesh ripped off of his body.
The only perks to spawnhood was at least you could regenerate from all the monsters that hurt you. Which, also, was in a way one of the major flaws as well.
And then there had been that one year the sphinx had gotten really into logic puzzles with boxes and asked Astarion which box held the treasure if one box only spoke truths and one box only spoke lies and the other box could be truthful or lying. Real bullshit stuff. And Yousen had gotten stuck in one of those boxes too one time. Astarion hadn’t bothered with the puzzle and had just left him there. Cazador could fetch him from the sphinx, and Yousen could take the punishment. Wasn’t his monkeys or his circus.
Yousen was probably a forced diversity hire by Cazador anyway.
“I do have to hunt a devil in this region before we leave,” Wyll said. “Her name is Karlach, and she was a general in Zariel’s army.”
Astarion snorted. “Here? In our state? Like this? When you just an hour ago couldn’t even cast a fireball?”
“Well she’s immune to fire so I doubt that would hurt her,” Wyll said wryly. “But she was badly injured when I saw her last. We mostly need to kill her before she stumbles into a source of healing magic, so time is also of the essence there.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
Lae’zel bared her fangs. “No. We go to the creche and then come back. If she is as great of a threat as you say, I will join you. That is what I will give you for getting the ghaik tadpole extracted from your skull. Do you even understand me? Did you miss the part where it devours your brain in hours? Do not blindly assume that simply because it is slow it will not consume you. We do not know how much time we have. We go to the creche, and then we come back.”
Wyll stared at Lae’zel, something far more calculating in his gaze than Astarion had seen of yet. “Alright. You make a good point. Where is this creche?”
—
So they didn’t even know where the fucking creche was to get the fucking tadpole out of Astarion’s head. Which, in Astarion’s opinion, was probably good. He wasn’t sure he wanted to say goodbye to the tadpole just yet.
Obviously he really didn’t want to become a monster, but something strange was going on with the fact that they hadn’t already been eaten, and Astarion wanted to see if he could control the tadpole instead. Because Astarion could put two and two together. He had a tadpole, and now he didn’t have compulsions. He had a tadpole, and now he could frolic in the daylight like some sort of a racist depiction of a sun elf.
Astarion was probably a sun elf, so he was allowed to frolic, but he maintained no one else was allowed to do so.
Their journey led them to a druid’s grove where they poked and snooped around. Wyll immediately got to heroing, and Astarion immediately got bored. But! There were a few people that made things interesting.
One was a batty old bint who lived in a real gods-honest swamp and sold potions and berries and such. Astarion adored her immediately and managed to coax Wyll into talking about help for their illithid problem. Wyll was of course all gentlemanly polite to the swamp witch, sipping at offered potions and calling her Auntie. Lae’zel made a disgusted sound, and Auntie Ethel promised aid if they swung by her hut. Astarion wanted to do this not because he believed she had any cure, or that he enjoyed swamps, but because he wanted to see what her solution would be, and he wanted to see what face Lae’zel would make at it.
They then did decide to see the local healer, Nettie.
Nettie made a few polite inquiries about their eyeballs and tadpoles and then led them into a stone room. The door sealed shut behind them, which in Astarion’s experience meant they were about to do very illegal things to your body and/or really refused to let you pay on credit.
“I say,” Gale said.
“There is no cure,” Nettie said sadly. “The only option I can offer you is death before you become a mindflayer.”
Wyll held up his hands, trying to play at peacemaker. “We haven’t had any changes. We haven’t had any loss of information. We haven’t had any personality changes. We haven’t undergone the first stage yet. Can you not see something strange is going on?”
“Oh something strange is going on alright,” Nettie said, gesturing to the drow body behind her.
The skull was carved open, bone saw delicately next to the table. Instead of a brain, there was a massive tentacled slug larvae thing with millions of fine tendrils radiating out of its body, sliding down into the central nervous system.
“That’s stage one,” Lae’zel pointed out. “See? I told you. That’s what happens when we—”and here she made a sharp gesture in a circle, indicating all of them”—do not go to the creche. Please tell me you understand this concept now. We have ghustil. Doctors? Doctors, in your tongue. Medicine. We have people who can fix us before we become that but only if we get there in time.”
Nettie frowned. “Where?”
“Up the mountain,” Gale said. “We finally found the location from a man who had an unfortunate run-in with some of the githyanki earlier. At least he survived his encounter. I’m hoping we will as well with Lae’zel at our side.”
“Maybe,” Lae’zel said.
Nettie sighed. “I cannot risk that. That will take too long, and you’ll turn before then. I will give you this choice. You can drink this poison now and die quickly and relatively painlessly, or I will kill you.”
Astarion laughed. “We outnumber you.”
Nettie smiled, a baring of teeth. “In a druid’s grove?”
The ground erupted in millions of swarming beetles, pinching and biting Astarion’s vulnerable leg flesh. He shrieked, and vines exploded out of the ground, attempting to impale the others. Astarion attempted to stumble away, but the beetles had already devoured through his tendons, and he fell to the ground, and the swarm started to engulf him.
Gale yelled something, and then the entire swarm was set on fire. This wasn’t that much better for Astarion, as it sort of by default set him on fire too. Astarion shrieked and began to roll in the ground, batting at his skin trying to get whatever living beetles were off, as his debuffed regeneration strained to restore his devoured legs.
And then suddenly all the beetles vanished, skittering into the earth, followed by that classic thunking sound of a head falling to the ground.
“Deeply unpleasant,” Lae’zel said. “Shadowheart. Healing is required.”
Lae’zel had been pierced through the throat, vine somehow missing the esophagus and the major arteries, which was really a fucking poor show of medicine skills on Nettie’s part. Couldn’t even hit a vital part of the body. What did she know about medicine then? Ugh. Astarion would have better luck with roots-and-berries swamp witch who probably thought that bloodletting could fix anemia.
Dalyria had horror stories about some of the practices she found under her quest to modernize standard medical practices in Baldur’s Gate. It was her only good quality, though for some reason she didn’t like retelling the funny stories of when people lost their dicks to the bubonic plague.
Thankfully no one seemed to notice that Astarion’s legs had regenerated.
Or, no one but Wyll, who when everyone’s backs were turned, raised a single eyebrow at Astarion, looked down to his shredded pants, and then back up to Astarion.
“Had a healing potion handy?” Wyll asked, with a sort of playful smile to his lips that made Astarion’s brain sort of slide down his spine and into his throat, expelling a truly embarrassing noise before Astarion caught a hold of himself.
No, no things would not go differently just because Cazador wasn’t around to make things horrid. Astarion knew how people were. He knew how cruel those who hunted others could be, and he wasn’t about to put himself on the menu in any fashion. At least not with this man. If Astarion needed to tactically seduce someone, he was going for Gale, because Gale would probably forget they were having sex halfway through to talk about magical theory, and then Astarion wouldn’t have to put out.
“Haha. Yes,” Astarion said casually. “Yes thank you. That’s what happened. Healing potion. They’re everywhere in here, you know.”
And to be fair, there were like ten of them lined up on the desk as well as some other potions. There appeared to be a handful of antidotes to various kinds of poison, an anti-nausea poison, a number of painkillers for various ills, and then about fifty contraceptive potions as well as a warning that they didn’t always work in wildshape.
Now that was environmental storytelling right there.
Gale managed to find a way to get the door down again, thankfully. Unthankfully, it was before Wyll and Shadowheart had finished hiding the body, who then hissed at Gale. And on the other side was one of those big wolves.
So the wolf didn’t make it.
Astarion had hoped that could be the end of it, but no, killing the wolf immediately sent one of the druids running their way, who then saw the headless Nettie and the dead wolf.
“Shit,” Wyll said.
But around the fifth druid they killed, they finally found a place to stash all the dead bodies before more could come running. Wyll seemed big time sad, but that didn’t matter really, in that he hadn’t outed Astarion due to being big time sad, so maybe Astarion could simply distract the man with more crises and crying sniveling orphans.
Which was good because right outside there was some dumb urchin who got enthralled by a bunch of harpies. Astarion tried to focus on killing just one harpy, but the kid lived anyway, which was disappointing, because a dead orphan was bound to make Wyll forget about Astarion.
But! Because Astarion could present Wyll with a dead harpy, he’d clearly been trying, and wasn’t the kind of vampire spawn one staked in a dark alleyway. Or bright beachside either.
At this point though Lae’zel called an end to any side diversions. They were going to go to the creche immediately before whatever protection they had wore off. Which sucked. It was already late afternoon, and Lae’zel didn’t let them rest during the night. They hiked up in the dark and finally found the location of the creche around mid-afternoon the next day, upon which everyone was contemplating the virtues of murdering their companions.
And after all that, the zaith’isk didn’t even work. It just exploded. Lae’zel insisted on seeing the manager or something, which Astarion kept snickering at, because that was one of the only perks of being a spawn, is that when someone wanted to see Astarion’s manager, it was one of the only times Astarion didn’t have to put out to get Cazador a home-delivered dinner.
This manager had psychic powers however, and insisted they go into some random device Shadowheart had apparently ‘acquired’ along the way to kill a person inside there. Lae’zel and Wyll squabbled over protecting/killing some random dragonborn in there, with Lae’zel finally managing to stab the dragonborn through the chest.
It didn’t matter. It was all illusions. Astarion was deeply disappointed. He had wanted to steal some of the blood and sip it later.
“Thank you anyway,” the illusion said to Wyll. “I cannot fault your githyanki friend. The chains of Vlaakith run deep through the githyanki people. Know this: I am protecting you. I will not let you transform into mindflayers. I can keep the tadpole from consuming you.”
“Lies,” Lae’zel had said. “If there was such a power Vlaakith would know it.”
“It’s exactly because of that they want me dead,” the dragonborn said. “Vlaakith cannot stand that I know this and she doesn’t. The fact that I can do something that she has never managed to accomplish means I am a threat to her power base, and she will stop at nothing to kill me. But I am infected too. I, too, want this tadpole dealt with, this cult stopped. I do not like relying on my own power to keep the tadpole at bay.”
“Thank you,” Wyll said, rubbing at his stone eye. “Though understand it is difficult for me to believe you.”
“I know,” the dragonborn said. “I do not fault you. But if you can, use every strength you have to survive. If you all die, if the prism falls into the wrong hands, all is lost. I know it sounds difficult to believe, but I truly do think the best route to victory lies through using the advantages the tadpoles grant you.”
That wasn’t hard for Astarion to believe. He was on board with this plan already. Go team tadpole! He’d swallow down any tadpole. Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he sucked down, and honestly the texture was better than yuanti dick, which you’d think would be more snake-like, but apparently due to all the constant flesh-crafting and metamorphosis left them all more of disturbingly soft with an almost spongey mouth feel in their sensitive bits.
They had to drag Lae’zel out of the Prism, which did not go well for them when a large ambush caught them. Lae’zel even pleaded that she’d tried to kill the whosit, but none of them listened to her, and as Shadowheart pointed out afterward, they hadn’t waited to hear the results before designating them all as traitors. Not very sporting of them but extremely typical. Astarion was glad he’d drawn that goatee and monocle on Vlaakith earlier. No one had caught him, and it had been funny.
Thankfully there was a back exit to this room, and they managed to leave. Unthankfully, this did not result in what Wyll and Lae’zel were hoping to be a ‘non-violent approach to dealing with the other githyanki’, because someone, who would remain nameless, someone had taken a magical dookhicky out of the shiny thing, and this apparently set the monastery to self-destruct. Which couldn’t be someone’s fault, because who would design something like that? Oh, a novice sneaks in for a gander and a laugh, and then whoops, there goes all of his loved ones?
Wait that sounded exactly how Lathander approached all of his problems. A god of new dawns and new beginnings sort of, historically, wasn’t big on learning from his mistakes.
Okay, no, this checked out. Classic Lathanderite design philosophy.
They did finally agree to sleep. In the morning, which was now early nightfall, downright nostalgic for Astarion, he decided to try to give the mace to Wyll as some sort of ‘don’t kill me’ offering.
Wyll raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t be precious,” Astarion said. “I couldn’t have known the fucking idiotic, dribbling monks would have designed a genocide button around their relic.”
“No that’s not on you,” Wyll said slowly, as if he hated to admit that he couldn’t blame Astarion for the deaths of dozens.
“I can’t use it, but you’re all…” Astarion thrust up his chin and flexed. “You know. You see more like the type to use Lathander’s precious morning star to kill some baddies. And you also seem sacrilegious enough to get a kick out of it. There’s no way I’m giving this to Shadowheart.”
Wyll’s eyebrows rose. “I mostly use swords. It’s sort of my thing. The Blade of Frontiers, and that’s not very blade-shaped.”
“Seriously? It doesn’t fit your style? You aren’t vibing with the holy relic?”
Wyll shrugged. “Not really. And… are you sure that you want to be offering me this? You want to give me a holy relic most known for its ability to smash through any vampire there is?”
Astarion’s ears went flat. He almost instinctively hissed before remembering that would give his game away.
“You could use it,” Wyll said after a beat. “It does have a… sunlight radius, but then, you are clearly not a vampire, as that doesn’t harm you, right?”
“Right,” Astarion said, feeling very scared, and maybe also a bit horny. Wyll had this way of talking that made his dick throb for some reason. It wasn’t Astarion’s fault, and it didn’t mean he actually wanted the man. The only way to survive two hundred years as a spawn with thousands of strangers who could hurt him was deciding that being scared did in fact make him horny. It was a conditioned response, see, nothing for him to pay attention to. The fact that his lungs somehow seemed to shiver in Wyll’s presence was simply irrelevant data.
“You could use it,” Wyll said.
“With these scrawny arms?” Astarion asked, gesturing to himself. “I’m more of a dagger person. Maybe a bow.”
Wyll frowned. “Right. Bows take incredible strength to be effective. It’s why I don’t use them.”
“They what?”
“The draw weight. The more pounds of pressure you can pull back, the more that force goes into the target. Even if you can hit your target, you need the proper bow with enough bow poundage so that it will penetrate deeply into them. It’s basic technique. Without the required strength, you can’t penetrate very far, and it’s an unsatisfying shot.”
Astarion blinked. “Sorry. This is bows?”
Wyll looked confused. “Yes? What else would I be talking about?”
Astarion smirked. “You know. Fumbling with your arrows. Accidentally firing off too quickly if you catch my meaning.”
Wyll brightened. “Right. Exactly. So, you’ll need to build up more upper body strength if you want to pursue archery, because right now, politely, I don’t think you could penetrate the broad side of the ocean.”
Ah well, whatever. He didn’t get it, but Astarion knew what he meant.
—
They traveled further down, again at night. The tadpoles seemed connected to the Cult of the Absolute, and there had been all that True Soul talk. They planned on infiltrating, but not before running around and sort of… practicing killing people? Since everyone had apparently lost all their skills at murder. Astarion unfortunately included. He hadn’t done much with murdering people under Cazador’s command, but he had known how to drive a knife directly into where all the blood was, and then do that a few times, and then someone would die.
Why was his aim off?
At least he had company in misery.
“I was a mighty archmage,” Gale said, stubbornly. “Why am I struggling with a basic hold person spell?”
Lae’zel spat on the ground. “I do not know. It might be linked to the changed ghaik tadpoles. Normally mindflayers do not alter their host bodies. They want only the strongest warriors and psychics so they could seize our might for their own.”
“And mages, presumably,” Gale said.
“No,” Shadowheart said. “Mindflayers famously detest arcane magic, Gale. I’m surprised you don’t know this. I’ve got amnesia, and I know this. But, it is strange. Even my clerical magic is weakened, and I cannot fathom how anything as base as a tadpole in my head would make it harder for me to connect to my goddess. My faith alone should summon my magic to me, surely?”
Wyll shrugged. “In a similar position. My blade’s weaker, and my magic’s dulled. And this really shouldn’t be going on, legally speaking.”
“Legally speaking?” Astarion asked.
Wyll nodded. “I’m sure it’s against some law somewhere if you catch my drift.”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Astarion said. Wyll just sort of sighed at that, shrugged, and walked off into the bushes. He’d do that sometime. Weird man.
Though that was how Wyll coaxed them into killing a hag, that it would be ‘good practice’ to help them ‘re-learn’ their own talents. Outside of wanting to be competent at murdering people again, Astarion didn’t give two whits about his old talents, because what he was supposed to be good at was one) seducing people and two) fucking people with a side of three) luring said fucked individuals into a dark manor where Cazador could eat them. And Astarion was hoping not to do any of those again, even if he would try to do the seduction thing, but—
For some reason—
It just wasn’t working?
Astarion couldn’t get the words to work. And sure, okay, haha, most of them had lost their skills, but why was he struggling with this so hard? He could remember, clear as the sunlight trying to turn his shoulders a cooked lobster red, that all he needed was to look at someone and listen to them talk for fifteen minutes, and he’d know exactly what to say, how it say it, and when to say it to lure someone upstairs for a discrete fuck that was good enough that he could then breathlessly promise them so much more fun if they returned back to his place. How to be so good and enticing but still leave people wanting.
Instead he found himself stumbling over half-practiced lines that rang hollow to his ears. Shadowheart and Lae’zel noticed. And laughed at him.
It filled him with a weird fear, a pulsing dread. Astarion had been good at this. Why couldn’t he be good at it now?
He should practice more. He should seduce harder. He should be scrambling to secure his place in the group more, but it was also harder to pin down the exact reason why he should. Which was stupid, because he knew it. There was a world of hurt and pain out there. There were millions of people who would stop at nothing to hurt him if it gave them an edge up. Astarion had to grit his teeth and do whatever it took to secure any advantage. He had to approach every situation like it could be his last.
Instead he found himself baaing at red caps pretending to be sheep, because it was just funny, okay? It was funny! He stood by it was funny. Yes the red caps got mad when they realized Astarion could see through their illusion, but like. No one died for realsies, so it was fine!
The disconnect caught at him though, span him around in circles. They killed a hag and felt confident enough that Wyll mentioned there was a devil he was hunting, and he felt strong enough now to go after her.
Fine. Whatever. Astarion didn’t care. At least it was out of the swamp. Auntie Ethel had turned out to be a bore anyhow.
It was up a road and further down, and they caught her signs. Scorched hellfire, and whatnot. Enough that Astarion legitimately did believe there was a devil. Even seeing her, Astarion believed, at first, that this Karlach was truly a devil. Like, okay, maybe that was a little racist, because apparently she was actually a tiefling, but some tieflings looked like devils! Aurelia didn’t, which was nice of her, but this Karlach had a glowing chest and spit hellfire, and how was anyone supposed to know that was a mortal and not a devil? Some tieflings just looked a bit more infernal than some of their brethren, and Astarion would say it.
Wyll seemed shocked though, scared senseless. It was in the grip on his sword, the wildness in his eyes, the quickening of his breath, the pounding of his heart.
Karlach pledged support in whatever was going on with him if he didn’t kill her. And he didn’t. So. Okay. Wyll gave a deeply ominous warning that ‘something bad might happen to him soon’ but that everyone else would be fine.
Wyll seemed in a sort of shocked stupor the rest of the day, which was deeply worrying. He didn’t even enjoy murdering a bunch of paladins, which was a shame, because Astarion wanted to have a good time killing paladins, but apparently divine smites really fucking hurt, especially if you were a spawn, and Astarion had maybe caught on radiant sunlight fire and screamed a lot.
Surely someone would comment on that, but no one did. They were all too busy mooning over Wyll and Karlach. Astarion reminded himself that was a good thing, drinking stolen healing potions, while seething at the lack of attention.
So they went back to camp. And then twilight came. Wyll stood in the center of camp, braced for some inevitable worst case scenario.
And absolutely nothing happened.
This only seemed to concern Wyll more. He looked around, deeply confused, and then back at Karlach, and then around again.
“What’s going on soldier?” Karlach asked. “Talk to me.”
“I wish I could,” Wyll said. His shoulders were braced for someone to hurt him in a way that Astarion didn’t want to feel pity for. “Genuinely and truly. There’s nothing more that I’ve ever wanted than to give someone answers, but I cannot. Do you understand?”
“Oh please,” Astarion said. “The rules seem all altered, don’t they? Everything’s sideways. Try. This is getting tiresome.”
Wyll stared at him.
Astarion gestured to himself. “I’ve been under compulsions before, Wyllyam. You aren’t special. None of them mean shit to me anymore, so perhaps they don’t mean anything to you either. Have you even tried to act against them, or have you just been assuming the old rules work?”
“I’m pacted to a devil,” Wyll said.
“What,” Karlach said.
“What,” Astarion said.
“Shit I didn’t think that would work,” Wyll said, frowning. “That shouldn’t work. That’s against the pact. And not just against the pact, that’s an unviolatable rule. I physically shouldn’t be able to say that.”
“What else can you say?” Karlach asked.
Wyll bit his lip. He resembled more maybe Dalyria fearing the Kennels.
Astarion tsked and gestured with one hand for Wyll to get on with it. “You already broke the pact, yeah? If punishment is heading your way…”
“Then I should seize opportunity, yes,” Wyll said. “Alright. I’m pacted to Mizora. She bid me to kill you. I have to hunt someone for her every month. Devils, she promised. It’s supposed to be devils and demons, and… oh gods. The heartless? Really? That’s a loophole she doesn’t try to use often. I’m not allowed to tell people I’m pacted to her or her name without her express permission, and that is something I truly cannot do even if I was willing to brave the punishment. I made the pact to save the Gate once, seven years ago. And Mizora is a raging cunt. I’ve met a lot of cambions in seven years, and I think she’s the worst one. She acts diplomatic and engages in false pleasantries instead of just getting on with the torture part. I’d rather just get tortured than Mizora tell me how this is going to improve my quarterly year review.”
Karlach whistled. “Okay wait slow down there. Um. Shit. You’re not joking. This would be a dumb joke.”
Wyll’s breathing had quickened, his chest rising and falling as if he’d been running.
“You’re serious,” Shadowheart said. “I don’t think you’re lying.”
Wyll shrugged. “I was terrified to spare Karlach for a reason. But now, I’m already a lemure for when she finds out what I did. What do I have to lose at this point?”
“Mystra preserve you,” Gale muttered. “Ah. Yes. No this is why most people don’t become warlocks, and especially not to devils. I’m so glad I didn’t do that when I was younger. I know there’s temptations—”
“The temptations of a city not being destroyed,” Wyll said flatly.
“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Gale said.
Wyll opened his mouth, and then he hesitated. Instead of words, he shoved a memory at all of them. It felt impossible to believe in, a dark night with dark portals and Tiamat trying to push into this world and make it her own. Wyll, pacting to a devil to save the city in a too-good-to-be-real move. Astarion wanted to accuse Wyll of making the whole thing up, if not for all these other lingering strands of emotions and memories that had come with it unbidden. It felt like falling into muck and trying to not notice everything clinging to his skin.
Everyone else seemed shocked as well.
“That could have been an illusion,” Gale said.
Karlach snorted. “Gale. It’s Baldur’s Gate. There’s so many dragon cultists there.”
“So many,” Astarion sighed.
“They are the main competition for my dark lady,” Shadowheart said. “We try to assassinate as many as we can, but they keep springing back up.”
Karlach nodded. “Like if Tiamat was going to be summoned somewhere, it would be Baldur’s Gate. Damn, Wyll. That’s an impossible scenario you found yourself in.”
“I shouldn’t be able to do that!” Wyll said. “Not even through the tadpoles. I don’t know what’s going on, or where Mizora is. She should be punishing me. Even if she wasn’t, the Hells should have intervened on her behalf to drag me down to Avernus.”
Karlach frowned. “Yeah that’s way weird Mizora didn’t show up. I know Mizora. She hates me. This makes so much sense, but also, damn Wyll. Look if I knew it was your soul on the line, maybe we could have haggled out a little sneaky ‘I die and then you cart my body for a week, and then you revive it’ sort of thing.”
Wyll grinned. “Oh I love you.”
Karlach flushed, pleased, tail whipping faster than one of those purse dogs the patriars bred to get around the animal size limit rules.
Shadowheart looked around the camp. Still no devils springing up to ruin all their lives. “This is bizarre. Mizora should have shown up by now?”
Wyll nodded. “She normally appears at nightfall. She’s been silent as well. Every now and then she peers in through my stone eye and makes commentary in my mind of what’s going on. It’s never pleasant. It’s like living with a bad intrusive thought. But she hasn’t since I’ve gotten infected. I don’t know why.”
“I understand your fear,” Lae’zel said. “The hidden enemy is more dangerous than the one you see.”
Astarion wanted to remain indifferent. He should. He really, really should. He’d been indifferent to the screams of his siblings for two centuries. Anyone would, honestly; his siblings were so fucking annoying and shrill, and their screaming normally interrupted Astarion’s trance times. But for some reason, here, Astarion’s heart softened. Wyll looked so bewildered on why there wasn’t the torture punishment going on right now. He seemed paradoxically more scared than if this Mizora had shown up to turn him into a lemure.
And Astarion understood.
Gods above, Astarion understood.
“Then throw away the eye,” Astarion said. “It sounds like sparing Karlach already hits peak punishment. If lemure is the worst it gets, embrace what you have while you have it. And… is there any way around this?”
Wyll shrugged. “None that I could find in seven years, short of someone finding the contract and burning it. She’s made it clear she’s not keen to release me.”
“What if she did,” Gale said more than asked, looking thoughtful and rubbing at his scruff in that very human gesture.
“What?” Wyll asked. “She wouldn’t do that. I’m her ‘favorite’. She’s stated that multiple times.”
Gale opened his arms wide to the camp and gestured to the lack of angry middle-managers. “Well she didn’t show up. You spared Karlach. She hasn’t been in communication. What if she saw you get infected with the tadpole, and for whatever reason… cut you off? Most times with warlocks, when they lose their patron, they do keep their power. If you’ve had residual warlock powers warring with the tadpoles, that could be what you are tapping into.”
“Why would she cut me off?” Wyll asked. “I think that’s against the pact.”
“You think?” Gale asked, reproachful. “You don’t know?”
Wyll made a face at him. “I’ve only seen it once, and I didn’t have time to haggle on the minutia. She wouldn’t let me see it again. For the most part, there’s not a metaphysical force stopping me from violating it or going against its rules, hence why I could choose to not kill Karlach. A few exceptions though, like talking about any of this in the first place. Something weird is going on.”
Astarion wheezed. “Oh what if you aren’t Wyll.”
“What?” Wyll asked again, except higher and more incredulous.
“What?” Shadowheart repeated.
“What if you’re the tadpole?” Astarion asked, grinning. “Would you know? Would you just think you are Wyll?”
Horror crept along Wyll’s face. “No. I’d know. I would know. Wouldn’t I know? Why wouldn’t I know? I think I would remember eating someone, right? The tadpole would remember being a tadpole and eating someone, or something along those lines. I’d know if I got replaced.”
Astarion leaned against a tree. “Well you’re doing everything Wyll can’t do, so by the path of least insanity, perhaps you aren’t Wyll. The real Wyll would be dead.”
“You’re saying he’s a ghaik,” Lae’zel said, steel in her voice.
Astarion raised his hands. “Oh, how scary! He hasn’t killed anyone yet. Whatever morals he inherited from the other one must have carried over. That’s weird, but I suppose mindflayers are sort of built off of the host body.”
Wyll pointed at Astarion. “What about you? How do I know you aren’t the real Astarion?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Wyllyam,” Astarion said.
“You’ve been leaking doubts,” Wyll continued. “That you can’t flirt like you used to. Like all the skills you once had have been lost to you. Everyone has! Everyone has a complete disconnect of who they used to be and who they are now. If I’m not Wyll Ravengard, who’s to say you aren’t Astarion?”
Astarion stared at Wyll.
No.
No there wasn’t—
Because that would be so dumb. He remembered being Astarion so vividly. That was him. He was Astarion. Okay, yes, the old suave charm had sort of fallen off of the wayside, and he wasn’t acting in complete survival mode which he should be—
“Oh my god I’m not Astarion,” Astarion said.
Everyone stood there. No one moved. One by one, they all came to the same conclusions. The reason none of them were as skilled as they once remembered was because they weren’t who they once remembered. They were all the impostors. Each and every one of them.
Karlach whistled. “Oh no. Are we all… did we all… hey guys are we the baddies?”
Lae’zel stared at Karlach. Her eyes went down her sword, and then up to Karlach. And then Lae’zel sat down. Lae’zel did not move again. She simply stared at the dirt.
“That’s why Shar’s so distant,” Shadowheart said, dumbly. “That’s why she’s treating me as some stupid acolyte. I’m not Shadowheart. I’ve inherited her mission, but she is not me, and I am not her. Shar doesn’t believe I have faith in her, because I ate Shar’s treasured acolyte.”
Gale looked like he was doing complex equations. “I don’t want to eat Gale though. Well. I suppose I did. Honestly, out of all of the bodies to get, this one feels like pulling the short straw. It’s primed to explode. Though I guess if I explode it would serve me right for eating him. Huh. How do I feel about this?”
Wyll seemed to know how he felt about things already. “So. So Wyll would be in the Hells. Burning, for his failure to complete the mission.”
“So’s Karlach,” Karlach said. “She never escaped. Fuck. Fuck man, that’s too sad.”
“But you aren’t!” Astarion said. “You’re both fine. If I’m not Astarion, fuck that guy. Maybe he had it coming. Look. Okay, I know we’ve been investigating the illithid cult, but if we’re all illithids, everyone else will kill us in a moment.”
“I’m an enemy… of the githyanki,” Lae’zel stated dumbly.
“You’re catching on,” Astarion said. “Look, I’m just saying, is it wise to side against the only people who seem to want us around? If they’re pro-illithid, maybe we should join their ranks so we don’t die. Remember the drow? How his skull was all tadpole? That’s probably what we look like right now. If we can find out how they’re keeping from transforming, perhaps we can continue walking around in these stolen bodies, and no one will ever have to find out.”
Astarion smiled. “It’s the perfect plan.”
“No,” Wyll said. He drew his sword and held it aloft in almost a paladin-esque pose. “If I truly am illithid, if I really have stolen Wyll’s body from him, then I will make it my mission to break into the Hells and rescue the original Wyll. I have seen his suffering, and I will not let him endure alone. And Karlach too. I’ll rescue them both, and all of us, together, will stop this cult from infecting any more innocent people.”
Astarion snorted. “Please. The dead aren’t all in need of rescue. I’m sure dead Astarion is fine and happy to have escaped Cazador. We’re not doing that.”
—
So they were doing that. Well, fuck.