Chapter Text
“Are you out of your godsdamned mind?!” the words exploded out of Astarion.
Asmodea wasn’t sure exactly how she had expected him to react, but the near panic in his voice caught her off-guard.
“It’s a fey! Its idea of giving you immortality is probably to turn you into a statue, or some other inanimate object. Or… or to write a song about you, or exploit some other loophole.”
“That was my immediate thought too, but f*ckface specified they meant a boon of agelessness,” she hurried to protest.
“And you believe it?!”
“I know what it sounds like,” she said carefully. “But they said it can be done.”
“Can, or will?” Astarion scoffed. “Because there is a world of difference between the two.” He got up off the bed and began to pace the room. “Don’t be foolish, it’s just dangling a carrot before you!”
“They said it can be done and that it is within their power,” Asmodea tried to placate him. “Star, f*ckface has never lied to me. Simply refused to answer, given clever explanations that skirted the truth - yes, but flat out lied - never.”
“Yes, it’s the ‘skirting the truth’ part I’m worried about,” Astarion grumbled, still pacing.
“And this is why I wasn’t going to come to any agreement with them without first having my attorney go over the contract,” said Asmodea.
Her attorney huffed and threw his hands in the air.
“Besides, what other options do we have?” she said, humourlessly. “Find some other vampire lord to turn me..?”
Her mortality had always been an elephant in the room. Half-elves were already short-lived by elven standards. The 180 or so years that she might expect to live wouldn’t even be a quarter of an average elf’s life. It wasn’t even a drop next to the potential infinity of immortality.
They had talked about it, of course. Came up with and laughed at scenarios in which she would beguile and enamour an unsuspecting, witless vampire lord, and be turned by them, only to have Astarion burst out of a wardrobe at the first opportune moment, stake in hand, to put an immediate end to her hapless sire. Free her from the fate of being anyone’s spawn. Unlive happily ever after. As if he could ever be happy knowing that she had undergone the utter horror of transformation, or made such a sacrifice, setting aside the sheer improbability, no, impossibility of such a turn of events.
These conversations, thought held in jest, were always laced with a bitter undercurrent of futility. They could never decide whether it was worse to acknowledge the matter, or to sweep it under the rug.
Astarion made a non-committal sound and waived his hand dismissively.
“Would you honestly trust it that far?” he said. “Have you already forgotten how it nearly killed you?”
“I’m the one who nearly killed me,” Asmodea protested. “f*ckface knew precisely where my limits lay. They knew better than I did, in fact.”
Five years ago, in the vicinity of Baldur ’s Gate
The group skirted the army of the Absolute as they approached Baldur’s Gate.
A small village – merely a hamlet, really – lay in their path. It seemed to have been bypassed by the absolutists as they diverted their path away from approaching Baldur’s Gate head on, perhaps waiting for other contingents to catch up. It appeared to be filled with refugees passing through on their way to the city.
The majority of the group stayed in camp set up in the nearby woodlands, separated from the settlement by a well-trampled, barren field, while Shadowheart and Halsin paid a visit to the village, to offer aid and see if anything could be traded.
Startled by a sudden onset of screaming and shouting from the village, Asmodea and the others watched in horror from their concealment in the underbrush as the settlement fell under attack by what must have been stragglers from the main body of the army.
A jeering horde of goblins, ogres and other foul creatures had emerged from the woods which lay on the opposite side of the village, and ran rampaging through the settlement.
Smoke began to rise from the roof of a barn. People would have taken refuge there, Asmodea thought idly. Hiding in cellars, trying to barricade themselves in. All in vain. She didn’t need to be there to know what was happening. Already, a ghost of the smell of charred pork, though it couldn’t have possibly reached her at this distance, filled her nostrils, making her want to retch. The hamlet was doomed to suffer the same fate as Moonhaven and Waukeen’s Rest, though whilst there she only saw the aftermath, here the carnage unfolded before her very eyes.
She could just turn around and leave, she thought. The rest of their ragtag group hadn’t been spotted. It wasn’t her concern or responsibility. There were bound to be casualties in any war. It was simply fate. Misfortune. There was nothing she could do. She could not and would not be expected to do anything.
“Shadowheart is out there,” rasped Lae’zel. “And the druid,” she added.
The two were no doubt trying to rally the refugees in defence.
Was Halsin in his bear form? How many goblins would it take to strike him down?
Astarion crouched next to Asmodea, distractedly combing tufts of grass with his fingers.
“Pity...” was all he said.
How much could Shadowheart heal before her power waned? Or would she try to fight instead? The aim of her bolts had always been so abysmal...
A figure of a Guardian of Faith appeared near the entryway of one of the buildings, shimmering with radiance in the sunlight. It wouldn’t last long.
“So that’s it? We’re just going to let them burn?!” Karlach exclaimed next to her.
There were far too many. They would be overrun.
Lae’zel unsheathed her greatsword and looked at her expectantly, knuckles white on the hilt.
There was no point. It was futile. A sure death. Better to cut their losses, regrettable as it may be, and persevere with those who would survive instead.
…f*ck!
Before she could change her mind, Asmodea stepped out from beneath the canopy and made towards the hamlet, stubborn resolve in her step.
“Darling?” she heard behind her back.
“Alright!” Karlach bellowed, as more shouts followed from the thicket, voices breaking into arguments amongst themselves. She paid them no mind.
“Help me,” she directed at her patron.
She could feel f*ckface observing through her eyes.
“You don’t have a chance,” the fey answered. “Turn back before it’s too late.”
“I said help me, damn you!” she said out loud this time, picking up pace.
Karlach and Lae’zel flanked her - Lae’zel in concentrated silence, Karlach with raucous shouts, working herself up into a rage.
“What in the hells are you doing?! You’ll get us all killed!” Astarion had followed her as well.
The absolutists noticed them, as a group of goblins and other creatures broke off and rushed towards Asmodea’s small party.
“No,” f*ckface said firmly.
“We have a deal, and right now you owe me,” Asmodea gritted through her teeth. “I talked several abominations into killing themselves. I showed you a mindflayer colony. I saved an aasimar and destroyed an avatar of Myrkul. You are in my debt.”
Karlach broke into a sprint, hacking at the goblins that rushed towards them. Lae’zel followed the tiefling, the strikes of her longsword more elegant but no less precise or lethal than Karlach’s greataxe.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
Asmodea instinctively reflected a Hold Person spell that came from behind her, making a mental note to roast whoever dared – probably Gale or Wyll, though she wouldn’t put it past Jaheira to be reasonable, either – if she made it back alive, that is.
“Are you backing out of the contract? Now?! You can’t. You owe me.”
A hobgoblin rushed her and Astarion’s arrow whizzed over her shoulder, burying itself in the creature’s eye socket.
“It’s not enough.”
She continued to walk at a frenzied pace through the field as more and more absolutists, mostly goblins and the like, turned their way, eager for more carnage in their bloodlust. Karlach and Lae’zel ran up ahead, trying to clear a path to the village, but more and more avoided them and made for Asmodea - thinking her to be easy prey. Astarion cursed behind her and continued to put arrow after arrow into their bodies.
“Not enough?! You feculent louse, you want entertainment?! How’s this for bloody entertainment?!”
She continued to walk whilst pulling the hideous enchanted robe Alfira had gifted her over her head. As luck would have it, she was wearing nothing but her boots underneath it - she and Astarion had been having a very late morning, and it was all she had time to throw on when the screaming started from the village. She hadn’t even taken any weapons with her, seeking to rely only on her magic.
“Are you f*cking entertained, you c*nt?!” she shouted.
“What has gotten into you?!” Astarion yelled behind her. “Do I need to drag you back?!”
“You have to give me SOMETHING! Come on, you useless rat!”
“Stop this. Flee. I’ll grant you invisibility.”
“What are you doing?!” even the Emperor voiced his concern. She didn’t care. She had words for one creature, and one creature only, and she continued to stubbornly make her way towards the village.
f*ckface shot her a wordless, frantic plea. She felt their growing panic somewhere in the back of her mind.
“Come on, you twat, I know I’m your favourite!”
She knew no such thing.
“Help me, or watch me die, you piece of pixie sh*t!”
A handful of goblins that had rushed toward her had stopped in their tracks, looking at her with unease.
“Boo!” she barked at them, and they scattered screaming about her being raving mad and not worth it.
Gods, but she was really going to get herself killed, wasn’t she?
Well then…
Her memory would live on forever. Someone would have to write a song about an idiot that tore her clothes off and rushed into a burning village swarming with goblins. Shame they wouldn’t get her name right. Actually, no, thank the gods they wouldn’t.
She tried to take off her enchanted ring - one of the counterpart pair Astarion had found in the Shadowcursed lands, which provided some additional protection and benefits, but also made Astarion take any damage that she did as well - but it was stuck on her finger.
“Take your ring off,” she called out to Astarion over her shoulder.
“What?! No!” he protested. She cursed.
“If you take it off, you will die, little one,” f*ckface’s voice sounded grim in her mind.
“f*cking help me then, you fairy f*ckwit!”
“This will hurt,” they said, with sad resignation.
What was she doing, she thought to herself. None of this would change anything. It wouldn’t change the past. It wouldn’t even change the present or future - this was all pointless.
“Kneel.”
The word sounded more like an urgent instruction than a spiteful command.
She fell on her knees.
Her vision blurred and swam with an image of a glowing text. The symbols appeared to be espruar, though the words must have been sylvan. She could read it, though she did not understand its meaning.
“Read.”
As she uttered the words of the text, a power blossomed within her body. It filled her, shifting and moving, picking up force and momentum, as though an invisible maelstrom, with her very being at its eye.
A new fear filled her. One not of death, but of living with the aftermath of whatever was to come.
What the f*ck did she care about those refugees, anyway? They were nothing to her. Shadowheart was a bloody cultist, seeking nought but death, corruption and annihilation, including of her own self. Or had been, until very recently. Halsin could probably shapeshift into a bird or a mole or some other critter, and escape unscathed at any moment, should he only wish to do so. Neither of them were her responsibility.
Why was she doing any of this?
It was becoming harder and harder to breathe, her throat closing up, as though filling with sand.
All the power that was coursing through her seemed to tether her to the earth and somewhere deeper, beyond. Something, somewhere, had been snared. It pulled, it tugged, it threatened to wring her out, taking everything that had just filled her and more. Every muscle in her body seemed to tense at once, fighting to stay whole. Her tendons felt on the brink of tearing. Her back curved and twisted, threatening to snap her spine. The pain was unbearable.
Astarion began screaming in agony behind her.
I'm so sorry, my love…
An ogre approached her, waving a massive club in triumph.
“Dig.”
She mustered what was left of her strength and plunged her fingers into the dirt, as though impaling it.
An upturned avalanche taking the shape of a gargantuan earth elemental exploded from the earth before her, upheaving the ogre with it, and smashing it with a rocky appendage as it crashed back onto the ground, killing it. It lifted itself onto what passed for its legs. It heaved. It charged.
The goblins fled as the elemental rushed toward them, but as it gained momentum it leapt into the air - somewhere in the back of Asmodea’s mind she managed to wonder how in the hells this thing, which would have weighed tonnes, could possibly jump - and landed on a knot of goblins.
What was left of them was unrecognisable - shards of splintered bones and shattered armour mixed with organs turned into bloody, bilious pulp. A half-crushed goblin screamed until the elemental stepped on his head - the action happenstance, not mercy.
The elemental did not possess or understand the concept of mercy. There was Them, and there was Other. And just then the little mud green Others were disturbing Their peace and had to be quelled immediately. The earth shook as it chased and pulverised the goblins and their allies.
The unseen tether between Asmodea and the earth elemental remained in place as the elemental rampaged. Its conscience, rudimentary as it was, was sinking roots and intertwining with her own. She began to lose track of where the elemental ended and she began. She only felts its mindless urge to destroy until all was One.
The only thing that kept her grounded in her own body was the pain and the sound of her own screaming.
Blood seemed to boil in her veins. Tremors swept through her as the fey magic latched on to anything it could and pulled, and twisted, and wrung. It sought purchase within her body and found it lacking.
She recognised the sensation of someone’s healing magic - it must have been Jaheira’s - coursing through her body, but it couldn’t possibly be sufficient.
“That is enough. Release it.”
Her eyes registered a red, winged cambion taking flight toward the village - Wyll must have finally called on the power of the rapier she had negotiated from Mizora - he had been so opposed to the idea at first.
Gale rushed on foot after the cambion, lightning dancing on his fingertips.
“Hang in there, cub!” Jaheira’s voice just barely cut through the pounding in her head. The druid must have redoubled her healing efforts, but it was all in vain…
Through the haze, she saw the remaining absolutists retreating. Would the elemental plough through the village next..? It was all the same to it, wasn’t it?
She grimaced in agony and clutched at her head as a sharp, piercing pain emanated from her ears. There was no escape from it. A sudden pinching sensation, and the world had grown silent, aside from a reverberating ringing. Something wet spilled down the sides of her neck.
“LET GO!”
She didn’t know how.
She felt a momentary flash of guilt from her patron as the realisation hit them, and within an instant, they withdrew, taking the power they had provided her with them. The tether snapped, and moments later, the elemental disappearing back into the ground as though diving into water.
The pain of her misused body remained.
The last thing she remembered before the darkness mercifully took her was Wyll laying a cloak over her bare shoulders.
She lay recovering in the darkness of Astarion’s tent, her head on his lap. His hand felt pleasantly cool on her forehead, which still thrummed with pain. Light seemed to make her very retinas burn - for a moment she had wondered whether she had somehow become a vampire.
Her body had been healed and was now going through the motions of expedited recovery as everything returned to the norm, but an exhaustion which always accompanied being drained of one’s magical prowess seemed to have set in her very bones. This would take longer to recover from.
f*ckface came and went frequently, lingering lightly somewhere in the outskirts of her mind, as though peeping in to hover over her, with concern and guilt.
Not being afflicted with magic-related exhaustion, Astarion had recovered much quicker than she did. Shortly after getting back on his feet he hunted down and gorged on some straggler goblins. He had also accepted Halsin’s offering of his own blood, after, for the first time. ‘As a palate cleanser’, he said, thought Asmodea knew it meant more than that for both elves. Something was set in motion by one and accepted by the other.
Both Halsin and Shadowheart had survived - the absolutists were disrupted in time.
Wyll had brought Asmodea soup and so Astarion begrudgingly allowed him to linger for a few moments.
“What you did there… It was incredible,” he said. “I can conjure a minor elemental, but nothing of that size or strength.”
“It was... almost like a scroll, but within my mind,” she said. “Hardly my own doing. I won’t be able to replicate it.”
“You know that’s not how it works,” Wyll objected. “If you’ve done it once, it means you can do it again,” he said.
“And what do you think, you f*cker?” she directed as f*ckface.
The fey said nothing, fleeing her mind. The ensuing silence should have been blissful, yet somehow it was almost deafening.
“Why did you do it?” Astarion asked, dully, once Wyll left. “You just took off, leaving me behind. Reckless, careless, stupid... Why? Why would you gamble like that? You didn’t have to do any of it. Was it some kind of penance? Why..?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t believe in penance. I just had to. And it all worked out in the end, didn't it?" She gave him a weak smile.
“Did that wretched thing promise you something?” He said, growing more animated. “Did it make you do it? With some condition? Or did you honestly place that much trust in it? That you’d put your own life on the line?”
She shook her head as he talked, even though the simple motion sent spikes of pain through her temples.
“No,” she said again. “I trusted you to watch my back.”
Astarion scoffed at her words, following by an intake of breath that sounded like a masked sniff.
“I barely trusted the fey at all,” she continued. “But I do now,” she grinned.
“And why is that..?” Astarion sighed.
“I think they like me,” she laughed, despite the pain.
The theatre was abandoned for the night. Frederic would handle it himself, gods knew they paid him enough for incidents like this.
Astarion and Asmodea had ended up on their terrace, laying flat on their backs on some chaises, looking up at the night sky. Argument had given way to quiet contemplation.
“It’s our only option,” said Asmodea.
“There’s the astral sea,” Astarion said without conviction in his voice.
The astral plane. A vast nothingness between worlds and other planes of existence. A space where time stood still for its inhabitants. No ageing. No hunger. No sun. No healing. No entertainment. Awful weather. Countless deadly beings one might accidentally stumble upon. Overall unpredictability. Danger.
“There is… And it will always remain there, as a terrible backup plan,” she conceded. “I do wonder how Lae’zel is doing,” she added after a pause.
“Have you had any news from her?”
Asmodea shook her head.
“Sending spells come difficult enough for me - I think most of them don’t even reach her. Or she doesn’t respond… Last I heard from her, she simply said ‘Vlaakith yet lives’ as an explanation and update.”
Another silence stretched.
“You mentioned it wants you to leave Baldur’s Gate,” said Astarion. “And go where..?”
“Anywhere, at first,” said Asmodea. “Just back on the road. They said I’m growing weak, being so out of practice. And it’s true - I used to be able to do much more, and it came easier.”
“And then..?”
“And then we’ll need to visit the feywild, at some point,” she admitted.
“Great…” muttered Astarion, too weary to argue. “You do realise what you perceive as a minute in the feywild can end up being a year here..?”
“f*ckface promised no time tricks.”
Astarion sighed, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands, suddenly feeling every minute of his own 200-something odd years.
“f*ckface, f*ckface, f*ckface… After all this time, do you know anything about the fey..? What is it? Which fey court does it belong to? What is its real name? What does it even look like..?”
“I don’t know. It’s never mattered.” She frowned and bit her lip, searching through her memories of their interactions for any clues the fey might have provided. “They did mention wanting to trample someone beneath their hooves once, so there’s that. Maybe they’re just a very clever deer,” she offered, turning to look at Astarion with a smile.
Astarion only scowled at her joke.
“Only you would trust a deer to carry out a promise to provide you with immortality,” he said.
“A magical, talking deer,” she corrected him, deadpan. “That responds to ‘f*ckface’.”
