#astar'dra

As of right now, it lives in disgrace, shoved beneath a stack of worthier volumes, lest the drow catch him trying to drown it, or burn it, or whatever suitably ignoble fate he can devise for the damned thing. 

If his heart beat, it would have stopped when she showed it to him, some sick game before she produced a stake— but no. No, her big silver eyes were guileless, trusting, and if it was a cruel joke as he suspects, it was being done through her. 

Astarion had kept his composure, more or less, and with quick thinking, he had at once gotten the book away from her before it could describe him any more perfectly, and won points with Triel’dra in the process. She was certainly the person whose favour he most needed, and even with a bit of a hiccup initially— mind flayers are creatures of the underdark, there was a drow skulking around on the ship, he’d made some assumptions— he’d say he was doing rather well for himself on that front. 

It’s a brilliant stroke of luck that Astarion had full day to ingratiate himself to their fearless leader (“I do not understand how that happened,” she’d admitted when he’d first called her that to her face) before they’d stumbled across Gale and then Wyll. With only Shadowheart and Lae’zel around, winning her over had been child’s play. But these two… 

He sees the way the wizard looks at her.

Fortunately for Astarion, Triel’dra does not. 

Gale had been much, much too friendly from the moment Triel had dragged him from his own faulty portal, and all too happy to launch into a nauseating list of his many, many self-reported accomplishments; however, to Gale’s disappointment and Astarion’s immense satisfaction, Triel’dra’s only follow up questions were about the cat. 

“Would you like to be a housecat, Erelae?” she’d asked the raven on her shoulder. Evidently it did, because the familiar was now trotting after her as a sleek silver tabby.

The warlock, though… Wyll Ravengard had swashbuckled his way across their path mid-battle, leaping in to defend a gaggle of cowering idiots who had led a pack of goblins right to the gates of their settlement. Astarion hadn’t worried, not at first, about this newcomer getting between him and his quarry but that was before they’d gotten inside the tiefling encampment and it had immediately become apparent that Triel’dra was also exactly the kind of incorrigible do-gooder who would stop and risk her neck for anyone with a sob story. 

When he had decided to charm a drow woman for protection, too compassionate was not a problem he had anticipated. 

The day before had been all hiking and looting and the odd reanimated skeleton, so he supposes he hadn’t had the chance to really observe her. She was difficult to read, in a way he’d taken to calling ‘resting murder face,’ a quiet stoicism and soft voice that gave little away, save perhaps a twitchy kind of wariness— when the worm in her head wasn’t interfering, anyway— and when beset by goblins and bugbears, had dispatched them with a promising, ruthless efficiency. 

And then they’d walked into a settlement full of frightened little tiefling children and she’d melted on the spot. 

She’d been visibly unsettled as soon as they’d crossed the gate, murmuring something about her conversation with what he presumed to be the tiefling leader, and had only become more distressed as they took in the chaos, white brows knit, those eerie pale eyes wide and troubled. 

Triel’dra was hesitant with people, but she’d make time for anyone who asked— and her greatest weakness was for the little ones.  

The first time Astarion had actually seen her lose her calm was after stepping away from the particularly unpleasant group of children with their miniature thieves’ guild. 

“I do not understand,” she’d said, horrified as soon as she was sure there weren’t any more tiny little devils lurking around to hear. “Why is no one watching them? Where are their parents?” 

Shadowheart had raised an incredulous eyebrow. “They’re orphans, obviously. They don’t have parents.” 

Triel had floundered for a moment, the way she does when she gets stuck translating whatever is in her head from Drow to Elvish to Common and just gestured in helpless outrage to the adults milling about, panicking and arguing and running about like headless chickens. “No one’s child is everyone’s child.”

She had looked about ready to flatten the druids who tried to keep her out of the grove, once she heard they were keeping a girl captive, and he’d had little choice but to follow after her, ready to bolt if she was suddenly beset by angry bears. 

It had been a rather impressive bit of hostage negotiation, if he’s being honest. Especially considering how much of it she had spent talking to a snake. 

But now she was fully preoccupied with the druid’s predicament and could not be diverted. 

Thus, the argument. 

“We do not have time for any of this!” Lae’zel hisses. “The gaith tadpole in your skull grows by the hour. We do not have the luxury of running errands for every being we encounter!” 

They’d returned to spend one more night at their campsite before moving on, either forward as Lae’zel wants towards wherever she thinks her Creche might be, or after these goblin cultists who have, more likely than not, already killed this Halsin person. Here they could rest, and argue without the subjects of the argument weighing in or making puppy-dog eyes. 

“I understand,” Triel’dra was considerably calmer than Lae’zel. It’s the measured response of someone who already knows what they’re going to do, arguments be damned. “But I cannot leave them. If we find the Archdruid, the circle will cease their ritual, the tieflings will be safe. Otherwise, they die.” 

“She’lak! Their fate is not our concern.” 

Astarion is inclined to agree with her. Triel’dra is an adult elf, at least one hundred, more than old enough to know the world is cruel, let alone nature, and her behaviour is in stark contrast to the whispers he’s heard about drow societies. He’s wondering if he shouldn’t look elsewhere for protection…but he’d also seen her shoot down a bugbear in the time it took the rest of them to draw weapons. 

Not to mention that one, brief glimpse of bloody murder he’d seen in her head. 

Just for an instant, between flashes of her capture and her home, he’d seen, through streaming eyes and too-bright light, another drow woman pinned beneath her as she drove a dagger down with all the vicious force her small frame belied. 

So for now, he’s retreated to his tent, thumbing through a book, keeping his thoughts to himself— and weighing his options. 

Shadowheart is allied with Lae’zel, to everyone’s amazement, though she’s after a typical healer and not whatever in the hells a githyanki decontamination involves. She’s watching the confrontation warily, keeping her distance. 

Gale is bent over a stewpot, hoping that if he stays very quiet and very, very still, he won’t be dragged into this. 

“It’s fine, Lae’zel,” Triel asserts. “I do understand our situation; I will not ask you to delay, but I am staying. I will find Halsin myself and rejoin you afterwards, if I am able.” 

“And me,” Wyll adds. He steps forward and gives the drow an approving nod. Triel smiles at him, gratefully. “The Blade of Frontiers does not abandon souls in need.” 

Oh, for fuck’s sake. 

When they’d first met, he’d been surprised to see so much of the surface in those brief glimpses into her mind. There’d been her capture, running through grey dawn forest as the nautiloid pursued, somehow tracking her beneath the canopy of the trees ahead, her only thoughts of leading it away from home. An ancient drow’s gnarled hands, revelry and prayer beneath a full moon, two figures wreathed in starfire. He knows enough to recognize worship. 

Far fewer spiders and less ritual sacrifice than he had anticipated. 

Astarion wouldn’t say he’s well-versed in drow customs or the politics of the underdark (enough to know that they’re brutal and depraved), just the bits and pieces he’s picked up in two centuries. Something something the Seldarine drove out the Spider Queen and she took her cursed followers with her into the darkness. 

Triel’dra, it seems, is among those drow who came crawling back. 

Judging by the way she shies from sunlight, they haven’t been forgiven. 

But the gods had deigned to grant her something. It may be a mere taste of the kind of sacred power Shadowheart wields, but  the silvery white fire Triel gathers in her hands had made the hair at the back of his undead neck stand up in terror all the same.  

It’s a precarious position, a vampire hiding from vampires. The drow strikes the perfect balance of holy and grounded— able to protect him but without the kind of zealotry that might target him as well, on principle. 

Astarion sighs, sets the book down carelessly, and steps from the safety of his tent awning and into the fray. “I’ll come along. The druids did say they would be very grateful if we found their missing leader…” The last thing he needs is Triel’dra going off on some heroic adventure with a fellow bleeding heart like Wyll. Where would that leave him? 

Besides, she likes him already, and charming as he may be, winning over Shadowheart promises a challenge. She narrows her eyes at him now as he declares his allegiances. 

“I am certain they would be willing to aid us if we return their leader. Perhaps in the form of healing?” Triel offers hopefully, and Shadowheart lets out a noisy breath, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Master Halsin has been studying these tadpoles for a long time, it seems.”

“You really should have led with that,” the cleric says, defeated. “Fine. Maybe the druids can help. Besides, you’ll all get killed without me.”

“Thank you,” the drow breathes as a relieved sigh, even as Lae’zel curses in Gith. “This is… this is important to me.” She falters, expectant eyes on her, and looks to Astarion. Not the way he’s used to being looked at. It’s never desire, never lingering or hungry, but if she’s looking to him for reassurance, that’s at least something. He looks curious, encouraging her to go on. “I… They are me? The Emerald Grove is…. It is very much like my home. If this happened to us, if our leader—”  her voice fails her, and she shakes her head. 

The place in her thoughts. The worshippers under the stars. 

She’s reluctant to share more, but between the three of them they’re able to get a few details out of her en route to this goblin stronghold. 

She calls their leader something that would translate like ‘Moonreader,’ a title passed from mother to daughter for generations: druids of great power who divine the will of Sehanine Moonbow through the stars. 

“Drow druids,” Astarion remarks, eyebrows raised. “Drowids?” 

“But you’re not a druid,” Shadowheart prompts, to which Triel nods and says nothing more. 

The day is strange and eventful. Something about Triel just cows everyone they come across from this Cult of the Absolute, and one look at the drow is enough to convince most that she’s with them already. It’s remarkably easy to creep through their territory, looking through the ruins of an abandoned village for anywhere they might be holding the druid captive.

Triel’dra is forever preoccupied with fresh water, and can’t pass a source without checking on it. She wanders off to investigate a well, and calls them over urgently a moment later. By the time they reach her, she’s already disappeared over the edge. 

Astarion darts to the well and peers down. It’s dry, the bottom seemingly dark stone, and Triel is looking up at him, her eyes gleaming in the darkness. “There is much down here,” she calls to him. Her voice is soft but it carries up the empty stone chute of the well. She’s used to this sort of setting. 

Astarion smiles lazily at her from above. “Well, well, well… What do we have here?” 

Triel smiles; Shadowheart threatens to shove him in. 

The well opens into a dark cavern, festooned with massive cobwebs— studded with silk-swathed figures, distinctly person-shaped. 

“Hopefully not our druid,” Astarion notes dryly. 

“No,” Triel treads forward carefully, placing each step with deliberate care as she studies the webs across the floor. “No, these are old. Some of these webs are new, so it is difficult to say if it’s been disturbed recently, but the bodies have been here for a while.”

“Phase spiders,” Wyll assesses, and the drow nods her assent. “And lots of them. Watch your steps down here.” He takes a moment to obliterate a clutch of hideous eggs with a blast from his palm. “This doesn’t seem to be part of the goblin camp.”

“We’re already down here,” Astarion sighs, glancing to the others for their assent. “Might as well take a look. Someone hid an entrance to this place; there must be something worthwhile.” 

There are, unsurprisingly, spiders. Many, many, massive, fuckoff huge spiders, and little else. He’s not sure which of them it was who stepped into the webbing and sent the things pouring in (he’s inclined to blame Wyll. Even with his expertise, and  though Triel conjured some softly glowing wisps to light his way, he’s still a human with one eye) but in an instant they’re overrun. 

Fire and distance both seem like worthwhile friends in this fight, and he sends a firebolt sizzling into a chittering beast. 

Triel’dra is nearest to him, and after getting off a few shots, she tries to hide her cat. She shoos her familiar away, but the movement catches the nearest creature’s attention and it lashes out, the cat disappearing with an indignant chirp in a wisp of grey smoke. 

Triel cries out. It’s in drow, but the distress and intonation are clearly cursing. The offending spider is too close to shoot, and she darts after it, short sword drawn, a dagger at the ready in her other hand. She’s deft with them, darting in close to slash and then out of its reach. But then it lunges forward, blinking out of existence to close an unnatural distance, and she isn’t quick enough as she throws herself out of the way. 

The spider lets out a shrill wail as its fangs graze her skin. It’s trying to sink in, pump venom into her flesh, but only manages to graze at her with the sharp points as she retreats. The fang slashes through her sleeve as she jerks back, a spray of blood sent through the air by the sharp movement. 

Astarion is caught in its path and the world stops. 

Droplets of drow blood, hot and sweet, are splattered across his face, in his hair, and there is nothing else. He can smell it. He can taste it and all at once he knows why Cazador kept this all to himself.

He’s stunned long enough for the others to notice. A flash of that bright, hateful light that makes his cursed skin crawl snaps him out of his daze as Triel blasts the spider in its horrid face with a handful of holy fire, scrambling out from beneath it. He’s not sure how she got there. 

“Astarion! Are you alright?” Triel’dra rushes over to him, close enough to feel the warmth of a healing spell already forming in her hand as she does a quick battlefield once-over. Close enough to hear her heart pounding, to smell the blood coursing through her veins just beneath her skin, still soaking the torn fabric of her tunic. 

Astarion’s mouth is watering. He swallows hard and drags his attention, kicking and screaming, from the lavender skin of her throat not protected by her leather armour. He does what he does best and forces a smile, raises his hand, and a firebolt strikesd the spider coming up behind. It collapses with a shriek, oozing venomous ichor. “Of course, darling, never better. But do watch your back, won't you?” 

Clearing out the phase spiders is a long, exhausting slog. Shadowheart gets too tangled in webs to move and has to be cut free… twice.  

“Let's see you do this in heavy plate, Astarion!” 

Finally, the creatures stop coming, the cavern free of echoing chitters and the clack of chitinous legs, nothing but the cold empty nothing and the rush of flowing water somewhere deeper inside. And Triel, being a drow dowsing rod— drowsing rod— of course, has to go find it.

A stream trickles over an outcropping to form a deep pool of dark water, and Triel kneels to examine it, then cups her hands and brings it to her lips. “It’s good,” she tells them and sets to refilling waterskins and scrubbing the dirt and blood from her face. 

“I’m not sure I trust dank cave water.” Shadowheart notes as she lowers herself to sit beside the pool, and starts the slow process of removing her armour. 

“I wouldn’t mind the rest, location aside,” Wyll adds with a weary sigh, worrying at a spider bite. He smiles at the drow, who is gleefully shaking off the cold water like a pigeon in a bird bath. “Though, perhaps ‘welcoming’ is a matter of perspective.”     

“This is the most at home I have felt in days,” Triel admits, standing, stretching, still battered and bruised despite the refreshing interlude. 

No one wants to delay, but it’s been a long day of hiking and spiders and they decide to make camp for the night. Shadowheart’s magic is exhausted, as is the ranger’s. 

“No, wait,” she says, and with a word of incantation, calls back her familiar. To everyone’s dismay, she’s chosen its form as a spider the size of a small dog. She beams at it, lovingly. “Now I am out of magic.” 

Astarion takes his time, keeps his distance, as the others wash and settle, making a fire, passing around the satchel with their food, taking turns washing up in the pool. 

He’s been holding his breath. He doesn’t need to breathe, it’s just a habit, just something he needs to speak— and to smell. If he doesn’t breathe he can pretend there aren’t still droplets of Triel’dra’s blood across his face. That he’s thought of anything else since it happened. 

Finally, once he’s sure no one will disturb him, he makes his way to the water. It’s icy and dark, that telltale nothing looking up at him from its surface, and after a moment of hesitation he works up the will to scrub it away. There are eyes on him. 

The evening wears on. It's impossible to keep track of time in the cavern, but his companions sit and chat and eat and he tries to do as much as needed to keep up appearances. Astarion excuses himself to his tent, picks up a book, and stares at it, unable to take in the words. 

Gods, one whiff of drow blood and he’s become the world’s most obnoxious sommelier. Full-bodied red, rich and sweet with notes of mountain spring water, night air, and blackberry. 

He needs to hunt, deluding himself that he can sate this hunger with quantity. Does anything in this damnable cavern even have blood? He can get back out into the night, into the forest, he has to find something, something with… with more thin, useless animal blood. 

There are goblins outside— that’s something— and now he’s fixated on how to be sure he gets one on its own, not be swarmed by a pack of the little bastards. And after all this, he knows, it still won’t hold a candle to Triel’s. 

There are two other living bodies here, of course, but he’s like a bloodhound and he’s picked up her scent. Transfixed, single minded. 

He tries to divert himself, but there is nothing but the hunger, nothing but the pulse pounding in Triel’dra’s throat and the gnawing weakness, the need. 

But Astarion has been starving for two hundred years. He can last another night. 

He can. 

He has to. Triel is sitting with the others, trying to shield her eyes from the fire and nibbling on a hunk of bread as Wyll regales them with tales of monsters he’s slain. Even relaxed, there’s a dagger at her side, not to mention that sacred fire she conjures. She may barely know what a vampire is, but she certainly knows how to kill one. 

Above all else, she’s an elf. She trances; Triel’s guard is never down. Even if he wanted to, it would be suicide, and he takes great comfort in the knowledge that no matter how hungry he gets, he’d never be stupid enough to try. 

But as the fire is dying down and the others begin to drag themselves to their beds, Triel’dra approaches his tent, cautiously, like she would knock on the canvas if she could. “Astarion?” 

He smiles, bites down the screaming in his head. “Ah, hello. What can I do for you?”

The look she gives him in return is nervous, hopeful. “I think… I think that I will try to sleep tonight.”  

His cold, still heart plummets. 

The other two have noted this exchange, but they can’t understand what it means, not really. How vulnerable Triel’dra is choosing to make herself. 

He laughs, before he can stop himself. A nervous giggle, just for an instant, near hysterics. The gods all hate him. “Really? Sleep, here? Are you…. Are you certain that’s wise?” 

She pulls something from her shirt, a round set of stacked pieces on a silver chain he’s seen her fiddle with. “The Lady of Dreams sometimes blesses her followers with visions, in their sleep.” She shrugs, weakly. “I… I do not think it will amount to anything, but it seems the time to try. We say: when the tunnel collapses, pray as you dig.”

A genuine smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. “So,  have the same outcome either way, but if it’s good it’s because of  them and if it’s poor it’s on you?” 

He regrets it, the slip, but she’s not offended. She laughs a little, the scar across her face twitching as her nose crinkles. “I see it as: do all you can for yourself, but it does not hurt to ask.” 

Oh, but it does. It aches, to plead and beg and pray with no answer. 

His smile tightens.

“Anyway… wake me when it is my turn to keep watch.” 

This is their habit. It’s what they’ve done each night. He has no reason to do differently now. “Of course.” 

With a grateful smile, she bids him a good night, and turns back towards her tent. 

The others lay down to sleep, and Astarion is left alone with dying embers and his hunger. 

He should leave now, find something to eat, but… Triel isn't trancing tonight. There’s no elf aware enough to rouse if something were to disturb the camp while he’s stepped away. He can’t— or is that just the excuse he’s made? 

He creeps closer without meaning to, from his tent to the fireside to the edge of the pool and oh, that’s taken him right to Triel’dra’s tent, hasn’t it? How funny. 

Triel’s is the smallest of the shelters they’ve thrown together, made of dark fabric and suffocatingly small. She’s sacrificed surface area for coverage, devoting as much of the canvas as she can to blocking out the light. She’s tiny, a stunted little thing hiding surprising strength, and even she has to curl to fit comfortably, her bedroll poking out from beneath the flap. 

Astarion silently pulls it aside. 

Triel’dra is sound asleep. He can tell by the way her breath falls, the way she flinches and mumbles to herself into her pillow, murmurs in Drow, but no sounds enough like Elvish. It’s an unpleasant dream. 

As he moves closer he catches his foot on something— a less dexterous man would have face planted right into the pile of blankets stirring gently in the middle of the tent— but he rights himself and Triel’dra doesn’t wake. 

She’s left her pack and all its provisions out for him again. 

His mouth twitches, and he has to bite down hard on the bleak bubble of laughter threatening to slip free. 

She’s always so worried about him going hungry. 

With no sign of her familiar, he presses on. The fabric of the flap falls, sealing the tent behind him and at once he regrets it. Her scent is overwhelming in this close space, so tight he’s all but crouched over her, filled with her and her things— her blood, but more along with it. It’s woodsmoke and pine sap and the bar of soap she had from wherever she’d come from— night blooming jasmine and lilac, he knows his fragrances— and his mouth is watering. 

The little drow is fast asleep, safe in the knowledge that her trusted ally is watching over the camp. 

He can’t pretend anymore. He already knows what he’s going to do, knows why he’s in here, drawn irresistibly, a moth smart enough to realise what’s happening but too weak to stop itself as it’s drawn to the flame. 

Astarion may be free of Cazador but he’s still a slave to his hunger. 

He tells himself he won’t hurt her. He’ll be quick, take only what he needs, and she’s sound asleep. Just a taste, she’ll never know. Try as he might, the litany of excuses never completely drowns out the doubts. 

What makes him think he can stop? 

He’s breathing, desperate to draw in more of that delectable scent and it comes as ragged panting. 

His teeth are so sharp. She won’t feel a thing. 

He could so easily tear her throat out with his fangs. 

She’s so strong. 

She’s so small. 

He’s been so hungry for so long and to have it here— fresh, living blood, helpless beneath him… 

It’s as if someone else tugs gently on the blanket pulled over her head. She sleeps in a heap of them, curled into her pillow, as if even down here she’s afraid of sunlight sneaking in. 

He swallows hard, holds his breath, tries to clear the haze of ravenous need driving him to lean in closer, closer…. 

He tenses, ready to spring back as she shifts beneath him. Triel’dra mumbles in her sleep and rolls over, brow furrowed and lips parted as whatever nightmare she’s having plays behind her eyelids. 

She falls onto her back, her head dips to her far shoulder, baring her neck to him. 

He could sob. When this is over, however it ends, Astarion is going to find a quiet place and laugh until he cries. He has no doubt now that the gods are looking on at their unhappy cosmic punchline. 

Miserable of them, he thinks as he considers the sleeping drow, to use one of their own faithful as the set-up. 

The last of his restraint gives way. 

Astarion drops to his hands and knees as he inches closer, all too aware of the creeping, crawling thing he’s been reduced to. He doesn’t care. He’s too hungry for dignity, as if Cazador had left him with any to lose. 

He can hear the frantic beating of her heart, sees, with some gruesome instinct, the place along her neck that would be best to sink his teeth. He lines himself up, fangs bared, shuts his eyes and—

A jolt passes through the figure beneath him as she wakes. 

Oh, shit. 

Astarion’s eyes fly open in time to meet hers, wide with panic and unfocused with sleep as in a a reflexive movement she draws a knife he’d been too distracted to see from beneath her pillow and a forceful kick to his midsection sends him sprawling backwards out of the tent. 

This may well be the stupidest way he could die. 

He manages to land on his feet, standing just in time to see her stop dead in the doorway, an attack abandoned as she wakes fully and takes in what she’s seeing. Triel’dra lowers the knife, blinking sleep from her eyes. “Astarion?” 

He straightens against the ache promising a bruise in the shape of her foot, brushes himself off and tries to look as innocent as possible. “I can explain,” he says, and it sounds as weak as it feels. 

At least no one else seems to have woken.

There’s a moment where he considers lying. That he was overcome by a different kind of hunger and meant to wake her to suggest a midnight tryst. But no. Triel has been unmoved by his flirtations and she’d woken with a face full of fangs. It’s too late. 

She’s quick but if he turns and bolts he may be able to make it to the rope out of the well before she does. Maybe. 

Triel’dra hasn't moved from before her tent, just lets the flap fall behind her, tucks her knife away, then raises her hand. He hadn’t noticed her familiar creeping from the top of the tent ready to lunge, but the spider halts at her instruction. Triel is eyeing him cautiously, that appraising stare he’s felt before. “You do not eat with us,” she says softly. 

“No,” he says, his smile chagrined, defeated. “No, I don’t.” 

“Blood-thief,” she breathes. “You…?” 

He tries for casual, but the laugh that slips out is high and near-deranged, his eyes darting  between the drow and the spider, trying to place the campfire behind him by the warmth against his back. Just how and when to bolt without tripping into it. 

As much as Astarion loves a sharp knife, his wits have always been his first line of defence, but he finds himself disarmed beneath her steady gaze. Words bubble and spill, clumsy and panicked. “I wasn’t going to hurt you, I swear it— I’ve never actually killed anyone— to feed, I mean, I’ve killed people; you’ve seen me kill people— but I’ve always fed off of animals. I’ve been hunting deer, boars, kobolds—” 

She had, until this moment, been observing him silently, her expression unreadable. Triel’dra’s eyes widen and she starts towards him, a bewildered outrage on her face. “You!” She hisses, a sharp whisper that makes him reflexively look to the other tents for movement. She crosses the distance and gently prods an accusing finger into his chest. “You are the one who has been killing the boars!” 

“Shh, shhh!” he shushes, pleading. “Yes. Yes, that’s been me; please keep it down.” There’s no sound or movement from the others, and for his initial concern, her voice has never raised above a hush, drowned out by the steady trickle of water from the stream. She pulls back her hand to rest her face in it, exasperated. This is… not the reaction he had been expecting. 

She mutters something under her breath. Language doesn’t matter, Astarion can always tell when someone is cursing. “Such a waste of meat. A carcass that size attracts wolves, owlbears, scares off all the small game…” 

That’s the part she cares about? “I couldn’t exactly bring it back to camp, could I? Here’s a dead boar I hunted, don’t mind it being fully exsanguinated!” 

“That is why you bring it to me. Or better yet, bring me with you. I field dress the boar, no one can tell how it died.“

It takes a moment for the exchange to fully process. Astarion stares at her, baffled, as he finally convinces himself that he’d heard her properly.  His surprise turns to suspicion. “You would do that?” 

“Of course. I am doing all I can to keep everyone fed, and that boar would have helped immensely. You get the blood, we eat the meat, everyone is full and happy.” 

Astarion studies the drow, looking for anything like disgust or anger and finds none. He motions away from the group, and to his further surprise she’s happy enough to follow him closer to the pool, where the rushing water can better obscure their conversation. Someone should probably warn her that it’s inadvisable to wander off with someone like him. But for now, he’s impossibly grateful she does. “You… you don’t mind that I’m a vampire.” He shouldn’t really be so shocked. She barely knew what one was, and besides, he supposes it may be rather difficult to rattle someone from the land of things-that-go-bump-in-the-forever-night. 

It does give her pause. Triel is quiet a moment, and he can feel her gaze on him, his red eyes, his fangs, observing the things he tries to keep below anyone’s notice. It sends an uneasy prickle down his spine. 

“I wish you had told me.” She says, finally. 

“Yes, well.” Astarion’s mouth twitches into a nervous smile. He clears his throat uncomfortably. “The response is typically less… this, and more…” He sighs, mimes the stabbing motion she had made the day before. 

“Oh.” Her brows knit. He shouldn’t be giving her ideas. “Thus, the secrecy?” She thinks for a moment, the freckles across her nose shifting as her mouth works at something she can’t figure out how to word. “If you have been drinking boar blood, and it is plentiful, why were you…?” 

He’d rather hoped she’d somehow forgotten about that. 

Astarion sighs. He feels pitiful, but maybe it’s best to lean into it. “Animal blood is… fine. It will keep me going, but I’m… I’m so weak. The blood of a thinking creature is far more potent, just a sip and I’d be so much sharper, stronger…” He doesn’t expect much, but looks at her hopefully all the same. She’ll refuse, he’ll be cheeky about it, smooth things over with his charms and they can both go back to their reverie and pretend this never happened. 

Instead her face is deadly serious, her voice soft with pity that would turn his stomach if it weren’t so empty. 

“You are hungry,” Triel’dra says.  

The laugh slips out before he can stop it, bitter. “For two hundred years.”   

Her unbroken stare doesn’t waver, studying him. “How much do you need?” 

He has no idea, but if it’s as powerful as it smells, it shouldn’t take much.  “A sip. Just a taste, really, I swear that was all I wanted.” 

“Alright.” 

“Pardon?”

“My blood. You may have some.” 

Astarion blinks at her. The words make sense, he understands them all individually, but cannot believe what he’s hearing when he strings them together. “I…. you’re certain?” She nods again, resolute. “Well then,” he forces his most reassuring smile, trying to hide the glance he takes around the campsite to ensure no one else is listening, to capitalise on this offer before she comes to her senses. “Shall we make ourselves comfortable, darling? Somewhere away from prying eyes.” 

She leads the way when he gestures to her tent. He has to wonder if she isn’t agreeing so she might lure him back to where she has a stake, but he’s too hungry to let that stop him. 

She grabs her pack on the way past, pulling it into the tent behind her as she disappears behind the canvas flap. He has to stoop as he nudges his own way into the cramped space just as Triel sinks cross legged to her bedroll and indicates the space she’s left beside her. 

He laughs to himself as he gets to his knees beside the bed instead. “You should lay down for this.” 

“Why?”  It comes out in a hurry and for the first time she seems nervous, well after he would have expected it. 

“Blood pressure, my dear,” he eases. He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing but it makes sense. “Better to keep you from fainting on me.”  

Triel considers this and hesitantly seems to concede. She’s uneasy as she lowers herself to the bedroll and settles back against the pillow, hands balled into fists and her eyes fixed on the dark canvas above her. 

Slipping into place over top of her is familiar enough, a well-practised movement from so many other nights,  and Astarion lays a hand to either side of her to rest his weight. Triel’dra squeezes her eyes shut tight as he draws closer and gives him a side, turning her head— away from him— to offer the crook of her neck and left shoulder. 

Astarion pauses, studying her beneath him. Her whole body is clenched as tight as her eyes, breath stuttering, heart pounding… cheeks flushed. 

Well, well. And here he had thought she wasn’t interested. Will wonders never cease? His vicious little gloomstalker is shy. An unusual surge of feelings pulse through him at the realisation. Relief and no small amount of amusement. He can work with this. 

The aftertaste is disappointment. 

He had thought she was different, but in the end, he knows exactly what he has to offer. All he’s ever had. 

 “Go on.” Triel swallows hard, he can hear it from where he’s paused, a whisper away from the heat of her skin. 

“Relax, darling. You’re so tense I’d break my fangs if I bit you now. Deep breaths for me… There you are….” His smirk nearly brushes the hammering thud of her pulse as Triel doesn’t calm so much as force herself to go slack about the shoulder. She’s still gritting her teeth, breath hissed between them. 

Her nerves have been an amusing diversion but his empty stomach clenches painfully. He has to breathe to speak and inhales a lungful of her scent, overpowering this close to her skin, to the veins calling to him beneath it. He’s salivating as he finally bares his fangs and surges forward. 

Triel swallows a gasp and Astarion’s first taste of thinking blood hits his tongue. 

He can’t really remember what it was to need air, but in that moment he thinks it must have been like this. How it was to gasp for something so desperately as he slips a hand beneath to cradle Triel’s head, holding her closer as he drinks, and drinks, and drinks, losing himself in it. 

Astarion moans. It slips free on it’s own, not a pretty sound, not the pitch-perfect playacted panting he’s perfected over the centuries, but something deep and animal and real that would be mortifying if he had the wherewithal to care, but his mind is empty of anything but taste and sensation and blessed relief. 

He feels it. The strength that was always just out of his reach, the heat of her blood spreading through his body, her pulse against his tongue—

“Astarion—” 

Her voice is so small, so far away when it finally reaches through the drunken haze of his thirst. How long had she been calling? Her hand is fisted in his shirt, the grip going slack.

No. No, it’s only been a moment, only a few seconds, he can’t have—

The heartbeat beneath his lips is slow, the skin cool against the unfamiliar stolen heat of his own.

She’s still breathing when he pulls back, but the lavender of her skin has gone grey. She blinks at him through heavy eyelids as he swallows curses under his breath and fumbles through his pockets for— ah, here it is. He hurries to press the handkerchief to the still bleeding wounds at her throat, dragging her to sit up. She sways, slumping against him. 

The rats were too small to tell but feeding on the boars he had been sure: there’s something in his bite that keeps the blood flowing. 

“There you are, darling, that’s it. Just… Hold this here, would you? It just needs a second…”  

Triel’dra steadies, the weight slumped against him lessened as she props herself up to sit under her own power, numb fingers grasping at the thin square of cloth. She mumbles something, slurred Drow that stumbles into Elvish, something like ‘I’m fine.’ Her movements are slow and clumsy, and when she looks at him she’s reeling, silver eyes are unfocused, but she’s keeping upright under her own power and the handkerchief clutched to the wound well enough, so finally he’s free to retreat. 

“Well,” Astarion sits back on his heels, getting what distance he can in the cramped tent. She’s fine. It’s fine. A little rest, and she’ll be good as new, he’s certain. “That…” He feels breathless, giddy. He licks his lips, catches a stray trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. “That was… amazing.” An ache so deep he’d forgotten how it was to be without it is gone. “My mind is finally clear. I feel strong, I feel…” It takes him a moment to find the word, so long since he’s needed it. Content. Satisfied. How had she put it? Full and… happy.  

Astarion hears the need in his own voice, the heady desperation, and clears his throat. He smiles, polite, brisk, aiming for just the perfect combination of nonchalance and gratitude. What’s a pint between friends? Everything is fine. No need to panic, or call the cleric, or contemplate just how valuable this is to him. Not appreciative enough that it might be leveraged against him, but enough that she might agree to this again. 

Gods, he can still taste her and already he’s angling for his next fix. 

Triel just smiles a little, weakly, unsteady. Something about it makes him uneasy, a feeling that only intensifies as an eerie chittering sound from behind sends a shudder down his back. The flap stirs and her familiar creeps back into the tent, crawling along the ceiling and watching him warily with far too many eyes. Time to make an exit. 

Astarion excuses himself to find something more filling he can feed on without restraint. “No boars,” he adds, forcing his most charming smile despite the disquiet still needling at him, “I promise.” 

He can never just enjoy anything. A belly full of drow blood is more than he dared to dream of through his years of draining vermin, but the high is souring and he can’t put his finger on why. A mix of things, a potent cocktail of roiling troubles and he needs to leave before his facade slips. 

“This is a gift, you know. I won’t forget it.”  

Astarion can’t bring himself to look at her as he hesitates at the doorway, the image of her haunting him anyway: pale and trembling, big horrid spider curled in her lap like a housecat as the red staining the handkerchief clutched to her neck deepens and spreads. 

A gift. As if there were such a thing. 

That’s part of the disgust he feels. That she has something he needs, that she knows it, and that for all his talk of his improved usefulness, it’s something he owes her with no way to repay. A debt, just another thing weighing against him in the balance of his worth. 

Well, at least Astarion knows what she wants from him, something he is all too able to provide, and the sooner he can tip the scales back in his favour, the better. 

It’s as he stalks through the web-strewn cave that the other aspect makes itself clearer. It’is knowing, now, just what was being kept from him. Not just the taste, but the strength, the clarity, the relief. It’s not possible to hate Cazador more than he does already, but it brings the feeling back up to the surface, acrid and persistent. 

Unfortunately, sharp as he is, the first thing he finds to stalk is an ettercap. It’s going to be one kind of spider or another down here, so he resigns himself to the thing with fewer legs, at least. He remembers from the earlier encounter to keep his distance, to hit it with fire. 

Its blood is vile but abundant. 

It doesn’t douse the heady craving for the drow’s blood as he had hoped. If anything it’s all the sweeter in his memory by comparison, the taste still lingering on his tongue. 

He stalks back to camp, belly full, chest hollow. 

Wyll and Shadowheart are asleep and he makes it back to his tent without waking them. It’s just as he’s about to turn in and try and get a decent stretch of reverie that a sound from the furthest tent catches his sensitive ears. The scent of blood is still heavy in the air and a stuttered, rasping sound just barely reaches him over the sound of the waterfall. Her familiar is meant to be keeping watch, but there’s no sign of the spider. 

Astarion grits his teeth, the flap of his tent clenched in his hand, and with a roll of his eyes he lets it fall and creeps back to Triel’dra’s tent. 

He’d left her sitting up. She’d been alert, mostly. She’d been fine. 

When Astarion pokes his head into the tent, the drow is sprawled across her bedroll in a dead faint, the handkerchief loosely grasped in her hand drenched in blood. There’s a splatter of it across her pillow. She’s deathly pale, grey lips tinged blue, breath shallow and strained, and soon to stop. 

Fuck. 

He should leave. He should go back to his tent and trance, and be as shocked as everyone else in the morning. This cave is full of horrors, it’s no surprise someone died. 

But no. Shit. Shit, they’ll find her with two perfect little punctures in her throat. All they need to do is look at his fucking teeth and he’s finished— and even if he gets away with it, he’s lost his best protection from Cazador. 

Cursing under his breath, he darts inside, drawing the flap closed behind him. Turning he starts, finds himself face to face with the fey spider perched on the dying drow woman’s chest. It shouldn’t be possible, but he swears those many eyes are all glaring accusations. 

The thing lunges for him when he moves towards her. 

“Piss off; I’m trying to help!” he hisses through clenched fangs. 

The spider only sort of…. Wiggles defensively in response, its first set of arms raised in a sad attempt at a threat display. It’s difficult to be intimidated by anything that fits under his boot but he still reflexively draws back. 

“What do you care, anyway? You’re bound to her, aren’t you? If she dies, you’re free.” The fey spirit waggles its arms more emphatically. 

Astarion sighs, surprised as he watches the creature by a sudden pang of pity. It probably can’t let her die even if it wants to, some clause in whatever fey pact familiars are bound by.  

“Look,” Astarion raises his hands, placating, and it— Erelae, that’s what Triel’dra calls it at least— lowers its arms in turn. “I’m trying to help, alright? Here, see?” He reaches behind himself and feels for her pack, dragging it over to rifle through. There’s no way he’s explaining this to Shadowheart and no way she’s lasting until morning, which leaves him few options. His fingers close around the familiar shape of a potion bottle and he shows it to the spider for its approval. 

Because that’s the kind of ridiculous his life has become. 

Erelae relents. The spider backs up, crawling off of its mistress, all eight eyes still fixed carefully on Astarion as he uncorks the bottle with his teeth and gathers the limp form of the bloodless drow in his arms. Her head tips back against his shoulder, and he carefully drips the sweet-smelling liquid, an unnatural bright red, into her mouth. “There we are,” he says, more to reassure himself than anyone else. “All better… No harm done. Good as new.” 

She’s still unconscious as the last of the potion trickles down her throat, but Triel’dra lets out a deep sigh, and her breathing seems to steady, the wounds on her neck fading. She’ll still feel like shit in the morning, but— in his amateur opinion, at least— she’ll live.  

Astarion lays her back against her bloodied bedroll. He’s certainly had worse targets. Pleasant enough to spend time with, and she’s beautiful— if in a severe, rugged sort of way. This close, and without having to worry about being caught, he’s able to really study her. There’s the obvious, the freckles, the jagged scar that stretches across the bridge of her nose from her jaw to her forehead. There are more. Older, fainter scars. One across her eye, tendrils of lethal scar tissue that stretch across her throat, the other side than she’d offered to him. A lifetime of fighting, and more than one brush with death by the looks of her body— let alone what he’d seen in her memory. 

Exactly what he needs, if he can just keep her attention. 

Astarion reaches down, her skin warm beneath his undead fingertips as he brushes silver hair, matted with blood, from her face, acknowledges the spider creeping back into its place on her chest, rising and falling with each slow breath, and skulks back to his tent to try and salvage what he can of this rest.