#helsin

✧ Background: Farmer (Modded)

✦ Family History:

Grandparents: Petulna Hallowfern (Wood Elf) & Inton Mountwander (Lolth Drow)

Parents: Helwyn Hallowfern (Wood Elf/Drow) & Rhodugh Collins (Human)

Siblings: Suewen (Sister | Half Elf) 14 & Teirnan (Brother | Half-Elf) 8

✦ Pets / Animal Familiars:

She has pet hands called, This and That. They act like dogs and scuttle about like Thing from the Adam's Family.

Also.. the sweet little Hyena you can save in the Shadowcurse (mod).. he'd definitely be along for the journey!

✧ Three Words That Describe Them:

Spooky, Eccentric and Sweet

✦ Physical Trait / Anomaly / Disability:

Well. Undead for starters.

• Heavily scarred through lacerations on the entirety of her body, and a large angry scar down her face.

• Glowing chest in a sickly, putrid green colour.

• Left pelvis shattered and healed, so she has a limped gait.

(Although, as the story progresses, my baby starts to heal through her own journey.)

✧ Tadpole Status: (e.g., Expanded Potential / Half-Illithid / Fully Evolved)

Rejected

✦ Game Stats (RP Flavor or Mechanics):

• Strength: 8 (but less if I could)

• Dexterity: 12

• Constitution: 12

• Intelligence: 10

• Wisdom: 14

• Charisma: 16

✧ Companion Affinity Key:

(Use these emojis to describe the relationship between your OC and each companion)

💜 = Close bond / Romantic interest

💚 = Rivalry / Mutual respect

🧡 = Strong friendship / Ally

❤️ = Romantic interest / Complex bond

💙 = Trustworthy companion / Mentor

🤍 = Mutual admiration / Professional respect

🖤 = Complicated / Dislike / Hatred

✧ Companion Affinity:

Astarion ❤️💜🧡

Gale ❤️🧡💙

Halsin ❤️❤️💜

Jaheria  🤍💙

Karlach 🧡🧡🧡

Lae'zel 🤍🧡🧡

Minsc  🤍💙

Minthara 🤍💙

Shadowheart 🖤💚🧡

Wyll 🤍🧡💙

✦ Theme Music:

- Fight Song

Odysseus - Epic/Little Girl Gone - Chinchilla

- Love song

Infinity - Jaymes Young/At last - Etta James

- OC’s choice

The Challenge - Epic

- Romance Song

Colours of the Wind - Peyton Parrish

✧ Moodboards / Aesthetic Extras: Undeath and Unlife

✦ Voice Claim:

Hetty - Rebecca Wisock: Ghosts (US)

✦ Actor Claim:

Vanessa - Eva Green: Penny Dreadful

✧ Reputation / What Others Say:

People are pretty terrified of Helna when she first approaches, often startling backwards, or recoiling but they soon learn she's a darling.

"She's odd, but she's a good person."

✦ Beliefs / Personal Code:

No one will come to save you, but there's always a chance to save others.

✧ Most Prized Possession:

She doesn't have very many possessions, but she has things she's proud of.

Her book of pressed flowers, her many various disgusting crafts made of bone and scrap fabric.. and, eventually, her Grandmother's necklace hidden under the floorboards of her family home with the emblem of Silvanus.

✦ Greatest Fear:

Losing herself to the Shadowcurse.. and ladders!

✧ Alignment (Personal or D&D):

Neutral Good

✦ Authors Notes

• She fell in love with Halsin - even though she didn't know what it was at that point - when the local Druid Enclave came to visit and reforge their alliance/trades with Reithwin. They spoke briefly and both noticed the other, admiring each other across the distance between them.

• She's inspired by Laudna from Critical Role, but differs greatly in story - so no spoilers.

•°•°•

The campfire crackled and snapped against cruel, biting chill of the Shadowcurse's cloying aura. The suffocating layering of death, purification and cursed magic heavy against Halsin's skin. The tense swaths of silence, interjected by a terrifying warbling hoot, or scream of some foul thing turned from nature.

He detested this place.

It was not his first time venturing inside, since it's inception all those years ago. In the early days of the Curse, he'd battled his way back to valiantly attempt to save his Fey friend. The lack of Thaniel's presence in his meditations meant that Reverie had offered him little restoration, or reprieve for decades afterward.

The Shadowcurse had always been at the forefront of his mind over the years, spliced with brief rest bite of Grove politics and pressures but whenever his schedule allowed; he would try to visit, to commune with Thaniel, to attempt to reach through the tenuous veil, to reach his companion but by his greatest shame, to no avail.

He had never lingered here so long. It clawed at his soul, his very being. It was unnatural. Even the bright yellow and burning orange of the licking flames seemed dulled in this oppressive gloom.

He stared blankly within the flickering fire, lost in it's hypnotic chaos, recounting his numerous failings.

A century of darkness and torment had befallen these lands. He could scarcely believe the sands of time had slipped so rapidly, carelessly, through his fingers.

How could it have been a hundred years so soon?

He remembered the first day like it had happened mere moments ago. Ketheric's fleet of Justiciars, the roar of the Druids, the shouts of the Harpers. The arrow volleys, the screeching Trebuchet's, the clanging of steel on steel. The hollow thud of armour being dulled to the ground, the splintering of wooden shields; his bear form tearing through bloodied Sharran flesh, ripping and stripping muscles from bone.

He could taste the blood in his mouth still, or was that from how hard he ground his jaw.

Movement beside the fire pulled him from the haunted memories of battles won and lost, pulled to perhaps one of the greatest tragedies to emerge from the Curse.

Helna relaxed back to the floor, her layers of moth eaten black skirts and petticoats settled around her crossed legs. She shrugged to no one.

"Thought I heard something. But it was just Owlbert." She smiled to him, her dead, cracked lips spreading into a wry grin.

"Owlbert," Halsin chuckled, "Is that what you've taken to calling him now?" He inquired, an unexpected smile spread across his face.

Helna did have a very strange way of unknowingly breaking simmering tensions with her specific and odd charm.

"Well," she began in her usual ragged voice, "That's what Karly and I have been calling him. He seems to like it. He does the little hops," she gestured bouncing hands in the shape of claws, "when we do. It's quite sweet." She added, tilting her head and smiling fondly at the direction if the cub.

"He has settled well here," Halsin agreed, "I'll wager you'll have a fierce protector in no time. Owlbear cubs do tend to grow quite dramatically very quickly." He imparted his Druidic knowledge.

"Ohh," she warbled, sounding like rocks scraped together, "Well, we'd better make sure we've plenty of food. Wouldn't want him to tear through the whole camp!" She cackled, stained teeth on display as she did, "He wouldn't spend much time on me. I'm no more than a chicken bone!" She jested at her own slim frame and shook her twig like arms. They gently tittered together and fell back to silence.

Helna was quite unlike anyone he'd ever come across before; obviously being touched by the Shadowcurse, she was already a very rare character but she had a morbid lightness about herself. Never taking things to seriously, and always ready with a clever quip to soften the mood.

Her long dark hair, streaked with one shock of white at the front, tied half back in a small bun. The sallow greenish grey of her skin, the blackened ash of her hands. The numerous, long, deeply-carved scars that plagued her undead body, the large scorched scar across her face.

Not to mention the alarming new colour of her eyes since they'd entered the Shadowlands. Before they had been a charcoal and green hue, but now her sclera burned angry black, the irises almost lost in the darkness. Along with the unsettling broken tapestry of what looked akin to a mask of pulsating Shadowcursed energy, emblazoned down her eyes and cheeks.

She had always been intimidating - even if her true nature did not belie such foreboding - but since their journey had brought them here, her unpinning curse was fighting to break the frailty of her skin and self.

But she was far from frail; this he knew to be unapologetic fact.

This slim, brittle, scary looking woman had an immense inner strength and resilience that he could only aspire to. Her looks deceived, and not just aesthetically.

She had rallied her companions, brought them through the growing treachery of the lands surrounding his Grove, saved his life and summoned the will to return to the place that had inflicted so much hurt and torment on her.

She was no ordinary woman. In more ways than one. And Halsin admired her deeply.

"You seem deep in thought." She observed, sat knees tucked to her chest and arms folded over. She regarded him through a tilted gaze, through sunken onyx eyes.

Though objectively a horrifying image, Halsin found comfort in her.

"I am. This place brings up many memories, mostly unpleasant. As I'm sure you're more than aware of." He answered, pressing his lips into a tight line.

"Mm," she nodded, mimicking his expression and gazed over the deathly silence of the eerie lake, "this place does lack a certain needed degree of charm." She flourished her blackened hand, fingers curling like pointed spindles.

"That's one way to put it." Halsin replied, sighing and joining her in surveying the desolation before them.

In the distance, Halsin could see the outline of Reithwin town. The ominous silhouettes of Moonrise, the Grand Tree, the various steeples, rooves and towers and the mountainous terrain behind.

"Do you remember what it looked like before?" Helna ventured, a wistful curiosity in her tone.

"Before all this? Yes, I do. Vaguely. It's been such a long time now, I'd not realised how much the land had changed." Halsin nodded, squinting into the bleakness.

"I remember it all," she stated, a small smile graced her face that grew, as she pointed out different places of interest.

"The bustling marketplace in the town square, the sights and smells of foods and spices, of brightly coloured crafts and goods. The hurrying and unhurried people making their way through the streets, the glorious sunshine, the docks bustling with trade. And the Grand Tree," she indicated with two firm, cold fingers at the dead, gnarled shadow of the tree's husk, "It would glow warm light in the day, and blue white by night. It took her so long to lose hope, poor thing." Her torn face fell, as she pulled her lips in a brief grimace, "But I still find her beautiful, in her own way."

"Like you." Halsin mused, glancing from the town to her.

She heaved a laugh through a dry rasp, "Well, of course. I'm tragically beautiful." She laughed again and gestured to her semi-mutilated form, "Or is it beautifully tragic?" She shrugged, and rearranged her hair, flicking it behind her in a long cascade of darkest raven.

His stomach tumbled uncomfortably within him, a sensation he'd not experienced in such a jolted force since his youth. He swallowed and said nothing.

Helna sat silence for a moment, lost in memory.

"Where were you placed during the battle?" She asked conversationally, as if inquiring about his preference of tea.

Halsin balked at the question, "A rather unpleasant conversation for such dire surroundings as this, wouldn't you say?"

"Mm, most definitely but," she began, her voice scraping like ice on metal, "After all, how often have you come across someone else who survived the curse, let alone lived in it." She posited, her cool brow raised at him.

Halsin was surprised at her detached straight-forwardness, but he could not deny the morbid intrigue to finally discuss the Curse with someone who was actually there too. Halsin considered the question and their current position.

"I was on the far right of the battlefield from here. I was part of a deadly offence of powerful Wild-shaped Druids; our mission was to pierce through the wall of Sharran soldiers, supported by the Harpers and other Druids." He recalled, memories of the initial skirmishes buzzed in his head, "But they were more prepared than we anticipated and took many lives that day. I was dragged to safety for Clerical aid."

Helna stayed silent, and looked up at him with gently urging eyes for him to continue. Her fingers softly and absent-mindedly traced over the thinned material of her long sleeves.

"After the first attack, we regrouped quickly. We had an advantage on the ground forces from our elevated positions but would be taken out by those perched in Moonrise, if we ventured further in-land. That was when the Trebuchet's we saw today came into effect." He loosely gestured the direction from their camp, as he narrated the war plans, "Where we you when all this was happening? Not on the battlefield, I'd hope?" He inquired with a teasing smile.

Helna shook her head with a returned smile, and glanced up him over the ominous but oddly comforting glow of her Shadowcursed scars.

"No, I worked at the hospital. So many wounded, so many calling out for their mother's. Crying, weeping, sobbing, as I held their hands," she entwined her withered hands together and brought them to her unbeating heart, "I was the one to end their suffering, in many cases. There were no potions left, nor healing spells. Just quicker ends."

Halsin's attention was pulled from the far flung battlefront of the past, to the undead woman beside him.

"I earned the moniker of the 'Angel of Death', because most of what I did, the longer the war ravaged, was bring the worst of them to a kinder end." She swallowed and shrugged, resting her chin against her clasped hands.

"People of all creeds would scream out for the angel to take them, beg me to end it. I could make Wyvern poison in my sleep." She frowned, shaking her head mournfully and sank her hands to her lap.

Fleeting, sporadic memories of whisperings of that name flittered around Halsin's mind.

"I heard rumours across the battlefield of an 'Angel' that would carry you towards death. I thought it a metaphor for Kelemvor's chosen." Halsin breathed, stunned by the two separate identities, correlating into one; the one sitting beside him on the cursed banks of the Chionthar. Memories, long buried along the years returned to him.

"Many of the men and women who lay wounded and abandoned in the ravaged battleground called to you also. It was difficult to listen to their cries of agony and pleas for mercy. I cannot fathom just how painful it would be to administer the toxin to kill them."

Helna squeezed her bony shoulders upward and tilted her head sadly, "I didn't relish the title, but offering comfort to one in pain was a duty most sacred to me. I would stay with each of them; make sure they weren't alone, make sure they knew someone cared. But I suppose I rather ended up living to the name, in the end!" She joked morosely and flourished her hands at her cursed form, mouth held agog for comedic effect, "Little gallows humour for you." She tittered, settling herself back into her base seated position.

Halsin's chest squeezed, panged at the question he'd been desperate to discover the answer to, since first finding out her origins.

"This may be forward - and do not feel you have to answer - but do you.. remember the end?" Halsin ventured tentatively, daring to ask the question that had plagued him.

"You mean, the end.. the end?" She posited, a scratchy ethereal quality to her voice.

Halsin nodded slowly, vexingly curious about how she'd passed and returned to some form of life.

"There are patches that are a touch fuzzy, but I unfortunately remember quite a lot about how I died. It's not a pleasant tale, I'm afraid." She rasped, with her jerk of her head.

"I apologise, I do not want to upset you." Halsin began, shaking his hands in front of him to physically dismiss his vile nosiness.

"Noo," she began, her voice grating in her throat, "It's actually quite nice to talk to someone who was there, you know?"

"I do." Halsin inclined his head, with a sorrowful smile.

Helna rearranged her seating position, legs crossed and back stark straight; her skeletal frame akin to charcoal remnants of a forest fire. She clasped her hands in her lap, and inclined her head towards him.

"My parents thought I was learning how to become a Mortician at the Hospital's Morgue and Mortuary. And I was.. but I'd secretly been teaching myself more advanced practices from Doctor Thorm's personal library. Practises that a simple girl like me shouldn't be dabbling in." She wove her spindly fingers in a symbol of practised perfection. Her hand glowed a sallow, necromantic green, the energy snapped and wound around her blackened hand and forearm. She dispelled the magic and gave a coy smile up to him through dark lips, Halsin's heart jolted and made him swallow for the second time.

Helna looked out over the town again, "One night, before all this, when leading my slovenly drunken father home from the pub, he decided my tone wasn't proper." She spat with latent disgust.

Halsin's anger tensed and flared, but Helna continued unfazed.

"And so he dragged me away from the path, underneath the docks at Moonrise and beat me. Slapped me and called me vile, wicked names. I didn't fight. I never did. If he beat me, he wouldn't beat my brother and sister." She admitted, shaking her head, a cool detachment in her tone. Halsin's simmering rage was stoked higher but he remained silent.

"Then he threw me down to the floor. Started calling me by my mother's name. Laid on top of me-" She stopped, and blinked fast several times, as though ridding herself of the memory, "I was wearing my mother's coat. We looked quite alike. He was confused and very drunk."

"He..?" Halsin growled, unable form the foul, unforgivable words. They brought bile to his throat and murderous fury into his heart.

"No," she assured and shook her head firmly, "But as he held my throat and tried to raise my skirts, something snapped inside me. The ground around us bloomed like a lush garden, as my father's life was drained from him. And he fell like a dry husk to the floor." She flicked her undead fingers at the ground, the bones cracked as she shook out her spiders leg digits.

"I didn't understand what happened at the time, but my foray into studying the Necromantic arts had proven quite fruitful indeed." She balked at the memory of her unexpected show of power, rolling her eyes slightly.

Halsin simply stared at her.

"Drawn by the intense necrotic energy, Ketheric Thorm's mystic aid, Balthazar appeared and after a brief and panicked discussion on my end; he promised to raise my father back from the dead - as he was - if I would study under him," she turned her hollowed gaze to him and distorted her voice to unnerving depths, "'Your talents show great potential, young one', he'd said to me. Terrified of what I had done, and searching for any remedy to my actions - and not truly understanding what that meant - I agreed." She shrugged, pursing her lips to the side.

Halsin had now fully turned his attention to her, rapt and eyes wide. Their combined watch utterly forgotten.

A bombarding attack of Shadowcursed ghouls and Cultists could attack and Halsin was unsure he'd even turn his head away.

"He did as he promised, brought him back exactly as he was but now anything we asked of him, he would do. Like a loyal servant. And after a life spent in fearful servitude of that drunkard, it felt good to have my family safe." She continued, her face laden with pride and known hubris.

"I studied under him for a time, only at night. His tutelage was disgusting but fascinating. And I've always been a little morbid," she shrugged and playfully wiggled her shoulders, "people mostly kept away from us. The strange family on the hill." She fluttered her fingers towards the old forests distractedly.

"When the war started, our tutoring stopped. Realising that Ketheric Thorm had turned away from the Moonmaiden, I refused to study with Balthazar further. But one night I was summoned to Moonrise Towers by a set of old bones - a servant of Balthazar. He demanded my presence under blackmail of revealing my father's need for resurrection, if I refused. Trapped by the consequences of my actions, I acquiesced." Helna paused, lost in remembrance, her expression pained.

"Ketheric Thorm was waiting for me there and implored me to help him find an end to the bloodshed, that he'd heard my name whispered among his Justiciars. He wanted to find a way to die. He wanted me to help kill him, to find a dignified death and I agreed." Helna stared into the crackling depths of the fire, a heavy weight pulling at the edges of her sharp shoulders.

"It didn't make any sense at the time why he couldn't just allow himself to be killed but if agreeing meant an end to the war, I didn't care. Obviously, now we know whatever this Nightsong is, is the source of his immortality, it explains it somewhat." She rattled almost to herself.

Halsin barely breathed now, his muscles shouted at him from how taut they were wound. Helna's dead eyes shone orange, with the blazing reflection of the fire.

"I see now that my actions weren't pure, or altruistic but driven by power and a desire to control death. I believed myself untouchable, as we do in youth. I had no idea how wrong I was. Hindsight is such a wonderfully useless thing, don't you think?" She tutted to herself, and continued.

"Balthazar had created a ritual that required a very specific ingredient. He told me to meet him inside the Thorm Mausoleum the next night, to wear the robe he handed me and to bring something that reminded me of home." She gently reached in her pocket, and produced a perfectly preserved lavender flower clipping and offered it to Halsin. He cautiously accepted with a flat, wide palm, not wanting to accidentally destroy it.

"The smell of lavender, it always reminded me of home. Of Mother's garden." She shrugged and delicately placed the pressed bloom from his hand; it sent subtle tingles spidering across his palm.

"It seemed symbolic at the time. But it was a ruse; part of the ritual. I had to willingly walk through the altar's circle to place an item inside, it didn't matter what." She deftly took the lavender from his hand, "I was the very specific ingredient. A Selunite Cleric."

Halsin's eyes widened in horror, as his face fell in complete shock. His chest ached, caved in by the brutal and inhumane revelations she imparted to him.

"He commanded his undead minions to hold me down. He cut me, flayed me, peeled back my skin. Over and over and over again."

She touched her chest and parted the black bindings she'd wrapped around her upper torso to hide her jarring skin. Deep, lashing scars gnarled her sternum and slashed outward in ruthless viciousness. The depth of the jagged, savage lattice-work marked across her body, evidence that this indeed, was not done just once.

Halsin's brow creased in sorrow, and he gasped at the sight of her twisted body.

"He painfully took long, careless slashes at my flesh, cut my body repeatedly," She pulled up her long layered skirts to show her desecrated legs, covered in large semi-healed crevices and valleys through the meat and muscle, "Sliced me open, carved my chest with runes for his spell to take hold." She recanted blankly, as if completely emancipated from the horrors that had befallen her.

"I begged him to stop. Screamed and pleaded with him but he didn't even flinch. Didn't stop. Kept me just on the cusp of death, for what felt like an eternity." Her face showed no emotion, but the reflection of the campfire's flames in her eyes, now glowed malevolent green.

"It honestly felt like it wasn't even me by the end. Like I was watching it happen to someone else. It's amazing what the mind can do to save oneself, isn't it?" She widened her eyes in wonderous amusement, a somber smirk upon her smoked lips. Sitting herself straight again, she continued with airy lilt.

"The last thing I remember is Ketheric Thorm's blood streaked face, his armour battered from battle. After that.. it gets a little fuzzy but the next thing I remember I awoke, dumped in a mass grave, piled high with dead. Everything was silent. Deathly quiet. Even for a cemetery," she added in jest with a roll of her eyes.

"The Shadowcurse had been unleashed, Ketheric was dead, and locked away in his tomb." She stared silently out towards the suffocating darkness.

"I wandered around for the longest time, trying to find someone, anyone.. but by that time everyone had already fled, or was already dead." She lilted with a croak.

"When I dragged myself home, the house was empty. Suitcases half-packed but no one there. I don't even know if they escaped.. I prayed to every God they did." She croaked in a whisper, her face pallid and blank.

"Helna.." her name was the only thing Halsin could utter.

"Halsin." She answered brightly, turning to him with a warm smile; as though she hadn't just recanted him with the most tragic and heart-wrenching story he'd ever been told.

He just looked at her, stunned and mortified.

Her gaunt face pulled at the sides, "Are you alright? What is it?" She pulled her teeth tight and brought her balled fists to her face, "Did I upset you talking that way? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I just started blabbering. I thought we were making conversation to pass the time." She smiled awkwardly with a shrug, eyes shining like black beetles, "The last thing I want to do is make you unhappy."

Halsin's brow pulsed upwards and remained stuck. He extended his arms to embrace her, not sure of what else to do.

"May I?" He barely spoke.

"Oh." Helna eked out, surprise clear in her expression; she smiled shyly and nodded. The green glow of the curse still pulsing through the cracks in her face.

He leaned forward and completely engulfed her petite frame in his arms, leaning his head against hers. She laid her head on his shoulder and wound her thin arms under his.

Halsin poured his warmth into her, willed the light of Silvanus to bless her and protect her. He held her so tightly, her brittle bones creaked and popped in their sockets but she simply held onto his arm, leaning softly into his shoulder.

She was cold and clammy to the touch, a sweet smell of death; like mulch and dying fruit fallen in the forest. Halsin could taste something acrid on his tongue, something bitter. A trace of darkest weave. The faint sense of the unnatural magic keeping her alive.

However, despite the ghoulish variables that should have made him withdraw from the embrace; an easy, comfortable silence descended upon them, wrapped safely in each other's arms. Halsin closed his eyes and relaxed his worried brow, and welcomed the calm that washed over him.

He should be repulsed by her. Her very being was against nature, surely? This Shadowcursed creature inside his warm embrace was an abomination, wasn't she? He should feel disgust and repugnance. Shouldn't he?

"Your hug feels like sunlight, Halsin. I knew it would." He felt her smile against his skin, the gentlest squeeze from her cold grasp, as she nestled closer in his arms, "I do appreciate your presence here. A light in such darkness. I've missed warmth like this." She whispered against his skin, causing gooseflesh to rise.

He gave a long exhale, and felt himself lose footing near a precipice he'd so carefully avoided for many years. He tried to stop himself but he knew it was futile.

The heart cares not for sense, nor logic. The heart sees itself reflected in another, it looks past all else, regardless of what others may see.

Over 350 years, and he'd only fallen a handful of times, for those of great significance to him. He had lived long enough, and fought through enough heartache, to know that she would be one that would take care with his heart.

There was a softness to her, he couldn't describe it. Almost a glow. Buried deeply within the withering layers of her corpse-like body. A light in her very soul. One that not even the Shadowcurse could touch.

Much like the Grand Tree she loved. Across the span of time she spent rotting here, shambling through an existence of horror and shadow; she never lost hope.

"I'm so sorry. No one should have to suffer that fate." He stumbled, utterly shaken to his core.

Helna pulled back from the hug, moistened palms still laying gently on his forearm. Halsin held her stick-like shoulders, and silently beseeched the Oakfather to watch over her.

"Oh, don't you pay any mind to me and my sad story. It's not worth getting upset over things that can't be changed." She shrugged with demure smile on her pale face, her spindled fingers gliding down the expanse of his arms.

"I unfortunately learned that wisdom through years of grief, but what I can't fathom-" he stopped himself, as they finally parted their lingering embrace, searching the deathly obsidian of her eyes.

"Mm?" Her head tilted once more, her long raven hair unfurling from her shoulders, falling like an old moth-ridden cloak.

"The Curse consumed me for decades, turning me to drink and hallucinogenics to alleviate my unbearable sorrow and profound guilt, yet you.. lived in this, survived in it," he gestured to the oppressive gloom and barren wastelands of what remained of Reithwin, "Yet you, above all others here, are the happiest of us." He exhaled in sheer disbelief.

She gave a small smile that grew as she spoke, "Well, of course. The worst thing to happen to me has already happened.. and I'm still here." She gently flourished her long, curled fingers to herself, gazing up at him through the blackest of night, curtained in inky swaths of silken hair.

"Thank the Oakfather." He managed to mumble slightly breathless, crossing himself habitually.

She arched a brow, "Mm, I don't quite think he had anything to do with it but appreciate the sentiment." She ruffled up her bony shoulders, and gently rested her cold, black hand on his forearm again, "Thank you for listening."

Halsin expression softened, his heart thrummed warmly in his broad chest.

"You truly are the most extraordinary woman I've ever met." He admitted, reverent honesty in every word spoken.

She made an embarrassed noise in the back of her throat, and touched a thin hand to her gaunt cheek, "Stop, Halsin. I don't even know if I can blush." She giggled, gently swatting the air at his compliment.

"Mm, there might be some green flushing in those cheeks." He teased, reaching the back of his hand to touch the pallid clamminess of her skin.

She leaned in to nudge against his knuckles and he instinctually thumbed the hollow of her cheek, his smile faltered a little, as he swooped his large hand to cup under her jaw.

Thoughts of cracked lips growing soft and pilant, cold hands increasing in temperature as they roamed.

Helna dipped her chin out of his grasp, with a timid smirk, and went back to look out to the surroundings once more. Halsin composed himself, removed thoughts of holding the back of her head, as he neared her lips.

He blinked out against the darkness and while it was still desolate, it seemed a little more bright.

A contemplative silence fell before them. For Helna, a moment of quiet reflection. For Halsin, a stunned stupor of incomprehension.

The rapidly growing respect and admiration that already existed for her, was exploding exponentially within him, and the wish to help his newfound companion out of necessity and obligation; was now developing into a deep and fierce urge to protect them from their doomed fate.

Also, if he was being utterly truthful with himself, an alarming swell of unexpected and inappropriate desire.

Not unexpected, or inappropriate in the sense that her ghoulish visage should repulse him, because it didn't. He actually found her ghostly features rather beautiful. Hauntingly so, if he could take a moment to enjoy the pun.

But unexpected and inappropriate because he was supposed to be aiding their search for a cure to their Illithid infection, because he was meant to be acting as a guide and beacon of wisdom during difficult times.

Not fantasising about what a lack of breathing requirements could add to certain oral activities. Not getting lost in the strangely alluring potential of interesting positions her Form of Dread cracked, curved and twisted her brittle spine and body into. Not wondering if his heavy hands had the ability to be gentle enough, to take her willingly under the moonlight.

To mention nothing of her penchant for looking up at him over big, inquisitive eyes, the gentle tilt of her sickly green face, her dry, pursed smile; her long curtain of ebony hair cascading over her face, hiding her from the world's scrutiny.

How he longed to reach over and tuck it behind her pointed ears, to see her tragically beautiful face, or was it beautifully tragic? He chuckled to himself, as he remembered their conversation.

"I'm very glad to have met you properly this time, Halsin." She nodded, looking oddly serene.

Halsin blinked twice, pulled sharply out of his intimate musings, "This time?"

•°•°•

(My little attempt at photomode before I got kat's professional set 🙈😅)

•°•°•

Helna couldn't quite describe it but sex with Halsin was.. different. The words evaded her, escaped her, slipped through her grasp like smoke..

Especially with his face between her thighs.

She'd not been a prude in life, far from it..

But when she thought about the men, and boys alike she took in: bathrooms, dark corners of busy rooms, alleyways, barns, under the docks; it made her question if it was even her.

She'd used them as a distraction; a balm for an exhausted mind. To simply switch off her thinking brain, and only feel pleasure.

It was transactional. She got reprieve from the constant shit, and they got a warm cunt to cum inside of.

She'd learned to please men with all that the Gods gave her, and she'd eventually discovered what made her feel good.

She thought she understood what it was like to have sex with a man.

By the Moonmaiden's light, she'd been wrong.

Halsin lay beneath her, feasting greedily on her swollen pussy, like a man starved of all but oxygen.

Halsin tightly grasped her bony hips, and urged her deeper, faster against his tongue. His rough, throaty gasps vibrated through her folds, shuddered a heated path of decedent delight that made her eyelids flutter.

Helna choked a gasp, as she keened to the night sky; one hand firmly fisted in his hair, the other gripped his hand on her hip.

This was their sixth time having sex, in as many days - not that she was counting.

It had been less than a week since Halsin had expressed his feelings by the campfire, and she'd told him how long she'd reciprocated for, then they'd finally finally had sex.

Gods. They could barely keep their hands from each other, even if it was innocent; a brush of fingers, a twirl of hair, a lingering touch, a chaste kiss. It was all so exciting.

She'd never felt excited at the prospect of having sex before.

It was just a thing that had happened to her.

Not that sex with Astarion hadn't been fun. It had been illuminating for her, of course, albeit unexpected.

It was cathartic - for both of them - being able to explore their re-emerging sexuality with someone they trusted.

After over a century without sex, it had been akin to her first time all over again; but Astarion, like the gentleman he was, took his time with her and her insecurities. So, instead of a hurried romp in a haystack, where she was left unsatisfied and left with hay in uncomfortable places; it was orgasm, after orgasm.

Astarion was disgustingly talented in that department.

But just as grossly talented, was her hulking Elven fantasy, currently flexing his tongue shallowly against the slit of her pussy.

Halsin licked a stripe from her entrance, to suckle on her hard clit. Helna jolted and cried out to the midnight air, ragged and wanton.

"Halsin.." she faltered, her voice unsteady.

Her back arched unnaturally, then snapped horribly in two. Through a bitten lip, she made a sinfully satisfied moan in the back of her throat as she sank backwards, until the top her head came in contact with his muscular stomach.

Halsin groaned in awed surprise at the delightfully vulgar position she'd contorted herself into. He explored the freakish jolt of her skeletal body with his enormous hands, relishing in it's supernatural arch.

He suckled and laved his wet tongue against her sensitive clit, dancing his way to the rim of her entrance, firmly tracing the lines of her distorted body.

"Ohh gods-- you are exquisite, my heart. Truly," he mumbled against her soaked folds, raking his fingertips over her scarred and broken skin, "The way you bend for me, moan my name. The feel of you under my hands, so wanting." He moans low, pulling her closer to feed upon her in licentious delight.

Her eyes rolled and struggled to open from the pleasure searing through her body, illicited by Halsin's touch. She glimpsed flashes of his thick cock laying in wait, hard as granite on his toned belly. Clear, viscose excitement beading on his belly as it twitched.

Need pulsed through her, flooding her body with purpose.

She twisted her shoulders, and they cracked loudly, as she reached towards his length. Helna pushed her tongue flat and took his leaking tip into her mouth.

Halsin's entire body spasmed in shock, as he gasped in surprise from between her thighs. A groan of blasphemous enjoyment rumbled from his chest, that she felt through his cock.

Gods, she loved how his hot, velvet cock throbbed in her mouth. The smooth, thick shaft, the thump of his heartbeat through the strained veins of his erection.

She tasted the salty spend on her tongue, as she licked and sucked on his aching, purplish head, tonguing over the sensitive ridges.

Slurping, garbled noises of flustered zeal from her mouth, echoed out around the glade, as she lavished her lips and tongue over his cock.

"Mm, Halsin. You taste so good," she garbled, as she licked in circles, "I love the way you feel in my mouth. I love tasting every inch of your cock." Her voice thick and husked from lust and desire, she kissed and sucked and licked his tip.

His feet brace into the forest floor, and his legs bow around her head, as he fights the urge to thrust into her mouth.

"Ohh, my heart. You test my resolve every time you use that gorgeously filthy m-mouth on me--Mmgnh." He praised, jerking and thrusting up further into her mouth.

After fantasizing about him for so long, she now knew how he felt buried deep inside her, how he stretched her tight walls to accommodate his impressive size; the pain's sting so sweet it felt like the Gods lessened the blow just for them.

Halsin wound his arms around the fragile curve of her thighs and began gently squeezing down with enormous palms, his long fingers easily able to dance circles on her clit, as he roughly parts her entrance with his tongue. Helna moans, throaty and rough, at his ministrations against her dripping pussy.

He was toying with her now; playing with his food. But she was never one to fight fair.

Again, she cracked her spine to bend viciously, angling her throat to a better degree to swallow him deeper. Her body bent to resemble an archaic rune, her hands braced on his proud hips.

Coaxing his stoic length further inside her mouth, she took him past what should be a gag reflex, until he was almost entirely sheathed inside her snug throat.

"Ahhh-ghh-hh." Halsin rasped, breath catching in his throat.

Helna bobbed and worked his length with her mouth and pulsing throat, she swallowed him down, massaging his tightening sac with her hand.

Halsin moaned high in his throat, stopping to gasp against her delicate lips, "My heart, no. Y-you must stop--ngh!" He faltered, small hot breaths ghosted against her core, as his body tensed, "Ughn-uhh."

The coiled spring inside him unexpectedly snapped.

He shook violently, as he wrenched her named in ravaged bliss, gripping so hard against her bones they popped under his might, "Yes, Helna--yes, my heart. T-take-t-take me--yess."

Halsin's seed spurted to the back of her throat and she relished in it, eyes rolling up in hellion rapture, as she greedily gulped every drop. She whined at the delicious sensation of his cum staining her gullet, filling her to the point of seeping from the sides of her mouth.

He groaned and hissed at her continued sucking, then returned to feast upon her with envious gusto and a lustful growl.

His tongue blurred against her clit, he fucked her pussy against his mouth; large hands manipulated her stick-like hips to ruck against him.

Helna twitched and keened, as the roilling storm of orgasm he'd been tactfully keeping at bay, barreled down on her like an inevitable hurricane.

With Halsin's cock stuffed in her mouth, his tongue on her clit, and his cum on her lips; she came, came in cascading waves of unbridled, unashamed, undeniable love and pleasure.

"Yes, Halsin. Yes-yes-yes. Halsin. Halsin. Uhh!" She garbled praise on his name, as his thick cock slipped from her tight throat. Slurred cries echoed out into the mists of the glade.

Her hips bucked and her thighs pulsed around his head, as her head lolled about. The newly acquired ability to breathe, heaved her lungs to calm them.

Suddenly, her spine seized and straightened without her permission, forcing her to sit up. Her long, raven hair fell around her face in heavy curtains, as she whimpered his name.

"Halsin. Yes, my beloved. Yes-uhh-yes.." she moaned breathlessly, her hands desperately clawing at the air around her for him.

Her eyes opened to his and watched his beautiful face beside itself with sinful abandon, as she came on his tongue.

Halsin ceaselessly guided her hips languidly against his mouth through the last tremors of orgasm, and she jerked against his precision. Laying her hands on his, she stilled his motions, heaving out a last breath into the night air.

Cum drunk and delirious, Halsin slowly blinked up at her, turning his head to press a kiss to her inner thigh.

"Incredible, my heart. My heart soars." He sighs out, entwining his hands with hers, pressing kisses wherever he could find purchase.

A moment was shared between them; both panting, both spent, both hearts full. It was enough to make her weep with joy.

He released her and gently laid her down beside him on the grass, she willingly followed him; she had no want to refuse him.

Legs spread akimbo on the soft grasses, Halsin peppered her thighs, her lower belly, her hips in delicate kisses. Slow, lingering, passionate.

"You're going to make me cry again." She warned him, her eyes already blurring.

"With happiness, love. Tears are never an evil." She could hear the smile, as he continued up her body, unfazed.

"I know.. always." She smiled and sniffed, "I can't help it. I'm sorry."

"Never apologise, my heart. I adore the fact you feel emotions so strongly." He kissed his way along her sternum, over the swell of her breasts, his large hands padding their way up the forest floor, "I adore you." He added, breath ghosting over her collarbone, and she bit her lip, as she grinned.

"And.." he nudged his nose against her chin, following it with a kiss, "if you ride my face and suck my cock as you did just then, you have my freest permission to do whatever you like."

Helna shoots a laugh and scrunches her eyes, as Halsin settles above her, "A perk of Undeath, it seems."

"I know not what it is, but it was incredibly erotic, as you can tell by my -- ah, eagerness." He chuckled, a mote of embarrassment in his voice, "I must admit, you took me quite by surprise. In over 350 years, no one has taken my cock quite like that." He traced across her lips, slowly sliding his tongue into her mouth.

He tasted like sex, and warmth, and quickly revitalising desire.

They moan and keen against each others mouths; slow, and wet, and hot. Taking their time. Soaking into the tenderness of the moment. Savouring each other in this place, this plane.. this stillness in chaos.

Hands roamed, knees parted thighs, calves wrapped around hips needfully.

Half-hard and willing, Halsin positioned himself to prod Helna's soaked entrance. He easily slid passed any resistance.

Stunned gasps tremble from both of them at the warm welcome.

"Already, beloved?" Helna moans through a small smile.

"Always, my heart. And at least twice more tonight."

•°•°•

Ahh, it's been a little while since I've flexed the smut writing fingers. Hope it's not been too lonely without me 🤭