#limpfisted

“I don’t think I…. properly apologized.” Wyll trails off, his voice as quiet and still as the night air, but so much colder, even despite the cinders burning through both their involuntary changes. He feels emboldened. He feels bitter. And like the call of the cicadas, his own voice sounds oppressive and consuming in its firm crisp bluntness, shrill to his now sensitive ears. The guilt surrounds him. But it does not consume him. That is the job of the shame, to choke like Mizora’s leash—for having to say this, and every direction that smoke bomb of a weighted obligation billows outward in the Sword Coast’s humidity. “I should do that, right?” He smiles after a long pause, softness filling the space between his scars, the furrow beneath his horns unfurling if only for a moment, his gaze catches just the corner of her eyes. “Though if you’d prefer, instead, to fight me instead for your own honor, I think I would much prefer it.”

There's a delay in response, only a couple of seconds, before her head turns and she gives Wyll an empathetic smile without truly realizing that she is. Every description of her that Wyll was fed and he repeated contradicts this quick and subtle moment of oh, you poor sod but I won't say it aloud. She cannot begin to think of what runs through Wyll's head but she does know this: the man didn't deserve it. But devils rarely care about what is deserved and not deserved.

An apology. Karlach almost laughs. Those sound like fairytale. Devils don't deal in apologies (but here Wyll stands already contradicting her thought. Again, not to be said aloud.) " Oh, I don't know. " She finally gives out a laugh as the not quite tension settles before it even grows into something to hate. " As fun as a good ol' fashioned tussle sounds I wouldn't want to give you what you want! "

U may call birv princess while he's down collecting his knees -

@limpfisted

wyll vc I would rather call you a cleric

"You're rather eager to sharpen your skills on the whetstone of our companions, I've noticed." My word, that is teasing pinched in that grin.

@limpfisted asked: who died and made you king? still accepting

❝      𝚀𝚄𝙸𝚃𝙴   𝙰   𝙻𝙾𝚃   𝙾𝙵   𝙿𝙴𝙾𝙿𝙻𝙴,   𝙰𝙲𝚃𝚄𝙰𝙻𝙻𝚈.      ❞   The   casually   cruel   smile   is   momentarily   concealed   by   a   healthy   sip   of   blood   wine,   crimson   stained   teeth   peeking   through   pale   lips   at   his   one-time   traveling   companion.   The   years   since   the   defeat   of   the   absolute   had   been   incredibly   kind   to   the   former   vampire   spawn,   his   power   and   influence   spreading   farther   and   faster   than   either   Cazador   or   Gortash   could   have   dreamed   of.   Now   Ascendent,   Astarion   was   just   as   likely   to   be   seen   in   shady   backrooms   of   Lower   City   taverns   brokering   illicit   deals   as   he   was   here,   at   balls   attended   by   Baldur’s   Gate’s   high   society   and   crafting   political   policy.  

Turning   with   a   cocked   head,   calculating   carmine   eyes   traced   Wyll’s   form   with   little   regard   for   subtlety.   The   elf   had   had   little   use   for   𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒐𝒆𝒔   since   he   had   been   turned,   even   if   he   had   been   dragged   kicking   and   screaming   into   being   hero   adjacent   because   of   Tav,   and   he   had   less   use   for   them   now.   Morals   were   such   pesky   things,   anyway,   always   getting   in   the   way   of   the   things   one   wants.  

"I do not enjoy this sitting around and waiting," announces Lae'zel, irate, as though her saying so might suddenly cause the sprain in her ankle to dissipate. Bah. Were that they had the services of one of K'liirs ghustil in their employ — or, better, were that Shadowheart did not have a stick up her ass in every matter that surrounded Lae'zel's well-being. Either or would do: and result in her being able to fight again.

Either her annoyance boils over, or the ghaik worm in her skull continues to wriggle, aimlessly gloating. She spits onto the dirt floor, and continues to lament.

Though, she supposes, it could certainly be worse. Not that it couldn't be better, but there are worse people to be stuck in camp with. She was not the only one who'd been claimed by injury, though at the very least Wyll can claim his injuries as an expense of protection. Not that Lae'zel was ever in true need of protection, but... Wyll, for all of his rehearsed gusto about blades and heroics and whatever manner of pompous slop, at the very least has the sword skill to back up his chatter.

Loath as she is to admit it.

"No need to be so tense, gorgeous." seated behind him, astarion's front half was pressed flush against the blade's back. he slowly ran his hands up the length of wyll's arms; from wrists to shoulders. and there, he started to carefully knead his undoubtedly sore shoulders- but was it was a sight to behold. a true swordsman. watching his biceps flex as he cleaved through enemies in one incredible swing. it was so distracting it had proven almost dangerous once or twice. he'd felt himself wobble accidentally on the heightened terrain that he always occupied. "You're just going to feel me bite- right here."

astarion's finger swiped over the side of the warlock's throat before quickly tending back to the massage. "It'll sting, but it'll be quick. And then... pressure." the actual draining was hard to put into words. it's like icicles in the blood. and the more he drank, the more that freezing, foreign sensation would crawl; it'd weave itself to the tips of the fingers, down into the pit of his belly. but of course, he didn't plan on drinking that much. he just needed enough. "There are actually people who quite enjoy being fed on. They find it sensual." his hands moved downward, his thumbs pressing along the muscles on either side of wyll's spine before stilling on his waist. he allowed him another second to relax, to breathe, to change his mind if he wanted to. there was no interruption, so he pried his lips open and sank his fangs in. inhumanly hot blood filling his mouth in an instant and he swallowed it down desperately.

"I will pay you in all the fortunes of the Flaming Fist, if you will spin me a psalm, tell me a tale, speak magic into words into magic---and tell me how it feels to touch and mould the weave, and have it full inside you." ↳ @limpfisted

THERE  IS,  TRULY,  LITTLE  THAT  WOULD  INTEREST  HIM  SO  MUCH AS THIS —  the  request  is  barely  out  of  Wyll’s  mouth  before  acceptance  and  agreement  is  plain.  It’s  been  so  long  since  he’s  been  able  to  share  what  he  loves  about  who  and  what  he  is  ——  

❝  No,  no,  the  journey  of  telling  it  all  is  all  the  payment  needed,  ❞  protests  he  with  a  little  laugh,  but  then  the  gravity  of  the  complexity  and  depth  of  the  question  both  settles  into  him,  and  the  smile  eases.  ❝  It’s  something  that  spoken  language  scarcely  has  the  capacity  to  describe,  but  I  will  try.  ❞ 

Iraestra often closes her eyes and sees only ghosts behind them. She opens her eyes and sees the dead, soft-jawed servants and instruments of profane knowledge. She surrounds herself with their rotting presence, perhaps out of a longing for the familiar. before their deaths, she had never learned the secrets of undeath. Her current studies a direct result of this desire that she can never fulfill — to raise them from their subterranean graves.

She did not see the bodies of her family, and that is, perhaps, her biggest regret. Fate would have it that she was not there the day that her ancestral home was sacked and then sundered from the very edge of the city itself by divine fury. She had been off researching rumors of an aboleth deep within forbidden tunnels of the Underdark with her cousin, far from the slaughter. Though their absence is what spared them, Iraestra will always blame herself for not being there. The rumors never came to fruit, anyway.

But she has seen enough dead to be able to imagine well their cold, dead eyes, their crooked knuckles and swollen limbs. They likely wouldn't have had time to rot before their bones were picked clean. Scavengers of the Underdark would have skittered out of their loathsome homes en masse that day, eager to feast upon the flesh of noble drow and slave chattel alike. All equal in death as far as a hungry mouth is concerned.

Iraestra does not own mirrors and covers them if she has the means to. It is worse to look upon her own face and see her mother's hooked nose, her grandmother's proud chin, the almond shape of her sister's eyes peering out from her own wretched visage. What is she if not a haunted house?

And oh, how they would hate her, to know that they had died and she would live. That she did not even try to dig for them and bring them back.

The glooming, swooning hours of the night belong solely to her most inane longings. The ones where she imagines she would have found them all. Would have known such magics at the time to be able to bring them back to her, perfect and intact. That they would laud her in praise for her dutifulness.