[open] my little misbegotten, you're quite a stubborn bud

[vampires_pawn]

WHO: Astarion and YOU! (plus closed starters for Molly, Vanessa, and potentially others)
WHAT: Astarion reaps an angry witch's vengeance in the form of several weeks of psychic torture, culminating in a final confrontation. Plus some other catch-all threads!
WHERE: Around the city
WHEN: November
WARNINGS: Physical and psychological torture, references to past abuse, hallucinations, panic, suicidal ideation.

i. we will plant brambles in your bed (greenhouse)

[ Astarion knows, theoretically, that anyone could show up in this place; more often than not, it’s not a comforting thought. At least, he tells himself, it’s not very likely that anyone he actually knows will end up here. The city pulls in only a handful of new captives each month, from such diverse lands and realms that the chance of Astarion seeing anyone else from the Sword Coast, much less someone from Baldur’s Gate must be vanishingly small.

(That it might be one incomparably dreadful vampire lord in particular is even more infinitesimal.)

That’s not to say he doesn’t keep an eye out, if not necessarily for anyone he knows, then at least for someone useful. And as it turns out, when Astarion does finally catch a glimpse of someone familiar, it’s someone who fulfills both categories—someone he’d met only briefly, aboard the same illithid ship that had freed him from his master’s control. ]

Shadowheart?

[ He stares incredulously at the figure standing a ways away outside the greenhouse. It’s the same dour face, the same foreboding armor and even more foreboding mace on her back, facing the glass door with a distant expression. She doesn’t seem to have heard Astarion, not judging by the way she slips into the building without any acknowledgment of him at all. Either that or he’d made an even worse first impression on her all those weeks ago than he’d thought.

Regardless, he’s not going to just let her disappear into this city without a trace. He chases after her, towards the greenhouse entrance. ]

Shadowheart! Slow down for gods’ sake!

[ The last time he’d seen Shadowheart, they’d both survived an impossible fall after having illithid worms shoved into their skulls. She’d told him they needed to find a healer—and then he’d woken up here. Had she found one, he wonders? Or had she at least learned what the little maggots even are? He steps into the greenhouse just as he sees the cleric disappearing past the thorned foliage down the leftward path, just a few meters ahead of him. By all rights, unless she’d broken into a dead sprint or cast a hasty invisibility spell, she should be right there when he turns the corner. But as he steps among the curling vines, there’s no figure there waiting for him—nor any sign of anyone having been there at all. ]

Shadowh—ow!

[ He remembers, belatedly, the kind of plants that inhabit this part of the greenhouse. An opportunistic vine snags a wrist, thorns digging in and drawing blood. Astarion wrenches his arm away, eyes still casting around as he searches for the wayward cleric. ]

ii. you won’t know what will hit you next (around the city, cw: panic, allusions to sex trafficking)

[ He doesn’t see Shadowheart again after that. Which is just as well, because he very quickly comes to find that he has plenty of reason not to trust his senses.

The visions start small. So small, they’re easy to dismiss. A flash of familiarity as he passes someone on the street, that evaporates just as quickly upon a second glance. A whisper that makes him turn his head, only to find no one there. Sometimes, he thinks he hears his name. Sometimes, he thinks he hears laughter. He can never quite pinpoint the source, but then, this city has already shown its penchant for little tricks. He does his best to ignore the mysterious signs, loath to give this place the satisfaction of unnerving him.

Yet, as the month wears on, the visions become more frequent—and more intense. He begins to recognize those flashes of faces—faces from taverns, alleyways, brothels. The faces of those he lured to Cazador, faces that leer or glare or sob, and then are gone the second Astarion looks again. During these times, one might notice Astarion staring at them wide-eyed, as if he’s seen a ghost. Worse still are those times he thinks he sees Cazador himself. Those times, he looks as if he’s seen something far, far worse.

And still, the sightings escalate. Eventually, they are no longer mere flashes of faces—they are full-bodied apparitions.

A former victim stands on the street corner, eyes locked with his in an accusing stare. A gaggle of bloodied children follow him for several blocks, apparently unseen by anyone else. One morning, he wakes to a corpse in bed beside him, weeping.

He avoids sleep where he can help it after that.

Sometimes, the figures are silent. Sometimes, they confront him. They don’t seem to be able to actually touch him, thank the gods, but they can get in his space, scream and threaten and accuse. When it all gets to be too much, one might even catch sight of Astarion screaming back. ]

And if you hadn’t been such a fucking fool, maybe you’d still be alive! [ His teeth are bared, but his eyes are pained, anguished. ] At least you got your pleasure in the end, didn’t you?

[ Of course, when the visions take the shape of Cazador, it’s another matter entirely. At those times, one might see Astarion freeze in place, eyes fixed with inutterable dread on the approach of some invisible figure. Sometimes, he maintains enough control of himself to run, and afterwards one might find him hiding in the shadowiest corner or closet he can find, eyes wide, breathing hard.

At other times, his legs fail him. His knees hit the ground and he kneels there, trembling, before his master. ]

iii. just close your eyes and count to ten (around the city, cw: torture)

[ The pain follows the same pattern: starting small and easy to ignore, and rapidly escalating in severity. At first, it’s just an occasional headache or the slightest irritation prickling at the scars on his back—annoying, but nothing Astarion hasn’t dealt with before.

It’s about the time the visions worsen that the pain does, too. The scars begin to ache in a way they haven’t done in decades, and the headaches build until they’re nauseating, and then until they’re blinding. Astarion begins to hide from the sunlight he so loves, trying to avoid setting them off. It doesn’t help. One can find him in dark rooms and corners, a tight grimace of pain on his face, fingers rubbing circles against his temples.

At other times, it’s not his head that hurts, but his cold, dead heart. Most of the time, it’s simply an ache, not dissimilar to the one in his skull. Later in the month, though, it’s something far more dire: the feeling of a fist curling around his heart and squeezing. Astarion hasn’t needed to breathe in centuries, but now he coughs and gasps, clutching at his chest as smooth, slender fingers crush the un-life from his heart.

Sometimes, the pain lasts for just a few seconds. Sometimes, it lasts for far longer. The worse it becomes along with the visions, the more time Astarion spends locked in his room, as if he can hide from whatever force has decided to make him its plaything. Maybe it doesn’t help—maybe the pain is just as bad and maybe the visions just as terrifying, but at least here, there’s no one to see it. No one to take advantage of it. Still, sometimes it can’t be helped. He has to leave sometimes, even if just to restock on blood, and it’s then that he seems to suffer worst of all.

He’s in a smaller store when it happens for the first time. He’s searching the aisles, trying to move quickly and purposefully to finish this errand, eyes darting and alert for any signs of his spectral tormentors. His vigilance doesn’t save him. One moment, he is in the City, with its buildings of glass and steel and its strange, buzzing white lights—

And the next, he feels his face press against cold, rough stone as a knee digs hard into the small of his back. There’s an all-too-familiar weight pressing against him, an all-too-familiar whisper in his ear. ’Hold still now, boy. You only make it worse for yourself when you struggle.’

There is no time to brace, no time to cry out. The blade presses down, cold at first and then erupting into agonizing heat as Cazador drives it into his flesh. His master sighs, in ecstasy or contempt, Astarion can’t tell, and Astarion chokes back the screams in his throat, wishing that the bastard would just tell him not to scream, he wouldn’t scream if Cazador just told him not to, and then he wouldn’t have to start over, again and again and again.

Astarion can feel every slow, excruciating whorl, every jagged angle and flourish. He is already on his stomach, immobilized by Cazador’s command. It makes no sense that he can still feel another body, a million realms away in an impossible city, collapsing to the floor, that he can feel it writhing against cold tile even as he lies obedient and still under Cazador’s blade, his master carving poetry into his back.

And yet, all the same: back in the city, his body still moves, driven by some long ingrained instinct to survive. To flee. To hide. Drags itself blindly across the floor until it finds a corner and cannot drag itself any further, then curls up as tightly as it can so as to remain unseen. There it stays as Astarion’s mind remains trapped within the memory, eyes screwed shut tight, one hand pressing hard into his mouth to stifle his own screams. Screaming only ever made it worse. ]

iv. the gardener's coming to collect (closed to Vanessa, cw: suicidal ideation)

[ It goes on for weeks: the pain. The visions. The nightmares. Astarion wishes he could believe that it was just another of the city's tricks. He wishes he could believe that it would stop. But he knows better. He knows what this is.

When Cazador finally appears to give him his orders, he can't even find it in himself to be surprised.

It happens after he's woken from another nightmare, another night spent starving and mad and still inside a stone coffin. He'd rolled out of bed. Stepped into the common room. And there his master was, waiting for him.

"Oh, Astarion," his master tuts. "You really thought you'd gotten away, didn't you? Such an ungrateful child..."

Astarion says nothing. All the terror, all the pain of the past several weeks and now, all he can feel is cold, bleak resignation. His master goes on.

"These past few weeks have disabused you of that notion, have they not?" Cazador glides closer. A spectral hand is laid on Astarion's shoulder and it takes everything in him not to flinch. "Never forget: you are mine. Even here, even now." Astarion can hear the smile in his master's voice. "But I am nothing if not merciful. Even to a wretch like you."

The hand lifts from his shoulder and resettles atop his head. Suddenly, Astarion is no longer in his room. He is moving swiftly through city streets, guided by an unseen hand, one that leads him to an sprawling labyrinth of a building, and then down, down, through long dark corridors flanked by dead machines. And then, just as suddenly, he is back in his room, his master still standing over him.

"You will meet me there and seek penance for your transgression. Show me contrition, and I may forgive you yet." His master leans in, his next words no more than a hiss in Astarion's ear. "Do not keep me waiting."

And then Astarion is alone in his room once more.

Despite his master's final warning, Astarion finds that, for several minutes, he can't move all. He simply stands and stares into the darkness, feeling the freedom he's only just tasted slipping away from him, feels the heavy black cage of the past two centuries bearing down on him once more. For one mad moment, he thinks of escape. He doesn't need a weapon; this city has plenty of high spires and towers, and a vampire spawn like him needs nothing but a high enough fall to end his undeath.

But he knows just as surely as anyone else here: it won't last. And more surely than that: whatever punishment Cazador has in store for him, he can make it so, so much worse if Astarion defies him now. He is already making it worse for himself, standing here waiting. He cannot think. He cannot mourn. All he can do is obey.

And do he does. He makes his way out of his room and onto the streets, following the vision from before and feeling... nothing. Nothing at all. His feet seem to move of their own accord and he falls back into the same thoughtless obedience he's known for centuries.

How foolish of him, to think that he'd ever escaped. ]

Comments

[korol_rezni_nikolai]

[ Nikolai grins in response to the sleight-of-hand. He appreciates the trick itself, but even moreso he appreciates the fact that Astarion is showing off. The trick and the banter both speak to a resilience that Nikolai admires. Nikolai would bet good money that Astarion is not nearly as fine as he's pretending to be. He'd just been tortured and there is no guarantee it won't happen again. But here Astarion is, putting on a good show. It's exactly what Nikolai would be doing if he were in Astarion's shoes. ]

Faerûn?

[ A small furrow forms between Nikolai's brows as he searches his memory. He's sure there's no such place in his own world, but he's had time to do a little reading since arriving here. Had it come up in anything? Moments later he shakes his head. ]

Sadly, no. Which is quite vexing. I'm not accustomed to being at such a complete loss when I meet someone! I'd love to hear more about it sometime.

[ It's no mere annoyance; being able to befriend just about anyone is a crucial survival skill as far as Nikolai is concerned. How is he supposed to do that without the necessary information to lay a groundwork of small talk and pleasantries? Sure, plenty of the time he'll pretend not to know much about a place just so he can ask questions and give the other person the pleasure of explaining their home to him. But how is he supposed to know the right questions to ask without a thoroughly-researched foundation? ]

I'm afraid the real Ravka isn't quite like in that story I told you. Fewer mystical animals and more petty nobles endlessly scheming and squabbling. Although...

[ He makes a small noise of consideration, scrunching his nose and adding: ]

I suppose there are one or two mystical animals running around.

[vampires_pawn]

[ Resilience is one word for it. Conditioning might be another. For 200 years, Astarion has endured every torture Cazador's depraved imagination could conjure and more often than not, still be expected to go out and hunt the following night so long as he was able to walk. Suffering and fear were never impediments to his charm—they were the drive behind it. Be charming enough and he could keep Cazador fed. Content. And most importantly, not as inclined to amuse himself with Astarion the following day.

There is no guarantee his master is here and even if he is, Astarion no longer knows what might stay his hand. But there is another reward being dangled before him now, one that is perhaps even more precious than a single day's reprieve from his master's wrath:

An ally. And a powerful one at that. Of course Astarion will do what he can to show himself to be worth the man's help. ]

That's reality for you, isn't it? It doesn't sound too much different from Baldur's Gate, truth be told. It was easy for a man like Cazador to thrive there.

[ His expression darkens on that last thought, his gaze low. But that flash of bitterness is shuttered away soon enough. He adds, primly: ] I don't have much firsthand knowledge on the rest of Faerûn; I'm afraid I'm not the most well-traveled. [ A wry smile. ] But tell me: what does one deem a "mystical animal" in the kingdom of Ravka?

[korol_rezni_nikolai]

[ Nikolai nods; he understands Astarion's meaning. He might not know the specifics, but he is very aware of how the conditions of a place - its social hierarchy, its economic structures, its culture and religious institutions - could act as a catalyst for suffering. He'd grown up seeing it in action in Ravka; he's spent his entire adult life trying to find ways to change those conditions. It would never eliminate evil men like Cazador, he knows, but hopefully he could make it at least a little harder for them to flourish. ]

Maybe you weren't before. But how many people from Baldur's Gate can say that they've visited a whole other world? You've probably traveled further than the rest of all of them combined, now.

[ Nikolai matches the wry smile, because of course none of them had chosen to travel here, and how could the distance they've gone from their homelands even be measured? ]

Well, there are stories of a handful, but only one I've ever seen with my own two eyes. Rusalye. The sea whip.

[ Nikolai allows himself a dramatic pause here, the corner of his mouth curved into a smile. He can't help but feel a certain rosy nostalgia, thinking back to hunting the beast. In terms of years, it wasn't even that long ago, but he'd been a different person, then. Younger, more daring, more naive, more hopeful. ]

It was a gigantic white serpent that lived in the waters of the Bone Road, a cluster of small islands far to the north of Ravka. The folktales said it was a prince who had been cursed to live in the body of a monster.

[ Somehow, his brain never made the connection until now. Nikolai can't help it: he laughs. ]

Terribly cliché, isn't it?

[ He shakes his head sadly, as if he were not himself a king cursed to transform into a terrifying monster every night. Somewhere in the universe, he thinks, Zoya would be rolling her eyes at him. ]

The stories said that it lured girls out to the water with its song and then dragged them under the waves to be its bride, only to wail and weep when they starved to death. But I have to say, having seen the thing up close myself, it wasn't about to seduce anyone. It was just an animal. A dangerous, powerful wild animal with about seven rows of teeth and a foul temper.