Chapter Text
Rosalie didn’t know why she was here.
Outside, the sounds of revelry and cheer echoed through the newfound gaps in ruined buildings and the remnants of the narrow street. Eventually, it reached the windows of the Elfsong, which were boarded over with paper until new glass could be fashioned and installed. The victory parades of earlier were now giving way to music and drunken shouts, as the crowds descended into more decadent celebration with the darkening of the night sky. All of the older members of their party, the ones who were old hands at adventuring, had chosen to enjoy themselves alongside those toasting to their names. Everyone else had simply retired to their rooms. Wyll, Karlach, and Lae’zel were gone, and that left the rest of their party - well, all but one - pensive. They’d slept since they’d defeated the Nether Brain, but only for one night. More sleep was needed, to rest from what felt like the decades of exhaustion and heartache, and to rid themselves of the lingering tadpole migraine.
But Rose couldn’t sleep, these days. And there was nothing drink could offer her other than oblivion. Not to mention she knew of no real way to respond to the pitying looks Jaheira and Halsin kept giving her, even if it was easier to pretend Minsc was really going to the bathroom when he asked her if she wanted to hold Boo.
And so, she was here.
On the balcony. With him.
And she didn’t know why.
She didn’t know what either of them were doing here. Why he would deign to give her an audience, and what she thought she could do with one.
She didn’t know what she thought she could say to make things better. There was nothing that could fix this.
“Thank you for staying with us, until the very end,” she tried saying, anyway. “You didn’t have to.”
“Of course I did,” he told her, “I had a debt to settle, in the shape of the glorious new future you’ve gifted me. I couldn’t leave you to fight alone - that would be extremely ungenerous. After all, it’s not as if I had anything to lose - it’s not like I could die.”
The stranger wearing Astarion’s body smiled condescendingly at her. His beautiful face showed no mark of fatigue, and certainly no sign of sadness. He was dressed in a dark, blood-red outfit, with golden trim, that left him looking sinful - exactly as intended. Rosalie had no idea when he had found the time to purchase it - or perhaps it was simply one of the many suits they’d found in the cabinets and wardrobes of Cazador’s palace. Maybe it didn’t bother him to wear those clothes.
Rose smiled back, tightly.
“Besides,” Astarion drawled, examining his nails, “you know, I would do anything for you, dearest heart. Time once was, not so long ago, I assumed the feeling was mutual - but I’m not the one who has changed. The only person who is fickle, here, it seems, is you.”
Rosalie kept the placid smile on her face, even as it became brittle. Since he had completed the ritual, Astarion wielded words like a knife with unprecedented calm - but, if his provocations triggered any reaction other than acquiescence, he also proved volatile and erratic. Emotions could lead him in unprecedented directions. She wasn’t quite sure how she’d come out of the conversation they’d had, the night he had asked to change her, alive.
“And, yet, despite that,” she continued, “you stayed with us. I’m grateful.”
“Are you, pet? How grateful, exactly?”
Rose ignored the innuendo lacing his tone like velvet, and replied with careful neutrality, “Wyll was going to be in charge of distributing our assets - Gale’s now offered, instead. Gortash’s estate will be halved, between us and the City, to help them with repairs. I haven’t been told exact numbers yet, but it should be more than enough to repay us all for our work over the last few months.”
She didn’t ask him what he was going to do with the money. Four nights ago, while the others had spent the evening doing whatever they felt was needed to prepare for their final battle, and Rose had laid in an empty bed staring blankly at the ceiling until the sun rose, he had gleefully burned Cazador’s entire palace to the ground. He had used explosives taken from the Ironhand gnomes, but there had been no casualties, he assured her.
No casualties, save seven thousand.
Rose assumed Astarion planned to claim the land, and rebuild from the ashes using the spoils of their quest. She knew the dungeons were still intact, and she also knew that one day, he would probably use them.
The vampire lord in front of her pouted. “Well, once again, you prove to be absolutely no fun. Such a shame, that you lack imagination.”
“That’s me,” Rose said flatly, before she could stop herself. The tired sarcasm in her tone caused him to raise an eyebrow.
“Does this mean you’re leaving, then?” he asked, “if dull old Mr. Dekarios is in charge of settlements. Are you not going to stay, to order us all around some more?”
Rosalie thought of her bags, already packed in her room. No one save Shadowheart knew that she had, in fact, booked herself onto the first stagecoach that was leaving Baldur’s Gate that night, as the world returned to normal and travel began anew. She’d written letters to everyone else, explaining herself, that would be handed out tomorrow morning. There was no way she could stay.
“What orders are left to give?” she said, voice neutral. “The adventure is over. We’re all cured. The Absolute is gone.”
“Aren’t you at least going to go throw yourself gleefully into hell again, to become part of the polycule of foolish martyrs?"
Rose fought a wince, the pain of yesterday morning flooding back fresh. She'd felt like such an inadequate audience, watching Karlach in what should've been her last moments, too numb to have anything to give. It was Wyll who'd proved himself the better person - who'd ended up saying all the right things.
"Or would you prefer to stay and keep tabs on me?” Astarion gloated. “Aren’t you worried what I could do, unsupervised? Don’t you want to stand in a corner and tut, see if that’ll rouse my soul to goodness? I can certainly think of a few outfits you could do it in, if you want to guarantee you’ll hold my attention.”
“You can do whatever you want now, Astarion,” Rosalie said quietly. “And we will both have to live with that.”
She had thought she was giving him freedom. This, she thought, was what freedom looked like.
…When had she realised she had made a mistake?
Was it when he’d told her he planned to make her immortal? As if that had ever been a thing she’d wanted, or asked of him?
Or was it when she had simply… stood there, silently watching Cazador’s shirt be ripped clean from his back, and the tip of Orin’s stolen dagger plunge into the skin? The sobbing had left her sick - but he was a bad man, she’d told herself. An evil one, who deserved no sympathy. She’d thought she’d been doing the right thing.
No… she’d never thought they’d been doing the right thing, deep down.
But above all else, she’d thought it wasn’t her place to decide.
How did you walk through Cazador’s halls, meet Astarion’s torturers face to face, and believe you had a right to say what retribution was enough? How could you think that you were the one who knew when to draw the line? How could she ever pretend to understand what had happened to him, or claim that she knew what was best for him, in a situation that went so far beyond any pain she was capable of fathoming?
Or, any pain she’d been capable of fathoming, then.
Before, when Astarion was himself, he had accused her love in his darkest moments of being just another yoke he fell under: a means for her to control him and make him into the person she wanted him to be. She had worried, in that moment, that he was right: who was she to tell him what to do?
And so, she had stayed quiet, and in keeping her silence, she had lost him entirely.
The monster in front of her was one that Rosalie had created.
“Such melodrama,” it sighed, rolling Astarion’s eyes. “You know, we’re not in a relationship anymore, darling - all this starry eyed, self-righteous, self-sacrificial bullshit really does wear thin, when it’s not accompanied by the more… enjoyable parts of you.”
That bored gaze leered its way down her body, from head to toe, leaving Rosalie feeling nauseated and ashamed. But where it lingered was on her neck, the last fading bitemarks nearly erased entirely. He didn’t need the blood anymore, but more than anything else, it seemed the monster was still somehow always hungry.
“Don’t be cruel,” she said tiredly, folding her arms over herself for comfort. “I didn’t ask you here to fight. I just wanted to say thank you. And now I’ve said it.”
“That’s all?” he said. “Underwhelming, as usual, darling. It seems you truly aren’t worthy of my time.”
Rosalie stayed silent, at this. It was true, after all - she had utterly failed him.
After a second where his barb got no reaction, Astarion sighed, and adjusted his cuffs, flicking a strand of hair out of his perfect face.
“Well, if you’ve said everything you needed to say, and your conscience is thoroughly unburdened, then I must dash. I’ve got some hero worship to partake in,” he said. “I’m sure I can find some lovely, pretty things somewhere in this city who are just so very happy to be alive and so very grateful that I saved them. Nothing like a brush with death to leave everyone desperate to make their lives mean something, if only for a moment. Who knows what the people who are sensible enough to celebrate their victory and continued survival, rather than moping around like a sullen child, will want to tick off their bucket list tonight. It’s going to be a wild ride.”
Rose stayed silent, as her heart ached and her face burned. She was so very tired.
If Astarion noticed her discomfort, he still looked annoyed that he hadn’t got a true rise out of her. He took two steps in towards her, until they were chest-to-chest, him crowding into her space. He looked down his nose at her, equal parts lecherous and condescending, as if he was undressing her with his eyes, but only to find all the ugly parts of her - to remind her how far beneath him she truly was.
He decided to go for the heart, merciless, as he said: “unless, of course, you could be persuaded, dear heart? One more for the road, as it were?” He smirked, “if you’re very, very good, I’ll promise I’ll even keep my fangs to myself.”
This is… nice. Her Astarion had told her, as he held her hand.
“No, thank you,” Rose said, voice weak and pathetic, the words hurting as they passed around the lump in her throat.
“Ah,” he said, and immediately stepped back, the aura of sensuality gone and dropped like a jacket onto the floor. “Our heroine is not as selfless as she would like others to believe, it seems. She could’ve saved a few lives, tonight, if only she was willing to get off her high horse and debase herself a little. Such a shame the only thing that fucks you, these days, is the stick up your arse.”
“Don’t kill anyone,” Rosalie said, ignoring all the other horrible words in that statement.
Astarion raised an eyebrow at her, as if it amused him to watch her dare defy him. “Funny,” the Vampire Ascendent said, “Cazador wouldn’t let me feed from the people who liked me best, either.”
“I mean it,” she persevered. “Don’t kill anyone, Astarion. You’ve gotten what you wanted. Seven thousand lives was enough.”
“I don’t take orders from you anymore. You just said so, yourself.”
“The moment you kill someone,” Rose replied, “is the moment I'll know that my next task is to stop you.”
“Darling,” Astarion grinned, “I would sincerely like to see you try.”
Rose tried to think of something else she could say, but there wasn’t anything. He was right: it wasn't the night of the ritual anymore, when he was newly reborn. Now, he was invulnerable, with a coffin hidden somewhere in the city to regenerate from, and thus her threat was completely empty. This was the future she had chosen for herself - this guilt, this knowledge that she had made the wrong choice - and there was nothing she could do to fix it.
Astarion tsked, as he moved towards the door. Hand on the frame, he looked back at her, pressed into the corner of the balcony, hugging herself, making herself as small as possible until she hoped she would disappear.
“Poor little Rosalie,” he said, voice holding a lilting, sing-song quality. “You worked so very hard, and on the night of your victory, here you are, all alone. So scared of what it is you truly want. Does it make you feel good, in your little heroic knickers, to stay so spotlessly virtuous, so very perfect, all the way to the very end?”
Rosalie took one more look at his face - his beautiful, perfect face - and the monster that had claimed it as his own. Did he think she thought she was perfect? Did he think she thought she’d done anything right?
“I hope that self-righteousness makes for a good bedwarmer,” Astarion noted. “I, myself, will settle for three-to-six living, breathing people - and maybe they’ll stay that way till morning, to appease you, my beautiful, sad little saviour.”
And then, he left.
Rosalie waited alone on the balcony until the pain faded - until only the guilt remained. Then, she took her bags from where she’d hidden them under her bed. She cast Disguise Self, just in case Astarion had someone watching the inn. And she walked across the ruined bridges of Wyrm’s Crossing, to Rivington, to catch her stagecoach. To flee.
And two days later, she arrived on the doorstep of her family home for the first time in five years. She fell, sobbing, into her mother’s arms, and told her the story of how she had killed the man she loved, when all the while she thought she was saving him.
Eleven years later, on a day much like any other, Archmage Rosalie Frostsong woke up in her home - a remote tower on the coastline of Alaron.
It was a beautiful day, cold but with pale, seaglass blue skies. The only sound was the waves crashing against the base of the cliffs, and the call of gulls. The island of Alaron - already far from civilisation, in the middle of the Sea of Swords - was sparsely populated, but she had chosen to renovate an abandoned ruin on the rocky hinterlands to the north, and as such, it was the only building for miles around.
As she moved from bed, donning her plum-coloured silk robe and mooching to her kitchen to make her breakfast, her back twinged. Rose was now forty-three years old. She didn’t quite wear that age as a human would - while some wrinkles now weathered her face, her hair remained blissfully, beautifully free of grey - but it was starting to feel like an unavoidable fact of her life. A year ago, she’d found out all those years hidden in the archives meant she needed glasses. She’d hastily contacted Shadowheart for a quick clerical solution, given that she felt it was embarrassing to be able to see in the dark but not three feet in front of one's own face. Then a month later, her knee had been royally fucked when hiking to a dig site in Silverymoon, where her expertise on illithids had been commissioned to make sense of the ruins of an ancient mindflayer colony.
Another ten years or so, and she knew that her students at the Order would see her as an old woman.
It was her work at the Watchful Order that had earned her her position as Archmage - rising through the ranks of the Divination School, with a quick, poorly-planned trip to Avernus and a few more monster slayings to earn her fast promotions and an undeniable amount of CV-able expertise. Above the fireplace was the stuffed, severed head of the white dragon she’d slain to finally secure herself the title. Quite a gaudy trophy, if Rosalie was honest, but also, if you went through the fucking harrowing experience of trying to slaughter a dragon, and then did it twice more, you wanted some kind of fucking reward at the end of it.
But she rarely went to Waterdeep these days, except on the days she was scheduled to give lectures. Though she and Gale had hand-painted the teleportation circle in her basement together, it was getting used less and less. Unless she was appraising an artefact or a geographical location, she conducted most of her meetings and freelance consultations via projection. Alaron was so peaceful, but it was also… easier.
She didn’t dare take on an apprentice or student that would take her to the Order more often, for fear that either she would force them into a life of similar solitude or-
Just think it, she said, as she spooned more oats into the porridge saucepan. No one’s here to hear it.
- Or for the fear that any display of more-than-average favouritism would endanger them, when left undefended on the mainland.
She would hate to move anyone to the Alaron tower against their will, but she’d feel far more wretched about leaving anyone with a commute from Waterdeep that left them outside of her protective wards, non-detection spells and mindblank sigils, for the majority of their day-to-day lives. At this point, it was probably just paranoia, to think that these things might hold meaning. But if she ever took that risk, and she was wrong…
She hated that her life was nearly fulfilling every wizarding cliché: her, alone, amongst her powerful artefacts and her books, with her cat Ser Verity (that Gale had insisted she get, after Scratch unfortunately passed).
But maybe clichés were clichés for a reason. Maybe this was how wizards were supposed to be.
Rose ate her breakfast, not really tasting it. Ser Verity collapsed on the table next to the empty bowl, and she scritched the cat’s ears absently as she worked through her morning’s correspondence. Three translation requests; four consultations for divination readings - two from city officials, and two from rich people who felt entitled to her services above any other practising wizard on commission; a report on her enquiries into conjuration texts from the libraries of Candlekeep, giving her absolutely nothing she wanted; and a letter from her father, asking if she was well, and when she would next visit. A line, cautiously asking, is there anyone else we should make room for, at the table? the only sleight, amongst an otherwise kind and well-meaning note.
Movement to her left - her unseen servant (she’d named him Timothy, just because “you” felt awkward) - was dusting the shelves in its morning routine, engaged in a constant battle against the amount of hair her evil, monstrous beast shed on every available surface, priceless or otherwise.
Maybe Timothy could be her plus one, Rose thought ruefully, without even a tinge of pain.
Silent, quiet, peaceful. It was a day like any other.
Until it wasn’t.
As she was clearing away the plates (to stack next to the sink for Timothy to wash - what was the point of being an archmage if you still did your own dishes? That was what Rosalie wanted to know), there came a brief flash of white light from the living room. This was nothing out of the ordinary - the majority of her post was mailed to her via arcane means from her pigeonhole in the Watchful Order, these days, and this was simply the flare of magic that heralded a late arrival.
Tying up her hair and adjusting her robe, Rose moved through into the other room, to the dumbwaiter in the wall. It wasn’t actually a dumbwaiter, of course - it was a magical portal that she’d managed to convince, through extensive spellcraft, into thinking it was a dumbwaiter, so that it didn’t rip too big a hole in space and time. She liked it, aesthetically - it reminded her nostalgically of the hatch, in the Elfsong Tavern, and the bets they’d all used to make on which food would come up next.
“Nondescript stew of the… game-y persuasion,” had always been what Astarion said. But Rose had never divulged that she’d asked Lakrissa to forego sending stew to them, on the grounds that it avoided sending Gale into indignant lectures on underseasoning. And so, he’d always lost.
Rosalie lifted the hatch. Inside was a rolled newspaper, tied with black ribbon, and a white envelope, sealed with a golden wax imprint of a moon that made its sender clear. Rose swallowed nervously. Shadowheart - who’d decided to fully embrace life as a Selunite, albeit with all the skills and savvy Shar’s teachings had instilled in her - was not the only one of their party who remained in Baldur’s Gate. But she was the only one who sent Rose honest updates. After keeping her company in that rough six months in which she'd used one of the Nine Hells as a solution for a messy break up, Wyll and Karlach tended to sugarcoat things.
She picked up the envelope, and popped the seal. The card folded itself out into a brief, characteristically direct note.
It’s finally happened. Was all Shadowheart wrote.
Feeling sick, Rosalie picked up the paper. If her friend hadn’t felt the need for any further explanation, then it was clear what this probably pertained to. She untied the ribbon, and unfurled the newspaper to see it was indeed a copy of the Baldur’s Mouth Gazette, dated today’s date, with the headline:
A Dance With Death
57 aristocrats murdered at an anonymous, late night party in the Upper City, in an unprecedented orgy of violence.
Rosalie read the article, twice, and then she remembered there was a sofa next to her, for her to sit down on. She felt a little numb, though her bad knee wobbled, and gave out as she finally parked herself down.
It had, indeed, finally happened.
The Vampire Ascendent had finally killed people.
And that meant, just as she had promised that night over ten years ago, that her next task was to stop him.
Notes:
Hahahaha two first chapters of two WIPs posted on the same day, I'm so sane and normal about this man and this game.
It seems that the only AUs I'm capable of writing are time skips, but this one is very, very different in tone from Party Favours lmao.
Thank you, again, to all the people who have kudosed and commented on my fics in Early Access and in the first month or so of the game being out. My main motivation for writing has been all the lovely things people have said in the last few weeks and last few years, thank you so much for being so supportive! Hopefully these new stories repay the favour :)
Chapter Notes
- The fic title is obviously from a Hozier song (it's what Astarion deserves). I had a back up title from 'Eat Your Young', but I chose this line from 'Unknown' instead bc these guys are still in love they're just being weird about it.
- Rosalie is now at Level 18 in this fic, which means she too is insanely powerful. However, her Insight remains at a +0, which I think is a very important detail to have, going forward.
- Alaron is a 'real' place in Faerun, located to the west of the Sword Coast and Baldur's Gate.
- I have changed/added some pieces to the Vampire Ascendent lore to make Astarion harder to kill, this is mostly led by rule-of-cool and a little bit of how I homebrew vampires in D&D, and that is why there is a canon divergent tag.
- There should be a tag entitled 'ways to tell that the author's first fandom was Spuffy' bc I feel like that shines through in this :))
Chapter Text
Rosalie let herself have roughly ten minutes to hyperventilate, like in the good old days, and then she set to packing.
“Do you want to come with me?” she asked Ser Verity. The massive lump of a cat looked at her, yowled once, then lolled onto her back in a sunbeam.
A brief sojourn to Gale’s family home it was, then. Gods knew how she would cope if Astarion was now the Orin-brand of psychopath who threatened to murder people’s cats.
Rosalie went to her armoury. It was a room off the second floor, that she kept behind an illusory tapestry, because it was honestly a little embarrassing to have an armoury, this many years after active service. Even though she was the only person who lived in this house, she didn’t need to see that every day. Who did she think she was, Lae’zel?
She was a lot softer than she used to be - no longer subsisting on rations during the most stressful months of her life would do that, not to mention the amount of calories it turned out an illithid parasite could burn. But she knew her robes would still fit her, if only because magical items were incredibly forgiving, and didn’t advertise to you when exactly in the attunement process they changed to fit your current body shape. She removed the dark indigo clothing from the manequin she’d awkwardly ordered to her house when she’d decided she preferred a shirt and breeches, along with a resplendent cloak of deep, rich, night blue, whose inner lining was a pattern of shifting, moving constellations, and a pair of very powerful (very comfy) winged boots.
She picked up her Ring of Mindshielding, and put it on. The moment she left Alaron, her existence would be fair game - but that didn’t mean she had to play fair.
And on the wall next to it-
The Ehalaer Daoin Vel - her Star-Render Staff.
It was not a weapon she had wielded whilst tadpoled. This had been forged for her four years later, part gift and part commission (given that Rosalie had taken that very beautiful, very carefully made staff, and immediately demanded some adjustments). It had been her reward from the Moonshae Elves, for defeating several fey entities in their forests, gifted to her along with the deeds to the tower she had asked to make her home.
Tied to the blessed constellations the Moonshae revered, it was awfully good at helping her look into the future, and it did an awful lot of radiant damage. She’d made sure of that.
Not that it mattered, she knew. The Vampire Ascendent did not turn away from radiance, nor the divine. While the essence forged into the core of her staff would crisp up your average vampire, it would probably leave him with new some freckles, at best.
But still. Rosalie had figured that one day, she’d probably have to kill some spawn.
She handed all these items off to Timothy, to go place in her very pretty, gold-embroidered carpetbag of holding.
And then, she moved to the library.
Her spellbook was kept in a pocket dimension for her to summon at will, these days, but her library was an arsenal of weapons she had been collecting ever since she returned to the Watchful Order, a month after the fall of the Three, and regained her library subscription. There were the books she’d stolen from libraries across Faerun, and books she’d politely acquisitioned - via careful blackmail of university officials - for her private collection. There were books she had bid tens of thousands of gold on, remotely, under false names.
The library included many things: studies of the invulnerable liches of centuries past, and the manners of their eventual defeat. But these had been dull, and taught her nothing more than what slaughtering Carrion had provided through hands-on praxis. Historical accounts from the cursed lands of Barovia - which she had briefly visited, for three days, two years ago (never, ever again) - documenting the fall of the tyrant Strahd, once thought immortal, but who had been killed by the blade known as the Sunsword, only for the vampire Lyssa von Zarovich to take his place.
Rosalie had used her apparently single-minded ability to charm vampires into cooperation, to enter Lyssa's gothic castle and take brief observational notes of the Sunsword, which had been mounted in pride of place in the Queen's dining room.
I’ll let you into my home, in exchange for a taste of you, the Queen of Barovia had said, gaze flickering to Rose’s neck. I can tell you have partaken before. I can smell it on your skin.
Rosalie had let it happen. She had drifted free of her body, and she had tapped the Queen of Barovia on the shoulder, the same signal she'd used with her lover, when she could tell the woman had taken her fill. Then, she had examined the Sunsword using Identify and a scroll of Legend Lore, and concluded it useless, if impeccably polite - it had been a weapon designed to exploit Strahd’s weaknesses, and Strahd’s alone.
The library had spells, too. It included the texts she had used to decipher and transcribe Reality Break - a spell that it turned out, did not break reality enough for her purposes. It included the texts that had allowed her to learn True Polymorph, only to realise that True Polymorph could change the physical form, but not imbue that form with the soul that was lost.
It included the ancient Infernal lexicon Cazador himself had used, to forge the text of the Black Mass with Mephistopheles. Gale had found that for her - she had no idea how. She had used it to fully translate the text of the Black Mass that she had stolen from Cazador’s rooms, and then quickly, hastily copied from it’s place in Astarion’s own belongings. Rosalie had translated it twice, with every possible syntactic nuance, and not found a single loophole - all the vulnerabilities in that contract were ones that existed before the ritual was cast, not after.
Still, with space to spare in her bag, Rosalie picked out every single one of these texts from her collection, along with a few romance novels for recreational purposes, to stop herself from becoming suicidal on whatever suicide mission she was about to embark upon. She would need every piece of knowledge in her arsenal to do this, and do it cleanly.
As she left the library, heart pounding, a single book caught her eye.
The ancient conjuration text, locked in its glass cabinet. She had purchased it a year ago. She had stayed up every night, for two weeks, drinking potions of Peerless Focus like they were water, until she had managed to translate it. But its last twenty pages were missing, ripped out in a cruel, vindictive joke played on her by the universe.
It’s never going to work, she thought to herself, heartsick with wanting. She remembered wading through the archaic mixture of Sylvan and Celestial - a Moonshae dialect that was like drowning in vowels- and the drop in her stomach when she’d reached the last word, on the final page before the gaping wound in the binding. She had hoped those missing pages were appendices. They were not. The spell was incomplete.
A final hope, dashed thoroughly against the rocks.
Even if it was complete, you couldn’t cast it anyway, she thought, as her feet moved her towards the glass case, seemingly of their own accord. You might be an Archmage, but you’re not strong enough. You never will be.
There’s no guarantee that it would even give you what you wanted.
It’s not like you deserve it to.
She took the book out of the case.
She did not pass it to Timothy. This - her last, final, futile hope - Rose placed into her suitcase herself.
“I’m thinking of squatting in the House of Grief until I have an actual strategy,” she told Shadowheart via Sending, “I’m sending Verity to Gale’s.”
“Sounds like a plan,” was her friend’s bland reply. “I’d hate to have another traumatic bowl of soup in my future.”
She sent another brief Sending to Gale, warning him of his incoming houseguest, and then put Verity into the dumbwaiter.
“Another work trip?” was Gale’s cautious, careful reply - worried enough to tell Rosalie that he, too, had recently picked up a copy of the Baldur’s Mouth Gazette.
Her heart was pounding. She didn’t reply to Gale, because then he would offer to come to the Gate to help, and then he would be in danger too. He had kids now - with a very pretty genasi sorcerer whose very existence defied Mystra herself, which Rose couldn’t help but think was some beautifully poetic justice.
She also couldn’t close the hatch the first time round. She reopened it before it clicked shut, pulling out the beastly lumox of a cat and kissing her all over her round, whiskered face. “I love you so much,” she told Ser Verity, only to be left with a swat on the cheek for her troubles - luckily without claws, which was how you knew the cat loved her.
“I’ll see you soon, baby,” she lied, and then she closed the hatch. There was a brief flash of light, and her cat hopped across the continent. Don’t cry, she told herself, firmly: Verity was about to be spoilt rotten. Either she’d just gained a new owner, who would smother her in affection till the day she died, or that cat would be returned to Rosalie, at least a stone heavier than when she left.
She locked the doors, set Timothy to automation, and went down to her basement. The carpetbag already sat there. She picked it up, along with a thousand-gold piece of chalk that would guarantee a safe and swift retreat if needed, and then she stepped into her teleportation circle, thinking of the needlessly decadent, horny-coded dormitories of the Sharran dedicates in the House of Grief.
Shadowheart was already waiting at the other end, which told Rosalie things were dire. This wasn’t her friend’s home anymore - the House was now a functional temple, a true place for people to grieve, with the extensive underground premises a well-kept secret. Which meant Shadowheart too had legged it across town to meet her. Still beautiful, encased in her youth like an artful fly in amber, Shadowheart lived in the outskirts of the city, with her father, after her mother had passed peacefully in her sleep four years ago. Rose had attended the funeral, mind-shielder ring on her hand, heart in her mouth. Astarion hadn’t shown. Shadowheart hadn’t invited him.
“How bad is it?” Rosalie asked, as greeting.
“The situation, or the fact that you’re still in your pyjamas?” Shadowheart replied archly.
“...Fuck!” Rosalie looked down at herself. In her daze, she'd put on her boots, but she was still in her silk housecoat, and thigh length nightdress. Her thighs were a little cellulite pocked, these days, and not something she would typically flaunt in polite company.
“I like the silk,” Shadowheart smirked. “Very tasteful. Very dark consort.”
“Don’t even joke about that, fucking hells,” Rose said, immediately dropping down to rummage up to her elbows in her carpetbag.
“Was the plan to simply go in braless? It might work.”
Rose glared up at her, “I packed clothes-!” She thought of her very flattering purple linen shirt, and procured it, to prove her point. “Please, just cut straight to the gory details, while I try to find some pants.”
“I’ve just come from the murder scene,” Shadowheart said. At Rose’s sharp glance, she continued, “I was dressed like one of Kelemvor’s, both in the literal and magical sense, so no one would’ve known it was me. The good news: it wasn’t for an arcane purpose, and definitely wasn’t some kind of ritual. Just a very artful bloodbath, from the looks of things. A certain type of party, gone terribly wrong. And there wasn’t any… nice people, amongst them, either - the victims that have been ID’ed are all a very particular kind of awful: either Zhentarim’s finest or the nobility’s nastiest. Lots of those in the flesh trade, a few Underdark slavers for some spice. But-”
“...But?”
“It was definitely him,” Shadowheart told her, not bothering to soften the blow. “It was all jugulars, all over the shop, and the amount of blood left did not add up to how much should’ve been spilt. I don’t know how large his brood is, these days, but the people on the scene were concluding that some fledglings got seriously hungry. Wyll has already contacted me: the city is hushing up any vampiric involvement, as usual, but when the liaison reached out-”
“- I thought Wyll was the liaison?” The Blade of Avernus was - or had been - the city's point of contact for monitoring all its monstrous activity.
“He stepped back, two years ago,” Shadowheart said, frown pinching. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“No,” Rose was shoving her legs into her trousers, at this point, just for something to do. “He didn’t.”
“He said it was making him uncomfortable,” Shadowheart told her, which was, Rose felt, the understatement of the fucking decade. She bet Wyll hadn’t told her, just because that sentence would’ve sounded so stupid, when said to her face. “His replacement is someone we trust, but when they reached out to His Lordship this time, there was…”
“No reply?”
“No, actually,” Shadowheart grimaced. “A three word reply: ‘I was bored.’”
Rosalie had been lacing her breeches shut, at that point, focusing on the routine task to get her through the conversation. But Shadowheart’s words took all the wind that remained desperately in her sails away. She just froze in place, the bonecrushing grief that had long numbed to a dull ache coming back in full force and stealing away her very breath.
“...Fuck.” she said, inadequately.
“Yes,” Shadowheart replied. “That about covers it. He gave no guarantees that he wouldn’t do it again.”
“...Any word on Revivify, or True Resurrection?”
Shadowheart’s gaze was pitying, but she delivered the answer anyway. “We found his grave. He’s too old. I’m sorry.”
Rosalie felt like she could vomit her own heart out her chest, in that moment, just to stop it from hurting.
“You know I’ll stay with you, till the very end,” her friend told her, which was a mighty deep thing for her to say, when Rose had her pants open. “Whatever the outcome.”
“It’s ok,” Rosalie lied, hands shaking. “Well. It’s not. I’m the one who should be apologising. If only I’d-”
“-You loved him,” Shadowheart said.
Shadowheart didn’t lie, anymore. She didn’t say, ‘you had no way of knowing’, or ‘we thought it was the right thing to do at the time’. She simply stated facts.
“You loved him, and so you let him make his own choice, and he chose wrongly. Selfishly, I’m grateful that you learned that lesson, in time for when we were last here together,” She looked around the empty, dusty dormitories of the Nightsinger, and sighed, “you’re the reason my parents and I had a life together, and so I’ll never hate you, even when you hate yourself. At least, when you make a mistake, you’re willing to deal with the consequences.”
Was she? Rosalie thought, wretchedly. She’d ran away from the Gate, as far as she could, and hidden herself away for ten years.
“I’ll find a way to kill him,” she promised.
“I know you will,” said Shadowheart. “And we’ll help you.”
“I think you should use Rolan.”
“I am not using Rolan.”
“The Archmage of Ramazith’s tower, with his little posh boy accent and his puppy-dog crush on the dashing older woman who saved him and set him up for life?” Shadowheart said, arching a brow as she bit into her apple, “I think you should use him. Go to Sorcerous Sundries with a low enough cut top, and His Lordship would come out of hiding in five seconds flat.”
They were sat cross-legged in one of the old, round beds in the House of Grief that Rose had prestidigitated free of dust. Shadowheart used these grounds as a safe house for Shar’s victims occasionally, utilising all of the deceptive and illusory charms on the place against its patron, and she kept rations here for such occasions. The two of them were eating snacks and discussing strategies for killing Rose's ex-boyfriend, like they were at the world’s worst slumber party.
Rosalie blushed. “I don’t think I have the kind of power you think I do over him, not anymore,” she said, not sure if she was talking about Rolan, or Astarion. Though in truth, this was the reason she kept consultations with Rolan to written correspondence, usually.
She really liked Rolan, and he was a hell of a mage, these days, but she didn't think of him that way - or maybe, she didn’t dare let herself think about him that way, because he lived in the Gate, a place she could never visit, and his accent was of a very particular brand. And then, there was also the fear that if they spent too long in a room together, she’d wake up one day to the news that her close friend had been slaughtered violently in his own bed.
Shadowheart gave her a pointed look, reading all of this in Rose’s face.
“Most of my precautions have been for me,” Rose insisted, “to make me feel safe. And he’s never come looking for me, not once. He’s probably long since moved on. Maybe he’s got like, twenty dark consorts. He doesn’t even have a heart anymore.”
“So what I’m hearing,” Shadowheart said, “is that we should use Rolan anyway. Because that means we can walk into the tower full of arcane superweapons, and Astarion won’t bat an eye.”
“Have you ever been in the Palace?” Rose asked glumly, moving the conversation along.
“Not I,” Shadowheart said. “I moved with my parents as it was built, and had no urge to visit. Whenever I walk past it, my skin crawls. Seven thousand deaths… the ground reeks of it. He had it right, the first time, when he salted the earth and burnt it to the ground. He just never should’ve built on it after. Wyll and Gale went in though, Karlach too - he invited them to the grand tour, when they were freshly back and it was first finished. They said it was basically a mirror image of Cazador’s home. Just a different colour scheme, newer stone, and larger windows. Almost like its all he's ever known. There’s a large garden as well - that’s the only way he can one-up him, isn’t it? Given that he's the one that can go outside.”
Rose felt a little sick, but ate more of the rations Shadowheart kept here to spite her own stomach. “And the dungeons?”
“Still there,” Shadowheart confirmed. “But we only know that because all of the sewer entrances have been well and truly blocked up and locked away. We’ve not been able to get in that way, and one time after Wyll asked Halsin to try, they found a loaded rat trap and a bouquet of roses by the only crack in the stonework - freshly sealed over.”
Rose sighed. A rat trap wouldn’t kill Halsin, just shunt him out of wildshape. But still. It was a very petty and on-brand act of revenge.
“So, what?” she said, “I just… draw him out? But the moment he knows I’m here…”
“...Is the moment we lose the element of surprise,” Shadowheart confirmed. “Going to the palace and knocking on the door would probably work, if I’m honest, but it would be suicide.”
“I know I could kill him,” Rosalie said. She thought of a night, three years ago, when she had discovered, and finally transcribed, her Power Word Kill into her spellbook. It was different for every wizard, and hers was just… cruel. She’d been sick, afterwards, thankfully making it to the toilet.
“But I would need to get to wherever his coffin is, after,” she continued. "Even with Disintegrate… I think he just reconstitutes, now. It’s like a lich, with a phylactery - they have a failsafe that prevents true death. If he’s clever, it’s somewhere far away from the Gate, given that that’s where we’d automatically look for it. Regardless, a bit of the essence just lingers. It might not even be tied to the coffin. I have one theory…”
“...What?” Shadowheart said, when Rose fell silent.
“...That. Well. In the Black Mass,” she said, chest tight. It was the first time she'd ever dare say any of this out loud. “The... soul is the phylactery. It’s not in the body anymore. So it doesn’t die when the body dies. And all a lich needs to reconstitute is one part outside itself, so it stands to reason…”
“His soul is gone, Rose,” Shadowheart told her, quietly.
“I know that,” Rose sighed. She’d trawled the ethereal plane enough, to know for certain. “But we don’t know where it went. We know it powered the ritual, and it was a part in the devil’s bargain. It could be in the Hells. Souls are what devils treat in.”
“And what they consume,” Shadowheart countered. “All those souls were burned away, when they were used. Karlach and Wyll asked, remember? None of the victims could be found in the Hells.”
6,999 of them couldn’t be, Rose thought. And that left two unaccounted for, didn't it? Cazador's - and Astarion's.
Both of their backs had been scarred, the moment the ritual was cast.
One of the first things she’d done, after she managed to shake off the depression that had her lying on her parents sofa for a month, was return to the Order and use their plane shifting equipment to join her friends in Avernus. It had been a decision made for many foolish reasons, but the most selfish amongst them was to gather intel on what Hell thought about the newest, biggest deal to go off without a hitch. They’d all done their due diligence, and they’d asked their questions as carefully as they could, but even then, it was trusting the words of devils. Rose hadn’t been able to fight off the itch, in the back of her mind - the feeling like every single denizen of the Hells they’d encountered had been secretly laughing at her, amused by her torment.
Preservation of the soul hadn't been mentioned in the Black Mass, when she translated it. But the Black Mass had been written for Cazador, a Vampire Lord who - for all she knew - might have already lost his soul long before he conducted the ritual, so that was inconclusive proof. Or Cazador had still had his soul - he needed it, in order to be a suitable replacement for Astarion, after all - in which case, it hadn't been something he'd planned to risk, in the original casting. His skin had been bare, until Astarion placed it under the knife.
If I was a devil, she’d thought, thinking of Astarion on the very cusp of hopeful freedom. I’d keep the soul.
“Look, I’m not saying I’m right," Rose said. "But we saw him get stabbed… after. We saw him get downed. And it didn’t matter. He was just mist, and sometimes he wasn’t even that. So there’s something more at work than just being able to live and breathe like you or me.”
“I think we can’t work in theories, especially idealistic ones," Shadowheart replied. "We have to work with what we know: we go for him, and then the coffin. Once we know where that is. Even if we don’t kill him, it might be enough to scare him into line.”
Rosalie looked at her. Shadowheart shrugged, conceding the point. “And if not, we just keep trying. If he truly can’t fall, we’ll get plenty of second chances.”
“He said that if any of our friends moved against him, he’d have to put them down,” Rosalie said, mouth ashen. She’d love to live in a world where Astarion didn’t try to kill them, but he’d already let her walk away once, and that had felt like an improbable stroke of luck. She didn’t want to push it further.
Shadowheart said, with her usual calm: “Cazador was easy enough to kill, in the end. And Astarion has crafted himself in his image. We have to hope that that’s his downfall, as well.”
Notes:
Apologies for the requisite exposition chapter, I'm trying to post the first few chapters of this asap so that you can actually get to the Good Stuff. But a chapter without Astarion in: the toughest battle, for god's strongest soldiers. You are all so brave <3
Thank you for all the lovely comments on the previous chapter - I forget, every single time, what being in an Active Fandom is like, and I'm having a great time :D
Chapter Notes
- 'Ehalaer Daoin Vel' is D&D elvish - it doesn't exactly mean Star-Render Staff, but it was the closest I could find with the elvish translator that exists.
- The Curse of Strahd lore I quote here is based on a variation of Barovia that can be found in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft - to no one's surprise, I am a big fan of all D&D vampire content (Lyssa Von Zarovich especially) and I will be using it to inform certain parts of this story :')
- No True Resurrection in this fic, I'm so sorry :(( that's how you know it's not Party Favours
- Power Word Kill is (IMO) the sexiest D&D spell after Counterspell, I made up the lore about it being different for every wizard, simply bc I live for the Drama
- Vampire Ascendent lore has been extensively brainrotted about and altered for more narrative impact, we'll see if Rosalie's theories are true or not in future chapters ;)
Chapter Text
The next conversation was: who did they ask to help? Rosalie’s answer was “no one”, and Shadowheart’s reply was “that’s fucking stupid”.
“No one with family who could be hurt,” Rosalie amended. Shadowheart gave her another look.
“I’ll have my father out of town by the end of the day,” she said, primly, pointedly. “Anyone with any sense will do the same, once they know you’re back.”
“Not Gale, then, because he’s got kids and he can’t exactly send them away, at least not without feeling bad. And not Halsin, for the same reason,” Rosalie said. “I can’t have Astarion slaughtering any orphans to make his point.”
This, Shadowheart conceded.
“So, that leaves Wyll. Karlach, as her girlfriend can take of herself. Lae’zel…?”
“We should use Minsc,” Rosalie said. “If Astarion fucks with Minsc, Minsc simply won’t notice it’s happening.”
“Unfortunately, Minsc is relegated on the grounds of the first clause,” Shadowheart said. “He has kids now.”
“No way,” Rose said. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
Shadowheart shrugged, “Nine-Fingers Keene.”
“Nine-Fingers Keene!?”
“I don’t get it either.”
Rose wish that Minsc had written her letters, to communicate this news. But such things required it to occur to Minsc to write.
“I’ll try to get the word out, discretely,” Shadowheart said. “We’ll see who answers. And you should Disguise up, and go to Sorcerous Sundries.”
"That joke's not funny anymore, just to clarify," Rosalie said.
"The wards and non-detection and illusions remain, but the ground of this place is no longer hallowed," Shadowheart replied, looking around the Cloister of Sombre Embrace. "I made sure of that. I can protect you from charm effects for the next hour or so, but I won't be here all the time. You'll need to be chugging potions daily, in case he finds you and tries any kind of compulsion on you."
Rose blinked, surprised at such a concise and logical explanation.
"...Also, if you're the one to ask for those potions, from Rolan, you'll get a discount," Shadowheart smirked.
And so Rosalie and Shadowheart readied themselves (Rose put on a full set of clothes), and armed themselves to the teeth with spellcraft. Shadowheart gave her one brief hug, then called down Blessing of the Trickster and left disguised as the penitent as which she’d entered, walking straight through the front door. Under Deathward and a Seeming guise of a copper skinned dragonborn - that would hopefully not just mask her face, but her voice and her scent - Rosalie climbed out of the secret tunnel Shadowheart had had newly excavated near the orchid pool.
It was strange to be out in the Gate again, after so long. The city was immediately bustling the moment she stepped out of the hidden doorway in an alleyway, and out onto the street. The change in Astarion had not immediately heralded the end of the civilisation the way the Absolute had, and even on a day where 57 people had been killed, life went on mostly unimpeded. Very few people seemed to see anything wrong with continuing with business as usual. Rose walked past the site of the Steel Foundry, surprised to see that someone with a lot of enterprise and very little tact had turned it into apartments. The bodies of the Steelwatch themselves had been requisitioned for parts, and were responsible for a very shiny, very sleek tramline that ran through the centre of the city. Hopefully, none of the infernal iron had been used.
Sorcerous Sundries was still as splendid as ever, brightly coloured flags decorating the ribs of its tall ceiling. Rather than Lorroakan’s suits of armour, Rolan had invested time studying battlemagic, meaning that he had living, breathing eldritch knights at the door, all trained in his abjuration techniques. Rose nodded at them as she entered, and was surprised to see Rolan himself at the desk, not even in projection form. She supposed it shouldn’t surprise her - his letters often talked about running the shop. But you met very few wizards who actually enjoyed talking to people, much less customer service.
Rolan was in his mid-thirties now. His posture, body, and tailoring had all adjusted so that he filled out his shoulders more, awkward haircut grown out long enough to tie away from his face, and a much more forgiving shadow of stubble softening his chin. Enchanted rings adorned each finger: as an abjuration wizard, he carried more wards than he did spell components.
“Greetings, valued customer!” he said, with his usual theatrical volume, and his confident grin.
“Um, hi there, Rolan,” Rose said awkwardly, voice changed in her disguise. “It’s… well. It’s Rose? Rose Frostsong, from Alaron? I need your help.”
“Oh!” he said, after blinking a couple of seconds, “well! That explains why you triggered all of our deception wards, I suppose. I was about to set Lady Mallory on you. Goodness, that would’ve been exceedingly awkward!”
Rosalie glance behind her. A six foot tall woman in resplendent adamantine armour received another unspoken command, and awkwardly retreated to stand by the door.
“I’m sorry for the disguise,” Rose said, “if, um, you have time, we can head somewhere a little more private and I can drop it? I need potions, so whoever manages that-”
“Me, when you’re the one making the request,” Rolan said hastily. She hadn’t meant any of her words as innuendo, but it was a little gratifying the way the red of his face darkened just a shade, as he quickly handed off the front desk to a young elven apprentice and ushered her upstairs.
Even more so, once the portal deposited them in Ramazith: when she dropped the Seeming from her shoulders, he darkened another shade further. It had been a long time since just looking at her had that effect, though Rosalie supposed she didn’t really get out much. She knew she hadn’t lost much of her beauty, and could still turn heads amongst the right group of people, but given the way most of society seemed to forget women’s existence when they reached a certain age, it was always nice to be reminded that she was not, in fact, invisible.
“So, what can I do for you?” he asked eagerly. They entered an antechamber that belonged to a bespectacled hobgoblin alchemist, who took one look at them both over the rim of her glasses, and decided not to interrupt.
Rosalie ran off her shopping list: Potions of Protection for Evil and Good, Potions of Intellect Fortress, Distillations of Fey Ancestry… anything that could free her from charm, at a push. Rolan almost tripped over his robes to get them, exactly as Shadowheart had predicted. There were nine in total.
“And I can get work on making more!” Rolan said, when she didn’t quite succeed in keeping her disappointment off her face. “We do commissions, here. We’d need to get ingredients, but if I expedite acquisitions, we could have them ready in a week!”
The hobgoblin raised one eyebrow, as she continued to work silently.
“I’ll take everything, whatever you can get me, honestly,” Rosalie said, feeling bad for triggering a nightmare of overwork. “I don’t know how long I’ll be here, so I need all the help-”
“-You’re staying?! In the Gate?!” Rolan asked, eyes brightening. “How long? Oh no, wait, you just said, you’re not sure-”
“Um…”
Rosalie vastly underpaid for those nine potions. She wasn’t sure she’d ever indulged in pretty privilege before, but that poor alchemist was probably having an aneurysm, as she shoved them all into the carpetbag.
“Do you want a tour of the improvements to the tower while you’re here?” Rolan said. “I’ve made a bunch of acquisitions for the library. We found an artefact from one of the floating cities of Karsus, one of the levitating discs used for domestic enchantments, it’s most beautiful-”
“-I’m really sorry, Rolan, I’m not sure I can,” Rosalie replied, feeling wretched as they descended down to the level where the exit back to Sundries was. “Um, and I know this is going to sound a little melodramatic, but I’m going to need you not to tell anyone you saw me. I’m working on something a little dangerous, and the longer I’m in here, the longer I put you at risk..."
"Well, Ramazith's defences are extensive," he began to argue, with a frown. "Whatever it is you're tackling next, I'm sure I can-"
Suddenly, a shiver rippled along Rose's spine, pulling her focus from Rolan. It raised every single hair on her neck, and rattled her teeth. An answering shiver thrummed through the Star-Render Staff in her hand, like an echo, telling her that it was more than just the average person stepping on your grave - it was a portent, coming to her unprompted. The vision was brief: she caught a flash of a figure in her mind’s eye, walking through the portal at the foot of the stairs... and she knew for certain who it would be.
But... how?
“-Rolan,” she said, putting a hand on his arm and digging talons in. “Get somewhere safe. Dimension Door, Misty Step, get to somewhere secure in the tower, now.”
“What are you talking about -”
“That is not a request,” Rose clarified. “Tell your employees to stay put as well.”
She dug into her carpetbag, took out one of the potions she’d just bought, broke off the wax and unstoppered it, then started downing the contents in foul tasting, heavy, viscous gulps. By the time she was halfway down the flask, her stomach was extremely unhappy, but Rolan had gotten the message, winking out of existence at her side.
Another breath, that’s all she had, she thought. She reached for a ring on her pinky finger, and twisted it, and turned Invisible. In the same moment, exactly as her divination had foreseen, the portal rippled like a drop of rain hitting a lake, and a tall, slender figure ambled out. They stepped directly into the large column of sunshine cast by one of the tower’s tall, stories-high windows, raising one hand to squint against the brightness.
“Ooooooooh Rolan,” said a loud, familiar voice, echoing off the sides of the tower. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! I’m here to drop in on an ‘old friend’! I know we haven’t talked in a while, but remember that year when your brother and sister didn’t know how to stay alive without constant supervision, and you were equally useless? I’m just dying to hear about your new books you’ve purchased, instead of getting laid, et cetera, et cetera.”
How? Rosalie thought again, as the Vampire Lord Ascendent walked forward, his entire profile outlined in gold.
Portents gave her insights into the future, but very few explanations. How had he known to come here?
Astarion was dressed in a dark blue velvet suit, over a waistcoat that sported a solid year’s worth of expensive embroidery, the kind that had probably made worsened the seamstress’ eyesight, and made their fingers bleed. The shirt underneath was open at the collar, but left a froth of lace at the wrists, and he carried no visible weapons lest it mess with the tailoring. Other than that, literally nothing about his appearance had changed. His white hair was turned golden as cornsilk by the sunlight. The same face, the same eyes, the same long straight nose… and a grin that had soured to something even more clinical, a mask resting upon his face.
Even as the shock of seeing him rooted her to the spot, Rose didn’t dare move from where she stood at the top of the staircase, hand gripping the bannister. He couldn't see her, she knew, but a single breath too loud or a single footstep wrong, and he would almost certainly hear her.
“Hellooooooo?” he called out. “Anybody there? Don’t make me go back down to your very busy shop floor, and find some other means of getting your attention!”
There was no question why he’d come here, of all places. How had he found her so quickly?
Rose took a quick mental inventory. She wore nothing that she’d worn in her tadpole days, not even jewellery, so there was nothing that could trigger a Locate Object. She supposed a Locate Creature was possible, and made a mental note to find the components for Non-detection as quickly as possible. But even then, that required a level of specificity she had no idea how he’d achieved - that spell could only cover a few thousand feet at a time. She’d given the palace the same deliberately wide berth for a reason.
“...I don’t appreciate being made to wait!”
With a flash of terror in her stomach, she was hit by a fleeting memory of when they’d come to the Gate ten years before. Cazador has known where you were, the whole time, the other spawn had told Astarion.
But I’m not spawn, Rosalie thought, desperately.
And then her neck, long-healed, suddenly itched something fierce.
Fucking… hells, Rosalie thought, body flaming all over, not with lust or shame or anything else but utter embarrassment at her stupidity. In her research into Barovia, she had read about Strahd’s behaviours, and the techniques he’d used to attempt to claim the soul that was once a woman called Tatyanna through vampiric bites. One bite was enough to sense when she was close, two was enough to compel her, three bites (and an offer of blood in return) enough to make her turn into the true bride he wanted.
One more bite is all it would take, Astarion had told her, trailing his fingertips along the column of her throat that night ten years ago… which meant Rose had been somewhat farther up the spectrum than perhaps, she’d ever appreciated.
Astarion had been spawn at the time, but he’d bitten her… a few times. Ok, so, a lot.
Oh, Rosalie said, with no small amount of overwhelm. I’m so fucked.
These were the sort of powers a person could learn to tap, once they’d had enough time and leisure to explore them.
“Darling. It’s very cute of you to think you can try and hide from me, but I’d recognise that heartbeat anywhere. Especially when it starts fluttering like a caged bird, once you’ve realised you’ve made a very silly mistake,” Astarion announced in her direction, tipping his head to the side and gaze honing in, like he could indeed see her standing there. “I heard the song of your blood all the way from my mansion. It’s a tune I know well. Let us not pretend otherwise.”
Oh, hells, Rosalie thought.
She twisted the ring again, ending her invisibility. She silently reappeared at the top of the stairs.
"Quick thinking, darling, but that fragile little body of yours will always betray you in the end," Astarion smirked, taking a step forward out of the sunlight, so that her figure resolved from a silhouette.
The moment he could make out her face, he paused, blinking up at her. "Oh." He said, "you've gotten… old."
His voice was half disgust, half fascination, as he examined her like she was a new, strange specimen under a magnifying glass. Rosalie couldn’t stifle the part of her mind that thought there might be more notable comments on her appearance to make - like the fact her hair now fell to her waist, cut infrequently after years of living alone on Alaron, or that her horns were now tattooed with a pattern of thorned roses, pierced and adorned with rings.
But one thing was true: she was older. She wouldn’t let this horrible, cruel thing get under her skin, the way he used to.
"Hello to you, too," Rosalie said, as calmly as she could manage. "Have I? I can't say I've noticed. I was considering taking up bathing in the blood of virgins, but I didn't want to step on anyone's toes, so to speak. I know you’ve worked very hard on your branding."
“Oh, please!” he smiled up at her beatifically, “you shouldn’t believe all the rumours you hear: the virgin cleanse is only once a month, dearest. The rest of the time, I simply moisturise.”
He made to take a step towards her, but stalled as Rose started to quietly descend the stair. She figured if she made a show of moving closer, there’d be a chance to leave enough space to keep her on the high ground. Sure enough, when she stopped three stairs from the bottom, he made no attempt to close the distance.
"You're just… here,” he remarked. “After all these years."
“And you sought me out, in under an hour of my arrival,” Rosalie replied, deciding it might help hide the fact she’s been in the House of Grief since morning. “Some might say that’s a little… desperate, Astarion.”
The accusation did nothing to ruffle his demeanour. He blinked, and replied, “I was simply appalled by your lack of manners, darling. I know you’ve hidden yourself away from the finer parts of civilisation for a while, but not even a calling card? Such a lack of decorum; I’m hurt! Why must I do all the legwork, like the good old days? Maybe I wanted to be wooed a little. We could’ve had tea. I might even have gotten out the nice china.”
“As charming as that all sounds, I’m only making a quick visit. I've just dropped in to see Rolan," Rose hastily lied, feeling very guilty about throwing that poor boy in harm’s way. “I’ll take the teleportation circle out of here once I’m done. I'm consulting on some cross-planar travel, and he has an item attuned to the plane in question.”
Astarion stared at her for a long second, as if considering something, and then he smirked: "You're lying. I can smell it on you. Not to mention, I felt your presence trawling all over the Gate."
"Horrifying news, for all involved,” Rosalie observed, and then began to try and think roughly twenty steps ahead. “But yes… I am lying, probably. It seems like a smart move for me to make, under the circumstances."
"...Did Wyll call you here?" Astarion asked her, voice dropping to the velvet register as he narrowed his eyes at her. “Daddy's misbehaved, so after years of being the absentee parent, we have to call mummy back in, to try and get him back in line? Keep him domesticated, rein him back under control?"
"There were a solid seventeen fetishes in that sentence, and you did not just refer to yourself as Wyll's daddy," Rosalie said bluntly. "I'm 43, Astarion - please don't make me wish years off of my life. I’m in my prime."
“Are you?” he taunted, “all I can smell is depression, and cat hair.”
“Misogyny, targeted at the middle-aged woman? Funny, all I can smell is a distinct lack of originality.”
“Did Wyll call you here?” he repeated.
“I haven’t spoken to Wyll in three months,” she replied, knowing he would be able to sense the truth in that statement. “Have you two fallen out? Are you the one who needs me to step in and peacekeep?”
"Tell me why you've come to the Gate," Astarion demanded.
Rosalie felt the force behind it, a sinister energy underlying the words. There was a sharpening of his image at the edges, as something sensual tugged at her gut, to only lose it hooks as quickly as they had formed. He had just tried to charm her, dominate her will - hoping to force her to speak, only in order to please him.
"No." She replied. Then added, for spite: “I don’t want to.”
The potion boiled a little in her stomach, like the burn of a good whiskey.
Astarion looked surprised at being refused, having clearly expected the glamour to work. It caused him to pause and re-examine her, as he cocked his head, like a predator eying up his prey.
“Someone's bought their anti-vampire measures into play, it seems. Is that not a degree of overkill, for a business call with little Rolan?"
"And yet, here you are, disrupting my business," she pointed out. “Being a divination wizard certainly has its perks, some might say."
"You're here about the murders," he accused.
"What murders?" She asked innocently, just for the sake of it. Sure enough, his nostrils flared with annoyance at her dismissal, face looking briefly thunderous, before he caught hold of her scent and smiled.
“You’re lying to me, again, Rosalie. How very disappointing.”
“And you believed it, for a second, so that was honestly very fun for me.”
“So you are here as a result of that charming little soiree."
Rose didn't respond, which Astarion took as confirmation, given that she couldn't lie without him knowing.
"News travels quickly, it seems,” he smiled, swaggering two steps closer and watching with amusement as she tensed up. “And here I was, concerned you'd fallen quite out of the loop! I wondered whether you’d cloistered yourself up in some little rural backwater, maybe bricked yourself in like an anchoress to spend the rest of your days virtuous and miserable. But here you are, just moments after the Gazette's ink is dry. Should I be flattered, darling? Is this all it takes, to get your attention? Is your little life so very dull?”
“Imagine how I feel,” she replied, blandly. “My taking a stroll through town isn’t exactly making front page news, and yet it was enough for you to immediately come running. Doesn’t speak of the rich social calendar one would expect, of Cazador’s replacement.”
This one hit home, she saw. Nothing obviously changed to herald his annoyance - it seemed the Vampire Ascendent had gotten his more erratic moods in check - but the atmosphere shifted slightly, and his eyes narrowed to cruelty. Mentioning Cazador had probably been a bad idea.
"Is this what it takes to get you here?” he demanded. “Really? You don't call, you don't write, you slink away in the middle of the night with your tail between your legs like a coward, to go live life like a hermit-”
“It must have been very difficult, having all that power, and still being unable to find me.”
“It wasn’t ‘difficult’,” he retorted, voice rising and reverberating off the walls, “it… was… rude! Who the fuck do you think you are, to just leave! Everyone else gets a letter, Wyll and Karlach get a visit to Avernus - but not the man who once shared your bed, it seems. No, he doesn’t warrant even a single basic courtesy."
Rose was surprised that he even knew about the letters, never mind that the methods of her departure had actually warranted offence from him. It hadn't seemed like he wanted her around. He’d been all but spitting on her face, the last few times they’d tried to speak: “what in the hells could you possibly want, you sad little wretch?”
"But oooh, the moment I step out of line,” he continued. “Our virtuous Mistress Rosalie can be depended on to step back up onto the stage, to tsk and shake her head and tell me what a naughty boy I've been. Commit a single slaughter, and she’ll be there within the day! Are you really so desperate, to lay first claim and stick your flag in the moral high ground, to cling to your importance, make yourself feel special and sanctimonious all over again, that you’ll come running back to relive your glory days and parade yourself through your old haunts-"
"So you admit it, then. You admit that you killed them?" Rose interrupted, ignoring everything else that he said.
Astarion paused, clearly affronted at not being allowed to continue soliloquising like a madman. Then he saw her expression, and the opening she’d left for him to cause her more hurt.
"Yes, Rose, if you're really asking. I killed them all," he said, leaning in conspiratorially and grinning from ear to ear. "Every. Single. One. By my hand.”
Rosalie froze up, feeling sick. That was 57 people. Shadowheart had called it a bloodbath. People had thought there were feral spawn involved… but it was just him, and him alone?
“So, what are you going to do about it, sweetheart? It can’t have escaped your notice that no one else dares lift a finger to stop me."
He was right. He could confess to the crime openly, but what force could subdue him? What prison would hold him? It was just a sure fire way to get every other person inside the building killed.
"But… why?” she said, bemused. “You don't even need to feed, anymore."
"Can’t a man have hobbies, dearest?" Astarion asked. At her open disgust, he grinned wider, "just because I don't need to do something, doesn't mean it isn't fun. Irreverent pleasures are how I occupy most of my time, these days."
“All those bodies…” she voiced aloud, still searching for some kind of explanation. There was indiscriminate killing, the kind she figured he’d been doing the entire time and just hiding better, and then there was a theatrically slaughtered banquet, hall full of cooling dead. “...What purpose could it possibly serve?”
“It doesn’t need to serve a purpose!” he replied angrily. “I can do whatever I want now, and I don’t need to spend my time thinking up moral justifications for any of it, least of all ones that will please you.”
“But, still,” she said, still unable to parse the logic. “What exactly does a slaughter like that achieve? I mean, really, Astarion-”
"‘Astarion’,” he mocked, doing a pantomimed insipid version of her voice, and batting his eyelashes a few times, “look at you, Rosalie, falling straight back into your role as the beleaguered conscience - how you do relish it! You’re nothing more than an eager martyr: you should’ve let Loviatar scourge your soul, and find far more entertaining ways to indulge this embarrassing, desperate masochistic streak of yours. But I’m happy to play my role as the villain well, if that’s what you need, to pretend you’re relevant. Shall I just start leaving corpses on your doorstep, so that you have something to rail at, on your porch in your dotage?"
"Careful now, Astarion," Rose warned. "That’s what a cat does, all to please its owner. It sounds almost like you want me around."
That was it - the step too far.
There was a flash of movement. Between one blink and the next, Astarion was gone from his place on the landing, and then he was stood in front of her, one step below, hand pinioned around her throat. His beautiful face watched her with impassive neutrality, as the strength of the Vampire Ascendent kicked in. He didn’t lift her clear from the ground, but Rose found herself on the very edge of her tiptoes, struggling to keep purchase on the step as his fingers tightened their grip on her windpipe and started to cut off her air.
“How your pulse sings to me, through my very fingers,” he mused aloud, almost conversationally, as he watched her start to struggle. “You act so very brave, Rosalie, and yet your heart still thumps away, like the prey you are. I’m so glad you haven’t actually forgotten who you’re talking to. I’m surprised you didn’t wet yourself, when you first saw me. You’ve hidden yourself away from me, for ten years, like a scared little rat... and yet, you have the gall to provoke me. Who exactly do you think you are? Has life gotten so very terrible, that you’re suddenly desperate to die?”
“A very… sane and normal thing… to say to a person,” Rose replied, voice hoarse as his fingers began to bruise. “How many years… have you been practising that one… in the mirror? Was it recycled… or did you… save it up… just for me?”
His grip tightened.
“You know,” Astarion said. “Maybe all the wretched little people in that banquet hall just really fucking irritated me. Maybe that's why I killed them. There might be a lesson in there somewhere, precious, don’t you think?”
“If they were… irritating… then I suppose it would… make sense that… they were your friends,” Rosalie gasped out.
There was a tick in his forehead, something new and unexpected, the only flaw to mar his entire face, and the only sign that her dismissal annoyed him. His pressure on her neck constricted once more, and then Astarion leaned in so they were cheek-to-cheek. Rosalie braced herself: waited for the insult, the bite, but instead he just took a long, deep sniff of her hair and neck, like a fucking weirdo.
There was a strange symmetry to the way he’d used to act around her in this conversation, but that wouldn’t have ever been sexy, even if he had a soul. It felt invasive, and was performed with the deliberate desire to unnerve. Rosalie’s skin crawled with the sensation, uneasy and yes, fucking terrified, as she felt the gentle kiss of his eyelashes flutter on her cheekbone.
“Hmmmmm,” he said, into her ear, voice dangerous. “You smell of another. You’ve been bitten, since we last met. Surprising. Was it fun, darling? Was that another eager recourse back to your youth?"
"More just… a business transaction."
"Really, dearest?” Astarion’s eyes narrowed - she felt it, from the eyelashes alone. “But I bet you enjoyed it. Maybe it’s not fear at all that I sense in your heartbeat, but that desperate little whore that you keep locked away inside of you, who’s just gagging for it, but will never dare to admit it out loud. No, love, instead you like to feel all guilty about the things you want - almost like it’s the shame that does it for you. You’d rather lock yourself away from the entire world, than be forced to admit, even once, that you are not the perfect little maiden you pretend to be.”
“Gregarious… range… of insults…” she retorted, breath rasping, “some… might say… incoherent… and contradictory.”
But even as she managed to summon an insult, she felt panic and her body's instincts start to kick in. It was getting harder to speak, and she had to fight not to scrabble for purchase, hands desperately wanting to claw at him or even just use him for support. But that would mean showing weakness. It would also mean touching him.
“And yet, your blood answers,” Astarion smirked, leaning back and looking at her as she choked, through heavy-lidded eyes. “I think I could kill you right now, darling, and if I did it right, you’d thank me for the privilege. Maybe if you behave properly, and stop answering back, I might even do it the way you want it… nice and slow-”
Rosalie reached out one of her own hands, the one not holding her staff, and placed it on Astarion’s chest, bracing herself and pushing away from him. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything, but the moment she did it, everything changed, and she froze.
His heartbeat. Under her fingers.
She’d never felt his heartbeat before.
In the aftermath of the ritual, she hadn’t dared touch him. Part of her had wanted to - to hold him close to her and never let go - but he’d been stained up to his elbows in Cazador’s blood, and it hadn’t looked like he wanted to be touched. Then that night, after he’d washed himself clean, he’d told her of his plan to turn her. He’d made his offer of eternity and, skin crawling with sickness and guilt, she’d refused. He’d spoken then as if his touch was a boon to be bestowed on her - not something she participated in, but a reward she earned.
And after that, there’d been no reason to touch him, ever again.
Rosalie’s gaze darted, wide-eyed and shocked, to her hand on his chest. The heart underneath was pounding. She’d all but forgotten that that was part of the Ascendent deal. Somewhere in the past decade, it had entirely slipped her mind.
When her eyes moved back to Astarion’s face, there was, impossibly, emotion there. His gaze snagged hers, full of incredulity and smugness... like he couldn’t quite believe his luck.
And then, Rose cast her Shocking Grasp. It was a very nice suit - but it meant that the cocky, immortal asshole wasn’t wearing any armour. Like a fucking moron.
Astarion let out a shocked bleat of almost animalistic pain, as electricity coursed through her hand, to lance up his body and leave it rictus. His hand briefly spasmed tighter on her neck, then dropped, as Rose pumped more and more lightning into her grip with grim determination, and his muscles started to seize spasmodically. His fangs extended in his face. The injury turned him more beast than man.
Then, Rosalie made the gesture of a Thunder Step, and felt the ground beneath her quake as she teleported away from him, upwards to the landing above. The boom that echoed around the walls was enough to make the glass of the Ramazith’s windows rattle all the way to the top of the tower. Rosalie watched, incredulously and with not a little guilt, as the stairs she had been stood on began to crumble. She had definitely been panicking, and putting a little more magic into the spell than she should. She would have to repay Rolan for the damages.
Astarion had been hit with the wave of thunder as well, blown onto his back ten feet away, winded and sprawled on the ground by the portal. The two of them watched, as the place where they’d both been standing collapsed and gave way, the stone dropping one floor down and exploding on impact with one of the arcane domes that kept Rolan’s artefacts under lock and key.
Astarion’s gaze darted wildly around, in the first moment of true panic she’d seen from him, since he’d turned.
Then, his gaze caught her, honing in on her position on the balcony above, and Rosalie knew she would have to do more work, to make her point crystalline clear. She thumped her staff on the ground once, with needless theatricality, and it flared to life, the runes and marks of constellations all burning with bright white light.
Behind her, she felt as the blast of cold air ruffled her (beautiful, waist-length, again, berry pink not at all grey, and this was itself notable) hair, heralding her summon. The spirit of the white dragon, Arauthator, whom she had killed for the title of Archmage, then bound into her weapon, rose up behind her. Its wings unfurled to their full twenty feet span at her back, as it rose up at her call to protect her.
“Kill me, Astarion?” Rosalie said, eyes burning. Thaumaturgy carried her voice over the ghostly screech of Arauthator’s roar, combatting the way her throat ached.
It was a line that she was ashamed to admit she had practised, in front of the mirror, mostly when she was wine drunk and alone:
“I would sincerely like to see you try.”
Notes:
I promised divorced vibes, and I've now updated to the point where I (hopefully) deliver! *Runs away and hides*
Idk if anyone is interested, but my three main song vibes for drafting this chapter were: Dead or Alive by Stileto/Madalen Duke, Fan Behaviour by Isaac Dunbar, and Dangerous Hands by Austin Giorgio.
Chapter notes
- I know Nine Fingers Keene probably isn't straight given that she has like, four extremely hot lesbian bodyguards, but I just really liked her and Minsc's exchanges in-game. I liked the sunset premise of himbo and the crime boss sniping at each other (or Keene sniping, while Minsc is kind of just happy to be there) while they try to work together. This is my fic, I'll sneak a crack ship in there if I want to.
- Some of the potions that defend against charm are made up, but they are all using D&D spells/features and traits
- More Curse of Strahd lore (or maybe just Dracula lore, idk how much of my CoS was homebrewed) justifying making my Vampire Ascendent more Vampiric, as well as my convoluted plot points. Although I did find it super interesting that Ascended Astarion only needs to bite Tav once more to turn them, in light of the three bite rule in CoS! I know he's only making a spawn, so it doesn't contradict the rules and it isn't that deep. But still. What if it was that deep?
- Thunderstep is like a more destructive, 'fuck you' version of Misty Step (very said it's not in the game)
- Summon Draconic Spirit is a 5th level spell. Arauthator is a canonical white dragon in Faerun, in so much as I found the name on the Forgotten Realms Wiki and was like "that's cool, I'm using it."
Chapter Text
“...So, that’s the element of surprise gone, then,” Shadowheart stated, voice dangerously acerbic.
“Neither of us could’ve predicted the ‘song of my blood’,” Rose argued defensively. “I’ve got Nondetection up now, so we’ll have to hope that’s enough. I’m not above putting diamond dust in my night cream, if that’s what it fucking takes.”
All the while, she was massaging the dark ring of bruises at her throat. Shadowheart had refused to heal them. Stupid decisions don’t get Cure Wounds, she’d said.
"Did you have to summon the dragon?"
"...No. But I can't deny it felt good."
Shadowheart raked her hand through her hair: no longer black, or blonde, but the natural dark brown she had been born with.
"But the explosion triggered all the turrets in the building, which I suppose makes sense. You’d kind of hope that’s what an explosion, in the high security level of the tower, would do. Then Rolan returned, and brought an arcane canon to the argument," Rose said. “So we ended up at an impasse."
"And he just… left? Without a fight?"
Rosalie stayed silent a beat too long, making Shadowheart's face go stony.
"...What is it?" she demanded. "What am I missing?"
Rose examined the dormitory wall with great interest. "He invited me to dinner, first."
She heard a loud, hollow thump, and turned to see that Shadowheart had faceplanted onto the desk at which she was sat.
“I didn’t say yes!” Rosalie cried, but she fished the dark, embossed business card out of her pocket anyway.
“Well, that was diverting!” The Vampire Ascendent had said, brushing the grey rubble dust off his clothing, and swaggering towards her. His eyes hadn’t left hers, even as the mechanical whir of nine separate arcane turrets had accompanied the movement; even as Arauthator’s ghostly throat rumbled in a warning growl; and even with poor Rolan training a portable arcane canon directly on his face. “An argument, just like the good old days - maybe it’s this silly heart of mine, sweetpea, but I can’t help but come over all nostalgic!”
Rosalie had just watched him silently, less inclined to talk now that they had an audience. Astarion demonstrated no apparent injuries, though even his unruffled performance could not mask the lingering smell of burned hair.
“Although, if you’d played this rough in the past, maybe I would’ve decided you were worth keeping around…” he’d leered, reaching into his coat and pulling out the piece of black card.
“Don’t be a stranger, now,” he’d warned. “This time, you don’t get to walk away. I expect a certain degree of politeness, and common decency, from everyone’s favourite goody-two-shoes.”
Rose had accepted it. It had seemed like a pretty reasonable term to agree to, in order to prevent any immediate bloodshed. Or at least, it felt reasonable, once she had cast Dispel Magic on it in front of Astarion, breaking whatever terrible enchantments lay therein. Judging by his expression as she'd done it, she'd been right when she guessed there was something unpleasant baked into the paper.
"I swear on the Moonmaiden…" Shadowheart said, voice muffled when addressed directly into the woodgrain. "Do I need to send you to Sharess' Caress, to get this out of your system? What is it about you two that makes you both so stupid, when you're in a room together for more than ten seconds?"
"It wasn't like that," Rose hastily said, lying through her teeth. It had certainly seemed like that at Astarion's end. But that was because he had been inclined to weaponise his sexuality before, and was now possessed by some kind of sex-crazed, hedonistic monster.
"Oh, so you're not thinking of going?" Her friend said knowingly, raising herself an inch off the desk.
"About that-"
Shadowheart dropped her head again, making another loud sound.
"OK, OK, I know it's stupid," Rose said, "but… hear me out!"
"Please just go to bar and fuck someone," Shadowheart said, raising one hand. "I am actually begging."
"Yes, I should get drunk in the Gate! That seems like an amazing idea, that also won’t end up with me and my unlucky paramour lying dead in a ditch! Look, OK - I genuinely have a plan.”
“...And does this plan even demonstrate one ounce of intelligence?”
But the business card - now slathered in its own layer of diamond dust - had given Rosalie an idea. “We have never been able to scry on Astarion," she said. "Or his home. One of my greatest tools, as a divinator, out of the window - he's got a spellcaster shielding him daily, and wards on his house. But-"
"...I should just retire."
"Butttttt," Rosalie persisted, reaching over and shaking her friend's arm, to make her pay attention, "if we were to get an object, even just a - a coin, or a pin, and place it on Astarion's person without him noticing, and I was to scry on that instead-"
Shadowheart raised her head fully this time, looking resigned.
"It would bypass all the protections," she said glumly.
"Unless he lives in a lead lined bunker, which isn't outside the realm of possibility, but seems unlikely, given that he likes to sleep with warmblooded, living things," Rose agreed. "And even better, if we wait until the right time, or if we plant the object, and then he dies…"
"...It shows us the coffin."
"It shows us the coffin!" Rose beamed, pleased that her friend immediately understood. She remembered being absurdly grateful when Cazador's mist form had taken everything on his person with him after he'd died the first time: it meant she'd never had to see the vampire lord naked. Thankfully, it turned out mist was an extremely versatile substance. Cazador’s dick would remain a mystery for the ages.
"And we could, of course, hire one of Keene’s people to try and plant said item, but I suppose you want to be the one to place it on him?" Shadowheart sighed, "...for no selfish reasoning, whatsoever?"
"Well," Rose said, the very picture of detached logic. "I don’t want to risk getting anyone else killed. And he did get very close, with very little provocation."
Shadowheart's face was resigned. "So. You just go to this restaurant, he acts weird, you let it happen, and then... we zap him? That's the plan?"
"Uh…"
"Gods, what now?"
"He didn't invite me to a restaurant, " Rose said, guiltily. "It was dinner... at his house."
Shadowheart's disgusted groan reverberated off the walls.
"What do you want written on your tombstone?" She demanded. "I might as well kill you now. You do realise you’re dinner, yes? I’m assuming he made the double entendre plain all by himself, but in case it has escaped your attention, that is definitely a plan to murder you!"
If you ever set foot in the door, he’d said, know that you’re committed to staying until dessert. No skipping out on me this time, little love.
“It had occurred to me, yes,” Rosalie said, weakly. “I wasn’t thinking of going… alone.”
“Oh, so I’ll get an invite to the necrotic murder mansion as well, will I?” Shadowheart cried, “for what end?! The privilege of watching the two of you flirt and probably fuck against a wall, before I then have my throat slit? Lady of Silver preserve me.”
“I’m not going to sleep with him! He’s evil!”
“...That’s the only issue we have with that sentence, is it?”
Mercifully, their bickering was interrupted by a crackling sound on the air. The darkened halls of the Cloister of Sombre suddenly erupted into light, as a round portal began to rip itself into existence and then fold out in the centre of the room, to reveal an endless starry sky beyond. Luckily, this was not a cause for alarm. Shadowheart had received a prior missive with a projected arrival time.
The acid rainbow of the Astral portal fluttered, and in stepped Lae'zel: tall, stern, and stately, carrying a sword that had a solid half foot of height on Rose.
"I hear we are putting Astarion down," the githyanki said in greeting. Like Shadowheart, she had barely aged at all, though new scars weathered her face. Vlaakith was not yet in the ground (her dust was not yet drifting in the stars?), but she had been through several new bodies, ever since Lae’zel had become the leader of the rebel factions. "I will lend my sword to the cause. I cannot say it will bring me joy, but the goal is honourable, and it may prove diverting."
"Gods, it's good to see you," Shadowheart said, with genuine warmth.
"You as well," Lae'zel said inclining her head in a small bow. Then she glanced towards Rosalie, and asked Shadowheart: "Have the two of them engaged in ill-advised sex, yet?"
"No, but it was a close thing."
"I see," Lae’zel nodded once more, then looked towards Rose. "The first point of order should be to take you to the Caress, so that your body is sated, and your mind clear for the task at hand. If we head these urges off at the pass, then there will be less risk for the mission overall."
"Thank you!" Shadowheart said. "That's what I said!"
Rose's face flushed, with both embarrassment, and indignation. "I'm not going to sleep with him!" She said angrily, "it's not him, does no one else understand that? Half the things coming out of his mouth… they’re not kind, and they do not make me inclined to like him! And he… he didn't even want me like that, not before!"
Both of them looked at her with pity in her eyes.
"I still think we should visit the brothel," Lae’zel insisted. "You are too easily flustered, and also look sad.”
They thankfully did not go to a brothel, though the idea did result in one truly horrible nightmare, where Rosalie saw herself enter a room on the top floor, to find Astarion already there and engaged with the person she’d planned to purchase. Moments after she woke up, she couldn't remember if he'd been fucking them, or drenched head-to-toe in their blood. Either way, it was the kind of nightmare that made you think, ‘hmmmm, who needs to sleep? Not I!’
Two days after the encounter in Sundries, a tired Rosalie-cloaked-by-Seeming-and-Nondetection dropped the business card back into post with a scrawled message on the back: If I’m allowed to bring guards, I’m amenable to dinner.
She’d felt so stupid, writing it. Her wording fell halfway between the embarrassingly formal tone of her usual work correspondence, and the most lacklustre, half-arsed honey trap ever. With a side of Why, Mr. Lion, thank you so much for inviting me to your den, can I bring a few more sacrificial lambs, just for my own peace of mind?
And sure enough, the next day, a starched piece of white card tied in red ribbon and a closed with a rust-coloured seal of a rose found its way into Wyll’s possession, with her name on it.
Come then, tomorrow night. Bring whoever you’d like - the more the merrier! And please, do wear something tasteful, darling. If there’s to be weapons, make sure you hide them in novel places ~ x
“He posted it to me with instructions to give it to you - said he didn’t know where to find you all,” Duke Ravengard said, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly as he stood inside the once-hallowed halls of Shar.
Yes: Wyll was a Duke - at least temporarily. Rosalie could tell the office didn't sit entirely well with him. He and Karlach had been running an adventuring band that covered mishaps all along the Sword Coast, but it seemed that Ulder Ravengard’s health was ailing. Though Wyll had spoken strongly of his own independence, it wasn’t surprising to anyone that he was too soft-hearted, to not to return to his family in a time of need.
Unlike his father when he’d held the office, Wyll didn’t wear armour or a coat of arms to signal his Dukedom, but a chain around his neck on top of his standard leather fatigues. Rose could tell he found it a little awkward, even if it matched the bright gold iris of his new prosthetic eye. Since losing his warlock powers, Wyll had retrained as a run-of-the-mill fighter, gaining muscle and new scars. But with his current vocation, he now spent more time behind a desk, which suited him less than it did Rose. His face was ageing as hers was, though they both smugly compared their ungreying hair as they hugged - Wyll also boasting that his hairline remained completely in-tact.
“Thank you for doing this,” Rose said, after she read through the letter. “Shadowheart said you’re not the underworld liaison, anymore.”
“No, I’m not,” Wyll sighed, scratching his chin. “It was just… getting harder, you know? The monthly visits. I suppose a better man, with a stronger constitution, would stay, and make sure we had tabs on him. But... I couldn't do it. My being there just seemed to make him angry, more than anything. Like he resented the fact I still cared. His harming others… well, I assume it was happening, and the only victims he would allude to were ones I couldn’t argue weren't better off dead. But watching him just… well, the way he would harm himself…”
Rose didn’t want to know what Wyll meant by that, so didn't press him when the sentence trailed off and died. It was gratifying for someone else to care about the man that had come before... but thinking of the Vampire Ascendent as someone capable of feeling, and of feeling enough to cause himself pain, seemed like too much dangerous anthropomorphism. Seeing the Astarion of the present moment as something human, or anything like the man he'd once been, would lead Rosalie down dangerous avenues. It was best to avoid it entirely.
“You think he’s broken his word, before now?” she asked instead, knowing she felt the same.
“What word?” Wyll said, confused.
Rose suddenly realised that, while she had told everyone that she’d asked Astarion not to kill, no one else had ever considered this an agreement he would choose to honour.
Wyll shrugged. “I assume he’s been killing, discreetly, this entire time. Enough bodies show up that could be his, but never anything that could endanger him - never any ties to him directly, never any substantial proof. It’s why this particular... display is so unusual, honestly: he’s usually very careful. But the city has no contract with him: save the promise that, if he ever rocks the boat too much and causes the wrong kind of unrest, he won’t be the person we want in charge of the city’s monsters. Not that it matters much, given that we’re in the unique position of being completely unable to unseat him. He’s not beholden to anyone. All we can do is hope he’s happy with his own sordid kingdom, and that he never longs for more.”
From the way he said it, Rosalie could tell that kind of compromise chafed against Wyll’s heroic sensibilities. But what could she say? They had, after all, all made that same compromise - that same choice. They had, up until now, all let their former friend live, and simply prayed that the world never paid the price.
“Did the massacre change much, in the city?” she asked. “Was it the ‘wrong kind of unrest’?”
“Honestly…?” Wyll blew out a breath, “far as I can tell, all it did was prevent a few other balls from happening this week, and then closed about… eighty open cases? There were more criminal charges than there were people, in that room. Astarion has some shitty, shitty friends - or, well, he used to.”
“I still don’t understand…” Rosalie sighed, cutting herself off. “He didn’t seem like he was that bothered by it, but he used to be like that, whenever he wanted the subject changed. Maybe he’s trying to hide something… maybe he lost control?”
Or maybe he just massacred them for fun. Was she foolish, to think it went any deeper than that?
Rose looked down at her letter, heart in her mouth. She jumped a mile when Wyll put his hand on her arm.
“I’ll keep to my part of the plan, and whatever you need from the city to get things done, you know you have it," he said. “ I only wish that I could offer you more... I will offer you more, should you need it.”
The other part of being a temporary duke that seemed to both suit Wyll well, and also chafe: as one of the Council of Four, the lives of several thousand people were under his stated protection. He couldn’t risk acting in direct opposition to the underworld, not for the fear of recriminations from the Vampire Ascendant taking place against the civilians in his own neighbourhoods. They all remembered that time Astarion had burned an entire stretch of the Upper City to the ground.
“If I need to ask more of you, I don’t think I’ll have the luxury of not doing so. But for now, you’re more than enough, just as you are,” Rosalie said with a smile, meaning every word. “It’s really nice to see you, Wyll.”
“You, as well,” he said, with his usual bashfulness, ducking in for a hug that smelt lovely: all rich cologne, and underneath it, a slight hint of smoke. A true testament to the wealthy, successful man he’d become - and the legacy of the Blade of Avernus, who still dwelled underneath.
The next day, with Wyll’s preparations in place, Rosalie, Shadowheart, and Lae’zel all made the climb through Bloomridge, towards the home of the Vampire Ascendent.
As expected, it felt like suicide. Ever since Rose had thought the words ‘lion’s den’, she hadn’t been able to shake them from her mind. Perhaps it would’ve been better to simply walk around the Gate again and wait to be confronted by him in the street… but that version of events had way more variables - not to mention civilians, in the line of fire. At least if it was in his territory, Astarion would feel more in control, and the only person he would be likely to hurt was her.
Lae’zel took one look at her clearly nervous face, and sighed, “we are all three extremely capable. If things go wrong, we each get ourselves out, and make them wish they never stood in our way.”
This was true. Rose had her thousand gold chalk on her, in her pocket, along with four potential items for her to plant: a gold piece (she assumed Astarion wouldn’t deign to carry any lesser currency), a blunted needle as thin as a strand of hair, a lockpick, and a ring. The ring was, in all honesty, designed to be caught, so that he would think he had foiled whatever ruse she’d potentially be devising. The others, she could only hope, would go unnoticed. Beyond that, she would simply have to improvise - in even the worst scenarios she could conjure, she had decided she was not above surrendering her underwear in some bid to either be seduced or humiliate herself, if it fucking meant she could fucking scry on them, later.
All three of them also wore armour: Shadowheart and Lae’zel clunking shamelessly in plate, and Rosalie not in her purple robes, but the somewhat matronly attire of an Watchful Order Archmage - her dark dress robe, with two lines of pearls at the wrists, and four at the collar that was deliberately buttoned all the way up her throat, practically to her ears. Partly, because the fading bruises on her neck were embarrassing. Partly because she wanted to avoid any more weird, territorial sniffing encounters. But, mostly, because the material was resistant to all non-magical forms of damage, and many of the magical ones as well. It seemed sensible to have it cover as much of her as possible, given the circumstances, except for the panel removed at the back for her tail. Some things were unavoidable: all those nights slept in the dirt had come back to bite her on the arse, literally, it seemed - her spine had been wreaking havoc on her ever since she clocked into her late 30s.
Her weapons were hidden in a novel place, as instructed: the pocket dimension, carried in the bracelet at her wrist. In truth, she was armed to the teeth, and even if that didn’t guarantee her survival, it also cast aspersions on his.
Still, Rose didn’t not feel stupid, walking up to Astarion’s iron gates. But then, she’d walked directly to Gortash's front door, to the Temple of Bhaal, and to the House of Hope... all on these same two feet. Those hadn’t felt like smart decisions, either. But she had survived them, every single one.
The newly built palace was resplendent, an edifice of white marble who’s gleaming facade exposed its recent construction. The copper detailings on the roof were only just beginning to age enough to oxidise, turning from warm orange slowly towards blue.
It did, indeed, look a lot like Cazador’s old home, even from a distance. Save for the fact that, instead of the outbuildings and the utilitarian walk along the short crenelated wall, you now had to walk through an extensive, twisted pathway of walled gardens, just to get to the front door. Rose counted six gardens, each artfully decorated with flowers still fully in bloom, with beautifully crafted water features, and love seats, and one frankly insipid tree swing, that she hoped Astarion hadn't picked out himself. And she counted five gates, each of which shut behind them with phantom hands as they passed through. No matter - without access to a rogue, Rosalie had turned towards arcane solutions, and had in fact acquired a skeleton key at auction four years prior. She’d always wanted to find one: in the middling days of their adventures, around the time of the Shadow Curse, she had often daydreamed about getting (what she considered to be) the world’s best and most impressive anniversary present.
Eventually, they reached the entrance to the new palace. Ivy crawled up the facade in a perfectly neat arch around the door, the leaves currently a deep, rich red with the turning of the seasons. The door itself was three times as tall as Lae’zel, and painted dark, lapis blue.
The knocker was a golden lion’s head. Rosalie wanted to brain herself against the wall.
“If there’s too much vampire bullshit, I’m gone. I mean it,” Shadowheart announced to the air, as they all just stood there, feeling foolish. "The first time I hear the word ‘master’ used in conversation, I’m leaving. I'll just walk out."
The cleric’s teeth were chattering, and Rosalie thought she knew why. Remembering the necrotic energy that had emanated from Cazador’s guest bedroom, she thought she felt an echo of it on the breeze. They were, after all, visiting a mass grave.
Heart in her throat, Rose knocked on the mass grave’s door.
Notes:
Me: I'm actually quite proud of the plot in this fic !
The plot in question: a series of increasingly convoluted excuses to get Astarion and Rosalie in the same room togetherApologies for another breather chapter, but what good is vampire mansion content without ANTICIPATION of the vampire mansion content, you know what I'm saying?
Thank you for all the kudos and really lovely comments, particularly on the last chapter! I really cannot adequately put into words to how much I enjoy reading every single one (which is why some of you may receive lacklustre replies, lmao).
Chapter Notes
- Diamond dust is the spell component for Nondetection, which is why Rose has added it to her own skincare routine (which I imagine now rivals Astarion's own tbh, she's rich enough to maintain it)
- The best thing about being a DM is that, if anything I've said about Scrying is technically wrong, I can merely reply that that's how it works in my own games :') If my players conducted a (horny) heist to place an item on someone who was otherwise undetectable, they'd get the points for effort, and the same rules apply here!
- I'm sorry that I combined all of Wyll's potential endings into one mega-ending. 1. it's bc I genuinely love all of them, and think they're all somewhat in character, 2. I feel like if anything ever happened to his father, or his father was ever at risk, there's no way Wyll wouldn't sacrifice his own happiness and drop everything to help. That's kind of his whole deal, at least in my head.
- I never thought I'd be one of those people to callback to other fics in my own writing, but the dress this version of Rosalie is wearing is just a higher status version of the one she wears in Party Favours. I'm so embarrassed. And yet, I'm doing it anyway.
Chapter Text
Said door was immediately opened, by the prettiest drow girl Rosalie had ever seen in her life. She was a foot taller than Rosalie, and at least twenty years younger.
“Ahh, honoured guests,” she said, in a soft-spoken, placid voice like the peel of a bell. “The Master has been expecting you.”
Shadowheart stared daggers at Rose. Yet all three of them entered, and she did not run at the first display of ‘vampire bullshit’ as she had just promised. Rose could do nothing but give her an apologetic shrug, suspecting that that this would be the first infraction of many.
Sure enough, as the doe-eyed servant in the - yep, that was an entirely sheer dress - led them down the wide, high-ceilinged corridor, things took an immediate turn for the worse. She did not escort them to any door leading off the wide entranceway, but instead to a set of marble stairs. The banister was carved with patterns of ivy and the steps bisected with a blood red runner, and they led… well... down.
Memories of what used to be on Cazador’s ground floor made Rosalie fight a shudder.
“Um…” she said, “I thought this was… dinner? Can we not go to, um, to one of the dining rooms, rather than the creepy basement? I hope that Astarion doesn’t think we’re that stupid.”
“We aren’t going to the basement,” the woman said, speaking slowly. “It’s a party, taking place in the ballroom, and the hedgemaze at the back. Master’s other guests are already waiting - you are the last to arrive.”
“Um.” Rose said. “That’s not exactly dinner, either.”
“This 'Ascendent' toys with us. I had hoped that becoming evil would at least distract Astarion from his hobby of petty inconvenience,” Lae’zel groused, before adding, “...I hate parties.”
“You don’t hate parties! You loved the ones at the Elfsong.”
“I loved victory,” Lae’zel replied contemptuously. “It was the rest of you, for whom that was rare enough experience to make a song and dance about it, every time.”
“I am going to kill myself. Before anyone else here gets the chance,” Shadowheart said, once, while the drow just blinked at them with that same inoffensive, glassy-eyed expression.
Then, because there was nothing else that could be said, the three of them descended down the stairs. What else could they do? Leave? No wonder Astarion was already changing the rules of play: it’s not like they could object. They’d come into his house.
It seemed that stupid decisions truly did get stupid prizes.
As soon as the woman - servant? thrall? - had pointed it out, Rosalie began to hear the first few lyrical strains of music drifting lazily through the house. The sound grew as they were led into the bowels of the mansion, like the belly of a beast with a very expensive taste in interior decoration. Rose looked around the walls idly, seeing tapestries and oil paintings of coastlines and landscapes, as well as several of beautiful nude women. One was a tiefling, though she was golden-skinned, not purple (and, fortunately for Karlach’s sake, not red, either).
It was all beautiful and pristinely clean. But it was also like walking through a less dusty, better-lit echo of Cazador’s home from ten years ago - maybe with a couple of notes lifted from the House of Hope, given that Astarion had learned his villainy from the best.
Ahead were two glass fronted doors, wrought in gold, opening out onto a spotless hardwood floor. The colour of the walnut varnish was so strong that it almost looked bloodred, in the first light. The music, overlaid with a hum of talk, grew louder as they were confronted with a replica of Cazador’s ballroom, lit by a large, beautifully intricate chandelier with fine crystals that shimmered like the spray of mist off a waterfall.
There was a massive painting depicting a violent battle between angels and demons, taking up the entire expanse of the back wall.
Rosalie pinched her mouth into a thin line: depressingly, she recognised the artist on sight, as she had one of their pieces in her own tower, mounted in pride of place behind her desk, in her library.
The space was filled with even more beautiful, flawless people to rival their drow escort, about forty of them, all in various states of over- or underdress. Immediately, Rose started looking for red eyes and fangs, and was dismayed to find them. Inevitably, the most beautiful people in the room were all frost coloured, pale waifs with classical bone structure and sharp teeth. As if Astarion was the kind of god who only made people in his own image.
It was impossible not to find herself feeling frumpy in her very sensible, life-saving outfit - a small pang of vanity, against all Rose's better judgement. When getting ready, it had felt far more stupid to even consider ornamentation, with her only nod to formality the arrangement of her long hair into one intricate braid (pinned with several metal honeysuckle-shaped ornaments dipped in paralysis poison, should the need arise). But now, of course, it showed. There might be more money in a room full of archmages, but they tended to spend that wealth on books, rather than clothes, jewellery, and - Rosalie hoped, unless they were all just born like that - extensive cosmetic enchantment.
It was, she realised, an event designed to make her feel inadequate. Perhaps that was self-centred of her, to think this was all staged for her benefit… yet, wasn’t that what Astarion did? Was that not what he’d always done?
Shadowheart cast another meaningful glance Rose’s way, and then looked towards the back of the room. Rosalie followed her eyeline, and her stomach fell away as she saw Astarion himself, as if her thoughts had summoned him.
He was every inch the Vampire Ascendent, dressed in a black shirt under a spotless white dress coat, with crimson detailing and golden buttons at the cuffs. He was sprawled across a plush looking, gold wrought chair on a raised dais, chin resting in one hand and a glass of something red in the other.
He has a throne, Rosalie thought, dully.
...Of course he has a fucking throne.
It was like she’d just walked into a scene from a particularly sordid, soapy novel. There was no one sprawled on Astarion’s lap, or perched slavishly at his feet, to complete the erotic tableau, but the person on his left - again, insanely beautiful, insanely young, with an undercut that honestly, Rosalie was herself attracted to - had their shirt open to almost the eighth button, and a series of puncture wounds on their neck, which was perhaps the next most obvious setpiece to draw on. And on his left-
- His mage.
She knew it instinctively, from the woman’s bearing. Mages came in two brands, typically: bookishly awkward scholar (guilty), and Arrogance Personified. As expected, this mage was the firmly from the latter camp, elven and dressed head to toe in black. Which… Rose supposed she was as well, before she could think up any catty commentary, although this woman sported a neckline that dipped almost to her navel. She had cheekbones that could cut glass, and long, chestnut hair that glowed almost red in the light. She also had fangs, which meant that the hair was dyed. Rosalie found herself wondering whether she was the one who now wielded Cazador’s garish staff.
Lae’zel observed the scene with an unimpressed expression, and folded arms. Shadowheart looked ready to crawl the walls. And Rosalie…
No, don’t do it, you’ll DIE, she reprimanded herself.
But she couldn’t suppress it.
…She snorted a laugh, and quickly covered it with her hand, trying to mask it as a cough.
It was a nervous reflex, she thought, but it was all just so… stupid. It felt honestly absurd. It was hard to hold onto any of the fear she’d entered with. This room made her feel like she’d walked into a theatrical production, and left her feeling needlessly worried that she was a subpar audience.
No one was biting anyone just yet - or initiating what she could only assume was the prerequisite orgy, when this many hot people in underwear all existed in one room. But the amount of extravagant ballgowns, fetish-wear, and beautiful, pouting youths, all arranged into the perfect cliché of everything vampirism was supposed to look like, was equal parts horrifying and… hilarious.
And Rose was just… stood there, in her work dress that did not flatter her stomach, like a chaperone at one of the Order’s student formals. The dowdy one, who was trying to make sure no one was spiking the punch, only this time with murder.
Why did Astarion feel the need to perform like this? Who was he doing it for? Who was he trying to intimidate - hells, who was he trying to impress? Her?!? The spinster magician with a cat?! The woman who, nearly twelve years ago, had woken up to him trying and failing to bite her, and was now supposed to… what? Be menaced by the knowledge that he finally knew how?
Rosalie was just… far too old for this shit.
“Do you think we’re supposed to like, go greet the ‘master’?” she said, fighting another wave of absurd laughter, that she hid behind a hand. The moment she stopped taking it seriously, was the moment it stopped feeling like anything she should worry about. “Is that the etiquette? I haven’t been to a ball in a fucking age. Last one I went to, I just showed up half an hour after all the mandatory bullshit was done, and got sozzled on all the free wine.”
“I am not talking to anyone here,” Shadowheart vowed. “I am going to stand in the corner, until you’ve had your audience, and then I’m going to leave. If we have to fight these people, I’m suddenly no longer opposed.”
“Just think,” Rose joked with a grin, pointing at the nearest woman with black lipstick to match her black hair, of which there were many. “That’s you, in the Justiciar timeline.”
“...Why are we friends, again?”
“Saved your life, multiple times, gave it renewed meaning, broke the cycle of trauma, et cetera, et cetera.”
“This place is strange, and the people scrawny,” Lae’zel hummed, having seemingly completed her own catalogue of the room. “I will patrol the exits. If either of you have need of me, please scream. I will not be far.”
“I honestly feel like I should be asking half these people when their parents are picking them up. Or if they have a curfew,” Rosalie confessed. “Gods, I’m so old.”
Not old, literally. But just the kind of old you started to feel, deep in your soul, once you realised your definition of a ‘fun’ night actually involved a good book, a cat, and a cup of sleepy time tea - and a ‘wild’ one was like. A dinner party where all your friends had childcare, and so bought an optimistic amount of wine.
It seemed that their unenthusiastic response to the room had not gone unnoticed. Someone suddenly cleared their throat at Rosalie’s left-hand. She turned, to find herself face-to-face with a dark, long-haired man, with crystal blue eyes. He was the kind of pretty that left your mouth dry… and he was also shirtless, which worked even more in his favour. Rosalie blinked a few times, trying to avoid looking at his nipples, and fought off the maternal urge to ask him if he was cold.
“The Master is wondering why you have not introduced yourself,” he said, in that same placid bedroom voice that his fellow hot colleague had adopted.
“Um… the ‘Master’ already knows who I am,” she felt the need to point out.
“If you could please come with me,” he said. Improv, it seemed, was not in his script, as he turned to escort her the thirty-or-so paces that were needed for Astarion to make his point.
Rose hung back a couple of seconds, just so she could check the boy's back. She was deliriously relieved to find it free of any scars, Infernal or otherwise.
Then, she followed. Astarion was lounged in his seat, a spoilt prince with despot pretensions, hair ruffled as if multiple hands had combed through it, on this night alone. He watched her approach, his gaze trailing down her body with the weight of treacle. Rose kept both her hands by her side to avoid fidgeting with her skirts.
"I'm so glad we were all scared what 'dinner' meant, and ate beforehand," she said, once she was in earshot, instead of whatever greeting was expected. "Our definitions seem like they're at cross purposes."
"I had wanted a somewhat more... intimate arrangement. But it was you who asked to bring friends," he replied with ease. "I agreed, and thus think it's only fair I get to bring my own, as well."
Rosalie looked around, but bit back the next snippy comment: You consider these people your friends? She was trying to play nice, and not get murdered in five seconds flat, after all.
"Is no one else coming to say hi?" Astarion asked her, craning his neck around the crowd to pick out Shadowheart’s face from amongst his pretty underlings. "I didn't realise you'd gotten the lesbians, in the divorce."
"I mean, I'm sure if we all got a shirtless man-"
"Oh, you mean Oralin?" Astarion grinned at her. “He's very pretty, isn't he? One of my favourites, amongst my new acquisitions."
Rosalie decided not to point out that the man was a spitting image of Sebastian. Either Astarion already knew, and that had made his dispatch to her deliberate.
Or he hadn't noticed, which was somehow worse.
"Half the people here look like they need a hug, and a nice warm meal. I'm worried you're not feeding them properly," she said instead, rubbing her forehead. "Which is probably the stupidest possible thing I could say, in a vampire den… Do you have any wine?"
Astarion looked at her with his lifeless eyes, and then raised one of his hands in a silent command. Rose watched, horrified, as the bleeding, buttonless waif on his left moved away without even a single word, and two others moved forward in perfect synchronicity to place a second chair where they once stood. It was a twin of the Vampire Ascendent's own, only slightly smaller - because it seemed that things had reached that stage of fragile masculinity.
"Take a seat," Astarion said. "Your wine will be with you shortly."
Rose hesitated, then quietly did as she was instructed, taking this new seat at his side. The chair was angled slightly, so that there was no way to avoid looking at him, as she threw her braid over one shoulder, in order not to sit on it.
"You could've made a bit more of an effort, darling," he observed, placing his chin in his hand and tilting his head to watch her arrange herself. "Aren't you going to try and beg me not to do anything else dastardly, with those big, sad eyes of yours? Don't you think you need a lower cut dress, for that kind of thing to make even the slightest impression?"
"I don't know," Rosalie mused. "I thought I was just coming to dinner, but it seems I accidentally got the uniform down, given that black seems to be the go-to colour." She gestured between them, to his white jacket and crisp black shirt, and her own white collar and cuffs of pearls. "We even match."
"Still, a little make up wouldn't go amiss, pet. You could make yourself look ten years younger, I bet."
"You fell in love with me on a journey where I barely even got the chance to wash," Rose replied blandly, without flinching. If she'd put any effort into her appearance, he'd have mocked her mercilessly for that, as well. "I don't need makeup, Astarion."
Her refusal to rise to the bait made him frown, but a second later one of his underlings came forward with a fluted glass and a carafe of red wine. Astarion poured for her, silently, then handed it across, forcing their hands to brush as he did so.
Rosalie accepted the wine from him. She cradled it in her lap, and then immediately unfastened one of the pearls from the cuff at her wrist.
“What are you doing, sweetheart?” he sighed, sounding disappointed in her the way you would a misbehaving child. “It’s not like it’s poisoned.”
“No, I imagine not,” Rosalie agreed, matching his saccharine tone with a sickly, sarcastic smile. “But any elixirs that I drink now undo the effects of anything currently in my system, and I like to think of myself as perfect, just the way I am."
Not to mention, she was running on a Fey Ancestry potion, equal parts immune to charm and very, very awake.
"And so, the Identify must be cast. With your permission, of course?”
Astarion waved his hand in an elegant gesture of acquiescence, expression only souring a little. Rose held her pearl over the rim of the glass, and her eyes flared briefly white.
Then, she sighed, heavily. She looked down into the dregs of her cup, and then back up at Astarion. She maintained eye contact with him, as she reached over, and tipped the contents of the glass into a potted fern decorating the dais. It undoubtedly became overcome with bloodlust - but luckily, it was a plant.
“Little on the nose, don’t you think?” she said, handing off the empty glass to another scantily clad minion. Had she been fool enough to drink it, he could've charmed her, ordered her to kill, and she would only get stronger with each body she left in her wake until the command dried up.
“You cannot blame a man for trying,” he replied, with another lackadaisical hand wave. “Who would I be, if I didn’t push my luck?”
"A better fucking host, it seems," Rosalie seethed, three spiked drinks later, as she flooded the poor houseplant once more and left it in an extreme identity crisis. She glared over at him. "This spell doesn't drain me anymore, Astarion. I'm far too powerful for that. You're not going to tap me by boring me to death. Please just let me have some fucking wine."
He seemed to decide she meant it. The next glass handed to her passed both its test with Identify, and the small metal coin she'd purchased for the detection of more mundane substances. Rosalie refastened her cuff, and then took a careful sip. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she couldn't stop the surprised, satisfied sound she made in the back of her throat: it was the best wine she'd ever tasted, in her life.
When she opened her eyes, she realised Astarion had been watching her drink. She blushed, despite herself: it felt embarrassing, to buy into even a single vampire cliché.
"Can I ask about the mage?" she asked.
"Why, darling, are you jealous?"
Rosalie rolled her eyes. "If that motivates you to answer, then sure."
"Her name is Hemlock," he told her. "She was one of the first people I changed. I actually put an advert in the newspaper, you know. For a ‘necromancer seeking hands-on praxis’ - I thought you'd like that phrase. She was the smartest, and the prettiest, and the most ambitious amongst them, so obviously, she was the one I chose."
Hemlock stayed silent and watched the crowd as her life was narrated for her, though her face did not hold the same dazed expression as the mortal servants.
"You needed someone to wield the staff," Rosalie hazarded.
"Oh, don't worry darling, no one 'wields the staff' but me," Astarion smirked. "But Hemlock was a very driven and enthusiastic teacher, and happily showed me how."
Rose had already begun to tune him out when the innuendo had kicked in. Hemlock… Hemlock… why did that name ring a bell? Did she know any Hemlocks who were capable of casting the Mind Blank that kept Astarion out of the range of her own power…?
"Oh, my goodness," Rose said, leaning around Astarion to examine the mage properly. "You're Hemlock Bartelle! I can't believe that's your real name - no wonder you became a vampire! I saw you at a conference in Neverwinter, nearly twenty years ago. Weren't you a Conjuration specialist, then?"
Hemlock cast a single, contemptuous glance at Rose sidelong. Then, she looked towards Astarion. He seemed put out at being ignored, but nodded once, giving her his permission to reply.
"I diversified, into more lucrative fields," Hemlock said, voice dripping practised condescension.
Gods… Bartelle. Bartelle. Why did that name matter so much all of a sudden?
Then, Rosalie realised… she'd used a Bartelle translation, to help her with the spellbook, up to its last twenty missing pages.
Though nothing in her exterior presentation changed, both vampires immediately turned their gaze to bore into her, as adrenaline suddenly kicked in and her heart rate no doubt kicked up by roughly sixty bpm.
"Sorry," she lied, skin crawling under their scrutiny. She looked up at Hemlock. "I used to have a bit of a crush on you, back in the day, but I was in a relationship at the time."
Astarion narrowed his eyes at her. Rose had deliberately shrouded the lie in a painful truth, in an attempt to confuse whatever metric he was using to read her - but it seemed he could still sense something was off. Hopefully, he just thought she was in the throes of some awful Threnn flashback, and not immediately wondering how she could best to gain access to Bartelle's study.
Either way, it evidently didn't sit well with him, to not be the centre of her attention.
"Well," he said, clapping his hands together, "just know that if you try anything, Hemlock has plenty of counterspells to spare."
Rose did not feel the need to point out to him that if Shadowheart cast something, she could just counterspell Hemlock in turn, and all their attacks would go through just fine.
"I'm not planning to fight today," she told him, honestly. "It's your behaviour that will determine whether or not that plan changes."
“...What if I’m very, very bad?”
“It’s more if you’re very, very annoying, that it becomes an issue,” was her unamused reply.
Astarion sighed, combing his hair out of his face to look at her out of the corner of his eye. “How overwhelmingly dull. In true, tedious heroic form, I imagine you're just here to talk."
"...Yes," Rosalie said, and hoped that the smug knowingness in his face as he sensed the lie might actually work in her favour. When her cheeks went pink, it was all the better to sell the ruse. It was her job to provoke him, this time, and in all the right ways.
"Well, then. What shall we talk about, my love, if you came all this way just for the privilege?" He asked, in a singsong lilt. "Are you here to pull me back onto the path of righteousness, and do your utmost to save my soul?"
"Not really, though it rapidly sounds like that’s becoming one of your favourite fantasies," Rosalie grumbled. It was also an exercise in futility, given that he had no soul to speak of. "You can pick a topic first. Let's get it out of the way - do your worst."
Astarion made an act of musing: looking thoughtful, but only at his best angle.
"Well, I suppose I should ask you what you think," he said, making a grand, sweeping gesture to encompass the room, and the palace as a whole, "given that it's your first time here, and you've never dared to visit before."
"...You want my honest answer?"
"Well, I'll know if you don't give it - so what have you to lose, pet?"
Rosalie looked around the room. She knew what he expected her to say: some accusation using Cazador's name, that he could then mock and deride for its idealism or morality. It would only end in an argument, which might be exactly what he wanted, and then all the spawn would descend.
But… what did she have to say about this horrible, pathetic place that was true, and yet would also please him?
Movement caught her eye, in her periphery, as she looked out over Astarion's small kingdom: the first flash of fangs, from two figures hidden in one of the ballroom's alcoves. A man had pierced the wrist of a human woman dressed all in white, drinking from the vein while knelt between her splayed legs. Rosalie caught the shining wet of blood staining his chin, pooling messily to dampen his victim's skirts as the woman's head tipped back with bloodloss and - Rose at least hoped for her sake - enjoyment. Several heads turned, as all the vampires without extreme ritualistic measures in place registered the bloodshed. They were too far away for sound to reach her, but Rose found herself making a discomforted face anyway, uncertain why the act was public. Wondering if it was dangerous for the woman. Wondering if it had been staged, for her.
She turned away from it, only to see Astarion was watching her again. She knew nothing about her reaction had escaped his attention, which led her to suspect the woman had been bitten on a cue.
"Come on, darling," he said, voice pitched low as if only for her, even in this crowded room. "Tell me exactly what you're thinking."
"...You know,” Rose said, after a hesitation, though her voice stayed level. “I'm not sure if you'd remember, but you once claimed that there was nothing more desirable than a vampire. You asked me if I agreed.”
Astarion smiled prettily at her, the light from the chandelier dancing off every silver eyelash as he watched her.
"I didn't know what response to give you at the time,” Rose continued, “because you were the only vampire I knew. But… I think the answer might be… no. No, I don't agree. I think perhaps it was just… maybe, you know. You."
Surprisingly, the monster's face turned stormy. Rose was wrong-footed by the expression - she hadn't meant to anger him. Astarion was the one who'd taken lies off the table, but she'd hoped that even her honest words would flatter his ego.
"Also… so glad you're not torturing anyone directly in front of me," she added quickly, going for the time-honoured Astarion-management technique of veering away from serious topics and directly into humour. "I assume that'll come later in the night, but I appreciate that you only opened with 'tawdry sex den', to help me acclimatise."
"Don't be silly, darling," he smiled, picking up her script with ease. "I only conduct torture at brunch. It's part of what makes being the Ascendent feel special."
That was funny enough to make Rosalie fight a smile. When she lost, she quickly hid it behind a hand, though she was dismayed to see him catch it. He smirked at her like he'd caught her doing something she shouldn't.
It was too close to the old days, just then.
"The sexy drow vixen, who I'm sure opens the door for all your guests, said that this 'dinner' also involves a hedge maze, as all good dinners do," Rose said. She glanced over at the second set of doors, that opened out onto a night-darkened veranda, and offered a much needed change of topic. "Can I go look at it?"
She needed far less eyes on the both of them, for when she attempted to plant her items
"Trying to get me all on my lonesome, darling? Not very subtle of you," Astarion observed, almost reading her mind. "If you're hoping to have your wicked way with me, please feel free to just clamber right on into my lap. I tend to prefer pleasure with an audience, these days."
"Funny," Rose cast a dry look in his direction. "I don't actually remember inviting you to join me, but you can come along, if you'd like."
"I don't think you quite understand the way things work here, dearest, if you think it's safe for you to be wandering off alone," Astarion murmured, leaning in across the gap between their two chairs. "You and your little friends are my honoured guests, this night, but you're only safe so long as I extend to you my protection."
Protection from what? Rose thought, hickeys, and a practised countenance of ennui?
Her incredulity must've shown through a little, as he continued. "There are rules we follow, in the boundaries of this household. But I am not Cazador, and so things get a little… fuzzier, once outside them. I have given my orders: no one under this roof is allowed to touch you tonight, save for me. My word is absolute, but I’m also under no illusions: it wouldn't do for me to send a little doe blindly off into the forest, and then kick up a fuss if one of my wolves goes hunting, when that is only their nature."
"Impressive speech," Rose drawled. "You wanna come outside with me, or not?"
"Well," Astarion leaned in further towards her, lowering his voice so she was all but forced to do the same. "What I'm saying is, you're only safe tonight, with me. Nothing will harm you, so long as you stay with me, and keep me entertained."
Rose couldn't help it: she used all that sudden close distance, to look at Astarion like he was stupid.
"If that's a threat,” she said. “Then it’s a pointless one. I already know I'm not safe here, and that I'm not safe with you, either. You attacked me, literally days ago. But, if what you're trying to express is a concern for the discipline of your brood, or a desire to accompany me into your own fucking garden, then be my guest. You don’t need invites these days, I’ve heard, but you’re more than welcome."
She supposed he wanted her to beg for his protection, or faun over his big, strong vampire self before heading out into the unknown night. But the only thing she was truly afraid of here was him, and even then, she could take care of herself.
…She also knew exactly what worked, when you wanted to hold Astarion’s attention.
To prove her point, Rose leaned back from him, severing the moment. She stood up from the chair, drained the last of her wine with her head thrown back, and smoothed out the wrinkles in her dress.
She then turned back towards the dais, to see him watching her like he was trying to solve a puzzle. She cocked her head, and felt an echo of a previous life, a similar conversation at a party of tieflings, once held in the Emerald Grove. The smile she gave him was the facsimile of the one she’d offered up, then.
"You coming with me, or not?" She asked him, though she didn't hold out her hand to him, this time.
In the corner, she practically heard Shadowheart roll her eyes.
And after a brief pause, in which he looked at her with such derision she could tell he was trying to pretend he was still in control of the situation, the Vampire Ascendent got up out of his seat in a single fluid motion. And Rosalie smiled, as he followed her out.
Notes:
Astarion: *creates the sexiest vampire scene he could dream up in 24hrs*
Rose: Are you high, right now? Are you high?!!!
Narrator: Unfortunately, this was the same OC who laughed at the BG3 Act 1 sex scene outright, and so, it was not very effective.The good thing about a breather chapter is that I always feel guilty and then post again as quickly as possible. My updates might slow down after this week as the next few chapters were hard to write (and rewrite), so thank you for your patience (and all your lovely comments!)
Edit 06-10-23: The number of people writing 'Astarion, you didn't get anyone in the divorce' in the comments... brutal. Obliterate that twink.
Chapter Notes
- Lae'zel's feelings on parties are extrapolated out from her charisma modifier :')
- At level 18, wizards have Spell Mastery, which allows them to cast two spells under second level for free without expending spell slots. Which is why she can cast Identify without a problem.
- Mind Blank is a 8th Level spell that prevents scrying (prevents any 'power used to affect the target’s mind or to gain information about the target')
Chapter Text
It took only a brief, embarrassed nod to Lae’zel and a few seconds of walking down the smooth, paved pathway, for Rosalie to admit the garden was an absolute wonder. An archway of wisteria carved a tunnel toward hedges that were eight feet tall, studded through with white roses. In daylight, it was probably beautiful, but at night, it was otherworldly. Magical lights danced through the bows of trees on a drunken loop, illuminating each spray of flowers with a soft blue glow. The colours were like dark ink spread across paper, the white roses glowing deep lilac in the dim light.
It was the kind of stage that the old Astarion would’ve longed for. Rose wondered how many people had gotten lost here, falling in love with the Vampire Ascendent under the moonlight, giving their very souls away amongst the shadows of the trees.
Or perhaps she was being needlessly sceptical, and this was a place only for him.
"I have nothing snide to say, it's honestly gorgeous," she told Astarion, who walked in utter silence at her side. His footsteps made no sound, as if he was truly the ghost that haunted her.
"Yes, well. Ugliness and squalor were very much Cazador’s game, not mine,' he said, shrugging off the compliment. "I know exactly what I am - but unlike him, I can at least do it with a little more class. If I'm going to live an eternity, I will not suffer it without beauty."
Rosalie looked at him sidelong, wondering if that logic extended to the sea of beautiful, lithe people inside, that served as his audience, and his set dressing. Did he think that truly made him different from the man that had come before? Cazador was the one who’d taught him to wield his own appearance with such precision, after all.
“‘Blood tastes better from a golden goblet, and silk sheets improve any night-time activity’,” she quoted back to him, remembering his arch comments to Shadowheart in the Counting House, when she’d asked him what he’d do with unlimited wealth.
Astarion smirked, recognising his own words. He hadn’t changed, the way he used to when it was just the two of them, softening without an audience to entertain and lash out at in equal measure. The mask stayed in place, smug and self-gratified. “Just so. Cazador was so old and bloodless, that he thought all he and his followers deserved was a tomb. But I’m a living, breathing man - and what is it to live, but indulge the senses, and enjoy all of life’s pleasures to the full? In my opinion, that includes the aesthetic ones.”
Rosalie stayed silent for a second, but then realised she couldn’t stop herself from asking the stupidest question: “...And how do the spawn live?”
Astarion cast her an amused and knowing look, “darling. Expressing concerns for animal welfare? They do not live in the house of course, but underground. Not out of any spite on my part, you understand - just so the poor little lambs don’t face death come the morrow, all for the sake of my love of bay windows. But that doesn’t mean I shove them all on top of each other in a filthy dormitory like workhouse children, either, if that’s what you’re wondering. Look how well that worked out, for daddy dearest. It’s like the man wanted me to kill him. I read Vellioth’s records as well, you know.”
Rosalie couldn't hide her alarm at that, and he laughed aloud. “So kind of you to leave them behind for me, sweetheart - it was quite the guide in how not to conduct oneself. Vellioth and Cazador ruled through fear and hatred, because deep down they both knew how easily they could be killed, and so they survived by making sure it never occurred to anyone to try. I remember Cazador’s pathetic snivelling at the end - how easy it was to fell him, once you stripped the monster you’d created in your mind’s eye, away from the man.”
What had been easy about walking into that house ten years ago, Rosalie wondered. But the man before her had rewritten that confrontation into a victory triumphant: she knew there would be no arguing with him on his version of events.
“I, on the other hand, have exactly what they always pretended they had. I cannot die and cannot be killed, so… why bother going to all that effort? Much easier to be loved, than resented. No torturer means no unsightly stains in the carpet, and no reticence to overcome. People do things for me simply because I want them to, and I don’t even need to ask, half the time. A lesson I learned from you, one could argue, the way people fell over themselves at the end - although far less work is required, on my part, and I do not feel as inclined to charity. Instead, I reward deeds in kind. So don’t worry, pet, I’m the very picture of benevolence: all my spawn love me, and display their loyalty often enough that they are extremely well-cared for. The Black Mass is completed, after all, and so all working and living conditions have vastly improved here in recent years.”
Rose listened, numbing herself to the litany. She wondered if Astarion rehearsed the speech enough that he now truly believed it, but at her end, she didn’t bother trying to think of it as true. She remembered how quickly he’d resorted to compulsion, with her. The apprentice at the front desk of Sorcerous Sundries had been convinced they were in love with him for eight hours, until the charm he’d used to enter had faded. Perhaps Astarion was simply much better at wording his commands, after years of suffering under another’s. Perhaps he'd insured that any instances of malicious compliance simply could not manifest strongly enough to earn a punishment.
Her silence didn’t go unnoticed. Astarion raised a questioning eyebrow at her.
“Not going to call me a liar, and demand an inspection of their quarters? Not even going to tell me that, no matter what I do, deep down inside I’ll always be a horrible, irredeemable, so very evil man?”
Rosalie shrugged, as blasé as she could manage. “My only servant is a literal extension of my own will, and I’ve condemned him to a life of washing dishes and dusting on loop, for no living wage whatsoever. I’m not about to throw stones in glass houses.”
By then, they’d reached the edge of the maze itself. Rosalie examined the nearest rose. She removed the pearl from her wrist again and checked it wasn’t magically designed to kill people, before leaning in to take a sniff.
“Lovely,” she said, meaning it.
When she turned back to him, Astarion’s face was covered in shadow, and she couldn’t see his expression.
“Yes, well,” he said, after a second. “Some of us know how to enjoy ourselves with the spoils of war. Without feeling guilty over them, until the end of time.”
Rosalie thought about her own house: her closets full of beautiful brocaded fabrics, her claw-footed bathtub and her magically heated floors, and her library, whose contents was worth the cost of a small duchy, all on its own. She thought of the shingle-fall of steps she’d had carved into the cliff-face, tripping themselves down to her own private beach of white sand, and water that was freezing when she bathed in it on the New Year like a baptism.
“Oh,” she replied, with a small smile, “I don’t know. I like my own garden a little more, overall.”
Then she walked through the entrance of the maze, and waited for him there until he followed her deeper into the labyrinth.
“Is there a single path?” she asked, “or am I likely to get lost?”
“Well, I’m not about to offer assistance, either way,” he said easily. “Who on earth do you think I am?”
Rosalie shrugged, and took the first left turn she saw. The path meandered twice, to another fork, and without consultation, she took the right. She was surprised to find herself in a small alcove, with a water feature of two lovers dancing. She paused to admire it for a second, the way the light danced off the marble in a warm glow, then she continued onwards.
As she suspected, it took Astarion all of two minutes to get restless. She wasn’t cowering, or jumping at shadows, nor was she fawning over him, and he’d never sat well with silence. It was one of the easiest things to use against him, in all honesty.
“Why did you come, Rosalie?” he demanded. “Just out with it. You’ve been hidden away from me, again, these last few days, and now you’re just… here? You must have a reason.”
“Well, you’re the one who extended the invitation. Why did you want me here?”
“Maybe I just wanted to see what would happen. Maybe I didn't think you'd be silly enough to say yes. You must think you can achieve something by being here, to not take the most sensible option. Come now, it doesn’t suit you to be coy - I’m a busy man.”
“Must the things we do have a reason?” she threw his own words back at him over her shoulder as she walked forward. She’d rehearsed these explanations, so that they wouldn’t smell like lies, and hopefully in a way that would intrigue him further. “You sure are thinking a lot, for a hedonist. Maybe I just wanted to catch up. You were right: I stayed away for far too long, and if things get out of hand and you kill a bunch of people, well - I can’t pretend I don’t have my part to play in that. I’m taking responsibility for my actions. You’re the one who made it weird, by inviting all the boring hot people.”
As she suspected, the lack of an ulterior motive (or appearance of one, given that she’d deliberately hedged herself into this corner), confused Astarion. “So… what is this?" he persisted, "an intervention? A parlay? Are you going to try and sweet-talk me, to find out all my wretched, evil plans?”
“There’s that fantasy again,” she sighed, as she took another left at the next junction, walking blindly further into the maze. “Why? Do you have any plans you particularly want to be talked out of?”
“It doesn’t work like this anymore, you realise?” he said to her back. “This isn’t like our merry adventures of yore. Whatever my plans may be, they’re not decided by committee, and I don’t need to look to you for permission, like a domesticated dog. If you have something to negotiate, start setting your terms, and you better pray they are of any interest to me. If you continue to be a little smart arse, I will simply kill you and your friends where you stand, and move on with my life.”
“Ohhh, I see. You invited me here because you wanted to scare me some more.”
“You should be scared," Astarion said petulantly. "I could’ve killed you in Ramazith’s Tower.”
“You certainly could’ve tried,” Rose hummed in agreement, taking another turn. “And here I was, thinking you maybe just enjoyed my company, what a… oh.”
They’d come to another set piece within the maze. Heart in her throat, Rosalie found herself at an embarrassing loss for words. They were in another hedged alcove, this one holding a small pond, surrounded by wildflowers. The water was dark as oil and still as glass, even as a breeze ruffled the night air. It looked almost like Shadowheart’s night orchid sanctuary - except that ten feet above the water, a bunch of magical, golden coloured lights floated like dust motes. At first, they just looked peacefully pretty, but when Rose moved closer, and looked down into the pond’s reflection, she saw that the lights left the pattern of immediately-recognisable constellations on the surface of the water.
She waited for Astarion to come closer - maybe she could use the moment to place something in his pocket. She wondered, vaguely, if the Vampire Ascendent had a reflection… surely he did? Otherwise, why would you make something like this?
But he didn’t come to join her. Rosalie looked over her shoulder, to see him standing at the entrance still. He was watching her silently again. She supposed she should be grateful that he hadn’t just gleefully pushed her in.
“Do you like it?” he asked in a low voice.
“I…” she looked back at the water, which would no doubt show the stars in the sky regardless of the clouds above, or the light pollution in the Gate. “Honestly? It kind of fucks.”
He scoffed, no doubt wishing she was more articulate in her praise.
“Do they glow during the day as well?” she asked, glancing around.
“No,” he said, finally moving over, though he stopped just short of his reflection entering the pond. “But… the basin of the pool has a mosaic of a similar design. It’s those stones that actually hold the enchantment.”
“Wow,” she said, meaning it. “That’s… neat, in terms of efficiency. And overwhelming tasteful, regarding theme.”
“What were you expecting to find? Drowned corpses? It’s a garden.”
“I just…” Rose tried to think of something intelligent to say and, knowing all it would earn her was derision, instead settled for the truth. “I… like stars. I have an observatory, in my house. Divination gets more and more abstract, when you reach the highest levels - I could’ve gone down the mathematical route and hurt myself with numbers, but I chose the ethereal and divine, instead. I’ve actually…” she frowned, “I devised a spell, that does almost the same thing as this. It replicates the sky perfectly… regardless of…”
“Oh? Sounds thoroughly tedious,” Astarion said, with practised disinterest, walking past the pond, and onto the next path through the maze, even though he’d said he wouldn’t lead.
There’s no way… But that spell was free for anyone to use, Rosalie supposed. If someone wanted to utilise it to create a decoration, they were more than allowed. And it wasn’t like Astarion would have been the one to cast it. He probably just commissioned an Enchanter, who would’ve puzzled through his request, and come to her spell as a logical resource…
She quickly hurried to catch up, to where the Vampire Ascendent waited in the shadows of the next path. Her shoulder brushed his as she scurried through - it was an accident, and then she pressed in, making it deliberate. Any excuse to close the distance he’d manifested all of a sudden, when that was the absolute opposite of what she wanted.
Astarion caught her doing it, and raised an eyebrow. She carried on without comment.
“You know,” he said to her back, as they were once more plunged into near darkness, “I’m starting to think you never even loved me.”
Rosalie nearly tripped over her own feet in surprise. Astarion's conversational tone hadn’t faltered, though it was now at odds with the brutality of the sentence. He would’ve seen her stumble, given that they both had dark vision, so she stopped, and turned to look at him.
“What makes you say that?” she cleared her throat when her voice came out a little ragged. “I’m surprised it’s something that even matters to you.”
“Well, it’s more a question of ego, than anything, darling,” Astarion replied, completely and utterly calm. “I remember the way you used to shake and stutter and cry over that lost girlfriend of yours. You were such a pathetic, snivelling wreck, all for that pasty watermark of a person. And now here you are, barely even a flicker in your expression. And I could actually kill you. Makes a man start to think he didn’t even make an impression beyond fleeting distraction - I must really have meant nothing to you at all.”
Rose examined him, and realised that was perhaps the most honest he had been all night. Yes, it was trawling through all her age-old embarrassment for the person she had once been, to try and get a reaction… but she thought it might actually be getting to him. The fact she wasn’t having panic attacks in his presence. She imagined that, for the man he was now, that might be the kind of slight that could actually sting.
“Oh,” Rosalie said, and then snorted to herself. “Astarion. I went to therapy.”
The face he made in response spoke volumes.
“Radical, groundbreaking words to use in present company, I’m well aware,” she drawled, amused. “But alas, we can’t all complete Infernal rituals to fix our problems. I nearly became a mindflayer in the name of self-medication. After reflecting on that awhile, I instead hired help.”
Cruel, off-the-cuff, and reductive, but all of it true, and she thought he could take it.
It was the things she didn’t say that mattered: about how she’d spent the month after ending the Nether Brain locked away in her family home, the tadpole’s absence feeling like a lost anchor, leaving her with a sea of emotions she had no means to process. Or the way she’d thrown herself into Avernus to try and recapture that sense of urgent purpose, to stop herself thinking about him, to stop herself going further adrift.
Hells, she lived alone in the middle of nowhere to avoid ever catching on the edges of him - though of course, he didn’t know that. It was a living situation determined by the practical purposes of security, not agoraphobia, yes. But also… Threnn could never.
“I suppose I should expect nothing less dull or preachy, from Rosalie the Ever Virtuous,” Astarion said, voice dripping disgust. “Of course, a person might note that the gravity of our problems differed somewhat, yours all existing inside your own head-”
“No argument from me here,” Rosalie interjected, before he could say anything that truly pissed her off. “But then, I’m not the one that brought it up in the first place.”
Astarion frowned briefly, before summoning one of his most insufferable smiles. “So... what I’m hearing is, you’re still madly in love with me.”
“I don’t remember actually saying any of those words, in that combination,” Rosalie said, which was as close to a lie as she could manage. She reached out, and patted his arm. “But I’m sorry I’ve had a decade to get better at handling discomfort, for your sake. Threnn didn’t make me cry either, the last time I saw her, if it’s any consolation. But I’m sure I can squeeze out a few tears for you, if that’s really what you want.”
She touched his arm. He let her. Bizarre as it was, that was flirting. Both of them acknowledged, briefly, that it was flirting - or what passed for it, when offering up tears to the demon wearing your true love’s face. Rose turned away from him, and hastily moved on.
“You saw your ex?” he commented roughly ten seconds later, in a dangerous voice. “When?”
Rose threw an amused glance over her shoulder, then took the next left in the hedgemaze, “Oh, you know, every Wednesday, for a nice little lunch. It’s part of the healing process.”
There was a strange, low noise, almost like a growl. Rose thought she must’ve imagined it, for a second later Astarion ambled up next to her, hands behind his back and a pleased grin on his face. “That’s a lie,” he observed.
“Is it?” Rose replied, with ample sarcasm. “Why, Threnn’s my very favourite person. I’d relish the opportunity to spend more time in her company.”
“When did you see her, then?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“Why not?”
For fear that you’ll use the information to track her down and flay her, an irrational part of her mind said, as they reached a dead end in the maze and she had to turn back and around. Out loud, Rose replied. “Because it’s not all that interesting, or relevant to my life. That’s kind of the point. It means the therapy worked.”
“I’m interested.”
“Are you?” she challenged, “about Threnn? Why? You’ve established that I’m well beneath your notice, and I'm far more interesting than her.”
“The wizard bitch got a visit, but I didn’t. I wonder why that is, dearest, if your precious therapy is working? What could possibly be going unresolved, here?” Astarion smirked to himself. “Suddenly, my ego is fully recovered.”
“I’m so happy for you,” Rose drawled. “Truly, I was worried for a second. Your entire enterprise seems to rely on it to survive. What if you suddenly started feeling silly about your little throne?”
The insult silenced him for a second. Rosalie felt that old thrill she used to get, when she’d won a conversation with him, as if they were in competition (they absolutely were - they always had been). She grinned up at Astarion, teeth flashing in the darkness, as she dared him to let her have the point.
“That chair was merely commissioned,” he replied primly, his defensiveness entirely staged. When she shouted out a laugh, it was loud in the silence of the maze, enough so that it startled the both of them.
Rose looked away, blushing and picking up her pace. But as had always been the case, Astarion was actually pleasant, when he wasn’t actively trying to be awful. Only, Rosalie tried to remind herself, it was now one sentence in every one hundred, and that wasn’t a ratio she should embarrass herself by falling for.
She took the other turning, given that this one had clearly led her astray.
And rounded a corner, to find herself in a rose garden.
Well, maybe that was a bit of an understatement. Calling this a 'rose garden' was like calling Rosalie’s library a ‘library’, or Raphael’s home a ‘display of vanity’.
They’d passed a few rose trellises on their way in - Rose didn’t know much about nature, but she’d thought that the colours were unusual, as if maybe that was a place where certain breeds (was it breeds, with roses? She’d have to ask Jaheira) were being cultivated.
But here, they were everywhere. There were riots of them in the flowerbeds.
The clearing was a large, perfect circle, with each flowerbed divided like spokes on a wheel. But otherwise, there was no order or organisation, simply roses of every shade, vying for pride of place in the mess of colour. Reds, purples, yellows and pinks, whites and deep, wine dark burgundies, that looked black in the night. Rosalie thought the garden must be under some kind of enchantment, given that none of them held a blemish. The weather was just beginning to change and become fully autumnal, yet with her darkvision, she could see that all of them were still in full bloom.
It was bisected by four paths that all seemed to lead to this spot, from other portions of the maze. Rose saw that they all converged under a wrought iron structure at the very heart of the clearing. There was a bright ring of pale roses around its base, and as she walked towards it, she saw that the pavilion itself was crawling with more flowers, that had twined their way through the ornate swirls of the metalwork.
There were benches underneath the canopy, but Rosalie didn’t sit. Once she stood directly under the dome, she craned her head and saw that there was a small, circular window at the very centre of the pavilion's roof. Absurdly, it framed the moon. It had to be enchanted. It was like something from a fairytale. It was all so perfectly neat.
“Is this the centre of the maze?” she asked, looking around. If it wasn’t, it was fucking overkill, was what it was.
Astarion stood underneath the archway they’d entered by, no doubt perfectly aware of how he looked in his white suit, framed by shadow and moonlight. He looked up from his nails, which he was examining with care. “It is.”
“I found it all on my own,” Rosalie observed. “And it isn’t a labyrinth, is it?”
“...No,” he replied, carefully.
He took a step forward, so they were both stood under the pavilion together. Everything his setpiece was designed to achieve fell perfectly into place, as if the very universe conspired against her, and Rosalie felt the air grow close.
“Do you spend much time here, in daylight?” she tried.
Astarion frowned at her. “I used to take tea here, in the early days,” he replied. “I’ll never not relish the feeling of the sun on my face. But... it got a little lonely, without company. Very few people see it in daylight: everyone else here has to wait until dark.”
Oh, that had to be a line. It had to be, because there was no way such a display of vulnerability was true. They stared at each other for a second, in the silent heart of the maze. Astarion’s features were shadows in his face, a chiaroscuro of light and dark, while he watched her through lowered lashes. The look on his face was one she recognised, from before.
Even without explicit threat, everything felt dangerous. And Rosalie needed to get him close enough to her, that she could plant the items.
“Well!” she said cheerfully, smiling bright, and clapping her hands together. “Time to head back in then, I suppose! Thank you for the company - it’s nice to be away from all those awful people. What a pretty walk!”
Then, she turned her back on him. Her every instinct screamed - it was an utterly foolish, incredibly perilous thing to do, as if she didn’t take the threat of him seriously at all. And sure enough, a second later, she felt a slender hand snap out and clamp itself down on the nape of her neck. She carefully stilled in place, relaxing herself under the grip before it had a chance to hurt her.
“Come now, pet,” Astarion chided, “try to savour the moment a little, at least.”
“With you… restraining me? No, thank you.”
“Would you prefer a gentler touch?" he asked, voice like honey. "I suppose I got a little carried away last time - it was cruel of me to bruise.”
“You seemed to enjoy doing it, at the time,” she observed, as gooseflesh rippled along her spine under his touch. “I thought you prided yourself on being above such things, these days - an obsession with people’s necks seems kind of cliché, don’t you think?”
“No more so than you walking out into the dark with me, to a secluded little spot where no one can hear you scream,” Astarion replied, and she heard fabric shift as he stepped in closer to her back, to murmur directly into her ear. "You surely know you’re playing with fire, dearest. Only the silliest, fuck-struck little morsels ever ask to come here with me.”
So it was a seduction garden, Rosalie thought. She knew it!
“Astarion-”
“Now, now, don’t worry. You’re many things, darling, but you’re not stupid. Perhaps you don’t want to die, just yet… but I don’t think you want to go back inside, either. You're here for a reason, and we both know it. So don’t lose your confidence now: don’t bolt, don’t flee. We're all alone here, it's just the two of us, so why don’t you ask for whatever it is you want? Perhaps, I’m feeling generous…"
Rosalie shivered despite herself, and tried to shake him off again. “Could you please be a little less weird about it, first?”
"I’m not about to let you walk away from me,” Astarion said, rubbing a thumb carefully across the notches of her spine. “So, tell me, why are you here, hmmm? Are you really not going to try and make some kind of bargain?"
"No," she replied, voice level. "What for? What would be the point? Surely you remember every single time I shot Raphael down?”
"Is there nothing you want from me, specifically, sweet thing?"
“Other than you getting your hands off me, and letting me turn around and conduct this conversation like a normal person?” She asked.
"Things you actually want would be helpful, my love," Astarion said, voice pitched to silk. For a second his grip tightened, and Rose feared he was going to push her forward, maybe even get her to bend over for him. She tensed up in preparation to resist and he laughed delightedly, making her realise that that was exactly what he’d wanted her to think.
“Your thoughts are your own, darling, but please remember I can hear your heartbeat.”
His breath ghosted across her neck, this time, which just made her feel too many things, all at once. There was still intense discomfort, thankfully, and enough of it that Rosalie flailed around the same way she would’ve if a spider landed on her, trying to bat the hand on her neck away.
“Don’t make me cast again,” she warned, employing an elbow that he seemed to dodge easily. Then added, in an attempt at compromise, “I won’t leave, Astarion, I promise.”
The hand released her suddenly, making her stumble forward. Rose was grateful for the space, catching herself on the side of the pavilion before she turned.
Only, there wasn’t quite as much space as she’d thought. Or maybe Astarion had closed the distance, while she shook off the feel of him. Rosalie supposed the pavilion was small, although in truth she’d thought that was just a product of his company, not a reality of the space itself. But when Astarion took another step forward, she felt the sharp pressure of the metal archway at her back, confirming that she would have to keep her promise: there was nowhere to go.
Of course, this was what she wanted, she tried to remind herself. He was so very close to her now, and she knew she should start reaching for pockets. It was almost the perfect sleight of hand distance.
For a second, Rose was irrationally scared she had fallen under compulsion: she couldn't seem to move and his beauty, up close, could still take her breath away.
“You all but admit there’s something you want, then,” Astarion observed softly, taking another step forward. “Something that it’s within my power to give.”
Reach for your pockets, Rosalie. You don’t want to be here, any longer than necessary!
But she couldn't seem to move.
They’d been this close before. But by then, they’d usually been kissing.
Rose swallowed, wetted a dry mouth, "No."
"No?” Astarion asked, with a small grimace, as if testing the response. If it registered as a lie, he didn’t react, which made Rosalie truly start to panic, because she herself didn’t know either. He still looked perfectly composed, as he examined his hands again in a picture of disinterest, and took yet another step forward. “Well, then, are you employed as a delicious distraction to me, while your friends try and fail to search my house?"
"No," Rosalie repeated, with more certainty. "They only came because they didn't trust me to be here, alone."
"Whyever not?" He tutted, smiling all the while, "you'd certainly never let yourself stray too far into anything fun, I'm sure."
And then he took another step forward, and grinned even wider. Rosalie knew it was because her heartbeat was now in stupidly embarrassing territory. If only Astarion knew it was because she was trying so desperately to be smart, which always only ever tended to trigger extreme anxiety.
I can’t let him kiss me, she thought. And then she panicked some more, because she realised that it would probably help matters, if she did. And also, that meant she was thinking of kissing as something that was on the table. He didn’t even like her.
Not that that mattered, anymore.
"Ok, so they trust you less than they trust me,” she replied, in a perfectly even voice. “If I was alone, I think they thought you'd kill me."
"Smart of them. And yet, you're all alone now," he observed. "What’s worth taking that risk for, I wonder? Unless Shadowheart's peeking at us through the foliage. Maybe she is. Did you want it to feel like the first time all over again, lover?"
“I’m not going to lie,” Rose admitted, staring up at him. “I’ve been wondering how many people you’ve used ‘lose yourself in me’ on, since you got yourself a fucking maze.”
"Maybe that line was only ever for you, precious thing," Astarion said.
What a fucking liar. Like she hadn't known that he was feeding her a script, the very first time he’d said it.
"You still haven't answered me, Rosalie," he murmured. "And I’ve asked so many times. Why are you here?"
"I… I just wanted to see you,” Rose said, which was the best she could manage in the moment.
And it was the truth, wasn't it? After all… that was the very definition of what scrying did. It allowed you to see people. That was the perfect loophole… wasn’t it?
"And all you wanted to do was look?" Astarion pressed. At this point, she had to crane her neck in order to do so - he wasn’t that tall, but that was how little space she now had to work with. Still, he pretended like he was conducting the conversation from a distance. He gestured down at her, to prove how little their closeness seemed to affect him. "How very in character of you, to torture yourself over what you can't have."
"...Can't I?"
Rose said it, and then immediately bit her lip. That wasn't what she had meant to say at all. And, frustratingly, she realised it would absolutely work, but… that really was not why she'd said it.
Just a quick fumble in a hedgemaze, she thought. Plant the items, then I'll pretend to panic, and then I'll leave.
‘Pretend’, her own mind mocked her, in the same breath.
No way that could backfire.
Astarion’s eyes narrowed.
“You seem to think awfully highly of yourself, sweetheart,” he remarked in a detached voice.
He reached forward with a hand, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. The gesture held a tenderness that in no way matched the rest of his demeanour, and that meant it unsettled her, left her off-kilter. Rose pressed herself backwards and into the iron, holding herself as far from him as she could. Her skin, unused as it was to such close touch, had already started to burn.
Just reach for your fucking pockets! she thought. But gods forbid that her rationality worked, in this instance.
“It’s almost… selfish,” Astarion sighed, rolling the word around his mouth like he was tasting it, and sounding tired. “You tell me there’s nothing you want, when we both know that's a lie. And then… what? You expect me to do all the work, like I did before? Fall over myself to please you? Wrest all of your dull little secrets out of you, with my bare hands, and do it with such skill that it will only make you feel good? Seduce you, in the dark and away from prying eyes, so that you never have to admit you were the one that wanted it, in the first place?”
Rosalie frowned at him. “That’s not fair,” she said, “it wasn’t like that, at all, the first time round. I was the one who led you away from that clearing. I was the one who told you I liked you.”
She knew that wasn’t what she should be focusing on, in this moment, but she couldn’t let the accusation lie. Even if there’d been misunderstandings, all those years ago, she was certain they had been in that moment, together. She wouldn’t let this monster take that away from her.
“Yes, I suppose you did… after weeks of me laying the groundwork,” Astarion replied, voice dripping with disgust. “But now, it seems, without a tadpole to make you less of a coward, and without me bending over backwards to accommodate your exasperating temerity, your depressingly repressed personality wins out. So scared to do anything, and so steeped in shame - you just swim in it, until you let yourself drown. Why, I’ll never understand. What do you think is going to happen? Are you so self-obsessed that you think the world will end, for you wanting me?" He looked down at his hands again, "sex isn’t anything special, darling. There isn’t any need to dance around it like this, and frankly, it’s a little… boring. I don’t have time for people who will torture themselves, over something as meaningless as desire.”
Rose glared at him, angry to the point of incoherency, and utterly heartbroken for the man she’d loved.
“I suppose it was easy to act all coy when you knew I’d beg at your heels, and never bite. But you can’t call me a monster, and hope I remain tame, darling. If you need something, this time round, you’ll have to be a big girl, and ask for it.”
Forget magic: Rosalie strongly considered punching this Astarion in the face.
“Admit it,” he said to her, leaning down over her, lip curling. “Or run away again. I dare you.”
Punch him, watch him burn up in Infernal fire, even if it didn't kill him. Leave him here alone, all over again, just to prove she fucking could.
But none of those things would get Rosalie what she wanted.
So instead, seething, she grabbed the Vampire Ascendent by his collar, and dragged his mouth down to hers.
It was honestly worth it, for the moment when she pitched him forward, and his eyes widened. Had his horrible little spiel of bile been humiliation, insult, or genuine provocation? Had he expected it to work? Rosalie had no idea. It didn’t exactly feel good, but it didn’t fucking matter, because she was still the one who would win in the end.
She tugged and wrapped his suit jacket around her fists, so she didn’t have to touch him, before leveraging him down to her. She licked into his mouth, which was already open and waiting. They crashed into each other, with a violence that burned. She didn’t relax into it. She didn’t let down her guard. It didn’t feel good - it felt painful. Their breaths filled the air, and seemed to echo off the metal. It was a horrible kiss: callous, vindictive, and teeth-filled. She’d often thought of their times together as another competition, a race to wreck each other. But this wasn’t wreckage, it was ruinous.
She didn’t close her eyes to lose herself in him, but to will it all to be over.
“There,” she said, bitingly, into his panting mouth as they parted. Her hands stayed anchored in his collar, and kept them barely an inch apart. “Happy? That’s how it happened last time, as well. Stop pretending otherwise, you utter dick.”
“You still didn’t ask very nicely, so I can only conclude your manners are atrocious. But luckily, a monster will never judge,” Astarion smirked, reaching up to cup her jaw, and place his thumb against the plushest part of her lower lip. “And he never will, darling, no matter what lies you need to tell yourself. I find that they taste quite sweet from your tongue.”
It was then, that Rose realised she hadn’t used the distraction to plant anything whatsoever.
That was when the shame hit: she’d been stupid. Even if the emotion was hatred, it had still overridden everything else, including reason, robbing her of her excuse. Heat rose through her body, a boiling mass of self-contempt. She blushed all over, and she knew Astarion could see it. Hells, he could feel it - the way her cheek heated under his palm.
Although, his hands were warm this time, as well.
“Well, you’ve crossed the line, and nothing terrible happened,” he murmured quietly. “Why not fall over the edge? You might even enjoy it, if you let yourself. That last one didn't quite… feel like you.”
Rose went warmer, hating herself. It was all or nothing, now, and it was because of her. Keep your head, this time, she told herself. As long as she got what she wanted, everything and anything was fine.
She let go of his collar, to wrap her hand around his wrist. Then, she nodded.
Astarion gave her a horrible smile, full of sharp teeth. When he leaned down and kissed her, it was almost soft. Almost kind. In a way that held threat, because he stilled until he felt her anger leave her. Until she succumbed. Only then, did he deepen it into something that she thought might qualify as a distraction. A hand snuck around to the small of her back, to fall unerringly on the patch of exposed, bare skin, first time, without even looking, and pull her in closer.
And then, his grip tightened, his teeth dug into her lip, and there was a sheen of white light.
Notes:
My beautiful, 10 Wisdom wizard, rolling Insight at disadvantage: Huh. Seems like Astarion built this entire hedgemaze solely to seduce people. Must work on everyone, I suppose. Oh, look at that lovely constellation water feature! Oh, look at that metal cage in an eternally preserved rose garden at the maze's heart, better go stand directly underneath it! How pretty! Perfectly generic, standard hedgemaze, for no specific person in particular. :)
Astarion, internally crawling on his knees: please, for just like.... one second... I’ll fail whatever save you need me to, I’m begging...
I wrote (and rewrote, so many times, lovers to enemies to lovers is HARD) the next two chapters in one long sitting, so I forgot how little this chapter's cliffhanger makes sense without part 2. Sorry! :')
I won't be updating again till around this time next week due to life commitments, so thanks in advance for your patience xx
Edit 11-10-23: Genuinely cried with laughter at some of the comments. We've gone from 'Astarion, you got no one in the divorce' to 'this poor fucking man' in the space of single chapter lmao. Correct. 10 out of 10 reading comprehension.
Chapter Notes
- Stole some companion dialogue from the Counting House (which I got after I started drafting this chapter, and then immediately opened my laptop, while losing my mind)
- Rosalie still invented the same spells she did in Party Favours, she just didn't go to the awards party, sad times :(((
- The reference to Shadowheart lurking in the bushes is an Early Access callback, where she used to disapprove if Tav and Astarion fucked at the tiefling revel (which I honestly wish they'd kept in the final version of the game, it's so very valid of her)
Chapter 7: Chapter Seven
Notes:
There is a trigger warning for this chapter but it's also a spoiler, so I've put it as the final line in the endnote! Otherwise, be mindful of the tags, which have been updated as accurately as possible, and please take care of yourselves x
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
There was a familiar arcane sound on the air, as the momentum of the kiss dragged Rosalie from the darkness of the garden to another, dimly lit space.
She broke away from Astarion and looked around, confused, to see they had been teleported. It was still somewhere in the house, she noted with relief, given that she recognised the spell, and the nearest window still held a view of the Gate beyond. There were bookshelves lining the walls, and no bed, suggesting it was some kind of study. There was a brief moment of panic: Shadowheart and Lae’zel thought she was in the garden, and she wasn’t anymore, and now she was trapped in a room with him.
But truthfully, Rosalie had much more pressing concerns.
“Oh, my gods,” she said, unable to help herself in that moment, and utterly without artifice. Her anger was momentarily forgotten. “You did not keep the Dimension Door boots I gave you, just for seductions. Oh my gods.”
She laughed, but not harshly - in fact, it was a little delighted: “That’s so silly!”
Astarion raised an eyebrow at her humour, keeping his stoic expression in place. Then, he splayed his hand across her sternum. He stepped forward, and pushed her back a step. There was no resisting it. The last time he’d displayed that kind of strength, he’d been cutting off her air supply.
“No, but I’m serious!” she continued, grinning up at him regardless, as she stepped back in time with his advance. “What if it’s a threesome? Does the other person have to make a mad dash for it, when they get left behind?”
Astarion still didn’t reply, and this time, he shoved her. Rose hadn’t been expecting it, so she stumbled. Her feet tripped on her hemline, her arms pinwheeled, and she tumbled back a few steps before there was a crash as her hips and thighs banged up against the edge of a desk. She braced herself against it, to stop herself from falling.
“...Was that really necessary?” she asked.
"Sit," he told her, gesturing to the flat surface.
Rosalie answered that with pointed look. The chair had already been moved from the desk to the corner of the room, before they’d ever entered. She couldn’t help but think that was awfully presumptuous of him, even if it only worked out in her favour.
"This is the way it works now, pet," he taunted when he saw her expression. "If you don't like it… Again, you can leave."
Dammit. She should've planted the items on him in the maze, rather than pushing her luck. Instead, Rose was now confronted with the hole she’d dug herself into.
After a mullish second, she hopped onto the desk, taking a moment to readjust her seat.
"Good g-"
"No. Absolutely not.” She said, interrupting him with a raised finger. She wouldn’t put it past Astarion to have used that line on literally every person in this building, and she didn’t have much interest in being audience to some well-worn, repeat performance. She glared at him: "You get one rule, I get one rule. That's also very much not how this works."
"Not one for praise?" he smirked, with an expression that implied he doubted that highly.
"Maybe save it for when I've actually achieved something," Rose replied, with mocking severity. "Don't condescend to me, and don't hand out gold stars merely for effort. I'm not one of your eager sycophants."
"Well… we'll see, shall we? Who knows where the night could take us," he replied, grinning, and closed the distance with a swagger.
Rose tensed as he looked her up and down, then moved in close enough to take a pinch of her skirts between his thumb and forefinger. But Astarion made no other moves, and didn’t touch her again, except to make a show of examining the fabric and testing its texture before dropping it. He stood there, dangerously close but still far away, regarding her like she was an object at auction.
“Now, sweetheart,” he commanded. “I think you should kiss me again. And if you can’t make it nice, at least make it interesting.”
So, he was leaving her to do all the work. Rosalie bit her lip, in uncertainty and in anger, as she examined him, puzzling out his motives. Was he trying to make her feel wretched, again? Forcing her to act, so she condemned herself?
She said she’d been to therapy - and she had, extensively - but there was always going to be that little pit of self doubt in her stomach, no matter what. Especially with Astarion.
It felt selfish, given how immensely she’d failed him, to turn over the other parts of their relationship like fossils for examination. But one of the cruellest parts, about never getting to see things through to the end, was never knowing what they truly could’ve been - what he would’ve wanted with her, in time. She didn’t know what he liked, and what he’d pretended to like.
Maybe that was the point. Maybe that’s the truth he taunted her with, now.
Well, she thought, after a second, as the Vampire Ascendent watched all of that play out on her face and clearly savoured every moment of her discomfort. This isn’t really him, anyway. So it doesn’t matter.
She parted her knees where she sat on the desk, earning a raised eyebrow, which earned him an eyeroll. She put her hands on Astarion's waist underneath his jacket and reeled him in closer, into the space that she’d created in the cradle of her hips. They were close enough now that he could look down his nose imperiously at her, like she was nothing, which she could tell he clearly enjoyed with all the ease of routine.
But Astarion wanted nice, and he wanted interesting, so Rose reached up and placed a hand flat against his cheek, and scrutinised him in turn. This was a face she’d loved, that had haunted her dreams and her nightmares in equal measure. She placed her other hand on his chest, hearing the steady thump of a heart that had cost seven thousand people their lives. It was slow, where adrenaline already had her pulse thrumming lightning fast. Astarion smiled lazily at her as her eyes roved over him, enjoying the physical proof that she was more affected than he was, in this moment.
She moved that hand and brushed his hair away from his neck, testing its familiar softness. The faded bite mark was still there, in the place it had always been. She thought she saw his eyes flutter closed, briefly, but it was only in her periphery, so she couldn’t be sure. With the hand on his cheek, she tilted his face gently to the left - to see the moonlight catch the small scar she’d noticed one night, drinking on the balcony in the Last Light Inn, certain they were both going to die and wishing they had all the time in the world. Without thinking, she brushed it lightly with her thumb, then inwardly cursed herself for the foolishness of the gesture.
She quickly moved her hand to his jawline, applying pressure to his chin to manoeuvre him into position. She ran the same thumb briefly across his bottom lip, wishing that her tenderness could reach through to the other side, and comfort what - if any - soul remained
Then, she kissed him.
It wasn’t like that horrible kiss had been the only intimacy she’d known in recent years. Rose had not pined away in solitude for the whole decade. There’d been no relationships, but there had been partners, often nameless, and with no strings that could potentially cause them harm in the long run. The night she’d left Barovia, and seen exactly what kind of destruction Astarion could wrought, if he ever chose, she’d gotten black out drunk and fucked the prettiest person she could find in the nearest bar, all to feel something. There’d been trysts on tours and site visits and adventures, whenever she needed brief comfort, and the loneliness got too much to bear.
But those hadn’t mattered, not really, and this was Astarion - or at least, it felt like him, when her movements were no longer fuelled by pure spite. Maybe she’d just been trying to get it over with, in the garden, for now she pressed her lips against his and got hit by that awful, flustered embarrassment of true desire all over again. It was a little like being young, about not knowing what you were doing, and feeling clumsy, and she had items in her pocket that she needed to put on his body - but she needed to do this well, in order to even have a chance.
And he was making her work for it, cruelly so. Astarion's mouth was unmoving under hers, even as she felt her entire body flare with the echo of her old feelings and she pulled him closer in response without thought. Her hands tugged him closer towards her and her legs tightened on either side of his hips, to close what little gap remained. Rosalie pressed her lips to his mouth, once, twice - all to nothing. She parted her mouth to capture his bottom lip and swipe the curve with the slightest press of tongue, tasting the residue of wine. Kissed his cheek, his neck, captured an earlobe with teeth.
And still, it was like kissing a statue.
Her cheeks burned. Astarion wouldn’t even open his mouth for her when she returned there. His hands were loose and limp at his sides, like there wasn’t enough desire in him even to fight to remain still. Even so, Rose guessed it must be an act: it was, at least, a choice designed to humiliate, remaining so unfeeling as she rubbed herself all up against him.
But that decision on his part meant he was still thinking, and she needed him distracted. Fucking hells, she thought, angrily, as her entire body flamed with indignation all over again. How dare he wield desire as if it was disgust?
What fell out of her was the only thing she thought might work:
“...Please?” she said, once, against his mouth, like she resented even having to form the word.
And it was like she’d given a command, not him. Astarion crashed against her like a tidal wave hitting a cliff-face, bracing both hands either side of her on the desk and consuming her, all teeth and open mouth.
His hands were suddenly everywhere: at her back, in her hair, one hitching her skirts on the left side so he could grip her bared knee. He was sin incarnate now, so obviously it felt fucking amazing, once he deigned to make it so. Rose’s breath left her in a big whoosh as he crushed her to him, and invaded her mouth with his tongue, groaning at the taste of her. She fisted her hand in the front of his shirt, for leverage, and heard the pulse of his new heart pounding. As that last inch of distance was lost she felt him against her, already half-hard in his trousers.
For a wild second, it was like the old days. That thrill of victory at making someone so untouchable fall was almost as hot as imagining how they would drag you down with them. Rose wanted to reach immediately for the buttons at his throat and to peel all his elegant clothes away, just to see how much worse she could make him.
But she couldn’t undress him, that wasn’t the point of this operation! Actually, now that she thought about it with anything other than the horny parts of her brain, she needed him, for the love of the gods, to stay in his clothes!
As if a devil bent on cursing her to oblivion heard those thoughts, Astarion reached around her to the back of her dress and started unfastening the buttons with that dexterity she’d relied upon, all those years ago. And that was her armour, but Rose wasn't sure it mattered, as he ran his fingers down the ridges of her exposed spine and it lit her aflame like the sparks of a struck match.
“You’re… softer,” he said, at one point, almost to himself.
“Um, yeah,” Rose replied, too lust-drunk and stupid to tell if that was an insult. She didn’t think so - she knew her skin was feather light to the touch these days, except where the hard spines of cartilage pressed up through her skin. Astarion has known her only in a time of hardship - both her skin and her body were much better cared for these days.
“Undress for me,” he ordered, as he reached for the pins fastened in her hair.
"Oh shit! No! Careful!" Rosalie said, ignoring his command, and snatching instead for his hands before he could touch her again.
Astarion gave an affronted look, clearly interpreting this as an act of defiance. He evaded her grasp, and instead caged her wrist with his own hand, taking the offending arm and wrenching it away from her body in a steel tight grip.
"What are you doing here, if you want careful?” he asked her, in a low voice of warning.
"Oh… no, not careful of me!" Rose hastily clarified, feeling embarrassed: she couldn’t do any sleight of hand, if everything got a little too bondage-y, not to mention the extremely high chances she could die. “It's just, if anyone else but me touches one of these hairpins, they become paralysed. I didn’t think I would be… Give me a second-"
She shook her trapped hand, and gave Astarion a meaningful look until finally he loosened his grip and let go, watching her warily even while clamped between her thighs. Then she reached up, and started removing the honeysuckle ornaments from her braid, loosening it as she placed the enchanted pins in a methodical pile on the corner of the desk, as far from him as possible.
When she was done, hair falling loose around her shoulders, she looked back at him, and caught an expression of pure bemusement on his face.
"And… me becoming paralysed… in this situation…" the Vampire Ascendent said, speaking as if to a moron as he looked at the set of twelve pins, which even Rose would admit was a wee bit of overkill, "was… not the plan?"
Rosalie paused in what she was doing, realising that he made an excellent point.
"Oh," she said, weakly. "No. Not really. More of a failsafe, than anything."
You wouldn’t have been able to place things on him while he was paralysed and watching you do it, she told herself. It would, however, have been an excellent tactic for finding any keys to Mage Bartelle’s rooms, and was now entirely off the table for future endeavours.
But right now, all Rose needed to do was reclaim the moment, to get the job done. She placed her index finger on the closest pin, then bought it within hand’s reach, next to her hip.
"There," she said, leaving it in place and giving him a small, conspiratorial grin. "‘Interesting’ enough for you?"
Astarion looked at her with dark eyes, then down at the weapon she’d revealed, and refused to turn on him. After a pause, he reached into his pocket, and drew out an embroidered square of cloth - a beautiful, spotless handkerchief marked with his initials, and a pattern of dark flowers ay the border. Arranging it in his hand, he then picked up the hairpin, wrapped it in the cloth, and deposited both back in his pocket.
“I think it serves less well as a prop, than a memento,” he said in a clipped voice, face unreadable.
But Rose didn’t need to read his face. Heart in her mouth, throat dry, she realised… she’d done it! Hells, he’d done it for her. That was two things she could scry on: the pocket square, and her own hair pin, probably still adorned with strands of her own hair. That would form a simple connection between him and her arcane vision, calling to her own divinatory senses through the ether, like a lightning rod calling to a storm.
Her job was done. Now, all she needed to do, was leave. Get out in one piece.
Astarion pressed closer, looking at Rosalie now with her unbound hair. With a clinical, closed expression, he ran his fingers through the waves at the right side of her face. The first time they snagged, hitting on a snare from the braid, he grabbed a handful of it like a rope and pulled taut, wrenching her head back and bowing her spine so she bent inwards towards him. Her dress gaped at the back. It was just the right side of pain, making Rose gulp in a breath, and Astarion smiled cruelly when he saw her reaction in the blush across her face.
I could put the pin in his collar, as well, she thought wildly. That was three things. You know, for the hat trick. It was good scientific method, surely.
When she didn’t move even an inch, Astarion kissed her again.
Open-mouthed and starving, one hand still wrapped knuckles deep in her hair, and the other caging her face. They both kept forgetting to come up for air, each break in their mouths a messy gasp at the last possible moment, until Rose was dizzy. But there was something heady about him being just as desperate, this time: from the pounding of his heart, it was actually real.
Remembering her order, Rosalie hastily pulled her loosened dress off of her shoulders and down from her chest. As she tugged it down to pool around her waist, she used the movement as cover to reach into her pocket for the tiny pin.
Astarion let out a low, almost snarl of approval. Rosalie didn’t hate the sound quite as much as she would’ve hoped. He was still fully dressed. She was trying to remind herself this was a good thing, as she reached up and wrapped both arms around his shoulders, pulling her close to him in what would feel almost like a loving, desperate embrace; the care she’d once tried to show him, in the time before.
But what it was, in fact, was an excuse to get her arms fully around his neck, and one hand positioned at the back of his jacket collar, holding the pin.
"Yes," he coaxed, into her mouth, biting at her lip. "That's right. This is what you want. Me, only me. You're mine, even now."
Rosalie wasn’t really listening, though she made an appropriate sound at the lip biting, given that it was expected. She was too busy trying to make the manoeuvre natural, as she felt the pin between her fingers slide, imperceptibly, into the fabric. She smoothed the collar down over it, then moved her hand up to his hair to cradle the back of his head, all in one fluid motion. Something inside her glowed with triumph and she smiled to herself: after all, he was the one who’d taught her sleight of hand in the first place.
Suddenly, Astarion broke their mouths apart, causing her to panic. Oh no, had he felt something?
Rose tried to pull him back down to her, to distract him further, but he resisted - all of a sudden, it was once more like tugging on a statue.
He observed her do it, for a few seconds, watching her face for some kind of sign when all she had was desperation, and then he smiled at her widely with reddened lips.
"I knew it," he said.
He reached up, and pulled both her hands off his shoulders.
Rose froze up under his touch: this was it, then. He had just caught her red-handed.
But instead of reaching for his collar to see what she’d placed there, or pushing her away, Astarion simply kissed both of her knuckles, then he placed her hands back onto the desk.
He kissed her again, soft and gentle on her now-abused mouth as he parted her lips.
As he did so, he began running his hands along her bare shoulders, thumbs swooping across her collarbones and down her arms, as if trying to calm her like a skittish animal. He ended the journey at her hands, fingers lacing across hers and pinning them to the edge of desk, so that his body was a mirror overlaid across hers.
He moved from her mouth, and dipped his head to kiss a spot just under her jaw. It could’ve been tender, but Rosalie tensed in fear, given all that stuff he’d been saying about her blood just days ago.
And still, Astarion kept talking.
Rose was starting to think he hadn’t noticed the pin at all.
"I knew it,” he repeated.
“I knew it was only a matter of distance," he muttered into her shoulder, almost to himself. He kissed the spot: she jumped at the touch, and he hummed approvingly. "I knew that the moment I got you here, darling heart, that this would be inevitable. A matter of days, Rosalie. That is all the time you could hold out on me, the longest you could bear to resist. You don’t want me to charm you? Fine. I don’t need glamour, to make you like this. Let us both know that this was all you, and only ever for me.”
She tensed up, and he soothed again, making a chiding sound. “Hush, now, don’t be prideful. Why fight this, little love? Why deny yourself? You're not very good at it. Isn’t it so much better, this way? Doesn’t it feel good?"
"I - what?" Rosalie said, fighting to clear her head as fear and desire warred within her thoughts.
Had he not caught her? Because if so, she had done what was needed. But now she was trapped - and each word that came out of Astarion's mouth was more sinuous and sinister than the last, coiling decadently around her.
"So bored,” Astarion murmured in a low voice, nosing along her collarbone, breathing her in. “Every day the same, every day interminable. Every meal without savour, every conversation dull, and I knew you were what's missing. I knew it. I knew all I had to do was lure you back to me. And you do so love to play hard to get, but it wasn’t exactly difficult, was it, my love-?”
Rosalie struggled to make sense of what he was saying. It wasn’t precisely a threat, but it wasn’t bedroom talk either. What did he mean by ‘bored’?
No, actually, Shadowheart had said, when Rosalie had asked how the Vampire Ascendent had responded to the murders. He gave a three word reply: ‘I was bored.’
“No, in fact, it was easy,” Astarion smirked into her skin. “You put up a good front, my darling. But here you are: with me. Where you’re supposed to be. Where you will stay. You will make everything better. All I needed to do was to make you come back to me, and finally, here you are.”
Rosalie froze up. Her mind began to whir, almost as if she couldn’t dare let herself think, to follow the logic too far to its horrible, inevitable conclusion…
"The party," she said, heart pounding. “Those people who died-”
She tried to pull against his hold on her hands, moving her body back as far back from his as it would go. But it was like pulling on iron shackles, and Astarion didn't budge, simply leaning in further into her space, her legs trapped on either side of his body, and the evidence of his reaction to her utterly impossible to avoid.
"All terrible, heinous people, I assure you," Astarion told her conversationally, kissing his way along her shoulder without any concern for her sudden resistance. "No one who deserves to be mourned: all wretches and ingrates, murderers and thieves and flesh peddlers and slavers - I remember, pet, how you much used to hate slavers.”
Rose tugged at her hands, again - he ran his thumbs over her knuckles, and pinned them down harder.
“You yourself would've carved through that room like a righteous blade, my love. But I did it, all for you. I invited them all there, and they all came, like the cattle they are. And then I slaughtered them for their crimes, and now they’ve served their purpose, for here you are again, with me, once more."
Astarion's mouth was still moving all over her skin, which had begun to crawl. He reached behind her back and undid the clasp of her bra as he narrated. He whispered the words against her, like her body was made for his secrets, and then kissed the flesh, open mouthed.
"Astarion," Rose said, "you need to stop - I need to think - you said you didn't do it for any reason-"
His hands came up to her arms, and tightened to bruising, holding her in place even as his thumbs stroked circles designed to soothe.
"Of course there was a reason. You said that if I killed people, you'd come back and stop me," he said, moving back and pressing his forehead against hers, silvery lashes blurring with the closeness of her vision. His breath ghosted across her still-damp mouth as he smiled with utter tranquillity. “But you didn't try to stop me, did you? Cornered in Ramazith, and you simply let me walk away. And now, here you are. You just… came back. You returned to me. I knew you would."
As the horror of his words sunk in, poisoning this parody of an embrace, Rose couldn’t find anything to say. I’m so fucking stupid, she thought.
"It's not your fault, my sweet,” Astarion reassured her, as if she’d spoken aloud, pressing his lips gently to her temple. “I know this won’t sit well with you, but nobody can stop me. Don't hurt yourself trying, my dove. Nobody can stand in my way, so why not stand by my side instead? Isn’t it easier that way? You thought you wouldn’t enjoy this anymore, but clearly you do, so I’m not sure what the issue is. It seems all very clear to me."
Numbly, she felt him pull the straps of her bra off her shoulders. My hands are free, she thought. I can fight this.
"Isn’t it quite the simple equation?” he asked her, dropping her underwear to the floor and manoeuvring both her hands back to his fully clothed shoulders, rolling his gaze down her body with a pleased smirk. “The only person who can restrain my power is me, and if I do it at all, it will be for your sake. So why not stay with me, and make sure I do everything you want me to?"
“You can’t think…” Rosalie said slowly, finding her voice, “that a room full of slaughtered people is the way to my heart. I thought you didn’t even want my heart. You said I was unworthy.”
"We were both angry, in those early days,” Astarion said, dismissively, as he took hold of both her hips and pulled her a scant inch further towards him, teetering on the edge of the desk. “But you gave me nothing but time to think, didn’t you? And I find that I’ve missed you, little love. I missed this.”
Rosalie was grateful for the layers of clothing that remained still between them. “Astarion. Please let go of me.”
“Come now, don’t be boring," he said, a note of sternness sneaking into his voice. "Don’t go all shy. You’ve done more than your fair share of killing, and you can’t deny you still want me.”
“What I want, is to leave,” Rose replied, skin clammy as a corpse.
“Skittishness isn’t very attractive, love. You were the one who drove me to such drastic measures in the first place. You know, I wouldn’t have minded being a traditionalist, and getting you back using love letters, and flowers, and chocolates. But, darling,” Astarion rested his forehead in the crook of her shoulder, nuzzling against the curve of her neck with an affection that belied the threat of his words, and the fear she felt and knew he could feel, “you still won't tell me where you live."
Her entire body went ice cold. “Let go.”
“No." he replied. "Never again"
And then, head buried against her shoulder, he bit down.
Rosalie couldn’t help it - she screamed. Every bite of the past had hurt, but it had been a cautious, careful process. As gentle as a person could manage, even from that very first time when he’d pretend not to care. This was... a mauling. The Vampire Ascendent bit down on her shoulder with utter disinterest for her welfare, and a singular desire to mark. His teeth cleaved through Rosalie’s ridges of cartilage, and scraped into her collarbone as he latched on like a hound with a piece of meat. Blood flooded his mouth, and her skin came with it.
It was painful, so painful that Rose’s only consolation was that she knew Shadowheart would feel it through the Warding Bond she’d cast - their established alarm system for whenever anything truly started going tits up.
She felt the swipe of his tongue as he began to drink, and with tears in her eyes, she pulled her hands away from him, and desperately cast Telekinesis.
Another cry of pain from her, as - mercifully - Astarion was shoved away. But he took a chunk of her shoulder with him. Blood began to pour like a waterfall from the wound, the meat of her torso weeping and butchered. His chin was crimson, as he wiped his mouth with a hand.
“You know,” Astarion said with a smile on stained teeth, as he pulled himself up once more to his full height. “Praise where praise is due. I’m always advised to shackle the mages, and Hemlock is a little too scared of me to use her higher-level spells in bed. But I should’ve known you’d be a quick study in precisely what I like. Is a fight what you need, my darling, so that you feel less wretched for wanting me? I’m sure I can take whatever you throw at me, so best make it hurt.”
“H-happy to oblige, your highness,” Rosalie replied in a wavering voice, clogged with tears and pure, unadulterated terror. With one hand clamped on her new wound, pain pulsing in a beat that matched her heart through her fingers, she raised the other.
Pointing a shaking finger at him, she did the only thing she could think of, and cast Power Word Kill.
The word that came out of her mouth was Infernal: Inferiu, ‘a dead soul’.
Rose wondered if Astarion would recognise it. It was one of the words carved into his back - that she had translated. That he had inscribed on Cazador’s back, in turn. When she had learned this spell, Rosalie had realised that she’d been destined to only ever use it on one person, to fix this one mistake that would haunt her for the rest of her days.
The magic left her in one fell swoop, as the fatal impassivity of her Word took. Astarion gave a single incredulous look, as if he had never expected her to go straight for the killing blow - to never even dare - and then, without a sound or a word to wield against her, the noose of the Word tightened around him at garrotte speed... and death came.
Astarion erupted into mist.
Rosalie was left alone in the office.
She lowered her hand with a deep breath, that tapered off into a whimper, and an aborted sob. She was naked, and trembling, and as the mist fled from the room, she had no idea how much time she’d bought. His coffin could be in the basement, for all she knew, and he could be running right back to her in a matter of heartbeats. And even if he wasn’t, she was bleeding, profusely, in a house full of spawn who’d just been divested of their master-
Did time pass? She wasn't sure. There was a crash, a splintering, and the door burst open - Shadowheart, chest heaving, with Lae’zel on her heels. “I felt it,” her friend said, “what happened? Where is he?”
Then, her eyes widened, “Hells, that’s so much blood-”
“We need to get out of here,” Rose said numbly, not bothering to put her arms back into her dress where it was pooled around her waist. Instead, she reached into her pocket, for her piece of chalk. “I need to get to a scrying bowl. I killed him. We don’t have much time.”
“Killed him?” Shadowheart squeaked, “but… but… we were going to wait till morning, till we were clear. Wyll’s already hired the mercs!”
“Can you cast it?” Rose asked. “The scry? If I teleport us now, I might be out of magic for the day.”
“We can’t teleport,” Shadowheart said. “If we do, he’ll see the markings, and know our location…”
Rose looked down at the chalk in her hand. She hadn’t thought of that. Her immediate desire had been to flee. Not even to the Sharran temple, but to her tower. Astarion was right: she was an idiot. She never should’ve left her tower.
Shadowheart waited for a reply that didn’t come, and so cast a glance at Lae’zel, who looked calm even in the midst of a storm.
“Get her out,” Lae’zel said, with certainty. “I will find my own way - either via the Astral Sea, or through blood.”
“I’ve got Dimension Doors to spend,” Shadowheart agreed, and then walked over to Rose, to shake her. “Put your top on, for the love of the gods.”
“The deaths,” Rosalie said. “Those people he killed. He said… he said he did it for me.”
“...Hells,” Shadowheart cursed, before removing her cloak from her shoulders, wrapping it around Rose like a blanket, and helping them both to flee.
Notes:
✌️
Oh boy, guys. Got to earn that Yandere tag, but even so, thank you so much for sticking with me. I hope this wasn't too uncomfortable, but I consider horror to be a part of the Ascended Ending. If this was Baldur's Gate 3, please consider this the end of Act 1.
I have a lot to say this week. Response to this fic has been overwhelming, and I've loved every single one of your comments and asks on tumblr. Thank you to those who have also shared this fic on social media, something I myself am way too nervous to do. I really appreciate all your support and feedback, and am glad you're all enjoying the story!
Special thanks to riskpig and tobidei, for two amazing fanarts of previous chapters. Thank you so much for even spending a moment of time on this story, and with my silly OC!
I will try to post once more in the next week, but otherwise I will have to leave it a fortnight as I'm on holiday without my laptop next week. I know this is a hell of a cliffhanger to leave things on, but I promise there are nicer, better things to come!
In the meantime, this fic has a playlist now.
Chapter Notes
- Dimension Door has a longer range within D&D than in Baldur's Gate 3, making it feasible to move into the house. Also, it requires the other person's consent to work, so it's not as terrible a seduction technique as some might think :)))
- To all of the people who successfully guessed the reason for the murders: congratulations. I'm so sorry.
- Everyone in the previous chapter: what if the white light was a vampire bite? Me, having already written this chapter: 🙂
- Everyone in the previous chapter: hahahahaha failed insight rolls. Me, HAVING ALREADY WRITTEN THIS CHAPTER: 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂
(I loved every single one of these comments, but oh god do I feel evil).
- Reddit translation of Astarion's scars my beloved. This is where the understanding and translation of 'inferiu' is taken from. I love the person who did this translation so much.
- In a previous chapter someone asked me whether Power Word Kill would actually work on Astarion due to his HP. Here, it is employed with rule of cool, and a dash 'I support women's rights and women's (still right) wrongs'. If this is not good enough justification, please imagine it does double damage by being a word specifically tailored to him and him alone.
- I really dunno what it says about me that the smuttiest thing I've ever written ends in a Power Word Kill :)))))))
TW for this chapter: sexual consent is revoked but this is then ignored by the other party. The characters do not have sex.
Chapter Text
Rosalie yanked one of the mirrors off a dorm room dresser in the House of Grief, and threw it onto the thrashed mess of covers on the bed. At home, she had her own scrying pool: a wide, platinum lined basin inlaid with opals. Here, she would have to make do.
She got every gem that served as an arcane component out of her carpetbag, with shaking hands. The focus had to be worth one thousand gold - this was an old mirror. But she could make it work. She’d made it work in the past.
Pain screamed through her shoulder, but it felt very far away.
“Moonmaiden’s mercy, careful!” Shadowheart hissed, as she stumbled into the room with a medicine kit taken from the stores. It had taken seven Dimension Doors between them to flee, interrupting their sprint at necessary points to throw off the trail, so that the blood pouring out of Rose wouldn’t just lead Astarion straight to them. Healing was still possible, but Shadowheart was clearing flagging - better to conserve magic, and stitch Rosalie up the old-fashioned way first.
“He took one of my hairpins,” Rosalie said. “This will work.”
“I think you’re in shock,” her friend replied.
Rose suspected Shadowheart was correct, which was strange, because she honestly felt overwhelmed by feeling. Shame, fear, an ache of sadness in her chest, and above all else… guilt. The guilt that had been there from the first morning she’d woken alone a decade ago, knowing that this was the problem that she had forsaken, the problem that was too much to face and too much to fix.
The prayer sent to the gods, to grant her this one clemency. To not visit consequences upon her for this one single choice, when her heartbreak should have been punishment enough.
And the constant awareness that that was, as Astarion had said, the coward’s move.
57 people. All dead, because she’d been too afraid to-
No. It was time to do what she had always planned to do. It was why she had gone to the mansion in the first place. It was the only reason she had kissed him, and let herself be kissed.
Easier to work. It had always been easier to work.
Why not stand by my side, instead? Isn’t it easier that way?
The shadow of Astarion’s voice made Rosalie shudder, tears pricking in her eyes. The bed dipped as Shadowheart took a seat by her side, starting to peel away the bloodslick fabric of the cloak and dress from her mangled shoulder.
“Gods above, Rose. Maybe we should rest, before we-”
Rosalie closed her eyes, picturing the hair pin, and cast the spell before Shadowheart could finish. Anything to get away from the pain, and out of this room.
…Only.
Nothing.
She stayed exactly where she was.
Rosalie's hands fell limply from the mirror, as she stared down at it in confusion. It wasn’t that the Scrying spell had been blocked, or resisted, the way it had been the first few times she’d tried. That had been after getting back from Avernus, having sense-checked with Karlach to see whether it counted as stalking. “In normal situations? Yes. In the case of our favourite maniac? Not quite,” had been the response.
But no. This time, the spell simply didn’t take. Her magic didn’t leave her.
The connection wasn’t resisted - it couldn’t even be made.
…How?
Shadowheart had seen her eyes flare white before they closed and had sighed heavily, beginning to thread the needle for the required stitches. She paused in her preparations when Rosalie’s eyes opened once more.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know, something’s not working.”
“Oh? Maybe you’re too hurt.” The censure was there in Shadowheart’s tone despite her best efforts, the frown fully settled between her eyebrows.
“No, it’s nothing to do with that, it just… it didn’t take. It felt like trying to find... nothing. Like he doesn’t even exist to be scried on,” Rose said, hollowly.
“Well…” she could see Shadowheart trying and failing to find a silver lining. Because of Rose’s hasty decision, they didn’t have time to be leisurely about finding him. Getting mercs to kill him the next morning was awkward, pretty damning timing, but manageable, if you had an alibi, and your half-truths all prepped for the walking lie detector. But no, Rosalie had just flat out declared her allegiances to the Vampire Ascendent, and acted against him. If the scry didn’t work, this entirely risky plan would’ve been for nothing, which started to make you wonder why they’d let her commit to this plan in the first place. Astarion was unlikely to take a Power Word Kill well, and if it hadn’t even worked-
What if she had failed? If everything she had done at the mansion… if it had all been for nothing.
But… this wasn’t a failure, exactly - it was an impossibility, which made it another piece of a puzzle. How could a scrying spell simply not happen? Even something that was blocked had that moment of resistance, the rebuttal that caused your magic to bounce off and away and be utterly wasted.
For an irrational second, Rose worried that her spell had truly killed Astarion. That the scry had failed, because he really didn’t exist anymore.
And it was worry - this horrible, lurching drop in her stomach, a sudden panic: but no, he’s immortal, he couldn’t have fallen that easily, not without that ever being her intention. Not before she truly had the chance to say she was sorry, before she had the chance to say goodbye-
… But she’d seen the mist. If he’d died, her hairpin would simply have fallen to the floor.
He’s not dead, she thought, with sudden, unfathomable relief. That spell had not been final. It had never been cast on the understanding that it would be final.
If he was dead, then surely she would know what that felt like.
But if that wasn’t the answer, then what was? Even if Astarion was still misted, just an hour after she killed him, then that’s what the spell would show her, and then she’d simply wait to recast when enough time had passed. The coffin could be on the other side of the world, and it would matter, so long as it was on this plane-
So long as it was on this plane.
Rose’s entire body jolted with the realisation, causing Shadowheart to curse. The needle was in her shoulder now, but she’d been fixating too hard to notice. “Stay still,” Shadowheart said, voice terse.
“The coffin’s not on the material plane,” Rosalie said, awed at the implications.
“...What?”
“Scrying doesn’t work when the target isn’t on the same plane as you,” Rose said. Shadowheart gave her a look, given that she too could scry, even if she wasn’t an Archmage of Divination. “I - that means - what? He’s just… not here?! That’s… holy shit!”
Rosalie's first thought was honestly that she was just… impressed. In the last ten years, Astarion had invested in transplanar travel? Where had he found the money… the expertise? Was that what he’d truly hired Hemlock for… it was honestly ingenious! And the perfect place for a coffin, so long as you had a functional exit that your mist form could traverse through… incredibly clever, especially when you considered Cazador had settled for putting his failsafe in his basement.
Her second thought was: despair.
Never mind the fact that it nullified her scry - if you wanted to try and work from this new evidence in any other direction, there was a veritable fuck tonne of planes to choose from. Many folded in and out of themselves like origami, or wrinkles in fabric. The idea of trying to minnow it down to one plane of existence, never mind a single location in one entire plane of existence, was astronomically difficult. Even if it was just a demiplane created solely for the purpose of housing his body as it regenerated, there were thousands of those, to boot!
That was needle in a haystack levels of complexity - Gods, that utter, royal bastard, this was impossible! He truly was fucking invulnerable…!
…Unless.
Rosalie made an educated guess.
She reached into her bag - “Lady of fucking Silver, will you stop moving!” - and drew out the infernal marble she kept in there, for whenever she wished to visit Hope.
…A devil’s bargain was never over. And she felt certain that Astarion’s understanding of villainy was inherited, patchworked from all the people he'd seen come before.
The moment she placed the infernal marble on the mirror, it was the same sensation as touching an arcane conduit. Magic coursed in then out of her, as the aborted scrying spell connected and the world fell away dizzyingly. Rose caught another curse from Shadowheart, as her arm came around her waist to brace her upright. The scry took, and Rosalie’s consciousness plunged out of her, to fall not only into the mirror, but through the very planes themselves.
It took all of her mental fortitude to hold on, as -
As her arcane vision opened, and she was greeted by a hexagonal chamber, wrought from white marble. The proportions of the chamber were briefly dizzying, and off-putting enough to require adjustment to - its walls were high, suggesting a tower, with long, thin, arched windows and a mural in the domed ceiling. Everything was deathly still, and quiet.
And at the chamber's centre, a pristine white coffin.
Its lid was carved into an ornate frieze of flowers, foliage, and winged birds. All its fastenings were pale white gold, the clasps inlaid with rubies. Rose felt her consciousness tugged like a boat anchored, as the hairpin focus called her forward.
When Rose approached the coffin, she heard stifled, harried breathing within. This was truly Astarion’s resting place, then - and close enough for him to cross planes in the time it had taken them to make it to their own sanctuary. He was already inside, recovering from the death she’d willed upon him. If she’d been real, in this moment, Rose would’ve laid her hand upon the surface of the casket.
Echoing from within the coffin, came a long, gravelly groan, that ended in a series of stuttered breaths.
Ah, Rose thought, skin burning in the material plane. Not in too much pain, then.
And... definitely Astarion.
She hastily backed herself away from the coffin, rising up through the centre of the strange, pristine room to the nearest window. It seemed the quickest way to find out more information on their current location, and to leave him to whatever… that was. She felt the connection finesse itself and stretch taut, finding the limits of her own concentration as she drifted up-
Rosalie felt the temperature drop drastically as she came up to the arched window. Its glass was rimed with frost, small glittering starbursts of ice lining the edges and patching the view in places with fronds of glimmering crystal. Beyond, a pale, snow-covered landscape with no signs of life, only mountains that were impossible to scale, and a sky that was brutally dark. A night blue as ink with not a single star to light it, only pulses of colour in an aurora of paler blue and deep, bruise purple, fluttering in and out of existence and rippling through the endless, dark sky like a wave.
Rosalie did the disembodied, arcane equivalent of pressing her ear against the glass. The metal of the window frame felt so cold, it burned across her mind like flame. Though the air inside the chamber was still, she thought she heard the high, roaring howl of a merciless wind.
The arcane tether snapped. The pain returned, but so did the warmth of the cloister, and her friend’s living body, both gratefully welcomed. Shadowheart grunted as Rosalie began holding her own weight again, rather than being limply collapsed against her. She had been holding her body up with a knee pressed to the chest, while her hands worked on suturing the wound.
Laid out in front of Rosalie, the mirror was fogged with ice. The marble in the centre of the glass was now a pale, ice cold blue, having attuned to a new layer of the Hells.
“Cania,” Rosalie said, panting with exertion. “He’s in Cania.”
“This wound is going to scar,” replied Shadowheart, voice livid.
Not everyone would recognise Cania on sight. But then, not everyone was a scholar in Infernal dialects, who’d already had to do a lot of research before ill-advisedly plunging into Avernus.
And not everyone was a tiefling, whose line could be traced back to the Eighth Circle’s ruler, Mephistopheles.
Rosalie tried to reckon with the fact that Astarion had gone to her ancestral homeland, when it had never even occurred to her to ever want to visit.
But then, she supposed, Mephistopheles was the devil who had created the Rite of Profane Ascension, and with whom the Vampire Ascendent had treated. Not everything was about her - even if a lot of it, apparently, was.
“So, we just have to find a means of travelling to Cania, then. Before we kill him all over again,” Shadowheart said, mopping Rosalie’s shoulder down with alcohol, and then finally pumping in the Cure Wounds, “on most people, that would be hard. But for us, that’s just… well. A remix of our greatest hits, I suppose. Karlach will be livid.”
Rosalie thought, fleetingly, of Hemlock Bartelle, and her quarters, wherever they were located in Astarion’s dungeons. She knew that was another lead they could pursue.
But in this moment, it felt unspeakably stupid to voice her hopes aloud.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “It shouldn’t be that hard at all.”
But, the next day, The Devil’s Fee was closed - and from the looks of things, it hadn’t been open in some time.
Rosalie stood outside the entrance to the massive building, trying to make sense of its boarded-up windows, the locks and barricades across the door.
She was unspeakably tired. The familiar wooziness of bad decisions made in the name of pretty men felt more like a lead weight, this time round, made worst by the physical exhaustion. Both Rose and Shadowheart had waited up for Lae’zel’s return - via an Astral portal, with not a lick of blood on her, which was unfortunate, because the look on her friend’s face suggested she strongly wished to stab something. The silence between Shadowheart and Rosalie had been tense, both due to their anxiety for Lae’zel’s welfare, and the unspoken conversation that needed to happen between them, that neither of them had the energy to broach.
Though of course, once Lae’zel had returned, tact went out of the window.
“If these deaths were the Ascendant’s attempt at a proposal, then its outright rejection will likely vex him,” she said to Rose. “We should begin fortifying our defences. I expect he will send the spawn, first, while he tends to his own wounded ego.”
“Sounds good,” Rosalie had said, while Shadowheart’s eyes burned into the side of her forehead, clearly willing her to say whatever was expected of her, in that moment.
But what, exactly, was there to say?
…Hurray, I love this constant fight, and I can’t wait to murder the man I love.
And if not that, then... Don’t kill him? Don’t stop him?
That was what the Ascendent wanted.
He thinks he did it because he loves me. He did it because he thinks he loves me.
Fantastic. All the more reason to put him in the ground, then.
...Can we wait?
Wait until… what, exactly? Until Rosalie could make some more foolish decisions, and more people could get hurt - until she was forced to admit she truly had no other choice?
Everything felt so fucking stupid to say out loud, so Rose simply didn't say anything. And then things had gone quiet, and they’d all given up on each other, gone to bed.
Rose hadn’t slept, just stared up at the ceiling for a few hours. Her shoulder began to burn, as the healing properties of the Vampire Ascendent’s saliva began to kick in, and took care of the wound he’d carved into her.
The itchiness was familiar. She remembered the way it had been in the latter days of their adventure, in the camp outside Baldur’s Gate. When Astarion would feed from her, but then he’d stay, afterwards. He would let her lay down next to him and rest her head in the curve his arm, while he played with her hair. Rose couldn’t remember what she'd even talked about, then, only that most of it was tongue-tied nonsense designed to fill the silence. Both of them were so new and unpractised at whatever it was they were doing, that most talks they'd had were the conversational equivalent of barking your shins on the furniture. Clumsy, but strangely like home.
She’d always tried to stay awake as long as possible, wanting those moments of quiet to last before the morning came, or another midnight travesty descended. And she’d always failed, slumping against him and inevitably drooling on his shirt before the itchiness fully set in.
Now, it hurt enough that she wanted to rip every stitch free.
Eventually, exhaustion won out… but then everything started mixing together into a poisonous sludge in her mind. Those late days, the tentatively hopeful ones, interspersed with the visceral aftershocks of what had happened tonight. Rose replayed the scenes from the study in her head. The feeling of his hands on her. She tried to separate what she’d felt from what she’d wanted - the plan she’d had, from the reality that confronted her.
And even if it had felt good, all for a second... again, what did it matter? It had become immediately tainted, afterwards. Regardless of what she might have wanted, her body had been violated, and that made every desire feel foolish. The Vampire Ascendent had a single-handed talent for turning everything ugly, most of all Rosalie herself.
Her sleep ended fitful, and Rose didn’t like the version of herself she saw in her dreams.
The next morning she was exhausted, shoulder stiff and bandages dried to a crust with clear liquid that had seeped from the wound. But they had twenty-four hours while the Vampire Ascendent was apparently on a whole other plane of existence... 'recuperating' himself, and it would’ve been foolish to waste that time. Rosalie had doused herself in Nondetection and Seeming, and set out for the next obvious step in their plan of attack - passage to Cania, negotiated for with Helsik.
Only Helsik wasn’t in the Gate, anymore.
“But… we got rid of her,” Karlach said, over a bowl of hot food in the Elfsong.
As soon as they knew the Hells were involved, Shadowheart had contacted Karlach again, and she had replied immediately, in practically one of her new heartbeats, asking to meet. It was perhaps foolish to venture outside the grounds of Shar’s former home, but it was a midday meal, and the only vampire capable of walking in daylight was currently out of commission. Once the sun dipped below the horizon, everyone would have to be on high alert again, awaiting Astarion’s retribution.
More than anything, Rose had wanted to be anywhere other than that empty, hollow building, alone with her own thoughts. All of them had been placed under one of Shadowheart’s guises, and travelled to meet Karlach in a place loud enough that it drowned out everything, including their own talk.
Karlach looked much the same as she always had - hair shorn in the same fashion, only with more deliberate intent these days, and she did have some greys but honestly? She was rocking it. A few extra piercings looped through each ear, and, of course, the engagement band on her left hand. They had all been forged by her girlfriend, who was Karlach and Wyll’s quartermaster at the Blade(s) of Avernus guildhall, though sometimes she also used that hammer on skulls. It had made an awful lot of sense to Rose when she first saw the two of them together - forgemasters seemed to be Karlach’s type. She’d always been convinced something was going on between her and Dammon.
The only thing that was truly different about her old friend, was the layers of clothing she wore. The first time Rosalie had seen Karlach in a coat, a full winter coat, she’d done a double take. The fire in Karlach's eyes and under her skin had dulled with the return of her mortal heart, irises still as gold as Counting House coins but without the churning flame underneath. The valves in her shoulder and arm had begun to heal over, without the immense heat of the infernal engine keeping the punctures fresh.
“That was one of the first things Wyll and I did, when we got back from Avernus,” Karlach said, frowning. “Didn’t kill her or anything. But it felt a bit weird, claiming you’re going to free the Sword Coast from Infernal influence, then leaving the back door to your biggest city wide fucking open.”
“Did Helsik do something wrong?” Rosalie asked. Treating with Mammon’s avatar had been an awkward, but overall thoroughly pleasant necessity, when they’d been breaking into the House of Hope. At that point in their journey, surrounded by a soup of motivations, it had been really nice to just... pay someone. To do something.
“Yes, and no,” Karlach replied. “In comparison to most devils and their ilk, Helsik was fine - she was no Zariel, by any means. But the love of wealth extended beyond coin…. or well, different kinds of coins. What I’m trying to say is, she was definitely in the soul trade. And some of the items she was procuring for people were Crown of Karsus levels of nasty, and way more obvious about it. We found out she was about to pull off a big arms deal with some nasty folks… it felt like the kind of murky territory it was just better to clean.”
“So you… what?”
“We destroyed her contract with Mammon,” Karlach said. “Seems like they were quite the cordial business partners, but we did it without telling either of ‘em. Could’ve just gone right back to the way things were, but obviously, the King of Coin wasn’t about to start a new contract without renegotiating the details, knowing how good Helsik was at her job. Much better than she’d pretended to be, the first time round. Not when he’s chuffing made of greed. And whatever he asked for, it was little more soul-damning than before, so Helsik just… scarpered.”
“How? How did you find her contract?”
“Well…” started Karlach, and then her face became stormy. Rosalie knew the answer before it even left her mouth: “Astarion came to us. Said he had his ear to the ground, and that he'd been given some intel. He told us where it was.”
“Of course he did,” Rose said glumly, though her voice held no heat.
“It was the proper early days,” Karlach said, almost defensive - but of herself, or of him, Rose couldn’t tell. “He said he wanted to, you know… help. That he was the Underworld guy, that that was his thing now, and he wanted to start off his working relationship with the Blades of Avernus in good faith.”
“Instead, he used you to get rid of his competition," Shadowheart said.
“Not his competition, his weakest point,” sighed Rose. “Anyone could’ve asked to try and nick that coffin, once they knew it was, for all intents and purposes, a Hellish artefact.”
“Or perhaps that was Mephistopheles’ price for the real estate?” Shadowheart hummed. “Undercutting his rival’s presence on the material plane?”
“Maybe that was already in the deal,” Rosalie pointed out - though her translations of the Black Mass had mentioned nothing about Cania, beyond the extensive and effusive paragraphs praising Mephistopheles’ name and generosity, as the bearer of the contract.
“Well, it wasn’t out of nowhere - we were already looking into Helsik, at that point. He’d heard us talk about her. He didn’t hold our hand the whole way.” Karlach gave Rosalie a guilty glance, “again, that was the early days, you understand. We thought if we invited him to the pub once in a while he wouldn’t be all, you know… Ascendent-y. We thought maybe that empty house was getting to him a bit.”
“Not empty, anymore,” Rose said blandly.
“Oh, yeah,” Karlach said unenthusiastically, scratching her neck. “He brought that Hemlock girl once. Great tits, terrible personality. That was when things started to get a bit… y’know.”
Rosalie tried to imagine the Vampire Ascendent, his pet mage he’d apparently slept with, Wyll, and Karlach all trying to awkwardly make conversation in the same room. Gods, it was enough to make someone want to move to an isolated island all over again.
“So, we doing it then?” Karlach asked, face sad and voice resigned, “we putting him in the ground?”
“...He killed all those people,” Rose said quietly.
For me, she heard echo unspoken around the table, and the guilt radiated out of her body like a beacon.
“He tried to turn Rose last night, without her consent,” Shadowheart interjected icily.
Had he? Rose wanted to open her mouth to ask. She’d always imagined that if he ever succeeded in transforming her into a spawn, the gesture wouldn’t have been crude, even if the truth underlying it was. But maybe the desire to dress things up had fallen away, in time.
That question also felt stupid, and so never left her tongue.
“Damn. So, he’s a dead man, then. And he’s making us go to Hell, all for the privilege of killing him,” Karlach said, shaking her head. “Gods fucking dammit. What’s he doing bedding down with the Cold Lord, of all people? Cania is a frigid, lifeless place - you might as well be dead all over again. I swear that ritual fried his fucking brain.”
“I could always split open his skull, and check,” Lae’zel offered from her corner of the table, examining the bottom of her glass.
The talk turned to strategy, as they started to wonder what other avenues were available for a ticket to the Eighth Hell. They had Helsik’s book that gave passage to the House of Hope, but that was only the route to that specific house, in Avernus. They could travel on from Hope’s, but that relied on successfully descending through seven other hell dimensions. Not exactly a picnic. They could extrapolate out Helsik’s ritual and try tailoring it to a new location, but that trial and error could take time.
Rosalie had access to plane-shifting apparatus at The Watchful Order - that’s how she’d made it to Avernus, the first time round. But that took paperwork (usually, if one hadn’t… snuck in… with a reckless apathy towards self-preservation that only depression could bring), and somehow I need to kill my ex-boyfriend didn’t sit too well on the form, in her imagination.
“Hells, we could always sneak in again,” Rosalie sighed. Having a second break-in on her record might cancel out the dragon slaying, but it wasn’t like she needed the Order anymore, in order to remain an archmage.
“Let’s try not to get you fired, shall we?” Shadowheart said sharply, as if reading her thoughts. “After all, we can’t just shift to anywhere in Cania - that’s a surefire way to die of frostbite before we ever reach his doorstep. We need to try and move using the same kind of specificity Helsik gave us. If we kill him then we spend two weeks trekking through a wasteland, even without dying, well, then, he’s just alive again, isn’t he?”
“Rolan?” Karlach asked, just throwing out wizard names. “Gale? Gale will have a bunch of contacts. And this is something he can do without y’know, being here. I feel bad leaving him out. It’s like when he always used to stay behind at camp all the time.”
“Gale has a copy of Helsik’s travel guide,” Rosalie agreed, “and it has all of my annotations already, so the Infernal translation is covered. It’s not a bad thing to ask him to research, although maybe we don’t… you know. Tell him why? Just yet.”
“...Why not?”
“Because I need him in Waterdeep, looking after his kids… and. Well. My cat.”
Karlach accepted this with a shrug - she was Gale’s kids, and Ser Verity’s, biggest fan. “What other options do we have, for a quick hop to the ol’ Hell plane?”
“Astarion will have a portal,” Rosalie felt the need to point out. “A direct one. He made it to his coffin in the same amount of time it took us to travel down the road. That means it’s probably hidden somewhere in the house, if I were to hazard a guess.”
Shadowheart looked steely, the way she had been every time Astarion’s name had been mentioned that day. But she couldn’t argue. Kill him, raid the mansion, and then bamf through to kill him again - that was clearly the most obvious way to get exactly where they needed to go.
“We did not find passage to the basement or dungeon system anywhere on the ground or first floor,” Lae’zel said. “The previous elevator that Cazador installed has gone. I assume to be replaced by a secret passage, if the rest of the decor is any indication of Astarion’s new taste in cliche. But we could not find it in the time we had to search.”
“You searched the mansion?” Rosalie said, surprised. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”
Both Shadowheart and Lae’zel gave her a flat look.
“Of course we searched the house,” Lae’zel replied. “You had him in the garden. He was clearly distracted.”
“We didn’t tell you, because then you wouldn’t have to lie about it,” Shadowheart explained. “But unfortunately, we didn’t find anything useful. Apart from the fact that the bastard had traps set up, literally everywhere. Just for the occasion, I assume. Unless he navigates through his house daily, via some very specific routes.”
“Probably just adding insult to injury,” Rosalie said. Because he knows he was the only one in our party who could ever disarm them.
“...Have you ever tried just stepping over a tripwire, Foxglove?”
“Why thank you, Astarion. Groundbreaking observation, as always. But I’m in skirts today, and if I don’t point these things out to you, how will you continue to enjoy feeling useful?”
“So you just like making me work for it, do you? What a cruel mistress you are.”
Rose kept finding herself looking listlessly out of the window, even though it was only mid-afternoon, and darkness was still far away. At one point, Shadowheart and Lae’zel got up to order another round of watered down ale, and Karlach caught Rose’s eye just as she was dragging her gaze away from the street outside.
“So, you killed him, then,” her friend said. Rosalie jumped, and Karlach gave her usual lopsided grin, trying to look reassuring. “I don’t blame you: can’t say I haven’t wanted to slap that smile off his face once or twice, in the last decade. Did it feel good?”
Rosalie felt her chest collapse in on itself, then let the resulting emptiness overpower the pain.
“It didn’t feel much like anything, to be honest,” she said, aloud.
“Well. Damn,” Karlach said. “Shit.”
Rose smiled despite herself, at Karlach’s usual eloquence. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, it’s just... if it felt good, then I’d clap you on the shoulder, and offer to take you shopping, for some really big sharp things,” Karlach said. “And if it… if it felt bad, then I had a bunch of things I wanted to say. But if it didn’t feel like anything… then, well. Fuck me.”
“What would you say….” Rose asked, “...if it had felt bad?”
Karlach gave her a long look, jaw locking in determination.
"Well, soldier," she said. "Then I'd probably tell you, that it's not your fault it has to be done."
Rosalie blinked. She'd expected an 'I'll do for you’ - that was Karlach’s usual flavour of pep talk, when violence was involved.
"I know you didn't stay, cause you couldn't," Karlach said. "And no one blames you for that, except you, yourself. So you're probably sat there thinking 'I could've tried harder. He wouldn’t be like that, if I hadn’t left’."
Rosalie fidgeted awkwardly in her seat, trying to make herself smaller. Karlach wasn’t exactly wrong.
"But… I did stay," Karlach continued, "I did try. And it didn’t fucking work.”
“...Oh.”
Karlach leaned over the table, gripping her cup with two hands, tension in her shoulders.
“Do you know the first thing he said to me, after we dragged ourselves out of Avernus, tooth and nail?" she confided, shaking her head heavily. "He said: 'did she dump you for having a heart now, too?’”
Rose flinched.
"Me, three days out of Avernus - after all we’d been through to get there, to get that heart. Hells, after what you’d done for me?… I could've fucking punched him," Karlach sighed. “What a fucking wanker.”
“But instead I thought, 'hey, you know, I get it. Break ups are hard. There's obviously some anger there, and you've had no one to express it to. Maybe it’s ok you built a house instead of coming to help, despite being literally invulnerable’. So I talked to Wyll, and we started inviting him to things. We checked in on him, we offered to let him join us on missions - though he never came. We tried to make him feel... included.”
Karlach ran her fingers through her hair, “I invited him to my birthday party - can you imagine that man, the way he is now, with a bunch of my friends, at my birthday? My first proper party, in fucking years, never mind my first birthday since I was freed from Avernus for good? Astarion was… horrible. Angry. Prowling like an animal. All but spitting on everyone else there, just for the sin of being people, you know, with flaws, and with their mistakes and their lives. Someone said something silly, and he charmed them, right there in front of me. Asked them to admit they were an idiot. He only stopped because I asked him to, and I saw it - the moment in his eyes, when he remembered I was a person he was supposed to care about. It took him longer than it should. And it was like he didn’t even consider the rest of them to be real people, just extensions of me.”
“But… we kept trying. We made things smaller, so it was just us, like the good old days. But… he just got worse. Crueller. At first, he only hurt himself, hosting those big grand parties with every vice under the sun, that he clearly hated, and fucking everything that moved, just to prove he could. And then when, surprise! That didn’t make him any less fucking miserable! He just started lashing out at us. Made us meet him at the Caress. Told us all the terrible things he was doing, just so they had an audience beyond himself. The things he used to say to Wyll…”
Karlach’s hand tightened on her cup. If she had still been Zariel’s machine, Rose could tell this corner of the tavern would be smelling of smoke.
“Just these horrible, vile spiels, practically cackling away like a villain from a bad book - only you know Wyll took them all seriously. About how heroism was pointless. About how there are no good people, no selfless people - that Wyll was only in it for the money and glory, deep down. That it was all about his dad, and how he’d make Archduke one day and he’d turn out just like every other official this city’s ever known, and sell out for the right price. That he’d acted like the bargain with Mizora was a hardship and a burden, but really his choices for making it were selfish - that he’d enjoyed every minute of the power and the fantasy, until other people had been there to cast judgement. I’m not even saying it right, but it was… awful. It was like he wanted to hurt him, push him, to see just how far it would go before he left as well. Sometimes, it was like he wasn’t even talking to Wyll, it was like-”
“Like he was talking to me. The closest thing he had, to me,” Rosalie finished for her. It felt self-centred and self-obsessed to say, but she knew it must be the truth. If the first thing Astarion said, upon seeing Karlach whole and no longer damned, had also been about her, then-
“Maybe,” Karlach said, with a face that said ‘yes’. “I don’t think he ever tried it with me, because, you know, I’ve seen shit. I can give Astarion a run for his money, on the whole ‘seeing shit’ thing. But it was like he thought Wyll had this perfect life, you know: out of his contract, reunited with his family, doing what he loves until he grows old, surrounded by loved ones - as if he hadn’t gone to Avernus and earned that shit, tenfold.”
But Wyll was someone I fought for, Rosalie thought wretchedly. She’d help free him from Mizora, once and for all. She hadn’t just… stood by and watched, with Wyll.
And fuck Astarion, for ever treating Wyll that way - like he was a prop in someone else's narrative, or a wall to simply yell at. But it was because of her.
“Eventually, we sat him down,” Karlach continued on, oblivious, and Rose wondered if her Seeming guise was strong enough that it hid all the horror she was feeling, alongside everything else. “And we were just like: listen, you rich, miserable wanker. We let you do that ritual, we let you kill people and you bring them back as spawn, but what the fuck are we doing it for? You clearly hate it, so why don’t you just stop? Why don’t you do something with your grand, expensive immortal life, like join us and start killing things for a purpose again, instead of rotting away in that house of yours? If you keep taking it out on us, well. My skin might be thick enough to dent a blade, but I’m not interested in being abused for a hobby.”
“...What did Astarion say?”
“I’ll never forget it," Karlach replied. "He started with his usual rant, you know. About how he could be so much worse, if he wanted to be, how we should be grateful. And then, well, I said, ‘sounds mightily familiar to the bullshit a bunch of other people used to feed us, if you get my meaning’- sounded like something right out of Gortash’s playbook, or the Emperor’s, or Cazador’s.”
Karlach sighed. “And so Astarion looked us both, dead in the eye. And he told me that he wasn't anyone else: that this was what he was, and he wasn’t ever going to be ashamed of it. That this was what Ascendency looked like. That he wasn’t going to be some project we could work on, or some grief that we could excise, and that if we didn’t like it, we could leave.”
Rosalie remembered how he’d delivered the exact same ultimatum, last night, like a dare. And how she… hadn’t left. How she’d stayed.
....Had that surprised him?
“So… we took his offer at face value, and we left!” Karlach said, shrugging. “I don’t know what else that bastard expected. It’s not like we could fight him on it - he’s too powerful. He probably would’ve relished the opportunity to kill us both, too. But unlike him, I’ve got shit to fucking live for. We gave him his choice, and he made it. He gave us ours, and so did we.”
“Was he angry?”
“Honestly? No. Not even a flinch, never mind a tantrum, or a broken glass. He just nodded, and waved us out, like it was the outcome he’d been waiting for, all along,” Karlach sighed again. “Rose, I’ve thought about that night so many times since and… I’m really not sure what we could’ve done differently. And sometimes, I think Astarion was right. That ritual did exactly what it said on the tin. All that time we tried to help him, he wasn’t being anything other than what he was. We were the ones trying to make it mean something, creating this story in our heads about how there was something else that could still be salvaged, deep down. He didn’t want an intervention, or a purpose. He didn’t want to change. He just wanted to see how much we’d compromise ourselves, to stick around with him. The only people who were hurting was us.”
Rosalie looked down at her hands, heart sinking. She tried to imagine the Vampire Ascendent being sad over losing his last two friends. But more than anything, she was scared that Karlach was right and he wouldn’t have cared at all.
Even then, all she could see in her mind’s eye was the Astarion of before - the one who had hurt people, yes, all to see if they considered him worth the pain. Was he just doing that, all over again? Or was it just a punishment, for the mess they'd made of him?
“Maybe we let him do the ritual,” Karlach said, reaching out and placing her hand on Rosalie’s arm, breaking her out of the reverie. “That’s on us. But he’s the one who chose to… lean in. Could be, the Black Mass had a big ‘I must be a massive dick to everyone’ clause built in. But I’ll be honest, by the end, he seemed to realllly enjoy having the excuse.”
“It’s not like he can fight it,” Rose found herself saying, the words leaving her mouth before she had the time to process them. “If he’s evil and soulless now, it’s not like he’s capable of change. Maybe it's unfair to even ask it of him.”
Karlach gave her a long, steady look.
“...All the more reason to end it for good, then, don’t you think?”
They both took a moment of silence, as Rosalie realised that what she had meant to say in condemnation had come out as a defence. She shuddered once, and then she nodded.
“I’m not so sure that the old Astarion would… want this fuck to stick around, either,” Karlach told her, gently. “If he’d known that’s what the ritual would make him, do you think he’d do it a second time?”
Rose considered flipping the table.
“You’re right,” she said, aloud. “It just needs to end.”
Because Karlach was right, wasn’t she? It wasn’t like they had any other choice.
Astarion’s words from the night before echoed through her: The only person who can restrain my power is me, and if I do it at all, it will be for your sake. So why not stay with me, and make sure I do everything you want me to?
The memory jolted through Rose like electricity.
Because it wasn’t the only choice, was it? She’d known it from the very beginning: there was a version of this life where she had given herself away, as well. It had been unthinkable, and the reason she had run in the first place: she could not martyr herself for a monster, and hope enough of her remained afterwards to protect them both. Rose had recognised that for what it was: a delusion, a losing game. She’d known she needed to keep herself alive, so that when this day came, there was someone still willing to fight him.
But what if, in making that choice, in being selfish, on some fundamental level, she had condemned Astarion to his worst self?
I should’ve stayed, she thought.
Then tampered down that thought, with extreme fucking violence. If she’d stayed, she’d be dead - either walking around as a corpse puppet in some undoubtedly tight clothing, or actually fully in the ground. Only a fool would trust a promise from the Vampire Ascendent’s mouth: especially when a bargain with him was now a bargain with the Hells.
“Maybe… he’s beyond saving,” Rosalie continued aloud.
But she didn’t need Astarion here with her, to tell her that felt like a lie, in her mouth.
Karlach tightened her grip on her arm, as if she too could sense something was off in her words.
"Soldier,” she said, “I don’t think this Astarion wants to be saved. Not in the slightest.”
Rosalie thought back to the litany he’d said into her skin, begging her to make the world better for him. She couldn’t speak. If she tried to speak, she’d just scream.
“I’m not saying it’s not going to be hurt, love, but if we kill him, he’s the one that’s made us do it,” Karlach said, adamantly. “He’s holding the knife to his own throat. And if he hurt you…”
And Rosalie thought back to fangs at her throat, to a body unyielding against her, to the first bitemark to ever scar her permanently.
“...Well,” Karlach said mournfully, “then I’d say there’s no hope left, at all.”
Notes:
I'm not going to lie lads, this is where picking Mephistopheles Tiefling two and a bit years ago, all so that my silly little OC can be all pretty pinks and purples, really starts to pay dividends.
Apologies for the delay in posting! I went on holiday, and came back sick :)))))) I've been ill all weekend, which was an utter bitch - but have enjoyed reading all your comments, even if I didn't have the brainpower to reply to them just yet. Thank you for reading, and for continuing to support me and this fic! (sorry we're still in the 'angst' portion of this 'angst with a happy ending').
Thank you to riskpig for another amazing fanart, this time of Chapter Seven (my beloved). I also did a little Pieces doodle here for Halloween, to distract myself from feeling wretched.
And hello Rachel and CJ, if you're reading this! You get a shout out in a chapter about Karlach!! Nothing else in this chapter, nothing at all whatsoever, to make knowing my IRL friends are reading it awkward. Not in the slightest :)))))
(jk, I'm so happy you're here x)
Edit 01-11-23: Ascended!Astarion's latest crime - he ruined Karlach's birthday party. The Council of Commenters have spoken. The sentence: immediate death.
Edit 02-11-23: Schrodingers Hell Coffin... is Astarion crying or wanking or having a panic attack in there? I ask you, reader, can it not be all three?
Chapter Notes
- Rose, in Chapter Three: "I'm just here to see Rolan about some important planeshifting I need to do - he's going to lend me the component, and then I'll be out of here."
Astarion, who's coffin and entire immortal livelihood reside in the Hells: "....oh, thank fuck, you're LYING!"- Look, D&D purists: I know. I know scrying shouldn't work across planes. Do you know how mad I was, once I realised where I needed to put this fucking coffin? I was like "oh no! My sexy scrying heist! For flimsy plot purposes! I'll have to get rid of it!" But I wrote a version of this chapter where the coffin was on the material plane, and I wrote a chapter where the scrying doesn't work at all, so they have to do other detective work. And it was boring. So then, I decided I'm god's specialist princess, and I make the rules here. I figured, with an altering component, scyring can work across planes if I say it does. I am so sorry. Smite me down rn. I have gone against a spell text, for the hell(s) of it.
- God bless her. Rose gets one clutch arcana check to make up for every failed insight roll so far. High int low wis, baby!
- Cania is the 8th Level of Hell in D&D lore, and Mephistopheles' domain. It's basically just a massive, empty land of ice. We will learn more about it, going forward :-)
- I want Karlach and Wyll to date as much as the next person who sent them to Avernus together, but in this timeline they got murdered if Astarion ever saw them happy. So platonic business partners it is! (they definitely hooked up in Avernus before Rose got there, and then it was hard to have a romance blossom with your heartbroken friend thirdwheeling the whole time. But they're both happy anyway! It's fine!)
- To anyone who thinks its flimsy to have me relegate Gale for catsitting duty, fine, maybe it is, a little. To anyone who isn't judging me - you have cats, don't you? You know how fucking difficult it is to find a reliable catsitter. You understand.
- Because people have been guessing in the comments, and a few people came close, rejected locations for Astarion's coffin when outlining this fic included: A country estate, where a lot of the things now in the hedgemaze originally resided. Auntie Ethel's cave. The crypt where you meet Withers, which was Rose and Astarion's first mission together (this was scrapped when I finished the game finally, lmao). Mol's hideout. The house, next door to Rosalie's parents' in her hometown, which was its location for a long time, for maximum creep factor. Then I realised something about a major plot point, as was like, "oh no. It's in the Hells. It's in Rosalie's portion of the Hells. I've just made this ten times more complicated for myself."
- This was my first time writing Karlach properly, so it was a lot of stress trying to get her voice right! I hope I came close! :)
Chapter 9: Chapter Nine
Notes:
There is a small content warning for this chapter but it's also a spoiler, so I've put it as the final line in the endnote! Otherwise, as before, be mindful of the tags and please take care of yourselves x
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
They each took watches that night, fearing recriminations as Astarion emerged from his bolthole and returned to the material plane.
But nothing came, and all the watches succeeded in doing was leave them all tired, spread thin in a way that could only be loosely glossed over by the nostalgic familiarity of the olden days. In the dark silence of the early morning, Rosalie tried to read one of her romance novels. But even she could admit it really wasn’t the time or place, and ended up mostly staring at the wall.
When she couldn’t get to sleep again - felt herself doing Astarion’s work for him, anxiety running her ragged and sapping her of strength - she figured no attack would come that night. It was now a cat and mouse game, she supposed: this was what it felt like, to be toyed with.
The next day, it was time to check in with Rolan. The next batch of charm protection was ready, in a time frame that made Rose want to heavily tip his alchemist.
They met in a secondary location, for fear that Ramazith was potentially watched. She settled for a nice café outside the city limits in Rivington, built in the new district that had been set up by the refugees who’d chosen to settle and expand the village’s borders.
“Thank you for this, seriously,” she said, dressed up in Non-Detection and Seeming as a pretty young elven woman in her twenties, mostly just so things wouldn’t be awkward for Rolan and whatever crush she had to admit he was harbouring. She counted the potion bottles - twenty! Twenty of them! In a week! - and then began depositing them in her bag.
“I can get my bank to transfer you all the money within the day. Just like I did for that staircase. I’ll be sure to add a bonus for the overwork. I can’t thank you enough.”
Rolan was looking very absorbed in his coffee cup, and the woodgrain of the table, ears going redder by the second. He looked like he just might combust, if he wasn’t careful. It was enough to make Rose want to reach out and pat his hand reassuringly - they were just having a conversation! - but she didn’t need Shadowheart at the table as well, to tell her that would only make things worse.
“Don’t be silly, Rose,” he said. His voice took on that slightly more pompous tone he got, when he was feeling awkward. “As I’ll repeat, every single time: I wouldn’t have Ramazith, nor my own family, were it not for you. This is merely one small step, in repaying a lifetime’s worth of debt.”
“Right, but… I literally showed up on your doorstep unannounced, then destroyed your property, in under twenty minutes,” Rose felt compelled to point out, “then, you still did all of this for me. I’m definitely paying you.”
“I, um, had a thought about that, actually,” Rolan managed to force out through his anxiety.
“...About my paying you?” Rose said, with trepidation.
Please don’t ask me on a date, she pleaded silently. That’s what Astarion would’ve done.
“Well, not as such. I had a thought about your… um… problem,” Rolan said, looking at her meaningfully. “The problem you need all these anti-charm protections for. The problem who was the one who actually showed up on my doorstep, unwelcome and unannounced, not making use of a blanket invitation I extended to them years ago. And who actually destroyed the staircase-”
“-No, that was definitely still me, and probably overkill.”
“You’re planning to take on the Vampire Ascendent, aren’t you?” Rolan prompted. “That’s what you need those potions for. You plan to kill Astarion, somehow. Because of that ‘orgy of violence’ business that was in the paper.”
Rose remembered Astarion strolling across Ramazith’s foyer with nine turrets and an arcane canon trained on him, her fingers itching to massage the bruises at her neck.
“...What gave it away?” she joked weakly, offering Rolan a half-hearted smile.
He grinned back in response. “Oh, you were a very picture of discretion as always, don’t worry. But you did clear out every anti-charm precaution I could offer, and then downed the first one in record time. Plus, him breaking into Ramazith, after ten years of paying me little to no attention, was rather unsubtle on his part.”
“...I hope your receptionist is ok.”
“I think that was her first crush on a man in years,” Rolan confided. “So naturally, I gave her the week off to recover.”
Rosalie laughed, her first true laugh in days, and then Shadowheart cut across the moment with typical efficiency. “What is your thought, then, Rolan?” she asked curtly. “On our problem. If you have one.”
“Oh! Well,” Rolan straightened to attention in his seat. “You showed up today, and that day, in disguise, but he still managed to track you. I don’t entertain that he paid Ramazith and its workings much mind, until you were inside, so I surmised that he must have known you were there instinctively. I imagine there’s some kind of insidious, vampiric aura at play, that may outstrip or outwit standard arcane practice, or cannot always be accounted for by it. The literature on the topic is often a little, well... romanticised, to the point of silliness, but vampirism does come with its own magics, so some things must be true.”
“...You could say that,” Rose replied diplomatically.
“Well, my thought was: that very few forms of detection - arcane, vampiric, or otherwise - work across planes.”
It was Rose and Shadowheart’s turn to straighten in their seats.
“Yes,” Rosalie said, “that is definitely something that I have been made aware of, of late.”
“Well, what if you had access to a demiplane? As a safe place to stay,” Rolan offered. He looked down at his hands again. “I’m sure you have a perfectly adequate safehouse, of course, I would never presume - but I did a quick Detect Magic, when you entered, and it’s as I suspected. You’re having to take multiple safety measures to evade detection. It must be eating up your magic, not to mention your spell components, and I can’t imagine it’s very… you know… pleasant. Or relaxing.”
“Rolan… do you have access to a demiplane?”
“Well, you see, I could have access to a demiplane,” Rolan said, blushing all over again. “A friend of mine has an extradimensional mansion, that he’s willing to lease out to me at a discounted rate. It is a pocket dimension, and only designated occupants can enter - I don’t mean in a ‘vampiric invitation’ way, either, as I know he can bypass those these days. He wouldn’t even be able to find the entrance. I can get the components for its formation by the end of the day, and travel back with them on the morrow, should you wish it. So long as you were there, you should be protected from all arcane surveillance, and, I would sincerely hope, whatever all that ‘song of your blood’ drivel was all about.”
It was Rosalie’s turn to blush, in the knowledge that that conversation had been overheard. She hoped her elf face wasn’t doing the same.
“You’re just… giving us a house,” Shadowheart drawled. Rose didn’t need to glance her way to know she was side-eying Rose heavily, as she threw the blushing back across the table like a volley in a tennis match.
“I am… offering to... rent a house,” Rolan said, clearing his throat extensively, “for a month, at a very discounted rate.”
He gave Rosalie a direct look - the kind of look that was so direct that she knew, from experience, he was probably staring directly at some point near her eyeline, like her ear, or her eyebrow, to avoid the excruciating embarrassment of actual eye contact. She used to pull that shit with Astarion all the time.
“I trust you won’t need much longer than that, Groveskeeper,” he teased, “not that I couldn’t afford a second and even a third month, if pushed: Ramazith is doing quite well for itself. But you’ve worked nothing short of miracles, in far less time.”
Groveskeeper. Rosalie hadn’t heard that name in a long time. For a second, she was thrown back to the tiefling revel, and the Emerald Grove…
And her expression must have wavered, because Rolan looked immediately apologetic, his feigned confidence failing him.
“...And I could give you the components, if you would like,” he added hastily. “Hand them straight to you. You could put the door up anywhere, so long as you gave it back once you were done. I wouldn’t need to know it’s location. There’s a room in Ramazith where my friend puts the house, when he comes to visit. So that’s… there. But you don’t have to do that. Only if you want to. So then you would have the turrets, as well. And I could bring the potions to you directly, if you need them. If you wanted.”
Shadowheart coughed, obliquely, into her hand, then made a show of examining her nails when Rose glared at her.
Rosalie turned the idea over in her mind. On the one hand, it would be a boon to cut back on the paranoia portion of her casting. A Magnificent Mansion would mean no watches, like they’d had last night. The cloisters of Shar were protected, but they were still open - it was hard to shake off how many places had the potential to be entrances.
It had made sense to stay there, because Astarion had never stepped foot into the Cloister himself. He’d been Ascended by the time she and Shadowheart had entered the House of Grief, and so he hadn’t contributed anything to the plan, and hadn’t paid either of them - or Shadowheart’s parents - much mind when they returned.
But… it didn’t mean they were safe. They were, in fact, just down the road.
And in a Magnificent Mansion, she would be safe. Unlike Astarion’s house in the Hells, a pocket dimension would be near undetectable - there were so many of them, scurried away into the niches of other planes, that it wouldn’t be the case of plinking an infernal marble into the scrying pool to get the tide to turn in your favour. It would have to be a personal artefact of this wizard friend, whoever this wizard friend was.
And on the other hand… it would be incredibly funny.
Rosalie knew this, on a visceral level. Astarion contracted with Mephistopheles, for a piece of real estate in a blighted, frozen hell - fine. She could get her own timeshare away from the material plane, and it wouldn’t even cost her her soul.
It appealed to the unique one-upmanship that blighted every wizard, to some degree.
“That honestly… sounds like a wonderful idea, Rolan,” she said, meaning it, before adding: “I leave the entrance's location to your discretion. I trust your judgement.”
And Rolan’s entire face went scarlet.
“He looooooves you,” Shadowheart crowed, as they walked back across Wyrm’s Crossing. “He bought you a house!”
“He didn’t buy me a house,” Rosalie grumbled. “I don’t need a house bought for me. I have a house. And when the time comes, I’ll make him split the bill for this one, too.”
“He’s still so awkward, but so smitten, after all these years! We should hold off on staking Astarion, until he gets to witness the proposal.”
Rose knew that Shadowheart was trying to joke, but that didn’t feel very funny, and in fact sent pain throughout her whole body… though she couldn’t exactly articulate why. Why shouldn’t Shadowheart ridicule the man who’d mauled her two nights ago? Why would she stop her?
“Rolan’s ten years younger than me, Shadowheart,” she reprimanded instead. “More than that, in fact. He was like… twenty, when we met.”
Rosalie was tired. That argument was stupid. And Shadowheart said as much, through the pointed look she gave her.
“Yes,” she drawled, “gods forbid you ever engage in a relationship with a sizeable age gap. Ten years? Practically a crime.”
“Alright, alright,” Rose said. “My love life is already taking over far too much of everyone’s lives right now. Please let’s not discuss it any further.”
Rolan would inform them tomorrow when he had returned with the components, so they had one more night in the Cloister. They returned to Shar’s temple, and started to make preparations for moving. For Rose, that just meant shoving everything back up into her carpetbag - she’d basically been living out of it anyway. Lae’zel, as always, had an armoury to dismantle and put away. Karlach herself was assembling her own supplies back at the Blades' guildhall.
For Shadowheart, things were a little more involved. This wasn’t a place she had much attachment to, any longer, but she still had to reset all the protections for closing up shop. While she was busy marking the ground and sprinkling holy water, Rose set about raiding the libraries for any last minute texts that might prove useful to them.
She’d already had a thorough search, the day they’d cleared this place out - but it had only been three days since Astarion’s Ascension at that point, so her judgement hadn’t exactly been its best. Even so, she trusted Shadowheart to have already done her own due diligence: it was more of an exercise in distraction, than anything. This was a nervous habit Rosalie had been unable to kick: whenever she was stuck in one place too long, she would look at the bookshelves, and see if Astarion’s cure could fall magically into her hands by a kind twist of fate.
It didn’t happen, of course.
The three of them reconvened, to eat cold rations for dinner in taut silence before they organised their watches. The knowledge that the period of Astarion’s recovery had now fully passed loomed over them like a shadow.
“Once we’re moved,” Shadowheart said, “we can start to plan. I’ve sent everything on to Gale, and in Ramazith, we will have access to all of Rolan’s resources as well. Makes sense to lean in, on the wizardry angle, given that we still don’t know what powers Astarion has access to these days.”
“We should try Banishment,” Rosalie said.
Shadowheart gave her a look. "No, Rose - we’re killing him. Permanently.”
“I know that,” Rose replied, flatly. “I mean, for the first step - we should at least try it. I don’t think he’s a devil, but his home is in the Hells now. If we Banish him, it might operate by the same rules, and take. Then he’s stuck there, and we’d have expended less resources than if we were trying to kill him, to get him in that coffin.”
“I don’t think it too taxing, for me to keep hitting him,” Lae’zel noted. “I have anger to spare. Unlike your magic, it is far from finite.”
“I suppose…” Shadowheart hummed, “...if we injured him physically, then Banished him, he’d likely make the decision to regroup rather than come straight back. It could work-”
Rosalie tried to imagine an Astarion bisected in two by Lae’zel’s hand. Cleaved through the chest - perhaps missing an arm. The thought… made her want to fade away from it. She couldn’t picture it without there being a disconnect, as if she couldn’t handle that ever being her reality.
A hand on one of her knees where her legs were crossed startled her. She looked up, to see Shadowheart watching her again.
“Nothing is decided yet,” her friend told her - the words reassuring, but the tone of them lukewarm, “it will take us some time to find a way to Cania. If you need a break, or if there’s anything you want us to do-”
“The longer it takes, the more people might get hurt,” Rosalie said firmly. “Better to start thinking about these things now.”
Shadowheart’s nostrils flared with frustration. She looked like she wanted to say something, but Rose stood up before she could.
Rosalie was last watch this time, so she went to the dormitory bathrooms and washed, taking time to complete her skincare routine as she stared listlessly at her tired reflection. Mage armour already up, she changed into her nightclothes. When she padded back on bare feet, Shadowheart and Lae’zel were talking to each other in hushed voices, heads bowed close together. They fell immediately silent at her approach, telling Rose that their conversation had been about her.
And in the silence, something clinged onto the floor, in a far-off, dark corner of the cloister.
The sound came from one of the House of Grief’s distant, hidden passageways, hard to place. But it was against stone, not grass, which meant it was near the dungeons, possibly even beyond the mirror Shadowheart had long ago smashed into a million pieces.
Lae’zel was on her feet first in a fluid motion, food dropped without thought to the floor as she unsheathed her silver sword.
“The wards,” Shadowheart muttered, herself pushing to standing. “Nothing went off.”
“Mage,” Rosalie reminded her tersely, and immediately stuffed all her clothes into her carpet bag, which she then touched invisible and stowed away in the hiding place she and Shadowheart had agreed upon. After all, it had the incomplete spellbook in - though Shadowheart didn’t know that, and looked confused at the fact that Rose had wasted her invisibility on an object.
Rose had a moment to really regret changing into her pyjamas, before wrapping her cloak over her shoulders for some added protection.
Shadowheart picked up her glaive, where it was resting against the wall. She didn’t use it often these days, but it immediately began glowing under her touch, radiating light out into the darkness around them, beyond the two oil lamps they’d lit for the evening.
The darkness remained empty, the daylight illuminating a few cobwebs in corners that other light sources hadn’t caught, casting long shadows from the beds and dressers.
No one said, “maybe it’s a false alarm?” Because even if it wasn’t, those words were a curse on anyone's lips. Rosalie became very aware that their positioning in the dormitories meant that they were, for all intents and purposes, caught in a dead end.
Lae’zel seemed to have the same thought, because her features sharpened, and she started making intricate signals with her hands. Rose wasn’t sure either her or Shadowheart understood what the hand gestures precisely meant, but the intent was clear even when unspoken: Move.
Shadowheart reached across to put a Death Ward on her, but Rose shook her head: she didn’t think she’d be the one getting killed first - she’d be the one made to watch. Shadowheart scrutinised her but then seemed to reach the same conclusion, for she nodded once, placing the spell silently into her own chest instead. Rose summoned her staff. With Lae’zel in front, they started to creep further towards the dormitory entrance.
The light spilling out from Shadowheart only cleared a small crescent before shadow, nurtured for years by Shar herself, claimed the space once more. Somewhere in the darkness of that wider central chamber, a shoe squeaked underfoot.
A shiver ran down Rosalie’s spine.
Found you, darling, she imagined the Ascendent saying, as she waited for him to step out from the shadows.
But instead, there was a pair of mirror-like flashes, not unlike Ser Verity when she was alighted on in the evening by a Dancing Light. Then another, and another. Then more than Rosalie could count.
Seven vampire spawn stepped out of the darkness, led by Hemlock Bartelle, who held her own staff of carved, bleached bone.
Well, come on, Rosalie thought, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. Seven spawn? That was too on the nose.
And Astarion had literally been there, in the Elfsong, when she’d laid waste to every single one of his fucking siblings. That had been literally years ago. There was symbolism, and then there was fucking insulting.
But then, those first seven started fanning out, and another seven stepped out of the darkness behind them. Then, another ten.
She recognised a few of the faces from the party, though they were all stark - beautiful, but without their makeup, rather ghoulish. They began to silently form a semi-circle around the three women, blocking all the exits - the one they had seemingly emerged from, and the Orchid Pool, and the doors leading up to the temple upstairs.
“The Vampire Ascendent has asked me to inform you,” said Hemlock, her voice carrying across the space as she pinned her gaze to Rose. “That if you come with me now, there will be no need for violence.”
“Wow,” Rose replied. “Very spooky of him.”
Unfortunately, her voice did shake.
“What a pretty way of saying your Master has sent you all here to die,” Lae’zel observed, the delivery far stronger - a deep, bass hum of threat emerging from her chest.
“Really? Well. You don’t like it when anybody dies, do you, Rosalie?” Hemlock said. Though she replied to Lae’zel, her gaze remained singularly on her.
The woman raised a slender hand to the spawn around her - it was an elegant, but minimalist, movement. “Each one of us is a person, with our own hopes, and desires - that’s what you believe, is it not? Our lives are all ones we chose, so you would not be putting any of us out of our misery. If you resort to fighting us, each death you accumulate will be on your conscience, and you will still lose. All it does is delay the inevitable, and cause you pain where we feel none.”
“Did he put those words in your mouth?!” Shadowheart demanded. “How do they taste, exactly?”
Hemlock took this vitriol with an unconcerned tilt of her chin. The rest watched in silence.
“I’m… so sorry,” Rosalie said, meaning it. “I don’t want to kill you, but I’m not going anywhere with you, either.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure a single one of us will fall,” Hemlock replied, with an icy, perfect smile. “For you will be the one pulling your punches. I can see it in your eyes already. No wonder you are so… circumspect, in your choices.”
Unlike the splendour of the night in Astarion’s home, the woman looking at her now was almost utilitarian in her presentation. Dark trousers and a dark leather chest piece, leaving her thin and slender as a reed, pale as the bone in her hand. Her dark copper hair was scraped back from her sharp lined face in a high knot, looking almost like a skull in the harsh light.
“Please spare the idle chatter, he doesn’t want her dead either,” Lae’zel argued.
“Oh? But if she just so happens to fall,” Hemlock replied blandly, cocking her head like a bird. “Then it’s easy enough to pick her back up, exactly the way he wants her. No?”
“He really just sent you here, to burn up in daylight,” Shadowheart hummed, the first of their number to take a step forward, as she summoned her Spirit Guardians and Selune’s grace beginning to churn around her in an aura of silver. “A fate he killed thousands to avoid - for he was too craven to face it, it should be noted. I really hope that stings, somewhat. Maybe it makes you at least reflect, given that you don't seem entirely stupid.”
Hemlock’s expression did not change as she looked beyond the both of them, to Rosalie once more.
“He gave me orders to tell you thrice: come with us now, and nothing unpleasant needs to happen. He makes this compromise, for your own sake.”
Rosalie looked at the woman in front of her. Indeed, Astarion was not Cazador. Unlike Cazador, he had no ritual to complete. He did not need any of these people he had turned to remain alive. So he was holding them for ransom, as his first move. And having them deliver that ultimatum, for him, from their own mouths.
“...I don’t suppose you’re at all tempted to resist your orders and lead an open rebellion against your Lord?” Rosalie tried, awkwardly. “Given that he’s treating you like shit, right out of the gate?”
“Astarion is more than a mere Lord,” Hemlock spat. The emotionless mask slipped briefly and left her looking venomous - she sounded mortally offended. “He is vampirism, perfected. He represents the very best of us. He saved me from my obscure mediocrity.”
“Right,” Rose said. “Well. It was probably all a bit too much to hope for, honestly.”
“Your ingratitude towards him displays only ignorance, and proves you to be his utter inferior,” Hemlock continued.
“Um… Shadowheart’s right. Did he script this speech and order you to recite it word-for-word, or is this your own… stuff coming to the surface?”
“One final time, for you are already boring me,” Hemlock replied. “No harm will come to you or your friends, if you leave with us now. In doing this, you will spare yourself any discomfort or heartache. You are already lucky to be offered this mercy, in light of your recent… indiscretions. Despite everything, my Master has no real wish to initiate this fight, so if you choose to ignore his words, the resulting bloodshed will be solely on your hands.”
“Is this what Astarion thinks the romance ballads are made from?” Shadowheart drawled, sounding revolted. “The exploitation of the qualities he once used to berate in a person? Maybe, if he was imitating Gale, and trying to fuck Shar-”
Rosalie placed a hand on Shadowheart’s arm to silence her, and took a deep breath.
“I would tell you all to leave, but I know you probably can’t,” she told Astarion’s spawn. “But even so, I’m not going to follow you anywhere, because I’m not stupid. That’s my answer. I’m so sorry he’s doing this to you - all of you. It’s honestly disgusting.”
Hemlock gave her a low, and unspeakably cruel smile, like the twist of a knife. “We will see how many fall, before you give in.”
Rose had no idea if that was her, or Astarion speaking through her. She supposed, it didn’t really matter. She knew exactly who had put her in this fight.
Her staff flared to light, as she summoned Arauthator.
Hemlock immediately counterspelled.
Teeth gritted with annoyance, Rosalie supposed this was fair.
And it meant Hemlock was distracted, leaving Shadowheart open. Rosalie was surprised, when her friend used that opening, to summon a Guiding Bolt. Rather than have her first move be something that affected all the spawn together, she focused all her power on Hemlock alone, and put a lot of magic behind it as well.
As Hemlock shrieked, skin sizzling and outlined in a faint glow, the rest of the spawn flew into fluid motion.
As did Lae’zel - with a cry, she surged forward, and one spawn pounced through the air only to immediately land on a greatsword through the gut. They let out a gurgle, as Lae’zel moved her blade, with them still on it. Muscles flexing, Lae’zel simply tugged it once, then yanked it out through the side of their waist. She drew the sword in a wide, shimmering crescent arc, and then hacked at the neck of the next figure to fall on her, as she kicked another assailant straight to the ground.
Shadowheart clutched her hand over the icon of Selune at her throat, her eyes fluttering shut in a moment of composed calm, even as the hoard of spawn ran at them. The aura of light already around her shivered, then pulsed once with a flood of warmth, rippling out like a wave on water. The spawn closest to her all started hissing like cats, their faces distending outside of the boundaries of their mortal appearance. They started scattering, a few flocking to the tunnels they had come from, others crawling up the walls simply to get away.
Rose tried to cast Sunbeam. Hemlock… counterspelled her, again.
“The moment you surrender," the woman shouted above the din. She was seemingly unaffected by the divinity Shadowheart had summoned, but her skin still smoked from the Guiding Bolt, cracking at the edges like veined porcelain, "is the moment we stop. Your friends will take no more blows from our hands. We only fight, to defend ourselves against you."
A spawn lunged at Lae’zel, teeth first. She caught their mouth on her gauntleted forearm, span them, and threw them like a ragdoll, directly into the halo of light surrounding Shadowheart. They started shrieking, as their skin also started to sizzle on contact.
Rose tried to cast Fireball for crowd control. Hemlock counterspelled.
When Rose cast her an alarmed glance, the woman smiled, and waggled her fingers in a condescending wave.
Then one of the spawn was on Rosalie’s left, and she had to cast Thunderwave before they got a hand on her, throwing them back and splaying them out on the ground.
Shadowheart sent a bolt of radiance at Hemlock, which she took to the chest.
Rose tried to cast Lightning Bolt. Which Hemlock counterspelled.
This time, Rosalie was so angry, that she counterspelled back. Objectively, it was a waste of magic: the spawn hadn’t arranged themselves neatly enough to justify the follow through, and Shadowheart’s spells did far more damage against the undead. The line scoured through the flagstone and the centre of the crowd, hitting Hemlock more than anybody else. The woman cried out in pain, entire body spasming as the lightning coursed through her veins. But when she came back to herself, chest heaving, all she did was grin back at Rosalie, just as wide as before.
When the next spawn came at Rose from the right, she didn’t recognise them - she realised more had entered, via the main entrance.
“I think we need to get out of here!” she yelled.
“You need to get out of here!” Shadowheart cried back, still untouched, for every single spawn who tried to enter her aura found themselves immediately flaking to ash at the edges.
Rose tried to Dimension Door. Hemlock counterspelled.
The attempt to leave had been half-hearted, so Rosalie let it happen. She didn’t want to abandon her friends.
Shadowheart gave the other woman a speculative, stony look, then adjusted her hold on her glaive, and threw it, like a javelin. It flew like a golden, burning dart, pierced Hemlock through the shoulder, and she screeched, her face entirely changing shape. With a hand that was no longer human, but blackened with elongated claws, the woman reached up, grabbing the weapon and yanking it out of herself. The parts of her body left behind, and her hands, smouldered like embers. She cast the weapon to the ground.
“Are you really going to let me die?” she demanded of Rosalie, from a scorched monster’s mouth.
And Rose hesitated.
Not because of the Vampire Ascendent’s ultimatum.
But because… Hemlock Bartelle’s knowledge died with her.
Out of the corner of her eye, Rosalie suddenly understood why Shadowheart had thrown the glaive, even as the daylight it suffused her with began to dim around her. She saw Shadowheart preparing a spell, and recognised what she was casting: Dawn. An evocation that would light up the entire room, and place all of the spawn in direct, divine sunlight.
Including Hemlock, bloodied and injured as she already was. Maybe she wouldn’t survive it.
Shadowheart was certainly looking at her like she didn’t think she would, as she finished her somatic gestures.
“...No!” Rosalie cried, the word ripping from her throat before she had a chance to process it. And then, she counterspelled, before she had the time to process that decision, either.
Time seemed to freeze. She saw Shadowheart look at her: unspeakable shock, frustration, and even betrayal written all over her face, as the spell fizzled out in her hands. Hemlock just looked thoroughly bemused for a second, glancing between the two of them with an expression that soon turned gleeful.
“What are you doing?” Shadowheart demanded, as all light in the chamber started to dim.
“I-” Rosalie started.
And then Hemlock tackled her from the left-hand side.
Spellcraft was seemingly forgotten - this was, instead, all tooth and claw. She’d moved as fast as Astarion used to, on all fours. Her strength was impossible, and as she dragged Rose down to the floor, it felt like fighting something three times her size. The chamber darkened, and for a second the only light was the smouldering of Hemlock’s own skin, as she bore Rose to the ground.
Face-to-face with her mouth full of teeth, Rose thought the woman would simply bite her. Instead, she touched her hand to Rose’s clavicle, and shouted “amo sangue!”, casting Vampiric Touch. Rose cried out in sourceless pain, and then even that lightsource was lost, as Hemlock’s wounds began to heal, leaving her only to the shadows of dark vision.
Shadowheart had to fight off three spawn just to get back to her blade. They all screeched when she picked it up again, the light spilling between the clasp of her fingers.
Rose tried to buck Hemlock off, but it was impossible. She knew she was fucked, the moment that the woman pinned one wrist, then the other, preventing her from casting with her hands. Hemlock’s shoulder, caught in Shadowheart’s light, was smoking again - but she took it, fangs gritting at the pain. The woman looked up, her face now oddly angled in a way that was ever so slightly other, her eyes dark, and her mouth sharp and glistening with saliva.
She held out her hand, and cast Hold Person.
Not on Shadowheart… but Lae’zel.
And… well, Lae’zel was fighting everyone else. As she glanced over, Rosalie saw Shadowheart's conflicted expression, as she saw Rose, pinned to the ground, but the Githyanki stuck in place, with eight bodies encircling her, and several others waiting their turn.
Rose was obviously Astarion’s target.
But everyone knew who Lae’zel had spoken her goodbyes to, the day she had left Baldur’s Gate.
Shadowheart ran straight towards her, her aura enveloping the spawn that were at Lae'zel's back, so that they immediately screeched in pain. Then, she turned, sending another Guiding Bolt at Hemlock and trying to fight the battle on both fronts at once. Rosalie watched as the radiant energy flew over both their heads, dissipating on a wall. Shadowheart let out a wordless yell of frustration, as she was forced to turn her glaive on the closest spawn assailing Lae’zel, stabbing them through the back.
Hemlock let out a snarl of victory, then wrenched Rose’s body over, two-handed. Trying to fight her manhandling only ended with Hemlock placing a hand on the back of her head, and slamming her forehead directly into the flagstone. Dazed, Rose ended on her stomach, the clawed witch on top of her. Hemlock pressed her knee against both of Rosalie’s arms, pushing them down into her lower back. The weight locked them both, and bowed Rose’s spine.
One of her taloned hands reached around and grabbed Rose’s chin, forcing her head up, and back. Hemlock craned her cracked, flaking face over her from above.
“...You’re not even that pretty,” she sneered, through her extended fangs.
For a second, Rose thought she would cast Vampiric Touch again. She still didn’t understand why the woman didn’t just bite her.
But it was a different spell that pulsed out of the hand where it pincered Rose’s jaw shut, and then, a dark fog descended.
The time that followed was experienced in sketched vignettes.
Insensate, someone picked Rose up, slung her over their shoulder like a sack of flour, and carried her from the room of clashing bodies. Rose saw two people she thought she recognised, one glowing like the sun.
But she could not call out.
At some point, she was deposited once more on her feet. They were bare: she was in her nightclothes. Rose was not sure what she was supposed to do with them.
Someone clinically moved hair away from her forehead, examining her face. They shoved a health potion in her mouth, and tipped her head back to help her drink it.
Then, Rose was walking through the sewer. There was no one in front of her, but a hand on her shoulder, pushing forward. She followed where it led.
A voice: she couldn’t understand the words. A gate was unlocked for her. Rose looked at the open space beyond dumbly, unsure, and only walked through when that guiding hand on her back pushed her onward.
Rooms of a different colour, high-ceilinged, somehow familiar. Stairs.
A house.
Rosalie looked listlessly around her. She was somehow now in a room that was lit, where the ground wasn’t dirty. She was shivering, her legs were covered in grime, and she was tired. In answer to the needs of her body, she collapsed down and sat cross-legged on the floor, wrapping her arms around herself.
Elsewhere in the room, people were shouting. The sound of their raised voices made her cringe.
Later, when the spell lifted, she would remember some of what they were saying:
“What have you done?”
A murmured response.
“How dare you!” in a snarl that reverberated across the walls.
“If I’ve failed you, you know that I’ll gladly bear the punishment, but-”
“I said that you were to bring her here, unharmed! You were to hurt the others, but not her. Never her.”
The woman with curled, taloned fingers made a gesture. “Well… she’s not injured.”
There was a crack, as the other person struck her across the face, lightning fast. Rosalie flinched at the sound.
“You are lucky the sun is set, or I would simply order you to walk yourself outside.” He told her. Then he leaned in close, hand tightened on the woman’s shoulder, and began to say something low in her ear.
Rose drifted, as he did.
She came back, when someone crouched down in her periphery and placed a gentle hand on her face, to guide her gaze to him. The room came back into focus, after it had almost disappeared entirely. The figure was dressed in an immaculate suit, that became creased and scuffed, as he knelt down in front of her.
Firelight danced across his pale face and gave warmth to his hair, as he examined her with what she thought was a mournful expression. She looked back at him muzzily. After a syrupy length of time when everything was strange, he finally came into focus as well.
Astarion.
Rose recognised him on sight. She knew his name, when she barely knew her own.
After this small period of time, lost and unmoored, warmth spread through her chest at the sight of him: relief, love, and an immediate sense of safety. He said something to her - but she couldn’t understand it, and she found she couldn’t reply. When she opened her mouth to tell him she had missed him, that she was scared, nothing came out but an aborted sound.
His face darkened to anger, but it didn’t really matter to her. It was just such a comfort to finally have an anchor.
Without remembering any reason not to, Rose leant forward, and pressed her face into his shoulder, hands still limp in her own lap. Putting all her weight against him, she buried deeper, screwed her eyes tight shut and breathed him in.
She didn’t want to experience any of the confusion of the rest of the world, not when she had this certainty.
A pause. A hand, on the back of her head, cradling her and pulling her in closer. Had he been sat as well, Rosalie would have crawled into his lap - instead, she shuffled closer on the floor, as close as she could get, and sighed gratefully, as he stroked her hair and that scary world all but fell away.
Too soon, Astarion pulled back, and held her away from him. Rose made a wordless, weak sound of protest, for she didn’t want him to go.
“I’m so sorry, love,” he murmured. His hand was on her cheek again, stroking her to soothe her through her panic.
“This was never supposed to happen,” he said, voice low and vehement. “I would never want something like this for you, do you understand? I would never have you lose yourself.”
Rosalie blinked back at him, dull and mute.
That other woman was still in the room, stood by the fireplace, watching them. Her arms were folded disdainfully, but her entire body trembled.
“Fix your mistake, now.” Astarion delivered the order curtly, in a voice that was entirely different from how he had spoken to Rose. Utterly devoid of kindness, and even of feeling, sharp as the cruellest razor. “Then take yourself to where you know you need to go.”
The woman moved forward, as if tugged on strings. When she knelt down next to them both, Rosalie instinctively shied away, shielding herself with her arms. Astarion made a soothing noise, enough to keep her in place. His arm came around her.
The woman reached up, and placed hands to Rose’s temples. She intoned some words, in a language that was different to what had come before, and just as indecipherable.
Rose began to come back to herself. Began to feel her heartbeat kick up, as she remembered how to feel fear.
“I - it would be good to subdue her,” Hemlock said, voice shaking.
The arm around her tightened. “Make it painless.”
Rosalie tried desperately to summon the Counterspell as Hemlock cast Sleep, but words still evaded her. The world fell away for real, this time, and she crashed into unconsciousness in the Vampire Ascendent’s arms.
Notes:
Oh boy guys. Is *this* the angstiest chapter of this fic??? I think it might be. This was the one where I was like "oh damn, I'm going to hell."
...I really like the next chapter? Does that help??? (Realises the last time I said that it was Chapter Seven. Nvm.)
In more light-hearted thoughts, can't believe I've accidentally created a kdrama second lead situation. Who will win: Rolan giving Tav an entire fucking house, or Astarion demonstrating one (1) sliver of a personal standard???
The next chapter will be posted probably late next week. I am going away for a work conference and probably won't have time to write/read/edit when I'm subject to the evils of its capitalist schedule. Hopefully I won't get sick this time!! :)))))) Thank you in advance for your patience xx
Thank you so much for all your comments and 1000!!! KUDOS!!!??????? wut. Also thank you to riskpig for two more fanarts, one commemorating Schrodingers Coffin 😌😌
Edit 13-11-23: AND NOW A FANART FOR THIS CHAPTER, WHICH FUCKS!!!
Chapter Notes
- Magnificent Mansion is a very, very fun spell, that I was always planning to use. I just made it worse by now having Rolan be the one who can facilitate it :')
- In D&D, Banishment works a little differently from BG3! If the monster belongs to another plane (e.g. fey, devil, angel etc), they get banished to their home plane and if you concentrate on it for the full minute then they just stay there - which is the theory Rose is positing!
- Yes, it's very silly of Rosalie to not be wearing any armour, but half of the appeal of spellcaster classes is that they can functionally wear whatever the fuck they want. Never going to get an AC above 16, might as well be comfy and/or hot about it.
- I realise that I just keep saying shit like "Rose summoned her staff" - this spell is Wristpocket, it's like a cute little pocket dimension cantrip that basically makes you like a videogame character and you don't have to carry items on you.
- Not me, adding a 'graphic depictions of violence' and 'canon typical violence' tags just so Lae'zel can be hot as FUCK.
- Dawn is a cleric spell that is clutch in vampire campaigns. Do you know how mad I was that Shadowheart didn't get Sunbeam?? If she doesn't have Dawn, Shadowheart should have Sunbeam!!!
- Me, writing Party Favours: I want an ex-girlfriend who isn't an evil caricature, just a fallible person with flaws. I want her to suck, but I don't want her to be a villain.
Me, writing Hemlock suplexing Rose with her bare hands: I SUPPORT WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND WOMEN'S WRONGS!
- The spell Hemlock casts on Rosalie is Feeblemind, which is a Nasty Fucking Spell, and I got peer review go-ahead from multiple people to use it :-) I've linked to the spell text, but for the purposes of fic writing and this story specifically, *I* think the most important line is: 'the creature can, however, identify its friends, follow them, and even protect them.'
CW: use of a D&D spell that has some similarities to being roofied. No harm comes to the character while they are under that spell, it is simply used to incapacitate them in combat. D&D spells!!! are fucked up!!! you guys!!!
Chapter 10: Chapter Ten
Notes:
Two content warnings for this chapter! You know the drill, in bold at the bottom of the endnotes, with much love ;)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Rosalie awoke to sunlight.
Her eyelid peeled open, a sticky fraction, to squint. For a small moment, she was in Alaron, and it was a night she had simply forgotten to close her own curtains. Whatever she was sleeping on certainly felt as plush and luxurious as her own bed, her face burrowed into a pillow of perfect softness.
It was just so nice to be back: the Cloisters of Shar had been unremittingly dark.
At that thought - realising where she should be - Rosalie jolted up on her elbows.
The mire of sleep that clung to her still made her panic - but if she could panic, her faculties were returned to her, and she was no longer Feebleminded. She had never been Feebleminded before, so she took a few breaths to process this, shaking, before she began to move onto other things.
She was in a bedroom: decidedly not her own. It was a high-ceilinged, ivory room with huge, towering bay windows. The curtains were pulled back to let in a spill of brilliant sunshine, that pooled like quicksilver across the varnished wooden floor. Its silhouette left a grid pattern on the foot of the fourposter bed she found herself in, covering the comforter in squares of light.
The comforter was berry pink, while her sheets at home were deep indigo.
Rose sat bolt upright in the twist of the covers, knowing exactly where she must be, and fearing who might be in the room with her.
But when she hastily scanned the room, it was empty, save for her. The other side of the very big bed was untouched: the sheets still tucked in, creaseless and clean as a fresh envelope. She was in the same nightclothes as yesterday, although they had been seemingly prestidigitated of any signs of the fight in which she had fallen.
She did, however, have a pair of silver, featherlight bracelets attached to each wrist. Though they barely weighed anything, just looking at them set Rosalie’s teeth on edge, and not just from the sheer indignity alone. They were too tight to pull over knuckles, had no seam by which to unclasp them... and something about them felt instinctively wrong.
“Ew,” Rosalie said.
Presumably, these were the shackles that the Vampire Ascendent used on mages who displeased him.
Sure enough, when Rose tried to cast Dimension Door and simply get the fuck out, nothing happened. She gave Sending a go, trying to get word to Shadowheart, but it felt like she had no magic to speak of. Even though all somatic, verbal, and material components were still in play, something about the bracelets prevented anything from taking. It was an absence, but different from a simple Silence, and the utter emptiness of Feeblemind.
Rosalie got up.
Panic was pointless. Obviously, she’d been abducted. To be fair, the current lack of Astarion in her eyeline was truly a boon, and the only reason she was capable of keeping a level head. It wasn’t like this was the first time she’d been kidnapped, in her life.
Usually, she had her magic. But then, more people with knives were usually involved, so people took the pros and cons they had, and they were grateful for them.
Rose went to the window. Two stories below she saw a familiar hedgemaze, confirming her suspicions. But hey, she could probably survive the fall, even at her age. In the old days, she’d used to just let shit in her legs break, before turning to Shadowheart and politely asking her to fix them, through gritted teeth.
She went to the nearest door, pressed her ear against it, and when there was no sound she opened it, in the hopes of finding something to throw at the window.
On the other side, was a bathroom made of marble, and a claw-footed bathtub, filled to the brim with steaming, pink tinged water that smelled strongly of… vanilla, like a dessert. This room was also disconcertingly and mercifully empty, but there was a dressing screen, and a tea table of cosmetics. Laid on an attendant’s chair next to the tub were two pristine fluffy towels.
Rosalie pushed the towels onto the floor, picked up the chair, and went and hurled it at the bedroom window.
The chair rebounded off the glass, which shimmered with arcane light.
“Well, fuck,” Rosalie said, succinctly.
She threw the chair at the glass again, just to be sure. This time, the chair smashed, not the glass.
“...Huh.”
She went back to the bathroom.
The tub did look incredibly inviting. And if she really was going to be subject to a hostage situation, and undoubtedly another villain monologue, it really wouldn’t hurt to make Astarion wait a little, and to at least be clean.
Immediately, Rosalie activated her Third Eye and searched the room for invisible objects. If this was some creepy lurker scrying eye situation - different from a creepy stalker abduction situation, if only by a fraction - there was no fucking way she was getting in that fucking tub.
But the room again came up clear, not a single blip across her vision. She went to the door, and locked it, then jammed the dressing screen underneath for good measure.
Rosalie undressed, and she took a bath, hands crossed over her chest the whole time, constantly checking for invisible scrying orbs - or worse, invisible figures - that thankfully did not show up.
She needed a lot of time to think, and to strategise, her mind beginning to swim with all the potential scenarios she was about to face. Otherwise, it was a fucking incredible bath. The water was at perfect temperature, and slippery with some kind of scented oil. Confident in her vigilance, she got out of the water, wrapped herself in her towels. She smelt like a pastry and a flower had fucked.
Hung on the back of the bathroom door, Rose was confronted with sheer dress of black lace, that she imagined must feature in several of Astarion’s fantasies. The lack of underwear to accompany it was a dead fucking giveaway. And honestly, what the fuck was he thinking? She was in her forties. Some things didn’t sit the way they used to, not without at least a bra, and others without some serious corsetry. She was sure his weird obsessive-fantasy Rosalie had amazing tits, but she also imagined that he was now the sort of man that would make it her fault if his expectations were unrealistic.
Rosalie looked at the dress. She looked down at her discarded nightclothes, which at least had shorts, but similarly was no help in the tit department. This was truly mortifying. She couldn’t even cast Mage Armour.
She opted for the nightclothes, leaving the dress where it hung on the door hook.
Then, she went back to the bedroom, stripped the duvet of the berry pink comforter, and started to rip it at the seams.
If the Ascendent thought anything of her walking into the dining room he’d laid out, wearing a bedsheet, he at least had the self-preservation to keep it off his face.
It had been the only door that would open, on the corridor Rosalie had walked down. She'd walked past it first - twice. Her arcane vision had scanned the walls, and she was pretty certain she’d clocked Lae’zel’s secret entrance - an invisible archway behind an artful statue of a bird of prey in flight, suspended in midair. But it had seemed unspeakably stupid, even for her, to descend into an evil vampire basement without any magic, so she simply tucked that information away for later, and decided to play along for now.
This dining room was another of Astarion’s setpieces, another cliché lifted from a story. A long, slender column of a table, laden with an array of beautiful smelling dishes, like Raphael’s House of Hope. It was far too much food for two people, but it did at least inform Rose that it was still breakfast-time when she’d woken. Although, maybe Astarion had just been waiting there for her, for his cue to start and the scene to play out, and it was actually past well past midday. The main piece of decoration in the room was a tall, imposing fireplace, a fire lit in a grate that was ensconced in another statuesque piece of carved marble - two lithe, graceful female statues holding up the fireplace mantle.
Astarion himself was sat with a book poised on his crossed knee, dressed the plainest she’d seen him yet, in just a dark, open-collared shirt and trousers. He held a cup of steaming coffee, and for all the world looked like the image of domesticity he was trying to sell.
“So, what you’ve done here,” Rosalie felt the need to point out, “is that you’ve abducted me.”
Astarion looked up at her from over his book, expression benign.
“Meanwhile, it seems you’ve already started clawing at the furniture,” he observed. “Those sheets were quite expensive, you know. If you wanted something with a bit more colour, you could’ve said, and I would’ve found something for you.”
Rosalie looked down at herself. She had made herself a terrible, rectangular-shaped poncho out of a duvet twice her size, ripping down the sides with her talons until she had something like a toga. At least it rendered her wonderfully shapeless, covering her all the way from the bandages at her shoulder, to her bare feet.
“I think I will vomit on the next piece of clothing you offer me,” she replied. “On account of the whole ‘abduction’ thing. This suits me fine.”
“As you like, pet. Are you going to sit?”
Rosalie stayed standing, looking at the table of food in front of her. “...What do you think this is going to achieve, exactly?”
“The last two conversations we had have gotten… heated,” Astarion said, mildly, “I thought it best to arrange for something a little more civilised.”
“And you’ve created these ‘civilised conditions’... by abducting me.”
And Feebleminding me, she thought. Though she didn't bother saying it, she thought he heard it said.
“Well, if you insist on unpredictable behaviour,” he replied, “you can understand why I might wish to bring other aspects of our encounters... under control. But in turn, I can understand your anger and your discontent, and for it I can only offer my sincerest apologies. The method of your transportation was lacking, I’ll admit. Hemlock was instructed that in bringing you here, she was not to harm a single hair on your head”
His face darkened, becoming cruel: “I apologise, on her behalf, for her failure, and assure you that she’s being punished for it accordingly.”
“Oh, fuck me, Astarion, don’t get mad at the poor woman for simply doing her job!” Rosalie said, voice dripping with venom. “There’s not a single way anyone could’ve gotten me to come here, literally fucking shackled, without bringing me to harm. Seems like you put her in an impossible position. I think she’s behaved like a saint, quite frankly: at least I’m not dead.”
Astarion narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s not a very funny joke.”
“Good, because it fucking wasn’t intended as one. And if your mage hurt me, well, that’s still your fault, isn’t it?” Rose pressed. “Must not have given very good orders, given that the poor thing couldn’t disobey you, even if she wanted to. Not very masterful, is it?”
She watched him with deep satisfaction as his expression spasmed with anger, as she sided once more with a vampire lord’s spawn. That was, after all, what she had always done, and she wasn’t about to stop now.
“...Are you finished?” he said tersely, once the anger had passed and he could resume speaking calmly.
“Not even started,” she said, still seething.
“I’m very sorry she hurt you.”
“You hurt me.”
“Yes, well, you killed me,” he remarked, closing the book with a snap. In a second of mortification, Rose realised it was one of the novels she’d bought with her, that must have been left out after her watch. “So let’s all take a moment to reflect on my magnanimous generosity, shall we?”
“If you’re so fucking generous, why don’t you do us all a favour, and choke.”
“And why don’t you sit down?”
Afterwards, Rosalie would remember the feeling. Unlike Feeblemind, she stayed conscious for all of it: heavy, irresistible, immediately dulling everything to a blunt edge. Like an anvil, descending onto her head.
But at the time, all that she felt happen was her body grow deliciously lax. The anxious tension that had plagued her journey through the house melted away like dew on warmed grass. She straightened up, realising how much her body had been rictused by fear.
There was a moment of resistance, and then it all drifted away…
And she sat.
Her arcane sight wasn’t a spell, which meant it had still worked with whatever antimagic had been placed on her. But vampiric charm wasn’t a spell, either.
It was the first time she’d woken up in a week, and not immediately reached for a potion bottle.
I’ve been charmed, she thought, in some logical part of her brain, and she observed this thought with an almost detached relief. It wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as she’d been anticipating.
“There,” Astarion sighed, placing the book on the table. “Isn’t that better? I mean, really. I know you see struggle as a sign of virtue, but there is no need to make everything a constant uphill battle.”
Rose didn’t fear Astarion, and if she did, she wouldn’t have shown it on her face because it would have displeased him. But maybe her sudden despair at having not offered him pleasant company was visible, for something prompted him to say:
“I’m not going to do anything nefarious or underhand, darling, I promise. This is just so we hold some chance of conducting ourselves in a productive conversation. Please, help yourself to food.”
He paused, and added, as an afterthought, “...if you would like.”
“I don’t think I’m hungry,” Rosalie said, then her gaze drifted to the cup he was holding, “...is that coffee?”
Astarion made a strange little face, like he was pleasantly surprised to be asked such a mundane question, and then he smiled at her. “Drinking chocolate, actually,” he said, “with salt, and chilli, to elevate the flavours. I have it imported. Why, sweetheart? Would you like some?”
“Yes,” Rosalie said. “That sounds nice.”
Astarion got up and walked to the centre of the room, picking up the long-stemmed pot from its place amongst the feast, before walking over to her end of the table and her unattended cup. Rosalie was unable to stop herself from watching him as he moved with perfect grace. Gods, but she had loved him, once upon a time. She couldn’t believe she’d ever hurt him. Her heart ached with longing for the past.
“I won’t poison it - look,” he said, as he poured in front of her, taking a sip from the mug himself before handing it over to her. “There you are. I made it, in the hope you’d like it.”
“Thank you,” she said, taking it from him.
“You’re very welcome,” he smiled down at her beneficently.
Then, after a hesitation, he reached out and touched her face, briefly, thumb stroking across her cheek. Rosalie let it happen, and the answering radiance in his face was all she needed to know she’d done well. He waited until she took her first sip, before walking back to his end of the table.
“Aren’t you worried that everyone’s going to come after me?” Rosalie said, biting her lip, suddenly concerned for his safety. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious where Hemlock will have taken me, and it’s a very nice breakfast, but isn’t it just wasting time? Shadowheart’s going to come here and hurt you. I get that the Ascendency made the pull towards theatricality a little worse, generally, but maybe you should’ve been a little bit more… efficient, about the whole thing?”
Astarion grinned affectionately, as though thoroughly amused by her. “We’ll be fine, my love - no one else can teleport in or out of here, though your concern for me is endearing. Still always finding faults in my plans. Why? What would you have done, in my position?”
“...You mean, if I was you?” Rose paused for a second, and gave the thought real consideration, like she had in the old days, puzzling through the next problem that presented itself. “Well, I guess I would’ve turned me while I was out. Given that seems to be what you want, and that’s the only way it’s going to happen.”
Astarion’s hand tightened on his glass. She was worried she’d hurt his feelings.
“...Unless you need me to be awake?” she hazarded, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, “but I mean, that’s only necessary if you’re making me a true vampire, isn’t it? Because I’d have to drink as well. Which would be very, um, trusting of you? But I’m not sure I’d like that very much either. Plus, it seems like it would be a bad decision on your part, given that I-”
I would just have more power to hurt you, she thought, but didn’t finish the sentence.
It didn’t feel like self-preservation. Rosalie simply knew it was an incredibly bad idea to tell Astarion of her plan to kill him permanently - but that was mostly because she knew telling him would make really, really upset, and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“Given that you, what-?” Astarion asked calmly.
Rose tried to search for an answer that wouldn’t make him angry, glad he hadn’t ordered her directly to tell him the truth.
“I’d be able to run away, then,” she said, instead, before hastily adding, “not that I’m saying I want to. It’s just that’s what I’d be able to do, if I wasn’t spawn. And maybe, that would make you sad.”
“Such concern for my wellbeing, love,” Astarion drawled, “it didn’t seem to bother you much, the first time you left.”
“You told me you hated me and never wanted to see me again,” Rosalie responded automatically. “You hated ever having to talk to me. I was under the impression you wanted me to leave. Being around me seemed to be the last thing that would make you happy.”
And being around you caused me pain, she didn’t add. Because it seemed so strange that that would ever be the case. She was so happy to be this close to him again, to talk the way they used to. A small part of her had loved every second since she’d come back.
Astarion stayed quiet, and Rose was worried she’d upset him again. The silence overwhelmed her, until she felt compelled to fill it, to appease him.
“I mean, I know you’ve done that sort of thing in the past,” she rambled, “you know, acted horrible towards me because you were feeling vulnerable and that, to you, feels the same way as being threatened. So maybe I should’ve seen it as a cry for help-”
His expression grew stormy, she panicked, “or… or… should’ve just known you were processing things, some really big, immense things, and that even if you didn’t want to see me then things might change in the long run.”
She paused, then added, “but on the other hand, the cruellest you ever got before Ascending was when we fought over Cazador and then… well… you kind of did it, didn’t you? I basically lost that argument. If that’s what we fought about before, and then it just happened, it wasn’t like we could make up.”
Astarion was still watching her. Gods, she needed to make sure she was saying the right thing.
“And you were the one who was always telling me to be less selfless,” Rose offered, as a last resort. “And well, you know, staying with you just to be yelled at and degraded is perhaps the most selfless thing I could do, but you used to never want that from me. It used to annoy you, more than anything. I don’t know, I thought I was honouring you in a way… well, you know, not you. The lessons you taught me. Before-”
“Before I changed,” he said, a dangerous note in his voice. “The other me.”
“Um... just to check, do you prefer to think of yourself as two separate people, or is that actually the case, metaphysically?” Rosalie said nervously. As he glared at her, she clarified: “it would be useful to know, more generally, but mostly I’m asking because I just want to make sure you’re not upset, or if I’m being unfair to you. I don’t want to hold you to standards that you’re simply not capable of reaching.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said with a wave of his hand.
“Oh, okay,” Rosalie said, feeling awful on his behalf for making him so uncomfortable. “I’m sorry.”
“Tell me: are you?”
“Yes,” Rosalie responded to the command, without hesitation. “Most days. Most of the time. Always.”
Astarion looked mollified. She decided not to elaborate on why, exactly, she was sorry, not when he was finally looking like she’d pleased him.
Would he be angry to learn that she was lying by omission? No, Rose didn’t think so: he hadn’t demanded the truth from her, when he easily could have, and she didn’t think he wanted to hear it, anyway. It would only make him hurt more, and he was already clearly so unhappy. All she wanted was to make him feel better, by whatever means were in her power.
What means were in her power? In a corner of her mind, Rosalie tried to remember what she could about vampiric charm, which had fortuitiously been a cornerstone of her research. She would follow his every order for the next twenty-four hours, so it made sense that Astarion was only asking for the things he truly wanted. Better not offer up anything that could come as a nasty surprise. He clearly just wanted to have a nice, pleasant conversation, exactly as he’d said - and even she had to admit, she’d gotten exhausted by all the arguing, in the old days.
And if he hurts me, part of her brain reminded her, from a distance, the charm could break.
So he probably wouldn’t do that. He would only disadvantage himself.
That didn’t apply to vampire bites though. When she was charmed, Rosalie remembered, she'd offer herself willingly. If he asked.
But only if he asks to feed, specifically, that part of her brain reminded her, again, truly insistent. Any other harm would potentially disrupt the thrall.
“Well, my dove, you’re entirely right: efficiency is key,” Astarion said, and Rosalie smiled widely, happy to see him regain his stride as he made a trademark effusive hand gesture that told her he was comfortable once more. “You’re going to answer some questions for me.”
“Ok,” she said. “I’d do anything, for you.”
Astarion smiled at her, she smiled back, before he asked:
"Tell me: why did you kill me?”
“Well, um... that’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?” Rosalie said. She did not want to offend him, by treating him like he was stupid.
“Spell it out for me.”
Rose wondered if she should tell him about the scrying plan, or the wider plan of putting him in the ground permanently. But that would not make him happy… and in all honesty, that wasn’t why she’d killed him in the study, was it? She would’ve happily been fucked on that desk and left, in accordance to the original plan and well… the variables that had presented themselves, in the moment. If other things hadn’t reared their ugly head.
“Well,” she said, “I didn’t want to have sex anymore, and then you bit me.”
Already, Astarion’s face was showing displeasure.
“I knew it wasn’t going to kill you permanently!” Rosalie hastily clarified, “I mean, we both know how vampires work. I wasn’t trying to end your life, I just… needed you out of the room. Because you weren’t going to let me leave.”
“You didn’t want to leave,” Astarion retorted.
Rosalie guessed he didn’t want open disagreement.
“...There were some parts of what was happening that were very nice,” she hedged. “And you know, I hadn’t planned to do any of it, so I suppose that’s sort of the same thing as me wanting to stay. Definitely a point in your favour! I’m also sure that speech works, on some people! You know, someone like Hemlock, who is very pretty in her own right, hears that you killed a bunch of people for her, and she would probably swoon. The pitch of your voice was lovely! Excellent line delivery, far better than whatever you said at the Grove that one time. But it was kind of horrible, at my end, really.”
She bit her lip, “not that you’re horrible all the time! You’re lovely, right now.”
There was a silence.
“Are you angry?” she found herself asking, “...about me killing you?”
“What would you do to apologise, if I was?” Astarion asked her, with a blandly curious expression.
Rosalie thought for a second. She knew all the things she could offer: they all flooded into her head at once, in very vivid, lurid detail. Every single one of them would please him. And yet, she refused to voice any of them out loud.
“I’d do whatever you told me to do,” she said, instead. “You get to decide what a true apology - or a true punishment - looks like.”
Astarion mused, and for a second she was terrified he’d pick one of the things she’d conjured up in her mind. The fear evaporated as quickly as it arrived, because even if his request hurt her, if he asked for it, she knew there must be a reason. Neither of them would ever truly harm each other. That was not how this relationship worked. They needed to protect each other, for you couldn’t hurt one without hurting the other.
If he hurt me, for instance, Rosalie reminded herself, from a very stubborn corner of her mind, the charm would break.
“Well, you see,” he said, after a long second that would have been uncomfortable, had Rose been allowed to feel discomfort. “That was a conversation I’d been hoping to have for a long while, darling. There I was, pouring my heart out to you... more than anything, it was simply rude of you, to cut me off. A lesser man might be humiliated, if they did not know you well enough to understand this was all part of your process. You do have this adorable little,” he swirled his hand thoughtfully, “routine, of denying yourself the things you want for the sake of it, don’t you agree?”
He looked over at her, expecting a response.
“I agree,” Rose said. “You’re absolutely right.”
Astarion smiled, pleased. “But I’m not going to be cruel about it, dearest. Or even petty. I think my terms are more than fair. Maybe all I need from you, is a little sincerity in return. After all, it’s not always an entirely pleasant experience, making oneself vulnerable.”
What came out of his mouth next was entirely unexpected: “Tell me what you like about me.”
“Um…” Rosalie said awkwardly, not sure if this was the condition surrounding her apology. “Do you want to elucidate on the whole, ‘old you’ versus ‘new you’ thing?”
Astarion glared.
Right then, so he wanted just a veritable word vomit of praise, indiscriminate of which Astarion she was addressing. Rosalie took a sip of her drink, and began:
“I really like the way you say words,” Rosalie started. “I like the jokes you make that are self-deprecating, which sounds terrible of me, but it’s because they were always so unexpected. The timing of them was always perfect, it’s just so endearing. All your jokes were fun, but those were the ones that made me laugh the most. I like talking with you - I like how smart you are, and how you challenge me. I like your taste in clothes, and in literature, and interior decoration, apparently, even if it’s all a little on the nose. I like how, if we shared something like alcohol, you always gave me the last drop. I mean, you didn't ever need it, but you were also selfish, so I knew that you did it deliberately. I like your hair, I like your hands… oh! And that twirly thing you used to do with daggers? You know, before you stabbed something? Very elegant, very compelling. Sexiest thing about the way you used to fight, honestly. Though I suppose you just use teeth now!”
Oops, mentioning the vampire thing might make him angry. She tried to think of more things that would appeal to the man in front of her.
“I like hugging you. I like the way you kiss me when you actually forget yourself and mean it,” she said. “I mean, I like all the kisses, I’m not a monster, but those ones are the best, and that seems to have stuck around. I like your surprised face, a lot. I like it when you take care of me, although I think I used to like taking care of you, more. It made me feel useful. It made me realise there were reasons you would stay with me, when sometimes that idea felt almost impossible. I liked it when you reminded me we were equals, that you weren’t just with me out of pity and you didn’t actually find me as boring as you always said I was.”
“...But I want you to take care of me now, and look after me, and I want you to stay,” Astarion said, hands steepling as he leaned over the table, “and you are not exactly jumping at the chance, are you, pet?”
So you do find me boring, Rosalie thought, her chest sinking with the knowledge.
“Honestly, I shouldn’t say this, but you’ve made a more compelling argument in the last few days than I ever would’ve imagined,” Rosalie blurted.
Astarion looked startled, and she quickly put up her hands.
“Not the murder thing! Please don’t murder anyone, I’m begging! Also, not the sex. Again, it was very nice, but then I didn’t want it anymore - which was my fault, I know it was, but it rather spoiled things! I mean the whole, you know, ‘if you stay around I won’t hate my life and I’ll feel whole’ thing. Gods, Astarion, how I wish it was in my power to give that to you. That’s all I ever wanted for you: it’s what I’d always hoped you’d find. That’s what I thought the ritual would give you, maybe. I’m sorry it didn’t. I’m so sorry it was all for nothing. It truly breaks my heart.”
Astarion’s face was becoming colder, the more she spoke.
“Tell me how I get you to like me.” he commanded.
“Well, by not being an egotistical, evil arsehole…” Rosalie replied again with automatic obedience, then she trailed off, once she’d realised what had been said. She looked down at her lap, so ashamed of herself that she felt tears spring up into her eyes. “I’m so sorry, please don’t hate me. You asked me to tell you, I just want you to get the answers you want. You’re not like that all the time. Right now, you’re lovely.”
“It’s ok, darling. I won’t hold it against you - not with such a pretty apology. But be honest with me: what else?”
“I don’t know,” she said, wretchedly. “If you stopped killing things, and stopped being cruel to the people who care about you, I guess it would be easier. But that’s only if you… want to be those things. If you’re just holding yourself back, or fighting some kind of instinct, then isn’t that cruel of me, to want that? I can’t demand things that might hurt you. I wish I could like you the way you were. You’re so right, it would be so much easier. And I’m worried it’s just so... unfair to you, to expect anything else. What if it’s not your fault that you’re the way you are now? What if it’s mine? How can I hold that against you?”
“I only killed evil people, just the way you used to,” Astarion said, “tell me why it isn’t good enough.”
“...Because you’re doing it for the wrong reasons,” Rosalie said, tentatively. “And you probably… enjoyed it?”
Astarion’s face became a mask.
“I didn’t ask you if you did, at the time,” Rose said, giving him the benefit of the doubt. “So maybe that’s unfair to you, again, if I assume that to be the case. And I should’ve maybe talked it through with you… I mean, in that moment, I just wanted you to let go of me, so I wasn’t really thinking about you, and that was selfish. But it is… different, isn’t it? I only ever killed the people trying to kill us. It was self defence - I didn’t seek them out. I haven’t killed another person in years.”
Astarion showed his first sign of frustration, raking a hand through his hair. Oh no, he was angry with her. She’d said something wrong, again.
“Tell me how I get you to love me,” he demanded.
“Oh, Astarion…”
Rosalie blushed all the way to the tips of her ears, eyes falling to her lap again. Mortification and eagerness to give him the answer he wanted warred within her, until she blurted:
“I already love you. That’s never been the problem, has it? If I could stop myself, maybe we’d both be more normal about this. But I’ll always love you. I always have and always will, so much so that it hurts.”
Silence reigned in the dining room, after that pronouncement.
When it stretched out too long, Rosalie peeked up through her lashes at him. She’d been worried he’d be angry, but what she instead caught a glimpse of was the Vampire Ascendent, lost for words.
“...Tell me,” he said, finally. “Rosalie, how much do you love me?”
Some part of Rose rebelled, but it was like thrashing under a heavy blanket. She’d been given an order. There was only so long she could hold out, when the order didn’t do her any harm.
“You’re still all I think about, all the time,” she admitted, cheeks burning as her body reacted to the admission, even as her mind faded to pleasing white static. “I have this life, and sometimes all I can see is all the ways you’re not in it. I mourn you, and how much I failed you, and I see you in front of me, and I still want you, as if that’s what I deserve. I love you so much, right now, that it’s like a weight in my chest. I love you so much that the person in front of me is enough to quell the ache, and that’s why I didn’t trust myself to come back. Sometimes, on some days, all the parts that are horrible seemed like they might be worth it, and on other days they faded away entirely. I didn’t mind if it was awful, I just wanted to be near you again. I love you so much that even though I know you’d treat me horribly and get bored of me and probably one day hate me, sometimes I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. At least then, you wouldn’t be alone.”
She sighed, the compulsion lifting, along with the weight of every feeling she’d been suppressing, ever since she’d gotten Shadowheart’s letter.
“I love you enough to know I could’ve done more,” she added, knowing it always seemed to make him happy when she admitted she was wrong. “I’m so sorry.”
Then, she looked up at Astarion eagerly, to see if she’d done enough. Was that the answer he’d wanted?
He was holding himself as still as a statue, exactly as he had done when held against her in the study. Rosalie realised now, with a mind desperate to ease his discomfort, that that look was more pained, than anything else.
“I want to help you,” she blurted.
That shook Astarion from his stupor, and he reanimated himself, kicking himself back in his chair and looking unconcerned.
“Really, pet?” he asked her, “tell me, how do you want to help?”
I want to take all of Hemlock Bartelle’s notes and use them to craft the biggest spell I could ever cast, and kill myself trying to make it happen, Rosalie thought.
But for some reason, that answer - the true answer - got stuck somewhere, locked behind her teeth. Some part of her mind was screaming at her, trying to remind her what was at stake here. Yes, Astarion ruled her, but only for twenty-four hours, and then there would be every day after that, if she managed to leave.
Leave? Rosalie thought through the fog. Why would she want to leave?
I can only leave, if he lets me.
But that wasn’t true, was it? There was always another way.
And there were other answers that she could give.
“I want to kiss you,” she said. In truth, what she wanted more than anything, even the Wish Spell, was to hold him. But she didn’t think he would like that, and she was also so very scared of doing it wrong.
But a desire to kiss him wasn’t a lie either. And thank the gods, because if it was, he would be able to tell.
Astarion smiled wide, “how would that help me, exactly? Seems rather selfish of you, if anything.”
Rose’s mind was a blank panic, as she tried to find the solution to the problem before her.
Out loud, she said, “I don’t like it when you’re unhappy. I want to make you feel good. I can make you feel good. You told me I could. You can use me, and you’ll feel better: you told me, that night, that it would help.”
“-And?”
“...It would be helpful for me, too,” Rose said, after a long hesitation, as she threaded the needle of her own words.
Astarion didn’t reply, but the charm hadn’t sent Rose into some spiral of self-hatred, so she thought she may have presented him with a particularly compelling argument. She thought she might, in fact, be right on the money. Astarion had said he wasn’t going to use the compulsion to violate or harm her, but if she seemed to consent, and she convinced him she wanted it, then maybe his own rules would be a little bit more malleable than he thought.
Rosalie got up, and walked down the length of the table, fingers trailing along its surface. She came to where Astarion was sat. He moved his chair back with a screech, to make room for her. She considered climbing straight on into his lap, but she thought he might prefer to tug her down there, to feel like he was in control, so instead she just stood between his parted legs.
“So, you want to kiss me?” he asked, smirking wide with his hand on his chin, eyes running over her. “In that bedsheet?”
“Well, I think you want to kiss me,” Rosalie countered, “even in this bedsheet. And I want what you want. I want you to like me.”
“What if I want to do more than that, sweetling?”
“I know that you won’t hurt me,” Rose said, abruptly. "Right now, I trust you to make the choices that are best for me.”
“...I meant more than like you, love,” Astarion sighed, looking up at her, seemingly disappointed at the crass place her mind went. “What if I wanted to love you? To lavish you with affection? To take care of you? Make sure you never want for anything, ever again.”
“Well, then,” she said, “that would be nice.”
He smiled with lazy satisfaction. “Tell me that you love me, but only if it’s true.”
“I love you,” Rose responded automatically to the command.
“Tell me: do you still want to stop me from doing bad things?”
“Yes. I have to.”
He reached out and placed a hand on her waist, reeling her in closer. “I would expect nothing less from you, dear heart… but why, exactly, do you expect the task to be so hard? What if all you had to do, was ask it of me?”
"Please don't hurt anyone else, Astarion." Rose said numbly, taking her obvious cue.
"For you, darling?” he reached up and cupped her cheek again, holding her gaze as he admired her. “Of course. But you'll have to stay with me, forever, because it seems like I can’t get it quite right on my own. You’ll need to be here, just in case I slip up. Just to make sure." He smirked at her, "...Is that really such a terrible, unthinkable fate?”
Rosalie knew the answer he wanted.
“No,” she said. She bit her lip, and added, for good measure, “I’ve been very lonely, without you.”
“Well then, sweetheart,” Astarion told her, with a tut. “Let’s start to remedy that, shall we? Kiss me, since you asked so nicely.”
Rosalie felt the wave of compulsion wash over her at the command, so she bent down over him, rested a hand on his shoulder, and pressed her lips to his. She kissed him, and let him kiss her, because he had told her to, and she had no ability to resist.
And with that intentional act of harm, and every part of her trying to find the loophole that would set her free, Rose rallied, and Astarion’s charm snapped.
Rosalie tightened her grip on Astarion’s shoulder, mouth still on his and eyes still closed. With her other hand, she reached underneath her stupid fucking bedsheet, to the strip of material she’d pulled from the cover, tied and knotted twice around her thigh.
And from it, she plucked the shard of chair leg, that had been reduced to splinters by its unfortunate encounter with whatever spell was on his windows.
In an act of serendipity, it was portable size - or at least, it was once you weren’t subject to slinky skin tight dresses, and silk bed shorts. But it still wasn’t incredibly sharp. It was, in fact, painfully blunt in its own way.
But it would do.
Rosalie pulled back from Astarion, who seemed oblivious and content, eyes shuttered and half-lidded with bliss. She wondered if he’d even noticed his charm was broken.
It soon became clear, as she plunged the makeshift stake into his chest.
His eyes snapped open as he cried out in pain, then looked down at his front in open incredulity. Rose pulled back her hand, and then leaned into it fully, jamming her whole shoulder behind it and pushing the chair leg in deeper, for good measure. It went further this time, the rib now successfully bypassed, and the sound that came from him was animalistic, as she felt blood begin to coat her knuckles. She decided that was enough, and immediately started backing away, onto the side of the room with the fireplace.
“Gods!” Astarion shrieked, “what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” She demanded, humiliation and anger and unbridled fury making her nearly blind, as she stumbled over her own feet. “Me? You kidnap me, you take my magic from me, and then you place me under a charm? How is that any different from being Feebleminded, you absolute, wretched cunt!”
Astarion tried to get out of his chair, but couldn’t seem to manage it. It was as if the stake was a leaden weight, pinning him in place like a bug. Rosalie made her way backwards, not taking her eyes off him as he reached down, and tugged the chair leg out of himself with a low, pained groan. It was coated in blood, as was the shirt, but only by a few inches. She hadn’t reached the heart - not that it mattered. Again, that wasn’t how the Ascendent would die.
“I really don’t like these tedious, vulgar fights we keep having,” he said in a low voice, tossing it aside. “But you keep leaving me no choice.”
Between one blink, and the next, he was moving.
But the stake had slowed him down enough to do its job. Rosalie had reached the fireplace.
Astarion grabbed hold of her arm, making her cry out in pain.
“I love you,” he said, “don’t you understand that? What it means for me, to even admit it? You say you love me too, so why are you so intent on prolonging both of our suffering? Why do you have to keep making things so difficult?”
Rose picked up the iron poker resting next to the grate. No time or spells to heat it, but oh well. Blunt force trauma would do.
She swung round, and backhanded Astarion across the face with it. He cried out, which meant it was somewhat effective, so she did it again, this time cracking him across his shoulder. The metal dented a little, but he also went reeling.
“Fuck you,” she seethed, breathlessly. “You take my magic from me? Well, fuck you. I don’t fucking need it. You are going to wish I did. Loving me will suck for you. Go fuck yourself.”
She adjusted her grip on the poker with her sweat-drenched hands, and just wailed on him again. She wasn’t very strong, but she didn’t think she’d ever been so blindly terrified in her life. She threw whatever scraps of foresight she could scrounge in her fear-addled state into the blows, shaving milliseconds off her serve to make sure it struck true. Hit something enough times, and it usually went down.
Sure enough, Astarion went down, teetering over by the fifth hit, looking thoroughly dazed. Rose started running the moment he was prone, barrelling her way through the dining room and back into the corridor, poker still in hand.
In daytime the foyer was devoid of people, thank the gods, but she was still a floor above the main entrance. Trying to remember where her room with the hedgemaze view was, she ran down the corridor, away from the back garden. She turned a corner, and found another set of stairs, with another blood red runner, leading down. Rosalie started taking them two at a time, knees protesting, wishing she had shoes, and desperately tried not to trip over the bedsheet.
She jumped the final four steps, cursing as she rolled an ankle. She looked to the right, and sure enough, there was the front door she’d entered by the other day. She ran up to it, pulled down on the handle and…
It was locked.
And Rose couldn’t cast Knock. And she couldn’t pluck her skeleton key from her pocket dimension either. Because both of those were spells.
She glanced around. If she went down the next flight of stairs, she could get to the ballroom, which could get her to the back garden. But when she was there with him, it had been dark. She had no idea if it was walled, or if it was warded, or if it would get her out to the Upper City-
That was when she saw Astarion stood at the top of the stairs, glaring down at her.
A blink, and he had closed half the distance. He was still super fast, even as he stumbled almost drunkenly from one wall to the next, blood leaking from his temple, and a bright stain of red creeping slowly across the front of his shirt.
Rose glanced around. If she tried to dart past the stairs to get away, he could probably catch her. She had no idea what any of these other doors led to. The only thing within reaching distance was a lacquered wooden side table, at the right wall of the entranceway. On it was a mundane pile of mail, a bell for ringing servants, and an umbrella stand on its left. There was nothing else.
Astarion was closing.
“Back the fuck off,” Rosalie warned him, as menacingly as she could, raising the poker in his direction.
“You can’t escape,” he said, almost slurring, holding one hand out in what she probably figured he thought was a calming gesture. “Don’t be silly now, you know you can’t outrun me.”
“Yes, Astarion, I fucking know,” Rosalie said archly, though her hands were shaking. “I just really fucking wanted to try.”
Astarion made to step towards her. Rosalie made her decision, and raised the poker higher, making him pause. Then, she stretched her left hand out in front of her.
“But I was thinking back to the olden days,” she said, keeping her eyes on him, where he stood warily back, clearly worried she was going to hit him again. “About how I used to just jump off things, and break fucking bones, and all I would do is take the pain. Then I'd turn to Shadowheart, and I'd ask her to heal me.”
Astarion’s brow furrowed, and before he could get it Rosalie gritted her teeth, and pivoted so her free hand rested on the edge of the sideboard. Hey, if I break more of his furniture, it’s an added bonus, she thought - and then she bought the iron poker down on her wrist.
Magical items were often, for all intents and purposes, indestructible.
Wrists. Not so much. Rosalie often swore her bones felt more brittle these days.
“NO!” Astarion cried, as she herself shrieked, and raised the poker, and bought it down again.
Two hits was enough, but she managed three before her vision started to spot and blacken at the edges. The hand was a pulp, the bracelet remained a perfect silver circle. The skin started weeping blood, which was probably not a good call, in the ol’ vampire mansion. Still, needs must. Rosalie could practically feel herself fighting a giggle.
As she raised her hand to examine it, magic came flooding back exactly as she had been hoping. Why did the bracelets come in pairs? It could’ve been Astarion’s weird aesthetic preferences, it could've been a kink thing. But then, if it was, she would’ve expected some chains there in the mix as well. She figured there must be a reason both wrists were bound.
The pain roiled through her like nausea, and one of the shackles fell away from the meat of her limp, flattened fingers.
She started to swoon a little, and Astarion was suddenly there, right next to her, his arm around her waist, holding her up before she could black out and fall to the floor.
“Look what you’ve done to yourself,” Astarion said, sounding genuinely horrified. “What does this achieve, darling? You can’t cast spells without both your hands, and it’s not like you can hold the poker and get the other wrist. I’ll need to find you a healer. What if you’ve prevented yourself from ever casting a spell again? You love your magic. Oh, dearest heart, good gods. You act like I’m worse than the devil himself.”
“Don’t need the other wrist,” she panted, imagining a world where she could stick around enough to vomit on his clothes as promised. “The only somatic gesture I need, is this.”
She dropped the poker with a clatter, raised her good hand, gave him the finger.
Then, she shouted the verbal component for Dimension Door, and winked out of existence. Astarion was left grasping on air.
“Well,” Karlach said, succinctly. “Fuck me.”
“Yeah, that about…” covers it, Rosalie thought, but the wooziness was really bad by this point, and if she touched or looked at her hand too long, she started gagging.
“Shadowheart?”
“Shadowheart.”
“She's here," Karlach affirmed. "The spawn left them, the moment you were out of reach. We were resting up to make a storm on the castle, which I guess we should've known you wouldn't need... shit! You gonna drop on me?”
Rosalie had started seeing double, while Karlach tried to conduct a polite conversation.
“I take hits better than I used to,” she grunted. “...But, yes.”
Karlach bent over, put an arm under her legs, and then picked her up like she weighed nothing. “Nice bedsheet,” she said. “Very rectangular. Do I want to ask why you’re wearing it?”
Karlach carried her across the foyer of Ramazith, where Rose had fled. They earned startled looks from several of the workers that Rose hoped they weren’t endangering. All the tower's turrets were up and actively assessing for threats, suggesting Rolan might have briefed them on the terrible decisions he was making on her behalf.
Then, Karlach bonked her horn on an unremarkable-looking lit sconce on one of the slanted walls. It twisted to the left like a handle, and opened a secret door. On the other side, was a single table, empty, and another large, round, red door beyond.
“It’s pretty neat digs, honestly,” Karlach said, and then she opened the door to an entirely new building on the other side.
Rosalie tried - and failed - not to feel smug as they crossed the threshold. Without any of her protection spells cast, she imagined Astarion sensing her enter Ramazith, and then disappearing entirely, like a puff of smoke. He probably thought she had teleported away. Let him. It endangered them all, she knew, on some level. But she found in that moment, half-conscious and in pain, she didn’t really care.
Whichever wizard Rolan had borrowed this from had a singularly ugly taste in baroque carpets, none of which matched the colours of the walls. It also had a musty smell, which should be impossible, given that it was a fabricated pocket dimension. This was what Rose learned, as Karlach walked them through their Magnificent Mansion.
“We got a live one!” Karlach announced.
Shadowheart burst through from the other room, her face a patchwork of healing scratches.
“We think he found you because of the new bite, so you’ll need to stay here as much as you can. I’ll try a Remove Curse to see if that lessens the its effects, once these other issues are taken care of,” she said instead of greeting, face set in grim determination. “Charm?”
“Immune for the next day,” Rose replied, not needing to elaborate on the reasons behind that. Shadowheart nodded once, with a face of stone, and then led them both to a side room.
The next hour was not particularly fun. Breaking your own wrist and hand did not come without a certain amount of anxiety, if you were not only a wizard, but also a wizard who’d never particularly excelled at anatomy classes. Rosalie trusted Shadowheart with her life, but she found herself finessing in her head the number of spells she knew that did not require somatic components, as a coping mechanism, as her hand continued to throb with pain.
First, they removed the antimagic bracelet. Shadowheart cast Rose another silent, meaningful glance, and cast dispel magic. The bracelet on her remaining wrist became heavy, and then dulled, and Karlach set to work prying it off.
“Yes, well,” Rose said. “I only have one set of hands.”
Then, Shadowheart set about reconstructing her wrist. Karlach took one look, and then immediately made her excuses. She scrambled through every Bag of Holding they had for health potions to help with the pain, and quickly scarpered.
About half an hour in, Rosalie clocked that Karlach wasn't exactly - and never had been - squeamish. She also realised that her friend wasn’t silent because she was concentrating on the spell. Shadowheart was… angry at her.
Oh shit. Now that the pain was receding, Rose had enough presence of mind to realise that the last thing Shadowheart had seen her do before she fell was counter her Dawn spell. She probably thought Rose had wanted to get captured.
“I’m sorry about the Counterspell,” Rosalie said immediately.
Shadowheart didn’t look up from her hand, brow furrowed in concentration as she continued the Prayer of Healing and reassembled the finger bones piece by piece. “I’m not angry about the Counterspell,” she replied.
“I mean… I’d understand if you were,” Rose tried, “you know how much it pisses me off, when it happens - hells, when Hemlock -”
Shadowheart looked up, hands falling away from Rose’s wrist where it was set out on the table. Her eyes were still glowing with divine light, the spell still holding taut.
“What aren’t you telling me?” She demanded.
“I’m… not sure… what you…”
“I have healed two major injuries on you, in nearly as many days,” Shadowheart cut across her weak evasion. “One of them will mark you for life, which already tells me all I need to know about how much this monster needs to be put down. But - joy of joys! - this one is self-inflicted, which is worse.”
“I mean, I get how that might be a red flag, but it wasn’t like that. He didn’t order me to do it. I just did what I needed to get away. If I could’ve killed him again, you know that’s what I would’ve done if my magic-”
“Oh, trust me, I know,” Shadowheart said, her voice laced with steel. “I know that you’ll kill him, so long as it isn’t real, and isn’t permanent, and then keep ignoring that all the injuries he’ll deal you are going to last. I know that, already, trust me. But I also know I definitely do not have the full picture.”
Rose blanched, and her friend repeated: “What aren’t you telling me, Rose? Why the everloving fuck would you Counterspell to save that woman? Is it sympathy for the spawn themselves, or do you think she matters to him? Did you not want to anger him? Do you still love him? I’m not going to judge you for it, but we need to acknowledge it and we need to know, so we can start to plan around it. If you can’t do this, you need to tell us, and if there’s anything we can do to help make it easier for you, then we need to know that as well.”
Rosalie’s body went hot, then cold. It was initially embarrassing, to know what her friend thought of her and also know that some of it was right. It was also mortifying, the way she fell immediately back into her old desire to retract and hide away from that level of being seen.
Then, she thought back to the monologue the charm had pulled out of her against her will. The sheer relief she’d felt afterwards, that she wasn’t entirely sure was a product of Astarion’s will alone. Shadowheart was right: some things could be made easier.
“That’s not why I saved Hemlock,” she said. “I know Astarion probably doesn’t care if she lives or dies. I care if she lives or dies.”
“Oh?” Shadowheart said. “You want to have a do over? Save everyone, this time round?”
“I mean, that would be nice, but also: no,” Rosalie said.
“Then… why?”
Rose huffed, running her unbroken hand through her hair. “So. I bought a spell.”
Shadowheart looked confused, and then Rosalie started feeling the explanation spool out of her, tension deflating from her shoulders with every word.
“A year ago,” she said. “A spellbook went up for auction. I spent a lot of money on it. It’s the only known transcription currently in existence of… Wish.”
She saw Shadowheart’s immediate comprehension: they all knew what a Wish spell was capable of. That's why not many wizards who’d cast it went around writing it down, and giving others access to that kind of power. Those impossible figures who’d cracked the code in the past tended to keep the exact details to themselves.
“I thought - well, I hoped-”
“We all know what you hoped. But… I’m guessing it didn’t work?”
“No, that’s the thing - I don’t even know. Because it’s incomplete,” Rose sighed. “I translated the whole thing, word for fucking word, and it still doesn’t work, not because it wouldn’t get him back but because it’s just… missing the last twenty pages. If it had them, I think…”
She couldn’t finish that sentence. It hurt too much to even think it, never mind say it aloud.
“I was so close, but it wasn’t enough, and I just had to take it. Because anything else is pure wizard hubris territory. It was already going to be a brutal stretch even to just translate it and eventually cast it - it’s too outside my realm of specialisation to also… complete it. I just had to accept I’m not good enough, otherwise I’d go mad. I mean, I could pact a demon or a devil and have it by tomorrow, but I know where that leads... and to write the ending myself, by hand, in an entirely different dialect that I had to learn from scratch, from what papers and resources I could find, and then calculate the right syntax to align with the previous version and also get what I want from it-?”
“I see,” Shadowheart said.
“But… and this is the fucking kicker,” Rosalie said, “the language that spell is written in? Hemlock Bartelle is an expert in it, not to mention, she’s a fucking conjuration wizard.”
Shadowheart raised an eyebrow.
“It is, in fact, a dialect of a group of conjuration wizards who were working on spells roughly four hundred years ago. I don’t know if Bartelle was around them after that faction disbanded, or if she’s one of their descendants? I don’t know how old she is? Or if she just has the skills I lack. But all the papers I used in my work, came from her,” Rose sighed. “I tried reaching out to her old University of study at the time, but they said she’d quit wizardry eight years ago. I mean, we all know why, now-”
Shadowheart sighed, but she stayed silent, and knew Rose would keep talking.
“And I mean, we could kill her, and I could just ransack her quarters, and hopefully find all her notes, and her helpful dictionary or thesaurus or whatever lexicon she’s reconstructed, or whatever books she used to reconstruct said lexicon, and I could use that - but what if she’s not written anything down? What if she did in the past, and then she destroyed them? What if it’s all just in her head? When you were about to kill her, I realised that's she's my last lead. I just panicked, and-”
“- You want to save him,” Shadowheart said, somewhat incredulously.
“Shadowheart, of course I want to save him,” Rosalie replied despairingly. “I love him.”
“...You said you were going to kill him.”
“And you know I will, if I have to. If I have no other choice,” Rose replied. “Which is what I thought. But-”
She couldn’t finish the sentence, but she saw she didn’t need to. Shadowheart looked down at her own hand, plagued by Shar’s curse after all these years. She still bore its pain, all in order to have the chance to know her parents - even the mother she’d only ended up having a handful of years with.
“-But you… have a choice. You’ve got one last hope, right at the last second, and so you’re willing to risk it all,” she said, with grim understanding. “Gods, the universe is cruel.”
“If it doesn’t work out, maybe. I’ll hate the universe until the end of time, if it does that to me. But-”
“-But there’s a chance it will all be worth it.”
“I’m sorry for not telling you sooner,” Rose blurted, “it just... it feels so stupid! When I first got the spell, I was too scared to tell anyone I had it, and then I couldn’t even use it, so it was like the universe had proven me right: that there truly was no hope at all, and it had been foolish to think there was. And now… he’s horrible. Killing people's not enough, he’s literally aligned himself with hell. And you’re right, I did just smash my wrist to pieces and potentially prevent myself from ever casting a spell again to get away from him. But it’s also. It’s. I mean-”
Rose took a deep breath, and just said what she was thinking: “it’s not him. And I know I could get him back.”
She waited for Shadowheart to laugh at her, to tell her she was indeed an idiot. Shadowheart stared at her, with her dark shadowed eyes, silent and stony-faced for long enough, that Rosalie thought it might happen.
But all her friend did was return her attention to her wrist, picking it up in gentle hands, and say, “you will be able to cast again. I’ll make sure of it. It screws up the new plan royally, if you can’t.”
“Shadowheart-”
Shadowheart sighed. “I meant what I said. I needed the full picture, so we can plan accordingly. I don’t like doing this with blindspots, because it means people make the wrong choices, and mistakes trip up our chances of success. I mean, you saw what keeping me in the dark did to Viconia, for the love of all the gods.”
Rosalie’s heart swelled. “You mean-”
“We’ll need to think about how we can lure her to us,” Shadowheart said, as the bones began stitching themselves back together again. “Hemlock, I mean. I don’t think she’s going to want to work against him. But there’s ways to get access what knowledge she has, and there’s ways to make her talk. If we trap her, and take her prisoner, then we could interrogate her for a few days, at least. Let’s be honest, Astarion may not even notice.”
“Ah. There might be a problem there.”
Shadowheart gave her a pointed look, “you mean, that luring your awful boyfriend’s second-in-command out of hiding and then taking her hostage, all to save his life, might pose an issue?”
“Yes,” Rose said with mock glumness, even as she started fighting tears. She couldn’t believe Shadowheart had just… agreed.
“It’s just…” Rose added, “Hemlock’s currently being ‘punished’. For hurting me. So she might not be… out and about, and available to be lured. I don’t think.”
Shadowheart groaned.
“Charming! Fucking stellar! What a keeper he is - I can’t wait to attend the wedding,” she drawled, then looked at Rose hard in the eyes again. “So what you mean to say is, we have to break into Astarion’s dungeons - those dungeons no one can find the entrance to - to find Hemlock Bartelle, and then get her out, and then interrogate her. All for this Wish spell, that you’re not sure you can even cast?”
“Pretty much,” Rosalie said, wiping awkwardly at her now damp eyes with her good hand. “I did, in fact, find the entrance to those dungeons. But the rest of what you said just about sums up our shitty situation and our frankly abysmal chances, so you’re correct, yes.”
“Well,” Shadowheart said, with a small smile, and a supportive squeeze of the part of Rosalie’s arm that wasn’t mangled, with the hand she had that was permanently scarred, “we’ve done much more, with far less. Remember that time when Gale and Lae’zel told us we were all going to become mindflayers in seven days flat?”
“Just a little, yeah,” Rosalie laughed wetly. “Might have stuck with me.”
“Then let’s just do what we did then,” Shadowheart said, “we'll blunder through, and see how far we get. And we'll follow you. If we're following you, maybe it’ll all work out in the end.”
Notes:
Sometimes you think you're going to work from home on the second-to-last day of your conference, other times you sleep in too late and then think "fuck it, might as well post and let Rosalie have her final girl moment".
I'm so sorry, I have a bunch of comments in my inbox and I haven't gotten to any of them yet. I have read them all and loved all of them, but I will answer once I am back home. Hopefully the decision to post regardless, while resulting at certain consequences at my end (presumably, more comments, if you're all feeling kind and generous), is the better choice for everyone else involved ;)
Chapter notes
- The anti-magic bracelets are actually a homebrewed magic item from my D&D game (shout out to the one person reading this who saw a hot twink get shackled by them in his office): they negate all spells and magical effects.
- According to the Divination Wizard subclass, Third Eye (See Invisibility) isn't a magical effect? It's just a thing that happens, as an 'increase to your powers of perception'? Given that perception checks were on the table, and I needed it for the plot, I decided to run with it.
- The book was picked up by a spawn while they fled, once their orders were complete (orders: bring Rose and anything belonging to her, luckily they didn't find the carpetbag).
- For anyone who needs the justification of Feeblemind being wrong but Vampiric Charm being fine, I have my essay and argumentation prepared for the comments section :') Sneak peak at Justification Number 1: "Ascendended!Astarion is a fucking hypocrit..."
- These are the 5e rules of vampiric charm, for anyone who was interested in the parameters I wrote this scene within (like a fun little logic puzzle):"Charm: The vampire targets one humanoid it can see within 30 ft. of it. If the target can see the vampire, the target must succeed on a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw against this magic or be charmed by the vampire. The charmed target regards the vampire as a trusted friend to be heeded and protected. Although the target isn't under the vampire's control, it takes the vampire's requests or actions in the most favorable way it can, and it is a willing target for the vampire's bit attack.
Each time the vampire or the vampire's companions do anything harmful to the target, it can repeat the saving throw, ending the effect on itself on a success."- TL;DR Astarion's vampiric charm, meet Rosalie's social anxiety: FIGHT.
- The hot chocolate is based on a hot chocolate I had in London lmfao. I'd forgotten I'd even written that, but let me take a second to honour that hot chocolate. It was soo fucking good.
- Astarion in Chapter Seven: every meal without savour. Rosalie in this chapter: hot chocolate sounds nice!
- Dubious consent as a way to break a curse? I'll admit I'm kind of smug.
- The poker incident: look, -2 to strength, but portents aren't magic either, and maybe she had a brief access to reckless attack. What if it was just hot?
- I forgot the Wish reveal was in this chapter. Jesus. the notes are long enough already.
- Anyway, so lots of people correctly guessed Wish! Which Rose can technically cast, if she took it as one of her spells, which she didn't. So now, as a wizard, she needs to transcribe it into her spellbook in order to use it. In order to have a plot, I have made that hard to do for the narrative reasons I've given in this chapter. I do feel like literally no one would write Wish down. If you were a hubristic wizard who could fundamentally alter reality, would you feel like sharing it? Probably not. So I imagine it's a very rare spell to find out in the wild. Or at least I make it so, for purposes of plot.
CW: A character has a charm cast on them. Nothing non-con, but you know that 'Dubious Consent' earns its keep. Also, a character self-harms, but in like, a hot way.
Chapter 11: Chapter Eleven
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Four days later, Rosalie was shaping a pile of snow with both hands - one recently healed, both newly numb.
“I hate this spell,” she chanted - mostly to herself, given that Shadowheart and Karlach were consumed in their own preparations, and she’d been saying the same thing for hours at this point. “I hate this spell. Gale insisted on me learning it. I only used it for deadline crunch. I fucking hate this spell.”
She regarded her roughly-human-shaped pile of snow. She smoothed a little bit off the nose, then looked at the mirror on the workbench to her left. After reluctantly scrutinising her own expression, she changed the jawline on the snow figure with a depressed determination. Her chin was far weaker, these days.
“No time for vanity,” Shadowheart called over from where she was consulting a long scroll, borrowed and not bought from Rolan. The good thing about placing the mansion in Ramazith was that they now had access to its extensive library, storerooms, and vault. Rose was trying to keep track of the tab they must be running, but the others just kept taking shit, and their usual response to her reprimands was to tell her to go flutter her eyelashes.
“You think this is an exercise in vanity?” Rose asked incredulously, as she padded out the snow-person’s stomach more, and flattened its chest further. She hadn’t bothered with legs, at least, making sure the copy was borne into the world fully clothed in robes, which prevented her from having to examine her thighs too closely. “I want to kill myself.”
“Well, you know, not exactly a fate we’re avoiding-” Karlach said, through the oiling cloth she’d stuffed into the corner of her mouth as she hefted her blade with both hands to examine its condition.
“Point made,” Rose said. She checked the height of the snow person against her - they were about on a par. She prestidigitated her hands warm again, watching the colour flood back into the tips of her fingers, and then reached into the bag of powdered ruby: that was hers, not stolen, given that she’d resigned herself to having to cast this stupid spell at some point.
“Ad vitum,” she intoned, almost apologetically. What a life she was birthing this poor bitch into.
Rosalie watched, as the snow person’s outline shivered, darkened, and then resolved itself - into a copy of her, with every wrinkle, every freckle, every single hair in the same place as it was on her currently. As it looked down at its own hands, her double looked… harried. Anxious. Extremely tired. Neither of them were wearing make-up.
“I hate this spell,” Rosalie said again, with feeling.
“I know,” her simulacrum replied, inflicting upon Rose the sound of her own voice. “I’m sorry I’m going to be hanging around here for the next day. Maybe just give me a book and put me in a corner?”
Rose sighed. She wished they could plunge into action straight away, but the casting of Simulacrum took a lot out of her - the standing for hours was murder on the knees alone. It was another day of planning, not performing, and she didn’t like how anxiety could breed in the space between making a decision, and then acting on it.
Not that she’d been idle. It was amazing how much work a person could do, once they were actually working towards the goal they wanted. The luxuries of the Magnificent Mansion had barely been noticed by her, as she instead made use of its extensive workroom to start preparations. Rose and Shadowheart had hammered out the beats of their plan to infiltrate Astarion’s home within a day of her hand being healed. Then, preparations had beuan: they had needed another day to finesse the details and find the pitfalls, and then Rose had had two days’ consultation with Rolan where he helped her to test if her theory was sound. It turned out, it was.
So now, she just wanted to do it. As much as she occasionally relished the image of Astarion pacing his stupid dining room, or his fucking study, thinking he had pushed her too far and she had fled for good, she was scared of his promise to present her with corpses on her doorstep like an outdoor cat. Each morning, she awoke fearing a scorchmark of Hemlock herself on the threshold of Ramazith.
But this was her main preparation for tomorrow’s heist done, and now she was at a loss for anything else to do, except rest up and refill her magic.
Eventually, she stood up behind the simulacrum and started to gently braid its hair away from its face, if only for her own peace of mind.
A clatter of chainmail announced Lae’zel’s return to the mansion. Rosalie tensed up over her double, having not seen her friend since the fight in the Cloister. While Rose was passed out from the exhaustion and pain in her hand, Lae’zel had gone back to the healers in her own army to patch her wounds, rather than bleed Shadowheart dry of power. Rose guessed her friend must be angry with her - enough to need a few days' space, even after Shadowheart cast Sending to explain the new state of the situation.
But on the other hand, Lae’zel had also just been exceedingly busy. Her healing session with the best clerics the rebellion had then ran on into a rebel war council on the Astral Plane. Lae’zel was taking a break from active service, but this meant she had to spend several days in meetings, delegating her tasks to the ten kith’raks over which she had Supreme Command, in preparation for another bout of absence.
Rosalie left her simulacrum to its little routine tasks it had been given - bottling and divvying health potions - and went directly over to her friend. She was pleased to see no new scars had been left on Lae’zel as a result of her own ineptitude.
“Lae’zel, I need to talk to yo-”
“Shadowheart tells me we are no longer killing Astarion, but are instead intent on saving his soul,” Lae’zel interrupted the beginning of Rose's apology in a typical fashion, forgoing the etiquette of an official greeting.
“...Um, yeah,” Rosalie said awkwardly, already fighting the urge to fidget with her hands. She loved Lae’zel, and knew she had the woman’s loyalty, to the point when even the silliest of admissions would not get her killed, like it used to seem it might. But she still feared Lae’zel’s judgement. While Karlach had simply nodded when they explained the change in agenda (albeit looking a little worried, and unconvinced), Rose had felt nervous at the prospect of telling the others. With Lae’zel in particular, she could only anticipate the usual lecture on weakness that these kinds of decisions tended to earn her.
“It may prove to be our undoing…” Lae’zel said, curtly, exactly as anticipated. Rose was about to nod and attempt to apologise again, when the sentence unexpectedly continued: “But this cause is more just than the last you handed to me, and for that I thank you.”
Rosalie blinked at her, surprised. Lae’zel saw her expression, then gave a heavy, world-weary sigh.
“It is good that all those auguries I once thought of as trifles have shaped you into someone of substantial power,” she added.
Then, she hesitated, and placed her hand on Rose’s shoulder.
“If you taught me anything in our time together, it is that the greatest acts of kindness - and those of stupidity - require great strength, if they are to bring anything but pain. I would trust no other with this foolishness. And, in truth, the thought of Astarion’s death held no savour for me. It was the most intelligent choice, but I remained… uncertain.”
“...Oh.”
“I think I shall sleep better, knowing we tried.”
“I… oh,” Rosalie said. “Can I… can I give you a hug?”
“Absolutely not,” Lae’zel replied immediately, though the grip of her hand did briefly tighten on Rose’s shoulder, in affection.
Their day of rest passed, and the next morning came with more silence from the Ascendent’s end. And. Two Rosalies.
“...Unsettling,” Rolan observed from his corner.
“We know,” the two of them said in unison, and then turned to each other, and shivered.
Rolan offered the real one, the one on the left, a conciliatory smile. “I hate simulacra, as well. A necessary evil, though, at times.” He glanced to the other Rose, “no offence.”
“None taken,” the simulacrum said, distinguished from the true Rose by her long braid, and soft, tight fitting clothes designed for stealth. “I am the perfect solution to a very specific problem - nothing more, nothing less.”
The simulacrum did indeed take care of the biggest obstacle in a potential break-in. The main problem with sneaking into the mansion, aside from its owner being a twat, was that Shadowheart’s Remove Curse had not seemed to take. Even though Astarion’s bite as the Ascendent had given him the ability to sense Rose in Shar’s cloisters, it was not regarded as a predatory effect, at least in the eyes of a spell that could not subjectively yield itself to the fact that Astarion sucked ass. Unfortunately, being trackable did not bode well for breaking and entering - and Rose knew that she would have to be there. Yes, the others could break Hemlock out without her, but if they wanted to search her rooms as well, she was the only one who knew what they were looking for.
The simulacrum had all of her knowledge… and no blood to speak of, whatsoever. It was her, but without her flesh.
Unless the Ascendent was also sniffing out fingernail clippings, and a shaving of horn keratin - the only biomass which comprised the copy’s core - then this version of Rose would truly be undetectable.
While Karlach, Lae’zel, and the real-Rosalie left town - her hand bandaged to look as though it was still injured, her blood acting as the lure that would hopefully get the Ascendent to leave his home - Shadowheart and the simulacrum could break in. Astarion would pick up her scent somewhere in the city, and once they had his attention, they’d head in the direction of the once-Shadow Cursed Lands: if Shadowheart hadn’t been unable to heal Rose’s hand in reality, Halsin and Thaniel would’ve been their next port of call.
Endangering orphans was still off the table, but the former holdings of Moonrise were four days’ travel away, and they only needed to keep Astarion occupied for one. It was hoped that Rosalie having the gall to leave the Gate by mortal means, coupled with a perceived visible injury, would be the kind of thing that made Astarion lose all reason. He’d follow them out of town, probably try to capture them, inevitably they’d have another pointless conversation and then a fight… all the while the other version of her would be rifling through his house undetected, because she was literally made of snow.
“But if anything goes wrong, or something unexpected presents itself,” Lae’zel said, “it is just… a thing.” She gestured at the other Rose. “It will not react as a person would.”
“I mean, give me some credit,” Shadowheart said offhand from the corner.
“Me, as well,” the simulacrum added.
“Rolan fixed that, actually!” Rosalie said cheerfully. “I did some extensive workshopping with him, and he realised that a Telepathy spell will allow me to see everything the simulacrum sees, as she sees it, and I can send back commands as to how she should react! We’ve even tested it - if I close my eyes, and images and sounds are simply relayed to me, I basically experience the world as if I’m there. Then I can offer instructions to the other-me via the link.”
She didn’t bother to elaborate what that testing had looked like - Rolan casting the Telepathy spell, and then her closing her eyes and trying to read aloud from the book he was holding. Which she had done, easily… so long as she ignored how many glances he'd made in her direction throughout the entire process.
At least they’d both only heard the thoughts they wanted each other to hear.
“We flee, you plonk me in a carriage,” Rose continued, “then I dissociate into other-me, help Shadowheart with her shit, presumably while Astarion is in a carriage behind us somewhere, cackling like a maniac and steepling his fingers like he’s in a bad book. You keep an eye on him, I tell you how things at the mansion are going, we either loop back or have a fight once Hemlock’s in our possession.”
“...I know you’re an overachiever,” said Karlach, sceptically, “but being both the bait and the mastermind of this little plan…?”
“I-”
“Trust me,” interrupted the simulacrum. “I wanted to be the one in the carriage. I thought it’d be really funny, if Astarion tried to bite me, got only a mouthful of icy water for his troubles, and then I just cast the biggest fireball I could cook up and reduced us both to ash. But we can’t replicate the blood lure, and I don’t even have a heartbeat. Depressingly, it seems like I’m built for stealth in this form. And if the true-me needs to actually talk to the Ascendent, I defer to Shadowheart’s command. I’ll recognise anything of use in Hemlock’s papers.”
“...What she said,” Rose said glumly.
“Seems like… a lot,” Karlach continued to look uncertain.
“I am, admittedly, being a bit of a control freak,” Rosalie replied. “I could just leave the simulacrum to its own devices: she is literally me. But…”
But I want to be there, if we find anything to do with the Wish spell. She couldn’t imagine missing it.
“...But there’s a small chance that looking for anything that might complete the spell text will require new knowledge to be adapted and applied in the moment, which simulacra simply aren’t very good at. They're grand in a fight - or if you’re doing an experiment, and just need help with the grunt work - but they’re a little… static, in the brain department. If I’m at the steering wheel, it’ll definitely not get missed.”
“And you’re ok with it?” Karlach pressed, “you being the one that might have to head Astarion off at the pass? Not the expendable version of you, that can actually die, no problem?”
“Of course she is,” Shadowheart said, rolling her eyes.
“...Of course I am,” Rose said, after a reluctant second. “I don’t always like talking to him, the way he is now. But I am very good at it, and those two things are unfortunately interchangeable, when you're a wizard.”
Seeing Karlach’s’ dubious expression caused her to clarify: “but I also won’t endanger any of you. It doesn’t have to be that complicated. If he thinks my hand is fucked, he’ll think I’m weak and unable to cast, until I’m not either of those things. With the element of surprise - hells, even without it - us three can definitely kill him in under a minute, if everything’s gone off without a hitch at the other end. If we timed it right, Team Simulacrum might even get to see where the mist disappears to, and then we’ll have our portal to Cania in there as well.”
Her friend still looked uncertain, but didn’t question it further. Rose guessed Karlach was just afraid that trying to save Astarion was going to get Rosalie extremely hurt, the way it had her and Wyll… and in all fairness, it probably was.
But Rosalie was braced for it. Whatever came next, at least she’d know she’d done all she could.
That she had fought to keep him, even if she was ten years too late.
Rosalie cast Telepathy on the simulacrum as promised, and then she, Karlach, and Lae’zel were teleported by Rolan to Wyll’s office in Wyrm’s Crossing.
“And you’re the real one, then?” Wyll said in greeting, pen paused atop a worryingly tall stack of documents.
“That’s me!” Rose grinned.
“If he comes here, I’ll send him your way. Still heading to Halsin?”
“In theory, if not in practice.”
Wyll smiled, “so long as whatever I tell Astarion holds no word of a lie… although, I would quite like to see if I was capable of fooling this truth sense of his. At a later, safer date.”
They paused long enough for Karlach to give Wyll a long, rib-crunching hug that raised him a couple of inches off the ground, then they descended down through the tower. Wyll’s carriage was waiting for them in the stables right at Rivington’s border - the three of them risked idling, just a few minutes longer than necessary, so that Rose’s scent was sent churning on the breeze.
Then, they were travelling out of the Gate: Karlach steering the horses, Lae’zel nursing her sword in the opposite corner of the carriage from Rose. It felt strange to take the same road out of Rivington by which she’d entered, all those years ago, even if they were an entirely different landscape, with the Absolute’s influence long-erased.
A pang rang painfully through her chest, as she saw the far-off towers that signalled the ruins where they had camped, those first few nights in Baldur’s Gate. Still there, after all this time.
An hour in, after the homesteads had fallen away and the road began hugging close to the Chionthar, Rose heard Karlach’s call from the roof of the carriage. “I think we’ve got him! That’s the third time I’ve seen that gothic-ass box in the last ten minutes!”
Rosalie leaned out of the window on her right, and followed the direction her friend was pointing: half a mile back on the road, where it had passed higher up the hillside, a carriage of wine-dark mahogany was just emerging from around the corner of the slope. Rose felt the chill grave stomp of a portent, as she knew for certain who was inside.
Relief coursed through her: there had been nothing worse than sitting here, waiting for something that may never happen.
“Speed up for a bit, so he thinks we’re running!” She said to Karlach, who nodded in understanding.
Rose drew herself back into the carriage, gave a nod to Lae’zel - “shake me, if you need me” - and closed her eyes.
After a brief, disorienting moment as her concentration finessed itself and her world briefly split in two, she suddenly found herself in another body, back in Ramazith, back in the Mansion. The simulacrum was sat on a chair, staring at a wall while Rolan and Shadowheart moved awkwardly around it like it was a piece of furniture. When she spoke to them both, Rolan startled.
“He’s left the city,” Rose told them through the simulacrum’s mouth.
“Well,” said Shadowheart with a sigh, rising out of her own chair. “I’ll say this in his favour: he’s nothing if not predictable, when it comes to you.”
“Gods, let us hope that’s the case,” Rosalie replied, thinking of all the assumptions she’d made in this plan that relied on it.
“Well, I guess we better move then,” Shadowheart said, as she placed both her and the simulacrum under Pass Without Trace. “You still want to try teleporting?”
Rosalie nodded. Something Astarion had said when she was charmed had stuck out to her: no one else can teleport in or out of here. Though Rose’s own home in Alaron had been chosen because the land prevented anyone teleporting without her express permission, Astarion had spoken as if they were both exceptions to whatever rules his mansion operated by.
She guessed if Astarion had warded his home from her own travel, it would've been to prevent her exit from the building, not her entry - leaving her trapped. But then, she’d also used Dimension Door to escape, so maybe he just wasn’t that clever at all.
Rosalie, Rolan, and Shadowheart exited the Mansion, stepping out into Ramazith. Rosalie looked guiltily at the floor of the tower - as a teleport with no designated final location, it had to be drawn freehand - but Rolan was already helping to move desks out of the way to make room for the circle.
“Good luck,” he said to them both, as she finished drawing her marks on the ground.
“See you on the other side,” Rose told him with a wink that made him pink up at the edges, and then the spell took, and she and Shadowheart disappeared from the room -
- and landed on Astarion’s ground floor landing, where Rose had broken her wrist five days prior.
Unfortunately, one of his attendants - the drow woman, whose clothing was a little less tight this time, but still just as sheer - was mopping the floor, at the time.
The attendant startled at their sudden appearance: “What are you-”
But by the time the poor woman was looking up from her task, Rosalie was already hitting her with a Charm Person. And - though she didn’t want to cast aspersions on this woman’s intellect or her life choices, charm still happened to the very best of people - she knew with immediate certainty that it would take.
The woman’s body relaxed from its defensive posture, though she still looked surprised to see Rosalie stood there in front of her.
“Are you here to see the Master?” she asked, in that soft voice of hers, “he’s just gone out. He’ll be so sorry to have missed you. Why are you here?”
“Ummmmmmmm… actually, I’ve been reflecting... on my relationship with your… Master,” Rose blurted, by way of explanation. “And I think he’s right, I’m certain there’s a way we can make this work!”
“...Oh,” said the attendant, sounding equal parts relieved and disappointed at this pronouncement. “Oh, well, that’s lovely, for the both of you. He loves you so much. You’ll make him so happy.”
“But in order for this to work, I want for us to step forward into our new relationship from a place of mutual vulnerability and trust,” Rose extemporised, studiously avoiding Shadowheart’s eyeline as she told a bold-faced lie. “Your Master was in agreement with me, so he’s said I am welcome to look around the house, if it’s to be my home as well, someday. That’s why I teleported - because I’m more than welcome here! And I bought my friend with me, because I want to try and get a… communal buy-in, for this new chapter of our lives.”
“I see…” the attendant said, a little dazed. “...Do you wish for a tour of the premises, my Lady?”
“Please, never call me that again,” Rosalie said, on reflex. “And no thank you! I know my way! Please make sure I am undisturbed in my travels - the Master promised it would be so!”
Grabbing Shadowheart’s arm, the two of them skirted the charmed servant hastily. Even if it was nice to have the confirmation that Astarion had been successfully tricked and the house left empty, Rose’s face where she sat in the carriage was burning: she absolutely hated to lie.
The two of them climbed the stairs, to see another attendant polishing the brass fixtures on the walls and doors with some kind of floral wax. This time, without dropping themselves literally on the man’s head, the two of them could skirt past him with minimal effort. Pass Without Trace did most of the work for them, even in this house that - Rosalie couldn’t help but notice - was lifeless and silent enough to hear a pin drop, whenever she saw it in daytime.
Part of her wanted to search every room of the house, just to find out more about the man Astarion had become. But that was an indulgent distraction, so instead she took Shadowheart to the statue she had noticed, and found the seam of the invisible door behind. When her searching fingers finally touched the curve of the lock’s fixture, the simulacrum fished the skeleton key she had given it out of its pocket. It fit silently into the lock, even when inserted blind.
The door gave, with a click and a soft sigh, as a chill draft slipped by their ankles. Rose would’ve thought this was all too easy, had she not known that the real challenge would lie beyond, and below.
Pass Without Trace wasn’t for Astarion’s human servants, after all.
The door did not open immediately onto a staircase, as she had expected. Instead it revealed a long, thin passageway, that followed the line of the hallway, behind and between the walls. Rose and Shadowheart pressed themselves into the small space - with horns, Rose was on an angle - and crept forward. As they moved they saw no more entrances, but on either side there were flat, dark panes of enchanted glass in the walls. Rosalie realised that this passageway must give opportunities for anyone to move to any room of the house, unseen.
When she pressed her hand experimentally against one of the dark windows, it warmed and gradually cleared even under the simulacrum’s touch. On the other side of the glass was a familiar room: a large bay window, a four poster bed. The sheets were now a pastel shade of pink. She realised she was looking through a mirror that had hung on the bedroom’s west-facing wall.
With a grim, sinking feeling, she did not touch the next pane of glass, and decided to live in a world where Astarion afforded her the privacy of a private bathroom.
Eventually, the secret corridor winnowed its way through all the first floor rooms, and they hit the staircase that she had expected: a twisting stone stairway, claustrophobically narrow and entirely unlit, spearing straight down. The simulacrum stopped breathing, as they slowly inched their way step-by-step down three floors, and then beyond.
Rose somehow knew immediately the moment they were underground, because the walls became clammy with condensation. Behind her, Shadowheart couldn’t stifle a low, nauseated groan. She remembered what the cleric had said, about this place feeling cursed to its very marrow.
“You good?” the simulacrum whispered.
“What was he thinking?” Shadowheart hissed back through gritted teeth. “Why would he ever stay here?”
Rose did not reply, for there was no answer worth giving. Did Astarion even stay here at all, or did he just leave it to his spawn while he enjoyed the ivory edifice upstairs?
They made three more turns of the staircase and then, with all the inevitability of a recurring nightmare, they found themselves once more in Cazador’s dungeon.
No - not Cazador’s dungeon - that much was clear. Though the proportions were the same: high walls, wide hallways, that sickening realisation that that first turn on the left would lead Rosalie to where she had once found Vellioth’s remains… everything else was different. The sickly green light was gone, as was the sound of running water, the musty damp smell of the caverns long erased. It was more spotless stone, and no different from the upstairs, except that the temperature was lower by several degrees. The same blood red carpets that decorated Astarion’s home bisected new pristine floors of white marble, inlaid with a seam of gold in a pattern of curving branches. Sconces lit the walls, the flame casting warm golden light across the space, even if it did little to dispel the unearthly chill. On the walls, more paintings of equal expense to those upstairs: pictures of a woman bathing at night under the moon, a flaming chariot pulled by horses across a starlit sky. Already, Rose could see spots of damp catching at the canvases’ edges.
It was all Astarion’s now. Though its skeleton still belonged to Cazador.
Rose’s simulacrum was not breathing. Shadowheart was similarly as still as a statue, as they paused on the threshold. It was close to midday, so Astarion’s spawn, in theory, should be asleep, but there was no guarantee that that was the case. And Shadowheart had the only heartbeat in the building.
Shadowheart held out her holy symbol and muttered an incantation, whispering Hemlock’s name as she cast Locate Creature. Her symbol started glowing, albeit faintly: Hemlock was closeby.
They paused to listen for anything: voices, footsteps. Shadowheart’s face froze like stone.
A second later, Rosalie realised why.
Because the first thing she heard… were the rats.
Silently, and without spoken agreement, the two women moved in tandem to the first turning on the right. This had fallen away into darkness and groundwater before - now it was a room of white floors and oak panelling, and in it were stacks and stacks of crates, all piled up in haphazard towers. Each one was filled with white rats, enough of them that their bodies churned across each other in their cages, the sounds of their scuffling and squeaking loud enough to fill the room like a chorus.
I'm worried you're not feeding them properly, Rosalie had said to Astarion, to his face, at his party.
And… it seemed she was right.
“Thissssss is fucked up,” Shadowheart muttered, looking sick.
“I don’t understand,” Rose whispered, after a confused second. “Wyll said there were bodies. Bodies that looked like vampires had killed them. At that party, there was a man, I saw him bite someone-”
And she’d seen every other vampire in the room turn to watch the spectacle. She’d assumed out of animalistic instinct, but what if it was something more than that? Jealousy, longing, need…
“No, don’t do that,” Shadowheart said, cutting off Rose’s worst imaginings that seemed to bleed onto the other her’s face. “It’s just a fact, and we know it now. Don’t make it mean anything, not without the full picture.”
Rose nodded, and then pressed herself to the wall to look around the corner, back down the corridor. The surfeit of living things was a benefit, in a way - though slower, Shadowheart’s heartbeat would be lost amongst the horde.
“The dungeons… the cells, where they used to be, on the way to the antechamber,” Rose said, “do you think…?”
But when they went in that direction, Shadowheart’s icon did not glow any brighter, and Rosalie was surprised to see that instead of bars, marking the cells where the Gur children and Sebastian had been sequestered, there were now two oak doors on either side of the corridor. The wood on each was carved with a circular design: two birds arching around each other in flight, a coronet of flowers around two gleaming golden door handles.
Suspecting what lay on the other side, the simulacrum motioned Shadowheart backwards until she was at the very edge of Pass Without Trace, and then she carefully pushed the door forward an inch.
On the other side, were beds. She’d say this for Astarion: they were much nicer beds than what Cazador had provided his spawn. The cells had been expanded out into dormitories, white cabin beds with red coverlets and a smell of fresh, clean linen on the breeze that the door carried with it. Spawn were sprawled out in sleep, all deathly still in a way that was in uncanny contrast with the way their pale limbs all overlapped in disarray. They were unblemished by any injuries they may have sustained in the fight in Shar’s cloister. There were about twenty people scattered through the room, and in the beds that held more bodies than they should, it looked like it was absolutely by choice.
All of them were as still as the grave, not a single chest moving with breath.
Rose closed the door quietly, then locked it behind, with her skeleton key. It might not buy them any time, but it was at least another barrier between them and the monsters, that could serve them well. She did the same with the other door, not bothering to open it first.
She cast a glance back towards Shadowheart, silently gesturing in the direction of the dreaded antechamber. Want to check it out, for old time’s sake?
Shadowheart gave a resigned shrug. Might as well. Things already suck.
The weight of history pressed at her back, as Rosalie walked to the top of the stairs that she had once descended in a numb haze, so overwhelmed by the talk with the prisoners, and the immensity of Cazador’s evil. That fateful day, she’d barely taken in the space at all. If she’d spoken to Astarion then, would things have changed? If she’d held his hand, as they faced that immense evil together, rather than just stood by his side and hoped he’d do the right thing?
She’d been too scared to say anything. She’d not wanted any of it to sound like judgement.
Now, the space before her bore little resemblance to that dark, cavernous room, even though it too was shrouded in shadow - there were no lit torches here. With the light from the open archway, Rosalie’s darkvision bounced of pristine, classical white columns, that climbed to the ceiling and were entwined with creeping, flowering vines that grew in a uniform pattern up the stonework. The floor was inlaid with more gold and a glittering mother of pearl design, birds in flight in a swooping circle, around a large, gilded sun, the rays of light in a concentric pattern across the floor. Beyond, there was a set of stairs that rose up to another platform high on the other side, where Rose could see the outline of another throne, overlooking the entire scene with the same perspective as a watchtower, or a god. This was closer to the ballrooms of Waterdeep and perhaps the Upper City, than any of the other ritualistic chambers Rose had had the misfortune to walk through in her time.
Her footsteps echoed through the entire space as she descended the staircase and took her place on the large, glittering floor. As with the other rooms, Astarion had rebuilt: the floors had been expanded to cover any sudden drops into cursed darkness. Now there were alcoves in the spaces that had once been empty, each with a blood-red velvet curtain pulled back across the entrance to reveal the darkened space inside. Rosalie peered inside the closest one and blanched as she saw a set of chains attached to the wall. But then she saw the implements hung on the wall next to them, and noticed the space also had a divan, covered with a tangle of used sheets. Cutting through the perfumed scent that seemingly lay over everything, like an overused prestidigitation cantrip, was another smell underneath, that she imagined the perfume was designed to hide. Sex, and the metallic tang of blood that, when present, always seemed to catch on the roof of your mouth as you breathed.
She didn’t need to look into any of the other alcoves. The elegant chaises pushed to the outskirts of the ballroom floor itself also took on a new meaning.
Rose took a measurement of the new room, and then went to the centre of the mosaic. She stood in the spot where she guessed Cazador had been forced to kneel, as Astarion carved the runes into his back. Badly, unfortunately - she still remembered thinking that from some distant part of herself, as he’d spelled some things wrong in Infernal despite the image Gale had stepped forward to show him. Gale had been equally well-meaning, but he was not quite the same expert in Infernal - not that Astarion had cared, in his anger and his haste. Rosalie had wanted to say something at the time, but that white haze of mute horror that had prevented her from summoning the image and making the tadpole link had made words hard. She had watched Astarion make his mistakes.
But with those kinds of spells, skill wasn’t really required: intent was all that truly mattered.
If you stood there, in that spot, and looked forward, you faced the tall stairs, climbing up to a platform raised above the dais, on which sat a gleaming ivory and gold throne - ten times more extravagant than the chair Rosalie had playfully mocked, in the upstairs of this house. In the scrolling detail of the headrest, Rose could see even from here a single red gem, filled with a powerful enough kind of magic to make it resemble a glowing ember, in the near darkness of the unlit room.
Astarion had made it so he would always look upon the place where Cazador died, by his hand. Like a king, forever more.
Rosalie tried to process the fact that Astarion turned the same room where all that horror had happened… into his designated orgy space.
“Your boyfriend has a sex dungeon,” Shadowheart observed, tersely. She stood in the far corner, having done a full survey of every alcove, and her face told Rose that she’d made the right decision to extrapolate out from given data, rather than taking a full sample size.
Rosalie looked over at her, and said the only thing she could manage: “...it’s on the same floor as the rats.”
Shadowheart paused, and then her mouth briefly twitched, before she asked, conversationally, “...do you think they pause for snack breaks?”
“Maybe it’s a ‘take one as you leave’ deal. Like a party bag.”
It all felt so surreal, and stupid, and gods, Karlach was right: who was Astarion doing all this for, if it didn’t make him happy?
“The icon is dimming,” Shadowheart said, after they both took another dazed, uncomfortable second. “I think she might be in the other direction.”
But all that lay in that other direction, was Cazador’s rooms.
They crept back, through the silent corridor, past the sleeping spawn. They turned off the corridor. With that same nightmare dread, Rose felt her feet carry her down a gleaming, remade corridor that held echoes of its old self.
The entrance to the room that had once been Cazador’s, and Vellioth’s before him, was now barred by two golden doors. Unlike the other doors to the spawns’ chambers, they were made entirely of polished metal without the single mar of even a greasy fingerprint. They were resplendent: inlaid with mother of pearl that held a slight pink blush in torchlight. It served as a backdrop to frieze of peacocks intertwined with flowers in a wreath around the edge of the door. They were expensive, they gleamed, and they were locked.
Shadowheart’s icon was glowing a little brighter, but she looked dubious.
“I… don’t think this is a door to a dungeon,” she said.
“...Maybe Hemlock’s rooms?” Rose hazarded - though in truth she had a suspicion, and against her better judgement, she wanted it confirmed.
She bought out the skeleton key once more. It whispered itself into the lock, and there was a succession of four clicks as the key met a small resistance, then still turned.
On the other side was an empty room, that looked like the tower a princess might be trapped within, in a fairy tale. There were no lights on, but the room was still bright, as a magicked window showing an artificially shaded grove sat on one wall, playing an illusory image of daytime on a loop. Plants hung from the ceiling in hanging pots, spilling flowers over the sides even in the underground darkness. Bookshelves lined the walls, empty save for a few ornaments that filled the space that would one day host a library. A wardrobe twice Rosalie’s height, a vanity dresser with no cosmetics, and without a mirror. A small adjoining toilet, and a freestanding bathtub in the right corner of the room, big enough to hold two people comfortably.
And another fourposter bed, identical to the one upstairs. Another set of pink sheets laid across it, this time embroidered with patterns of cherry blossoms.
In Cazador’s former sleeping quarters.
“Yeahhhhh, noooooooooooo,” Rosalie said to herself, closing the doors back up and locking it. Her simulacrum was breathing heavily through its nose now, completely superfluously, and she could feel her panic and disgust rising up in her other body. “This just sucks. This just royally fucking sucks.”
Shadowheart’s hand pressed gently on her back in calm, solid reassurance. “Soulless, remember?”
“And heartless,” Rose replied. “So much more so, than before.”
“I think she must be underneath us,” Shadowheart said, examining the icon, which was indeed glowing brighter, even though Hemlock wasn't here. “The second floor down. If Astarion’s renovated this layer, it stands to reason he fixed the other…”
“...And moved everything bad beneath the surface, and out of sight,” Rose muttered.
“Perhaps a secret door?”
“...You wait here, and I’ll-”
It took the simulacrum nearly twenty minutes of silent searching, and a use of its own Third Eye, for her to find the switch that dissolved an illusory wall… behind the rats. Shadowheart and Rose shared another unimpressed, bored look at the Ascendent’s expense, and started grumpily moving crates while the contents of each squealed and shrieked and writhed.
By this point, Rosalie felt almost numb to the horror and the indignity of it all. What had she been expecting to find down here? Fluffy bunnies? They’d probably be eating them, as well.
They passed through the wall, and immediately, everything was darkness. That musty, damp smell of Cazador’s old dungeons came back in full force, only kept at bay by Astarion’s single-minded obsession with aesthetic. While everything else had been renovated and enchanted to spotlessness, this had been left to further decay. After a few groping steps in the sudden, oppressive dark, Rose’s darkvision adjusted and they found a crumbling stairway, old and ancient, leading down. As they started down it, Shadowheart’s icon grew brighter and brighter, the only thing lighting their way through the darkness.
The second level of the dungeon was pitch black. Squinting through the aura of Shadowheart’s divine magic, the two of them found themselves on another corridor. Though there were no hanging cages or gibbets, as there had been in Cazador’s time, there were several doors off of this corridor, each with barred windows. Shadowheart’s magic glinted off slick, wet floors, and walls that crawled with slimy lichen and wept with damp, almost as if they were bleeding. When Rosalie walked up to the first door to peer into the cell beyond, she found the wood itself was spongy, bloated and rotting, as if the very space itself could only destroy.
But, to her relief… most of the cells were empty. It was only when they were six doors down, that Shadowheart’s icon flared bright, brilliant white. When Rose peered through the bars in the door, she saw a figure hunched over in a corner, her face and body shielded and hidden behind a bright curtain of copper hair.
Hemlock roused, skin hissing slightly as the aura of Shadowheart’s magic spilled through the grate. She raised her head and hand, to squint against the light, and the glimpse of her face through her long hair was pale, dirty, and tired looking. Rose was surprised to see that Astarion’s misbehaving mage did not have any bracelets on her wrists, to stifle her magic. Nor was she shackled. She was just sat there, still, in the squalid muck. And after five days, she already looked starved.
Hemlock squinted long enough to seemingly recognise who was peering at her through the small, porthole sized window in the door, for she then rasped, “what the fuc-”
Rosalie took out her skeleton key, and unlocked the cell door.
“What are you-” that was Shadowheart, clearly expecting them to at least interrogate Hemlock at a safe distance, first.
But when Rose pressed against the damp wood and the door swung inwards with a long shriek, Hemlock didn’t move from her space curled up in the corner. Nor did she cast anything. She just barely fought a flinch.
But… the skeleton key had worked, and Shadowheart still glowed with divine power, so it wasn’t like there was some kind of silencing effect in place on the cells themselves. Something else rendered the woman powerless - something else unseen.
“Can you move?” Rosalie asked her.
Hemlock blinked up at her, staring at her like she was crazy. “I can move,” she replied, her voice still rasping, but recovering some of its haughty condescension. “I just choose not to.”
“Your magic isn’t being suppressed,” Rose observed, now standing fully in the doorway. “But I’m not being Fireballed, or Feebleminded on sight. Why?”
Hemlock glared at her in stubborn silence, but she stayed in her corner and did absolutely nothing. No fetters or manacles bound her in place.
“...Did Astarion order you not to cast?”
The stare became venomous and hate-filled.
“Ah,” Rosalie said, “well, been there. Fucking sucks, right?”
“I have been told to stay here, and think about the things I have done,” Hemlock ground out through her teeth. “I will stay here, until I understand why he’s angry. And when I can be trusted to make the right decisions on his behalf with my magic, he will give it back to me.”
Rosalie could think of no reply to this, and so she walked into the prison cell.
“Come close enough,” Hemlock warned, “and I won’t need any magic. I’ll tear into you, and rip your ungrateful throat out-”
“-You can certainly try,” Rosalie interrupted. “And you know, if it had a chance of healing you, I’d almost consider it.”
“What are you - Ah. A simulacrum,” Hemlock observed, as she perhaps finally clocked the absence of a heartbeat within the room. Her face became almost scholarly, pensive. “I proposed that to him as a solution, you know. With the hair left on that hairpin of yours. If he ever wanted a plaything, we could always just make him one. He only lost interest in my suggestion, when he realised it would be bloodless.”
“Charming.” Rosalie said, as she began casting Dancing Lights with hands she was proud didn’t shake. “It’s always nice to know when someone likes me, for me. Shadowheart?”
Shadowheart’s divine aura dimmed as the Locate Creature dropped, to be replaced by the low blue of Rose’s own arcane light. The cleric stepped into the room, and began to cast another spell: Zone of Truth. They both watched Hemlock as it took, looking for the signs in her face that she had failed to resist and fallen under the spell.
“What good will that do you?” the vampire glowered from her corner, after a terse second. “I can’t lie, sure. But I don’t have to speak, if I don’t want to.”
“We haven’t found your rooms yet, in our search of this place,” Rosalie said, keeping up a tone of faux politeness. “Where are they?”
Hemlock smiled at her spitefully, staying stubbornly silent, lest the truth fall from her lips.
“Answer,” Shadowheart said, her eyes flaring white as she also cast Command.
“I live on this floor,” Hemlock immediately blurted, words falling from her lips and startling even her. “I’m the only one he trusts with this side of himself. I dwell in the workspace beyond the dungeon, in my lab, with my work. Walk through the south-facing door, and take a right.”
“Do you have any documentation on the Espruar dialect, or the spell Wish, in those rooms?” Rosalie asked.
Hemlock curled her lip, “are you fucking kidding me? Do you think you’re funny, little girl? Is this some kind of jok-”
“Answer,” intoned Shadowheart again.
“Of course I do,” Hemlock said. “That was my fucking life’s work. I’ve kept and preserved it all.”
“Is any of it hidden?”
“Yes,” Hemlock said.
“Where?”
The woman gnashed on her own teeth, like a dog on too-short leash. “Behind the cabinet on the north facing wall. There’s a switch in the bureau.”
“Fantastic. Thank you ever so much,” Rosalie said. “...If I stole all of that work from you, right now, would I understand it all, without your help?”
Shadowheart cast Command again. Hemlock was starting to look like she wanted to throw herself at them both, but still she didn’t move from the spot she was forced to sit in, amongst her own filth.
“I don’t know,” she spat truthfully, through gritted teeth. “It is ciphered, but the cipher is not unique to me. It can be decoded. The contents of my research is not beyond the reach of an astute academic mind. With time, and many years, and more intellect than you have shown thus far-”
“Right, so that means we're going to have to take you with us, because I’m not interested in it taking very long at all,” Rose said, calmly ignoring the insult. “The door you took me through when I was Feebleminded, from the sewers to this house. Where is it?”
“It is in my rooms,” Hemlock was Commanded to say. “The mirror on the back wall is useless, obviously. I have no need for it. There’s a catch on the left, and it swings aside.”
“Why would Astarion put a secret passageway in-” for a second, Rosalie wondered if this was jealousy feeding her disbelief, and then she realised it just didn’t add up: “he doesn’t know it's there, does he?”
Hemlock’s mouth moved painfully. “There is another passageway to the sewers, upstairs, that bypasses… this. I have my own.”
“...And he’s never noticed?”
Hemlock stayed silent.
“Come now,” Shadowheart drawled. “Don’t make me waste my magic on pointless things. It’s only humiliating for one of us, when you fail and capitulate.”
Hemlock’s nostrils flared, and then she gritted out: “he doesn’t like mirrors.” She looked at Rosalie. “He makes me cover it, when he comes to my rooms and we-”
“Yes, yes, we all saw the sex room upstairs, we’re all well aware of Astarion's piss-poor coping mechanisms,” Rosalie sighed. “Let’s not waste the Zone of Truth on pointless things, either. What happens, if we move you from this spot right now? Truthfully?”
Hemlock’s mouth moved mullishly around the words, but she responded before Shadowheart needed to compel her. “I shall fight and thrash and claw my way back here. I will feel my disobedience as pain. My mind will scream to my Master, to tell him of my misdeeds, and I will call him down upon you both. And once that is done, I will come back here, and I will lock myself in once more.”
“...Why haven’t you called him yet?”
This time, Shadowheart did have to use Command.
“...My Master told me to protect your life, as if it was my own,” Hemlock told Rosalie, unspeakable hatred in her face. “That if I made you unhappy, it was the same as making him unhappy, and I am already forbidden from ever displeasing him.”
“Gods, that really does suck for you,” Rosalie replied. “...And it only makes my life easier.”
She reached into her bag, and pulled out a Potion of Sleep.
“It will make me very, very unhappy, Mage Bartelle, if you don’t drink this for me,” Rosalie informed her. “Of course, I don’t mind if you ignore my wishes and make me unhappy. I don’t know what Astarion would think. Not that it matters: Shadowheart will simply compel you to drink it anyway.”
“...What the fuck are you doing?” Hemlock asked indignantly. “What is this? You aren’t saving me.”
“Come on, now,” Rosalie said. “You’re a smart girl. I’m sure you have some inkling of what I have planned.”
Hemlock glared at her in affronted disbelief. Rose uncorked the potion, got down to her knees in front of the spawn, and held it five feet from her face.
“Drink,” Shadowheart said.
Seething, Hemlock drank.
Once the potion had taken effect and the spawn slumped down into an inelegant black, white, and red pile on the floor, Shadowheart gave Rose an unimpressed look. “Big words, but you’re not the poor fuck that’s going to have to carry her out of here, are you?”
“She’s a wizard, and she’s the colour of wet parchment,” Rosalie shrugged, “I’m sure she weighs about as much as your old shield, certainly less than the glaive.”
“Let’s see, shall we?” Shadowheart sighed, grabbing the woman around the middle and hefting her over her shoulder like a sack of flour. “Lovely. Just wonderful.”
“You’re not that old.”
They walked down the corridor in the direction they’d been given, with Hemlock’s limp body in tow. Halfway down the passageway, Rosalie stumbled - or at least, it felt like she did, but she realised it was her true body, being jostled in the carriage, not the simulacrum who’s experiences she was merged with. It was a strange moment of dissonance - she’d been so focused that she’d not noticed any other bumps or knocks in the road.
“You alright?” Shadowheart asked.
“I think something might be happening with the others,” Rosalie explained. Then the simulacrum took control of its own mouth to add: “if she gets booted out, I was present for all of Hemlock’s explanation. It does not stretch my abilities to follow such instructions, and I will keep tabs on the true version of me, to tell you how much time we have.”
“Whatever just happened then, was unnerving,” Shadowheart remarked over Hemlock’s slumped head, as Rose retained enough control to open the woman’s rooms with the skeleton key.
Hemlock was well-matched with the Ascendent, in their shared taste for cliché. Her room was all dark red and varnished mahogany. However, Rosalie was embarrassingly enchanted by what she suddenly decided was the sexiest room in the house. Ignoring the double bed with its burgundy coverlets, bisected from the rest of the room by a curtain that pulled around to create its own private space, she instead focused on the massive fucking laboratory that took up the other three quarters of the large chamber, that she realised must be directly below the once-ritual space. Each workbench was covered with expensive spell components: if this had been the tadpole days, Rose would have immediately started sweeping it all up into a bag. Just one look at the bookshelves on the walls already sent her mind spinning: never mind Hemlock’s secret stash, half the tomes here on display were worth thousands upon thousands of gold, and there were a few manuscripts that Rose had only ever been able to read in translation because the originals were held in private libraries - or, apparently, dingy vampire basements.
Shadowheart was breathing heavily. At first, Rosalie thought Hemlock weighed more than they'd anticipated, but she realised that her friend looked a little green around the edges. “It’s the magic,” Shadowheart gritted out, “this place is cursed. I can barely stomach it. No wonder she’s so fucking weird.”
“I think she might also be cleverer than me,” Rosalie said off-hand, as she started taking books off the shelves. Once the agoraphobia had been dealt with, she'd taken any excuse to work in the field, so her theoretical magics had become her downtime activity, whenever she was injured or burned out from too many projects back-to-back. Hemlock, it seemed, had sequestered herself away to only study. The books were intensely difficult even for Rose to decipher, as she did a skim of contents pages. She gave up on being methodical, and settled instead for placing everything she could find greedily into her carpetbag.
“Hurry,” Shadowheart said, in the kind of choked voice that told Rose she was actually in real discomfort.
“Of course,” Rose said, going towards the bureau to flip the switch Hemlock had described. “I don’t think I’ll need more than twenty minutes to get everything. Put her down for now, if you’d like - if the two of us work together then-””
And then Rosalie yelped, as she was pitched forward and back into her own body. She was suddenly back, in the carriage hours outside of Baldur’s Gate, with a sickening lurch. It felt like falling, and then it was falling. There was a horrible disorienting moment, and then she realised that her true body was toppling forward in the carriage, about to faceplant onto the lip of the seat on the other side. Luckily, Lae’zel’s arm snapped out to clamp down on her shoulder, and braced her in time.
“What’s happening?” Rosalie asked.
“Astarion decided to give chase,” Lae’zel explained curtly.
And then, the carriage flipped.
Notes:
Could've had another horror sequence where Rosalie got chased down by spawn, but I opted for a chill tour of Astarion's Mojo Dojo Casa House instead :')
Lots and lots of info in this chapter, thank you for bearing with me! We'll have another divorced showdown in the next chapter, just gotta get some plot out of the way first lmao
Thanks as always for your patience, and your comments/kudos!
I also want to give a shout out to the person who made this Tiktok. The fact that there was a Tiktok about my silly little fic was very lovely in-and-of itself, but what I actually wanted to thank you for was the extremely entertaining and surreal experience of being jumpscared in the middle of workday by my IRL friend sending me a link saying "...you just showed up on fyp, what the fuck". What a time to be alive and writing fic! Here, have a jumpscare in the endnotes in return!
Chapter Notes
- Simulacrum is a 7th Level spell, I made up the Latin for it through an educated guess bc it's not in BG3 lol.
- Simulacrum is a Fucked Up Spell and I love it dearly - originally I drafted a version of this chapter where it was the bait and the entire thing *did* end with her fireballing the Ascendent... and then I realised simulacra don't have any fucking blood. FML. That things I do for 5e.
- Telepathy is an 8th Level spell. I'm not sure if it would create the exact walkie-talkie link I invent here, but fuck it, I needed a plot device and the spell text was close enough to what I needed lmao. I'd already rewritten the chapter once (see above).
- Please don't judge me for making Gale the one to do the mindlink and help with the Ascendency ritual, it's not any judgement of his character. I just needed a plot device and I think he is (after Tav) 1. the character with the most sympathy for Astarion's situation, given the Narrative Parallels, 2. the most useful knowledge of the spell in question. He did it bc he's Astarion's friend and Rose fucked it in the moment, nothing more.
- Me going room-by-room through this dungeon I have written, describing things that I decided for myself were there: :(((((((((((
- The rules of Zone of Truth is that anyone who fails the save can't say anything untrue - they don't technically have to speak though, so if there's something they don't want you to know they can choose to stay silent. But if you combine it with a Command spell (as I've seen done in games a few times!) it suddenly becomes a very evil interrogation technique (I love D&D spellcasters they're so fucked up).
-Espruar is a moon elf script - in a previous version of this chapter, I used the Calishite mages, but have since learned that Calishar has some awkward Orientalism I'm not interested in delving into, so I changed it for more of your standard fantasy bullshit. Espruar is apparently a 'common' written language according to the Wiki, but let's pretend otherwise here just so I avoid appropriating any cultures.
Chapter 12: Chapter Twelve
Notes:
Ok, I have admitted defeat, and added a 'horror' tag to this story. This is the chapter that tipped it over the edge (I say, like it wasn't already there), so please bear that in mind when reading!
(I've added trigger warnings to the bottom of the endnote to be safe!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Or at least, there was a moment when the carriage flipped. Lae’zel and Rose tumbled inside their compartment, as they were shunted heavily to the side, felt the wheels leave the ground, and the world begin to tip on its axis.
But then, a glint of magic shone outside the left window. There was a groan of wood, a force pressing down on the roof of the carriage. Rose’s teeth rattled as all four wheels hit the road again. There was a loud snap and a long tearing sound, as a wheel arch broke upon impact with the ground.
The horses screamed, a loud “fuck!” came from Karlach up top, and then the carriage span out to the right. Rosalie dropped to brace herself in the space between the seats, as the world kept spinning, and came to an abrupt stop when they crashed into a tree. The wood splintered and the glass shattered, the momentum causing her to nearly bite off her own tongue as her head was thrown forward.
Another crunch, as the world tilted one final time along the angle of the broken wheel. The carriage landed skewed, spiderweb cracks veining the windows.
And then, stillness.
Lae’zel had stayed put in her seat, out of sheer stubbornness alone. There was a curse and a groan from the roof, followed by the sound of movement, signalling that Karlach was still in one piece. A second later, Rose saw the dark shape of a horse dart past the window on the in-tact side - their reins had been severed, to prevent them going down with the vehicle.
Rosalie raised her head, feeling a line on her forehead from the imprint of the seat in front, but no other injuries. “I think we need to buy them twenty minutes,” she said to Lae’zel, who nodded in understanding.
Twenty minutes. That was all the time the simulacrum needed, in order to get Hemlock’s papers. And then maybe another fifteen at most, to find the door to the sewers and get out. They'd led the Ascendent roughly two hours out of the Gate on horseback. Rose remembered reading a very boring, but unfortunately very useful, academic article calculating the speed of the vampiric mist form - if dead, it would take him even longer to return.
So long as Astarion didn’t teleport by some unknown means, they were in the clear. Rosalie had nothing to lose.
And, thinking back to the dungeon, that pristine empty bedroom, and Hemlock alone in the dark… she had quite a lot to say.
Hiding in the carriage only ended with Astarion pulling her bodily out. So instead, Rose shuffled over on her arse, past Lae’zel’s legs, and kicked the carriage door open on the unmangled side. Seeing the steps down destroyed, bent out of shape and missing the rung where they’d carved a deep gouge in the road, she slithered inelegantly out of the raised cabin, the same way she would drop from a slightly-too-high wall. She was careful to keep her arm tucked into the fake sling, but this meant she ended up overbalancing, and tumbling down into the dirt.
Thirty feet away, Astarion was stepping down from his own vehicle, with the supercilious air of a Prince descending amongst the common folk. He was dressed all in white, brushing unseen lint off his shoulder… and like a regal sceptre, in his other hand Rosalie recognised the weapon that had once belonged to Cazador: the garnet staff, known as Woe.
So, the magic that had stopped the carriage had come from him, and this meant that perhaps teleportation was not off the table - with that artefact, Rose had no idea what the Vampire Ascendent was capable of.
Astarion’s eyes darted first to Rosalie’s bandaged wrist, then to her face. “Darling," he said, sounding heartbroken, "are you hurt?”
Rosalie looked up at him incredulously, still on her knees in the dust of the road.
“Astarion,” she said, aghast, “you crashed the fucking carriage. What the fuck do you think?”
“I did my best to minimise the damage,” he replied, his face approaching something contrite. “I don’t smell any blood.”
“Well, congrats on passing that low fucking bar. Who knew you had it in you?” Rose spat. She tried to rise up to standing with a grunt, but without the use of one of her arms it was not a very dignified nor successful process, especially taking into account her weak knee. Her muscles were all seized up from being sat in the carriage, piloting another body for the past hour.
“...Is your hand still injured?” Astarion asked her, a picture of concern. “Is that why you left town - was Shadowheart not pulling her weight? You know, I have a healer-”
To Rosalie’s alarm, she saw him take a step towards her, as if about to offer aid. But then, mercifully, Karlach’s shadow loomed into view from her right. Silent and stone-faced, her friend reached out her hand, and pulled Rose to standing in one fluid movement. She did it with enough strength that Rose tripped over her own feet.
By that point, Lae’zel was also descending out of the carriage with far more grace than Rosalie had managed, landing on both feet. The knight took a wide legged stance just behind Rose’s shoulder, while Karlach stood at her side, arms folded, looking extremely unimpressed in Astarion's direction.
“...Ah,” Astarion said, eloquently. Then, he smiled. “Well. Isn’t this just like old times?”
All three women stared him down.
“The four of us... out in the wild…” Astarion gestured between them, spaced out at a safe distance along the road, “I mean, I feel suddenly overcome with the urge to ransack a goblin camp, or something!”
“Ok, well, you go do that sweetheart," Rosalie replied. "And then we’ll talk.”
“...I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, don’t mind me, I’m also just reminiscing at my end,” she said, doing her best to shrug. “To a time when I gave you blood without question, because you were actually helpful when you had it. Didn’t have to force the issue then, did you?”
Astarion looked briefly hurt for a second, and then his expression turned venomous. “Oh… I see. Now that we have an audience again, it’s back to prickly and self-righteous, is it? You're still so scared of other people's judgement, darling. It's easy to play the beleaguered victim when-”
“Astarion. You locked me up in your house, you chased us out of the city, and then you crashed our carriage,” Rose replied, speaking as if to a toddler. “Yes, it’s child’s play to play the victim, actually - with you fucking victimising me.”
“If you didn’t want me here, love, why did you choose to leave the Gate by mundane means? Where are your spell protections? You're normally meticulous about these things, which means you wanted me to follow you, darling... that much is obvious,” Astarion sighed. “You know, I really thought we were making some progress, last time. But the appeal, for you, really does seem to lie in the struggle. What other use does this wilful obstinance of yours serve? Just because you said some things, that you can’t pretend weren’t said, and now you're feeling all shy over them-”
Rosalie stared at him. Then, she stared at him some more. She genuinely didn’t think that Astarion - the thing wearing his face - realised why remembering what she had told him when she was charmed would make her feel ill, even if it had all been true.
It had been a long day, filled with some already pretty vile things, and she was still seething.
Twenty minutes. She thought.
It was truly nothing, in the grand scheme of things, to win.
Rosalie took a step forward. Then another. Karlach moved to place her hand on her free arm, and Rose gave her a brief look, that she hoped communicated volumes. Her friend's hand dropped, and she let her pass. Astarion watched her approach, bemused and entertained in turn as she walked up to him. Rosalie just stared, straight in his eyes. It was hard to feel any shame at all.
“I like your outfit, darling,” Astarion said when she was ten feet away. “You look lovely.”
“Thanks, it’s armour,” Rosalie said in a flat, bored voice. She was wearing the night blue robes she had taken from the mannequin in Alaron, enchanted cloth interwoven with mithril, hinted at by glints of silver like stars in the sky.
“Lovely! It would be a bad idea to do anything silly, now, wouldn't it? That might lead to it getting dirtied-”
With the hand not wrapped and bound to her chest, Rose grasped hold of the pristine, crisp collar of his suit jacket, pulled him forward, and silenced Astarion with a kiss.
It was everything she could’ve given him last time, had she not been intent on ramming that stake into his heart. Gentle and tender, a little like the olden days, and then her hand moved deep into his hair, to cradle the back of his neck. Astarion shuddered - she thought, despite himself - and the mesh of their mouths deepened, becoming something needier, and messy. She could tell he was surprised, but had no issue with taking the opportunity when it was offered to him. He placed his free hand on her chin and used it as leverage to tug her whole body in closer. Rosalie let it happen. Despite feeling heavily manhandled, despite the fact that Woe, that hateful weapon that had killed seven thousand, was right there.
When she stroked her thumb gently into the bare skin just below his ear, Astarion made an inarticulate noise, and Rose smiled as she swallowed it.
And then she pushed him back from her, and watched as he stumbled, this time.
“There,” she said.
“I - what?” Astarion said. He regained his footing, placing his hand against his lip.
“Is that supposed to do anything?” Rosalie demanded, gesturing at him wholesale. “Am I meant to feel something now? Is it supposed to make me feel bad... or make me forgive you? Like you, even?”
Astarion actually looked flustered. Rose felt elated at the sight. “What are you-”
“Because I really don’t feel anything at all, Astarion,” she interrupted. “It’s the strangest thing. I loved you. When we were together, you filled my every waking thought. And then, for years afterwards, I stewed myself in blame and guilt and hatred, for everything I thought I’d done to you. I actually wondered if I’d made the wrong choice. I wondered if I should come back. And now, after two weeks of this exhausting, pointless, degrading experience, it’s finally over. Every scrap of sympathy I’ve tortured myself with, you’ve killed it all off.”
Astarion looked at her with wild eyes. “You told me you love me-”
“Yes, asshole, I fucking do!” Rosalie looked at him, close to laughter. “I love you! I love you more than anything. Is that what you’re going to use against me, next? Are you going to tell me it’s my weakness? Threaten me with it, call me perverse, or stupid? Call me a liar? Call me selfish? Guess what, you pulled that truth out of me by force, as well! So what can you do with it now? Make me feel bad about it? You already did that, and so you've made it lose its power. Before, loving you consumed me. Now, I’m just... bored! How embarrassing for you, that I could love you that much, and you can still render it down into nothing.”
“Now, darling-”
Rosalie reached out her arm before Astarion could even start his sentence, and she tousled her hand roughly through his hair. She raked fingers through front and centre, then through the soft curls at the nape of his neck, just for the spiteful joy of ruining the entire hairstyle. Then, she trailed that same hand with splayed fingers across his chest, down the brocaded splendour of this latest waistcoat, while he watched her with total, mortified incredulity.
“Oooh,” she said, framing his entire figure, “vampire sex appeal, so scary. So discomforting! Gosh, I feel so tortured by my own attraction. How dare I reduce you to your body, when you literally invite me into a house of all the people you've fucked, and spend your every waking moment weaponising your own appearance, until it’s the blade that cuts us both. I hope you don’t make me feel like a shameful little whore for a situation you’ve engineered, then tell me in the next breath that I’m a boring prude that never lets myself have anything, as if you aren’t the one humiliating me for any emotion I happen to display."
She dropped her hand from him, examined her nails, and then shrugged, “Or maybe I’ll give into my terrible, base instincts, or you won’t wait for my agreement at all. And then you’ll ravish me, and it’ll be horrible and underwhelming, because I’ll have asked for it all to stop three minutes in and you won’t feel anything, anything at all, because you’ve utterly forgotten how to do any of this without causing pain. Oh, wait a second... that’s already happened as well! So what have I got to lose?”
Rosalie sneered at him, imagining what he would look like, if he delivered this speech to her: “Doesn’t matter if I want it, doesn’t matter if I don’t - you’ll ruin it either way. You were totally right, Astarion: desire really is meaningless… when it’s for you.”
Astarion stared at her.
His voice was low and threatening, as he asked carefully, “are you trying to die?”
“Why, you going to kill me?” Rose demanded, utterly ignoring the threat. “No, you’re not, are you? You think we get to spend an eternity like this. You want me to be the kind of person who wants that for myself. So why is it, that you get to be horrible, but when I act the same way, I’m just being ‘difficult’? Aren’t I just getting to your level? ”
She gestured down at herself. “Isn’t this what you wanted? Congratulations: I’m exhausted, and you’ve burned through every ounce of restraint I had left. I just really don’t fucking care anymore. No more guilt, no more sadness, no more embarrassment. I’ll just treat you the way you treat me - the way you treat yourself."
She raised her hand, and pointed, "the only people who are uncomfortable here are Lae’zel and Karlach, who are being forced to watch you embarrass yourself for the first time. All because, again: you crashed our carriage.”
Rose hadn’t actually given Lae’zel enough credit - she was watching the entire scene impassively. By Lae’zel’s terms, Rose doubted that either of them had actually reached the point of insult yet - or, for that matter, foreplay. Meanwhile, Karlach was scuffing her shoes in the dirt and pointedly looking at anywhere but them. Rosalie really hoped Lae’zel had managed to hand signal to her that they were on a twenty minute timer, so that there would at least be a little context for the entire, absurd situation.
But when Rosalie turned back, she realised she’d done it again: turning her back on him, showing that she considered him to be no threat whatsoever. And yet, Astarion hadn’t done anything. He was just looking at her, lips parted, like she was a stranger. Even while holding Cazador’s staff.
“And if all this is making you uncomfortable, well, why don’t we examine that a little?” Rosalie took a step forward, hands behind her back, directly into his space. “Do you actually want me to be the kind of terrible person who could love you, or do you want something else?”
She looked at his lips pointedly, then back up to his eyes, which stayed riveted on her in turn.
“...Do you want the person who would save you? Or am I giving you too much credit, and what you actually want is the person you can torture? Who you can hound at every turn, who you can keep prisoner, and who will hate every moment, but have no choice but to endure?”
She placed her hand on Astarion's cheek, pretended she didn’t know about the bones and heart of his home, and found it all-in-all, easy to do.
“...Do you want me?”
Astarion’s expression sharpened under her touch, clearly trying to get back in on the game and find the way to win. “Of course I want you, dearest. You’re all I want.”
Rosalie wondered if he realised what he was admitting, with that sentence - the answer he’d just given, to both her questions.
“Me?” she asked, “Or the version of me you got through charm?”
“But… wasn’t it nice?” Astarion asked her, carefully. "To not have to fight so hard...?"
He hesitated, then reached out as well, and placed his own hand on her face, mirroring her gesture. It moved, stroked her skin with enough care to make her heart race exactly how he wanted, and ended on her neck, under the weight of her hair, his thumb pressed on the hinge of her jaw.
“Wasn't it good, to let all that pain go? Even just a little? The means were crude, I’ll admit, but… wasn’t it like the old days? Just for a second. We used to have that, all the time.”
Rosalie considered killing him then and there.
“You know who changed,” she told him, instead.
And felt his hand briefly spasm against her, seemingly resisting the urge to tighten.
“You don’t like me how I am now, little love?” Astarion murmured, fighting to stay in the conversation. He stepped in and closed the distance between them to less than an inch, voice dropping to a velvet-edged murmur. “What do you want from me? Do you wish me kinder? I can be kinder, for you. To you. If you don’t like the other people in my house, I can get rid of them. It can be just the two of us.”
And after a delicate pause, he leaned in and kissed her. Soft and slow, such a careful pantomime of the man that had come before. His body remembered what she had treasured, in the end: the moments of physicality that had been tender, that had been only for love. Rosalie closed her eyes, and let the moment linger, counting down the seconds it bought her and her plan. Had she been anyone else but who she was, the performance might even have been enough.
But those moments of uncanny difference couldn’t be ignored: the way teeth and tongue were used to use to cajole, and dismantle any resistance, rather than just to savour her. The way the hand cradling her head moved to her throat, and he thought she wouldn’t notice. When his thumb moved to rest in the well between her collarbones, the nail traced an almost imperceptible but ultimately sharp-lined path across the curve of her throat.
“Oh, Astarion,” Rose sighed, eventually, not seduced and merely sad. “That isn’t anything close to what I want, at all.”
She pulled his hand away from her, and backed out of his reach once more.
There was frustration in the Ascendent’s face as she parted the two of them. He clearly didn’t understand why the tools he had weren’t working.
Had he been anything but detestable, Rosalie would almost pity him. It truly was an impossible situation in which he found himself.
“Alright, asshole, now you’ve got us both here and we both fucking hate it, let’s have your productive, ‘civilised’ conversation,” Rose sniped. “Let me follow your convoluted logic to its inevitable conclusion. Say we eventually live in a world where I love you, and you fuck me well enough that I'm able to overlook every heinous thing you’ve done: I still don’t want to be a vampire. That hasn’t changed, and that was the sticking point last time, wasn’t it? Remember how this all started, with you dumping me?”
“Well, I’ll admit in hindsight, maybe I rushed a few things. It was all so new, I wanted to share it with you,” the Ascendent said, with a wave of his hand, and a face forced back to impassivity. “But I have to change you sometime, my darling. Otherwise, you’ll die.”
“Astutely observed, but not something that scares me.”
“Don’t lie, darling, everyone fears death,” Astarion said. He looked at the spot in the dirt where she’d struggled. “You’re already weaker than you used to be - imagine how you would have lost nothing, only gained, had you stayed with me in your prime-”
Rosalie raised an eyebrow at him.
“Though, perhaps you were right to wait,” he hastily amended, “now, if you changed, we’d look of an age. And you’re still beautiful, my love, but I don’t want to condemn you to aches and pains - although, now I think about it, I’m sure a drop of my blood would certainly cure your hand-”
“You haven’t actually heard anything I said,” Rosalie cut across him calmly. “I’m not scared of dying. I’ve never wanted to be a vampire. What can you do with me, now? Say I love you. Could you love me, the way I am?”
Astarion looked up at her, like she was a calculation he didn’t know the answer to.
“You can’t ask me to let you stay mortal," he said quietly. "How long would we have - forty years, fifty, sixty at most? That’s cruel, Rosalie: to make me love you, knowing one day I’ll have to mourn you. What am I to do, once you’re gone?”
“Attempt to take over the world, I imagine, if I’m truly the only thing holding you back,” Rose replied. “Or... we could live in a world where those years were enough, given that they’re all of myself I can give you.”
“And you want that? For me to miss you so much, it’ll drive me to violence?” Astarion demanded, seemingly ignoring the second part of her statement.
“Well, it seems I already drive you to violence from doing sweet fuck all. So at least I’ll be dead, and won’t have to suffer any of it myself.”
“Selfish, again, dearest. If you stay with me, forever, no one need ever get hurt.”
“No. If I stay with you forever, I become the one who is hurt, because I never wanted to be a vampire," Rose said. "And I’d be doing it all to leash a man who, quite frankly, can display an ounce of self control of his own, for once.”
“You would never want for anything," Astarion insisted. "You'd live only your best life. I’ll be everything you want me to be.”
“I’ve never had any doubts in your ability as an actor,” Rosalie replied. “I’m sure it would be a very compelling performance. But you don’t love me, Astarion. You’ve just admitted it.”
He frowned at her, angry. “I love you.”
“No,” she sighed, “you don’t. You love the spawn you’d make of me, which is just an extension of you.”
“I love you, Rose,” Astarion insisted, placing his hand over his heart. “More than my own self. You’re the only thing I’ve ever loved.”
“I’m sorry you’re so lost...” Rosalie replied to him. “...If my memory is all you have to cling to, like a life raft. But I won’t cling back.”
“Don’t do that,” the Ascendent gritted out, that anger flitting across his face again. “Don’t dismiss what I feel, as if it’s nothing!”
“Why not? That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
“How can you say that? It's everything. After everything I’ve done-”
“-Which part, exactly? The murder? The abduction? The charming? The assault?”
“I love you," he repeated. "You’re the one who left!”
“...And can you maybe see why?”
“You don’t know anything about what I see, what I feel. The future I envision,” Astarion said, “the one I’m working towards. I know we would be happy, together, in time - if you’re past the point of shame now, you know that to be true. You could be happy with me, if you only let yourself."
He had regained his script, finding his momentum. He snatched at her free hand and held it against his chest, and Rosalie scoffed.
But Astarion continued: “I know you think I’m cruel, that I’m different from what I was. But I’m not - I just didn’t have you. That’s what actually changed, isn’t it? If we went back to the way things were before, I could be better, exactly as you wanted. And we could be like that, forever more. Everything would be exactly right.”
Rosalie’s eyes roved across his face, and savoured the moment when she replied: “Until I displeased you, and then you’d put me in a quiet, pretty, little room, underground.”
Astarion froze.
“...And how would you know about that?” he asked her.
“Well,” Rose said. “I suppose I could just imply that I made an educated guess… but you’d know it was a lie.”
“...That’s unlike you, to go breaking and entering,” Astarion murmured, cocking his head to the side. He was trying to sound impressed, but his gaze flitted across her face, clearly trying to calculate exactly how much of the dungeons she’d seen. “However did you manage that, sweetheart? I’m sure I would’ve tasted you on the air.”
“Well, not to rub salt in a meaningless wound, my love,” Rosalie drawled, “but I replaced you with a skeleton key.”
And then, for old time’s sake, she cast Sunbeam.
Her hand moved, inside its makeshift, fake sling. The column of light - half silver, half gold - carved its way through the clearing, so bright Rosalie had to squint. She saw Astarion’s face light up, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints, as the beam hit him full in the chest, so close and at such a force that he stumbled backwards, the embroidered edges and lace of his collar catching alight and singing with heat.
In the moment he broke away from her, Rose tugged the tie of the sling up and over her head, then summoned her staff into her newly freed hand. Behind her, she heard steel ring, as Karlach and Lae’zel took their very obvious cue. Astarion patted down his sleeves, otherwise unperturbed by the blast, but his gaze was affronted when he looked back at Rose and noticed both hands free.
“You’re not-”
“You fucking wish,” Rosalie interrupted, and then she summoned Arauthator.
Gods, it felt good to summon her, for an actual fight. Rose was very rarely in the field, these days, but she still got a heady rush of adrenaline as she felt the tethered spirit of the dragon surge out and through her. The beast screeched, high and keening as its wings unfurled, and then it swooped at the Ascendent, carving a path of glittering ice through the roadway and directly into him, blinding him and coating him in frost before it swooped down upon him to rend him with its claws.
Astarion raised Woe in his hand, tried to cast Blight on it. Rosalie was certain Arauthator would’ve survived the blast, but she couldn’t help herself…
She cast Counterspell.
She was still laughing at the expression on his face, as Lae’zel and Karlach both sprinted past her, blades outstretched.
“How many minutes did I buy us?” she asked.
“Sixteen,” Lae’zel said breathlessly, before casting Jump and launching herself at him.
But both Astarion’s eyes and the veins of red gemstone in Woe flashed crimson, and suddenly Lae’zel’s momentum was interrupted. She was flung to the left, into the trees, by Telekinesis. He hit the pommel of the staff against the ground with a hollow thump, and then a chorus of howls sounded from the forest, in broad daylight.
“Wolves?” Rosalie demanded, “really?”
“Vampire, darling,” Astarion drawled at full volume, which was big words for a man about to get menaced by a dragon again.
Karlach closed the distance, just as the wolves he had summoned burst from amongst the trees. She wielded a beautiful greataxe these days, crafted by her fiancee from thoroughly mundane, very-much-not-Infernal metal. Rose watched and found herself flinching when a one of her blows caught Astarion full in the meat of his shoulder, slicing through fabric and skin to bone. Blood began to pool down his front. But then Karlach also let out a pained grunt. In the hand not holding his staff, Rosalie saw a dagger plunged into her friend’s side. She hadn’t seen any weapons concealed under Astarion's jacket, but then again, she had mostly focused on getting her hands on his hair, rather than his body.
Astarion withdrew the blade in one fluid motion, and then span it in his hands so that blood spattered artfully across the front of his pale suit. The glance he spared her was not lost on Rose - she, too, remembered what she’d said under charm.
Karlach suddenly had a dozen wolves to contend with, as did Arauthator, but within the space of a breath an arrow flew from between the trees and lodged itself in Astarion’s chest. He looked down at it, bemused, and pulled it from himself, as Lae’zel charged from the trees, already reholstering her crossbow and pulling out her sword once more. When Astarion took one step towards her, Rosalie summoned a Witchbolt, watching the purple energy lance down from above and strike him. He didn’t Counterspell it - she hoped that meant he couldn’t Counterspell anything.
When he tried to cast Blight on the oncoming Lae’zel… well. Rosalie did have Counterspell - and plenty of them to spare.
With a cry, Lae’zel raised her weapon, but Astarion caught the blade in his bare hand before she could bring it down. Unlike before, when Lae’zel could’ve suplexed Astarion, and he probably would’ve thanked her for the privilege, it seemed that his Ascendent strength was now more than a match for her. For a moment they struggled, blood gushing from the wound in Astarion’s palm and running a red streak down his sleeve. Then, with a snarl, Astarion threw the sword off of him, sent her arm reeling backward. The momentum of the blade meant Lae’zel stumbled back into another knot of wolves.
“Why don’t you fight anyone but me, like the mindless soldier you are,” the Ascendent crooned at her, the air around him thickening with glamour. Rosalie’s stomach fell away from her - she was the one taking the anticharm potions, and the fear for her livelihood meant that they were all reserved for her.
But Lae’zel cast Astarion an unimpressed glance, as she thrust her blade down through the skull of the closest wolf and pinioned it to the earth with a terrible crunch.
“Why don’t you mewl some more about your broken heart,” she replied, “like the pathetic coward you’ve always been.”
“Oh... I think I’ll actually enjoy killing you,” the Ascendent said. Rosalie saw that the wound on his shoulder was knitting itself closed, as his flesh regenerated.
“Tchk. You always were all talk.”
Lae'zel cleaved another wolf in half, while Karlach finished the last of hers before launching herself at him. Astarion raised his arm at her oncoming form, and Woe flashed red again with a blossom of necrotic energy. Rose was hit by a wave of foreboding, feeling something terrible might happen, as she recognised Finger of Death.
And she recognised it quickly enough, to Counterspell.
Astarion looked over at her, annoyed, and then Lae’zel barrelled into him at full force.
Rose watched, horrified and not a little impressed, as her blade skewered him clean through his middle.
Astarion shouted out in pain as he landed seated on the ground, and then he grabbed hold of Lae’zel with both hands, and threw her away from him. She went flying back, hitting hollowly against a tree, but already pulling herself up to standing. Meanwhile, Astarion was yanking the blade from his stomach with a terrible squelch and a frustrated noise at the inconvenience, reaching once more for Woe.
“I’ve had enough of you,” he said, and Rosalie watched as he cast Banishment.
Lae’zel immediately winked from existence. Rosalie panicked. If the Banishment stuck, her friend would be kept in her native home, the Astral Sea. It would not take her long to get back to them, but it would certainly take her out of this fight. Rose sent a flurry of Magic Missiles at Astarion, all the while knowing they served as an important but mild inconvenience, and he tiredly cast Shield, meaning they all glanced off him.
Arauthator raked her claws down his back with a screech, rending the material of his jacket. Lae’zel stayed gone.
“Karlach!” Rosalie cried.
But Astarion looked in Karlach’s direction, and flung her backwards with another round of Telekinesis. His stomach wound was still bleeding profusely, but it looked smaller than before.
I need Lae’zel back, Rosalie thought.
And did something very, very stupid.
She ran straight at him.
Astarion looked at her, normally perfect face raked through with scratches. Even injured, he raised a delighted eyebrow at her expense - Rose knew she must look stupid, her knees clicking with every footfall.
And then, she tackled him, and cast Burning Hands.
They tumbled together. Rosalie clung on with her own claws. She poured every possible ounce of magic into that casting, and was pleased to hear the pained, incredulous, breathless gasp, as Astarion was set alight above her, his entire body catching like paper. Smoke rose from him, as the fire left her like dragon’s breath. A strange, almost imperceptible pop happened in the air, a loosening of the atmosphere, telling her that the Banishment had slipped from his grasp.
Satisfied, she tried to roll off him, but a still-smouldering hand clamped down on her calf as she tried to stand. Even had she been not been against the Ascendent… it was her bad knee that he had chosen.
Rose dropped back down with a cry.
She tried cast Shatter behind her, but a hand fell onto her staff and wrenched it from her grasp. Arauthator disapparated, leaving empty air as the spell was severed, and Rosalie watched as her weapon was flung away from her into the grass.
And then Astarion was wrenching her over onto her back, soot covering his face and char in his hair, but the burns already healing. Rosalie reached up for his shoulder and cast a Shocking Grasp -
He caught her hands in his, taking the damage as he threaded their fingers together and he trapped her under him.
“Ah!” Astarion said, warmly and affectionately, as he examined her beneath him like an artefact for appraisal, “how I adore you! My equal, truly. In all ways.”
Then he tightened his hold on her hands, and the grip became like steel. With ease, he pinned them into the ground above her head.
“Well,” he continued, with a wink. “Nearly all.”
Rose was no match for his strength. She couldn’t see Karlach or Lae’zel. Astarion was on top of her, pressing her hands into the dirt, Woe utterly discarded to the side. Rosalie tried to thrash against him and buck him off, but it was honestly just… embarrassing. It obviously wasn’t going to work, and it only seemed to amuse him, to watch her do it, as the hair she had dishevelled earlier started to fall into his eyes. Just his gaze on her as she struggled and writhed made the whole thing feel filthy. She couldn’t sustain that defiance for long, when it only seemed to give him more power over her.
“You know,” she panted, settling for being annoying instead. “Hemlock got me into a similar position, last time we fought. Like Master, like servant, it seems.”
“Not quite, sweetling,” Astarion hummed.
Before fisting his hand into her hair, dragging her head up to expose her neck, and biting down.
He struck lightning fast, the movement almost snake-like. Rosalie cried out indignantly, before it actually became painful, and the sound was choked off by her breath being stolen from her. One hand was free now - she slammed the heel of her palm against Astarion’s forehead, to try and push him off of her, but all that happened was that she could feel her skin break further, leaving her gasping.
When she placed another Shocking Grasp onto his skin, Astarion just… groaned, the sound of it lost in the hollow of her throat. And his teeth sank deeper, latching on, so the pain became shared, and Rosalie tried to buck and nothing was happening, and her other hand wasn’t free-
With a frantic shout, she tried to cast Dimension Door.
Astarion calmly took his hand from her hair, and reached out to touch the base of Woe, still within his reach. It was then that he muttered his first Counterspell, directly against her skin, before running his tongue through the blood that had pooled there during his brief pause in feeding.
Astarion's body was now pressed all along hers, head bent over her. His hair was in her mouth as Rosalie struggled to breathe. She scrambled through her inventory, trying to think of something she could use. She’d barely given anything away to the simulacrum, she thought, as blood poured down her neck and wetted her collarbone, where she could still feel the movements of Astarion’s jaw, and his mouth as he swallowed. But half the things in her pocket dimension were spell components, and the other half were books. She only had one hand, and there was holy water in there but there wasn’t a stake. Divinity was not amongst the known weaknesses for a Vampire Ascendent, in fact, it was one of the things against which the Rite gave immunity -
“He doesn’t like mirrors.” Hemlock had said.
And it felt foolish, because all Rose knew about Astarion and mirrors, was that he couldn’t see himself in them. She remembered that conversation like it was yesterday. But he’d also been looking at himself, or his absence, at the time, and he had had a mirror, in his tent, in the tadpole days… He’d never had to cover that. An absence had never scared him, unless-
The mirror Rosalie used for Divination spells materialised in her hand, summoned from the pocket dimension with a single thought.
Wondering if it was the silver, she pressed it into the side of his temple with her free hand.
Nothing happened. She felt rather than saw him tilt his face where it was nestled into her throat, to try and see what she was doing.
The brief moment where his mouth moved, Rose hastily closed her fist around the mirror to hide it, and wedged her elbow between her body and his, at his neck, like she was trying to hold a feral dog at bay. “Let… go,” she gritted, casting Suggestion. Even if Astarion resisted, she knew he wouldn’t pass up the chance to gloat, to call her a hypocrite for trying to charm him.
Sure enough, even as the spell fizzled out ineffectively, she heard him laugh in delight. She leveraged him away with her forearm, and Astarion let her. He reeled back almost drunkenly, kneeling above her with one knee either side of her body, his weight still pinning her down. Blood drenched his chin, and he looked down at her with eyes that were full of affection - it was just monstrous. It was just that desire was now interchangeable with hunger. He looked like he wanted to truly devour her, or be consumed.
“You know,” he smirked, “if you just asked nicely, and made it worth my while-”
Before he could finish, Rosalie turned the mirror towards his face.
What happened next would haunt her. It was, in many ways, indescribable. Rose did not see whatever it was Astarion saw in the mirror: she did not know if he had a reflection, or if he didn’t. And if it was there, she had no idea what stared back at him.
What she did see, however, was Astarion’s face.
Something… changed. The proportions elongated. The fangs extended. The eyes darkened to voids, blackened pits - not even red, but pupiless. For all her thoughts, what had come before was not a monster: this was a monster. A gaunt, hollow echo, ugly and terrible, its veneer of humanity paper thin and disintegrating rapidly. It wore Astarion’s clothes, but it was losing its grip on his face: it was not Astarion.
Rosalie felt a thrill of true fear as it looked down at her - or it would’ve done, had it not been transfixed by the mirror in her hand. The Vampire Ascendent, blood rushing down its chin, opened its mouth and screamed. It was a high-pitched, horrible wail of a sound, the kind that Rose imagined Astarion’s torturers might have heard before, when he was spawn. Only, at the end, it became something else entirely: a horrible, inhuman, and unholy resonance, that tore through Rosalie’s soul like nails on a chalkboard.
It tumbled back and away from her, flinging itself from her body with Astarion’s hands and feet. Rose sat up, holding the mirror out towards it in her outstretched hand, even as the transformation horrified her. Even as she wanted it to stop, for his sake.
“Make it stop,” came a deep, horrible voice from inside Astarion’s chest, barely his at all, echoing her own thoughts. “Put it away, make it stop-”
“What... are you?” Rosalie gasped, blood pouring from her neck, feeling light headed, as this… this thing scrabbled back on its heels, on its knees in the dirt.
“Put the mirror away,” the voice said, “I said put it away! You horrible, conniving, little know-it-all bitc-”
And then, Lae’zel came in from behind, with her sword in two hands, and beheaded the Ascendent where it knelt.
Before the head hit the ground, Astarion erupted into mist. It dissipated like smoke on the breeze, and then it fled, leaving everyone in silence.
“Did you see it?” Rosalie panted, dropping the mirror from her hand and clamping it against her bleeding throat.
“See what?” Lae’zel asked her.
“His face - did you see it?” Rose needed to know the transformation had truly happened, that it was not an impossible warp of her imagination. “It didn’t even look like hi-”
“We didn’t see it, but we heard it, soldier,” Karlach replied, walking over to her and looking down in concern. “What the fuck was that thing? It sure as all the hells wasn’t human.”
And it suddenly transpired, that Rosalie hadn’t wanted it to be confirmed, that she had wanted it to be anything but real. She turned her body over, felt dizzy, and immediately vomited into the ground by her head.
Something glinted in her periphery, as she retched. Discarded in the dirt, for the monster had not been holding it when it perished, lay the staff Woe.
And in Baldur’s Gate, a skeleton key clicked, and her simulacrum helped Shadowheart drag Hemlock through the doorway: a dark, skin-bound book in her hand.
Notes:
Hello all! I'm worried that this chapter is a little messy, but I hope people enjoy it anyway! :)
Thank you as always for comments and kudos, and for bearing with me! I'm trying to reply to comments when i have the time :) My next update will be early next week!
Chapter Notes:
- Rosalie: I need to cause a distraction... I'm going to roast this man to within an inch of his life.
Karlach: you don't... have to...
Rosalie: no, I'm gonna
- I've been so desperate for Rose to use Summon Draconic Spirit in battle since I teased it, and equally heartbroken to since learn that its Breath Weapon is only 2d6 :(((((
- I added some spells to Woe bc, why not? It's my fic (but also Astarion is Vampire Ascendent and Cazador wasn't, he got a magic teacher, etc. etc.)
- Vampires regenerate 20HP per round, when they feel so inclined. This usually doesn't happen in sunlight, but I assume that's negated by Ascendency. It didn't happen in the Poker Incident bc I like the vampire lore that stakes prevent it (but just covering my ass here in case my vibes aren't obvious).
- Astarion having Counterspell is very funny for reasons that occur in the next chapter of my other fic... what's also very funny is the fact that this chapter is now going live before that one, etc. (Editing is the bane of my existence).
- As before, Rosalie summoning things out of midair is the cantrip Wristpocket, mostly for the sake of recreating that videogame inventory experience.
- I wrote/foreshadowed the mirror thing before the BG3 Epilogue existed. So the fact that one of the idling animations for Ascendent!Astarion is looking at his reflection in a mirror is now very funny to me. In this fic timeline, he very much did not do that at any point at Withers' party :'))))
TW for this chapter: non-consensual vampire bite, mild body horror
Chapter 13: Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Text
Rose was very tired when she walked her duplicate into Hemlock’s room, the next morning.
Having successfully gotten her out of Astarion's house, they were keeping the spawn in one of the mansion's guest bedrooms, the entire colour scheme of which was wine bottle green. It wasn’t quite a cell - it had, for instance, an ensuite, a double bed, and Rose had left some books on the dresser to soothe her conscience. However, Magnificent Mansions retailored themselves according to the inhabitants’ needs, so with Rolan’s help, they could collectively keep willing the door to the room in and out of existence, in order to keep Hemlock trapped.
Not that Hemlock was making much of an effort to escape. Instead, she sat on the bed glowering, long legs stretched out and crossed on the duvet. Clean clothes had been offered to her, that she ignored, instead choosing to sit wilfully in her own filth. The first night, once the sleeping potion wore off, she had thrashed and clawed at the walls as promised. But it seemed she had exhausted herself, or her inability to contact Astarion across the planes had meant that the command diminished with time. Rosalie thought that, perhaps, Hemlock was clever enough to end her own suffering, simply willing herself into a loophole, exactly as Rose had done with her charm.
Rose sincerely hoped that the order to protect her own life was still in place, however. They’d kept the simulacrum around in case it wasn't, and it was her they sent in, just to be safe.
As before, Rosalie watched and controlled the connection remotely, from where she herself sat alongside Rolan in the living room, making an inventory of Hemlock’s personal library. Woe was locked away in a secure and enchantment-laden case to the side, taken directly out of Ramazith’s vault and hastily repurposed. The risks involved in keeping both Astarion’s staff, and the spawn necromancer he’d hired to study it, in the same space was already preying on Rose's mind.
But there was so much for Rosalie to do now, it was easy to get distracted. Hemlock’s books were a wealth of knowledge she barely could've conceived the existence of. From the dates in the front covers, it seemed Hemlock Bartelle had been alive for several elven centuries before she also started gaining years in vampirism, and had erased some tomes entirely from history, by hoarding them all to herself. Every two minutes or so, either Rose or Rolan would make some kind of awed, indignant sound, as they discovered something else invaluable. At this point, it wasn’t a question of which avenues were useful - they were instead sorting books into piles of ‘understandable without Hemlock’s expertise’ and ‘requires an interrogation’.
Two corridors away, Rose's simulacrum walked into Hemlock's room, then deposited a magical artefact on a small table by the single armchair in the corner. It was an orb filled with smokey white mist, almost like a crystal ball, taken from Rolan’s vaults. The simulacrum spoke its command word, and the orb started to glow, omitting an aura of Zone of Truth large enough to encompass the entire room.
“Are you hungry?” the simulacrum asked Hemlock, by way of greeting.
Silence.
“Look, either we do the pleasantries like normal people, or I invite Shadowheart in here and it all becomes depressingly transactional, very quickly,” Rosalie sighed. “Mage Bartelle: are you hungry? Let’s pretend I don’t already know the answer.”
After a long pause where she puzzled through the costs and benefits of struggling, the other wizard sullenly replied,“...yes.”
“Well, the good news is, the other-me was bleeding yesterday,” the simulacrum told her, and then she produced a glass bottle, filled to the halfway mark with all the blood Rosalie had lost before Karlach had gotten her a health potion. “She figured it would be pointless to waste it.”
Hemlock looked from the bottle, to Rose, to the bottle again, with heightening levels of incredulity.
Rosalie didn’t exactly blame her: it said a lot about how the last decade had shaped her, that she’d even thought to procure an empty bottle from her pack in the numb shock following the fight, in the hopes of turning a terrible situation into a useful bribe.
“I am not touching that,” Hemlock said.
“Oh, come now, don’t be a baby. I’m an old hand at this,” Rose told her. “And it’s not like you’re my first.”
“...Nooooo,” Hemlock said, slower, and more patronisingly. “I am, very literally, not touching that. I refuse. Whatever incentive you think this is, giving me sentient blood in a bid to pretend we’re friends-”
“Has Astarion you ordered not to drink it?” Rose made the simulacrum interrupt, unable to help herself, “either my blood, or mortal blood, specifically?”
“Well, I don’t have a death wish, so the idea of ever drinking your blood never came up in conversation,” Hemlock said. “But I’ve drunk mortal blood before.”
Rose was embarrassed by how relieved she was to hear that. “So… it’s not prohibited? I thought you could only eat rats.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Well… because of the cages.” And because it’s exactly what Cazador did, before.
Hemlock raised an eyebrow. “The cages are necessary rations, for those who are for any reason unable - or do not wish - to find a bigger meal.”
“So… you do still eat people? He hasn’t ordered you not to?”
“We’re ordered not to kill,” Hemlock told her. “If a person is willing and consents, feeding from them is fine." She examined her nails. "Especially for me, given that I have Modify Memory under my belt. They often just leave, feeling like they’ve had a thoroughly enthusiastic night.”
“This Astarion...” if Rose was embarrassed to be relieved, she was now embarrassingly furious, still smarting from yesterday’s assault, “places an emphasis on consent... when it comes to biting… other people?”
“We’re not allowed to do harm,” Hemlock replied flatly, rolling her eyes. “That’s the rule. He bans us from hurting anyone. So consensual biting, to the point of minor injury, that's all that’s permitted. I don’t know why you’re being such a little bitch about it: it’s you he’s honouring - whatever stupid little promise you lashed him with, all those years ago. We could starve, quite frankly, as long as we don’t hurt your feelings.”
Rosalie’s eyes flickered towards the orb on the table, still glowing and pulsing softly with white light. This was, it seemed, entirely truthful.
Her voice was very far away, as she said. “Well, I didn’t get any more or less hurt by tipping my blood into that bottle. So you’re welcome to have it.”
“All of that doesn’t change the fact that I am not touching that, in a million years. It is literally the last thing I want to drink. It smells disgusting, even from here.”
“That’s not a very enterprising insult,” Rosalie observed.
“No, what it is, is a fact,” Hemlock drawled. "You’ve been bitten by him again, haven’t you?”
At Rosalie’s expression, Hemlock nodded in understanding, a smug curve of a smile on her lips. “He’s marked you a second time, then. You’re his now. And we’ll all know it. That blood smells like the very last thing I want to eat, because I’m not him. You could starve me here, and I still won't touch it. It’d be like drinking poison.”
“...I see,” Rosalie said, wondering if this poison was literal or figurative. “Grim.”
“I’m happy to drain one of your other friends dry, though,” Hemlock said with a cruel smile. “Unless you’re the only one with a fang fetish?”
“More just the one who keeps getting fucking bitten,” Rose admitted glumly.
“If you’re so desperate to do some humanitarian effort to make yourself feel better about locking me up here,” Hemlock said after a pause, “you could get me a rat.”
“You… want a rat?”
“Rats are a very ethical source of lifeblood,” Hemlock said, looking at her like she was stupid. “Anything bigger, and you don’t always drain it in one sitting, which means it might spend some time in pain. A rat-”
“Alright,” Rose raised her hand to stop her from talking, “I’ll get you your fucking rat, Princess.” She sighed, picking up the bottle again, “And find something to do with my bottle of blood, I suppose.”
She tucked it into her pocket, and started getting out her notebook, inkwell, and a quill.
“So,” Hemlock said, in her performatively bored tone, while she watched the simulacrum do its work. “This is a bit of a departure for you, isn’t it? The way he talks about you, and from all those stupid, trite books by Volothamp, you’d think you’d burn up like a vampire in sunlight, from stooping to coercion and kidnapping. I imagine you’re not exactly good at it.”
“And yet, here you are,” Rose pointed out mildly. "So I was still skilled enough to beat you.”
“What could you possibly hope to achieve, by keeping me here?”
“You’ll find out what I plan to achieve, in time.”
“You’re really going to keep me prisoner? Compel me to answer your questions?”
“Yep. Exactly. See, you’re already keeping up!”
“I wonder how long keeping it bloodless will soothe your conscience,” Hemlock mused out loud. “If you pull these words from me by force, how is that any different from physical torture?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me, I know exactly how invasive this all feels,” Rose reminded her with false cheer. “You Feebleminded me, remember?”
Hemlock’s red-eyed gaze narrowed.
“And you loved every second of it. Rubbing yourself all over him, like a bitch in heat.”
“Oh, please, let's not be crass,” Rose replied. “You took all the braincells out of my head yourself, didn't you? You must have noticed when you got the horny ones.”
“In that case, when stripped back to your base essence, all you really are is a mindless, needy slave, and an utter burden to him,” Hemlock sighed. “And you don’t even have animal instinct to blame, for the way you ran into his arms.”
“Yes, well, they were actually open for me, weren’t they?” Rosalie couldn’t help but make the simulacrum say, alone in that room with Hemlock where no one else could hear them. “I imagine that stings a bit - but I don’t want to reduce a fellow professional down to her petty jealousies. Let’s try to have a conversation about something other than your Master, shall we?”
The simulacrum leaned back in its chair, a sheaf of fresh paper in its lap and a quill in hand.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” Rosalie explained. “You can answer them now, in full, or you can be a ‘little bitch’ about it, and then I’ll bring in Shadowheart and we’ll force the truth out of you. And then we’ll leave you here, and then we’ll sleep, and then we’ll do it all over again. Any evasions, any silences, and you’ll get Commanded to tell us everything anyway. We’ll all watch you as you fail to resist, and let you spill your pretty guts out all over the floor. Those are your two options: we can conduct this whichever way you prefer.”
“Big words, little girl,” Hemlock said, “but you forget who I work for. You’re not any scarier than his displeasure.”
This was the first time Hemlock had ever admitted that subservience to the Ascendent was anything other than a joy and a pleasure, and an entirely free choice. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen what happens when he looks in the mirror and becomes a real life fucking monster? Rosalie considered asking, straight away. The memory had kept her awake, nearly all night.
“Fascinating insight into your working relationship, but actually, I am scarier,” was what she replied instead. “You see, Mage Bartelle, when all this is over, I’ll offer you another choice.”
“Oh, please, do tell!" Hemlock drawled, “maybe start cackling, for dramatic effect, if you’d like.”
“When our interviews conclude,” Rose said calmly, ignoring the provocation. “You can either have a Modify Memory from me... or I’ll bring Shadowheart in here again, and you can have Daylight.”
Hemlock tensed up, but Rosalie noted the way that her own eyes flickered to the artefact on the table. The simulacrum was also subject to its magic. Hemlock had probably felt the way she'd fallen under Zone of Truth without resistance, so she knew what spell was on the room.
“Now, either that will be your choice to make, or mine,” Rosalie concluded. “Depending on how much you annoy me. But cooperate, and I can offer you a way out of this where all your culpability is erased, and nothing that happened in this room will ever be traced back to you.”
“Oh, so I’ll just be dumb, and then I’ll die.”
“Not at all,” Rosalie said, “I’m actually very good at Modify Memory, to my own embarrassment. If Astarion's still a problem when you’re released, your cover story will be so believable he won’t question it - you won’t even consider casting a Remove Curse on yourself.”
Hemlock tilted her head. “So… this is still about him.”
“I’m just telling you, there’s a few ways through this where I become invested in keeping you alive,” Rose replied mildly. “Meanwhile, there’s many, many ways to get you to talk, and many, many, incredibly fucking easy ways to kill you.”
“Very menacing, but we both know you're not a killer. And besides, I’m smarter than you,” Hemlock said. “That’s the reason I’m here, is it not? Because I know so many things you don’t.”
“And yet, you were still stupid enough to become a vampire spawn,” Rose riposted. “And so only one of us here has an exhaustive, fully catalogued list of exploitable weaknesses. Meanwhile, the other is best friends with a cleric.”
“...You need me.”
“And if you’re half as smart as you seem to think you are, you’ll do whatever you can to keep it that way, in order to survive,” Rose sighed. “So, first things first, let’s get the easiest solution out of the way: can you, Mage Bartelle, cast Wish?”
Hemlock’s face spasmed, unexpectedly, with something akin to true hatred.
“Do you think that’s funny?” she demanded furiously, as she had the first time Rose had asked.
“Um… no. But it now certainly seems like something you’re sensitive about.”
“...You truly have no idea, do you?”
“Apparently not. Care to enlighten me?”
Hemlock glared at her some more, to the point where Rose thought she would have to prompt her, or go back into her true body and go tap Shadowheart on the shoulder. But something resolved itself in the woman's expression. She didn't seem driven by the fear of having her answers torn from her, so much as she clearly made the decision to keep ahold of the agency that allowed her to make their delivery hurt as much as possible.
“I could cast Wish,” Hemlock said, savouring the words, “...up until a week ago.”
She glared over at Rosalie again. “...When my final casting of it was wasted, on fixing you.”
“...Ah,” Rose said. Luckily, she could distance herself from the simulacrum, so that none of her own disappointment showed through, even as the other-her put her head in her hands.
To be fair, it had always been a longshot that Hemlock would ever cast the spell for her. Trying to police the woman’s wording of the Wish would likely have gone as well as trying to show Astarion how to write Infernal properly into Cazador’s back.
“I mean, you sort of created that problem yourself,” Rose said, carefully. “But why would that mean you couldn’t cast it again? I wasn’t aware it was a finite thing.”
“When casting Wish, there’s always a chance its method will elude you entirely,” Hemlock replied. “And then there is also a chance that the Weave will decide enough is enough. You cast that spell, on borrowed audacity alone. I am not a cleric, and holy magic is now antithetical to my very being. I removed your Feeblemind, and with it, I lost my connection to the highest working I’ve ever known.”
“...Because Astarion ordered you to do it.”
“No,” Hemlock said vehemently, “because of you.”
“But… it is doable. The Wish spell,” Rose said, after a pause, “you knew how to cast it. And you understand Espruar script - I’ve read it all in your published papers-”
“...Oh.” Hemlock said, sounding genuinely surprised.
“...Oh?”
“It was you,” the spawn continued.
“...You've said that already.”
“No, it was you. You were the recluse, who outbid us on that manuscript. You!” Hemlock said, sitting up straighter and no longer casually reclining on the bed. “You were nameless buyer, the one who purchased it through a third party, all those months ago…! Gods, the amount of money you must have spent… he was livid. He broke into the auction house afterwards, to steal it, but the text was already gone-”
Rosalie’s heart hammered in the other room. When the Wish manuscript had gone to auction, she had attended via a Project Image, visiting the auction house in Neverwinter a week before the bid to purchase a private, curtained booth on the second floor. She had only attended for the ten minutes that text had gone on sale, and in her small, cordoned-off space she hadn’t known who else was amongst the bidders, only raising her hand for the attendant in her room each time she met and raised the price. She remembered when, frustrated by the wealth she was competing with and the urgency of her own mission, she had simply upped the already astronomical price by another fifteen thousand gold, offered to pay all of the sum in cash, and had done with it.
Thank the Gods Astarion had never seen her there.
“I arranged for it to be delivered to my home via teleportation, as soon as my bid was accepted,” Rose said numbly, “...But why would Astarion want a copy of the Wish spell? When you could already cast it?”
“He never told me,” Hemlock said. “I suppose that’s part of why - whatever his desire was, he didn’t want to make it known, so casting the spell himself gives him that freedom. I had my suspicions, of course.” She sneered, “you’d hope it would be to further his agenda of Ascendency, perhaps gain traction in our holdings in the Underdark, or even just to give himself more power. More likely…”
Her gaze strayed to Rosalie.
In her own body, Rosalie swallowed nervously.
“And… fucking gods, that’s what you’re doing as well, isn’t it?!”
Hemlock threw back her head, and let out a long, disgusted noise.
“That’s why I’m here? Realllly? You say you want us to talk of things other than him, but it’s all about him, isn’t it? You want to cast Wish, for him - even though you already fucking have him! You’ll ignore the man, in favour of whatever starry-eyed little fantasy you cling to. Gods, was fucking in the dirt for six months at most, really that special? Even when he cried about it, afterwards?”
Rosalie tried not to react, as the depth of what Astarion might have shared with other people about their relationship was revealed.
“It’s not about that,” she tried to argue. “The Ascendent is an abomination. The Black Mass should never have happened. Even if I didn’t love him-”
“You stupid, selfish little idiot, listen to yourself! Is this how heroes talk?” Hemlock crowed. “You want to rearrange the very fabric of the universe, for that?! Gods, I’ll take the fucking Daylight spell. Just fucking kill me. What’s worth staying here for? I could’ve been party to something meaningful, from you, and from him. Instead, I’m caught up in some terrible, dull romantic tragedy, that would bore me even if it had the decency to stay on a stage!"
The simulacrum was silent, as Rosalie seethed.
“Ohhh, have I hurt your feelings?” Hemlock laughed in the face of her silence, running her hand through her hair with a practised, flirtatious ease. “Was I supposed to pretend you’re being noble? Anything other than fucking stupid, trying to tamper with a level of magic that you can’t even wield yet, for a man you already have, but are too much of a coward to admit you want?”
“I… have ran this script… with Astarion… multiple times by now,” Rosalie forced out through the simulacrum’s lips. “And if that wasn’t enough to bore me, hearing you repeat his lines like a good little slave, then know this, you silly little girl: I have seen the Ascendent’s true face, when he stares in the looking glass. I have seen his real home, in the wastes of Cania. And I can tell you, with full certainty: you have never known Astarion the man, ever, in all your miserable life, and especially not when you sold your soul to him, like a fool.”
She was satisfied when she saw something flicker in Hemlock’s face. As she suspected, the mention of Cania earned no recognition from the wizard, only a brief moment of panic. While some things might have been shared, Hemlock didn’t know Astarion as well as she’d like. And it seemed she already knew it, for she was smart enough for that, at least. That was a pressure point Rose thought she could use. Better to let her stew in it, perhaps: if there was one thing wizards could do, it was overthink themselves into a new problem.
“If you can no longer cast Wish,” Rose observed calmly, beginning to tidy up her supplies, “then I think we'll start with your writings, rather than with you, otherwise you will be dead within the day.”
“Oh, very mature,” Hemlock drawled, recovering some of her composure at this presumed sign of weakness, “fleeing at the first uncomfortable truth.”
“Unlike your Master," Rose demurred, "whom I’m sure handles each and every confrontation he has with aplomb.”
“You can’t bring him back the way he was, you know,” Hemlock said, disgust rippling through her tone.
“Yes, well,” Rose didn’t look up from placing her notes in her bag, “you would say that.”
“And I would mean it,” Hemlock insisted. “Think about it, for more than two seconds. The Rite of Profane Ascension was an impossibly powerful working, commissioned by Mephistopheles himself. Seven thousand souls sacrificed in its making, after centuries of preparation… you think you can Wish all that away in a heartbeat... and it will work?”
Rose paused, despite herself.
“I meant what I said before. Wish is a dangerous, and vindictive spell. The Weave will not suffer abuse for long - there must always be balance,” Hemlock said. “Either you build balance in, and make your request reasonable, or that equilibrium is ensured through force. If you tried to undo that much in the world at once, then the Weave's counterweight would hit you full-tilt, directly where you live. There would undoubtedly be some new evil borne into the world, to replace that which you wilfully erased. Who knows what form it would take. Think beyond the bounds of whatever insipid fantasy you’re entertaining: what do you want back, exactly? A spawn? A mortal man?”
Rosalie froze up, not daring to let any emotion show.
“Presumably not the latter,” Hemlock said cruelly. "You're a divination mage, are you not? Even you could hopefully foresee that that request is how you end up with a pile of bones on the ground, or an elven geriatric, as all his years catch up to him. But think of the consequences, then, beyond that: if you find an errant soul to fill up the body, would it even be his? That’s not to mention, seven thousand souls would still have perished - erase the Rite, and they would still have to go somewhere, and towards what? What new working would you funnel all that power into? There’s so many possibilities. Mephistopheles could also punish you. Another Ascendent could be born to replace the one lost - only this one wouldn’t be cuntstruck, and easy to manage. And those are just the first thoughts, that come to my mind."
She held Rose's gaze, and smiled ruthlessly: "make this decision, if you must, but at the very least admit it is selfish, because that is the only thing it will ever fully succeed in being. You are remaking the world, the way you want it. You shall inevitably will suffering onto, and through, the very things you are trying to fix.”
It made a horrible, unpleasant kind of sense. But only - and this was what hurt - through all the means and methods Rose had already considered, then dismissed. Devils’ bargains, fey bargains, all the stories and accounts of those who had found genies, monkey’s paws, and made their Wishes that way, to disastrous and poetic consequences. She'd thought, at least, that if she was the one doing it, no other agendas would interfere. That the method would be surgical, and clean.
“So you’re saying I should try for moderation?” Rosalie said, sounding equally disgusted at Hemlock in turn. “With a spell this big, I still have to be restrained?”
“You have to be clever,” Hemlock corrected tiredly. “A stretch for you, I know.”
What about what I want? Rosalie thought, though she was not stupid enough to voice this to her current audience. Why can’t the world just let me have it, for once?
It was already going to be so much hard, impossible work, to reach the point where she could cast this spell. How dare anyone tell her that, even then, it would not be enough?
After a second, Rosalie stilled, “...What did you Wish for, then?”
Hemlock looked at her. Then looked at her some more.
“You can bring your cleric into the room, if you like,” the woman said sweetly, after the silence stretched out long and wilfully uncomfortable. “That’s the only way you ever find out.”
Rosalie willed the simulacrum to leave the room. They both watched the door disappear behind it, and then she handed over the task of sorting through Hemlock’s library. Meanwhile, Rose returned her mind to her own body, and she started on the book that she’d deemed most relevant: the ciphered, skin-bound tome they’d found in hidden in Hemlock’s hidden personal safe. Next to the two of them, Rolan began on three of the other books, each open next to each other, taking notes on all three at once in some - quite frankly - chicken scratch handwriting. In between him and Rose, they laid out a shared piece of paper titled Questions for Hemlock. When they reached twenty bullet points collectively, they agreed the simulacrum would go through to the other room and host another interrogation.
All Rosalie needed to do with the skinbound tome today, was break the code. Once she did that, she could hand it over to the simulacrum, who’s capacity of mind was enough that, once given the key, it could take the time to decode it for her.
The thing was… before being tadpoled, Rosalie had been an agoraphobic scribe at the Watchful Order. She’d been stuck inside for just over two years, with barely any friends. And yes, she had been an Infernal specialist… but her life had been very, very boring, with very little to sustain her attention. Which had meant that whenever a book or manuscript that had something of a puzzle about it - a code, or a translation of Deep Speech, for instance - she had asked to work with it directly. Or rather, she had put her name down on the overtime rota, and then picked them all out from the list of ‘current projects': her most conflict-avoidant way of staking a claim. This... she hesitated to call it a hobby, but she supposed things had been grim back then, had given her many of the skills she was now commissioned for, in later life.
Rose had, as a result, uncoded many manuscripts in her time. And by hour four, it quickly became clear that Hemlock - although she was very clever, and almost definitely a better wizard than Rosalie - had never, ever worked as a scribe of arcane texts.
It was a polyalphabetic substitution cipher, written in Celestial but corresponding, Rosalie thought, to Common. Then perhaps to Elvish, for another layer of encryption... although she wasn’t really holding out that much hope for it occurring to Hemlock to have a double layer of security. It was in standard blocks, which - well, Rosalie had done a lot of standard blocks, in her lifetime. By hour seven - in which she had, admittedly, forgotten to eat until Rolan put a slice of cake down next to her - she thought she had a rough draft of the key. Mouth filled with jam sponge, she handed it to the simulacrum with her sticky fingers. The simulacrum went into Hemlock’s room with Shadowheart for company, and everyone heard the book Hemlock threw at the door as they left again, only two minutes later.
“The key is correct,” Shadowheart said, mildly. Rosalie had already been feeling smug for the past ten minutes, knowing it to be so.
“It’s still going to take me days to translate,” the simulacrum sighed, though her hand was already extended towards Rose, knowing that this was, unfortunately, the lot of an illusory duplicate.
“Sorry,” Rose said apologetically, as she handed the tome over.
“It’s fine, it’s what I’m here for,” the simulacrum replied. “I’ll still need to sleep occasionally, but we both know copywork can be done adequately on like, four hours.”
“As long as there's coffee,” Rose said glumly, remembering her undergraduate days.
“This is still a win... right?” Karlach said, having been drawn into the room full of books mostly by the thump from Hemlock’s quarters. “...We should celebrate!”
Rose gave her a confused, sidelong glance.
“Ok... so we should just get shitfaced,” Karlach hastily amended. “Because some fucked up shit’s happened, these past few days. Also to celebrate. But mostly because of all the fucked up shit. We've all been talking... if we’re in downtime, and whatever happens next is going to be well, a lot, we think we should probably let off some steam, while we still can.”
Rose saw through this explanation pretty quickly: if 'everyone had been talking', without her... that meant everyone thought she was the one who needed to let off steam. Which... well. She had been kidnapped. And bitten. Twice.
“This house has its own wine cellar,” Rolan offered, “and some harder liquor, I believe, although it's all a bit of the… old man variety. It replenishes itself though, on a recasting, which is what truly matters.”
“And I went outside into the real world for a leg stretch, an hour ago, and it was literally getting dark,” Karlach added, for in the Magnificent Mansion, everything was dependent on artificial lighting. “We really should call it a day.”
Shadowheart shrugged, pretending to look tempted by the idea, when she was the one who'd probably suggested it in the first place. “I could polish off a bottle of red. It’s been a long week.”
Rosalie looked around her friends, still feeling a little perturbed by idea. The problem with alcohol these days, was, Rosalie was not exactly a happy drunk. It was always fifty/fifty on if it would end up teary, or with her just quiet, staring out across her balcony while she felt herself floating away from her body, albeit not by quite far enough to escape the weight on her chest.
But then again, mostly when she got melancholic, she was on her own. The few times she’d gone quiet in company, these last few years, it had been fine, because others had been there to fill the silence: work colleagues at high table, Gale and his wife, the one time Wyll and his fellow mercs had taken a job in Waterdeep, and revived some truly embarrassing ballads in a pub on the outskirts of the city.
“...I’m not sure getting drunk, in a house with a vampire spawn, is a good idea,” she said weakly.
“She’s locked in,” Karlach pointed out. “Right? There’s not even a door. And I thought she couldn’t cast magic?”
“We’re not making you go out to the Gate,” Shadowheart pointed out. “Or to Sharess’ Caress. If you want to let loose without worrying about the consequences, here might be the best place for it.”
“No, I shouldn’t-” Rose wondered whether she should point out that she’d spent the day bloodless after yesterday’s injury, but even she could see that only gave more arguments in favour of drinking. The bottle of blood still in the simulacrum’s pocket was an argument, in and of itself.
“It’s safe here, and you really fucking should,” Karlach said. “After yesterday? We all should.”
And so, Rose found herself back in the old days, sharing a bottle of Blingdenstone Blush with Shadowheart, as the Unseen Servants of the manor bought out a dinner of roast pork. The simulacrum busied itself getting its own portion, before retreating to the cipher in the other room. Meanwhile, Karlach, Lae’zel, and Rolan all joined them around the dining room's dark, varnished walnut table. Karlach had found dark ale somewhere, and she was subjecting Rolan to it. It looked like it was going poorly - that man was a wine drinker to the bone, if Rose ever saw one.
As it had in camp, all those years ago, one bottle between her and Shadowheart quickly became two. Even though, by this point, her stomach was full of something other than cake, Rose knew she was fucked when they finished that as well, and her common sense didn’t stop Shadowheart from opening the third.
“So,” Shadowheart said, pouring them both another glass, “Astarion bit you, again, did he? Was it at least... you know... fun, this time?”
“Decidedly not,” Rosalie replied glumly, swirling the dark liquid around in her glass. “...Apparently my blood smells bad now. According to our guest. He made it smell bad.”
“A troubling development,” Shadowheart noted. “What do you think he’s doing, exactly? Is it just… you know, hunger?”
Rosalie was tipsy enough now, that she could voice the realisation she’d had roughly an hour into cipher translation. At the time, it had made her want to simply hyperfixate on that translation, until it was the only thing in the universe.
“Ohhhh,” she said, with an dismissive handwave, her voice climbing an octave. “I think he’s probably doing, like, a Vampire Bride ritual, or something?"
There was silence. Rose realised she was now addressing the table, as every other conversation came to an abrupt halt.
“I thought maybe he was just trying to conduct the spawn ritual, but it kept getting interrupted?” she explained, as she turned to encompass the rest of the room. “But if there’s an incremental change in my blood, in line with the chronological order of bites, yeah… that’s just some Strahd shit. I was hoping Astarion wasn’t reading the same stuff as me, but it was probably too much to hope for. Everyone loves Strahd.”
Everyone was looking at her now.
“Oh, I went to Barovia, a few years ago! Did I not mention?” Rosalie said. “Met the new ruler. Her name’s Lyssa Von Zarovich - she has a soul, and everything, by some very convoluted means! But I read Strahd’s very embarrassing diaries while I was there, so I recognise all the signs - I think Astarion’s trying to Vampire Bride me!”
“That is certainly a phrase you keep saying,” observed Shadowheart tersely.
“But that’s… good, right?” Karlach said hopefully, “I mean... not good. But that’s... different from being a spawn?”
“Yes, and no,” Rose replied, sipping from her glass. “It makes a true vampire, so, honestly, well done him. What growth.”
“But it’s not different enough,” Rolan interjected, turning to Karlach. “In a Bride Ceremony, the vampire bites the victim three times, bypassing the spawn stage. But this creates a tether between the vampire and vampire bride - even if the freedom of true vampirism is granted, a bond remains... like a shackle. It is the illusion of freedom. Strahd’s brides were all subordinate to him, though sources are unclear as to why. Not to mention...” he frowned, “the transition from mortal to true vampire places great strain on the bride in question. Survival is not guaranteed.”
Rosalie raised an eyebrow at him. Rolan looked a little bashful at her scrutiny.
“As you say,” he explained, scratching at his neck, “anyone who’s done any reading into vampirism knows Strahd.”
“I’m just feeling... cheated, honestly,” Rose sighed, playing with the stem of her glass. “The reading material promised ‘immense pleasure’, at the very least. It's supposed to feel good. That’s why I didn’t think it was happening, because both bites have royally sucked-”
“-Ha!” Karlach said, before she could stop herself.
“You’d think, if I was getting wifed against my will, I’d at least be enjoying myself at the time,” Rose groused. “But maybe Astarion’s not got the skills Strahd had - or Strahd had a lot more practice at finessing them.” She grimaced, “Maybe I’m his first.”
Rolan coughed, awkwardly. Driven by a sudden need, Rose drained the rest of glass.
“I only worked it out this afternoon,” she felt the need to clarify, to the still silent room. “I’m not being repressed again. I just… I haven’t worked out the solution, yet.”
“...We are not letting you leave this house,” Lae’zel announced.
“If he tries it... the full transition, I mean," Rose said, with the certainty and slur of the drunk. “I’ll just drink too much of his blood in the final stage, and then I’ll die! Serves him right. I think that would be hilarious, actually.”
And suddenly, everyone decided that bringing out the hard liquor was an excellent idea.
Two shots in, Rose was still defending her stance. “I mean, there’s always Withers-!”
“I’m not going to take a trip to the Emerald Grove because you let your awful boyfriend kill you,” Shadowheart said angrily, a pink flush spreading across her face, out from the centre of her nose. “End of discussion.”
The conversation devolved from there. Shadowheart made Lae’zel tell the story of her latest battle with Vlaakith. It was partly to distract everyone from the shitty situation at hand... and mostly because Shadowheart was also tipsy, and wanted an excuse to stare at Lae’zel. Just shy of a bottle and a half of wine, and two small shots of fusty, old man liquor, was plenty to get Rose drunk, these days. She nursed her final sifter of some kind of awful brandy for the next hour, listening to her friends talk, and thinking about how, if she was bitten again, there was every chance there would be no going back.
But it wasn’t tearful drunkenness, so if she was honest, it was better than she’d hoped for.
When the clock struck midnight, Rosalie called it a night. By that point, Lae’zel and Shadowheart were making eyes at each other, and Rolan was making repeatedly nervous excuses to leave the house, all the while glancing over at her, like he wasn't quite sure what to do... Rose was tired. She decided to make Rolan's decision for him, refilled herself her half-full glass with more brandy, and excused herself from the table.
The world did that thing, when she stood, that made her realise exactly how drunk she was. And how much she needed to pee. On leaden, uncoordinated feet, she climbed through the Magnificent Mansion to her room, which she’d chosen because the walls were white, even if the carpet was a nightmare. She used the bathroom, changed into her nightclothes on automatic, then found herself stalling in front of the mirror above the sink, staring at the fresh bandages revealed on her neck.
I used to be a happy drunk, Rose thought to herself, placing her hand on the mirror and watching herself stare listlessly back.
She remembered those nights at camp, or at Last Light, where they’d drunk to protect themselves from the cold - or at least, that was the well-worn, erstwhile excuse. She’d used to love listening to Volo tell another outrageous story. She and Gale had had a drinking game that revolved around factual inaccuracies: one sip, for every fabricated lie. If Volo mentioned a dragon, you had to drain the rest your cup, but you had to do it, without Volo noticing why. Astarion had often joined in, just for something to do. He would take his cues from her, and drink whenever she’d prompted him with an elbow to the side. By the end of the night, she'd probably have to poke him with a finger in his bony fucking ribcage, because his arm would be slung companionably around her shoulders, and there wasn't enough room between them to nudge.
I miss Astarion, Rose thought, wretchedly.
This was the other part of drunkenness that she had feared, and anticipated would visit her: the bone deep ache she felt, whenever she thought of him, without her rationality fully bolted in place. Not the Ascendent, but the man that had been with her, before. Rose missed Astarion, with that single-minded, almost childlike stupidity of the drunk, that didn’t care that he wasn’t there anymore, or that whatever was in his place was something horrific, that had hurt her. It just… wanted. And ached at being denied.
It had happened many times in the past. Usually, Rose just curled herself into bed and waited for the pain to pass, or for sleep to happen. Or she'd helplessly sought someone out, that she could beg to make her feel better. Or she’d gotten drunker, until nothing remained.
A couple of times, when she’d been feeling really stupid, she’d tried casting Sending. Luckily, the Mind Blank had been in place by then, and performed her restraint for her. She’d never gotten through. And thank the gods - who knew what the Ascendent would’ve done, with a drunk Rosalie on the line, missing Astarion like he was an amputated limb.
Only… Rosalie thought, as she went to the button on the wall, and the lights in her bedroom went out.
...Would he have Mind Blank now?
Rosalie realised, sitting herself down on her pristinely-made double bed with a dull thump, that she had his mage… and she also had his staff. She didn’t think the Ascendent could cast magic without it.
Don’t be stupid, she thought.
With her head in her books, she hadn’t cast any spells all day - except for the single Telepathy, this morning, on her simulacrum.
It’s not him, she told herself, remembering the horrible way his face had contorted, the monstrous voice that thing had spoken with.
But… it was also the closest thing she had.
Rose was at the level of drunkenness, that she only really realised what she had done, when the spell was already cast. An awful, retrospective clarity came to her, when she felt the connection take hold.
By then, it was already too late.
“So… ummmmmmmmm... what’s with the mirrors?” she slurred dumbly to her wall, using up the magic of a full casting for a fifth of Sending's wordcount.
Immediately, she felt the full weight of regret crash down on her, collapsing her head into her hands.
Maybe it won’t take! she thought, hopefully. Sendings didn’t always work across planes - was he in Cania right now, or was he fully recovered from the... well... the beheading, and back in his home?
“...Darling,” a voice like velvet insinuated itself into her head, raising the hairs all along her arms and the back of her neck to gooseflesh. “Are you... drunk?”
The Ascendent left it at that, though Rose could hear the obvious amusement in his voice.
You don’t have to reply, Rosalie reminded herself. You literally do not have to reply!
She downed her new sifter of brandy in one go (by the gods, it tasted like shoes) and recast Sending.
“Answer the fucking question, you weird fuck!” she demanded. “What the fuck even was that? That never happened before! Who was that speaking? What did the ritual even do?”
But by then, she realised she’d exceeded the wordcount of the message, though she wasn’t quite sure by how much.
“You know... if you’re interrupting my evening,” said the Ascendent, “you should make it worth my while. An apology, maybe? A ‘what are you wearing’, at the very-”
Ok, so it seemed she wasn’t getting any straight answers tonight. That was perhaps for the best, given that Rose had her doubts she’d remember them, come morning.
Rose bit her lip, heart pounding, and cast Sending again.
“I know what you’re wearing. Either a really stupid shirt with too much lace, or another waistcoat that cost a small village,” she said, hands extended out in front of her, counting off the words. “Pointless question, really.”
And then she beamed, because she knew that was twenty-five words exactly.
“...You are drunk. Have you done this before, sweetheart? Thought of me, when you’re desperate? Begged me to be let in?”
Rosalie frowned, and sat back fully on the bed. And then, she cast Sending.
“You know,” she said, with a small hiccup, “you make it really fucking difficult to have a normal conversation. Give it a rest for a minute. Can’t you just be-”
But she caught herself on the twenty-fourth word, before she said something really stupid.
Unfortunately, the Ascendent noticed her hesitation: “And what exactly do you want me to be, for you, my darling?”
Don’t answer.
“...I don’t know,” Rosalie said quietly, after her hands had seemingly moved of their own accord. “Nice, maybe? Kind? Not creepy, at least. This doesn’t count anyway, does it? You can’t do anything. So can’t we just be-”
There was a long silence.
“...Why are you drinking?” the Ascendent asked, carefully. Rose realised he was heeding her command to domesticate himself. “I trust it’s not to my good health, but it seems like an… out of character reaction, to our current situation.”
“Karlach wanted to let off steam,” Rosalie told him. “She thought it’d make me feel better. But drinking only makes me sad. It doesn’t take my mind off anything.”
“I think of you, as well, in those moments,” Astarion murmured, softly, so softly, as if it was being whispered into her ear. “It’s not a nice feeling, is it? You'll want something so strongly, but you can’t understand-”
It hurt, that he still knew her. Rose almost wanted to crawl out of her own skin, to escape the pain.
“I - I was thinking about the times in camp,” the stutter would cost her, as would the rest of these words. “I know we mostly just drank, to make camping easier. But it was… you were…”
“...Perfect,” Rosalie whispered to the wall, thankful the Sending had cut her off.
“And what you were, was a very handsy drunk,” Astarion told her, and Rose was mortified to find herself laughing. “You’ll call me ‘creepy’ again, no doubt, but I’m being factual. You were a veritable menace.”
Rosalie flopped on her back, staring at the ceiling above her bed. Gods, she thought. She would regret it in the morning, but it actually wasn’t that bad. It was almost enough to pretend, with her mind dulled to a blunt edge and the Ascendent playing along with the charade, for whatever reason he had to indulge it. Perhaps, he had some underhand motive. Perhaps he was just keeping her on the line. Rosalie didn't have the strength or wit to analyse anything too closely. Right now, his voice was a balm, and he couldn’t hurt her here, and no one else knew-
She’d lost count of how many Sendings she’d cast. She thought she must almost be out of magic.
Rosalie tried... one last time.
“Do you remember that time at the Grove?” she whispered, like it was dangerous. Her chest felt like it was breaking open, like she truly would crawl out of herself. “I wanted you to dance with me. You never did. I miss - we should’ve danced together.”
A glut of magic left her in a heady rush, so strong that Rose thought the fourth brandy must’ve kicked in. She stared up at the ceiling, dazed and confused by how much energy it had taken - the spell fatigue and the alcohol and the dull throbbing pain all mixing together, so that in the darkness the room seemed to spin.
And... silence.
It must’ve finally failed, Rosalie thought, eyes drifting shut with a horrible cocktail of disappointment and relief. The cross-planar communication didn’t take-
Time passed, or maybe it didn’t. It was one of those moments in drunkenness where she perhaps she'd slept for hours, or just blinked.
“Rosalie?” she thought she heard Astarion say, though it could’ve been her imagination. “...Rose? Rose?! Is that… Can you… can you hear me? Is this… love, if this is real, you need to-”
But the darkness took her, and Rose became certain it was just another very desperate dream.
Notes:
:))))))))
Hello! Idk when I'll next be able to post, as I have a close friend staying with me all of this week, and then I go home for Christmas so things will be a bit hectic for the next ten days or so. Hopefully, this won't be the last update in December, but just in case it is, I wanted to pause on a more hopeful (?) note.
(Still a cliffhanger, though, lmao. I'm so sorry.)
Chapter Notes
- Wish has a 33% chance of being unable to be cast again by a player if it 'causes stress' - usually, you roll a D100, and see what happens.
- Technically, fixing a Feeblemind isn't a stressful use of Wish, but I decided it would be funnier if it was. I also make the same case that Hemlock does here: she's not a cleric, and she's allergic to divine magic. So using Wish in the place of Heal or Greater Restoration *would* be stressful in this situation (not to mention, have you met her fucking boss?)
- It is up to the DM's discretion what the consequences of a Wish spell are. The spell text states: 'This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish.'
- All of my cipher stuff is cribbed from an internet research expedition, I just needed it to sound good. If it's inaccurate in any way, I'm so sorry. I couldn't just leave [Wizard is clever] there, like in my outline.
- The Strahd lore I am using can be found here. I'm not making this shit up (I kind of am, but come on, if I can cite an article to defend my horniness, I'm gonna).
- The stuff about it changing the taste of the blood was my invention however - needed that to be the case for exposition purposes.
- Poor Rolan :)))))
- Sending is a 3rd level spell, that you can then use higher level spell slots to cast. In every instance, the message is only 25 words long. It can be prevented by spells that prevent telepathy or 'spells used to affect the target’s mind or to gain information about the target" (like Mind Blank). There is a minor chance it can fail, when sent across different planes of existence.
- So... yeah. Sorry, again :'))))
Chapter 14: Chapter Fourteen
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The next few weeks resolved themselves into a routine Rosalie was long-used to, and actually found comfortable: the rigours of hard, deskbound work. While her simulacrum plugged away at the cipher in Hemlock's book, Rose and Rolan dove headfirst into Hemlock’s literature. Amongst the piles of books, the treatises on necromancy, and the much older texts on conjuration, Rose had found three books in Espruar. One was a spell list from a long-dead warlock, and there were also two more Espruar documents that Hemlock had translated. Already Rose’s understanding of the language was expanding, as she put her own vocabulary through its paces.
In her downtime in the evenings, Rosalie would read through whatever new sections of Hemlock’s skin-bound tome that the simulacrum had managed to decode during the day. The book was proving to be one-half experimental logbook, and one-half diary, detailing Hemlock’s journey towards accomplishing her own casting of Wish.
So far, with only a third of the book transcribed, the only experiments documented by the younger Hemlock were ones that had failed. Though already, Rose had a grasp of the method and logics that were being carried forward across each attempt. Scientific principle was abandoned early: unlike other high-level spells, Wish had no casting time, and no material or somatic components. Adding any of these things seemingly made no difference. Hemlock theorised that it was a spell that relied solely on the strength of person casting it: their feeling, willpower, and also just their power, literal.
You had to want something, badly enough to remake the world in your vision, and whatever magic dwelled within you… well, it simply had to be up to the task. You received no external help for this spell. You, alone, had to be enough.
This mimicked what Hemlock had warned her about during interrogation, but the way this past version of the wizard spoke was not in warning at all. She seemed to accept that she would exhaust herself remaking the world, and believed she deserved to do so: such ambition did not fit with the current Hemlock’s ideals of balance. But then, this version of Hemlock, that dwelled within the pages, did not seem very interested in demonstrating any restraint whatsoever. Though no mention was made of what Hemlock was trying to use Wish to achieve, it was clear she aspired to some great power, and when the first mention of ‘vengeance’ came up, Rose nearly snorted her tea. It was all just so cliché. Some of the passages were so astoundingly hubristic, that they would’ve made even Gale blush. Rosalie had half a mind to recount the book to him via Sending, just for some light relief.
Everything had quieted down, and resolved itself into long nights, spent with tea, crouched over her books, until her shoulders and upper back began to protest. This was something almost close to fun for Rosalie - at least, the mental exertion left her feeling immensely satisfied - and resembled how she had long prepared for her missions or expeditions.
…Admittedly, the hostage in the spare bedroom added a new twist. As agreed, whenever she and Rolan reached twenty questions on their shared sheet (once Rolan’s several variations on ‘what on earth is wrong with you?’ were removed), the simulacrum would go through into the other room and interrogate Hemlock, usually with help from Shadowheart. Sometimes, Shadowheart wasn’t needed at all - a lot of Rose’s questions currently revolved around pronunciations or clarifications of emphasis and syntax, to which Hemlock usually raised a single, bored eyebrow, and then offered the correct form in her usual laconic drawl.
"None of this matters, you know," she told the simulacrum. "It doesn't matter what language the spell is cast in. The fact that you think it does tells me you're nowhere close."
But she still answered the questions, and this, Rose felt, was what mattered. Hemlock was proving intransigent, but immeasurably helpful, however belligerently that help was given. She hadn’t murdered anyone yet, and the foyer to the mansion now had a three tiered wire cage featuring her next five meals, all of which Karlach had ill-advisedly given names.
It didn’t matter that everyone seemed to share Lae’zel’s opinion, that Rose should not leave the mansion again and risk a third bite. She wasn’t planning on leaving, anytime soon, when everything she needed was right here. This was the slow, steady progress that Rosalie was used to. And what's more, she was a master of it - these battles of attrition were the kind she always ended up winning, eventually.
But Rosalie couldn’t shake the sense that she was… well... missing something.
Something was scratching at the back of her mind, frustrating her. It was like a loose tooth you couldn’t help but prod at with the flat of your tongue: a sense of urgency that never seemed to leave. It often had Rosalie staring at the ceiling at 2am, fighting the urge to go downstairs to Hemlock and shake her like a box of chocolates, until all the most important things fell out.
For one thing, she was dreaming of Astarion.
The first time it happened, everything had started off terribly generic. A riot of colour and feeling, all vague sensation. The kind of dream, where you knew someone was there, and that you wanted them - that they made you feel wanted. Their hands were soft, but they were featureless, or a mixture of features all rolled into one, nearly formless body. All you were really doing was grinding your own hips into your mattress, chasing the idea of lust, more than a person.
For a second, Rosalie had let herself indulge. Knowing somewhere, distantly, that it had been a long week, she had willed herself into the lull of imagining, raising her hips off the dream-bed, leaning into the kisses she felt as mere pressure on her neck, pushing up against the hands that held her.
But the knowledge of the dream-bed made it tangible, and the riot of vague colour resolved itself into lurid, blood-red sheets. The hands on her hips tightened possessively, and the mouth pressed into her neck suddenly had teeth-
Rose rolled herself off the bed, utterly naked.
She didn’t go sprawling - she was just suddenly on her feet, like a cat. The precise logistics of her escape didn’t matter, only that she wanted it - such was the way of dreams.
“You think I don’t know what arcane interference in my dreams feels like?!” she demanded indignantly, irrationally angry at the entire prospect. “Me?”
Astarion looked up from the empty pillows arranged in disarray in front of him, to her, a look of surprise on his face. He was on his knees in his invented tangle of sheets, marble white skin equally bare.
Rose saw that this imagined version of him had no scars carved into his back, whatsoever.
“Fuck off!” she said, fuming, “get the fuck out of here! Even the Emperor asked!”
And then, she woke herself up.
The next night, it was another banquet in his dining room, though the windows were ink dark, and the dimensions of the long table between them kept drunkenly shifting. The Astarion at the other end was like a ghost - if she looked at his face too long, it lost all its detail, and all that was left was white. Rose was dressed in something black that she hadn’t chosen for herself, and on the plate in front of her was a steak so rare, it oozed blood.
“Trite,” she said, once, and then she woke herself up.
The next night, it was a ball where they span together endlessly, so fast that Rose couldn’t recover any other details of the room. Rose took the opportunity to tread viciously all over his feet, and then she woke up. The night after that, he was kissing her in one of his dark alcoves. She imagined putting her hand, fist first, inside his chest, and ripping his heart, bloody and beating, out of his ribcage - and then she woke up.
Stargazing in the maze on her own, until suddenly his mouth was at her neck and he was whispering words in her ear that she couldn’t quite remember -
“You keep pushing me away, sweetheart," the voice said, as two sinuous arms came round her middle and anchored her waist. "But you know I’ll never leave - I’m always with you, and I’ll always come back for you. Is this all just you testing me, to prove I’ll stay forever, no matter what it is you choose to do?”
“No,” Rosalie said. “It’s a very obvious message, that you don’t seem to be getting.”
“Nothing matters here, does it? So it’s ok, love. Stop fighting. We can fight again, come the morrow.”
“Oh sure, dickhead,” Rosalie sighed, “I’ll let a Vampire Lord bite me in my dream. No way that could backfire terribly.”
- and then she woke up.
A series of vignettes, all feeling a little too sickly, and sticky like fly paper, the colours a little too vivid, and all of them of him. Rose guessed it was something to do with the second bite, with the magic that marked her as his. It seemed that being on another plane of existence did not allow her to elude all of his powers, even if it did seem to stop him tracking her down. Whether this meant Hemlock was only playacting her apparent freedom from his commands, or if this was something unique to the bride ritual, remained to be seen.
Some of her sleeps were dreamless, but none of them felt safe.
One night that week, Rosalie dreamt of Alaron. She was barefoot in the sand, in breeches and a long, well-worn coat with the collar turned up, on the white chalk beach that was at the foot of the land she owned. The coat was one she’d bought in that way you sometimes did, to see if money would make the problem better, and it had: the brass buttons winked like coins, the brightest thing about the dream. Her tower was a mere shadow of a suggestion, on the nearest ridge.
It was an unforgiving day, the sky slate grey and weeping like a watercolour, into an ocean like a slag heap. Rosalie’s hair was buffeted by a fierce and ruthless wind, though there was no wind to hear, and silence instead rang loud in her ears.
And next to her, was Astarion.
He was dressed in grey trousers, and a white shirt. It was slowly becoming translucent with rain, the suggestion of his slim shoulders, like bones picked clean, shadowed through the fabric. The sketch of scars, a watermark on parchment, still there on his back. If she pressed her hand to the material, she imagined she could read them as if blind.
“You said once, that you liked the ocean,” Astarion said, in a strange, far-off voice.
“I did,” Rose replied. “Baldur’s Gate smelt awful, though. That was some severely discounted ocean. This is the real thing.”
“This is… nice,” Astarion told her. “Beautiful. But,” he frowned, “it’s quiet. …Are you really this far away from everyone?”
“It’s easier that way," Rose said, turning her collar up against the breeze. "You know that.”
Astarion looked down at her hand when it dropped again, and she saw the moment, where he hesitated. He didn’t move to take it.
“Is it easier?” he asked instead, and his eyes were the most honest she’d ever seen them, the way she remembered, in those late nights, when he spoke to no one but her. “Or is it lonely? I once imagined that you’d surround yourself with people. When everything was over.”
And then, Rosalie panicked, because she realised he’d found her. In every other dream, she’d been a player on his stage, but here he was now. This was from her memories, this was in her mind. And his performance had never been this good.
He’d found Alaron. He’d found her home.
Her home, and there was no real markers that would set it apart from any other nondescript stretch of bleak sky and sea, but then how could she trust that - surely, he would know - that this was hers -
“Oh, no. Darling, no. Please don’t be scared,” Astarion said, face falling. “I just wanted to-”
He took a step forward towards her this time, hands outstretched. Rosalie took a step back, flinching.
“Get out,” she said, and the sky turned two shades darker. “Get out. I don’t want you here. Leave me.”
“Rose-”
“This is mine,” she insisted.
And then she woke up.
Rosalie hadn’t left the mansion in a twelve-day. For some people, this would be a sign of mental collapse. For a formerly agoraphobic wizard, currently hiding from the Vampire Ascendent who only needed one more bite to change her, it was more just a marker of common sense, and thus of little consequence.
She was, however, considering whether to resort to both Potions of Peerless Focus, and Angelic Slumber. This, Rose knew, was a red flag.
“You’re not sleeping,” Shadowheart observed.
“I am sleeping very fitfully,” Rosalie corrected, running her hand through her hair. Her hair, it had to be said, was a rat’s nest. She had not washed it, in far too many days. It currently sported three different writing implements, and one hair tie.
Two days ago, after the Alaron dream, she had moved on to the Wish manuscript. She had heard Rolan go silent at his desk next to her, when she removed it from the carpetbag.
It was the kind of silence any wizard reserved, for a book that had cost as much as this one had. As with the Necromancy of Thay, all those years ago, the cover of the book was inlaid with raw cut gemstone - unlike the Necromancy of Thay, there were five stones in total. Rosalie had to light each one in turn with a spell, in order for the book to open. The gold leaf foiling the edges of the pages was real gold. The ink inside shimmered - she thought, perhaps, it had been made with finely crushed sapphire.
“I don’t think I have enough yet, to finish it,” she’d told Rolan, mostly so that she wasn’t just saying things out loud to placate her own thundering heartbeat. “But I think it’s time to try and apply what we’re learning, in practice. If only to see where I’m going wrong.”
Rolan had swallowed nervously, “I trust your judgement.”
Only Rose’s judgement had resulted in her crying into the pages of this priceless manuscript, two days later, when she inevitably, as she herself had predicted, made a mistake and got stuck. It shouldn’t have mattered, but oh, how it did.
She understood so much more of the spell, on this reading. And still her brain hurt. It could not encompass the spell’s whole.
But then, her mind was not exactly at its best.
Last night’s dream had featured another ham-fisted seduction attempt: dark room, a velvet chaise, hands on her so white they glowed like bone in the dark. So the crying was more due to tiredness, than anything.
“The dreams?” Shadowheart asked her tersely, once said crying had attracted the attention of people several rooms over.
“The dreams,” Rose confirmed, taking a rumpled tissue from Shadowheart’s extended hand.
“Maybe Mind Blank-”
“-I tried it a week ago,” Rose replied glumly. “It gave me slightly more agency-” this had been the one where she’d cleaved his ribcage in two, and yes, Astarion had been a smidge surprised by that turn in events. “-but the dream itself still happened. Ended up feeling like a waste of magic, honestly. I’ve done the training to shut out psychic threats anyway, especially with the residual immunity from resisting the tadpole. I think it must be a biological thing. He's reaching me not through my head, but through my heart-”
Shadowheart made a face.
Rosalie made a face back at her, “I mean literally, stupid. I think it’s the ‘blood’ of it all. That’s his way in.”
“You could try sleeping during the day-”
“-My nap three days ago ended up porny,” Rose sighed, while Rolan unsubtly choked on his tea. “I think it doesn’t rely on him being asleep at the same time with me - who knows if he even needs sleep? That might not have changed.”
“Angelic Slumber-”
“-If I get all of my rest in a minute, he has barely any time to work with. Astarion can be as smooth as he likes, but even he can’t get much done in under sixty seconds.”
Shadowheart and Rolan shared a look.
Rosalie glared at them both through tear swollen eyes, “...I know it’s a very expensive potion, ok?”
“It is very expensive indeed,” Rolan said, regretfully. “It’s not that I won’t give it to you, it’s that I only have one of them in stock, and while I might be able to ask my contacts for more, it’ll be a steep favour to ask. They take nearly a year of brewing time. Maybe best to… well, save it for a moment when you truly need it.”
For something actually life threatening, rather than because you just sobbed over a verb conjugation, in public, was his unspoken addition to that sentence.
“And, well,” he cleared his throat, “if you’re certain the dreams aren’t a threat-”
“I don’t think he can do anything,” Rosalie sighed. “At least, not without some kind of cooperation from my end. I manage the dreams better than he does.”
“Then why is he doing it?” Shadowheart demanded.
Rosalie got a mortifying flash, only half there, of her casting Sending. She couldn’t remember everything that she had said, which was good, given that the snippets she did recall caused the kind of embarrassment that made you want to tear off your own skin.
“I think he perhaps misunderstood something I said,” Rose admitted, cheeks burning. At Shadowheart’s raised eyebrow, she clarified, “I implied, once, that... if he couldn’t do anything to me physically, then it didn’t matter so much, and we could play nice-”
She blushed harder, for Shadowheart’s expression spoke volumes.
“I know. It was stupid. It’s also not applicable to this situation, even if he thinks it is, because obviously, right now, Astarion is doing something to me, which is: deprive me of sleep,” she continued, placing her head in her hands. “I want. To die.”
“Well, I would perhaps say…?” Rolan started. Rose was still cradling her head, so she didn’t see the way he started going bright red, and looking anywhere but her, “if the dreams truly are harmless, and you need the rest, no one would judge you if-”
“I would judge me! I am not getting non-consensually railed in my dream, for the sake of the cause, Rolan!” Rose replied, very high-pitched, and at her wit’s end. “I will not close my eyes, and recite Mephistopheles’ Canticles, all in the name of a blissful eight hours! I am not sharing my body or my mind with him! I refuse!”
At this point, Rolan stammered something about getting Rose some more tea, and left the room.
“Well, look at that, you broke him, the poor thing,” Shadowheart tsked placidly, once Rolan had fled. “And he just gave you his permission to bring Astarion into the relationship, and everything. You’re so mean when you’re tired. Both of you are: the simulacrum nearly snapped Hemlock clean in two earlier. You should let her have the Angelic Slumber.”
“Do you have something useful to say, or are you just here to mock me?” Rose asked her, a little cattily, rather proving her point.
“Well, if poor Rolan’s suggestion of lying back and playing dark consort for the evening holds no savour-”
Rosalie lifted one of the hands shielding her eyes, to glare.
“-I finished the casting of Legend Lore on Cazador’s staff,” Shadowheart finished, blandly. “You utter grump.”
Rosalie straightened, hands falling away from her face.
“It’s as we suspected,” Shadowheart continued. “Its history is bloody, and extremely unpleasant. It’s also, through the events of eleven years ago, irrevocably tied to the Ascendent, and the Rite of Profane Ascension.”
“...It’s a ticket to Cania,” Rose said.
“It just might be,” Shadowheart hummed, taking Rolan’s hastily vacated chair. “I don’t think it can get us there, in and of itself. The staff is not an Infernal creation, and the metal is mundane, not attuned to the Hells. But from what I could glean, it is the means by which Mephistopheles channelled his side of the Rite - as we both witnessed - and that meant it was also the means by which the Ascendent contacted him to elaborate on their contract further. It’s one of Astarion’s keys to his kingdom, so to speak.”
“Makes sense,” Rosalie said, “he’s not a mage, but it gives him magic. If he wanted to plane shift or open a portal to the Hells, he’d need its help.”
“I think it’s the key, and I think I know the lock as well,” Shadowheart sighed. She spared Rosalie a sideways glance, clearly weighing up whether to tell her or not.
“Go on,” Rose said. “Just give it to me. In the non-dark-consort sense.”
“His throne,” Shadowheart replied.
“His thr-?” But then, Rosalie paused. She remembered the two of them, stood in Astarion’s strange and empty sex dungeon, looking up at the platform from which he surveyed the space where Cazador had been erased from existence. The gemstones embedded in the chair had held a strange red glint, even from a distance.
“Well,” Rose said. “Shit.”
“The Ascendent’s throne, and his sceptre,” Shadowheart said, “both serve as ties to his palace on the other side. At least, that’s what Legend Lore gave me. You know how much that spell loves to wax poetically. So… that’s one way into Cania, it seems.”
“In his house, like we predicted.”
“His dungeon, and the heart of it, as well,” Shadowheart clarified, cocking her head. “Not sure we’ll get down there so smoothly, next time.”
“...Maybe Gale will have an easier solution?” Rose offered, optimistically.
Two days, and one dream involving a bathtub later, Gale did have an easier solution.
“Ancestral blood ritual!” he said cheerfully, by way of greeting, as he walked through the door of the Magnificent Mansion.
A Gale Dekarios of forty-three - for he and Rosalie were of an age, though she often liked to gesture to the eight months he had on her - was the kind of sight that you couldn’t help but feel warmed by, just knowing how far he had come. The shade of his hair, from his age, and from the exertions of small children, had just begun to tip out of brown fully towards grey, though he was still dashing enough to boast about the whispers of ‘silver fox’ that he claimed he heard in the halls of Blackstaff. His body had softened a little, the rigours of an adventurer's life thoroughly abandoned in favour for a nice warm library with a fireplace. Without the Netherese orb, the age in his face had softened also - a weathering, rather than a withering.
“And a hello to you, too,” Rose said, summoning a smile, even though she knew from Gale's initial reaction that she must look exhausted. “At least you didn’t tell me to go to Hell, this time.”
Gale gave her the once over, spared the simulacrum a worried glance where it sat in its corner - he knew it was a sign to worry, when Rose had a simulacrum - before drawing her into a hug that smelt mostly of books, and a little like the woodsmoke of his wife.
“Apologies,” Gale said bashfully, “I forget my manners, still! But it’s quite a serendipitous series of networked connections and epiphanies, you have to understand, to conjure such a neat solution entirely suited to the problem.”
“...Let me get some more tea,” Rose said, once she’d parsed this sentence, and ushered him through to the library.
She paused at the doorway. "Also, you didn't give me any updates about my cat."
This, Gale was utterly mortified by.
“So, about getting to Cania, specifically,” Gale explained, once the pot was brewed, everyone gathered, and greetings (and Minor Illusions of Ser Verity) were given. “There is a way that, I can’t help but boast, is so idiosyncratically suited to this particular set of circumstances, that I truly find it hard to believe that anyone else would think of it. Which means no one would think to ward against it… if you were trying to evade someone’s detection, of course.”
Rosalie raised an eyebrow, while Gale tried to give her his best innocent look, like someone hadn’t already told him everything and sundry about their current state of affairs, while her back was turned. Either that, or the very obvious equation that was Cania - Mephistopheles - Astarion had presented itself, and Gale remained a learned man.
“Sneaking our way in would be ideal, yes,” she drawled.
“Well, you see, it would your way, specifically,” Gale said, pulling out a crisp, folded scroll, and rolling it out onto the table. “The spell I found was for any tiefling of Mephistopheles’ bloodline who wished to, well, reclaim their birthright, so to speak.”
“Their birthright?”
“Well, a tiefling wizard - of what I’m sure is excellent pedigree,” he gave a wink in Rose’s direction, “decided, a few hundred years ago, that they wanted to see how they err… measured up, to the shadow of the absentee father, so to speak. They crafted a spell, in his name, that would get them into his home. It strikes me as presumptuous, quite frankly, but was perhaps created in a bid to impress him-”
Everyone gave Gale, the consumer of the Netherese orb, a look that he thankfully did not notice.
“-I believe, or at least make a name for themselves that Mephistopheles couldn’t forget! Little did they know, how right they were!”
“...Go on,” Rosalie said, indulging the lecturer in him.
“The spell - known only to a small community of teleportation specialists, of which my colleague at Blackstaff is a member - transports anyone of Mephistopheles’ bloodline to a location of their choice within the cold wastes of the Eighth Hell. Quite an accidental result of what was supposed to be a personal calling card, it transpires! It was supposed to simply transport one person to one building, but the choice of invoking the rights of bloodkin specifically made it more powerful than that one person could ever imagine. Perhaps its author thought they were the only child of the devil, which, well - wizards being what they are, it’s not entirely outside of the realm of possibility!
“Whatever the reason, what they didn’t realise was, in invoking their father’s blood in order to earn entry to Cania, they actually forged was a contract by which any tiefling of Mephistopheles’ get would be able to open the same doorway. And once the doorway was open, well, it could go anywhere, because the desires of one’s children are manifold and will always exceed expectation,” Gale said. “What the wizard actually created was an… etiquette so to speak. In forcing Mephistopheles to acknowledge them as a child-”
“-Raphael was in good company, it seems,” Rose observed.
“They forced Mephistopheles to acknowledge all his children!” Gale continued. “Anyway, all you need to do is spill some of your blood, invoke the name of Mephistopheles, recite the incantation, and you, as a distant child of Cania, can go anywhere within the proverbial Fatherland! You can leave it by the same method, as well!”
Everyone paused, staring silently at Gale.
Rosalie glanced around them all hesitantly, “...I mean-”
“No,” Shadowheart said, speaking for the rest. “Absolutely not.”
“It could work!” Rose started.
“It’s honestly an unprecedentedly neat solutio-” Gale began, at the same time.
“Invoke Mephistopheles’ name, then ‘spill some blood’?” Shadowheart demanded. “Do we all remember the last time someone we know did that? Hmmm?”
Everyone but Rolan looked a little grim-faced. Rolan, a fellow wizard, understood the draw of a neat, rare spell that fit the problem at hand, and did exactly what it said on the tin. Even if the tin said ‘spill some blood’ on it.
“...Well,” Gale said, sounding a little abashed. “There’s no actual murder involved, in this one. It’s just a small sacrificial offering-”
“Sacrifice!” Shadowheart said, “that’s what the Rite asked for, as well!”
“I don’t think this would involve a contract,” Rosalie said, moving the scroll over with two fingers and taking a quick scan. “At least, if it’s a contract, it’s one I’m already accidentally party to, and it hasn’t exactly been keeping me up at night. If it bypasses all of Astarion’s defences-
“...Are we forgetting the fact that your blood’s ‘marked’, now, or whatever?” Karlach pointed out. “Surely either he, or the Cold Lord himself,’ll notice-”
“Oh heavens, is it?” Gale said, glancing among the group nervously.
Rosalie looked at him, “...would that affect the spell’s success?”
“Well, no, I don’t think so,” Gale said helplessly, “but it doesn’t exactly sound good-”
“I just don’t think you should do a blood ritual to treat with a devil!” Karlach said. “Any plan where that’s the opening gambit is fucked from the get-go!”
“I mean,” Rosalie started, “if it gets us straight into Astarion’s house-”
“Astarion has a house in Cania?” Gale interrupted. “...I thought maybe we were in a House of Hope situation!”
“I mean, we might be, to be fair,” Rose replied.
“Yes, but it didn’t occur to me that Astarion would be the tenant. I figured that you’d perhaps discovered the location of the Ascendent’s contract-”
“There isn’t a contract,” Rose told him, “Cazador had the contract. Astarion is the deliverable on said contract. Consequences and all.”
“But if you’re going to his house…?” Gale let out a small noise, shock crossing his face. “Gods. His coffin is there, isn’t it? It’s actually happening. You’re actually going to kill him.”
“...We’re as yet undecided on that front,” Rosalie replied. “We don’t know if we’re going to kill him or not. I don’t want to...”
Gale was staring at her, with sad, dark eyes, full of understanding.
“...It’s a last resort,” Rose finished weakly. That man, she felt, should not be allowed to make that face.
“What we do know,” Shadowheart said tersely, interrupting the conversation, “is that if we kill him, we’re not going to do it by performing an Infernal blood ritual.”
“It’s really not as bad as it sounds, a blood ritual mostly in name-” Gale started, before Shadowheart’s gaze silenced him.
Rosalie placed a quelling hand on Shadowheart’s arm. “It’s a second option,” she pointed out. “And better, perhaps, than walking up to Astarion’s throne.”
Gale cleared his throat. “He has a throne?”
“Please, like a throne wasn’t the first thing you imagine him buying,” Rose sighed.
“Those are our two options?” Karlach sounded horrified. “Fuck. Maybe blood ritual-”
“No sentence that starts with ‘maybe blood ritual’ is a good sentence,” Shadowheart interrupted angrily. Her voice sounded final. She looked at Rose. “Don’t do it. Don’t.”
“In the grand scheme of things…” it’s probably harmless.
“Don’t say it’s harmless,” Shadowheart told her. “It isn’t. Treating with Mephistopheles made Astarion what he is now.”
“I’m a very, very, very distant relative-”
“You are an extremely powerful mage. And for all we know, the Ascendent meets up with Mephistopheles every Sunday, and tells him all about you. So don’t do it, Rose. Just don’t.”
“I… ok,” Rosalie said, surprised that this was the point where her friend drew the line.
But she supposed she had to honour it, if that was where it was drawn. She trusted Shadowheart’s judgement, above all else.
That night, Rosalie - who had laid awake in her bed for as long as possible, thinking longingly of Angelic Slumber - found herself in another dream.
It was another cliché - or at least, her outfit was: a long white nightdress, with more lace than structural integrity, sheer enough to see the shadow of her own body through the fabric. The two of them were in the study again, and Rosalie was perched in the same position, on the same desk. The nightdress covered her knees, at least, though her feet were bare.
The Ascendent bowed his head down in front of her, dressed also all in white. He pressed a kiss to the long lock of her hair that rested on the slender fingers of his open, outstretched palm.
“No one else is here, love,” he murmured. “Why not let go, give in? No one will ever know.”
Rosalie watched the way he bowed to her silently. It wasn’t so much that she wasn’t tempted: not just by the idea of a full night’s rest, but by him. The dreams were always honey-edged, promising only pleasure, without pain… so long as she ignored the invasion underlying them all, and became complicit with it.
But beyond even that, she knew. Rose knew that whatever happened here, it would matter.
It would never be meaningless, even if that’s what the Ascendent promised.
Even if he wasn’t simply lying - if this wasn’t just another step in his plan, or a snare he kept trying to get her to step into willingly - her acquiescence here would still be a weakness he could exploit. It would be surrendering something of herself to him, however briefly, however good it felt, and Rosalie knew the Ascendent would never let her forget it.
But… she was also very tired- and as Shadowheart had observed, this tended to make her mean.
Time to direct that towards someone who deserved it, she supposed.
“Fine,” Rosalie said, looking down at the Ascendent where he was bent before her. “You want me to indulge?”
Astarion looked up at her through snowy lashes, a ghost of a smile on his face. Rosalie looked back at him, unmoved.
“Beg.”
The Ascendent froze in place. Rose uncrossed her legs in her ridiculous nightgown, the lock of her hair falling from his hand as she moved, and gave him a cruel smile.
“You want me to give in to you? Surrender myself, even here?” she demanded, coolly. “Show me how badly you want it.”
She placed her bare foot on his shoulder, “Beg.”
In dreaming, Rosalie imagined him on his knees, and so, in dreaming, it was so. She hadn't actually pushed him there, but dreams were like moving illusions - your mind's eye tended to fill in the blanks with the most logical solution, and create a narrative of events. The Ascendent looked down at his own body, surprised to find it puppeteered by a force other than his own.
“Beg,” Rosalie said again, removing her foot and crossing her legs at the ankles demurely, one over the other. "And maybe I'll consider it. Don’t you know this script? Surely you’ve heard it enough times, from other people. Maybe you're the master of it.”
The Ascendent's jaw worked stiffly, and no words left his mouth.
“Gosh, if you really love me so much, it shouldn’t be that hard,” Rose said, when the silence stretched out. “It might even be fun for you.”
She leant forward conspiratorially, as she repeated his own words back at him in a gloating whisper: “Why not let go, give in? No one will ever know.”
Not a single emotion showed on that strange, ethereal face of his. But Rose would’ve been more surprised, if he had answered her. At this point, she was just taunting him.
“You can’t expect everything of me, and give me nothing in return. Words mean nothing in the grand scheme, do they? So, go on. Ask nicely.”
But the Ascendent remained still as a statue, and just as silent.
Rosalie placed her hand under his sharp chin with two fingers, raised his face to hers till it was close enough to kiss, and looked directly into his lifeless eyes.
“You can’t, can you?” Rose said to him. “Because you don’t actually want me at all. You don’t want anything, not really. You’ve forgotten what true desperation feels like, and you won’t ever let yourself remember.”
It was the first time the Ascendent looked like he wanted to kill her, rather than her pain just being an unfortunate consequence of what he thought love was.
“I’m not even sure the power matters, anymore - but it’s all you have left,” Rose murmured, feathering that hand across his brow before she let go of him. “You’d never relinquish it. Not even for me.”
His jaw was moving stiffly again, like her words were gristle he had to swallow. The Ascendent managed, this time, to muster some kind of reply: “I have asked you, nicely, enough times-”
“And you know it'll never be enough. You’re not him,” Rosalie told the demon in front of her. “You’ve never been him.”
She leaned forward, so that her mouth brushed the Ascendent’s ear.
“And I’d get on my knees for him, in a heartbeat,” she murmured, “just to be clear.”
And, satisfied, she woke herself u-
The world resolved into another dream.
Rosalie was in a white hall, so white it hurt her eyes. There was no colour on any surface. There was barely anything dark enough to interrupt the blinding brightness, save for tall, arched windows on a mezzanine floor. Rose had to crane her neck, in order to see the ink black, starry sky beyond, shot through with veins of blue.
Cania. But not quite. Rose looked down at her hands, and even she was leeched of all her own colour, purple skin bleached back to grey.
The hall was astronomically large, and mostly empty, save for three statues stood in triplicate, one behind the other. You had to walk past them all, in order to reach the door on the other side. All three were made of smooth, unblemished marble, exactly as the walls and floor underfoot. It left the room with a strange flatness, like it was all sketched out on paper.
Rosalie walked forward to statues, for that was what the dream demanded.
The first was of a man on his knees, penitent, ugly tears carved into furrows on his face. His hands were held limp between splayed legs, palms up as if in supplication, mouth open in a scream. A ragged shirt was ripped from his back, hanging in scraps around his arms and waist, carved fluidly in the stone by a cruelly talented artist’s hands.
The second was a man dressed in fine clothing, slender body twisted with a dancer’s grace as he held his hand outstretched to an invisible partner. His expression was coy and knowing in equal measure. The fingers of the hand gestured so that he was gently luring the invisible partner in.
The third was of a man in armour, posed cockily as if receiving applause, smiling resplendently. Basking in the glory. Rose briefly wondered if there was a crown upon his head… but no, there was nothing of the kind, just two daggers clasped loosely in both hands as he posed to take his bow.
All three wore Astarion’s face.
“What-?” she whispered.
Rosalie reached out her hand, to touch the final statue, somewhere around the knee.
But the stone became immaterial under her fingers, and she fell through it as if it was never there…
Only then, did she wake up.
And the next morning, on the doorstep of Ramazith, Karlach found a slaughtered goblin. It's body was cooling, but it was still full to the brim with blood.
Notes:
Hello lovely people!!!
I think this might be my last update of this story in 2023, so I hope you enjoy it. We're hitting some big plot moments, so the next few chapters require some hefty workshopping - thank you in advance for your patience.
While I'm here... happy new year to everyone! Thank you for reading! Thank you for making 2023 such a big and unexpectedly rewarding year for my writing. I may have had the countdown till BG3 in my calendar, but I never imagined this was what would happen as a result of playing the silly little fantasy dating sim (I certainly didn't expect to be writing an evil ending fic, lmao).
Thank you to everyone reading this fic, for sharing in one of my favourite things about my year, and contributing to the joy I get from it :)
Take care of yourselves!
Chapter Notes
- This fic truly is just an excuse to indulge in every single one of my favourite Gothic tropes. Dracula media really popped off by adding that telepathic connection thing, huh? So did that one Spuffy episode with the sex dream :-)
- Unfortunately, what is happening is not the Dream spell, as this cannot be cast on someone who isn't on the same plane of existence, and, well...
- Legend Lore is a 5th Level cleric spell that basically can provide a magical infodump on an object and/or place, providing accurate information on its origins and history etc.
- I was feeling guilty so ferreted Gale out of the woodwork... to be fair, he has a whole fic in drafts dedicated to him now. But still. He gets a happy married cameo here lmao
- The Mephistopheles spell (and Mephistopheles' Canticles, to be fair) are inventions of the author
- As always... Poor Rolan :(((((
Chapter 15: Chapter Fifteen
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
There was the another body, the next morning. And the morning after that.
Rosalie had told the Ascendent to kill some goblins, and then they would talk. It seemed he had taken this literally, or he was perhaps feeling a little dramatic.
Otherwise, the underlying message of leaving the corpses at Ramazith was clear: I know where you live.
The message on the fourth body, on the fourth day, was even clearer: the cadaver had a party invitation, tucked into the pocket of its ragged coat. It invited Rosalie to a ball at the end of the week. Because subtlety was not and never had been Astarion’s strong suit, Last Chance was written across the back in crimson ink.
On the fifth day, Rosalie stumbled into Hemlock’s room, near drunken with tiredness.
“Oh, it’s the real deal today, is it?” the woman said cordially, glancing above the pages of the third book she’d finished since the start of her confinement. Her hair had grown out enough so that she now had a small sliver of pale blonde, like a line of salt, interrupting the coppery tones at her hairline.
She wrinkled her nose as Rose entered. “And the stench of you remains fetid, both bloodwise and otherwise. Trouble in paradise?”
Rosalie clunked the Zone of Truth orb onto the table.
“I finished translating your diary,” she announced.
“Oooh,” Hemlock playacted embarrassment. “Does this mean you saw the places where I doodled our initials in hearts in the margins?”
“You learned Wish, just so that you could kill a bunch of people?” Rosalie demanded, “is that really all you did with it? Seriously?”
“Yes, well,” Hemlock snapped the book shut with a sharp sound, then placed it in her lap and spread her hands elegantly, “I considered spending all that power resurrecting a summer fling from my thirties, but something about that just screamed… oh, I don’t know… ‘desperate’.”
“Nineteen people,” Rosalie reiterated. “Not even that many! Astarion killed more than that in one night, in a romantic gesture. You do realise Power Word Kill is right there?”
“Yes, and it is also quick and - some theorise - painless,” the other wizard replied, blandly. “Neither of those suited my purpose… Shouldn’t you be sleeping, or something? Are you done throwing a tantrum, over something that happened nearly a century ago?”
“...As opposed to learning one of the most powerful spells in existence, which seems like a very reasonable response to whatever you imagine these men did to you?”
“They did what they did," Hemlock replied stonily. "The justice I dealt them pleased me, at the time. But I was also much younger then."
“All that work and all that knowledge for… something so…” Rose floundered, “pedestrian!”
Hemlock raised an unimpressed eyebrow, “it’s not as if you're living by any lofty ideals. You’re not learning Wish to make the world a better place.”
Rosalie opened her mouth, then closed it. To her, the world with an Astarion restored was a better place, but she realised how selfish that sounded.
“Perhaps I'd act differently now, if I had the choice again,” Hemlock sighed, “but only because I know of the ramifications for my own person. I’d still kill all of them in a heartbeat, if that was something I still had.”
“But… why?”
“‘Why’?”
“I just -” Rosalie huffed, wanting to tear out her own hair. “...I don’t get it!”
“I imagine not,” Hemlock smirked, resting her elbow on her bedside table and placing her head in her hand to watch Rose fret. “Thankfully, your opinion has never mattered to me, and so if I could sleep, I would do so easily.”
Rosalie knew this was her cue to leave. Like Hemlock said, she shouldn’t even be awake. She should be staring at her ceiling, or sneaking into the Ramazith vault all over again to find that one Angelic Slumber Rolan said he had. At least making some attempt at rest. She was agitated, and tired, and this was inevitably going to make her work sloppy.
But still she remained rooted there, in the centre of the room. Both of them knew there was no chance of her going back to sleep.
“...Why?” Rosalie said, again. She was so plagued by questions, that any answer might provide her some welcome relief.
“Is this where I start monologuing at you, tell you of my terrible upbringing, and all my very good reasons for being the way that I am?” Hemlock sighed. “Please. I’m not him. Go get your cleric, if you want a performance from me.”
“I was hoping I might spare us both the indignity,” Rose said with her own tired sigh, as she went and took the armchair in the corner, just for something to do. “Shadowheart is grouchy in the mornings.”
“Whereas you are a veritable ray of sunshine.”
Rosalie ignored her. She settled herself in the chair, and then felt a wave of mortification, noticing a jam stain on her sleeve that, on further examination, must have been there since yesterday, perhaps even the day before. She’d slept in this shirt, she thought with horror. How had she not noticed?
Hemlock eyed her as she fidgeted. “...You’re not going to leave?”
“Nope.”
“...You really want to hear this story?”
“Yep,” Rose replied. “We can either do it with Shadowheart in the room, or without her. I don't know your feelings on an audience, but it's the same threat as always, I'm afraid.”
Hemlock gave her a look of annoyed disgust. Rosalie smiled back airily, for she had much experience of being subject to this expression, often from Astarion.
They stayed silent, for a span of minutes. Rose took the time to prestidigitate her sleeve, knowing she wouldn’t be the one to crack first.
Hemlock let out a long, exasperated sigh.
“My mother was the one who taught me how to read Espruar," she said. "She was one of the last speakers of a singular arcane dialect, and a mage in the circle of practitioners who created that little book of yours. They were a group of like-minded individuals: scholars, hermits, and a few religious types, clerics mostly dedicated to Mystra, a few to Shar. Together, they wished to unravel the sacred Mysteries, kept from us by the Gods. Shrouded in the right amount of reverence, it was ultimately a project to understand and manipulate the Weave to the best of mortal comprehension, perhaps even make a few attempts at playing God themselves.”
“I know the type,” Rosalie said, thinking of Gale. Then, she paused. “...Too many of them in one place sounds a bit like a cult.”
“They never called themselves that. Framed themselves as more of a praxis-driven reading group,” Hemlock shrugged, “but they lived on an island in the middle of nowhere, conducting rituals and cultivating power. So, yes. They were a mystery cult.”
She continued. “The group was majority men. My mother was one of three female mages, with enough expertise and power to be considered ‘worthy’ of their number. When their rituals and meditations on the Mysteries posed to them began to become more than just lint gathering and started to produce something concrete, suddenly they closed ranks. The women were first relegated to administration and domestic duties, and then they were excluded from the meetings entirely. This was how my mother knew the group must have made some discovery of note - the moment they stopped speaking to her of anything. They weren’t just talking out of their arses, anymore - they’d found something, and they were keeping it a secret. When she tried to find out what it was, they banished her from the group and from the island. I was four, at the time.”
The idea of a young Hemlock was genuinely disturbing. Rose found herself imagining a very serious looking child, with the same severe, cut-glass cheekbones.
“Ten years later, when we lived in the Gate,” Hemlock said, “my mother contracted a disease for which there was no affordable cure. The clerics that might be of use were few and far between, so she tried to get in touch with those she’d known, in her former group. All now separated and spread to wind, all unprecedentedly talented and wealthy, enjoying positions of power across all Faerûn. She begged each of them to help her. They clearly had the power with which to do so. They all refused. And then, it was too late.”
“Ok...” Rosalie said, carefully. “I think I get it. But… why not Wish your mother back to life?”
Hemlock cast her a sidelong look, then shrugged. “My mother was nearly half a millennia old, when she died. She’d lived a long enough life. Why resurrect her… just to watch her get old?”
“I… see,” Rosalie said, not really seeing at all.
“What she deserved,” Hemlock continued, “was to be a part of that discovery. To be able to cure herself, if she so wished. She was the one who taught them Espruar - she deserved their acknowledgement. Instead, they took the words she put in their mouths, and then they slowly pushed her out of their inner circle. They ignored her in her sickbed, and left her to rot. She helped them make those discoveries, and we saw none of the benefits. They wouldn’t even cure her disease, just to see if they could. They kept their secrets to themselves, letting a woman die rather than deign to let her have her share.”
Hemlock picked a piece of lint from her clothing. “I, alone, discovered those self-same secrets, and when I did, it was without their help.”
“So, what did you Wish for?” Rose asked.
Though she’d seen several drafted variations in the diary, it was unclear what final wording Hemlock had settled on.
“I wrote down the names of all those in the Mystery cult, and I Wished for them to die as mother had: awfully and unpleasantly, slowly and painfully,” the woman said, with the same tone of voice she might reserve for discussing the weather.
At Rose’s horrified expression, she shrugged. “What can I say? I was young. And stupid. And bored.”
“But… but you told me I had to be restrained!” Rose said, indignantly.
“A lesson I wish I had been given, I assure you,” Hemlock drawled, flicking that speck of lint out of her fingers. “It all felt very nice, in the moment, to make such a grandiose statement, and feel the power leave me in one big rush. My younger self had no thought for balance - though I suppose, had I worded it correctly, the sheer amount of instability and change caused by the loss of nineteen men in power might have been enough to pay the bill. But I didn’t think that way, then. And so, Wish fucked me, and it didn’t even buy me dinner first.”
“How? What happened?”
“At first? Nothing,” Hemlock said. “I waited for news of their demise to reach me - and it didn’t. But I knew, deep down, the spell had worked. I had felt it take. I sought out the one closest to me: the moment I laid eyes on him in a crowded square here in the Gate, he dropped to the ground, vomiting and convulsing.”
She met Rose's eyes. “This was the first condition I learned of, that I hadn’t anticipated. I had asked for these men to die, as mother had died. Not only had her death been slow and painful: I had watched it happen. In order for these men to fall, I had to be there. I had to bear witness.”
Rosalie knew she was not controlling her expression, but Hemlock shrugged off this second horrifying fact, as well.
“All in all, not too taxing. A little time-consuming, particularly when some in the group began to notice a pattern, and realised someone was picking them off, one by one. They all started going into hiding, which was tiresome. But for all their power, and even their intelligence, these men were all stupid, and so I found each one of them, eventually.”
“And watched them die?”
“The act of watching the deaths themselves wasn’t exactly unpleasant. It was quite fascinating, actually. Sometimes it took hours, other times minutes, the final one: days. I had to crouch over that body, and make sure which breath was his last, just to check he wasn’t going to come back the moment I averted my gaze. I took observational notes, even, but that diary…”
Rosalie, who was now just watching this woman in abject disgust, noticed the moment when something approaching remorse creeped into her expression.
“Well, that diary became a little morbid, later on,” Hemlock said, rubbing at her nose.
“You think!”
“I destroyed it,” Hemlock informed her, as if that was the issue here.
“But how, exactly, is that balanced?” Rose demanded.
“Well, part of me assumes I was the debt those men wracked up, by willing their own success into existence,” Hemlock said, mildly. “Who knows how many counts of Wish they each used, to alter their own lives - and at the expense of the people who had done the work, no less. Something was bound to rebound upon them, eventually.”
“But you’re right, of course,” she continued, “I went on with my life, after that. I’d proven my point, I felt, and the manuscript had already been destroyed by one of the more eccentric targets, who stole it from the vault the cult kept and then cut out its pages, having become convinced it was cursed. A decade passed, then another, and another. I grew up, for I was only twenty-five when my Wish was granted. I figured all of it had worked exactly as planned. But there was another condition, yet to come.”
“...Did it come in the form of like, an arrest warrant?” Rose couldn’t help but ask.
“No?” Hemlock snorted. “The deaths appeared natural, in the sense that it was a disease, albeit one that others wore protection for, when they moved the bodies. People would’ve suspected magical foul play, of course, had these men ever admitted to belonging to an arcane cult that delved into the mysteries and highest workings of the Weave. But they didn’t. As before, they remained intent on taking their secrets to their graves, and I was more than happy to oblige them. To anyone but them, it was a series of awful, unrelated deaths.”
“So you got away with it.”
“I got away with it,” Hemlock confirmed with a bland smile, “such is the beauty of Wish, I suppose. I got my job, and continued living my life, and I wanted for nothing, having already received my heart’s desire. As such, I felt no need to Wish for anything more.”
“But then,” she said, after a pause, “I got sick.”
“Oh,” Rosalie said, and then she thought about it some more. “Oh no.”
“Yes,” Hemlock said, with that same mild-mannered tone. “You finally catch up, it seems - you really are quite slow, you know. I had Wished for them to all die as my mother had, slowly and painfully, of a communicable, and apparently contagious disease. The spell then forcibly placed me at every sickbed, every deathbed, and I had talked to them as I watched it take them. The inevitable happened. It was not even as if Wish had tricked me: it all makes a healthy amount of logical sense.”
“...That’s why you became vampire spawn,” Rosalie realised. "To stop yourself from dying."
She was awed and horrified by these implications. Her leap in logic surprised Hemlock, who seemingly hadn’t expected her to connect that other set of dots.
“The disease could not be Wished away,” she said, voice more guarded than it was before. “Of course it couldn’t be - that would be far too simple. One of them had tried that, in fact, and I’d laughed in their face when it did nothing. So when I started experiencing the early symptoms I had documented: the flashing lights, the muscle spasms, the convulsions, and the nausea and then the pain… well, I knew I was doomed. With no way of fixing it on my own, I had to look to outside sources. Devils, Patrons of the Undying and Undead… vampires.”
“But… but... if that’s your logic! If you hated all of these - all of these men, and what they deprived your mother of - the mother who, you said, had lived a 'long-enough life' - why would you then put yourself under someone else’s - a man’s - control?” Rosalie started to say, becoming supremely agitated. “Surely it’s better to die!”
Hemlock looked over at her tiredly, and rolled her eyes.
“That is not, in fact, an opinion that is shared universally, you dullard little hero,” she sighed. “Some of us are actually very afraid of dying. Most of us, in fact. And even fewer would see a life of luxury, with a handsome man who’s an excellent fuck, as the greater of two evils. I saw the deaths that I made for those men, and I still have no interest in experiencing it first-hand. Anything was better than that fate.”
A fate you engineered for yourself. Rose could not hide her disgust. She gestured to Hemlock, emphatically, “...And how is that going for you, exactly?”
“Well, not badly, honestly,” Hemlock sighed, looking down at her fingernails. “I’m still alive, aren’t I? I worried that vampirism would not stave off the disease, but it does. And I knew I’d have to be spawn, given that no vampires were handing out tickets to the club on the door.”
Rosalie felt an irrational desire to speak in defence of Lyssa Von Zarovich, but then she thought better of it. She supposed that Hemlock would not be Lyssa’s type - as a red-headed, power crazed wizard, she would be too much like competition.
“Most of them force their minions to perform their dirty work for them. Instead, I chose the all-powerful Vampire Ascendent, newly born into the world with untold ambition, not rotting away in some dreary castle somewhere. The Master who feeds and clothes us, who simply wants us to repeatedly promise that we’re having a good time? Who knew that he needed me as an ally, and who - I don’t know if you’ve noticed - isn’t very bright?”
“And you think you’re... smart?!” Rosalie said, incredulously, and a little affronted on Astarion's behalf.
Hemlock began massaging her temples. “The men I killed were all geniuses, and I outsmarted each one of them in turn. Part of me has always thought my mother was foolish to ask them to care, showing up all sickly and weak after she’d meekly accepted her dismissal, all those years ago, and proven herself of frail will. She could’ve made them care, if she’d tried hard enough, I’m sure. Make it so that they never wanted to lose her, so they wanted to share everything, give her everything. Men are fools, when it comes to love.”
She sighed. “I thought I could do the same thing here. Hells, I thought he meant all that idealistic bullshit he sprouted, in the beginning. I know what liars sound like, and he was just so lost, that first year. So desperate to please me, so desperate to be good-”
“...You’re a fucking moron,” Rosalie said, unable to help herself.
Hemlock looked over at her, and she sighed.
“No more so than you, I think, albeit in a different direction. It didn’t matter to me, where that futile path led him. I knew that he would fail at whatever virtue he aspired to, but that’s exactly what I wanted, and I’m a better manager of patience than you are. I figured that within the decade, this passing obsession would fade, and then there would be something for me to work with. A plan, or a lot of misplaced affection, left to fester. He’d need someone, and there I’d be - all that power you had over him, it would be mine eventually, and I’d make use of it… But then you came back, didn’t you?”
“Um,” Rosalie said, “he murdered a bunch of people-”
“Yes, and you fell for it,” Hemlock spat, disgusted. “The way he spoke about you, and the way you disappeared, I thought you’d be smart enough to see what play he was making. But no. Here you are. Here we both are.”
“And that’s my fault?” Rose demanded. “I mean, come on! You trusted those stupid things he says?”
“I trust the images men hold of themselves, and Astarion wants so badly for his to be real,” Hemlock replied, in flat voice. “It just took me too long to realise, that the set dressing wasn’t interchangeable. You’re the one there, in the portrait, with him. No one else. Only you.”
Hemlock sounded bitter. It was hard to feel sympathy for someone who had just confessed to nineteen counts of murder, but Rose couldn’t help but understand her frustrations. Hemlock’s definition of love, or at least affection, seemed much more closely aligned with what the Ascendent desired - certainly closer than Rosalie could ever hope to achieve. Hemlock was offering him exactly what he wanted: an eternity together, doing awful things. And Rosalie was just sat here - somehow that was enough to be outclassed. That really was quite galling.
And it led to the question: if it wasn’t him, and what came before didn’t matter, why the fuck did the Vampire Ascendent still want her, and her alone?
Rose paused to consider. The conversation had left her thoughtful. “...I suppose, having someone alongside him would mark him as different, from what came before. Cazador was always alone.”
“Cazador?!” Hemlock scoffed, “what the fuck does he have to do with anything? Astarion killed him.”
Rosalie gave Hemlock a long, puzzled look, at her incredibly strange joke. And then horror dawned within her, as she realised the woman was actually serious. Hemlock truly thought that all of what they were living now had nothing to do with Astarion’s former sire, and all he had put Astarion through.
But then, Hemlock had never known the Astarion of before.
Maybe that was the difference, Rosalie thought. The Ascendent wanted someone there with him, to acknowledge just how far he’d come.
“Ohhhhh, I’m really going mad,” Rosalie said tiredly, mostly to herself, rubbing her eyes and huddling herself further back in the chair. “You are literally the last person I should be talking to about this.”
“Yes, why are you here?” Hemlock asked, after a second. “I presume it’s for a more worthwhile purpose than the delivery of a moralistic speech - although, he said you used to be extremely partial to those.”
“...You didn’t say how you did it,” Rose told her, voice muffled through the hands that still covered her face.
“...What now? Speak up, dear.”
“Your diary,” Rosalie enunciated tiredly. “I finished it. In every failed attempt, you show your working. And in the only one where you’re successful, there’s nothing. You don’t say what worked. You don’t show how you did it.”
“...No, I don’t, do I?” When Rose removed one of her hands from her face, she saw Hemlock grinning maliciously, savouring every moment of her obvious frustration. “Funny, that.”
Rosalie could only be glad that the woman hadn’t seen her, when she’d realised. The moment she'd got to the final diary entry, and found it as frustratingly incomplete as the Wish manuscript.
It had been five in the morning. Rosalie had slept without a dream, but was still jolted awake by her fear of one. Despairing at her chances of getting more than a handful of hours' sleep, she’d decided to resort to working, instead.
The tome had been fully translated. The simulacrum was asleep at its desk, its task complete, and Rose hadn’t wanted to wake it. So she hadn’t had any warning.
The diary ended on the list of nineteen names, that Hemlock had just told her had been used to condemn those men to their deaths.
But that was all there was: a list.
Rosalie had hurled the book across the room.
It was now half six, and no one else knew she was in here. But Rose was exhausted, and angry.
“Why didn’t you want me reading it?” she demanded. “We literally had to pry its location out of you!”
“Well, you know, when you’re a young, ambitious wizard documenting the process by which you will visit your great wrath on every person who’s ever wronged you, you don’t exactly imagine it being read by others,” Hemlock said, examining her nails again. “Or, you know, you do imagine it being read, and then fifteen years later you read one line in your own handwriting and you fucking cringe, because you wonder who exactly you were performing for!"
Rosalie looked at her. There was no way Hemlock thought of her documentation of Wish as nothing more than the equivalent of an embarrassing, overdramatic teenage diary.
“Plus, I confess to nineteen counts of murder,” the woman offered, as an afterthought. “Pretty incriminating stuff.”
Rosalie considered throttling her.
Hemlock saw her expression, and laughed. “You wanted an instruction manual, did you? For me to spell it out for you word-for-word? Well, I hate to break it to you, princess, but you already have that - you paid through your teeth for it. And you can’t even use it!”
“I’ve read the manuscript four times, now. I’ve attempted a closing section,” Rosalie said through gritted teeth. “...It didn’t work.”
This statement did not begin to encompass the catastrophic headache Rose had given herself yesterday, trying to construct the ending to the Espruar text, armed with her glossary and Hemlock’s translations in hand. She’d managed to draft three lines of spelltext… and then her vision had blacked out.
When she’d come to, and peeled herself out of the pages, like a wan, anaemic pancake, the page that she’d written on was back to being completely blank.
“Ooh, practising an ending? That’s something you think you can do, for a spell like Wish?” Hemlock grinned, pleased by Rose’s discomfort. “Ah, it’s like watching the younger version of me all over again! You’ve read all the ways I failed! Surely that tells you what not to do.”
“But it still doesn’t give me the answer,” Rose replied angrily.
“Oh, and that’s what you want, is it? A step-by-step guide? With pictures?”
“Yes,” Rose couldn’t help but reply. “That would be ideal.”
“Even if you got your pretty little cleric in here and demanded one of me, I imagine you’d find it lacking,” Hemlock said, with a sidelong glance at the orb to prove that her words were true. “It doesn’t work like that, sweetheart. Surely even you’ve worked that out by now.”
Rosalie pinched the bridge of her nose and hoped it looked like frustration. She adamantly refused to cry in front of this awful woman.
But the truth was, she was at an utter loss. Another lead, that had proven itself useless, or proven her incapable of following it to its end.
“What words did you say?” she said through her hand. “When you cast the spell, what was the verbal component?”
“What do you think?” Hemlock replied. “...‘I wish.’”
Rosalie let out a sound of frustration. This just wasn’t fair. She had to transcribe the spell into her spellbook, to have it in her repertoire. In order to do that, she needed a full copy of the spell, to transcribe.
But a full spell wasn’t recorded anywhere, and no one was giving it to her.
She wanted to hit something, with acute force.
“Oh, you poor little thing. You still grasp none of the basics, it seems. You have no idea what to cast, and still have no idea what to Wish for, do you?”
Rosalie glared at her. Hemlock smirked prettily. “When I lacked the former, the latter was what carried me through. A singular purpose, and a clear goal, against which my younger, foolish self never wavered. It was all that consumed my thoughts, every moment I spent in the waking world. But you have far too many thoughts, don’t you, Rosalie? That overthinking little brain of yours means you’re guaranteed to fail, from the very beginning. You still have no idea what it is you want.”
“Well, how would you do it, then?” Rose demanded. “How would you word the Wish?”
“-To undo Astarion’s Ascendency? I simply wouldn’t Wish for it in the first place,” Hemlock retorted. “I’d Wish, instead, for you to die - which, as we’ve established, is my fatal flaw generally, but I really think it would get the job done here!”
“Don’t worry!” the wizard added, “I’d kill you... and then I’d let him bring you back. Then he has his little pet to distract him, and I’d have you to use as a bargaining chip whenever I need him to do what I want.”
“Astounding contribution, Hemlock. Thank you,” Rose sniped. “...We’d both be spawn, you realise? Neither of us would have any bargaining power against him, whatsoever.”
“Gods. You really are stupid,” Hemlock tutted. “You’d have power over him, if you played your cards right. You’re the only one of us with any leverage. I used to daydream about threatening you directly, with a stake, but with the new… measures in place, if there was something I wanted, I’d simply get you to ask for it. Spawn can’t charm, but I have Modify Memory, after all. You’d request something, thinking you wanted it, and so long as it wasn’t your freedom, he’d probably give it to you.”
Rosalie looked at her, disbelievingly. She was stunned to silence.
It was amazing the plans people could come up with, that simply would never work. She wondered if that’s what her and her party looked like from the outside, sometimes.
“You keep wanting me to be something I’m not,” Hemlock observed, misunderstanding the look on Rose’s face completely. “That’s something of a terminal problem with you, isn’t it? But I mean it: I wouldn’t try to Wish Astarion better. Even if I felt like going head-to-head with Mephistopheles, it isn’t worth the fucking bother. It’s a lost cause - doomed to backfire. There’s far too many variables in play.”
“...What would you Wish for, then?”
Rose didn’t know why she was asking, other than out of desperation. If Hemlock wasn’t going to give her the key to the spell, maybe understanding how she approached it would still be a useful clue.
“If I was you, you mean?” Hemlock frowned, seeming to give the question some genuine thought. “I’d Wish for Astarion Ancunín, the Vampire Ascendent, and only him, to be erased from existence from the moment the spell was cast.”
“...You’re really not very complicated, are you?” Rose despaired. “And you haven’t learned anything. How is that different from killing him, exactly?”
“Look, you might not like it, but that’s because it’s a compromise! It’s the only solution that doesn’t entail massive consequence,” Hemlock replied, looking almost defensive. “It would only affect the present and future, without trying to shove any sticky fingers into the past and steal back things that are long lost, like souls. You’re not attempting time travel - which always backfires. All his spawn would live, and that’s an outcome I’m personally partial to. Erasure is cleaner: if you killed him and any matter remained, Mephistopheles would find a means of resurrection, I’m sure. He might even have a Wish under his belt, himself. I mean, the Cold Lord will still come for you, undoubtedly, but you get that in every timeline, because you’re a fucking idiot to attempt any of this in the first place.”
“It’s not stupid, to want to save someone,” Rosalie argued.
“At the expense of all of yourself?” Hemlock replied archly. “I think it just might be.”
They lapsed into silence: Rosalie in her armchair, Hemlock sprawled languorously on the bed, fully at peace with all of her choices. Rosalie was so tired, her vision all but buzzed at the edges.
“...Astarion's invited me to a masquerade ball,” she said, idly, realising she needed to externalise this fact to someone who would understand.
“Oh? Well, someone did find one of your books in that dusty little cloister, and gave it to him," Hemlock hummed, examining the novel she held cradled in her lap. “He probably thinks masquerades are a thing, for you.”
“Every single one of those fucking books has a masquerade in it,” Rose replied, insistently. “It’s not a me-thing, it’s a genre thing. Trust me on that.”
“Hmmm,” Hemlock said, sounding unconvinced.
Which was fucking rude, Rosalie felt. The Zone of Truth was literally right there.
Today’s cooling corpse held a suit carrier. Inside the suit carrier, was a pristine, glittering golden froth of a dress.
We can host the celebration here, or we will come to you, at Ramazith, the note on the back of today’s party invite threatened. I will enjoy myself in your company whatever the occasion, darling, but I have a feeling I know which location you would prefer-
“Why aren’t we killing him, again?” Karlach muttered at lunch, though her irritation did not seem to stop her from shovelling food into her mouth, with enthusiasm.
“Because he deserves someone’s attempt to save him,” Lae’zel surprised them all by saying, from her seat at the head of the table.
Rosalie was glad to hear someone else still have faith in their mission. With Wish still elusive, and time seemingly running out, Rose could not summon much herself. She focused, instead, on mainlining coffee like her life depended on it.
“Stop looking at the blood ritual,” Shadowheart reprimanded her, as she entered the dining room with her own full plate that had been left to cool in the kitchen.
“In my defence,” Rose said, “I am having a very bad day.”
Spread out in front of her, on the table, was the scroll Gale had left with them. It was lucky Gale had children, otherwise Rose was uncertain if she’d have ever been able to convince him to leave and go back to Waterdeep. As it was, she’d only gotten his agreement on the understanding that he would be contacted immediately, if there was ever an emergency.
The scroll was, as Gale had said, a perplexingly neat solution to the problem at hand. There didn’t seem to be a loophole, that Rosalie could see: the scripture’s entire approach to the notion of an Infernal pact was really quite clever. As the descendent of a devil, the wizard had acted as if he could place someone into a contract, not the other way around. Contracts needed to be signed in blood, after all, and that, it seemed, was what Mephistopheles’ son had done. With his blood, which was also Mephistopheles’ blood. As a result, this was indeed an Infernal contract - but Mephistopheles was the one footing the bill.
Forget playing God. It took a lot of hubris to play the devil, within the court of his own game.
“I think we need to go to Cania,” Rose announced.
“No. Not by that spell,” Shadowheart replied, immediately.
“Isn’t it too early for that, anyway?” Karlach said. “I thought that was only a part of the 'killing-him' plan?”
“It’s just - I spoke to Hemlock earlier-”
Rosalie ignored the four sets of very judgemental side-eye these words earned her, as she continued. “She made fun of me for not knowing what to Wish for. She says I’m doomed to fail, from the very beginning.”
“Not the most… reliable source,” Shadowheart noted.
“She was probably just goading you,” Karlach added.
“I know, but she’s also right. Which is even more fucking annoying,” Rose continued. “I truly have no clue what I’m doing, and no idea what to Wish for.”
“Astarion back?” Karlach offered.
“I wish it was that simple,” Rose sighed. “But Hemlock says that won’t work.”
“She could be,” Shadowheart mock gasped, “lying.”
“With the orb, there in the room with her?”
“You’ve had dealings with the fey,” Lae’zel pointed out. “An inability to lie doesn’t mean that people can’t use their words to wilfully deceive.”
Rose flashed back to the ‘I’m dying of a disease I willed into existence’ speech. She didn’t think Hemlock was lying to her. Hemlock definitely had ulterior motives, but then, she was already steering Rosalie in the directions of ‘Wishes in which I and the other spawn survive’ solution, so Rose didn’t think she was being subtle about those either.
“There are two things I’m certain of, independent of Hemlock,” Rosalie said. “I am still not sure what to Wish for, and the spell itself is too dangerous to experiment with. I can’t test it out to see if Hemlock is lying. It's far too important to try, and then risk getting wrong.”
“But I thought this spell was still eluding your mind entirely?” Lae’zel asked, in typical Lae’zel fashion.
"Yes,” Rosalie ground out between her teeth, “and I don’t know how to fix it. I feel like there’s something I’m not seeing-”
Half-remembered dreams. A voice. Gods, she was just so tired. Had the statues been some kind of premonition? Was that why her mind still dwelled on them?
“And the only piece that I know is missing is Cania,” she continued. “I’ve been having dreams of the palace there-
“-Sounds like a trap.” Karlach observed.
“But… I don’t think the Ascendent knows that we know about Cania,” Rosalie rebutted. “Why would he be willingly giving that information away? Maybe, instead, it’s what keeps it all tied together. That’s the seat of his power, after all.”
“How would that help with your Wish?” Rolan asked. He too looked tired and spread thin, for he was still contending with a huge portion of Hemlock’s library. The simulacrum was still snoring in the other room, now nearly fifteen hours deep in a sleep that Rosalie very much wished she was having.
Rosalie's answer to that question was lacking. All she had was a gut feeling that she couldn’t shake.
“If we go, there might be some clues or indicators to the extent of the Ascendent’s bargain with Mephistopheles,” she said, trying to logic that feeling out. “If I know what binds them, I’ll understand better what to unpick. I’ll understand what the ramifications of the Wish will be. And once I know that, I can work back and know the safe parameters within which to work-”
“-All that sounds fine to me,” Shadowheart said, “but we are not getting there via blood ritual.”
"We just going to ignore the bodies he’s leaving on the doorstep?” Karlach asked. “Feels like, to me, that’s a more pressing issue.”
“This macabre party of his is two days away,” Lae’zel noted, “that offers us enough time to perhaps make the trip to the Hells without him knowing.”
“And if he gets impatient and insists on attacking Ramazith, we’ll be ready for him, anyway,” Rolan informed them all. “Though I will say, the corpses are proving bad for business. We get them indoors before we open, but my watches still haven’t managed to catch them being… deposited. As it were.”
“What if I maybe had a... two or three birds with one stone, sort of a solution?” Rosalie asked the group, carefully.
Everyone paused, noting her cautious shift in tone.
Shadowheart gave her a long look, then frowned. “You are not going to that party.”
“Well, I can’t do the fucking blood ritual, so all we’ve got is the throne, the staff, and a conveniently-timed invitation to his fucking house!!” Rose said defensively. “I’m just putting the pieces together! Knowing him, this party will probably be in the dungeon, as well.”
“Rose!” Karlach gasped. “You can’t leave this place, never mind go to him! You’re one bite away from being turned!”
“And that is why he’s leaving these bodies in the first place,” Shadowheart said in an icy voice. “To lure you out. Like he did the first time.”
Beside them both, Rolan looked worried.
“Ok, but..." Rosalie said. "...What if I had a solution to that, as well.”
“To the way your guilt makes you incredibly susceptible to manipulation?” Shadowheart asked, mildly.
“No. To being turned.”
Rose paused.
“...A really, really silly solution.”
All four of them stayed silent. And so, Rosalie explained that solution out loud.
She felt stupid, just putting it into words. It really was ludicrous. She was certain that nobody who wasn’t nearly a week deep into sleep deprivation would have been able to come up with it.
She had simply been idling around the Mansion kitchen, trying to think of ways Hemlock could've avoided her problems, aside from the obvious: “not be an evil psychopath”. And then... it had occurred to her.
She hoped it never occurred to Hemlock. She'd likely be livid.
“I-” Rolan paused, as she finished her speech. The frown on his face gradually descended into mortal offense, getting angrier and more frustrated by the second. “I - that really shouldn’t work.”
“I know,” Rosalie said.
“But-” his frown deepened. “I think it does.”
“I know,” Rosalie repeated.
“There… there must be some kind of side effect! A consequence! A-a ramification!”
“There isn’t. At least, there isn’t, when I use that spell for anything else. Once I've shifted back, I'm exactly the same I was before. It can't be any different here.”
“...It wouldn’t be dangerous?” Karlach asked, worrying. “...Aside from the obvious, I mean.”
“So long as I didn't get stuck that way, it wouldn’t be, no. It places me under a time limit, but otherwise? It might actually be, you know… safer, than usual. And I can use my staff’s arcane battery, so it doesn’t even expend much magic.”
“It shouldn’t work!” Rolan said again. “It feels like… like cheating!”
But it did work, and cheating wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, in this particular set of circumstances. Silence reigned, as all five of them let the prospect sink in.
“He’ll find out you’re gunning for Cania,” Shadowheart said, after a pause. “You’ll be able to get into his palace via the throne, only once. Then he’ll know what we know about him, and block off that route from us. In the end, if it turns out we do need to kill him, we’ll have to find another way to reach him.”
“...Put the coffin in a Bag of Holding?” Karlach offered, off-hand. “That way, if we end up killing the fuck, he comes to us for the privilege of Round Two.”
“We don’t know if that’s why the coffin’s there,” Rosalie said, “it might be that he has to reconstitute in the Hells themselves, depending on what the new bargain is. I was thinking I could try and pilfer something metal from his palace - then we’ll have material that’s attuned to the Eighth Hell, and we can Plane Shift. If the blood ritual is still off the table.”
“It is,” Shadowheart said, tersely.
“How would you get yourself back?” Karlach asked. “If you go there on your own.”
“...Well,” Rosalie said, to avoid mentioning that this was why she had been memorising the blood ritual scroll at the dinner table.
Shadowheart, of course, saw through it. “I’ll have an object enchanted with Word of Recall,” she said, “you can use that. It will deposit you at the shrine to Selûne, within my home.”
“...How has no one written a paper?” Rolan was still muttering, under his breath. Rosalie couldn’t blame him. She’d both been mad at herself for coming up with the idea for attending the masquerade, and mad that she hadn’t thought of it sooner.
“It’s a really stupid plan,” Rosalie announced to the room, just for the sake of saying. “For a reason I might be entirely making up in my head.”
“It is, yes,” replied Shadowheart. “On both counts.”
“We’ve done stupider,” Karlach offered. “In the tadpole days, and with Blades of Avernus. I come from a long tradition of doing stupid shit, and living to tell the stupid tale.”
Rose’s eyes drifted to the suit carrier, that she’d dumped in a fit of disgust by the door. There was another unspoken agreement that went around the table: it might be a stupid plan, but it would also be really fucking funny.
“I’m not wearing that dress,” she announced.
“Well,” said Shadowheart. “Obviously.”
Notes:
A lawful good wizard and a neutral evil wizard walk into a bar...
I hope people don't mind a slightly slower paced chapter - I know there's not much Astarion in this one, but I needed one more chapter to set the scene before Final Act Shenanigans ensue.
I also just want to apologise for falling behind on answering comments! I really want to reply to each and every one but I've become a little swamped! If I end up skipping a couple of chapters, please know that I read every single comment that comes into my inbox and love every single one. Many of them reduce me to tears! I've been so overwhelmed by the feedback this fic has received, I'm so grateful for such responsive and kind readers! :)
Chapter Notes
- Ever since the Epilogue came out, I've wanted to shove a lil masquerade ball in this fic, for my own mental health. If it ends up feeling a little forced because it was added to the outline last minute, oh well! Who doesn't like a masquerade ball? and who doesn't deserve to put whatever they want in their silly little fanfic? :)
- Hemlock's backstory was a stumbling block in this fic for a long time, as I was never sure how much I wanted to include here - I know it's always a little weird to spend too much time in a fic on your OCs. But anyway, I finally realised what it was that she'd Wished for. She was always conceived of as a character that, even if none of what happened here had happened, would be a Tav that actively chose the Ascension ending and the spawn ending.
- That being said... Rosalie is not the only wizard in this fic with a WIS dump stat. I have a type x
- I have found the silliest spell for the next chapter. It's so fucking silly, but from all the double and triple checking I did, I really do think it works. I hope people enjoy it when we get to the reveal!
- Word of Recall is a cleric spell that allows the party to travel back to a designated place of worship. Technically, Shadowheart needs to be there, to cast it, but I'm playing a little fast and loose with the rules!
- Poor Rosalie! Wish is a bitch in this universe :(((((( or is it?
Chapter 16: Chapter Sixteen
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“You really shouldn’t,” Shadowheart said.
“I mean, it’ll get me to the throne very, very quickly, and we only have an hour.”
“I still think you should go as Lyssa,” Shadowheart insisted. “Or… Or just, you know, anyone else.”
“Lyssa doesn’t have an invite,” Rose replied. “I do. And that shit actually matters, in this case.”
“...What about Hemlock?”
“She’s spawn, so it either wouldn’t work, or it would work in a really fucking drastic way.”
“...These are all just excuses. You want to see the look on his face,” Shadowheart observed, angrily.
And yes, if Rosalie was honest. She did.
Rolan had relented, and given her the Potion of Angelic Slumber - all of them agreeing she needed to be as sharp as possible for this wild plan to work. For the first time in days, Rosalie wasn’t a frayed edge, and as a result, she was calmer than she’d ever been. Everything about this plan was reckless to the extreme, so she felt like there was no point trying to dress it up as anything but what it was.
Her hair was pinned up in braided buns, and she was dressed in an outfit that was painfully reminiscent of the old days: a suit, purchased off the rack from the Facemaker’s Boutique, in deep teal velvet, with elaborate embroidery across the panels of the jacket in all the colours of a peacock feather. It was finished with a dark, opalescent dress shirt tucked into high-waisted trousers. The suit had been a birthday gift from Wyll three years back - “it’s exactly in your style, from how I remember it!” - and Rosalie had felt such a wave of horrible, bone-crushing nostalgia over seeing the clothes laid out in front of her, that it had taken her another two months just to put the suit on, and realise it was enchanted to the teeth. The Blade of Avernus really didn’t do things by half.
If this outfit had caused her pain, sending her straight back to the afternoon in Figaro’s where she and Astarion had tried on clothes until barely any of the merchandise remained on the hanger - the day after fighting Sarevok, the day before fighting Cazador, in a poor but ultimately very successful attempt at distraction - she hoped it would do the same to the Ascendent.
“This is dangerous,” Shadowheart, the cleric of trickery, said, “the thing about outsmarting someone, is that it works best if they never realise what has happened. You know what doesn’t work? When you walk up to said person, and laugh directly in their face.”
“I understand you completely,” Rosalie said calmly. “But I need to get to the throne, and knowing him, he’ll probably be sat on it. If you’re having any second thoughts, I’m more than happy to start the blood ritual right away, and sneak through to Cania without the Ascendent ever knowing.”
Shadowheart seethed, but ultimately remained silent. It seemed that the ritual was what she really wasn’t going to budge on.
And so, Rosalie smiled, as she placed the small half mask on her face, tying and knotting the ribbons at the back of her head. It didn’t match the suit particularly well, but at least it had some of the same turquoise as the accents on her lapels, which with the short notice and the fact that it didn’t really matter, was frankly enough. It did literally nothing to hide her identity: she imagined that there weren’t likely to be many purple tieflings in the room, unless the Ascendent had decided to openly declare his fetish.
“I said it was a very stupid plan,” Rose offered, when Shadowheart’s face didn’t resolve itself to anything but more clear worry.
“...You’re certain Cania holds the answer?”
Rosalie wasn’t, in the slightest. And yet… there was something about the visions, that still niggled. Why did she feel like there was something she was missing…?
“I hope it does,” she said, as honestly as she could manage.
Shadowheart looked unconvinced.
“I know that, if I don’t find anything to help with the Wish spell, this basically becomes a kill mission,” Rosalie told her quietly, instead. “I won’t fight anyone on that, if that's the decision we come to as a group. If I truly find nothing of use, I’ll stop trying to work towards an impossible goal.”
Although the dead goblins had stopped, the moment she had RSVP’ed (and she would’ve paid to see the look on the Ascendent’s face, then, as well) that was still four bodies. Four humanoids, that he had slaughtered, all to throw a tantrum over an argument he’d wilfully lost. The Ascendent had threatened Ramazith, and soon he would know that they knew about his Infernal heritage. Something was about to change, and likely none of it for the better.
“...Ok,” Shadowheart said. “I believe you. I’m sorry the spell still evades understanding.”
Rosalie was glad the mask hid her frown. The moment she’d taken Angelic Slumber, passed out, and then woken up happier than she’d been in nearly a week, she’d tried to read the manuscript one final time. She’d read it so many times in the past few days that she now knew some of the Espruar off by heart… and still, it wasn’t enough.
“It’s ok,” she lied through her teeth, “either it will happen, or it won’t. Hopefully I’ll find the answers we need, soon enough.”
“Your teleportation circle is ready... oh,” said Rolan. He was stood near the mansion’s entrance, as Rosalie picked up her staff from the doorway to her room, and both her and Shadowheart descended from the upper floor and down into the foyer, with its black and white chequered floor like a chessboard.
“Oh." he said, again. "You look nice. Like- like before, almost.”
“Thank you, Rolan,” Rosalie said with a sad smile. As they made it to the door, she leaned in on impulse, and gave him a grateful kiss on the cheek. She immediately regretted it, for his sake. It was already an inadequate gesture, in return for all he had done for them.
He cleared his throat, rubbing bashfully at his jaw as they stepped out onto Ramazith's ground floor, to see the sight of a very familiar circle in front of them. “It’ll fire off in the moment you step in, as you require. Are you casting here, or…?”
Rosalie looked at her party, all watching her with worried eyes. Casting the spell here would prove to them that it worked, so they wouldn’t be scared on her behalf… but she also didn’t want them to see her like that. She didn't want them to know what she would become.
Plus they only had an hour, and no more. Every second of the spell would count.
“I’m going to cast it, the moment I’m on the other side,” she promised.
Rolan nodded. He was certainly blushing, but he also queasy with worry, so he mostly just stayed the same colour, except around the ears. “Good luck,” he told her.
Rosalie nodded, and then she stepped through. Between one moment and the next, she was at the front gate of the Ascendent’s mansion, just outside his grounds.
Without time for a breath - for even that, she worried, would be enough for her to register once again on Astarion's awareness, or give him some type of influence over her - she cast True Polymorph.
What happened next, was strange.
Rosalie wondered if anyone had ever tried to Polymorph into a vampire before. They must have, somewhere in world, at some point in history. It wasn’t as if True Polymorph wasn’t a spell reserved for exotic transformations. Most people did the standard, once they got ahold of it, and went with a dragon of some sort. Rosalie had been no different. It had certainly felt bizarre, to be on the beach by her tower, and then suddenly above the beach, the size of a small house.
But she thought that her body had felt less alien to her, then, than it did now.
As the casting took, the world went muted, silent, and then came to her in a flood of cacophonous noise. Rose had never experienced the world truly, it felt, until that moment. She could hear the activity in the portion of Gate below Cazador’s raised holdings, echoing up the white stone walls. Her darkvision sharpened, until everything was razor-edged with light.
Her heart stopped.
Her heart stopped.
And then, came the hunger.
Saliva flooded Rosalie’s mouth, unbidden. She had to dab at her lips with the back of her hand, mortified, lest she begin to drool. Luckily, she already had fangs, otherwise she might have split her lip, the way her mouth suddenly ached. Heartbeats thrummed, seemingly, on the very edge of her awareness, and suddenly she realised why Astarion must have been able to smell her, even from that very first day, because she imagined she could smell everyone. Threads of warm, beating blood drifted on the wind, rising and falling with the pulses that made them. Each one delicious.
She took in a deep breath, and it was like having a stranger’s tongue in her mouth - the scent was so intimate, so immediately theirs. It was like she knew what each nameless person tasted like already. Not just in whatever way they would want her, but she felt as if she had already bitten down and through, piercing skin. She didn’t know that person’s name, but she knew their soul: their heartbeat, their organs…
The feeling in her belly, in her throat, that had begun to blossom, suddenly became all spiked: a rose that grew thorns. And thenn the briars were all that remained, barbed and cruel inside of her. Rose had eaten, she knew she had eaten, but her stomach clenched like a ferocious, gaping maw, and she felt like she had never eaten anything in her life.
She was starving.
“Oh, my,” she said. Her voice was a different timbre inside of her, thrumming like the long draw of strings across and regurgitated from the belly of a violin. She wondered if it echoed, because her ribcage was now hollow. Even the breaths she took felt strange. More torment, than anything, singing as they were with the smells of others. Everything about her body felt wrong, even if that wrongness was in many ways an improvement. When she raised her fingers to the light of the moon, they moved with unnatural, articulated grace. Her skin had dulled in corpselike fashion, from lilac to grey.
“But it’s only an hour,” she murmured to herself. The hunger could not be placated with this, but her rational mind could be. It was painful, but any discomfort could be borne... if only for an hour. She needed to drop the spell before it became permanent, after all, and she wouldn’t waste precious minutes ripping out someone’s throat.
“I am no beast,” Rose said, in her new, monstrous voice. Then, she pushed open the gate, and began to stalk her way through the gardens to the Ascendent's front door.
She had learned this spell, for Astarion - she had learned all her spells, for Astarion. But this one wouldn’t have worked on him, because True Polymorph could only change the exterior, not what lay beneath. Rosalie, like Lyssa von Zarovich, still had her soul - the same way that turning the Ascendent mortal would not bring his back.
Rosalie did not make a single sound, as she walked up to the façade of the Ascendent’s home. She covered the distance in half the time. The house pulsed with the sound of many mortal heartbeats, all elevated: with fear, with excitement, with ecstasy, with alcohol. As she had suspected, it seemed to come from deeper within the house than the time before. Of course Astarion would invite her to the revels that took place in his creepy little dungeon via the medium of a series of slaughtered bodies.
She placed her staff in her Wristpocket, where Woe was also stashed, to be drawn upon at any time. Then, she silently glided up the steps.
The servant at the door was different this time: a tall, slender, dark-skinned elf, with long dark hair in locks, down to the middle of his back. He had a half-mask of pure white, placed over his handsome, broad-lined face.
“Excuse me,” Rosalie said, and was surprised to witness the full-body reaction the man had to her words. He turned immediately, and his whole body swayed towards her as if he was drawn to her, like a moth to a flame.
She cleared her throat. “Your master is expecting me,” she said, as politely as she could manage. She handed over her invitation. “I imagine it might be best, to take me to him.”
The servant looked at the name on the card, and Rosalie heard the moment his heart started racing faster. Then he looked up into her face, into her eyes, and he started to pale, visibly. Rosalie realised they must now be red.
“Or…” she murmured, trying to placate him. It worked: from here, even behind the mask, she saw his pupils dilating, as pleasure flooded his system. It was horrifying that she could see that, from this distance. “I could find my own way. It won’t be difficult, I’m sure.”
“Yes… my lady,” he said, slowly, handing the invitation back as he tested the honorific. “The staircase in the lower ballroom will take you to where you are expected.”
Then, he stepped aside. For a second, Rosalie panicked she had charmed him, but it didn’t feel like she had - and surely, that sort of thing required intention. It seemed that vampires just had... an aura about them.
Or maybe they were just obeyed automatically, in the Vampire Mansion.
The hunger got worse, once she was inside. The air was a soup of smells, and a choir of pulses. Suddenly, all that obnoxious lack of clothing and the acres of bare flesh belonging to Astarion's guests began to make sense. With new eyes, she saw the filigree of veins under the paper-thin barriers of people’s skin. She heard breaths stutter. She noted the way that pulses jumped in throats, trembled in the crooks of jaws like plucked lute strings.
How had Astarion been able to bear it? Not the Ascendent, but the man he had been before. How had not jumped them all in - well - a heartbeat? But Rosalie supposed he’d already had three hundred years of practice at demonstrating restraint, by the time they had all met.
Restraint - not something she would’ve placed in a sentence with any version of Astarion, normally, but she had a new appreciation of what it must have been like. Not yet ten minutes a vampire, all she could think of was warmth, and food.
The crowd parted, to make way for her. Some because they saw what she was, and others - the ones who were frowning - because they knew who she must be. Moving as quickly as possible, Rose crossed the foyer she had broken her wrist in, went down the stairs. The ballroom was open, and in the far corner, where Astarion’s previous dais had been, the curtains were pulled aside to show another staircase, leading down.
She took them, two and then three at a time. Her usually-fucked knee was fine. Her body moved with barely a whisper, like the velvet she wore.
Rosalie realised then, with muscles and sinew and flesh moving like water, that she could just… sneak by. She was no Astarion, and never would be, but if she cast Invisibility now and held her breath… her body was something other than what it had been. She might just make it to the throne without him knowing.
Would he be able to tell, once she’d gone through? Would he even have the means to follow? Did she need to incapacitate him at this end, or would he simply wait for her here all night, on the promise of her RSVP?
All of this would’ve been a very salient plan.
But then Rosalie stepped down into the basement. At the foot of the stairs, stood in the pristine white corridor of Cazador’s former dungeons, was a beautiful woman, in a shimmering slip of a dress that clung to her body like gossamer and left her shoulders bare. She was a guest, not a servant - sipping from a glass of sparkling wine and talking to a friend who themselves wore layers of diaphanous, translucent lace. She would’ve been pretty, even masked, but otherwise inconsequential... had she not chosen to flip her hair from her shoulders, the exact moment Rose began to pass.
Her scent filled Rosalie’s mouth and nose, like water rushing over a drowning man. It suddenly became hard to think.
Between that breath, and the next, before Rose realised what had happened, she was standing dangerously close to that beautiful stranger. Far too close, in fact. Her hand rested on the slender dip of the woman's back, her face tilted as she inhaled the curve of her neck, the tip of her nose brushing along the column of her throat. The stranger's body was so warm, compared to hers. It was like clinging to a burning coal.
And then Rosalie's rational mind kicked in, and she realised what she was doing:
Being a fucking weirdo.
“Oh, gods,” she said, horrified. Immediately recollecting herself, she took a comically large step back.
The woman turned to face her. She was looking flustered, but not in the way one might expect from the quandary - ‘an exceedingly strange woman just sniffed me’.
“Do you… do you want…” the woman licked her tongue across dry lips. She looked dazed and yearning, as her pulse pounded in her throat, and more and more blood rose into her pale, heart-shaped face. There were crescent shaped scars, Rose saw, fading, on the insides of her wrists. “Lady, would you maybe want to-”
“Nope! Sorry, no! No, thank you!” Rosalie blurted, “I’m so sorry, that was - oh, my gods. Mortifying. I really cannot apologise enough.”
And when she turned away from the woman… there Astarion was.
Stood in the archway that led out into the main chamber, dressed in a resplendent outfit of red, black, and gold. Either her voice had announced her presence, or the servant standing sheepishly at his side in another white mask was responsible for how quickly he had found her.
In her vampire form, there was something about the Ascendent that set Rose’s hackles up. They were two predators, entering the same stretch of territory. But while she felt on edge, the truth was that Astarion seemed almost more magnetic than before. Maybe it was just the improvements to her vision rendering every single line of him into high definition, or that lack of a heartbeat to signal her own fear. But Rosalie found herself drawn to him, in a way the new monster she’d made of herself knew put her at risk.
Rosalie turned away from the woman she had accosted, and walked towards him. From inside the chamber, the music of a string quarter began to swell. Unlike her, Astarion was unmasked, and that meant she saw the moment when he realised what had happened. He clocked the newfound grace with which she moved.
For a moment, he looked genuinely awestruck, and then his expression soured into sudden fury.
“Hello,” Rose said, in a voice that didn't need breath. “I didn't realise we could ignore the dress code - but I suppose the face you wear is mask enough.”
His eyes roved over her, taking in the changes: the new pallor of her skin, the new red of her eyes. If she’d been spawn, her hair would’ve turned grey as well, so the things that stayed the same heralded just as much as those that had altered.
“Rosalie…” he said, “what have you done?”
“Oh, this?” she raised her hands elegantly, and then turned herself in a slow circle, “I believe they call it ‘cutting out the middle man’.” She gestured behind her, “that charming guest of yours called me ‘Lady’ - is that the correct terminology, if I’m a woman? Or do I get the appellation of Lord, as well? Lyssa called herself 'Queen', but I suppose-”
“-Is that who did this to you?” he demanded. “You went somewhere else.”
“A woman never kisses and tells,” Rosalie said. “But you can’t think I would step into the lion’s den a second time, without taking the steps towards adequate protection.”
“It’s not possible. There’s no way-”
“Tell me... was your lie detection reliant on a heartbeat?” Rosalie asked, genuinely curious. “Could I tell you anything now, and you’d have no way of knowing if it was true or not?”
“You said… you said you would never turn,” Astarion said with a frown, ignoring the question.
“I said I'd never turn, for you,” Rose extemporised, deciding to check if she was on the money with this lie thing. “But then you threatened the lives and wellbeing of my friends. I'd turn... for them.”
The wounded look on the Ascendent’s face told her that there was a strong chance that he believed her. It did not quite erase his obvious confusion, but at least Rosalie knew that outright falsehood could now fly under the radar.
“Besides, you think I didn't know why you bought me here?” she continued. “I'd much rather make the choice myself, on my terms, than watch you take it away from me.”
Astarion glared at her, still clearly mutinous. But in this form, Rosalie could also hear the way his heart pounded. She saw him looking at her, taking in her face, her form, and her new clothes. He saw everything he'd ever wanted, and in order to have it, he simply had to swallow the insult of it not being served to him on a platter, in the way he had planned.
“Well!" she clapped her hands together, "time to enjoy this party you blackmailed me into attending. I do so hope the bride ritual wasn’t your grand finale." She sighed performatively, taking a glance across the crowd. Her eyes alighted on the nearest handsome man: a tall human with auburn hair, and a mask of red and gold. “Oh, now, you’ll do-”
Rosalie raised her hand in a beckoning motion, and by some grace of her new ability, the man immediately looked her way. She heard his breath catch from here - it was fascinating, the power she suddenly held. She swallowed against the moisture gathering in her mouth, as she took a step in his direction-
Only to feel Astarion’s hand clamp round her wrist, trying to hold her motionless by his side.
Before, that grip would’ve been impossible to break free of. But something about it felt different now-
Rosalie tested it. She wrenched back her arm, in an attempt to shake him off. Astarion tumbled forward, as her newfound strength surprised them both.
Rosalie couldn’t help it. She laughed, delighted by the look on his face.
“Is this really not what you wanted, my darling?” she asked him. “Us, equals, for eternity, ravishing pretty little things, in a display of debauchery that I assume proves something, to someone, somewhere? I hope so, otherwise the sex dungeon truly is a cry for help.”
“You weren’t supposed to-”
“-Break your rules? Surprise you? Come into this, with my free will intact?” Rosalie smirked, leaned in, and pressed a gloating kiss to his cheek. “Yes, that much is obvious.”
She pulled her hand free, and walked directly over to the man she’d selected, descending the steps into the hall. She could feel the Ascendent’s eyes on her the whole time. If she’d lost her chance to sneak to the throne, she'd have to either head in that direction by covert means, or provoke her way there, without making it clear that was her destination.
“Hello,” she said to the man, hearing the rabbit-frantic pace of his heartbeat. “You’re very pretty. Would you care to show me how this dance works?”
Her partner swallowed, and then rallied, placing a rakish grin on his face beneath the mask. He didn’t spare the Ascendent behind them a single glance, which meant he was either confident, or foolish. “If that pleases you, my lady?”
“Oh, it pleases me very much.” Rose extended her hand, as she smiled with teeth.
She was impressed by how the man kept his demeanour calm and affable, as she placed her hand in his and felt his pulse going at a hundred miles per hour. It only ratcheted upwards, when he felt how cold her skin was against his.
She didn’t understand the dance, but this man - clearly some kind of low-ranking noble, the kind that learned these things from birth - led her newly graceful body with enough skill. It wasn’t like it mattered anyway, the steps or the company - Rosalie’s awareness was on the Ascendent’s position in the room, and the audience he gave her, the whole time. She’d thought he’d go down the petty route, and find his own partner to dance with. But no - he just stalked down the outer edge of the ballroom, in tandem with their own travel across the marble floor.
“I haven’t seen you before,” red-and-gold said. “I think I would remember.”
“Hmmm.”
“...Are you new to the Gate?”
“Returning,” Rose said, raising her head and trying to triangulate their position with the throne. “I came here, ten years ago.”
The room was warmly lit and resplendent, but to her it was simply a riot of pulses. The curtains of a few alcoves she and Shadowheart had peered into, lonely and pathetically sordid when empty, were now already closed. Rosalie knew, if she were to try, she’d be able to count the number of participants in each room in turn.
Her partner span her in place, then pulled her back into a close hold. It was like embracing an open flame. Her head was in a line with the man's shoulder, and underneath his cologne was the animal scent of his sweat. He pulled her closer still, until that pulse was not just in his hands but across his whole body, in every place it touched her.
By this point, Rosalie knew she had a plan, but it was getting harder and harder to think. Another mortal body brushed against them, burning. When her partner asked another question, she tilted her head towards him, in order to answer. Her nose and mouth came closer to his neck. A wave of mouth-watering scent rushed over her, erasing every rational thought from her mind.
The man was fully dressed. It was one of the reasons she must’ve subconsciously chosen him, in hindsight, and Rose was certain, later, that it was the only thing that saved his life. He wore a high-collared shirt and cravat, that knotted above his Adam’s apple, keeping most of his throat covered.
But still, the sensation that hit her was irresistible. Had it been pain, she would've doubled over.
Instead, it was hunger.
The pang in her stomach and jaw sent her reeling. The monster inside her wrestled the poor man forward by that frustrating collar, already starting to rend the material to get him unclothed, as her jaw began to unhinge. The man made a small, startled noise - at her suddenly becoming stock still in their dance, at being manhandled, who could say - and then he realised what was happening, and his pulse went quicker with either desire or fear-
“Oh! You poor, sweet thing, where are your manners?” came Astarion’s calm, conciliatory voice, as he was suddenly also there. He placed three fingers in the space between the back of Rosalie's neck and the collar of her suit jacket, and then tugged her backwards by the scruff, with force. She did not relinquish her hold on the red-headed man, who stumbled forward with her. But then the Ascendent held her in place, like he was muzzling a dog. With his other hand, he started peeling her suddenly clawed fingers from the other man’s jacket, one by one.
“I do apologise for her,” he said, and Rose watched as the wave of charm came out of him. There was a ripple of it on the air, that she could make out with her new vision. She wasn’t immune to it either, so hypnotised that her own hunger briefly became indistinguishable from other feelings. Her soon-to-be victim’s pulse slowed to an immediate lull, as the Ascendent gave him a brilliant smile.
"She’s so enthusiastic, and I’ll always love her for it, but she doesn’t know quite how this works. Shall we adjourn?”
The man blinked at them both silently, dazed, his collar askew and several buttons of his shirt now lost to the floor. The material at his shoulder was in ribbons, the skin freckled underneath, and Rose didn't remember how it had happened. Any emotion he had - either fear or excitement - was entirely gone, wiped clean to a blank slate. Rosalie felt herself get violently dragged from the dancefloor by her suit collar, legs flailing with indignation. The man followed the two of them listlessly.
“How fresh are you?” Astarion demanded in her ear, while Rose looked at him dully. “Have you even eaten yet?”
And she couldn't exactly say, ‘by my count, I'm seventeen minutes in, because this is a temporary spell effect.”
Which was good, because as it transpired, she could not speak at all. She let out an incoherent, wordless sound, half-snarl and half-moan, finding the hunger entirely beyond articulation.
“Oh, my poor darling,” Astarion crooned. She knew it was condescension, but in his mouth, it felt like care. She thrashed once in his grip, which merely tightened. “I know pet, we’ll get you sorted. Just you wait and see.”
They were at the edge of the floor now. Had Rose been in her right mind, she would’ve guessed that people were watching them, but right now all she was trying to do was reclaim her faculties from the bloodlust.
“Is he who you actually want, my darling?” the Ascendent’s voice in her ear again, making her shiver, as they both beheld the man she had mauled. “I won’t begrudge you the choice of your first meal, now that it’ll submit itself to tasting. I’m not cruel. But… there are other solutions… did you choose not to feed yourself? Whoever sent you here clearly left you out of your depth.”
The hunger was abating, now that the man wasn’t so close to her, and self-preservation was kicking in, as she found herself pinned in place. Rosalie did not want to eat this man. Even if her mouth ached, like she was a teething toddler. She paused, then wordlessly shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. In answer, she felt the way the Ascendent smiled against her cheek.
“You... can... leave,” he said to the man, who turned and immediately began walking out of the room, taking the charmed command literally.
“Let go,” Rose tried-
“Oh, darling,” Astarion tutted, as he used his strength to continue to manoeuvre her away. His arm came around her waist, as he let go of her collar to take hold of her arm. “This is why you should never have gone through this without me. You need a guiding hand, someone taking care of you. I would never have left you wanting - I know you may have your moral objections, but to starve a newborn is just barbaric.”
“Let go.”
“But you’re starving, pet,” he murmured. “I mean, I’m happy to set you loose. There is nothing I would deny you, and nothing I would love more, than to watch my beautiful girl tear through this entire room and glut herself. I'd let you have everything and everyone, every life you desire. But I think this would upset you, little love, so let’s take the more peaceable route. Let me take care of you…”
Rosalie realised he was guiding her in the direction of an empty alcove. There was nothing, she thought, nothing she wanted in the world less, than to be alone with the Ascendent in one of his weird little rooms, submitting to whatever he had planned for her.
But maybe there was a way she could salvage this.
“No,” she said, forcefully. She pushed heels into the ground and pushed herself back against him, bringing them both to a standstill.
“We need to get you away, pet.”
“...Not there,” she said, as if they were in a negotiation.
“Well, I’d find us a room, but-”
“How about the one with all the locks on?” she bit out. “Bastard.”
“Yes, it seems like that doesn’t quite appeal, either,” the Ascendent hummed. He tried to manoeuvre her to the alcove again, and Rosalie kept her feet firmly planted, leaving them in a deadlock. “But we need to get you seen to, little love.”
“I am not going anywhere, alone with you,” she said, glad she didn’t have a heartbeat to give herself away.
Astarion sighed with put-upon theatricality. Defeated, he moved them both in the direction of the only other modicum of privacy he could offer: the throne, on its elevated dais, high above the crowd.
Rosalie made a show of resisting and then giving up, going slack in his hold and then finally cooperating, as he led her in the exact direction she wanted to go. The two of them climbed the stairs together, her tripping over her own feet. She heard the murmur of the crowd behind them, but disregarded it, as the chair came into view.
It was a filigree of white and gold, as if someone had carved it out of bone, then painted it. The lattice work was intricate, and the size of it was for a man twice Astarion’s size. In the pinnacle of the headrest, the gem glinted and shimmered. It was the same red hue as Woe itself, signalling the connection between lock and key.
The Ascendent relinquished his hold on her, once they reached the platformed dais. There were a few people milling around, awaiting an audience: Astarion dismissed them all immediately, with a murmured word and a wave of his hand.
Rosalie walked to the edge of the balcony as the space emptied, to look out onto the floor of people that made up Astarion’s small kingdom. Removed from the crowd, it was easier to think, even if each breath still burned her throat with thirst.
Twenty minutes, she thought. And she’d made it to the throne.
The Ascendent moved to stand next to her. His footsteps were no longer as silent as they had been when Rosalie was mortal. She heard it, when he took his space beside her, his own heart thumping a steady, constant beat.
She turned to him, and tensed, as he reached out with gentle but practised hands, and plucked the mask from off her face, raising it away from her eyes and lifting it off her head.
“Oh, precious thing, but you are in a state,” he tsked, discarding the mask on the balcony railing. He ran a slender finger along Rose's forehead, to pluck a fever-damp lock of hair from where it had become plastered to her skin. “The hunger… does it hurt, my darling?”
It didn’t, really, but only in the sense that Rose could take solace in it being temporary. If this had been her future, just an eternal stretch of life spent unsated, she supposed she’d break down in tears, then and there. But she stayed silent, and Astarion made a pitying noise, as if that was answer enough.
“But so beautiful,” he murmured, examining her new eyes, the pinpricks of ruby against the black of her sclera. “What a perfect treasure you are.”
Rosalie was trying to do her calculations. She had to get to the throne, pluck Woe from the ether, and activate the plane shift, all before the Ascendent could intervene, or even worse, grab hold of her and follow her through. Incapacitating him might be her best option, and she had all of her magic, even in this form. But there was a chance he might resist, or people might notice.
“Let’s get you fed, precious,” Astarion said to her. "You did this recklessly, perhaps, but you did this for me. Let me show you what I had planned for you, had we conducted ourselves properly. I’m sure you’ll feel better, once I give you what you need.”
Rose had to confess, she was only half-listening. Was this not the same script it always was? She only came back to herself, when the Ascendent took her hand and pulled her away from the balcony's edge. His eyes were intent on her face. She followed silently, watching and continually adjusting her plans as Astarion moved them closer to the throne. He relinquished her hand and took his seat in it, languishing with an arrogant air she knew must be practised.
“Are you certain you don’t want to partake in mortal blood?” the Ascendent asked her, tilting his head to the side as he looked up at her. “You could have anyone at this party, if you so wish. I will allow it.”
Rosalie fought the urge to roll her eyes, even as the mention of blood made her mouth ache. “I’m good, thanks.”
“You don’t want to kill anyone, darling. I completely understand,” he replied with a smile. “Nothing about you has changed - it is all merely preserved. I knew you would be like this, so I planned what life would be for you. I wanted you happy and content, not a single stain on that conscience, you know.”
Rosalie struggled to pay attention to him. Her mind ran through her spells. Mental Prison? Nah, that would kill him in minutes, sending him through to the other side with her. Power Word Stun? …She’d have to hurt him first, to ensure it would take. Maze? The Ascendent would disappear along with her, people might think they’d left together… but no, that only lasted ten minutes, it wasn’t enough of a head start-
The Ascendent pulled a long dagger from a sheathe in the inner lining of his suit jacket. It was silver, tapering to a needle-thin point.
“I know it hurts now, precious,” he was saying, “but it can all go away in an instant. All it takes, is one drop… of my blood.”
And then, he took the point of the dagger, and idly pricked the pad of his thumb with it. A single bead of red appeared, on the stark ivory white of his skin.
Rosalie had been miles away, but the moment the scent of that blood hit the air? The hunger in her gut was a fishhook on her insides, ten times stronger than before. It turned her nearly inside out. It took all her willpower not to fall upon the wound. She fought, just to stay standing. She practically heard the heads of every other vampire in the room turn, as the scent drifted out onto the air.
The Ascendent seemed to have the same thought, as he said aloud, “Do you know what the others here would give, for just this one taste, my darling? They’d cut down every other person in this room, be they enemy, friend, lover. And still, I wouldn’t give it to them. This is only for you.”
Rosalie’s gaze was riveted on his hand, as it glided through the air in a gesture. She couldn’t help it.
But… she couldn’t take the blood, could she? If she did, would the change become permanent? She had no idea how something so powerful interfaced with the True Polymorph spell. Not to mention, there had to be a reason why this was the Ascendent’s countermove.
But right now, it felt heinous to refuse it, and far too easy to give in.
“All hunger, gone,” Astarion said, “all pain, vanished.” Then he smirked, “what can I say? I’m a romantic. I won’t even make you get on your knees for it… though you can, if you’d like.”
Rosalie stood there. The fact that she stayed stood there, rather than pouncing, was an unprecedented moment of victory.
“Come now, love, don’t be shy.”
The Ascendent returned the dagger to its sheathe, and then looped his now free hand around her waist, to rest it on the small of her back and reel her in closer, so she rested between his legs.
Rosalie let it happen, looking at the blood, holding her breath and still somehow tasting it in her mouth. It was driving her mad.
She couldn’t drink it.
I have to buy time. I have to distract him.
And so, she did the only thing she could think of.
Astarion grinned knowingly, as both Rose’s hands shot out towards him. It then gave way to a look of pure surprise as, instead of reaching for his hand, she instead caged both sides of his face, and kissed him full on the mouth instead.
Hemlock was right: this man was easy to control. And he really wasn’t very bright.
The startled noise she swallowed out of the Ascendent’s mouth turned into a delighted laugh, as Rose used all that novel strength to shove him against the seat back, her knee nestled in the vee between his legs. She didn't break the kiss. Astarion's bleeding hand remained elevated, with his elbow on the arm rest, as she then pushed herself forward, clambering right on into his lap. The throne was big enough that she could reposition, and place one leg either side of his hips, straddling his body. She was grateful she’d elected for trousers, this time. There was the security of more complicated layers between them, as her weight settled on top of him and their hips grinded together inelegantly. Her teeth were sharp and extended as her mouth plied his open. She had to be careful not to simply bite down.
What spell? she thought.
But it was not her most… eloquent thought. The fact was, the Ascendent was as warm as all those other mortal bodies had been, and Rose was just so cold. There was something vital about him, that called to every desire her new body could hold. The bloodlust overrode everything, then coloured the press of their bodies together, even if she told herself this was just to buy time.
The fact was, he tasted better now, than he ever had before.
The kiss was ferocious. The hand on her back crept to the base of her tail then up, finding its way underneath her jacket and shirt, onto bare skin and the serrated notches of her spine. Meanwhile, Rose could track the hand that bled without even looking at it. She let out a long, wounded sound as Astarion reached up and placed it to her cheek, smudging that searing blood across her jawline. She all but sobbed, knowing all she needed to do was reach up with her own hand, swipe through it, bring it to her mouth -
Or even just place her tongue against his thumb, where it rested now so close to the corner of her mouth. Astarion was a simple man.
“I wanted us to go somewhere private, love,” he whispered into her skin, “somewhere quiet, where we could be alone. But you refused. Did you want an audience, hmmmm?” He pushed an errant strand of hair behind her ear, as he looked up into her face with a satisfied grin. “Everyone here already knows who I belong to. Show them, if you like.”
Ok, this is fine, this gives me time to plan, Rosalie thought dully, as her hands went underneath his clothes. Just for something to do that wasn’t, you know, drink the blood of the Vampire Ascendent and potentially damn yourself for all eternity.
Rosalie started to pull his jacket off his shoulders. The Ascendent, with another breathless laugh, let her, as he pressed hand to breast through her shirt and murmured low noises of approval. With the hand on her back, he pulled her in and down, directly flush against him. Her weight dragged in such a way that even through two sets of clothing and pant seams, there was a delicious hint of how they might slot together. Rose couldn’t fight the instinct not to follow the movement through to completion, and if Astarion made his own groan at the rotation of her hips, fabulous. It wasn’t like this was even her body anymore, just an obstacle she had to overcome.
She got the jacket off him, leaving it draped only at the side with the bleeding hand. There was a weight in the left pocket - it made a different sound, to her new hearing, upon being half-discarded onto the seat.
She started with the buttons on Astarion's shirt. Rosalie's fingers were still unerringly accurate, despite the way her mind raced: desperately trying to keep the Ascendent distracted, work through her catalogue of spells, and resist the bloodlust. Her brain felt overloaded, and it only got worse when she undid his tie and the buttons at his collar.
The neck of the masked man downstairs had lured her in like a siren’s call, and Astarion had a pulse. It jumped in the column of his pale neck, under the nearly translucent veneer of opalescent skin. Rose ran her thumb over it, and then, with an instinct that was entirely foreign to her racing mind, she dipped her head, and licked a stripe directly over it. The pain in her mouth held an edge of something sweeter. The Ascendent was living, breathing - real in a way that she currently was not, in a way that she craved.
She paused with her breath fanning over the damp skin, until Astarion’s body shuddered, and then she kissed the spot with an open mouth, the way he’d used to with her. Her teeth grazed the soft, exposed skin, the flat of her tongue pressed against the vein. Gods, but all of him was so warm under her, and she could already taste-
A hand suddenly latched itself in her hair, and wrenched her open mouth away from his neck.
“Now now, precious, don’t get greedy,” the Ascendent warned. He was breathing hard. "One drop is all you need.”
Rosalie was breathless too, and utterly incredulous. Surely he should be counting his lucky stars, right now? She was literally in his lap.
“You’re a tool,” she said, “you know that?”
“I’ll let you take whatever you want-”
“-Only that’s not true, is it? It’s only what you’ll deign to give me,” she couldn’t help but argue. “Those are two completely different things, actually, and I’m not stupid, so fuck you!”
She scrubbed her suit cuff across her cheek, to get rid of the blood that would make her his forever.
And then she tugged him forward by his mangled collar and she kissed him again, just to shut him up. For fuck’s sake, she needed this over with.
Feeling that he was hard beneath her, Rose adjusted herself to try and make it less of her problem. She disguised it with a show of squirming, as she moved one of her knees - gods, thank every pantheon under the sun that she was a vampire right now, this would be murder on her joints, otherwise.
Suddenly, something brushed her shin, a slim, sharp line that pressed against the bone through the fabric of Astarion's discarded jacket. Something small, pointed, and-
No.
No way.
The Ascendent seemed to realise that being a little bitch about a neck kiss was severely impacting his chances of getting laid. The arm cradling her back under her clothes pulled her shirt fully from her waistband. He relinquished his hold on her head, to run a thumb along her nape and then tug her forward, leaning himself back so Rosalie fell even more fully on top of him, their bodies melded in a line. They were all but notched together. The pulse of hunger in her gut and desire in her body beat sinuously in time with his heartbeat.
Rosalie let it happen, and made a show of bracing herself one-handedly against the back of the chair with a moan. Meanwhile, her other hand landed on the jacket, and felt the shape of a familiar hairpin in the right pocket.
“Why don’t you start working on my belt, darling?” the Ascendent said between kisses.
“Um, excuse you,” Rose said. Did he really think he was going to fuck her, in plain view, on this fucking throne?
Then again: “...Why don’t you start working on mine?”
And she shifted her hips, ever so slightly, to draw his attention down her body with a single-minded focus. As she did, she silently plucked the honeysuckle pin the Ascendent apparently kept on him, from the suit pocket, and put it behind her back.
“I thought you wouldn’t be able to think of anything but your hunger,” the Ascendent crooned, looking up at her as Rose looked down at him. His hand tucked into the waistband of her trousers. Using it as a lever, he pulled her along his lap, once, as his knuckles brushed the soft curve of her stomach and his fingertips teased on the laced edge of her underwear. “But this is even harder to fight, isn’t it, my darling? Everything about what we feel for each other, is inevitable. Can’t you see how much suffering you’ve been putting me through, all this time? Why did you come here tonight, the way you are now, if not for this?”
Rosalie thought, in this moment, her expression must’ve slipped.
She thought that, maybe… she grimaced.
But even if she successfully kept her thoughts hidden, there must have been something that gave her away. She looked down at the deluded man in front of her, and felt severely unimpressed. Maybe Astarion saw that in her face.
Maybe it was the fact that certain things - like how she’d ignored and refused every single late night seduction for the past fortnight, and was now directly grinding on his erection with an audience of strangers - just didn’t quite add up.
Maybe it was the fact that his hand kept bleeding, and it was pretty easy for her to ignore, actually. Even the sweetest of temptations became possible to refuse, once you realised that the choice was the bitter, painful torment of an excruciating hunger, or a lifetime spent with this.
The Ascendent… paused. He took in the situation of the two of them, and its sheer improbability, given her continued and insistent rejection. He studied Rosalie, as the thought finally seemed to enter his brain, that there was a chance she just might have an ulterior motive.
“Oh, Astarion,” Rose said, “you are a romantic!”
And then her hand shot forward to his throat, lightning fast. She pressed the hairpin against the bare skin of his chest, exposed by the unbuttoned portion of his shirt.
She'd told him it was enchanted. She presumed he’d done something about it. What she didn’t tell him, was it recharged itself every dawn, even when dispelled.
With a sighed breath that caught and stuck in a stutter in his throat, the Ascendent became paralysed underneath her. His muscles locked up, and then they froze in place.
And he’d be that way, for the next eight hours, unless someone cured him.
Rosalie looked down at him, clinically, as his entire body became like a statue beneath her. Now a beautiful, inert object, no longer threatening. She watched him try to fight it, watched him fail. She’d bought these pins in Barovia, after all.
Only his eyes still moved, darting around in his face frantically. The Ascendent watched, helpless, as Rose leveraged herself up and out of his grasp, still on her knees over him to anyone who might look on from a distance. She undid her hair, to provide herself with more cover, and then she leaned over him, ignoring the way that her chest pressed into his face, as she examined the gem that was the gateway to Cania.
“Huh,” she said.
There was a small, Infernal inscription, in infinitesimal writing on the metal that affixed it into the headrest. It was the exact twin of that set into the hilt of Woe, underneath the bat heraldry with its wings extended.
Some things, it seemed, really were that simple.
She leant back, reached out her hand, and summoned the sceptre into the empty space at her side.
She looked down, once more, to see the Ascendent still stuck in place. Preserved, like a fly in amber. Or frozen, each smooth plane of his body unmoving as if chiselled from ice. The moment they made eye contact, the sheer amount of impotent fury in his crimson gaze sizzled across and through her body like lightning. With a triumphant grin, she couldn’t resist grinding on him one last time, just because she was feeling spiteful.
“Let’s hope no one tries to take that blood from you while you’re incapacitated,” Rose noted, off-hand, as she ruffled his hair, then pulled herself off him entirely, so that not one single part of their bodies touched.
Then, she pressed the gem of Woe to the gem in the chair, and silently vanished from the Material Plane.
Notes:
Alas! Alack! A masquerade... but no dance for our happy couple! They are instead, the pair of bitter exes, fighting and causing a scene at a wedding reception. I said they were divorced, and making it everyone's problem. That's everyone, from their besties to poor innocent bystanders, forced to watch them dry hump in public.
To all those who guessed True Polymorph, congratulations ;)
Anyway, my only other update is a small PSA! I don't know when I'll be posting again, as I'm going to be in hospital next week for a minor medical procedure. Depending on drafting and recovery times, I hope it'll be up soon, but I appreciate your patience, in advance!
Chapter Notes
- I have spent the last two weeks losing my mind over the fact that True Polymorph works. Vampires are creatures, vampire lords are CR15 and Rosalie is Level 18, and she took True Polymorph *at* Level 18. Anyway. Those affected by True Polymorph 'retain their alignment and personality'. Losing my mind. Don't do this in your actual D&D games bc your DMs will give you consequences, or just straight up kill you at the table. This shouldn't be allowed to happen. For the longest time, I thought I was cheating. In my own fic. For anyone who is interested, the spell text can be found here!
- ...Poor Hemlock. Guess her DM is a rules lawyer.
- I wanted to capture a little bit of that Epilogue magic with Rosalie's outfit, which is what she wore to Withers reunion in my playthrough. She and Astarion can really rock a suit together :)
- I had to live up to the infamous Ascendent "throne" dialogue, guys! She had to get in his lap there at some point!
- The Ascendent is such a fucking idiot. If he had let Rose bite him during their make out, he literally would have won. She'd be permanently a vampire, and she'd have Ascendent blood in her system. But no. He had to be a little bitch about it. Die mad, loser. It's called a fatal flaw.
- The hairpin is a bit of an OP item if it was to ever exist in a D&D game, but oh well. Rose is a Level 18 archmage. She can have some OP shit.
- Have people here read The Cruel Prince? Because I drafted this in a hyperfixation haze and then read it back, and I think the ending is accidentally serving Cruel Prince
- The next chapter is the final chapter in what I am calling 'Act 2'! Hold onto your hats! :D
Chapter 17: Chapter Seventeen
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The white of the palace in Cania was blinding as sunlight on snow.
It was also silent, as the grave.
Rosalie’s feet landed on the tiles with a whisper, as the rush in her ears from the teleportation began to fade. Even that sound felt like a violation, as did her first intake of breath - the room she found herself in was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop.
The first thing she did, was drop concentration on True Polymorph. It wasa risk, but one that was safer to weather than staying in this form that seemed so enslaved to its own needs. One irrational image flashed through her brain, of dropping dead right on the spot, at the threshold to the Ascendent’s home. But Shadowheart had placed a Deathward on her mortal form, just in case that was the way this entire farcical casting backfired.
Instead, all that happened was Rose choked in pain, as her heart spasmed in her chest, then started thundering again. It was a little, Rose thought, like the sensation of her old panic attacks - feeling her chest tighten and press in on itself with a resounding ache, noting the change as breath suddenly felt essential once more, and she gulped desperately, to fill her lungs with air. All she could hear in her ears was her pulse, after this brief interlude without it. But then heat began to reach the tips of her fingers, and her heart rate levelled when it became clear death was no longer imminent.
At a loss for what else to as equilibrium was restored, she banished Woe back to its pocket dimension, then began half-heartedly tucking her shirt back into her trousers.
Then, she remembered why she needed to retuck her shirt. Rosalie squatted down, knees bent with her forehead pressed to them, face in her hands as she began processing all the acute embarrassment.
After an indeterminate amount of time, in which she reminded herself she was an adult woman who had known about sex for several decades, she stood, and took in her surroundings.
In front of her, was the grand foyer of a palace carved entirely from marble. The building was as grand as it was empty, feeling like the cathedral to a very sterile god, with proportions that left those who beheld it feeling small.
And in front of her, three statues.
Rosalie gasped, the sound strangely loud in the space. She’d thought, perhaps, the dream had been symbolic. While she was the kind of divination wizard who found her craft in the small space between numbers, in calculations that were based in the physical world and rotations in the many night skies a wizard could access, she could still have a prophetic dream or two, from time to time, though they were often too abstract for her to interpret or take much stock in.
The feeling the dream had left her with was a yearning that dragged her in its direction. That, to her, had felt like prophecy.
And so, it was with a strange sense of dreamlike repetition and inevitability, that Rose began to approach the first statue, exactly as she had in her sleep. Each step rasped across the ground. She was struck once more by how still this room was, as if her very presence displaced air that would otherwise have remained stagnant.
The dream hadn’t given her any sense of scale. Classical statues usually dwarfed those who looked upon them, particularly when commissioned by people with more money than sense. But the first image of Astarion, on his knees and shirtless, only had height on her because of the squat, rectangular plinth it sat on. Otherwise, it was almost entirely to scale.
Looking at the anguish carved into its face, Rose couldn’t help but frown. The Ascendent did not strike her as someone who would exactly relish seeing himself in torment, every time he entered his own domain.
But then again… the Ascendent wasn’t him. Certainly not this version - injured, and subjugated.
On the statue’s base, was a single gleaming, golden plaque, without a speck of dust or a smudge mark to mar the metal. In elegant script, it read: Penitent.
Rosalie stepped around the first sculpture, and continued on through the room. A flicker of movement in her periphery startled her. But it was just a flash of deep, magenta coloured light, briefly interrupting the black night sky in the nearest window. The window was on the mezzanine, but large enough that even from here, she could see the dark skies of Cania beyond, shot through with streaks of different, violently fluctuating magical auras.
It looked like some sort of terrible storm was happening outside. The image shivered with snowfall, and an eruption of purple, bruise-coloured lightning flashed across the glass - but Rose couldn't hear anything. None of it disturbed the quiet, motionless hush of the palace, lit as it was by bright, golden, seemingly sourceless light.
The second statue was the same as before. Rose recognised the expression it wore on its face - it was the same way Astarion had tried to look at her, that first night of that first kiss in the Grove, before she had accidentally dislodged his mask. Even the Ascendent hadn’t quite managed to capture that countenance, because in those past moments together, there had been something a little more sincere, and at points viciously calculating, behind the eyes. The hand that was extended in a beckoning motion, was dipped slightly downwards. If you stood directly in front of it, it was like this handsome, well-dressed version of Astarion was inviting you to step up onto the platform with him.
Unable to fight the urge, Rose reached up on tiptoe to brush the hand. She imagined a world where, as in myth, a person's love - or their obsession - was enough to bring an object to full life.
But there was nothing about the sculpture, magical or otherwise, that responded. It wasn’t even armed or trapped.
It was just stone.
Beneath, the plaque read: Posturer.
She huffed out a breath... moved on. The final statue was the one that had confused her most, when she’d seen it before. It had some of the cocksure confidence of the current Ascendent, but its entire demeanour didn’t quite add up to gloating. Instead, the smile was artlessly sincere, nearly all fang. Its hands were at its hips. Rose recognised the weapons it held as replicas of the ones that Astarion had wielded - after many corpses looted, goods resold, and gold divided amongst the party - by the time they reached the Gate.
The outfit was unlike anything she’d seen the Ascendent in, even in his most casual guise. A doublet with a high collar and structured sleeves, and a very simplistic embroidery sketched in the marble over its chest. His legs were crossed at the ankle, and the statue wore the same pair of boots she had bought him, enchanted in the Underdark.
Looking at it… for some reason, Rosalie’s heart ached.
And underneath, it was titled: Pure.
…She still didn’t understand why this was what greeted the Ascendent, upon entering his home.
Beyond that final statue stood two varnished mahogany doors, almost three times Rose’s height. Against the blank, pristine, featureless marble, the colour of the wood became almost saturated, with a deep umber undertone. With one last, final look at the happiest statue, she moved on.
The doors required heft to be moved, and the hinges’ shriek felt sacrosanct in the quiet. Rosalie walked through. The suite of rooms that greeted her on the other side were surprisingly spartan. She’d expected the same level of decadence and ostentatious decoration as the mansion and the dungeons beneath it. But here, everything was pale white, and bare, save for essentials: dark chairs and tables, benches with red cushions - cotton, not velvet. There was no dust anywhere. The rooms were warm, but there wasn’t even a fireplace.
Rose began to do the standard thing she did upon breaking and entering into anyone’s property - rifling through cupboards, drawers, and every document on every available surface. The first room yielded nothing. Everything was simply empty. The kitchen was the same - unlike Raphael’s House of Hope, there was no food anywhere, rotten or otherwise. Just empty cupboards, and pristine silverware.
Rosalie frowned. One of the points of Ascendency was surely the ability to indulge.
There were a few bedrooms, that didn't even try to offer the pretence of use or function: austere, dark fourposter beds, the white linens on them as crisp and pristine as a hotel's, not dishevelled or even so much as creased by any debauchery. A room with a single settee in the centre, nothing else - as if the Ascendent had had an empty room in his own castle, and no clue what to do with it.
It was all so… lonely. Logically, Rosalie knew that this was his secret home - that he had a whole other mansion, one to wine and dine people in. This may not ever have been intended for another person's eyes.
But still, it was so… so bare, and sparsely furnished, with barely any speck of gold or embellishment. Had it been a museum of horrors, a gaol filled to bursting with tortured souls, that might have been easier to swallow, for it would've at least made sense. She almost wanted to… to do something, like buy him a plant, or prestidigitate in some colour. It was so strange, to imagine any version of Astarion choosing to live somewhere this austere. There were no gestures towards opulence at all.
Another dark door led to a wide, straight corridor, but Rosalie checked another door first and found herself in an office. There were library shelves on the mezzanine filled with books, and so it seemed more promising of a personality. She immediately went for the dark walnut desk. But the drawers weren’t even locked.
Inside, were sheaves of paper. They were getting brittle, or delicate - the kind of fragility that told Rosalie, as a scribe, that they were years and years old. She turned them over with careful fingertips, and on every page she found the same thing.
A name.
Astarion Ancunín.
Astarion Ancunín, written over and over. The bizarre thing was, it was Astarion’s handwriting. Rosalie recognised it. It wasn’t like the Ascendent was trying to practise, as you would if you were a forger - the name on the first page looked exactly the same as the name on the last. The ink changed colour and sometimes the quill nib was replaced, but it was just uniform repetitions of the same name.
She climbed the small, iron staircase to the mezzanine. On one side, the bookshelves held ledgers, all bound in the same black leather. The other side held marginally more colour, clothbound in a variety of shades. Rose turned to the ledgers first, plucking one from the lowest shelf. It was well-worn, and the pages themselves bent as if this book had been opened many times, some sections dwelt on longer than others. A single ripped strip of plain paper acted like a bookmark, a scant hundred pages or so from the end.
So that was where Rose opened to first:
-such a bleeding heart, and by the gods, what a fucking inconvenience! We should ditch her in the nearest village, just run off while she’s hosting another fucking trite Q&A. She keeps poking her nose into everyone's business, she'll get us all killed, and then cry over all our corpses - as if that will do any good. What good does crying serve, I ask you, except give every possible assailant a clear shot at your back?-
Rosalie all but dropped the book, as if it burned. She hastily recovered her grip, and flipped to the page before.
-I just closed my eyes, and let the transport take me. Gods, maybe it’ll be death, I thought. Anything, anything is better than this-
Astarion had, she believed, kept a diary. At least, half the times she’d seen him in camp, he’d held a book in front of him, quill in hand, in an attempt to look erudite. Gale had often joked that it felt like performing a proverbial dick-measuring context, both of them standing there trying to catch her attention over increasingly elaborate tomes - “I took out my books first, is all I’m saying!”. But sometimes, in the later days of their adventure, Rose had drifted occasionally out of sleep to hear the scratch of a quill on paper. So yes, she’d thought Astarion had a diary.
Rosalie had often wondered if the diary was something he did, to document the time he was free of Cazador, so that there was something left to hold onto once everything was over and he was back under thrall. Or so that there was some mark he left on the world, if he ever happened to then be erased.
She’d never asked him about it. She’d often wish she had, afterwards.
I can’t do this, she thought. But she did it anyway: flicking forwards through the dogeared, well-read, and latter section of the book.
- So we just have a lich in camp now, apparently. No one else is asking questions - makes you wonder what these people's day-to-day looks like. Though of course, I can't throw stones-
- spiders. So many spiders. I swear that’s why she gave me the book in the end, because she was the fucking one who stepped in that fucking web in the first place-
- A fucking hag. Just what we fucking need. Nothing to do with the tadpoles, just for the fucking record-
And later on:
-she’s looking tired. The Underdark is a lot of trekking in circles, and the hills are no joke. I rearranged the packs while people slept. You will not believe the utter tat I found in hers, but gods forbid we’d ever be allowed to throw things away. Gave more to Karlach (I asked first) and to Lae’zel (what would be the point in asking? She can clearly carry it)-
- dreamt about Cazador. Think it was the slavers back at Grymforge that did it. Foxglove is up on watch with Gale. The conversation has so many syllables, that at this point I think they’re just making it up. Oh, look, Gale glanced over. Yes, oh Mighty Mystra’s Chosen! The rest of us lowly plebs can read and write as well! We just don’t make it a fucking ball ache for ourselves -
Rosalie caught glimpses of herself, in stories about others. At first, she was crushed… and then she started to see the gaps which Astarion danced around, even in words meant only for his own eyes. These absences… they were all the places she was.
The time she’d hugged him in Waukeen’s Rest: clothes still smell like smoke. Could be worse, I suppose.. The night in the Grove: he talked at length about the pros and cons of the Underdark or the Mountain Pass, before noting: need new shoes. …Gods, what if this was all a mistake?
The first time he’d sleep in Last Light with her: Jaheira asked off-hand if we wanted the rooms rearranged. I told her it wasn’t currently necessary, thank you. Asked her to put more blankets in the cupboard by the balcony, instead. I did not appreciate the face she made.
After their talk, in the Gauntlet: Well, now my hand aches, after writing all about Cazador’s dastardly, nefarious plans for my person. And I’ve got a table to write as well, so I’ll keep this brief. I know I’ll remember it, until my final days, anyway.
Maybe it was just wishful thinking on her part, but Astarion seemed to avoid admitting what she was to him, even to himself. She was the topic he evaded, until they were together. And once he did start to dare put her name to paper, the entries were frustratingly brief.
Rosalie hardly expected their initials doodled in hearts in the margins. Nor long, flowery purple prose about their physical encounters, given the conflicting feelings he'd been negotiating at the time. But neither did Astarion spend paragraphs elegising her hair, her figure, her wit, her charm - not even her interests. Or their arguments. Conversations were recorded short-hand. While he agonised over daily sufferings, fears, and inconveniences, every sentence dedicated to her was often short, brief, and to the point. Peppered with little caveats: no need to say more, and the rest is history, we’ll both remember, I’m sure.
She seemed like the one thing he was certain he'd never forget.
Or, that he struggled to find things to complain about.
Rose was worried she was just trying to console herself. If you were a constant in someone’s life, and then the one blank space in their diary, of course you’d try to pretend it had a double meaning. But she started to realise how correct her interpretation had been, once entries about her did start to appear, with the detail filled in. In the places where Astarion started to speak of her in depth, the entries actually hurt to read:
-turns out she’s been lying to us the whole time. Not sure what to make of it. I know it’s over nothing, but it isn’t, is it? It’s all of her: that’s what she’s been hiding. She didn’t trust us with it - any of us. Part of me wants to be angry, but what right have I to be angry? Congratulations, Astarion! Have a taste of your own medicine! It comes with free hypocrisy! And no one else has even a chance of bringing her to account - she makes those eyes, and suddenly everyone is stepping on eggshells again-
Rosalie wanted to be sick.
-Another fight about Cazador. Didn’t speak to me for hours, until she deigned to deliver a begrudging cup of tea she knows I won't drink. Probably an attempt at a peace offering. Meanwhile, I had to pretend I hadn’t heard Wyll playing peacemaker and fighting my corner-
-wish I could get her to see that this is the ideal solution. I’ll be with her, exactly the way I am now. That's what she fell in love with, isn't it? And if she gets scared again... well. I can’t exactly do much to back her up right now, can I? Don’t be afraid, beloved! You don't like the outdoors? Fabulous! - we can stay inside forever, on account of my sunlight allergy! What a fucking joke. But - if I had the power-
-Tried on an absurd amount of clothes. Found myself wishing I could tear her out of them. Found myself wanting to hear the way she used to laugh, in those first days (the ‘something silly just happened in sex’ laugh, not the ‘let’s all make fun of Astarion’s perfectly adequate seduction technique’ laugh. I could live an eternity, before needing to hear that again).
I didn’t have the courage.
I suppose I’ll have to fix that. For tomorrow is the day.
And then, the diary ended.
Silently, Rose replaced the book on the shelf.
The ledger hadn’t been something she recognised on sight, so it hadn’t been the diary Astarion had written in directly. A check of some of the other ledgers confirmed her suspicions: this was an arcane aggregation of documents. Someone had compiled any written word connected to Astarion, in all his years of life, and magicked it up to be read in one place. In the years under Cazador, it was a mixture of a handful of scraps of his own hand - 'Astarion Ancunín, that is your name, it still endures', 'I think the year is 1314. Not sure. The coffin might have ended 6 days ago. Not sure.' - and glimpses of Astarion in the letters of others, often discussing disappearances: Elvira is beside herself, she said her cousin has not returned from the Gate. His friends mention seeing him with a handsome man, the night he-
Then, furthest back, Rosalie came to the magistrate years. These were also opened and rifled through by other hands, though not as well-worn as the last diary on the shelf. There were a lot of trial notes, and court proceedings, and Rosalie was surprised to see more personal diary entries - less frequent than the adventuring ones. Names she didn’t recognise. Lovers she didn’t recognise. Boasts of wealth, and travel, and leisure-
Mentions of family.
Rosalie snapped the tome shut, and returned it to the top shelf. It was too dangerous, she knew, to get lost in the past. If she let herself, she would stay here for days, studying and torturing herself over details she’d never so much as glimpsed, of the man she’d loved. Until the Ascendent swanned through the door, and found her, lost amongst memories that weren’t even her own.
She thought, maybe, that that was what the Ascendent had done with all these ledgers, before her.
On leaden feet, she moved to the other side of the library.
What Rose found there gave her such whiplash, she couldn't help but stare, disbelievingly. This next bookshelf was… fiction. Fiction books. It sent her brain spinning, after all the things she’d just read. It seemed so… so ordinary.
Then, she noticed the tabs, and the bookmarks.
Every love scene. Every sex scene. Every confession. Every kiss. Every proposal.
“No,” Rosalie said. “No way.”
It wasn’t just those that were marked though - that might have been comical. She could already feel surreal, nervous laughter bubbling up. But it was other things, too: Conversations between friends. Arguments. Divorces. Pregnancies. Revelations of parentage. Interactions with children. Deaths witnessed, funerals. All of them tabbed, studied, annotated, underlined…
The last book on the bottom of the shelf was the one he’d stolen from her, in Shar’s cloister. It had the most tabs, out of any of the books she pulled. It seemed it had been rigorously scrutinised… revised, like the Ascendent was a student cramming for a test. She didn't even know the book - it had just been one that she picked up in a store for a discount, then left as part of the unread section of her own shelves-
It was all uncanny enough to make Rose’s skin crawl, over nothing, there in that empty office. But the fact was, it gave no insight into Astarion's contract… beyond a glimpse into the desperation with which the Ascendent seemed to try and understand human emotion.
Rosalie took the final diary from the shelf: the one with that held the days in which she’d known Astarion. A bare 150 pages, in a shelf of nearly thirty separate volumes.
Then, she left the room.
The corridor which she’d glimpsed before had paintings on the walls. Aside from the statues, it was the first adornment she’d seen, in the entirety of this grand house. Rosalie moved towards them with curiosity. When she got to the first picture on the left-hand side, she wished she hadn't.
It was a painting of Shadowheart. Still in her Sharran vestments, black-haired and sullen. Rosalie wondered if it had been painted before their adventure had started - her friend looked young, a little rounder in the face.
Or she would have, had the canvas not been bisected in two places, slashed through with a knife in two wide, uncoordinated arcs. Shadowheart’s face and body had been carved in two.
Next was Lae’zel. Her shoulder and torso, in their gleaming armour, was cut to ribbons. Gale, sliced through at the head. Halsin, Wyll, Karlach… those were more recent, Rose thought, but the wounds in the canvas had still crisped up with age.
And then, heart in her throat, Rosalie came to the final painting on the hallway.
It was of her. Of course it was. It threw the other portraits into relief, because the paint itself was fresh, vibrant and saturated in a way that told her it had been freshly commissioned. It was not one she had ever sat for. She’d had four portraits, in her life: the one from Oskar, which grew dust and cobwebs in her attic (he’d gotten her nose wrong, which wasn’t surprising, because she was certain he had got her and Shadowheart mixed up, somehow, and started painting the cleric first). One commissioned by Wyll’s father, that stood in the hallowed halls of Wyrm’s Crossing, in the hall of heroes that had been built to replicate the structure of the ruins of Ansur’s trial. One, when she’d reached the status of Archmage, hung up in the Watchful Order in Waterdeep. And one her mother had fought for her to sit for, in their family home.
This one wasn’t any of those, or even a composite of the ones available for public viewing. It was seemingly a painting of the Ascendent’s own devising, because Rosalie looked younger, and her clothing was deep red - a low cut dress with voluminous skirts, a collar of rubies at her throat. There were purple flowers in her hair. She was not smiling.
As with all the paintings before, the canvas was scratched. It was torn. There were more maulings here, than any other canvas. But every cut was around her figure, savaging only the negative space. In some cases, the slashes pivoted last minute in sharp vees, just before they hit her arms, her body, or her face.
Hers was the only image preserved.
Rosalie swallowed, and kept walking. There were scratches in the walls as well, after this point. At first she thought they were made by a dagger, but as the corridor widened they then came in triplicate, all neat parallel lines. ...Claws? She wondered. She had never seen the Ascendent with them. But after she had seen its face transform, who knew what monstrosity lay underneath the veneer, once it was fully wrenched away.
When she reached the end of the corridor, something crunched beneath her boot, causing Rosalie to startle. She moved her foot back, to see glass, crushed to powder underfoot.
The next room was a bathing chamber, with a deep pool set into the floor in the same white marble, taking up most of the room. It was currently drained and empty, just an excavated space in the floor with golden taps at one end, and a fresco of angels in the ceiling above. On the right-hand wall there had once stood a mirror, as tall as the ceiling and as long as the tub. Of course, it was in pieces, smashed and strewn across the floor. Only the blank, wooden back remained, still hung up, though the frame was dented and bent out of shape with the force of an off-centre blow.
She understood why he had smashed it - but then, why had the Ascendent never cleaned it up? Had this been recent, maybe when Lae'zel beheaded him? In which case, what had he seen in this mirror, before?
Rosalie peered over the edge of the bath, and saw more shards littered the floor of the tub. Surely he had to walk through here? Did he just never look down?
And still, everything was spotless. The shards of mirror left on the ground were without a speck of dust, even as flaked, brown blood solidified on the ragged edges.
What was the point of a spotless room, still littered with the things that would hurt him? What was the point of this grand palace, this warm hearth in the cold of Cania, if it was bare as a monk’s cell?
Rosalie felt like she was walking through the house of a dead man, left to rot and disrepair. Not the home of a hedonist fashioned from 7,000 souls.
She came, finally, to the tower.
It was through the next set of doors, at the back of the bathing room. Rosalie immediately recognised where she was - the hexagonal walls, the coffin stood in front of her, with all its elegant design. She was… surprised, again. The palace, for all its grand dimensions, high ribbed ceilings, wrought iron glasswork, was actually… kind of small. It seemed she’d already reached its end.
The coffin stood in the centre. To the left of the door was a single, bone white wardrobe, the wood sanded down to smooth featurelessness, in comparison to the intricate décor of the coffin lid. Rosalie opened the dresser - there were identical sets of white shirts and black trousers, all smelling a little musty, almost like mothballs. Left here, in case the Ascendent was ever murdered in the nude, she supposed. And yet, never touched.
And on the right side of the door was a wrought iron podium, black like a fireplace grate, on which rested a single book. Above it was another golden plaque, next to the door, and Rosalie was surprised to see the inscription this time in Infernal:
My friend. As promised, your gift in full:
Your Idyll
The phrase ‘idyll’ was an ambiguous one in Infernal: a term derived from Celestial, bastardised in the mouths of devils. There were two ways, Rose thought, to translate it. It could be as it scanned: idyll - ‘your idyllic home’, ‘your refuge’, ‘your heavenly home’.
Or… translated literally… Your House of Peace.
“No,” Rosalie murmured. “...Astarion.”
Her hands immediately went for the slim volume beneath the sign, heedless of any potential traps. It turned out not to be a book, but a small binder in red leather, in which was held a series of documents. Rosalie’s heart fell, as she realised that this, too, was written in Infernal. A contract, she thought. And the signatories of the first page?
Mephistopheles. And, in a much practised hand: Astarion Ancunín.
But… that was fine, wasn’t it? Rosalie thought, as her fingertips shook on the edges of the documents. When she’d found Mol’s contract, she’d just destroyed it, and then it was all over. She'd find out what price the Ascendent had paid, and then she would simply set the paper alight. Get rid of the contract altogether.
But as she read through the Infernal - she worried how the Ascendent had found it, complex and archaic as it was, but luckily, that was in fact her specialty - Rosalie realised that only the first page was a contract. One dated several years ago, and paid for in full. The other pages were literally the deliverables: dated memos from whatever Hellish bureaucracy Mephistopheles ran, confirming receipt of each payment from both sides.
In exchange for a series of four favours - admittedly, not divulged, although this line was now struck off the document, implying its completion - and a set of five interviews, Mephistopheles offered the Ascendent his home in the Hells, as well as the portal between the two palaces. The interviews were also crossed out, all the terms of the bargain met and thus concluded. It struck Rosalie as a strange Infernal transaction history, given that its terms were small, specific, and finite - everything a traditional devils’ bargain wasn’t. It was also steeply weighted in favour of the supplicant, rather than the devil.
All Mephistopheles seemed to gain from it other than a new neighbour, were these favours. And, on the bottom line of the first page, also struck through-
A single soul.
Rosalie's heart began to hammer, somewhere in her throat.
Well, that’s good then, isn’t it? she thought, though she was already panicking. That’s an answer. One I didn’t have before. 7,001 souls must’ve crossed over in the Rite. Astarion and Cazador’s soul came over to the other side. That means the Black Mass produced a surplus, that the Ascendent could then negotiate and claim compensation for - that's why the bargain was so favourable. Devils hate imbalance or chaos. It just needed to be settled up, to restore order. That’s good. That means-
But then Rosalie read the contract through again, and she realised… the soul wasn’t being paid to Mephistopheles.
It was in the wrong column.
No. In this transaction, the soul - the soul was something the Ascendent had received.
In a scratched annotation next to the invoice - the invoice, for one specific soul - a foreign hand had written in gleaming teal ink, ‘a housewarming gift, my friend, to furnish your new home’.
Even though the soul was given no name in these documents, treated like the currency it was, Rosalie could already feel her blood pounding in her ears.
It could be Cazador, she told herself. It would make sense... wouldn't it? For Astarion to create this horrible, lifeless house, and then store Cazador's soul there. Trapped, as he had once been. Maybe that's why this place felt so wretched.
…But Cazador's soul wasn't the surplus. It had been consumed by the ritual.
And the Ascendent, she was increasingly sure, wasn't Astarion.
When Rose tried to place the documents back in the folder, several of them slipped out of her shaking fingers, to drop to the floor. She scrambled to pick them up, not sure why she bothered. But she thought it was a distraction. That pain in her chest, she knew it all too well.
She hated it, whenever she felt herself begin to hope.
...Housewarming. The phrase made no sense when written literally, in Infernal. House- warming.
Rose glanced around this silent chamber. This silent home. Warm, well lit, in the bowels of a freezing hell plane that could kill her the moment she stepped outside. What was powering this place? There were no light fittings, no heating grates. No arcane runes on the pristine white marble, no gaslight, no metallic fixtures or wiring to suggest more modern conveniences. The stone was cool to the touch, yet the house itself was the body temperature. Blood-warm.
Something stuttered out of Rosalie’s mouth: a little nervous sound, a sob.
She began to scrabble her hands desperately across to the walls, seeking out any cracks or imperfections. She activated her Third Eye, then tested each wall and floor of the chamber with her fingertips, seeking out the seams of any invisible or hidden doors. She hissed, when one frantic hand accidentally brushed the metal of one of the window frames - it was so cold against her skin, that it was almost equivalent to putting her palm to a hot stove. The temperature outside was so cold, just breathing the air would be crueller than walking across open flame.
…And yet here she was, inside. Warm and safe.
Rosalie knew it in her bones now. It was hard to doubt, even as she dared not trust herself. She checked the floor under the coffin, the walls. A wild image of her doing the same for every room she’d already passed through hit her full force, the panic in her chest already rising as she fought to keep calm and actually make the investigation thorough. Surely it was in here. If she missed it, she’d never forgive herself.
Her fingers caught on something, on the back wall.
Rosalie gasped, as she followed a slight depression in a straight line down, then up, then across, tracing the outline of a door that was a foot or so taller than her. The wall was flat and featureless otherwise. Was it an illusion, as those in the House of Hope had been? Would Dispel Magic work? Or was it a mechanism, the kind Astarion himself would have known how to disarm?
Rosalie’s heart was hammering. She could sit down. She could wait, she could prepare, and then cast Knock. It wouldn’t be too long. All she needed was some patience.
“Please,” she whispered against the marble, somewhat irrationally. She’d been less reverent, in days when she’d pressed her head to stone floors in prayer. “Please. It’s me. Surely you’ll open, for me?”
She didn’t expect it to work.
It did.
The door opened for her. Rosalie held her hand over her mouth, as there was a thump of a mechanical or magical latch, and then a grinding of stone against stone. The impression of a door resolved itself in front of her. It shifted backwards a few inches, and then started to press itself to the side. Unlike the rest of the well-lit palace, there was only darkness beyond.
Anyone’s soul, she tried to remind herself, pressing her palm in a seal over her lips to stop any sounds. Her breathing came harsh in her own ears, as she summoned her Dancing Lights. It could be anyone’s soul.
And then, she sobbed once into the heel of her palm.
Under the Dancing Lights, she glimpsed the newly unveiled chamber. Another room of white marble. Small, hexagonal, a mirror of the one that had come before but in miniature. Featureless. Plain.
...Yet its floor was a carpet of flowers.
The seams between the blocks of marble in the other rooms were invisible, each brick blending into the next in a seemingly endless stretch of white. Here, they were pronounced. Flowers exploded through the cracks between each plane of marble, in the corners between wall and floor, climbing up the indentations in the walls. They grew denser towards the centre of the room, until there was an impossible riot of them, around the base of a column that was the only feature of the chamber. They twined their way amongst each other, until they formed a disordered decoration around the central plinth. The colours were beautiful: purple and lavender and violet amongst green. The only life in this otherwise sterile, lifeless house.
Foxgloves. All of them foxgloves.
Rosalie was shaking, ill with the adrenaline. Never in a million years-
And as she stepped into the room, everything felt unreal. She dragged her eyes up from the mass of flowers. To what sat alone, on the plinth, in the centre of the room.
A delicate, squat jar, as wide and as tall as Rosalie’s forearm. Made of thick glass, reinforced with silver: half display case, half cage. There were two bands of pale platinum, and then dark iron, on the top and bottom, runic Infernal in a running script around the circumference of the container. There was a handle - utilitarian, reminding her of a hooded lantern.
Dwelling inside the glass, was a fractured splinter of starlight. It emitted a soft, white glow, which in truth was barely any light at all. Not enough to light the chamber - certainly not enough to see by. It wavered, fighting to grow brighter, only to falter and stutter and dim. Then it flared again, as if wrestling to stay alight. It was like watching the drunken path of a firefly, close to death. As Rosalie stepped closer, it flickered, died for a second, came back - as weak as a candle flame in a gale.
The starlight inside was strange - in all her travel across the planes, she'd never seen anything like it. A fractured nexus of gossamer thin threads, all churning and rearranging, twisting and folding in on themselves. Translucent, without form, save some small, weak, transient flashes of gold, winnowing through the eddies and currents, like a storm in a jar.
But Rosalie could not fight that initial thought: starlight.
Bottled, trapped starlight.
She crushed flowers underfoot as she walked closer. She reached out with a trembling hand.
“...Astarion?” Rosalie whispered, to the empty air, as her fingertips touched the glass.
Notes:
And... that's the end of 'Act 2' :')))))))
Thank you for your kind words and your patience, my health procedure-turned-surgery all went well and now I am back!! Hope you enjoy this chapter, it feels weird to be reaching the parts of the plot that I've had with me since the beginning.
This chapter now has an artwork by @xenea-aesthetic: you can find it here!
Chapter Notes
- I drafted this chapter during a big UK storm, and honestly? what a fucking vibe. Hope someone somewhere is reading this in a night-time thunderstorm, bc drafting in those conditions fucked.
- Rosalie: no fear. Rosalie: this house does not involve seventeen shades of burgundy, and NO ONE HAS FUCKED IN THESE BEDROOMS. Rosalie: one fear.
- Autistic teenage me 🤝 the Vampire Ascendent - using fiction as a way to understand how the FUCK one is supposed to be a person
- Me and a friend, around a month ago.Me: she's exploring another fucked up house.
Friend: of course she is. I bet it's full of marble, and it's cold bc it's in Cania.
Me, 2 minutes after writing the house-warming pun: you'd think, wouldn't you >:)- I'm thinking about doing a tumblr post explaining my logic in more detail when everything's over (if that's something anyone is interested in), but another voice note, from three months ago, to a different friend: "what if I not only Dorian Gray-ed Astarion's soul, but then made him Hope in his own House of Hope?"
- For anyone who's interested in what is going on *mechanically*, the jar is a Soul Cage spell - but a permanent one.While Soul Cage usually lasts 8hrs, this one is um... not that, because I said so. But the other functions and parameters of the Soul Cage spell are in play: the soul inside is a finite resource, and the person who wields it can use up its life force for four separate purposes: Steal Life, Query Soul (lol), Borrow Experience (lmao), and Eyes of the Dead (lmfao, even). Guess why the light inside the jar is weak? :))))))))))
- I told everyone. We had to work. For foxgloves. In this fic. I told you!!
- Anyway. We're in the end-game lads. Much love for everyone who has stayed with me this far! Fingers crossed for that Happy Ending tag :)
Chapter 18: Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Text
...It was eleven years ago, and Rosalie was shaking.
In front of her, on the floor of this dusty, empty, rotting room, were the shattered remains of Astarion’s former torturer. Fragments of bone were collapsed into a pile: a shard of femur, a skull with a hairline crack down the middle like a dropped egg. Splinters of bone were embedded in the white-washed walls behind it, new cracks in the flaking plaster interrupted the shadows of black mould. Rose felt a mild sting on her face, telling her that a few pieces had grazed her in the blowback, when she reduced Godey to rubble.
Rose stepped forward, hooked her foot under the visor of Godey’s helmet, and kicked it away with a clang. Then, she placed her foot on the skull, and pressed down. The skeleton was already brittle with age, and even under the slightest pressure the fracture her spell had made split wider. It cleaved itself in two.
Rosalie should’ve used Disintegrate, but she was saving that for Cazador.
Behind her, Astarion was quiet, pale as a ghost. The last colour had leeched from his face, when Godey had threatened her. Now, he looked at the space where his tormentor had stood with an unreadable mask of an expression. He looked like a watermark of himself - like he was barely even there.
“S-sorry,” Rosalie said, the apology already feeling inadequate in her mouth.
Astarion was torn away from the space he’d been lost in, blinking as if roused from a stupor. He turned to face her. “Hm?”
“I should’ve… let you do it,” Rosalie said, feeling like everything she said came out wrong. She remembered Karlach, with Gortash, and the promise she’d made, to let her friend make the final blow when the time came. “It should’ve been your kill to make. I’m sorry.”
“...You’re apologising?” Astarion asked listlessly, as if he didn’t quite understand.
“I didn’t think,” Rosalie explained. “I just… I just wanted him gone. I couldn’t stop myself. But I... I should’ve asked.”
Astarion just blinked at her.
“I promise I’ll let you take the lead from here,” Rosalie vowed.
Astarion’s gaze roved across her face, as if he was lost at sea and she was the lighthouse in the distance... or the anchor pulling him down.
“Who on earth do you think I am, Foxglove?” he said. He looked back at the pile of bones and crumpled armour. “‘Lead’…? I don’t even know if I could have-”
Rosalie reached unthinkingly for his hand, then felt wretched when he flinched away.
Not at the rejection - no, at getting things wrong. All wrong, again.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, though this time she thought she was apologising for a different thing: for bringing him here, for making him face things he hadn’t even told her about, for the fact that any of this had ever happened to him in the first place.
“What have you got, to be sorry for?” Astarion asked, eyes still pinned on Godey’s corpse. “You’re the only one who would do something like this, for me.”
Which told Rosalie how truly inadequate her words were.
These past few weeks, she thought she’d known better than him. No, it was more than that: she thought she’d been right. The arguments; the frustrated, aborted conversations. And worse even, the silences, when she stood there, waiting for the breakthrough that never came: for Astarion to become the man she wanted him to be.
Rose was ashamed to admit, she’d often felt disappointed. Irritated. Angry, even. She had felt, again, like she was flinging herself at a wall, and bruising herself in the hope she’d one day break through to the other side. She wanted him to see what had seemed to her to be plain as day: that hurt, piled on top of hurt, produced nothing, nothing but more pain. Surely, he could value the people he himself termed siblings, when though they were not related by blood. It implied that they mattered to him. She’d hoped-
But Rose saw now, how little she’d actually known. Astarion had told her plenty of the horrors he’d suffered, in plenty of detail. And still, she hadn’t known about this. She hadn’t known about ‘the kennels’. And Astarion had so casually tossed out the phrase, like he’d assumed its existence was a given.
She had entreated Astarion not to cause more pain, when she’d barely scratched the surface of what already existed. She’d been trying to dictate what retribution she felt he was entitled to, from a place of utter ignorance. And… she’d been punishing him for it.
She suddenly felt very small, very stupid, and very, very... cruel.
She would do better. From right now, Rosalie vowed. She wouldn’t become another shackle, keeping him from freedom.
When the morose, lost silence stretched out between the two of them for a little too long, Karlach cleared her throat,. “Reckon we should move on, lads, don’t you?” she said, a little gruffly. “Want to rip Cazador’s arms from his body and throw them like boomerangs. Or something.”
Astarion glanced in Karlach’s direction, and gave her a painful contortion of a smile. “Well, darling, you sure know how to promise a man a good time. And it isn’t even my birthday.”
Karlach offered her own poor smile back. No one was fooling anyone, here in this morbid horror of a house. She went back to the door, and wrenched it open with enough force to break it off its hinges, entirely by accident. Clearly, she was just as angry as everyone else - she was just better at hiding it.
She walked out, and joined Shadowheart, Gale, and Wyll in the corridor. Rosalie started to follow, but stopped when she realised that that would leave Astarion in this old, haunted room alone. She stalled by the open doorway, until it occurred to him to start moving, so that she could be the last one out.
As Astarion walked by, brushing past her silently, Rose tried to think of something to say. Anything. She couldn’t touch him, in case it frightened him. It was the wrong time for ‘I love you’. But she was just so desperate to reach him-
“Astarion?” she said.
He paused in place, and when they met each other’s eyes, it almost hurt.
“...Yes, Rose?”
“You’re - you’re not alone, anymore,” Rosalie told him, the words moving clumsily off her tongue. “We’re here with you, now. We’ll be with you, until the very end. Whatever… whatever happens. I promise. Whatever you need.”
This smile was still forced, a shadow of what it could be, but less painful than what had come before.
“I know,” Astarion said. And still neither of them touched, as he exited the room.
The moment Rose’s fingertips touched the jar, and the dying, failing light that dwelt inside, a sorrow that she had not known since that day crushed over her in a wave. The memory rose up within her like ice water, paralysing her exactly as the cold would. It was a sadness she had long since numbed herself to: a grief eroded to a sliver, a small splinter still lodged in her chest. On contact with the jar, it all came back, fresh and raw.
“Astarion,” she said again, with certainty, her hand closing around the glass.
There was no response from the inanimate object, or the light inside... but she knew it to be true. There was no question.
Her grip tightened around the cannister. The light inside was warm against her hand. It didn’t have a pulse, or a heartbeat, but there was something about it that was instantly recognisable as life. An intimacy, a feeling that rose within her, impossible to ignore.
The faintest glimmering spark surged through the dying light. Rosalie swore she saw it happen, though she knew it might be her imagination.
“Hi,” she said. Then, with more feeling: “Hi.”
Beyond the silliness of the scene before her, even speaking to him didn't feel real. Everything was strange, and she didn’t know what she was doing. On the one hand, it felt foolish, to be speaking to a jar. On the other, after all this time, she didn’t know how she could stay silent.
“It’s me," she said, "I’m here. I - I just - I came looking for you, I think. If there’s anything I can do to save you, I’ll - but I just need to get you home."
The answering silence rang in her ears.
“...My first conversation with you in a decade, and you can’t even talk back,” Rose murmured, almost fondly. “You know, if I were you, I’d make some kind of joke, about my wildest fantasies coming true-”
But her voice died out before it could gain momentum, as the enormity of the truth in front of her hit full force. He’d been trapped here, for a decade. Not in this room, maybe not even in this cage, but-
It was time to get him out.
Rosalie tried to quell that mounting… awe? fear? longing?... and confront the situation in front of her like the scholar she was. What was this container for Astarion’s soul? A Magic Jar? She had read about that kind of necromantic magic - it involved the treatment of souls, so of course she'd covered it at some point in her years of frantic research. If it was a Magic Jar, all she had to do was get close to the Ascendent, and open it, and then-
But the runes on the jar were different. A strange, shimmering crimson wax sealed the joint between the glass and the thick metal casing of the lid, which seemed to be a mixture of silver and Infernal iron. It had been rendered airtight, and if Rosalie had one failing that eclipsed all the many numerous others, it was her upper body strength.
Silver implied a Soul Cage, and that changed the parameters within which she was working, for both the release of the spell, or a counterspell. It was also an object of clear Infernal make. Devils had been laundering, trafficking, and bartering souls for millennia: they had it rendered it down to a fine art. What necromancers spent years trying to perfect, devils had been doing for centuries as routine. That changed the game all over again.
Not to mention-
She didn’t know if the body being undead meant the soul wouldn't be able to enter. Perhaps, it would simply dissipate. Or did Ascendency mean that Astarion’s body was now, for all intents and purposes, alive?
And… what was it, that inhabited the body, already?
Rosalie shuddered, thinking back to the previous rooms of the house. If she released the soul without preparation, then there was a chance Astarion would have to share. Or worse, a fight would break out, and both the soul and whatever else took up residence would have the chance to cannibalise each other… This light was already so weak...
But… she had Astarion’s soul.
In her very hands.
What did it matter?
“I just need to get you home,” she repeated again, to the jar, and to herself, “that’s the first step. W-we’re together now… again. And then I’ll - I’ll get my Wish text - from my bag in the house, and then I’ll just... cast it! And then we can - and it’ll be-”
Gods. How did you encompass everything you ever dared to hope for, in a single sentence?
It felt dangerous to risk it, like speaking any wish aloud would call down some kind of jinx. And there was no point, anyway. Every second she spent here was another second Astarion was imprisoned… meanwhile, she was talking to a jar.
With renewed determination, Rosalie picked Astarion up from the plinth. She cradled the container in both arms. The warmth in her chest mirrored the warmth next to her chest.
And then... everything changed.
The soul’s tie to the house severed -
The castle around her plunged into darkness -
And the wretched, burning cold of Cania descended, all at once.
The house all but moaned, with the blizzard-soaked winds that suddenly tore through its hallways and high corridors. Rosalie gasped, then let out a shout of pain - she couldn’t help herself. The ice was a thousand knives plunged into her back. The next inhalation hurt: air heavy, like lead, coating her lungs and leaving them with a stinging pain that made her gulp down even more.
When she breathed out, it froze on the air, the moisture immediately crystalising in her lashes. Her focus on her Dancing Lights flickered, and only just held. Her inadequate clothes began to rime and stiffen with frost, as the light from the room behind her was lost and her eyes adjusted to the new, inhospitable darkness. Already shivering, she looked around in confusion as she realised that the jar - the soul inside the jar, now casting the milkiest, weakest light in a small halo around her - had been powering this entire palace.
Yeah, well... I’m not fucking putting him back, Rose thought, spitefully.
Instead, she backed them both out of the chamber. Her teeth started chattering, as she struggled to guide her Dancing Lights through the bone-aching pain. Her hands were already burning, feeling swollen in the joints. She staggered past the coffin, now a bulky shadow in the pitch black - she wished she could kick it over. The light of Astarion’s soul glinted off the pearl in the lid.
She stumbled over to the red binder by the door, picked it up, and shoved it clumsily into her coat.
It was with that movement, that she realised her hands were starting to numb. The floors of the palace were now coated with a sheen of ice. If Rose wasn’t careful, the cold could leave her stupid. It would only take a matter of minutes for decision-making to be severely impaired.
Rosalie made it to the next room, stood amongst the mirror shards with starlight dancing across the shattered glass, before she knew she had to cast Leomund’s Tiny Hut.
She all but sobbed, as the purple globe of magic formed around the two of them. The immediate change in temperature told her how much of a toll the cold had already taken on her body.
“Ok,” she said, mostly to the jar, as she began shaking violently, and the ice in her hair and clothes started to melt. “Ok.”
There would be no doubling back and checking if she had taken everything of importance, like she usually did. Even if she wanted to go back to the library, and take every single diary from that shelf. It was time to get out.
She cast Sending.
“Shadowheart?” Rose said, still shivering. “T-The plan worked. I’m in Cania, and I found something. It’s his s-soul - it changes everything. I’m coming back to you all now.”
She shifted the jar to one arm, and reached into the pocket of her jacket for the charm Shadowheart had enchanted with Word of Recall. But her hand paused, when Shadowheart’s response came back through.
“-Don’t!”
Rosalie froze in place. On the other end of the spell, Shadowheart’s breathing was laboured.
“Ramazith is under attack,” she said. “Vampire spawn… more of them. We’re starting to mount our defence. Hopefully my house isn’t compromised - but find somewhere safe!”
The message ended.
An attack on Ramazith… with more vampire spawn?! That didn’t make sense - the dormitories had held a small… you know, gathering, party-wise. Not a small army. And the Ascendent's dungeons had been empty, when she and Shadowheart had walked through. Was he utilsing spawn pacted from other vampire masters? Or had the Ascendent gone on a spree this week… as a failsafe? Had it all been triggered, the moment she’d betrayed him?
…Or had he broken free of his paralysis, and these were new orders, freshly given?
Rosalie could feel the anxiety overtaking her - it was time to decide what to do next, but she was so afraid of getting anything wrong. If Ramazith was compromised, then-
The wind outside her bubble of magic was frantic. Sharpness scraped against stone, as the draft shifted the broken pieces of mirror across the floor and flung them up into swirling eddies: a small, shimmering snowstorm.
As the powdered glass came into harmless contact with the walls of the Hut, Rosalie missed the faint mist that drifted through with it, racing in ribbons across the floor.
“Shadowheart says we’re under attack. Or well, they’re under attack - we’ve been staying with Rolan, in Ramazith,” she was telling the jar in a hushed murmur, in case it needed a running commentary, to feel included. “But that’s ok - we can still teleport to her house! You’ll never believe how many animals she’s got, Astarion. We all thought it was a phase, but she keeps getting more and more! I hope they’re all being looked after-”
…But Rosalie paused. If she went to Shadowheart's cottage, then she’d be all alone in the outskirts of the city. With the blood in her body singing like a beacon, and all the sway the Ascendent had over her twice-bitten form in full force. Forget Shadowheart’s home, she was the one who was compromise - with no access to the space that nullified the Ascendent’s influence.
The Wish text was back at the Magnificent Mansion. Rosalie had ached to leave it behind, even knowing how dangerous it could be if the Ascendent got ahold of her last-chance weapon. But the soul in her arms was more valuable than even that book - there was literally no comparison. She would not risk endangering it, or ever being parted from Astarion again.
- One room over, there was a cracking of ice, as a now-frozen coffin lid was wrenched open.
Rosalie didn’t hear it, over the wind.
“...I could get us to Shadowheart’s house, and then teleport us straight to Ramazith? What if they need help?” she was saying to Astarion. Her voice felt uncertain, like when she was young. It was that moment all over again, of walking into Cazador’s house and doubting everything she knew. “But - but they have my simulacrum. And Shadowheart told me to get out. I honour those kinds of orders more, these days, you’ll be pleased to hear. So, to Gale’s, maybe. Or-”
There was only one place she wanted to take him. One place she trusted to keep both of them safe.
Word of Recall. Then teleportation.
To Alaron.
To home.
“Alaron,” Rosalie said, softly, making her decision. “We’ll be safe there.”
And in the pitch black of the newly lifeless palace, the door connecting this chamber to the Ascendent’s resting place smashed open, splintering off its hinges.
Rosalie didn’t scream, but she startled with a choked gasp. Luckily, her instinct was to clutch the jar more closely to her body, rather than drop it. She span in place.
The translucent walls of the dome distorted the darkness beyond. It was hard, even with darkvision, to pick out shapes through the curved wall of light.
But behind her, now in front of her, was a figure.
It stalked forward. Its clothes and hair were in disarray. It was in the outfit it had worn earlier that night, all dark colours that made it hard to see its full silhouette. For an absurd, surreal second, Rosalie thought it now wore gloves. Had it felt the power of the house fail, and chosen to come prepared for the cold?
But… no. She realised.
Its hands were now simply stained, up to the wrists, in blood.
And under its neck… no, that wasn’t a high collar, nor was it a scarf. That was a slash mark, a second smile, night-dark in the gloom and stark on pale skin. Still, it was hard to make sense of, until the wet sheen of it began to freeze stiff, as well.
As Rosalie watched the wound begin to knit itself closed, she realised the Ascendent had slit its own throat, all to reach her in record time.
His pale face resolved itself in her vision. He did not shiver - not even as a sheen of frost began to web across his face. He regarded her, the same way she regarded him: no doubt realising she looked different, and that she had a heartbeat again. For a second, the ice mixed with his complexion and dispassionate expression. He truly looked like an object: a statue, made of porcelain.
Rosalie clutched Astarion’s soul protectively to her chest, shielded by the dome but otherwise frozen to the spot.
“...Of course,” the Ascendent said, in its voice like silk, that echoed off the empty walls. He reached up, and ran his hand through his hair, as it started to become brittle. “Of course, this is what it comes to. Look, at what you’ve done."
There were so many questions Rose could’ve asked, or insults she could’ve hurled, but she found herself without the breath to say any of them. She’d pushed past fearing for herself, in the Ascendent’s presence. She, after all, was expendable.
But she knew fear intimately once more, as its eyes drifted down to what she carried in her arms.
Seeing the way she cradled the soul, its expression spasmed.
It started to prowl the circumference of the dome.
“I remember when you used to tell me that stealing was a bad thing, that we should never, ever do. Why is it, I wonder, that these rules you hold so dear never seem to apply to you?”
Breath coming fast and messily loud, Rosalie felt trapped. Not here, within her protective barrier. But here, on this monster's own territory, holding the one person she knew she would die protecting.
“Why is it, that no matter what I give you, you always want more?” it demanded in a low voice, that sunk towards something guttural.
The thing about the Hut was, its walls were impenetrable. Only those you designated could be let in, otherwise the barrier it made was absolute. The ten foot circle Rosalie had made for herself was safe, even from vampires who no longer required invitations.
But magic couldn’t pass through it, either. She couldn’t cast against the Ascendent, even if that was what guaranteed her safety in return.
...Magic cast within the dome, however, worked perfectly well.
Rosalie finally managed to shake off her fear. She rummaged through her pocket again, hand closing around Shadowheart’s charm.
“Be a good girl, and drop that thing you are holding, for me, little love,” the Ascendent said. Its voice was devoid of anything but force.
The charm rippled through the dome, unimpeded by the barrier. Rosalie had taken an elixir, same as any other day. And still, Rosalie felt, with dread, as it took hold - because it was stronger, this time, she could tell. The second bite had done something to her. She didn’t feel any of the fluffy-headed longing and nostalgia from the previous charm, when it had lulled her into a compliance that felt like companionship.
It was just an order. And it descended upon her, irresistible and undeniable.
But that order’s wording was… non-specific.
After a moment of resistance, Rosalie turned out her pocket. She dropped the charm she’d caught between her fingertips, just threw it onto the ground. She watched, as it clattered, and bounced across the floor, to land outside the dome’s walls.
But the Ascendent had not told her to drop all she held, or everything. And so, with her other arm, she kept clinging to Astarion’s soul. Thank goodness, that this creature had held onto Astarion’s love of pontification. It certainly looked frustrated, once it realised what it had done.
“Take down your-”
Rosalie squeezed her eyes tight shut, and began screaming at the top of her lungs. The sound drowned out the soft-spoken command before it concluded.
It was fucking stupid, as defences went. But a person who could not see a vampire could not be charmed by a vampire. And someone who could not hear a vampire, could not follow its orders.
This was not like the ballroom. Rose didn’t have time to buy, by letting the Ascendent talk. There was no room to endlessly strategise, to stress-test the flaws of her every possible plan.
She had only the time it took, for her lungs to run out of air.
But here she stood, on a carpet of shattered glass.
Still wilfully blind, the jar tucked under one arm, Rosalie squatted down, and groped one-handedly across the floor of the bathroom. Her voice was beginning to waver, her panic setting in, fearing that even the space of one breath might give the Ascendent enough room for a one-word order which, if it was the right word, could spell an end to everything.
But then, her fingers closed around a sliver of the broken mirror. It was large enough to serve her purpose. She sunk down to her knees in pure relief.
She didn’t turn it out towards the Ascendent, as she had done before.
All she needed, this time, was for it to be sharp, and for the cut to bite deep enough.
Rosalie clenched her hand into a fist. She felt the mirror dig into her skin. She clenched down harder, until she was white-knuckled, and something tore. She felt her breath failing her, as her scream tapered to a reedy end.
The blood began to well, in the pads of her fingers. In the meat of her palm, and in the crease of her lifeline. She opened her eyes again. Beyond the murky barrier, she saw the Ascendent’s nostrils flare with recognition, as the blood started to hit the floor.
Rose stopped for a single, desperate breath. If the Ascendent asked her to step out of the circle of protection, it was all over.
“Drop the-”
“I am a child of the Cold Lord, and of the Bloodline of Cania!” Rosalie bellowed, in spittle-laden, sulphuric Infernal. “By the blood of this land, I claim dominion. By the magic of these bones, I claim mastery. To serve me is to serve your Monarch: bow to me like the supplicant you are!”
She’d memorised the words. Of course she had. The dialect had been fascinating, so it had stuck fast, like her brain was fly paper. More pompous and grandiose than any spell text she’d ever written or devised. Riddled with colonial rhetoric (daddy issues and desperate power trips really were proving to be the legacy Mephistopheles bestowed on his children, it seemed), but the words and their components served their purpose.
Rosalie loved Shadowheart. She even knew that Shadowheart was right: nothing good came from consorting with devils.
But they both must have known that the spell was in Rosalie’s arsenal now. When Astarion’s soul hung in the balance, nothing else mattered.
“My words are law, and my will is iron: take me to Alaron!” she demanded of the spell, as the blood she spilled onto the floor betrayed the truth of her ancestry. It started to glow red, then purple, then bright, ice-cold blue.
Rosalie adjusted her grip on Astarion’s soul jar with a desperate anxiety, in the split second before she felt herself ripped from the hell plane.
The sensation was violent. Teleportation and plane shift were instantaneous: all that force was still exerting itself, it just happened so quickly that the person barely even registered it, until shit went wrong and something backfired. This homebrewed, home-grown ritual that Mephistopheles’ posturing, mewling descendent had devised was nowhere near as efficient. Rosalie felt it, physically, as she was raised up and out of the physical world. It was still at an immense speed, just not with enough haste for her mind to hit incomprehension and erase her awareness of everything that was happening, as it happened. Which was… less than ideal.
Rose felt herself rush upwards as if pulled by an invisible thread in her sternum. There was no wind to whistle past her, just brute force. The walls of the palace were immaterial as she passed through, and then she was dragged up and up, through the squealing snow storms and eddying clouds, in amongst the auras of magical lightning that danced across the sky. Teeth gritted and body screaming, Rosalie wished fervently that either something sped up or she blacked out, before the transition between realms happened.
And then she just… stopped.
She had no idea where she was. Suspended in darkness, drifting in the midst of a ruddy halo at the edge of the world. A glance down, and vertigo hit: miles and miles and miles of empty air. And then, far below even that, was the white-blue tapestry of Cania.
Unlike the real world, the plane was flat, and Rosalie felt a sickening lurch when she glimpsed its hard limits. A white ribbon of land and ice and snow, curved in a cylindrical shape like a spiral staircase. It was finite, marked by boundaries and borders at the two places where it touched its neighbouring kingdoms: Nessus and Maladomini.
It was concerning, to be so far up, as to be able to see the edges of an entire world.
Even more concerning, to hover there in place, so far above everything, no longer moving. Rosalie wondered if this was a part of the spell.
After a few seconds of simply… floating there, she swallowed against her nervousness, and tried to pour more magic and will into the spell, to force her body into some kind of movement. She cried out in pain, as she felt herself hit some invisible, metaphysical barrier.
The jar in her hand suddenly weighed ten times more, than it did before.
And it kept taking on weight. With a lurch, the arm that was clutching to Astarion dipped. Rosalie managed to stay holding on, but immediately felt the strain that action demanded of her body.
I am trying to leave a hell plane, Rose thought, with one more soul than I came in with.
One that had an owner, documented in the very contract she carried on her person. A soul that was a gift from Mephistopheles himself.
But dropping the jar was not an option. Even as a combination of the spell and the magic of Cania’s borders tried to enforce that fate upon her. Rosalie snapped her arm closer into her body, hugged Astarion to her, as she felt her muscles scream with the effort of holding him aloft. The jar grew denser and denser, the force of the plane trying to keep ahold of its property. Until she could feel her grip slipping, until she had to let out a wordless yell.
No, Rosalie thought helplessly.
I’ve just got him back.
“No!” she shrieked aloud, in the Infernal dialect lifted from the spelltext.
For - she thought frantically - if she was Mephistopheles’ descendant, and this spell made descendants into equals, devils by name, by contract, by blood, then surely-
“This soul is mine!” Rosalie screamed into the darkness, “I claim it as my own! It belongs to me! It was pledged to me!”
Something inside her chest tautened. She felt briefly dizzy, as more magic was drained from her.
She felt watched.
“It was mine! I owned it before it ever fell into your hands! He had no right to offer it, and you had no right to take it from me!” she continued, voice becoming hoarser and hoarser. The language was brutal, and this scream just as desperate as the last. That must be why it hurt so much, she thought. “How dare you barter and trade it, as if it was yours to own! You stole it from me! It’s mine! It belongs to me!”
The jar was so heavy, and the drop was so far.
“So you scarred it, and marked it with your runes! Did you not see my mark on it, in the place where it dwelt?!” she demanded of Cania.
She would die, before she let go.
She would never let go again.
The words that Infernal offered to her were inadequate, but they would serve.
“My words are law, and my will is iron,” Rosalie repeated, words seething out of her with the taste of brimstone in the back of her throat. “This soul is mine! My property! My responsibility! MINE!”
The endless sky of Cania held no reply, but she knew from the tightening of the spell on her form, that it had heard.
“And I will take it home with me,” she vowed, her intent as sharp and as certain as a blade.
The magic snapped. The contract bound itself.
And Rosalie was hurtling once more through space.
She felt the moment when the boundary between planes was crossed.
All those times she said she felt like she was running into an impenetrable wall, battering her body against it, in the futile hope of breaking it down?
Well, now she knew what that truly felt like, as she punched a hole for herself between realms.
Rosalie hit the ground full force, like she’d been thrown through the air by some kind of monster. Like she was falling off the Nether Brain, all over again, only not into water, but onto hard, uncaring land. She hugged the soul jar to her chest, curled her body around it protectively as she rolled and bounced inelegantly across the dirt.
No. Not the dirt, she realised, as she landed winded, and felt small sharpnesses digging into her back.
Pebbles.
A wind howled, with half the ferocity of Cania. A fine mist of cold rain coated Rosalie’s face and clothes in an instant, as she heard waves crash nearby.
She sat up with a groan, and opened her eyes, to behold the shoreline of Alaron.
“We made it,” she breathed.
The jar glimmered weakly in her arms. The glass unbroken. The light still there.
It was night-time, here on the material plane - but there was no moonlight to be found. Instead, dark clouds obscured the sky, and sheets of gentle rain were already soaking Rosalie through to the bone as she tried to stand. She was about twenty feet from the sea, which even this mild storm churned to night-black frenzy.
Every part of Rose's body felt bruised, and her head span as she finally straightened. Rose gently sat back down, placed the container between her crossed legs, and pulled a health potion out for herself. She immediately uncapped and downed it: a bitter, stringent tonic that was always too viscous for comfort. The dizziness abated. The cut on her hand healed. The rainwater slowly diluted the remaining blood to a pink stain on her skin.
This was not the northern shore, with the cliff-face, but the eastern shore, with its dunes. The land sloped up, into brush and pale sand. Her tower was just over the brow of the next hill.
“This is my home, Astarion. It’s called Alaron,” Rosalie told the jar, as she stood up, and started stiffly limping up the beach, in the direction of her house. “We, um, don’t need to go into the details. But once we cross onto my land, we’ll be safe there. It’s built on hallowed ground that’s warded against charm and teleportation - again, we don’t need to, um, go into- into why, but that’s why it spat us out here, a little beyond the wards…”
Her body was aching. The jar didn’t feel dense anymore, but lugging it up the beach was still a struggle, particularly as the gradient increased and she began trudging up the first dune. Holding it by the handle felt too precarious, but she wanted a hand free for spellcasting, so she simply hugged it into her waist.
“I’m… just... I'm going to contact Shadowheart again,” she told the jar, with a small huff of exertion. Her clothing was now heavy, clinging to her - her hair was flat and she was sodden to the bone. “The tower has defences. If we hole ourselves in, we’ll be protected. Then we'll get someone, maybe the simulacrum... no jokes now, she’s like a piece of furniture, and I haven’t done anything too sordid with your body double. I'll get her to bring me my books, and then we'll put a stop to everything. The quicker I get you back into your body, the quicker we can-”
Rosalie dragged her sorry self over the crest of the next hill.
The building's familiar, slender silhouette was there, just ahead of them. The wizard’s tower stood just over three-quarters of a mile away. A pale gravel track winnowed its way up the verge, to the higher ground where the tower sat, near the edge of the cliff-face.
And in the vicinity of the close, dim halo of light cast by Astarion’s soul, the pale, confused face of the Vampire Ascendent loomed large.
Notes:
"oh, jarstarion, we're really in it now"
Chapter Notes
- The flashback is not Honest Lie compliant - don't worry, I promise I wouldn't do that to you (I say, having done it to you here)
- I imagine that someone's back-alley teleportation spell that still manages to yeet people across planes must have some drawbacks. Like yeah, you can yeet yourself between planes. But you're going to be conscious for every single second and every single one of the Horrors.
- The spell is sort of a Chekhov's gun situation, but then asks the fun question: "what if Chekhov's gun had two bullets?"
- I had a lot of fun learning about the Nine Hells' geography/topology for this description of a bird's eye view of Cania. If anyone is interested, this is a really cool drawing of what the Hells canonically look like!
- Apologies to anyone who was hoping Astarion would be able to talk while he was a jar :((((( I did consider it, but some of the plot didn't work if he could communicate his side of the story, at this point in time. Shout out to @TimeKnife for suggesting the light should know Morse Code, but alas. The soul didn't even know Infernal :(((((
Chapter 19: Chapter Nineteen
Notes:
Alright guys, here we are. Take a deep breath. Trust me, ok? I love you all. I'll see you on the other side.
(content warnings are spoilers, so have been placed in bold in the endnote)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
There was an almost comical moment, when the two of them just blinked at each other, beholding the last thing it seemed either of them expected to see.
Rosalie thought she’d escaped him. The Ascendent clearly had no fucking clue where he was, until suddenly, she provided the context. Rosalie would think, later, that all he'd had to guide him was the scent of her.
That small moment of confusion was the only thing that bought Rose her survival.
The Ascendent opened its mouth to speak, and she cast Dimension Door.
She flung herself higher up the path, in one frantic moment. But doing so told her how much the Teleportation spell, and her magical grapple with Hells' laws, had cost her. Her magic was significantly depleted: enough to keep fighting, but not enough to use indefinitely. She saw then, that she would have to become extremely strategic.
Getting over the bounds of her home would protect her from charm. She had to hope that, at least: the ground had been hallowed, against fey but therefore also fiends and the undead, consecrated by something more divine than the wax seal on a potion bottle. By hands more powerful, even than her own. Rose had to pray that would be enough to counteract the second bite, for otherwise there was literally nothing she could do. She did not have access to Silence, and one more bite would mark her end.
Instead of another costly teleportation, Rose cast Expeditious Retreat on herself, and started running.
Rain coursed down her face, getting in her eyes and plastering her hair to her neck, as Rosalie sprinted at inhuman speed. The light of the soul bounced and lit up the path from where she was hugging it to her chest. She didn’t dare summon her staff, for fear it would all become too ungainly. Behind her, she heard nothing. That, of course, meant nothing. Those days marvelling at how silent Astarion was on his feet: she cursed them all now, as this wraith pursued her without a whisper.
But she had a head start. She knew the route, and the terrain. Yet even the magic coursing through her did not make her as fast as she would’ve liked. If the Ascendent got close enough to charm her again-
Gravel shifted, somewhere behind her.
Still running, Rosalie turned her head. A white shape, in her periphery - a blur of movement. He was wearing dark clothes, but at least he’d always be visible, because of his stupid hair. So long as he didn’t get close enough to speak-
With a breathless shout, Rosalie cast Scorching Ray, flinging the three bolts desperately into the night. She heard a shriek, barely human, as at least one caught, and then she kept running, widening the distance between the two of them.
“We’ll be ok,” she chanted, to the jar. “We’ll be ok, we’ll be ok, we’ll be ok-”
The boundaries of her house's grounds loomed ahead - the perimeter was a low stone wall, reclaimed by Alaron’s wilderness, crawling with knotted weeds and ivy. Her home was, in some ways, like Astarion’s mansion - rebuilt among ruins. Only she hadn’t tried to erase that history, the battles that had been fought and lost on this ground. The low wall was entirely decorative: in places, it had lapsed and crumbled with age. Rosalie hadn’t tried to rebuild them - she was already so isolated here on Alaron, that adding another fortification had felt like a loaded metaphor, even for her.
Besides - it wasn’t and never was the stone that would protect her. Alaron was so steeped in magic, especially here. The power in the earth rendered physical defences a secondary consideration.
Rosalie picked up her pace, seeing the safety of home within reach. But the ground was uneven. In her haste, she tripped and fell to her knees. Her first thought was for the soul jar. She curled her body and fell further, forgoing catching herself on her hands so that the container’s blow was softened. Any bump, or even light knock, could risk the glass being ruptured.
If the glass broke, then the soul inside was potentially lost.
Rose scrabbled out of the wet dirt. There was grit in her mouth that she spat out, as well in her palms and her elbows. Luckily, though it was now covered in grey, chalky mud, her suit was enchanted with spells bought by Wyll’s coin, and didn’t rip. She felt a warm splash of blood at her temple, mixing with the rainwater to spill across her face in rivulets.
She was still on her knees, the jar pressed into her chest so that her whole body covered it, when she heard another intake of breath behind her. Not readying a movement, but a command-
Rose flung a weak Magic Missile: simple, but effective, as always. In the time the spell took to cast, she picked up the jar and starting running again. The blows hit in a quick, plosive succession behind her, winding the Ascendent and stealing away whatever words he’d been about to use against her.
Rosalie heard a horrible, frustrated snarl - closer now than before - and dared to waste another powerful spell.
A brief burst of Telekinesis flung her over the boundary of her estate, clearing the four foot wall. She threw herself through the air like she weighed nothing, and closed that desperate scrap of distance that kept her from safety.
She tried to land on both feet, but cried out as her bad knee buckled on impact. She dropped to her haunches in the softer, grassier dirt, clinging to the jar as pain rocked her whole leg.
“You will stay still, you will submit, and you - will - listen!” bellowed the Ascendent from somewhere behind her. Rosalie assumed the demand was charmed, for his voice held expectation of being obeyed.
Rosalie froze, the jar still clutched to her chest.
But… nothing.
Rose laughed to herself, breathlessly. Nothing grand happened - no fireworks, no pyrotechnics. But it was as Halsin had promised, when she’d asked him to survey the property and the strange magics that emanated here: the land allowed none to fall under yoke. The chalk of these cliffs kept spells preserved like they were fossils, and yet was porous enough that any curse or hex was rinsed away with the rain.
Gods be praised, this home on Alaron was worth every gold piece she had paid for it! It had druidic and clerical magics woven into the roots of its every tree, and every grain of soil. Rose had first encountered the ruin on her adventures, for it was the site of a long-fallen stronghold against the fey presence that haunted the island. Here, the fey were what that plagued people’s nightmares - but hallowed ground was indiscriminate, when it came to the monsters it could safeguard against.
While it was easy enough to repurpose, Rosalie had found something intensely reassuring about a ruin, that warded specifically against creatures who worked through charm. That was why she’d asked for this dilapidated tower as her reward. She'd wanted to make her home here.
And secure now in her autonomy, she found herself able to stand. Her knee quivered, shaking under her, but she managed to turn in place.
The Ascendent was staring at her from across the boundary of the wall, waiting for her to obey.
“What are you?” Rose demanded angrily, through the rain. “I’d accuse you of being some sick, sad, twisted kind of fuck, holding your own soul hostage, but I don’t think it’s ever actually been yours. So… what are you, then?! A devil? A demon, who snuck in through the cracks? Your obsession with control suggests the former, but your ability to ruin everything you touch makes me think you must hold a singular love for oblivion.”
The Ascendent’s face was livid, through the gloom. It did not answer her.
“Is this fun, for you?” she shrieked, gesturing between them with her free hand, “Why won’t you just leave us alone!”
Leave me alone, she thought. Yet she worried Astarion’s soul had suffered far worse at the Ascendent's hands, than she ever had.
After all, it loved her.
“You know I can’t do that,” the Ascendent replied in its low, warning voice. “I don’t want to hurt you… but you’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to you, precious."
It took a step forward. The wounds from her previous spells were already almost gone, small blemishes on otherwise flawless skin that mismatched the char and staining on its suit.
“Haven’t you heard?!” Rose screamed at him, gripping the jar tighter. “I claimed this soul, and all of Cania witnessed it. This is mine, now.”
The Ascendent paused, mid-step.
Emotion passed, fleetingly, across its face.
It reached up. Dredged dripping, rain-sodden curls back from its forehead. And by the time Rose could see its face again, all that emotion was gone.
“Truly?” it murmured in Astarion’s voice, incredulous, with the ghost of a laugh. It gestured to the jar. “You would take that, over me? You would choose that?”
Rosalie was trembling. She didn’t deign to respond.
“We are seeing the same thing, aren’t we...?” the Ascendent said sinuously, and he was in movement again, stepping forward gracefully. “That weak, piteous, maudlin waste of a soul-”
“- Don’t you dare,” Rose started venomously.
But still, it kept talking, head tilted at an amused angle.
“-the last spark of a sullied coward, who, when given the choice to risk a little of himself or slaughter thousands, chose to kill them all without thought!? And then, proved too stupid to even get that right-”
“- You shut your fucking mouth!”
“- You used to kill the people that slaughtered thousands, didn't you, Rosalie? You begrudged me less than a hundred lives. You’ve put people to the knife for even holding ambitions so bold, and you told yourself that was what made you righteous, as you killed them. Now, you've decided the rules change? Not for me, but for…” he sneered, “that?”
“- He didn’t - I-I didn’t - It was me, I was the one who-”
“Oh.... little love,” the Ascendent sounded sincerely heartbroken. “Look at you, you poor thing. You carry so much guilt, so needlessly - all to avoid admitting the awful, cruel truth we both already share. All this pain you carry for him. But… he didn’t so much as look at you, when it happened, did he now?”
Rosalie took a breath, faltered. She… she couldn’t remember. That day had been so terrible, and everything that had come after was so much worse. She’d all but erased-
“I know, of course,” continued the Ascendent. “I remember. The most beautiful woman in all the realms, and he didn’t spare you so much as a glance. You're so precious to me, my love, that my gaze never wavers. Yet he knew he couldn’t bear to look at you hurt by him, or weather your disappointment... and that was all the thought he spared for you, my darling, before he left. Like the selfish, pathetic little wretch he is.”
No. Surely Astarion had looked at her. Rose was certain. Half her nightmares were of her catching his eye, in those final moments before he was gone forever.
But all she could remember now was the blood, and Cazador's screams.
“...Tell me, why would you ever choose him, little love? When, from what I can tell, he didn’t ever, ever choose you.”
Rose knew she should yell something else insulting. But breathless fury gave way, briefly, to breathless pain. She didn’t know if she felt it for herself, or for Astarion - what if he could hear all of this?
What if he heard her, now, as she fumbled?
“You would pick a small, meaningless speck of light that won’t rally itself for you, that can’t even speak for itself, that you don’t know can be revived,” the Ascendent said, before placing its hand on its chest. “Over the living, breathing man, that loves you? ...Exactly what is it that you're chasing, Rosalie? One last hope? An ending that you think will erase all the pain he’s dealt you? Do you think you will ever have anything real or true, with him, ever again - after all he's done?”
Rosalie thought longingly of the Wish text, thousands of miles away in the Gate - and then one demiplane over, for good measure.
“Do you even know if you can get it? Will you really kill yourself, trying? What has he ever done to earn that kind of loyalty, from you?”
The thing was, she had all the ingredients she needed, here: Astarion’s soul, his body, and whatever foetid monster resided within, and still... it wasn’t enough. Not without the spell. Even if she protected the soul successfully - if she killed the Ascendent now - then she’d just have to wait again. Until all the factors fortuitously aligned, another time over, in circumstances no doubt even less favourable that this, because the monster would have more time to prepare.
And even then, if it all went perfectly... if she got everything right... if she could face this beast again, and live... she still couldn’t cast the fucking spell-
Her resolve wavered, visibly. The Ascendent caught hold of it, and tugged.
“I’m stood right here, darling! You already have me!” he murmured, gently, with a conspiratorial smile, and a hand over his heart. It was Astarion’s voice he used. “Why must you make things so hard for yourself? Are you now so far from knowing happiness, that you’ve learned to love only suffering? Are you truly so scared, to let yourself once again know peace?”
Rosalie’s mind flashed back to the palace in Cania, and the definition of peace that resided therein.
“Even if you freed him, whatever little plan you’ve got brewing in your head… will it be worth it? That man might not even love you anymore. He didn't show you love, in the end,” the Ascendent said, insidious as rot. “But I love you. I stayed. That wasn’t him. That was me.”
“...Why do you even care?” Rosalie shouted, doubling over with the volume of it, unable to help herself. She was just so tired, and sad, and lost, and exhausted. “Like you say, you’re not him! I’m nothing to you! We owe each other nothing! So I’m miserable - why the fuck do you care!?”
The Ascendent was at the wall.
Maybe Alaron’s defences would keep it at bay.
“Oh, my darling...” the Ascendent said quietly, sounding exquisitely sorry for her all over again. “I’m the only one who cares.”
He placed his hand on the wall, and vaulted it in a silent, fluid motion.
“I was what survived,” he told her, feet landing without a sound on the grass.
There was nothing. No change, to signal the violation of everything Rose held dear.
“I was what was born,” it told her, “out of love for you. He was gone. He left. I knew you’d be alone. So… utterly alone…”
Now in her home, now on her land, now walking towards her. And Rosalie felt unable to move, as if the charmed command had truly held. But it hadn’t-
She was just terrified.
“I’m what will satisfy you,” the Ascendent said, holding all the solemnity of a vow. “I’m the only thing that can protect you. I will make it, so that you never shed a tear again, over him or anyone else. He already left you, once, Rosalie. When you were younger, and kinder, and so bright - so very brave. And don’t forget… it was all his choice. Can you really trust him, with what you are now?”
Rosalie swallowed, clutching the jar closer into her chest, almost childishly. The Ascendent was now close enough, to reach out his hand. As if he expected her to hand Astarion over to him, trusting in her compliance.
“That’s what freedom means, you horrid, parasitic little nightmare,” Rosalie replied, with as much strength as she could give to her wavering, choked voice. "He can choose to leave me, if he wants, and I can choose to spit in your face, until the day you finally fucking kill me. I mean, at this point, I’ve seen your library, so I think I get the gist-”
She placed her hand to the monster’s hollow chest, felt its heartbeat, and cast Chain Lightning.
Both them were rain drenched, and soaked. The Ascendent howled in agony, as Rosalie ground all her magic through him, and didn’t bother letting it spread out to anywhere else. She wanted to make this creature feel as much pain as she did already, until the smell of burning monster was on her tongue - and then she pushed more, because despite its promise, she was not satisfied.
“Do you think it even matters, what happens when he's back?” she demanded of the beast, teeth gritted as she watched the pain take it. “I don’t fucking care! I love him.”
The Ascendent couldn’t reply. Its vacant body stayed rictus, tensing and spasming on the current that raced through its muscles and across its skin. Rosalie took the opportunity before her, tightened her grip on the jar, and started running once more.
If the hallowed ground couldn’t stop the Ascendent, it wasn't ideal, but it was fine. It was good that it stopped the charm effect. That was close enough to an advantage, here in the grounds of a home Rose had built to protect herself.
Rosalie was an anxious individual - it was very rare for anything she did, to actually hit each facet of the thousands of contingencies she’d concocted. So her chest actually warmed, a little bit, when she thought of every single trap and magical protection in her Alaron home, that she could tell, at the time, had made Gale worried, thinking she was planning for some kind of Doomsday-
Well, she thought, steeling herself for a siege as she sprinted towards the doors, who’s paranoid no-
A force tackled her from behind.
The soul jar tumbled out of her grasp, as her spine was bowed inwards and she was crushed into the dirt. With the remaining air in her lungs, Rosalie shouted a Mage Hand into existence, that caught the jar before it fell. It was too heavy for it to hold, but the cupped Hand cushioned then slowed the fall, so the container hit the ground at a roll. Fearing the Ascendent would chase it, Rose immediately cast Levitate to raise it up into the air, out of his reach. But instead, claws buried themselves into the knot of her damp hair and wrenched her head back, breaking the line of sight, even as she held concentration.
The Ascendent wrestled her over onto her back in the mud. Rosalie tried to Misty Step, but he stopped her hands: she cast Chill Touch instead, and watched as the unnatural cold roiled through the Ascendent the way it would a normal undead, dealing it pain and interrupting its healing. That’s good, she thought, in a detached part of her mind, which also thought: that’s information. This intel about the Ascendent would be useful, when she eventually used Wish to return Astarion's soul to his body.
She readied another spell. She thought the Ascendent would simply try to bite her - that was what it always wanted, wasn’t it? And gods knew she smelt like blood, by this point.
But instead, its eyes drifted upwards and over her, to where the soul was held aloft, just out of reach…
…Then, it looked back down.
“I’m sorry, love,” the Ascendent said, meeting her eyes from where she lay her underneath its body. “One day, you’ll understand.”
Fangs bared, it back-handed her across the face.
Then, it did it again.
The force of its blows was blinding: Rosalie had taken some hits in her time, but gods. The third swipe raked at her face, with claws. She bit her own tongue with the momentum, the reverberation of pain around her skull. But with grim intent, she held onto the Levitation spell, through the stars that speckled her vision. When she blinked them away, she saw the Ascendent was not even looking at her, but glaring at the jar, as if this was somehow it’s fault.
It’s trying to break my concentration, she realised.
Good fucking luck. - she’d held onto spells through fucking dragon’s breath, never mind domestic abuse.
She raised her hand as it was distracted, to cast another spell. Something bigger - she tried, muzzily, to gauge her own reserves of magic. But it seemed the blows to the head were worse than anticipated, because she couldn't make the calculations, and she took too long to make the judgement call. The Ascendent’s eyes were on her again, and the window of opportunity was almost gone.
It looked almost… apologetic.
And even as she cast a Shocking Grasp through the Ascendent’s body, Rosalie knew it had let her do it.
A dagger was suddenly in its hand.
“I was trying to be kind,” it said, “but perhaps it is kinder, to merely be quick. We’ll be able to heal you up soon enough, anyway.”
It plunged the blade down on her.
Ha! Rose thought, fuck you! This suit is fucking armour! Wyll got it enchanted-
But then, she felt the sharpness; the wet rent in her belly. In the struggle, the buttons of her jacket had loosened, and the front of it had fallen open - to the plain, mundane shirt underneath.
The precision of Astarion’s strikes had not changed. As soon as Rosalie registered what had actually happened, in the space between blinks, the pain assailed her. The jar tumbled out of the air. Even as Rosalie felt the dagger leave her flesh, that was all she could look at, as it fell from the height she’d raised it to.
It landed, with a dull thud, onto the soft, wet mud, just five feet short of the tower’s threshold, and the nearby paving stones that would have spelt its end.
There was... no sound of glass breaking.
It was unharmed. The contraption was fragile, but the rain had churned the earth of Alaron to a soft bed for it to land on.
Rosalie felt herself laugh, incredulously. It hurt, to do so. But she was just so fucking unused to luck falling down on her side. The Ascendent was above her, crescent blade dripping with her own blood, and Rose saw the moment when it realised that the awful thing it had just done... had achieved nothing. The soul remained in tact.
It's mine to protect, some part of her said.
And the Hellish Rebuke rose out of her, without Rose even registering that she’d summoned the spell.
A large gout of ice blue flame exploded out of her in a blaze of blinding light. It was more powerful than any Hellish Rebuke she had ever summoned in the past: Rosalie didn’t really use that spell anymore, and she certainly hadn’t had it tabbed in her spellbook, in years. More fool her, it seemed: the force of it sent the Ascendent reeling back.
The smell was not of flame, or char, or even sulphur - but that cold, sharp sting of the air in the first breath of a frostbitten day, coating the throat.
In that brief moment of disorientation where the light blinded them both and wounded the Ascendent, Rosalie simply… kicked him. It was like kicking one of those statues in its palace, but fuck it, she thought, and used the same technique that had got him with the poker: turning time itself to her cause, and cheating the shit out of the situation.
The blow hit a weak point, leaving a muddy footprint on his beautiful clothes. Or perhaps the Infernal magic had proven itself effective: the Ascendent lurched back, just enough for his weight to shift, and for Rose to shimmy out from under him. As Rosalie twisted her body to face the jar, she felt warm blood spill out of her stomach. She clutched a hand to herself, and leveraged herself forward, somehow. Onto her knees, onto her feet, as she half-ran, half-crawled, in the direction of Astarion's soul-
The Ascendent recovered, regaining its footing in the mud. Licks of blue flame still clung to the outline of its form, crawling up his shoulders. He started moving as well, racing her for it-
Rosalie’s hand - the one that was not bloodied - closed around the jar. She watched as blood smeared on the glass anyway, a thumbprint of red rendered translucent, as the light inside shone through. The rain immediately began to wash it away - the entire case was slick with rainwater, and that meant her hand slipped as she tried to get a proper grasp of the handle.
Rose saw the light inside flicker, like a flutter of butterfly wings.
And then the Ascendent wrenched the jar from her.
Before her grip could tighten. Before she could get a hold on it, to resist.
Before she could cast.
The Ascendent wrenched the jar from away from Rosalie… then raised its hand, as it had with the dagger. Without even a look to spare for the soul inside, it flung the container down onto the stone steps that led up to Rosalie’s door, with its superhuman strength, and its savagery.
The metal frame of the soul jar held.
Each glass pane shattered, into a thousand pieces.
Rosalie screamed-
-As the soul inside was lost.
…Time took on the quality of a nightmare. Maybe it was the bloodloss.
“-You don't get him!” The Ascendent was shouting at the top of his lungs. Stood over her. Gesturing wildly. “He doesn't get you! He doesn't deserve you - don't you see? What did he ever do, to earn you? When did he ever try for you, the way I have tried? I'm the one who fought for us: I am what you made me. I am every word you made me follow. I am what you watched me become. You were the first thing I saw, and you will be the last thing I ever see. I did everything, all of it, all of this, for you!”
Rosalie wasn’t listening. She barely heard the creature's words, over the roaring in her ears.
Her vision tunnelled to the ruined mess in front of her. She forgot about the stab wound she hadn’t bothered to look at, yet. She leveraged herself barely out of the mud, then threw herself forward onto the path. Past the roaring monster.
Anything to close the distance.
Glass bit into her palms. Then rough stone, underneath her fingers. Rose knelt amongst the shards of glass, watching in horror as the light the jar had once held fought to stay bound together. It struggled to retain its shape, as if it was still confined to its prison…
…And then, started to fracture. Spool apart, and drift upwards.
Disappear.
Fade. First to a pale shadow of that gleaming white light. Then, to a vapour. Melting away, like dew in the first light of the sun.
I’ve failed, Rosalie thought, dully. Again.
The Ascendent was still railing at her. Who cared what it had to say? She tried to cup her bloody hands around the residual light of Astarion's soul. Maybe she could hold it together somehow, like it was a candle flame she could shelter and protect.
Yet, it evaded touch. She couldn’t hold onto something that was no longer there.
Rosalie imagined that she felt heat kiss her fingertips, briefly, but she was certain that was all it was: her imagination. Yet, she tried to scorch that memory, however fickle, into her brain. She knew she needed to do that now, this time around. She'd need these scraps to hold onto, in the years ahead of her.
For once again, Astarion was gone.
Rosalie looked up at the Ascendent, from her place on the ground. She was lost. She could feel her heart breaking again, but on some level she was simply unable to comprehend it.
“You’re not alone,” it was telling her. Rosalie saw its mouth, in its cruel, beautiful face, moving, and couldn’t raise her hands against it, because its face was his.
“You’ll never be alone, I promise you. I’m here. It’s a good thing - you’ll see. One day, you'll understand. What could he give you? I walk in daylight. I breathe, I live. My heart beats, for you, and only for you. Once we are together, we will never know pain or death again. I’m the most powerful man in all the realms, and I will never let anything hurt you. When the Rite birthed me, I was so lost. It took me so long to find my purpose: too long. I know that now. But I understand why - it was because I didn’t have you. All of this, from the ritual to now, was for you. The pain will be less, for us both, now that I know how to fix it.”
Gods. Maybe it would be easier, to just give in. A decade of struggling, for this. Rosalie blinked up at her monster, wondering if she even had the energy to summon, for a fight to the death. She would lose, it would kill her, and then it would simply bring her back.
Would it be easier? To have company? Could she deny herself that, again - consign herself to this loneliness, not just for a few years, but for her entire life?
And, maybe, as a husk of herself, she simply wouldn’t feel anything. Maybe… that was best. She’d thought the pain of grief came close to killing her, the first time. But this pain was already so much more, as her final hope died, along with Astarion. As Rose saw herself once again proved useless - no longer accountable for one accidental lapse in judgement, but a catastrophic, decade-long failure.
Every effort she had made: meaningless.
And oh, how she had ruined herself, to survive. The first time.
She couldn’t do it again. She just couldn’t. It would be the same as letting this beast sink its teeth into her neck, drain her and turn her. There’d be nothing left.
She refused.
“No,” Rosalie whispered. It wasn't an answer to any of the Ascendent's declaration. It was merely all she could summon: a refusal, of this reality.
Something crystallised inside her. Precipitated, and became sharp.
“...No!” Rosalie said again, tears forming in her eyes and a roar emanating from her throat.
The scream in her voice was ragged and raw. So animalistic that, for a moment, it was Rose that was the monster.
And something snapped.
No, not snapped:
Snagged.
A single moment, frozen in time: Rosalie, looking into the face of the strange, lost creature that had killed the man she loved, and made her watch, twice.
The monster looking back, with that same lost, uncomprehending expression: unable to understand why it, alone, wasn’t enough.
...What was the use of all this power, if it wasn’t enough?
And then the magic left Rose’s body… and Wish took.
Maybe it was the stab wound.
Rosalie swore, that all she did was blink. And once she did, she was no longer kneeling. She was face down, cheek pressed into the wet dirt. Glass from the soul jar embedded near her eye. Grit flooding her mouth.
The rain was still falling.
She blinked again, and lost more time.
That happened again, and again. Rain blurred to water, the chalky grey puddles to the sea. In her sluggish mind, reality bent out of shape. She was drowning in an ocean, trying desperately to fight a riptide, and all that happened was she became subsumed by the current. Dragged under.
In another one of those periods of lucidity, she tried to leverage herself up from the ground. But - though there was pain, tearing through her midsection - something else happened, and everything was darkness again. She tried to call out, before it took her.
Movement.
Someone turned her onto her back. Someone placed a hand to her skull and lifted her head out of the mud. Responding or fighting their hold would require effort, and Rosalie had no effort to give.
“-n you hear me?” came a voice, through the dark.
Let me rest, she begged silently. There’s no point anymore. Let it be over. Please, I’m just so tired.
But the world was cruel - it was always so cruel. And so she felt someone lift her up in their arms, as the motion caused her to black out again.
...Rosalie caught ahold of time, long enough for it to start making sense. Someone was cursing. The sound of a door latch, and then Rosalie realised it must be her house they were trying to get into, because the trap was triggered, and a plume of magic exploded all around them.
“Sweet… fucking… gods - seriously?! On every door?” came a voice from over her. Someone was on their knees, hunched protectively around her body. There was a smell of burning.
And Rosalie realised: Astarion was the one holding her.
…She didn’t want him holding her. He was a monster.
Rosalie tried to fight the current. She had to. She needed to get away.
She came back to herself, gasping, and then shouting in pain, as the sheer agony threatened to pull her under again.
No, she thought. Then again, with fury: no.
She opened her eyes.
Astarion looked back at her.
He was as he had been before: blood-drenched. Beautiful. So very, very sorry for her.
Rosalie tried to focus on him. She couldn’t. Her vision kept drifting, and it was already bleeding ink at the edges.
But something about his eyes was different.
“...Foxglove?” he said, once.
His voice was so utterly wretched.
And then, the world went black.
Notes:
What's a final girl, without her monster?
Oh boy, guys, I can't describe how NERVOUS I am, posting this one. This scene has been with me, from the very beginning. I hope I do it justice, and that this chapter leaves you feeling like sticking with me for all this time may end up being worth it :) Thank you for all your patience and feedback - you support is what has gotten me to this point! :)
Anyway, I do Act 3s a little differently than Larian - who needs to be fighting for their lives, right until the final second? Maybe people should be allowed to rest and process what's happened to them, instead.
I'm more than a little excited for what comes next :)
Chapter Notes
- While it may seem convenient for me to have pulled hallowed ground from my ass at the last second, Rosalie's house in Alaron was always imagined to be a ruin to compliment Astarion's, and it was always imagined to be on hallowed ground designed to defend from the fey! (not for any reason, I just like feywild lore, that's where my D&D game is set and why not have all my favourite D&D things in one fic!) That's actually why I ended moving the final conflict here, rather than the other way round :)
- To the person who mentioned in a comment that they wanted to see a clutch divination roll used... is it bad that it was for initiative? :') (also the kick, but mostly... initiative).
- Rogue sneak attack is a love language, until it isn't.
- For anyone who has been keeping tabs, although she's stressed about her magic reserves, Rosalie still had a 9th level spellslot within her. She cast True Polymorph using an arcane battery (favourite BG3 mechanic, loved spamming Disintegrates), so... it was just everything else that was starting to run low.
- I don't know how people will feel about my use of Wish. I know it might be a little different than some people conceived of, in their heads. At my end, the lesson for the character to learn was that sometimes you need to act, rather than dither yourself to inaction, exactly as Rosalie did the first time round with the Rite of Profane Ascension.
-I have this little headcanon that Wish is the only high level spell that doesn't come through theory or intense study, but through some innate understanding of your own magic, your own power, and your own intent, which is why it stumps wizards so hard!! They are used to studying something to death and that being where they get their power from - a spell that relies on 'vibes' would probably utterly stump them!
-This was the reason why Hemlock has been so thoroughly amused with Rosalie, this entire time. Like yeah you need to be careful with the wording of this spell (truth), but I'll keep telling you you need to be careful because the more careful you think you need to be the less likely it is you will ever learn this spell at all (hot lady machination).
- Wish produces extreme exhaustion/physical toll on the caster when used for any effect other than duplicating another spell: "After enduring that stress, each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest, you take 1d10 necrotic damage per level of that spell. This damage can’t be reduced or prevented in any way. In addition, you Strength drops to 3 if it isn’t 3 or lower already, for 2d4 days."
- All this being said, I do stand by the idea that Wish has consequences, I don't want you to think that that plot point entirely just to lead you astray! Who knows if there will be consequences? Who knows if the conditions of this Wish were viable enough for it to go through smoothly? Who knows what the Ascendent was ranting about? Who knows why he was pulled to Alaron? Much to ponder.
(Edit: dont worry this is where the happy ending starts happening but also answers will come in time!)
- And if I say it once, I'll say it a thousand times!!! Foxgloves are in this fic but they! must! be! earned!!
Content warnings for this chapter: physical abuse - it's called out as domestic violence adjacent, major character death (but only temporarily!! I'm sorry!!)
Chapter 20: Chapter Twenty
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Rosalie was having trouble with time. It kept slipping out from her grasp.
She was so heavy. So tired. Her body was shut down and uncooperative - it felt like drowning in wet linen. There was this constant feeling of falling - sickening, sudden drops, as she drifted in and out of fretful dreams that placed reality into a lurch.
Sleep kept reclaiming her. Rosalie would’ve let it - would’ve just given in - were it not for an instinct that told her to keep fighting.
…But maybe his face had been a dream, as well?
Rosalie needed to know for certain.
“-ealth potions?” came a voice out of the dark. “-ling, do you have any health potions?”
Someone shook her. Gently, but there was already so much pain. Rosalie felt so sick with sensation that she moaned.
The potions were in the house. But that thought opened up like petals on a flower, folding out and out upon itself in an endless whirl: her tower, to Gale’s tower, to Shadowheart’s home, to the Magnificent Mansion, to a burning, destroyed Ramazith, to a spotless white palace now as dark as the deep sea. Until Rosalie was not where the original thought had been at all.
Astarion. she thought. It was the only thing she seemed to be able to pull herself back to.
…But had it even been real?
“...I’m here,” came a voice.
And even if it wasn’t real - even if this was all still a dream - that almost made the words easier to say.
“Please… don’t leave,” Rosalie said, through a mouth that felt like it was full of syrup, full of cotton. It was a struggle, to say something coherent, but she would try. “Know you want… to run. But… not your fault. Just please… don-go.”
More time lost. She let out a cry of frustration, wishing she could break free of this new prison.
“-ave your breath, darling, you’re not well-”
“Please don’t leave me!” Rosalie said, as emphatically as she could, before she was pulled back under.
The next time she roused - who knew when exactly that was - it was to a horrible crash.
Rose tried to turn herself over, but her body still felt so burdensome. It was like she was locked inside herself, or cut off from from her body entirely.
Another crash.
“-Stop! It’s me!” A voice cut through her consciousness, but it didn’t seem to be shouting at her.
“Oh, I know very fucking well who you fucking are-!”
That was Shadowheart.
There was a shuffling, some clattering of armour. Astarion cursed. Rose heard a sizzling sound.
“-Fuck! Ow! Stop! No! As in, it’s me!” Astarion was saying. “Not the other one. Me! I called you here. There was this… this servant thing, just dusting, and it couldn’t talk, but it found me this whole room - this whole series of controls in the wall, and I just started pressing buttons! I’m not about to murder you, or take over the world, or - or - or cackle- I swear. Just, would you please listen-”
Rosalie shifted… or the dream shifted. Perhaps this was all a dream, while her body turned itself. While the world burned. It felt too close to what she wanted to be real.
The voices were closer, next time. “-Foxglove… something happened. I woke up - as in, I woke up - and she was on the ground. And since, I haven’t been able to rouse her. I don’t know what’s happening. I got her to keep some water down, I fed her a health potion - do you know she keeps her cellars like we’re tadpoled, still? But it’s been nearly a day-”
“This is all a very convincing act, but you’re in the daylight,” Shadowheart said. Rosalie’s imagination conjured her with adequate suspicion in her voice.
“Look,” Astarion said, exasperated. “Just because the lights are on and somebody is now home, doesn’t mean that all the renovations didn’t magically not happen!”
“...Why are you talking about yourself like you’re a house?”
There was a long beat of silence.
“If it’s you,” said Shadowheart, bitingly, “really you… could you please call off your fucking spawn?"
“I… What?”
“They are still attacking Ramazith as we speak.” Shadowheart said crisply. “Burning themselves up in the sun, only to fall on blades, and all of it for you. On the orders you gave them.”
“Oh, I, well… shit. What do I - um - do I need to, like, be there? Or do you think, if I just say them to the air…?”
“Well, I don’t fucking know, do I?!” Shadowheart said. “Why don’t you try?”
Astarion made a noise, and this was when Rosalie started to wish this was real. It was the sound he’d used to make, theatrical and disgusted, and meandering through a whole octave, whenever anything caused him a minor inconvenience. She hadn’t heard it, exactly like that, in ten years.
Had she even remembered what it sounded like, enough to imagine it all over again in perfect detail?
Stay, she thought, either to herself or to him, as she slipped-
Light flared across her vision. Blinding. An eyelid pulled back.
“Oh, fuck,” Shadowheart was speaking. Was this the same moment, or a different one? Her friend was closer. Her voice was loud. “Oh fuck.”
“Is it... is it bad? It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“It’s a spell fugue,” Shadowheart sounded dazed, disbelieving. “She’s in a fucking spell fugue. Fuck. She. Fuck. She did it. She really did it! You really are you!”
“Did what? What did she do? What spell? And if you didn’t believe me, why would you-”
“I thought you’d turned her, and something had gone wrong.”
“Why on earth would I-”
“And if you hadn’t done it yet, I was going to kill you.”
“...Oh. Well. That would be… deserved.”
“You have no idea,” Shadowheart replied, flatly, and Rosalie felt a night-cool touch on her forehead, at the pulse in her wrist. “But no, she’s just feeling the effects of altering reality a little. It’s spell fugue: the symptoms are acute and severe, more developed than usual, but then, she made me do my research as well, and this is all documented as a potential side effect.”
“Side effect of what?”
“Of bringing you back. That's what she's been working for, this whole time.”
“I'm the reason she's like this?”
“That… surprises you? How much do you remember? Even if it's nothing since the Rite, you can’t exactly be shocked.”
There was no reply to this, and this made Rose sad, because it meant that he remembered something. She wished this dream couldn’t be a little kinder.
“What… what if she…?”
Shadowheart sighed. “She’s not going to die, she's just utterly exhausted. If things don’t shift within the next day, I’ll be worried, but until then we bide our time, monitor her vital… wait a second, was she stabbed?!”
“Yes. But the health potion dealt with-”
“Moon maiden guide me,” Shadowheart said, in a voice that was the Shadowheart equivalent of Astarion’s theatrical noise. “A health potion. For a stab wound.”
A chair scraping. Someone took a seat with a huff. Rosalie wondered where exactly she was.
“Do you need any h-”
“No,” Shadowheart said, “you’ve done enough, thank you.”
Stay… Rosalie thought, as she dived under again.
She imagined that someone held her hand.
When she finally woke, it took her a long time to realise that was what had happened. From the quality of the light, it was sunset. But her head felt so sticky, that consciousness was almost the same as unconsciousness. The golden hour light leaking in through the window also began to colour her dreams. Maybe she was drowsy. Her mouth felt dry. Each blink of her eyes seemed to take too long.
She was in her bedroom, in Alaron. Sweating through the covers on her four poster bed, with its canopy alight around her. The shimmering, translucent curtains had been pulled back. They were only just beginning to glow with the coming of the night: she had commissioned a seamstress to make them from a very special, very expensive material run through with bioluminescent thread, cultivated from a species of silk worm that only ate plants from the Underdark. Above that, the mural of the solar system, painted onto her ceiling. It was strange, to see it again, after all this-
Rosalie jolted, remembering what had led her here. She tried to sit herself up, but only managed to lift herself onto an elbow before she collapsed back into her clammy sheets. Her tongue felt too big for her mouth.
When no one immediately came to help her, she wondered if she was alone.
“Hello?” she shouted out, feeling vaguely pathetic. But at the very least, she’d eventually get Timothy. “Hello!”
There was a sound, from another room. Footsteps.
And Rosalie felt her heart fall through her chest… as Shadowheart entered the room.
The disappointment must have shown on her face, because Shadowheart gave her a pitying look.
“It's OK, he's here,” she said, gently. “He's just not, you know, here.”
“Did he… leave?”
Shadowheart stared at her for a long second. “No, Rose. He didn’t leave. I advised him to… get some air.”
Rosalie felt ill with hope.
“I - is h… is he-”
“If you ask me if he's alright, when you're literally bedridden, I'll be the one to bite you,” Shadowheart informed her blandly, as she walked over to the chair by the bed and plonked herself down into it. She looked as exhausted as Rose felt. “It's been nearly three days.”
“...Three days?” echoed Rose, sounding incredulous. Then she caught Shadowheart’s expression, and aimed for a weak grin. “Wow. That’s some spell, huh?”
And suddenly she was being jostled and crushed, wrenched up to an awkward angle in the bed, as Shadowheart bent over her and enveloped her in a massive hug.
“You crazy, stupid genius,” her friend told her, sounding equal parts frustrated and genuinely sincere. “You actually did it. I’m so very, very happy for you.”
Rosalie wrapped her arms around her friend with effort, burrowing her face into her shoulder. Shadowheart smelt like Rose’s own soap, so if there had been any death at Ramazith, it had already been washed off her.
“So it's real, then?” she asked, into Shadowheart’s shirt.
“Him being back? I think so,” Shadowheart told her gently. “I only want to kill him when he talks, and not on sight. So we’re back to the old days, it seems.”
“I don’t understand… I don’t remember how it happened,” Rosalie admitted. “The spell - I don’t even remember casting it. I didn’t have the book with me. I know I’ve studied it enough times, but I didn’t say any of the words. There was- I don’t know if he’s told you-”
“Oh, as I say, he’s been talking,” Shadowheart said in grim assessment, as she gently put Rose back down to the mattress and sat back in her chair. “Whether he’s been saying much of use, is a different question.”
Rosalie snorted a small laugh, and then was embarrassed by how wet and tear-logged it sounded towards the end. This was ridiculous. She couldn’t be getting emotional ahead of time. She hadn’t even seen him yet.
Rose saw Shadowheart watch her think as much, and so she said as an explanation: “It feels unreal. Like it’s all too good to be true. What could I have done, to deserve it, when I didn’t even-!”
“Rose,” Shadowheart cut her off. “From my understanding, you got stabbed.”
And so, Rosalie explained everything that had passed, as she remembered it - though she elided the terrible, cruel things the Ascendent had said. When she spoke it all aloud, she supposed she had worked for whatever strange resolution she was now confronted with. Only, it didn't take any of the work she was supposed to have done, and that was where her brain struggled.
“I can’t believe your travesty of a panic room ended up having a use,” Shadowheart said to her, when she reached the end of the story. “That’s where your servant took him to, you know. I got that awful automated Sending in my brain. You wouldn’t believe the look Karlach, Wyll, and I shared, when you test ran that feature. Gale proposed we all pay for you to go on a nice, long holiday.”
“...It wasn’t just for Astarion,” Rosalie found herself saying, defensively. “If there was ever another world-needs-saving situation, then I figured it would be good for us all to have a way to, um, muster the troops…”
“And you’d be the one to do that? Here in your backwater?” Shadowheart prompted, unconvinced.
“...Remind me again how my elaborate forward planning became instrumental in you finding me?”
“The attack on Ramazith had lulled,” Shadowheart told her. “It was daytime, which was doing most of our work for us, and we’d rested after we’d killed all the spawn still in the building. That makes Astarion’s future ethical quandaries easier, I suppose: we’ve thinned out the herd for him.”
“Was Hemlock…?”
“Oh, no, she was still stuck in the mansi- shit.”
“What?”
“We… did not recast said mansion,” replied Shadowheart, immediately burying her head in her hand. “We were tapped, not to mention a little busy.”
“Oh, dear,” Rosalie said faintly. The last few weeks, she’d been stepping from the doorway to a Tiny Hut, then back again in the last five seconds of the recast, in the hope that this evaded the Ascendent’s detections (it hadn’t, obviously - he’d known she was in Ramazith. But still, she was alive, so… win?) It had become a daily routine. Because if they didn’t, the house disappeared and everything in it got ejected, which meant-
“Welp,” Rose said. “That’s Hemlock gone, then.”
Shadowheart frowned. “She didn’t attack us, though. If she was still under orders…”
“But she would’ve been returned into the Material Plane after… um… after he was back,” said Rosalie. Her neck began itching, and she hastily added. “If he’s back, I mean. So she would’ve been elsewhere, when the order were given, and then-”
“He is back, Rose. In some form,” Shadowheart said, as gently as she could manage. “I mean, maybe you’ll know more than I, when you… but it seems, to me, like it’s him.”
They were quiet for a second.
“You didn’t knock yourself unconscious,” Shadowheart pointed out. “That was three days of spell fugue. Therefore, it stands to reason, that some kind of a spell was cast.”
“...And if it wasn’t him, I’d be brided by now,” Rosalie said in agreement, though she was mostly trying to reassure herself. “Three days unconscious, in this bed? Practically asking for it.”
“I was the one who changed your clothes,” Shadowheart offered, gesturing to the bandages around Rose’s waist, and her new cotton jimjams. “If you were… um. Wondering.”
Another beat of silence.
“...Shadowheart?”
“What is it?”
“...I really, really need the bathroom.”
Together, they lugged Rosalie’s uncooperative body from the bed, all the way to the ensuite. Rose had never resented her posh, fancy house more: even limping across that distance felt like an exercise in hubris, and the size of her bathroom was frankly criminal. Her horns felt heavy on her head, from the effort it took to carry them. Shadowheart helped loosen her clothing and sit, then turned her back while Rose took care of business.
When she looked at her reflection in the mirror, while bracing herself against the sink and washing her hands, there was only one word for what looked back: haggard.
As fuck.
“Oh, fucking gods,” groaned Rosalie. as they started dragging her back through the doorway, in the direction of the bed. “This is awful. I feel both hungover and drunk, at the same time. Where did Gale get all his arrogance from? High-level workings feel like raw shit. I don’t want to be a wizard anymore. I’m too old!”
“Criminally ancient,” Shadowheart told her, fondly.
“Decrepit.”
“Wizened.”
“-And cronelike.” Rose affirmed, making a veritable old-person sound, as her arse landed back on the edge of the mattress with a groan in her creaking hips. She grinned up at her friend. “Put me out to pasture. Retire me and get me a grove, like we did with Snoot.”
…And at the door, someone tentatively cleared their throat.
Rosalie froze in place, where she’d been carefully inching herself back under the covers, and raised her head.
To see Astarion.
Just standing there, in the doorway of her bedroom.
The weirdest thing, Rosalie thought, was that he was wearing her clothes. Not her clothes - it wasn’t like he was parading around in her silk robe, or her favourite dress, or anything. But he was no longer wearing the Ascendent’s expensive brocade, and had found himself something else to wear instead: just a plain, pale blue shirt, and trousers. Which, given that they were in her house - he was in her house - meant they were her shirt and trousers. The oversized ones, one of the few in men's tailoring. That she’d bought, because she thought they were comfortable and snuggly.
They weren’t comfortable and snuggly on him, and in fact didn’t seem fit Astarion very well at all. Everything was a little too tight, mostly because she was shorter than him, and it was easy to be broader than her in the shoulders even for those without vampire strength.
Then Rosalie raised her eyes to his face, and pathetically, she forgot how to breathe.
Because it was Astarion. She knew that for a certainty, on sight. All the doubt within her vanished, even as she tried to hold onto it, for protection. To anyone else, it was probably the same pale, angular face that she’d been plagued with for the last few weeks. It had only plagued her, because it was so close but always slightly off from what Rose remembered. She had started to worry she’d romanticised a memory, so much that it had stopped being real.
Only now it was real, exactly as Rosalie remembered it. And yes, of course he was beautiful - though his hair was unstyled, dishevelled... a little fluffy, even. But that wasn’t what mattered: it was the emotion that animated his face that was important, the feeling that dwelt behind the garnet red of his eyes. Even as it poured its heart out to her, the Ascendent hadn’t quite been able to capture that look, and pin it down. This was Astarion’s face, not some awkwardly fitted mask.
Gods, he just looked so… sad.
“Um… hello,” said Astarion, and then Rose saw him wince when he decided that this was inadequate.
“H-” Rosalie’s voice chose this moment, of all moments, to decide it was shot. She cleared her throat, mortified. “Hello.”
Astarion simply stared at her.
All of a sudden, with a wave of raw discomfort she hadn’t experienced at any point until now, Rose wondered exactly what Astarion was seeing. Because it had been ten years. And she knew what she looked like, which was currently a tired, ragged, old woman who’d fought death, then gotten off on a technicality, even though death had won. Who was currently so stiff, she was unable to get herself back onto her fucking mattress.
What had been the Ascendent’s first thought, when he’d seen her? You’ve gotten… old.
And yes, the Ascendent had been evil, and she hadn’t cared then. But for some reason, Rosalie cared now. She shifted herself awkwardly in place, suddenly self-conscious, and her entire back twinged, spitefully proving her point.
“Are you alright?” Astarion immediately asked, taking a step forward into the room, as she grimaced with the pain.
“Yes… sorry!” Rosalie said, finding her voice. “It’s just the whole, ‘being burdened with a body’, thing - which… shit, is really insensitive of me to say, now that I think about it. Unless you don’t remember anything. Which, um, would probably be ideal.”
Astarion shrugged his shoulders, then said with a very forced smile: “What’s a little physicality envy, amongst friends?”
…So he did remember being a disembodied soul. Rosalie faltered again, as she was assailed with all the horrible things that the Ascendent might have done to him, not to mention all the horrible things the Ascendent had said about him, about the two of them, together, that he might have heard…
“...I'm sorry, that’s probably bad taste-” Astarion started.
“No, I’m sorry! I really wasn’t thinking-!” Rosalie hastily spoke over him.
Shadowheart mostly looked like she wanted to leave the room.
“Rose, you’re literally trembling,” she said. “Get in the fucking bed.”
With a wince, and a worrying amount of careful shuffling, Rose did as the doctor ordered. She arranged the covers around her waist, feeling like an invalid, then sat herself up on propped cushions, even though she could already tell she needed more sleep.
And then, after all that work, said doctor proved to be an ungrateful coward, because she took that as her cue to start stepping towards the door and-
“Where are you going?” hissed Rosalie, grabbing hold of Shadowheart's arm.
“You probably want some tea,” Shadowheart said mildly, by which she meant you couldn’t pay me to stay in this room a second longer than was necessary.
Rose shot a glance at Astarion, who was watching this all with a thin-lipped frown, and shifted hastily to Celestial, which she knew Shadowheart and her both shared. “But what if he’s still evil? You have to stay here with me, in case he’s evil!”
“The amount of social awkwardness I was just subject to, in under ten seconds?” replied Shadowheart. “That’s more conclusive proof than all that I’ve been given, in the last two days, combined. You truly bring out the best in him. Please let me leave.”
“What if it’s all an elaborate act?” Rosalie lied shamelessly, to try and keep her in the room.
“Then deal with it. Maybe talk to him some more, and thus murder him via second-hand embarrassment. You’re the one that bought him back,” said Shadowheart, with a small smile. Then she shook off the grip and sidled out of the room, giving Astarion a suspiciously wide berth.
Leaving the two of them alone.
In Rose’s bedroom.
This was still a fact she was conscious of, though she couldn’t muster much energy for anything except avoiding eye contact. Even hairbrushing was out of the question. It was however, something Rosalie suddenly wished she’d done.
“...Hello,” she repeated, after what became the twenty most-awkward seconds of silence in her life so far.
Astarion didn’t move from his place at the door. She could feel him watching her.
“You can… come in,” Rosalie said. “Properly, I mean.”
After more silent hesitation, Astarion moved forward on his frustratingly quiet feet, and took a seat in the chair Shadowheart had vacated. That put him into a rich spill of that golden hour sunlight. Rose felt her heart in her throat, as it illuminated his face and turned him resplendent, like the sun itself had bled for him, and… well-
Nothing else happened.
It seemed, that the daylight was still his to own.
“Do you still have a heartbeat, too?” she blurted, then bit her lip, despairing at herself.
Astarion paused, in the busywork of arranging himself in the chair. He looked at her. Then, he nodded, and, after a beat, he leaned in towards the bed, holding his arm out towards her. The sleeves of his shirt - her shirt, her lazy weekend shirt, that was hers - had been rolled up to the elbows. He offered out his hand, palm up towards the ceiling and fingers curled slightly inwards, and Rose blinked at it dazedly for a few seconds before she realised what it was he was actually offering.
She wiped her own hands on the duvet, then reached out. The touch of skin-on-skin was like a shock of lightning to a raw nerve, and though Rosalie hid the reaction as best she could, she swore her swift intake of breath was louder than a gunshot. She persevered. One hand cradled the back of Astarion's knuckles, as the other carefully wrapped her fingers around his wrist, placing the pads of her fingertips to the pulse point. The room was close and quiet for a second, as she pressed down more firmly, and after a few seconds of searching she found the heartbeat underneath his skin.
Steady as anything, the fucking bastard - Rosalie already felt like she was going to pass out.
When she glanced up at him, Astarion's eyes were on her. They’d been on her, the whole time.
She cleared her throat again, gently rescinding her grip, and placing her hands back into the coverlet. “You’re still the Ascendent,” she said, quietly.
“I… think so,” replied Astarion.
“Just the powers, I mean. Not the - because you’re… you.”
“Yes.” Astarion told her, throat raw.
He looked suddenly so relieved, as if he’d expected he was going to be forced to prove it to her. But Rosalie had no interrogation that she could think to give him. In fact, she wasn’t quite sure what she should say.
This was him. She’d done it.
She had no idea what came next.
“I'm so happy you're back,” she said, awkwardly: an inadequate summary of an obvious truth. “But it’s not… it’s not too much, is it? Being back? It… it seems like it would be a lot to happen, all at once. I hope it’s ok, that that’s what I did.”
Astarion was silent again.
“I mean, I wasn’t very, um, elegant, the way I went about it,” Rosalie continued. “I didn’t know what exactly I was doing, honestly! What I did, even! So I imagine it was all a bit, um, abrupt. I'd be overwhelmed, personally, if one day I was in a jar, and then the next my highly strung ex-girlfriend yelled me back into my body-”
“Rose.”
At the sound of her name in his mouth, Rosalie literally startled in place, forgetting every other thing she’d been about to say. Mortifying. Actually mortifying. I am forty-three, she thought.
“...Yes?” she said, clearing her throat.
“I remember everything,” Astarion told her, his voice uncharacteristically devoid of any performance. There was only sincerity.
“Oh,” said Rose, still a little flustered. Though Astarion was clearly sad, she also felt like he shouldn’t be using that voice, straight out of the gate, if only for her health. “Well... that’s good! That means I gave you an hour or so of preamble, then, at least. That’s better than nothing! I didn’t mean the thing I said about not talking, obviously… if you did, in fact, hear me say that, and I'm not just confusing you. Gods... being smashed didn’t, um, hurt, did it?”
“No,” said Astarion, and Rosalie began deflating in relief, thinking it was an answer to her question, until he continued, “I mean, I remember everything. All of it.”
“...What are you trying to say?”
“I have-” he faltered with something that looked like remorse, gaze dropping to the ground. “There’s two sets of memories, alongside each other. I have the… I thought of it as drifting, really. It wasn’t much of anything, unless someone else was there - was I really in a jar? But then, I have-”
Rosalie waited, as Astarion swallowed.
“I have the… other set of memories. Foxglove, I remember everything,” he repeated, wretchedly. “Everything from the last - Shadowheart says, ten years? Everything that this… this body… ”
His sentence failed, and Astarion immediately looked up at her, willing her to understand.
“...Oh,” she said, faintly. “So… it is a lot, then.”
He meant he had all of the Ascendent’s memories. And Rosalie’s first thought was strangely not of the violence, or the torment, or the horrible words that would no doubt cause him guilt.
Nor did she spare it, for whatever terrible things the Ascendent might have done, that she'd never once seen.
Instead, her mind went, to that first time she and the Ascendent had been alone in the study together. She didn’t want Astarion to carry that memory with him, at all, and she felt suddenly warm with shame.
“I’m sorry,” she told him.
It was, predictably, the wrong thing for her to say, though Rose couldn’t imagine doing anything different. Pain lanced across Astarion’s face, as he said, “I don’t know how you can stand to look at me-”
“Hey,” interrupted Rosalie, as calmly as she could manage. “I went through quite a lot, just to look at you.”
She worried it came out wrong: like she was a debtor, like her work entitled to something and she was holding Astarion to account. But it stopped him in the midst of his self-loathing sentence, and it wasn’t like she could take back once it was said. Both of them lapsed into silence, again.
“Perhaps I should’ve waited until you were rested. But I wanted to tell you,” said Astarion, quietly. “I just… I wanted you to know.”
He said it, like he perhaps thought it would make a difference to her. Change things, going forward.
Rosalie wanted to point out, that any part of those memories that involved her, she’d already lived through. And all of it had still brought her here, to be alone in this room with him. But that felt like too much, in this moment; like rubbing salt into a fresh wound.
“...Does it hurt?” she asked, instead.
That made Astarion flinch again, in pain and frustration, but he stopped himself before he could say whatever first retort had come to his mind. Instead, he waited until his expression had mellowed, and he paused to consider her question-
“...I don’t know,” he admitted. He glanced over at her. “I mean, it doesn’t feel good. But it’s… too strange to be termed pain. The memories feel numb, more than anything - like I know they aren’t mine. I see everything, feel everything, the emotions behind every decision, but… I’m not the actor. I’m not the one doing it. It’s all just… happening to me.”
Rosalie frowned.
“That sounds,” she said, “like pain.”
And Astarion’s mouth twisted bitterly. “But you forget, Foxglove: I’m not the one being harmed, in any of it. I’m the one inflicting the pain. It doesn’t feel good, but it…”
He faltered, looked to his hands, “it doesn’t exactly feel bad, either.”
Rosalie waited until this next silence settled. Even tired and exhausted, she knew that would be a big thing for Astarion to admit to her. And she was so far past the point, where she would punish him for it.
“Do the emotions give any of it context?” she asked, “does it tell you anything, as to why you might remember it? Do you have his… its thoughts, in those moments? Do you know what was there, instead of you?”
Astarion just looked lost, and frustrated. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not-” his mouth twisted, “it’s not me, but it’s not unlike me. There’s just so much… hatred, and bitterness, and sometimes, something close to satisfaction, though it was never fully satiated. But then, at other points, it's like there’s… nothing. Just nothing. Nothing at all.”
And then he looked at Rose, and even though he didn’t say it out loud, she basically heard it: if any of the Ascendent's memories were coloured with anything but unfeeling cruelty, they were the ones that contained her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, again. When he glared at her, she continued evenly: “it just sounds like a lot to process. Being out of the world for a decade - if that’s what it felt like - would already have been so much. I wish I could’ve… but it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t have worded it better. Maybe that’s the point. There wasn’t a perfect way to do this, and it's… it's wondrous, that it happened anyway. But all that aside, I imagine it will take time to make sense of. I just… I hope it’s not painful. I hope you’re ok.”
Astarion opened his mouth-
“And if your counterclaim is to say that I’m the one who got stabbed,” Rosalie interrupted, “then don’t worry: I was there.”
“What I was going to say,” replied Astarion, with a shadow of his former cattiness, “was that I’ve very recently been dragged out of hell. It places one’s discomfort on a very relative and very forgiving curve, Foxglove. Don’t worry on my account. I’m perfectly content.”
Perfectly content. Yes, Rosalie thought. That was one word for it.
She wondered if she could reach across the bed, and take Astarion’s hand. Would that be a part of his definition of perfect contentment, the same way it was hers?
But then, she remembered how he had abjured touch, in Cazador’s mansion. If he was currently feeling uncomfortable within his own skin, and if his body remembered every single time the Ascendent had touched her, maybe now was not the moment to be selfish. Rose had touched him, and felt his pulse: she knew, already, that Astarion was real. There was no need for anything more, and risk becoming greedy, not just now.
…It was easy, once the heroic part was over, for the cowardly pieces of herself to find their excuses.
“We’ll just work through it, together, then,” Rose said, trying to make herself sound certain. She could certainly still find ways to be grateful: this was, after all, another problem to fix. And if there was another problem to fix, she’d have a reason to be close to him.
Astarion was shaking his head. “You really don’t have to do that.”
“I don’t have to, but I want to. I’ll look into it,” Rosalie offered gently. “After all, I’m the one who cast the spell - when I’m well again, I’ll see what research I can find. Maybe there’s even a way to unpack my working behind the Wish - oh, that’s what I cast, by the way. At least, we believe so... I really think it should’ve involved different words.”
There was a ghost of a smile on Astarion’s face as he looked at her, though it was tinged with concern.
“There might not be an answer, Foxglove,” he told her, with equal gentleness. “It might just be the way things are. Like I said, what came before was far worse. If this is the price of being back here…”
There was a pause, which Rosalie filled with so many words, but mostly, with you.
But none of those words happened, and Astarion merely continued, “...then I’m more than willing to pay it. It is far more lenient a sentence than I deserve, I think.”
It’s ten years of someone else’s crimes, that they committed with your body! Rosalie thought. No one deserves that!
...If you don’t need me to fix something for you, will you even decide to stay?
“It’s quiet here in Alaron, at least,” she offered, instead. “Peaceful. I like to go down by the sea, when I’m feeling overwhelmed. There’s time you can take here, that feels… kinder, than other time. Maybe it will be good for you to be away from the Gate, if your body still retains all the memories from being there. Alaron could offer you a fresh start, a blank slate, in order to help you to make sense of everything-”
Then Rose caught herself, realising all the assumptions she was making, with that sentence.
“Not that I automatically think you’re staying with me - I mean, here - of course!” she added, hastily. “If you don’t want to - I mean, you could! If you wanted to. You’re more than welcome to stay, and… and you’ve seen the size of the place by now, I’m sure! It’s so atrociously fancy, you’ll want for nothing. The thing they don’t tell you about wizardry is, once you reach a certain level, you never have to do chores, ever again! I keep telling Gale that that’s what Blackstaff should lead with! And it’s just me here - not that that should matter! But I more mean there’s - there’s plenty of room for more than one person…”
Astarion was giving her a funny, confused look as her pathetic, needy monologue reached its devastating end, and then after a beat, his expression softened.
“Yes, Rosalie,” he said, quietly. “I’ll stay.”
“...Ok,” said Rose, as a pressure she hadn’t realised was there loosened in her chest. She felt her hands tremble as she made them into fists in the blanket. “Good. That would be… nice. Maybe it will help?”
“...Just maybe,” Astarion echoed, and his stare held the weight of ten years behind it.
His face was less golden now, than before, becoming moonlight pale. The light had been waning, without Rosalie noticing. The pale green and blue bioluminescence in the curtains was beginning to fully spark to life. Soon, it would cast a soft glow over the room, though it wouldn't be quite enough to see by. Rosalie didn’t have the energy to go over to the doorway, and turn on the lights, but she could already tell that the darkness was going to make her drowsy.
“Is something wrong?” Astarion asked her. “I’m assuming we’re now done pretending Shadowheart has gone to get tea.”
“...I’m really tired,” Rosalie admitted.
“Really?” Astarion said, awkwardly, scratching at his neck. “I can… go. Leave you to it.”
“No!” said Rose. “...No. I don’t want to sleep, just yet. Though... I’ll be honest, I may not get much choice in the matter.”
On the one hand, she knew she’d just come out of a three-day spell fugue. On the other, she wished there was a more climactic or, hells, a sexier way to end the first conversation she’d had with Astarion since she’d lost him, all those years ago. Rather than her conking out on him, just because she needed a nap.
Rosalie couldn’t shake the feeling that this all should have gone differently. All those years, she’d had so many questions… and now, she was struggling to recall a single one of them.
“-Your hair,” said Astarion, suddenly.
Rose put a hand to her head, self-consciously. “What about it?”
Testing it, she could feel that someone had washed it clean of blood and dirt, but that it had also dried damp, and hadn’t been washed since. She knew she looked a sight, but-
“You grew it out,” Astarion clarified. “It’s long. Now.”
“...Yes.”
“But it doesn’t…” he looked a little frustrated with himself, “it doesn’t seem as, err, tangled, as it should? I undid it, to lay you out flat on the bed - not this bed, I just went for the first one I saw - and it was… um… despite the rain-”
“Oh!” said Rosalie, and put her hands back in her lap. “Oh, I have it enchanted! When I go to the stylist, which I’ll admit isn’t often - they’re expensive, even for me. They offer cosmetic enchantments - it’s quite fascinating really, the way they adapt the schools to their purpose. It’s some Transmutation, and some Illusion - to help with the maintenance. I figured, if I was going to let it get so long, and cut less often, I could afford to spend a little money that would make it more forgiving of me, whenever I’m lazy…”
“Oh. Well. I couldn’t tell,” said Astarion, before looking horror-struck and correcting himself. “...That it’s enchanted, I mean! It looks lovely.”
Rosalie gave him a funny look. “No, it doesn’t. The enchantments were for day-to-day wear and tear, not a three-day spell coma.”
“Well… it looks lovely. To me.”
Rosalie found herself at a loss for words.
“-The enchantments don’t have anything to do with the colour!” she blurted, nonsensically. “The colour’s all natural! I don’t, um, get it dyed... but there’s not a single grey!”
Maybe staying lost for words would’ve been better.
But something akin to amusement ghosted across Astarion’s face, as he leant in and said gently, “well, now someone’s just showing off.”
They held each other's eyes for a second, and Rose was smiling without thinking about it, all pleased. The room felt small and close again. Rosalie could feel something spreading from her stomach outwards, throughout her body. It wasn’t desire, she didn’t think, or it wasn’t just that - because it was leaving her even sleepier, which seemed like it would be counterproductive.
I feel safe, she realised. The feeling in her stomach was comfort, and it kept dragging her closer to exhaustion because her body was telling her that she could finally let herself rest. That was why she was getting all of this conversation wrong… and it didn’t seem to matter.
But if she admitted to needing sleep, then she wouldn’t be able to ask Astarion to stay.
Well, she could... she just wouldn’t. Because there was no way to dress that request up, as anything other than ‘please don’t leave me’.
“...What did you wish for, do you think?” Astarion asked her. “If you were to make a guess.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Rose, dumbly. “You.”
Astarion looked weirdly stunned, as if he hadn’t been yanked back into his body as a result of the spell. Rosalie thought this much should’ve been obvious.
“It wasn’t really something I thought through,” she explained, hoping this helped clear things up. “It was more just something I needed. It wasn’t like I could watch you die, again.”
Astarion blinked at her. Rosalie blinked back at him. There was another patch of silence, in which neither of them knew what to say. Astarion opened his mouth, then closed it.
Then he opened it again, and said, “why aren’t you-”
He stopped.
“Why aren’t I what?”
“Why aren’t you… scared?” Astarion seemed to settle on. That was what it felt like: that he’d been about to ask something different, but deemed this question to be the safer option.
“Oh, I’m terrified!” responded Rosalie immediately. She’d messed with some powerful magic of potentially epic consequences, she just didn’t have the intellect or energy to unpack that fact yet. “Just... not of you.”
And Astarion looked stunned, all over again.
“...I’m going to lie down now!” Rosalie informed him, feeling herself grow warm.
She tried to move herself, but it was immediately clear just how slow and uncooperative her body was. Her muscles were all jellified, with no strength in any of them, and if she tried to winch herself down she’d likely just collapse onto the mattress. She reached out to summon a Mage Hand, to help herself into the bed, but then she paused. She knew that casting spells right now would only make her feel worse. She could maybe risk a cantrip, but -
“Do you… need help?” asked Astarion, carefully.
This time when Rose felt warm, it was pure embarrassment. She truly was an invalid.
“Yes,” she said, eventually. “Please.”
She moved the pillows herself, so that they were flat for her to lie on. Then Astarion silently leaned forward, and braced her with an arm across her back as, together, they moved her. It was… overwhelming. Rosalie tried to be sensible, staring up at the canopy and the mural beyond to distract herself. But she couldn’t help finding Astarion’s presence strong and reassuring, even if his arm was positioned entirely wrongly and she was still, for all his vampire super-strength, doing more of the work than she should.
He still didn’t do up the top three buttons of any shirt he wore, it seemed, and his chest was also just right there. She was struggling to avoid not staring at it, that's how right there it was.
When Rose felt her head hit the pillow, she moved her gaze back to his face, and found that said face was only inches from hers, which really didn’t help matters. Astarion had this look of concentration that she’d never seen before, like he was somehow afraid she would break.
“Do you like the bed?” Rosalie found herself asking.
There was another moment of stunned silence, Astarion’s arm still underneath her body.
“You are tired.” He observed.
“I mean the canopy,” replied Rose, gesturing with her eyes towards the shimmering fabric that was now nearly translucent with the dark, alight with firefly specks of green and blue. She was suddenly worried it might feel childish and infantile, or perhaps ostentatious.
Astarion followed her eyeline, as he carefully rested her down on the mattress and moved back into his seat. Rosalie glanced down at the mess of blankets and covers still around her waist, and guessed she was tucking herself in, then. She got to it, but became weirdly exhausted halfway through the process.
“...It’s nice, I guess,” he replied, somewhat half-heartedly, before looking at her disappointed expression and admitting, “I hadn’t noticed it before.”
“Oh,” Rosalie blinked at him. Her gaze was sticky, like before. Something about being horizontal was pulling her under again. “That’s not good. That’s nearly six hundred gold's worth, of something you didn’t notice.”
“I’ll be sure to pay more attention to the soft furnishings, when you aren’t dying,” replied Astarion, with asperity.
“Not dying,” said Rose. “Just sleepy.”
“Yes, well, before, when you were sleepy, it was because you were bleeding out,” Astarion said. “This is all a lot less worrying, than it was before.”
Stay, Rosalie thought.
But of course she couldn’t say it.
“...Do you need me to go?“ Astarion suddenly asked her, out of the blue.
Something about the way he worded it had Rosalie’s heart hammering. “...You want to stay?”
“...We’ve been keeping watches,” he informed her, casually. Almost impartially, like he was dancing around something. “You might not need that anymore, but if you want to rest… I’m happy to stay. Of course, if you prefer Shadowheart, after everything that's happened, I can-”
“No!” said Rose , too loudly. “No, that's… you can stay. I'd like it if you stayed, at least for a little while.”
Astarion watched her quietly, then nodded.
“So long as it's not too dull for you,” she added, as an afterthought.
“I have a book in the other room…” Astarion caught her worried glance, and then clarified, “it is absolutely not annotated.”
But that had not been Rosalie’s worry, so she paused.
“A book from… my library?”
“...I steered past the six shelves that seemed solely focused upon how to exterminate, kill, and overpower vampires,” replied Astarion, immediately. He didn’t pause for breath, which told Rose that he had rehearsed that joke many times in his head, to gloss over what would otherwise be a very awkward moment for them both.
“Oh, good,” she deadpanned, “that means you missed the other ten shelves, in the annexe.”
And he didn’t laugh - maybe it was too soon, for that - but the surprised smile Astarion gave her showed all of his teeth.
Notes:
...I have barely any chapter notes for this chapter. Is that what happens when people aren't fucking miserable anymore?
Thank you for all your kind words on the last few updates. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, honestly!! I'm just so glad people have made it this far with me. Hopefully the fic continues to be enjoyable for everyone <3
Thank you to @dolceaspidenera for this set of gifs for a modless, flycam-less skill issue gal like me! Can't believe Rosalie got a round in Lorroakan's throne, rest in peace Rolan x
And thank you @xenea-aesthetic for this fanart which I have also linked to Chapter 17 <3
Chapter Notes
- Snoot is my name for the owlbear (bc he hoots and has a snoot)
- I do not consider Rosalie to be a self-insert, but when I was drafting this scene and the first words out of her mouth were: "you know that time I went to hell and stole your soul and then yeeted it back into your body and nearly died? I hope I didn't come on to strong. I hope that wasn't an imposition." I just sat at my laptop screen and yelled, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" Most autobiographical sentence in my fic career so far. Anyway, learn from my dumb wizard and never be afraid to take up space in your own life... no worries if not :)))
- I apologise to the people who thought Astarion might no longer be a vampire! Unfortunately, he's staying the Vampire Ascendent, and I only clarify that here because um... it turns out the two are practically interchangeable when you try to describe them in writing :'))))
- I also googled dissociation symptoms for his description of what it's like to access the Ascendent's memories, for anyone who is interested!
- All Rosalie wants is for people to notice her expensive hair :) The Ascendent failed at the first hurdle in Chapter 3 :)
- We're entering our awkward housemates era. I said this fic contains all my favourite tropes, and that means we're microdosing some idiots-to-lovers at the end of this lovers-to-enemies fic, as a treat :')
Chapter 21: Chapter Twenty-One
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
It took two days for Rosalie to be able to begin walking around her house again. Mostly, she just needed sleep to recover her strength, feeling more and more like a person, as the magic she’d divested herself of began to trickle back.
Not that she hadn’t also put her body through hell. When Shadowheart changed the bandages around her middle, Rose was confronted with a new, silver-lavender scar - just under the hard bars of her ribcage, on the left hand side. The soft skin of the beginning of her belly, directly below the heart.
“Three new scars,” Shadowheart observed, in a somewhat clipped tone: the two bite marks, and now this.
“...Not bad, for one of our adventures,” said Rosalie.
And Shadowheart gave her a look that said: but not a good metric, for a relationship.
“I hear he’s going to be staying here?” her friend asked, on a separate occasion.
Rose was eating some food - she’d gone from nauseous to ravenous in a two hour window, like the aftermath of Wish truly was some kind of hangover that she was finally shaking the last dregs of. She paused, midway through doing something unspeakable to a slice of toast.
“...He said he is, yes,” Rosalie replied. “Unless he changes his mind.”
In truth, she hadn’t seen Astarion much since they'd spoken on that first day. She’d been sleeping a lot, and when she was awake, he never seemed to be nearby. Though she occasionally heard a sound that she thought was him, pausing at then passing her bedroom door.
“...And we’ve… discussed the implications of that, have we? Or at the very least, thought them through?”
“...Not really.” It was hard to think past anything but Astarion’s re-emergence into the world.
“And if we did, would we still think it’s a… good idea?” said Shadowheart, in that same voice with which she had observed the scars.
Rosalie paused, feeling judged. She put down her toast.
“...You said you were with me on this.”
“And I am. I wanted this, for you. I meant it, when I said I was happy - but you know that was never because of him. I’m just glad that you… after the last ten years, of seeing you… I know this is everything you wanted-”
“Good.”
“-But this is why we should be careful. We still don’t know what the spell did, or what you asked for. Have you talked to him about-”
“You said it was him. And it is! It is him. We agreed.”
Shadowheart’s expression was grim. Not in a cruel way. It was mostly just sad.
“But we don’t know if there’s going to be any ramifications, or loopholes. And Rose, even if we’re ignoring all the danger, and the fact that he nearly killed you, and that he remembers nearly killing you… do you really think that the answer is to move in together? There’s plenty of people Astarion can stay with, whose presence might be less, well, painf-”
“Please don’t make me say goodbye to him again,” Rose blurted, inelegantly. Her chest hurt, just thinking about it. “Please. I can’t do it.”
Shadowheart opened her mouth to speak, but Rose beat her to it. “If you don’t think this is the smartest decision: fine. It literally doesn’t matter, when it’s the only one I can make.”
Shadowheart took a long look at her.
“It’s not moving in together,” Rosalie said, trying to make her voice more even, and less desperate. “You know it isn’t. That’s not - that’s not what this is about. He needs time and I - I need-”
I need him.
Shadowheart looked like she wanted to say more. But instead, she just nodded once, with a conflicted, resigned frown.
And that, mercifully, was the end of the conversation.
By the end of the third day, Rose had managed to walk down all the stairs of her tower, and could muster a low-level levitate for taking herself back up. She demonstrated this thrice, and then Shadowheart announced that she was going to need to return to the Gate.
“I need to check in on everyone,” she said.
Because Astarion nearly murdered us all, was the unspoken undercurrent of her words.
Rosalie could tell there were ulterior motives. Shadowheart would need to inform everyone that Astarion was alive: no longer evil, but still the Ascendent.
And Rose also knew that Shadowheart would want to have this conversation to happen without her present. There would no doubt be the need to put some kind of ‘what if we have to kill him’ contingency in place, or at least have the ‘do we think this is healthy?’ consultation.
Rosalie tried to muster the ability to care. She tried so hard. But truth was, she didn’t. She knew her behaviour had rarely, if ever, passed that second test.
This was proven by the fact that, right now, she was more worried that she hadn’t seen Astarion in days, and he seemed to be avoiding her. It was starting to feel as if, by broaching the topic in conversation, Shadowheart’s newfound distrust of the entire situation had become contagious. It was bleeding out through the house, before Rose could enjoy whatever tentative hope she’d managed to build for herself.
On the fourth day - the day of Shadowheart’s departure - Rose made her way downstairs with only the slightest of winces… and found her suspicions confirmed. Astarion and Shadowheart were stood in the ground floor receiving room, talking in hushed tones to each other.
The conversation stopped, the moment they both spotted her watching them.
Astarion was still wearing the comfy-but-slightly-too-snug weekend shirt. Rosalie would’ve offered to Prestidigitate it, but she worried that this was bordering on domestic. She also had the urge to tell him that the shirt was one she had bought for herself, not some hypothetical former partner, but that seemed like jumping the gun.
When he saw her stood there, on the third step, she did her best to smile for him. In response, Astarion's entire face tightened with something akin to pain, and then he just…
Left.
Just walked out of the front door, into the blustering cold of Alaron, without a word.
Rosalie began, immediately, to panic.
“What did you do?!” she demanded of Shadowheart, sounding irrationally betrayed.
“I didn’t do anything,” replied Shadowheart, tiredly. “He’s just taking a walk. You should escort me to the teleportation circle.”
Rosalie looked towards the front door, trying to memorise the glimpse of Astarion she’d gotten before he disappeared. “But I-”
“Rose,” Shadowheart cut her off, and Rosalie felt this strange, sudden impulse to cry.
The Alaron tower was on six floors, seven if you counted the observatory deck in the roof, and also the much larger cellar that spread itself out to twice the size of the building itself, underground. This was where Rosalie walked with Shadowheart in sullen silence: down the curving spiral staircase and into the basement. There was one room for storing food, potions, and arcane components; then there was the wine cellar, and what Shadowheart had termed Rose's ‘panic room’, which was more of a panic suite, if you were being pedantic. This was where the teleportation circle was.
The first of the two rooms was large, one wall dedicated to thousands of gold’s worth of spellwork. It covered the arcane functions across the house - everything from the traps in the walls and floors, to the enchantments in the kitchens and bathrooms, to the ambient temperature of each room, including Rose's research space - alongside the several buttons Rosalie had for if anything went wrong. The names of each of her emergency contacts were inscribed next to a once-a-day switch. The walls were lead lined to prevent magical detection and divination, but… lead was poisonous. So the lead was also encased within another reinforced metal barrier, that kept the poison inside its core, and also had the handy secondary use of preventing anyone from breaking through the brickwork - even those with superhuman strength.
At the far end was a door, that led to the teleportation circle beyond. Still not speaking, feeling almost impotent in the hurt she was currently stewing in, Rose went to the door and-
“I had it easy, you know,” said Shadowheart, quietly and unexpectedly, once the door to the panic room was shut.
Surprised, Rosalie turned to look at her.
“I had a very clear set of excuses,” Shadowheart continued, pinning her gaze to the buttons of the mechanical wall, “...with which to face what I almost did, to Aylin - and what I would have done, to my parents - in the months after we finished our adventure. Shar put in a lot of work, to make me into the person I was, when we first met. And, from what we know, I’ve risen to goodness before. It really took a lot of effort, to ensure that part of me was fully stamped out, and quelled.”
Rosalie frowned. “Well, yes, that’s because you’re a good-”
“But there came a point, when I realised,” Shadowheart spoke over her. “That it wasn’t as clear cut as I might have liked. There was a comfort, in being able to blame everything on an outside force, and pretend that those thoughts had never come from me. From within me.”
“Because Shar-”
“-I had my mind wiped, it’s true. But the blank slate was something I wrote upon. There were things I wanted, that no one else made me want. Loving power was not something I needed to be taught - nor was it ever something that becoming Selûne's required me to give up,” Shadowheart persisted.
She sighed. “There’s stuff I haven’t told you, about what happened in the months after you left, and then went to Avernus. You had your own things that you were dealing with. But I was…” her voice wavered, “I was so angry. About all that had been taken from me, about my mother's illness, about having to pick between my parents and Lae'zel, when I knew she truly needed me. And I’d become convinced anger was wrong, and that anger would make me evil, as it made me hate. I was living within a world where there were two versions of myself - all the bad, cruel, vicious parts, those belonged to Shar, and anything that was light and good was what I had to cling to. Because the moment it was gone, I thought I’d belong to Shar again.”
She looked up, and met Rosalie’s eyes, “but of course, what I eventually worked out, was that none of it belonged to Shar. It was all me: the good, and the bad. Until I accepted that, I was going to be forever at war with myself.”
Rosalie had thankfully, by this time, cottoned on to where this speech was going.
“...You said all of this to Astarion, as well,” she accused.
“Astarion has… asked me some questions, in the past week,” replied Shadowheart. “I’ve answered all of them, as honestly as I could, and in line with what I believe.”
“But… but Shar did make you who you were, back then! You shook it all off, in weeks of being with us. And his… and his soul was literally outside his body! I saw it! It wasn’t - the Ascendent wasn’t him!” Rosalie sputtered.
“I believe you,” said Shadowheart, implacable in her calm. “I believe the soul and the monster were separate people, if that’s what the evidence suggests. But now, we have no idea where that other thing is, or why Astarion has its memories. And we don’t know what it is you Wished for. If this is going to work, at least one of you has to reckon with the fact that it might not be a separate thing to the person we have with us now. Maybe it never was. We have no idea.”
“But maybe-”
“It doesn’t have to be you, Rose,” Shadowheart told her. “You don’t have to be the one who faces it. You’ve been so sad, for so long, and the last few weeks were so grim, that if it makes anything easier, for you to see either of us as two entirely separate people, then I won’t begrudge you. But someone has to admit what might really be going on - and you didn’t want to have the conversation. So… Moonmaiden save me, I’ve decided to put my trust in him.”
Rosalie froze in place. The tears really did threaten to spill over, this time.
“But he’ll…” she swallowed, voice sticking thick in the back of her throat. “He’ll hate himself.”
“And maybe, that’s something he needs to work through,” replied Shadowheart, as gently as she could manage.
Which somehow made it worse, when she continued: “because, no matter what happened when you cast Wish - regardless of what the Ascendent was or where it is now - Astarion is still the one, who killed seven thousand people.”
Hearing the same words of the Ascendent spoken in the mouth of a friend, when Rosalie had never told Shadowheart the Ascendent had even said them, was enough to make her stomach drop in another sickening stab of panic.
“You’ve only ever tortured yourself with thoughts that you’re a bad person, Rose,” said Shadowheart. “Some of us have learned to live with the reality of being one.”
And then Shadowheart left, and Astarion was just… living in Rose’s house.
Rosalie tried to find him, that day he walked out of the tower. Trawled the gardens and the shore for him, to no avail. Waited in the armchair nearest to the door, for him to return. But both of these endeavours were foolish, when she was still on the cusp of recovery, and eventually, it meant she fell asleep, curled up in that same chair. When she woke the next morning in her own bed, she had proof of Astarion’s existence, for he was the only one who could have put her there. But otherwise, no clues to his location. He hadn't stayed with her, this time.
Rosalie knew he was here. But, since the day Shadowheart had left, he was now… never where she was.
Instead, Astarion’s presence in the tower was something akin to a haunting. Small things moved. A sound, a few floors up, that could’ve been the wind. A book, left open on the chair arm in an otherwise empty library, when she went up there in the morning. A few fingerprints, trailed through the dust on the worktop. Smudged against a mirror.
A flash of white, in an upper story window, that Rosalie could only half-swear was real, when she returned from her careful walks around the grounds.
Rosalie communicated with Astarion in much the same way - like she was hosting her own brand of tentative séance. She tried to leave out books he might like, in places that seemed incidental. She made fresh coffee, fresh food, fresh baked pastries (ok, that last one was Tim), the rich smells carrying through the whole house, in the hope of luring him down to her.
She stood in her library, and wondered if he’d noticed the painting yet. Did he realise it was the same artist, as the centrepiece of the Ascendent’s home?
She drew out a map to all seven floors of the tower, instead of the tour she would’ve given, had he been willing to spend time with her. She produced ordnance surveys, for this stretch of Alaron coastline, in case he wanted to explore the land beyond her house.
She left notes, folded so that they were left standing upright in neat little vees on the different surfaces: here are some more clothes, I’m sorry that they aren’t likely to fit! do you need pyjamas? Blankets?, here are your keys to all the locked rooms in the tower. I’ve labelled the ones that are important, but you can use any of them - just please don’t lockpick! The defences get tetchy!, low tide is at 12:58pm today and the weather is fair, if you want to go for a walk along the eastern shore, there might be seals!, Timothy made banana muffins today :) Gale added the recipe enchantments to his programming himself, so I promise they’re really good! Take as many as you like! :), Gale is bringing home my cat in two days, so if you start hearing random noises in the night, I promise the place isn’t haunted. There’s just a cat now! She has an angry face, but she’s very friendly!!
Feel free to help yourself to anything in the wine cellar, except the bottles sealed in gold wax. I know I love you, but-
That last note was scrunched up, and tossed in the trash before it could be finished.
There were notes with daily weather updates, notes with information about her plans for the day, notes with questions that never got answers. Rose was halfway through labelling her entire kitchen - every cupboard, every ingredient, every jar on the spice rack, for some reason - when she finally realised what the notes actually were.
All she wanted was to have a conversation with him: this was her substitute.
He didn’t join her on the beach.
But it was ok, Rosalie thought. After what Shadowheart had said, he just needed time, and she could understand that. Though she now had her magic back, she did not cast any kind of Location spell. She didn’t want to overstep. Instead, she clung to those little signs of life, those small hauntings. There was proof, that someone other than her moved through this space.
She wasn’t alone. It wasn’t like before.
…But just how was Astarion managing to hide from her? It was so very quiet, here in Alaron. The silence of this house seemed louder, to Rose, than it ever had been before.
Astarion wasn’t around either, when Gale came via teleportation circle to hand over Ser Verity. While Rosalie had just put her very docile, very lazy cat straight into the arcane dumbwaiter, Gale was ever the perfect gentleman. In one hand, he held a suitcase filled with the clothes Rose had asked him to buy for Astarion. In the other was Verity, who had been afforded the dignity of a cat carrier for this journey.
When Rosalie took the carrier from him, she nearly doubled over with the strain.
“Gale,” she said, accusatorily.
“Now, I know what you’re going to say-”
“She weighs a tonne.”
“Tara said that she was showing signs of homesickness, and an awareness that her owner was in distress. More treats were deemed necessary.”
“And what were the treats made of, exactly?” Rose joked, “lard?”
Gale mumbled something.
“Gale.”
“...Butter,” he admitted, as if under extreme duress.
“You fed my cat butter?!”
“She was pining!”
If Verity was suffering from any kind of despondency, she didn’t seem to show it. By the time they’d walked up to the ground floor kitchen to brew coffee, her meows were throaty and operatic, and the cat that tumbled out of the carrier was overly fed, and very well groomed.
As Rosalie picked Ser Verity up and deposited many kisses on her little pink nose, she already had a sneaking suspicion the beast would be more sad, once Gale left, and she was left in the care of a woman who wouldn’t fold at the first chirrup. It was his legs her greedy traitor of a cat twined around, the moment she was placed back onto the floor, purring like an Infernal engine, while Rosalie made them both a drink.
“Shadowheart said you used the spell, in the end,” Gale noted. “Quick thinking on your part, to apply the principle of libertatem diaboli to all souls, including those under your stewardship… Do you have any cat treats?”
Rosalie rolled her eyes, and fished them out of their habitual place in the far kitchen cupboard. Verity was about to fall on lean times, so might as well let her have this one last indulgence.
“Thanks,” she said, “there’s a paper on liminal spaces in there somewhere… borders of hell, borders of tiefling identity, in relation to their Infernal heritage, et cetera, et cetera. You know my mother is actually Dispater, originally? And less further back, than my father. It’s interesting to me that I could essentially pick a dominant strain. I wonder if it has anything to do with me being a wizard. Either that, or it’s patriarchal, which is just depressing.”
“Well, if you ever seek to deliver the paper at Blackstaff, or in your own place of work, Anala is insisting that we must have Astarion and you for dinner in the next six months. And let me tell you, that deadline took some negotiating on my part! She wanted you both with us by next week. I’ve gotten her agreement by letting her pick the restaurant - we have to make childcare worth it when we hire someone who isn’t Tara, so there will probably be a dress code, when we get round to it. Do let me know if you need anymore clothing, closer to the time, as I only bought comfortable-”
“Gale,” said Rosalie, wondering if she misheard. “Are you inviting me and Astarion on a double date… with your wife?”
Gale paused in his sentence, and had the grace to look flustered. “Well, err, no, not exactly. I suppose, if we were to reduce it down to its social essentials, then yes. But when I told Anala the news, from Shadowheart, she said that she was glad that weight was finally lifted from you, and that she couldn’t wait to see you happy. So I, um, wanted to put that offer forward - so she could do that, that is. See you happy. Know something of the woman I knew, in the beginning, as well.”
Rosalie’s chest felt both tight and warm at the same time.
“I don’t think we’re… quite there yet,” she told Gale, gently.
“Oh, well, of course! I imagine a lot of recovery still needs to be done, that I’m sure Ser Verity will be more than happy to help with-!”
“No, I mean, I don’t think we’re, um,” Rosalie winced. She wished there was a point in time when a person felt like an adult, not just a teenager bumbling around in adult’s clothes. “Double-dateable, yet. And I don’t exactly know for certain, if we ever will be.”
Gale blinked at her.
“...But I can ask Astarion if he wants to visit with me, next time I come for tea?” Rosalie offered. “If he’s still here, of course.”
Gale was looking increasingly confused.
“Rose,” he said. “You fought and defeated an Ascended Vampire, went to Cania, found Astarion’s soul, brought it back, fought the Ascended Vampire, again, cast a Wish spell without textual citation in order to bring him back to life-”
“Yes,” said Rosalie, feeling all hot in the face for some reason.
“...And this all comes, prior to the commitment to a double date?” Gale asked her, incredulously.
“It’s more that that was all something I did… for me,” replied Rosalie, after floundering with her words for a second. “I feel like, from this point onwards, it all rather requires the consent of the other party. Which… um. I don’t really have, yet.”
“Well… what’s he waiting for?!” Gale said, with a grin that told Rose that Shadowheart had not given Gale the full picture, either. “I was ready to risk it all, when you were only nice to me the once! He needs to get his act together, quite frankly!”
“Yes,” said Rosalie, dryly. "If there's one thing we know Astarion to love and adore, it's a sense of obligation.”
Verity was utterly distraught, once Gale left. That was her queenly diet, gone. It was back to two meals a day, and that greatest of all crimes: dry food. It took her cat until the late evening to start coming over for cuddles. Rosalie understood. Some betrayals were just not to be borne. It was only once the prospect of the last blanketed foot of Rose’s bed offered itself, that Ser Verity seemed to magically forgive her. Rosalie rearranged the covers to her majesty’s liking, then left the bedroom door open as usual, so the cat could slip out again if she needed to.
Rosalie also left the suitcase of clothes in the library. She didn’t actually know which bedroom Astarion was using, because it turned out that giving an already stealthy man super vampirism meant you never had a clue to his location, at any given time. She’d never gotten the ‘get him a bell’ jokes, until now, when she thought she’d force him to suffer the indignity, just so she knew he was… you know… alive.
These are all clothes that should be in your size, this time :) Gale picked them out, so don’t blame me if anything isn’t to your taste! Tim does laundry on third, sixth, and ninth-days. Laundry hampers are in the bathrooms :)
It was now nearing the end of their first ten-day together, and Rosalie still hadn’t seen Astarion once. She would’ve added a ‘please respond to this message’ to the end of this note, were it not for the fact she knew already, that the notes were being read. Astarion always left them flat and face-down, a kind of frustratingly understated ‘understood’, that at least provided Rose with proof he was still in the house.
The suitcase was gone from its place in the library, the next morning. That was the haunting, again.
She was really quite frustrated by this point, because without Astarion to talk to or repair bridges with, Rosalie was starting to get restless, despite her recovery. After days without casting anything stronger than a levitate, all her magic was nearly back, and she could walk to all the way to the sea without becoming breathless, even on a blustery day - even when she was alone. She’d tried reading books, but all she could think about was annotations. She’d eaten so many of those muffins she kept getting Tim to bake, that she felt like she would burst.
All this actually left, as a distraction, was her office.
Rosalie hadn’t yet opened her office door, which was on the same floor as the library. She had, after all, nearly died.
But as Astarion’s first week back in the world had not transpired into some glorious honeymoon - this was, she felt, both of their faults, though unconsciousness had been a major factor at her end - all that left her with was her research, or… (and this was when things truly got depressing) her correspondence.
Rose didn’t want to deal with her correspondence. She didn’t even want to research Wish, which would probably involve having to deal with… a number of her correspondents, all who had been left hanging. It was occurring to Rose, now it was all over, that she hadn’t actually sent out any kind of Out Of Office notice. She hadn’t explained to anyone, that she was going off to fight her evil ex. Timothy was an Unseen Servant, who’d been left in automation for nearly a month. The pile of mail was undoubtedly monstrous.
But Astarion still wasn’t talking to her, and Rosalie didn’t want to push.
So that left her with only one option: she did what she always did, and opted to bury herself in work.
The office was the nicest room in the tower after the library, larger even than Rosalie’s bedroom, given that she’d known this room was the one she was destined to spend the most time in. This had been the highest floor of the tower before she expanded upon the ruin, and some of the original brickwork had been preserved under the pale plaster. It featured decorative high windows that got sunlight, all day long. She’d added another window, with a bench seat and a stained glass border, but that was mostly for Verity's benefit.
The cat immediately sprawled belly-out in her habitual position across the bench, like the lazy unemployed menace she was, while Rosalie confronted the pile of mail on her desk. It had gotten so tall, under Tim’s indifferent eye, that the first stack had shunted sideways and collapsed, leaving the second looking precarious.
I rescued Astarion’s soul from hell, Rosalie thought to herself.
But it seemed that life went on as usual. You’d think she’d have learned that by now, from the other adventures. She’d thought this time, it would be momentous, and that everything would be different. For some reason.
Instead, she plucked an opal-plated letter knife from the top desk draw, and set to work.
By the end of the day, Rose’s shoulders were as ratcheted just as tight as they had been when she was researching Hemlock’s texts on no sleep. She’d made leeway on half the mail, starting with the oldest, and drained all her spells, casting apologetic Sendings to the queries that had proven themselves urgent, and the projects she’d all but abandoned halfway through. Even though the office door was open, she hadn’t heard anyone come by - but she hadn’t noticed it get dark, either. She had this distressing image of Astarion cartwheeling along the landing, and her being oblivious - there was no hole she could fall into, more deeply or more easily, than work.
She fed Verity, but didn’t feel up to dinner herself. Instead, she went straight to the largest bathroom (third floor, not ensuite, heated tiles, and a mural of a feywild glenn complete with Dancing Lights inset into the wall. Rosalie was starting to worry that her choice in decoration was actually kind of embarrassing - but there’d been so much money, and only her tastes to please). She filled up the freestanding tub with hot water, and every soap and perfumed oil under the sun. Anything to get rid of the anxious tension winching her ribs and shoulders, and the headache she could feel building in her temple.
The water actually scorched her, when she got in. This was surprising, even with the vapour rising in a heavy mist - she’d never been on Karlach’s level, but it took a lot for a tiefling to feel the heat.
The moment she got in the water - and not a moment before, no, that would imply that it wasn’t premeditated - Verity began scratching at the door. A few seconds later, the warbling began. But Rosalie wasn’t falling for it - the one and only time she’d let the cat into this room, Verity had maintained a moment of prolonged eye contact, that had spoken of evil intent, before pouncing up onto the lip of the bath, overbalancing, and leaving them both miserable. Rose had been left with scratches all over her knees, as she followed the betrayed beast around the tower, repeatedly casting Prestidigitation to try and dry out her dripping, soapy fur.
Instead, Rose dipped her head and horns beneath the bubbles and into the water, submerging herself up to her hairline to drown out everything but the frenetic pace of her heart as her blood pounded with the overheat. The warbling remained distant, for a while, before Verity realised it was a lost cause and fell silent.
After an indeterminate amount of time, there was a sound of padded feet - possibly paws. The warbling started again, low and mournful, as if Verity had been stabbed in some Revenge Tragedy and was performing her final act monologue on a Neverwinter stage. More door scratching. Rosalie committed to her cold-heartedness as best she could.
Then, the door opened silently, without barely even a ping of the snib. Rosalie raised her head from the water and cast a nervous glance over her shoulder, terrified that Tara had taught Ser Verity new tricks.
Then, she saw who had actually opened the door, and startled so hard that she sloshed soap and bathwater all across the tiled floor.
“Fucking gods!” She shrieked, as the pale slice of Astarion's face she could see through the crack in the door looked ashamedly back at her. He'd clearly been hoping to avoid getting caught, which- “Does stealth preclude knocking? What are you-”
“- it's nothing untoward, I promise you, I didn't mean to disturb,” his words came from him in a rush. “I just… the cat was so loud, and I couldn't tell if it was unhappy. And obviously, I could hear your heartbeat, but what if it knew something I didn't, and you were, say, unwell, or in trouble-”
Ser Verity began grooming herself, still sat in the hallway. Having now proved she was utterly capable of getting someone to open the door for her, she displayed no interest in actually crossing the threshold.
“Oh my gods, she doesn't know anything, never trust her, she's just a dramatic baby!” Rosalie all but wailed, “do not let the thing that hates water and has knives in her feet near me, when I'm naked and soaking wet...!”
And then they both stopped, because yes, Rosalie should literally never be allowed to open her mouth in company, ever. And she was naked, underneath all those bubbles. This was now verging into Ascendent territory, and the horror-struck look on Astarion’s face said as much.
“... I'm just going to leave,” Astarion said, weakly. “...I'll take the cat.”
Rosalie sank lower into the water, so her shoulders were fully submerged. But the moment the door was swung shut again, she bodily launched herself from the tub, prestidigitating herself dry as she lunged for her shirt.
Astarion had been tracking her heartbeat. That's how he'd been avoiding her, all this time! All the same ‘song of her blood’ bullshit that the Ascendent had used to hunt her down, now used against her in a frustratingly novel, new way! If she didn't catch him now he'd be fucking gone again…!
Rosalie stepped back into her stockings, underwear, and the circle of her skirt, and was still tying up the laces at her stomach as she stumbled out of the bathroom and onto the corridor. She needed to follow him, while she still had the chance. If he’d taken the cat, he’d probably gone upstairs…
She turned the corner which would take her to the next staircase, and nearly collided face first with Astarion, head against chest.
“Oh,” she said intelligently. “You’re still here.”
“...What just happened felt like something I might need to recover from, honestly,” Astarion confessed. He reached out his hands to steady her as she stepped back from the collision, then clearly thought better of it, as he raised them both as if he'd been asked to surrender. “I swear to you, I wasn’t-”
“Is that… are you wearing a jumper?” said Rosalie, squinting at him.
Astarion paused mid-apology, hands still raised, then his own gaze drifted down to the charcoal grey wool sweater he was wearing, a little self-consciously.
“...Have I ever seen you, in a jumper before?” asked Rose, recalibrating the image and wondering why it seemed so strange.
“Unlikely… I never needed them, before. I get cold, now,” said Astarion. Seeing her surprise, he clarified, “well… as much as any other person, I would guess. I’m warm-blooded again, or maybe just blooded, and it’s cold here, with the change in seasons. It won’t kill me, or anything, but it was getting a little... uncomfortable. Not very, um, ‘Vampire Ascendent’ of me, to need to wrap up warm, but-”
“No, it…” Rosalie wanted to tell him it suited him, even if it was a little odd. Homely, more than anything. She kind of wanted to bury her face in the front of it, but that was a secondary concern.
She changed track. “‘All the arousals and appetites of man returned’, is what Raphael said about the Ritual. I suppose a lust for knitwear is a pretty human thing. I have like, seventy jumpers, myself.”
Astarion looked at her, tilting his head ever so slightly. “...‘Lust’?”
“Raphael’s words,” Rosalie hastily clarified. “Not mine.”
“...When he was talking about knitwear,” Astarion agreed solemnly.
“Exactly,” she couldn’t fight the way she smiled. “About knitwear.”
“Given that this was handpicked by his Highness of Waterdeep, I’m just glad it isn’t velour,” Astarion drawled, as best he could. He seemed to remember his hands were still up in surrender, so started to relax his posture, looking embarrassed. “I think even he knew that was a step too far, for me.”
“I can turn up the heat in the tower,” Rose told him. “If you’re cold, that is. I’m sorry, I should’ve checked in, I didn’t realise you would…”
She trailed off, as they both realised that there was no way she could have checked in, given that he’d been avoiding her like the plague.
“It’s mostly for the outside, Foxglove,” said Astarion, as gently as he could. “With it being almost winter, and all.”
“But I can still make the tower warmer! It’s no issue, really!” Rosalie insisted. “I can modulate the temperature on each floor with the arcane controls, or we can move you into a bedroom with a fireplace-”
“-I’m already in a bedroom with a fireplace,” he told her.
“Oh,” Rosalie said. That narrowed it down to three, the ones that were on the north facing facade and adjacent to the original chimney breast. “Well. Ok, then. That’s good, at least. Let me, or Timothy know, if the coal needs replenishing. There’s a store…”
Verity chose this moment, to bound up with a canter of paws and a loud mrrp. Rosalie was used to it, keeping an eye out for ankle-high missiles barrelling about the place, but she could tell it startled Astarion a little. Especially when Verity bypassed her entirely, and settled for rubbing herself shamelessly all along his legs, instead.
They both watched the cat, who was too pampered to know of hardships like vampiric ascendency, as she began to smother the bottom half of Astarion’s trousers with white hair.
“So… this is the cat, then.” he said, clearing his throat. “We are already acquainted, through our brief moment of betrayal. But I don’t know it’s… their… name.”
“That’s Ser Verity, yes.” replied Rose.
“...Severity? That’s a name, is it?”
And Rosalie smiled, “Ser Verity,” she corrected. “But that is the pun, yes. She gets this look sometimes…” she put her finger to her own forehead, angled it until it was more prominent, so that her face was mostly eyebrows, from Astarion’s perspective, “where she looks just so fucking grumpy. It was worse when she was a kitten, and nearly all forehead. I decided to honour that part of her disposition.”
“...Will she…? If I…”
“She’s a flirt in spirit and a fickle traitor at heart, so yes, probably,” Rosalie told him glumly, as he dropped down to his haunches and offered the cat his hand to sniff. Predictably, the cat immediately chirped again, and started doing rolls of her head all over his fingers.
“Oh!” he said, after a second, and then glanced up at Rosalie, to offer the explanation: “I saw the forehead.”
“It’s a big, angry forehead.”
“Very severe.” agreed Astarion in a soft voice, before stroking the cat and scritching under the side of her cheek. Rosalie watched him do it, in his silly little jumper, and felt her heart soften, as if the tension of being alone all this week was finally starting to relent.
“...Do you want to have a drink?” she suddenly blurted. “Together. Do you want to have a drink, together? Now? Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolat- WINE!”
Astarion looked up at her, while Verity started purring.
“Wine,” Rosalie said. “I’ll be having wine.”
“...Alright,” said Astarion.
Notes:
Hello lovelies! I wanted to post an update to mark the milestone 3,000 kudos (3,000!!! KUDOS!!!) so here is a new chapter, thank you so much for your patience :)
I don't think I will posting another update of Pieces until April - I am currently working towards a large submission deadline for my PhD thesis that's at the end of this month, and if you want to know how I'm doing, picture that meme of the taxidermy fox looking sad and dissociated in a chair. Which I suppose fits some of the vibes of this chapter, so at least I'm on theme!
Thank you for sticking with me, miss you all lots! I hope to have more fic for you soon when my brain is not on fire x
Chapter Notes
- Do you know I'm one of those people who has to take a quick lap of the living room, whenever second hand embarrassment happens in a piece of media? it seems you truly die a hero, of live long enough to watch yourself become a villain :')
- Shadowheart's speech is less motivated by hatred/distrust for Astarion, so much as a realisation of what's actually going on with Rose, coupled with the fact that someone has got to help that poor man talk through some of his shit.
- Also, the Catholicism.
- Ser Verity has been a plot point... this whole time! All part of my Master Plan. Amongst my favourite tropes, I have included "cat".
- (Also I feed my cats butter, so no one is judging Gale here :') this is a safe space)
- Fun fact! 'Liminal' is a buzzword in my field of academic study... idk it's just very fun to use it in a fic. Meanwhile, 'libertatem diaboli' means 'devil's freedom', and was my invention. I don't know latin, I'm just using the conventions of Karlach's nickname (advocatus diaboli my beloved)
- I've put Rosalie through Actual Horrors in this fic, but I think the cruellest thing I've maybe done is force her to read her wizard emails :'))))))
- From previous fics, I know 'jumper' is a British word, but I'm sorry all these bitches have UK accents I'm sticking to my guns. Next thing you know, I'll be committing actual crimes and putting Astarion in henleys.
Chapter 22: Chapter Twenty-Two
Notes:
TW: this is so silly considering what this chapter is about, but there is one mention of pet death! I didn't want it to come as a surprise to anyone lmao. It's not Ser Verity so don't worry - this fic is not *that* evil.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Rose took him to the larger sitting room. The one on the second floor - that was Ser Verity’s favourite. It was a large, dark coloured room, with a patterned rug imported from Amn stretched out in front of the fireplace.
Astarion trailed behind Rosalie like a shadow, as she waved her hands over the arcane controls by the door, raising the lights and conjuring flames in the grate. Then, she moved to another patch of wall. She’d embedded a twist of copper wire in the plasterwork of each room, so that she could message Timothy directly, from anywhere in the house. She murmured a command for wine and two glasses, then moved over to the settees. Verity immediately lolled out across the rug, arms stretched above her head and distended, fluffy belly facing the crackling fire.
Astarion had stayed silent in the doorway, watching everything Rosalie did. It was only once she glanced back at him, confused as to why he had not followed, that he suddenly stirred back to life and moved with his usual soundless grace. He took a separate seat, though there was enough room for both of them on the one that Rose had chosen.
“...How have you been finding the house?” she asked, awkwardly.
“It’s… lovely,” replied Astarion, just as stilting as she was. “...And now I know how to turn the lights on, so there’s that.”
“Oh, no!” said Rose, horrified. “Please tell me Shadowheart didn’t just leave you fending for yourself in the darkness.”
Astarion’s smile was so small, it was barely a glimmer on his face. “Though I’d understand it, if she did do that to me, out of spite… that was actually a joke.”
“It was a joke, wasn't it?”
All Rosalie was thinking, was how Astarion had darkvision. If he’d been unable to operate the tower’s arcane apparatus, he very easily could've walked through the darkness and made do, all in the name of avoiding her-
“It was. I worked out pretty quickly that waving my hands in front of things was necessary, though I was mostly just flapping at everything,” Astarion said. “It was just… nice, to see how it’s meant to be done. I’ll try to copy your gestures, next time. I suppose.”
The implication he had been watching her cast - even such a small, simple domestic spell - brought some heat to Rosalie's face.
“It is a beautiful house, Rose,” Astarion repeated, after a second. “Very… grand.”
“...That’s one word for it.”
“It’s… not quite what I imagined it would be, but I like that's the sea closeby. That’s why I chose the bedroom I did. Not for the fireplace, but because you can hear the ocean. It’s beautiful. Even though-”
“-Even though?”
“Well… it’s very far away,” said Astarion, carefully. “From… anything. Everything.”
Rosalie gave him a twist of a smile. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
“I haven’t seen another soul all week.”
Rosalie wanted to point out that he’d had the option for company, if he’d wanted it. But Astarion didn’t exactly say it, like it was a bad thing.
“That was kind of deliberate,” she admitted. “Alaron’s not very populated, given the history of fey visitations, particularly on this half of the island. There’s settlements to the south-” he’d know this, if he looked at the maps she’d left him, “-but there’s forest and some very impassable mountains, between here and there. Whoever built this place clearly didn’t like company. Although, there were a large group of people living here, we think, based on the records.”
“And yet you… chose here? All on your own?”
“It’s very peaceful,” said Rosalie, oblivious to the leading quality in Astarion’s voice. “We came through here, when we were on our mission - it became a safe base, for excursions into the forest. We were hired to investigate some fey-related disappearances - not really my bag, but I-” but I was investigating fey bargains at the time, and had just stumbled across references to a Wish text in the Moonshae elvish dialect “- but it turned out that agents of the Queen of Air and Darkness were operating in the woodland via a portal they’d made. They were taking people through to the Feywild on the other side - we rescued them, then we closed the portal down. That was me, and Karlach’s half of the Blades… oh, and this was when Anala had only just joined Blackstaff and Gale was still griping about her approach to admin, so he was still down for an adventure or two, in the summer vacation once marking was over-!”
She glanced over at Astarion, who was still silent, and looking unusually and unnervingly thoughtful. Maybe telling him about the adventures she’d gotten up to with their friends, when he’d been locked away and the Ascendent gallivanting around in his body, wasn’t a good idea.
“Anyway… when we got rid of the agents, and closed the portal, the island officials gave us our reward, et cetera,” continued Rose, changing tact. “Instead of money, I asked for this.”
“...Because it’s far away from everything,” said Astarion, quietly.
“Nothing’s far away, when you have a teleportation circle,” countered Rose, not sure why the way he'd said it seemed to sting.
“But… you like it? Not being around people.”
“Well…” the fact was, Rosalie didn’t like it... not being around people. But saying that would open a whole other can of worms, so instead she settled on, “...it’s also a very powerful wizard tower, on hallowed ground. Not many of those, in the world.”
This was of course, the wrong thing to say. Astarion’s face became even more thoughtful, as he observed: “You needed the ground to be hallowed. In order to feel safe.”
From me, was the unspoken ending to that sentence. Looking at the pensive, far away quality of his face, Rosalie felt herself start to panic.
“I also love the ocean!” she hastily added, “I’ve always loved living by the sea. That’s part of why I moved to Waterdeep - I’m sure I’ve told you that before. But when we came through here, it made me realise how much building a city that big on the coastline, kind of ruins it.”
She tried to smile at him, “the Sea of Swords in Waterdeep, or in the Gate, was some severely discounted ocean. This is the real thing.”
Astarion stilled, looking at her.
…And then he startled, when the door to the room creaked open, and the Unseen Servant came in with a loaded tray. Invisible and barely more than a breath of air, Timothy was as nearly silent as Astarion was. It seemed that it had taken him so long to come up here, because alongside the two wide bottomed wine glasses and the bottle of red, was a plate of cold food selected from the larder.
Rosalie frowned, wondering if her servant had bizarrely decided to play wingman via charcuterie, when she remembered.
“Oh! This is part of the programming Gale installed. He snuck it in, along with the recipes,” she explained to Astarion, blowing a strand of hair out of her face with good-humoured exasperation, “if I haven’t eaten by the end of the day, he made sure that food came with any orders I did happen to give.”
Astarion squinted at her. “...You haven’t eaten today?”
“Well…” said Rosalie, “I was working.”
“You were working?” This tone of voice was worse, than that used for the first question.
Rose flushed, suddenly busying herself with pouring the drinks. “Do you want any food?”
“Why were you working?” Astarion demanded.
“Often, a person requires money, in order to maintain a certain lifestyle, and ensure they have adequate food and shelter,” replied Rosalie primly. “Unfortunately, this also means said individual must go through the tiresome practice, of participating in a society-”
“Oh, please! You live in a magically powered castle, and you - you almost died a ten-day ago-”
“Yes, well. The fact remains that I didn’t die, and I didn’t-” I didn’t have anything better to do.
Rosalie stopped herself.
“I didn’t remember to notify anyone that I was taking leave,” she finished, lamely. “So everything has sort of been… piling up.”
Her stomach did feel empty, and though she’d asked for wine, she didn’t actually want to get drunk and ruin everything. So she focused on stacking some bread with the other ingredients on the plate, glad it also gave her the excuse not to maintain eye contact.
But unfortunately, Astarion wasn’t letting this go.
“And this just… happens, does it?” he demanded, the most vocal she’d heard him since he’d gotten back. “You working, and then not eating. Often enough that Gale programmed it in to the only other thing in this house?”
“Tim is not the only thing in the house,” protested Rose. “There’s Verity-”
“And everyone else, presumably, just leaves you to your own devices-”
Rosalie looked over at him, and that look - mostly hurt - stopped Astarion mid-sentence. Though it had all been reflex, she immediately felt guilty that it had happened. After all, after this week of silence, she wanted him to talk to her.
“Please don’t speak about my friends like that,” she muttered, becoming absorbed with arranging the food on her plate. “Or me, for that matter. I’m not a child, so I’ll take responsibility for my own choices, thank you.”
Astarion was practically glaring daggers at her, mouth curved into a sullen frown unlike anything she thought she’d ever seen on his face.
“This is sometimes just how wizards are,” Rose told him, and she took a careful bite of her food before she picked up his wineglass and leaned over to hand it to him. “We become focused on things… and we… we like to live in quiet places, that help us to focus on them more.”
Astarion paused. That frown softened. Then he reached out, and took the glass. Their fingers brushed, ever so lightly, and Rosalie knew that both of them had noticed. When he looked down at the point of contact, he was frowning, though she wasn’t sure why.
“It is a lovely house, Rose,” Astarion said softly, after a second, before leaning back. “Truly. I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just… it’s not what I imagined. For you. For Gale, maybe. But… not for you.”
Rosalie examined a minute speck of dust on her skirt, the rich dark wine in her glass. Anything but him, just for a second.
“I am happy here,” she muttered.
…Why did that feel like a lie in her mouth, all of a sudden?
“...Have you seen my observatory?” She continued, weakly. “Lae'zel got me a lens, for the telescope, that shifts the viewfinder to the Astral Sea. It was so I could, um, predict a few battles for her, using the stars there - but the view itself is beautiful. It's the only telescope of its kind!”
Astarion didn’t say anything. He just looked sad.
“I understand if you don't like it here, though!” she continued, the stare seeming to draw more and more words out of her against her will. “Not exactly your kind of scene, I understand. I know it must be lonel-” nope, she caught herself, “a little dull here. I like it, but that doesn’t mean you have to-”
“I think I’ve had enough excitement for the decade, don’t you?” murmured Astarion. “I can take a little boredom, should that be the word you wish to use.”
“Well, you saw me in the bathtub, so, it’s not like it’s entirely devoid of surprises. Based on certain mirror placements, Ascended-you literally wishes,” joked Rosalie.
And then became abruptly mortified at herself. She really did just say words sometimes. She started downing wine, so she continued not having to look in Astarion's direction.
But… there was no rejoinder. No tease. Not even a mockery of her own poor and unsubtle, blundering attempts at flirting, which admittedly probably shouldn’t have bought his soulless alter ego into the mix. When she glanced over, confused to have left such an opening and not earned even a laugh at her expense, Astarion was simply staring at her. She kind of wished he would stop.
“...I’m not trying to leave, Rose. I meant it, when I said I liked it here,” he told her, sincerely. “And I certainly prefer your definition of peace, to his.”
He meant it as a compliment, but the parallel Astarion drew between the tower in Alaron and the Ascendent’s palace, so lonely and empty, made Rosalie feel a little sick. She couldn’t say for certain why.
“...How are you feeling?” she said, selfishly desperate to turn the conversation towards him, rather than have it linger on her for a little too long. “Are you…”
Astarion raised an incredulous eyebrow, seeing through the ruse.
“...Well?” she finished, weakly.
He looked amused. “Am I ‘well’?”
“Ok, obviously not,” replied Rosalie. “But I hope you’ve not been avoiding me because things are, I don’t know, dire.”
This earned a wince, and a small, soft intake of breath. The humour in Astarion’s face faltered slightly, as if he hadn’t expected her to state it so plainly. Rose supposed she didn’t use to do that, all that much. Some things were easier than others, even now.
“I didn’t-” he started, “it’s not - I don’t want you to think that-”
“-It’s ok.”
“I thought that, if you needed me,” he told her, “there were, you know... spells you could cast.”
I wouldn’t cast them, Rosalie thought. But ok.
He was the one that had been tracking her, after all.
“It’s… fine. I’m fine,” he answered, “everything was a little confused, at first, but it evened out and everything in my head got itself lined up in a neat, orderly row, eventually - for better or for worse.” His mouth quirked, “mostly for worse. I’m not sleeping much - not that I used to, really. As a result, I can obviously survive.”
“If there’s anything I can do…”
“You have, of course, done enough.” replied Astarion, and the edge in his voice meant it was Rose’s turn to fall into stung silence, forcing herself to take another bite of her food.
He watched her do it, then said, “...there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Ok?”
“I might have been avoiding you, because I didn’t want to do it.”
“Alright.”
Her agreeableness seemed like it was turning Astarion resentful, which came so close to familiar conversations of old that Rosalie fought a smile.
“It… I genuinely didn’t keep this from you, I want you to know,” started Astarion. “It was entirely accidental. There is a period of time in my memories, a gap of years, where things become… muddled. Convoluted. It took me a few days, to work out exactly what was happening. ”
“...Were these the times when your soul cage and the Ascendent shared the same space?”
“Precisely,” he nodded, clearly relieved. “Being in two places at once, simultaneously, then at times part of the same conversation… it proved somewhat disconcerting, to say the least.”
Rosalie opened her mouth, to offer to help again. Modify Memory had taught her a few things about unpicking people’s minds and placing them back together in a new, easier order. Then, her own mind caught on something Astarion had said.
“'Two parts of the same conversation'? The Ascendent and you spoke?”
Astarion looked queasy, just thinking about it. “Yes. I used to - it used to - well, I suppose, interrogate me. I remember the conversations, from my side - well as in, the jar’s side… oh, hells, you know what I mean - but it was all extremely confused and I couldn’t remember the order. The time from the ritual until now was hard to track anyway - it was all so… sourceless, most of it. Unmoored. Save the times I was talking with someone, and there was a connection to anchor me to the outside world.”
“Were there many of those connections?”
“No,” Astarion said. “Only two. You. And Him.”
“...No Mephistopheles?” she joked.
“No. No hellish overlords quizzing me on my terrible choices, or putting me to work in the Infernal mines, as it were, thankfully,” said Astarion, with a subdued version of his former sarcasm. “Just those times with you - the one where you were drunk, and then the ones where you were asleep, and then-”
“-I’m sorry, what?”
“...Ah,” Astarion looked suddenly, incredibly awkward, bashfully scratching the side of his face and examining the contents of his own wineglass, as the tips of his ears seemed to go ruddy in the firelight. “So. A memorable night for only one of us, I see.”
“I spoke to you?!” asked Rosalie. “Drunk?”
“You did. At least, I’m assuming. I thought it was some kind of apparition, initially, and then that maybe that you were, I don't know, drugged. But with more than enough time to consider it, and now the... um... other half of the conversation intact-”
Rosalie was staring at him, stewing in horror. Trapped in a prison, no contact with the outside world save the thing holding him captive - and she’d barrelled her way in, shitfaced, and then forgotten it after? The thought simply couldn’t be borne.
Astarion looked at her, and his entire expression softened.
“Don’t worry, Foxglove. You didn’t say anything worse than what you used to when-”
“What did I say?!”
“Well, now I’m not sure I wish to divulge-”
“...Was this when I was in Ramazith?!”
“You’d have to tell me, d- darling. Do you get that drunk, often?”
Rosalie immediately slammed her half-full glass down, with enough force to make a loud clunk and shake the end table. There was a snuffle of breath that could almost have been a laugh, and when she glanced back Astarion had his hand over his mouth, covering something close to a smile.
“There’s no need to worry yourself,” he said, gently. “It was all very endearing at the time. And a relief, quite frankly, to know you were alive, still.”
“...Why wouldn’t I be alive?” asked Rose. But then, this version of him probably hadn’t even known if they’d survived the Netherbrain...
But the mirth in Astarion’s face faded so quickly, as he returned to the thread of his story, that Rosalie thought it must be something more than that.
“When he - let’s just call him ‘he’ - gained ownership of me-”
“-From the Cold Lord?”
“Yes. When I was gifted to him, he… used me, as a resource.”
“To power the house.”
“In part,” replied Astarion. “But that was not… there was more to it, than that. There were parts of myself - himself - oh, gods, whatever - that he couldn’t seem to access. Now that I see the other side, it strikes me as if something was stunted in his understanding, and left him with problems he couldn’t seem to solve instinctively, or alone…”
Astarion placed his hand to the bridge of his nose, wincing as if in pain, or resignation. “...Rose.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“The… deaths,” said Astarion. He kept his eyes closed, and spoke mostly into his hand. “The ones at the part - that made it into the paper. The ones that brought you to the Gate. They were my idea.”
Rose frowned, shaking her head. “No, they weren’t. You were in-”
“When I was in the cage,” Astarion told her. “He would come to visit - or talk to me, I guess. He would ask me questions, and I would be compelled to answer. The answers that I gave him had to be truthful.”
“Oh…” the sound came out of Rosalie, wounded. It hadn’t occurred to her, that the first step in her research might be to look into the spell that had bound Astarion, and learn precisely what it was capable of.
“The first few times we interacted, he just… observed me, I suppose is the term. I could feel something being taken from me, but I had no way of knowing or articulating what it was. He didn’t talk to me at all, in the beginning, and then when he did, the questions were all about you,” continued Astarion. “What you liked, what you would like, what could be done to please you, where I thought you were - I had no clue, obviously. I told him Waterdeep, in return he called me useless. And then-”
“...And then?”
“Then, he asked me… what would be guaranteed, to bring you back to the Gate?” Astarion muttered. “What could lure you to him, when you hadn’t visited of your own volition, in nearly a decade. And, well, I said…”
Rosalie already knew, what Astarion had said.
“I said,” Astarion repeated, clearing his throat, “that ‘once you’d made up your mind about something you thought was right, nothing that appealed to your selfish desires would persuade you or tempt you away from it. That, in those situations, the only thing that could move you to make the stupid decision, was to bring your moral code back into the mix. That when you see something heinous happen, you will automatically feel that it is now your duty to stop it, and that only guilt would drive you forward’. And, well, by that point he’d already ranted to me about how you’d made him promise not to kill anyone. And so I pointed out, that, if I wanted you to take notice of me, and descend upon me like some kind of harpy, I would simply…”
Astarion trailed off. At some point during the explanation, he had reopened his eyes to watch her reaction to his words. But Rosalie was so dazed that she hadn’t noticed.
“I did manage to find a loophole at the last second,” he muttered. “Put in that clause about them not being innocents, otherwise - as I pointed out - we both knew you’d just move straight to killing us - him - on sight. But I could see the damage was already done, of course. And the next time he came back, he said that it had worked. And then he siphoned off some large part of me, and it suddenly became a lot harder to think. Even the half-consciousness of that state became difficult to cling to. I was grateful, to know you were still around. It made it worth the effort.”
“...I see.”
Rosalie was trying to remember what she could about the Soul Cage spell. But necromancy had never been her forte, and Infernal adaptations to an already existing spell would take it even further outside her realm of understanding.
But… she thought back, to those times the Ascendent had seemed close-to, but-not-quite-Astarion. How the sheen had fallen away over time, from that first, incandescently playful meeting, to their bitter and thankless fight on the road out of the Gate. She’d attributed it to her own nerves and strange excitement at seeing him again, falling out of boredom and into something closer to her old life. And of course, she’d lost all of her own interest, as the situation worsened.
But Rosalie had held the proof, between her own two hands, that Astarion’s soul was a finite resource, and that it had been on the very edge of fraying away into nothing.
If the Ascendent had used it as a resource, and all it had offered him was diminishing returns, meaning he had to keep taking more…
“You’re not saying anything,” commented Astarion. For a strange second, he sounded relieved.
Rosalie couldn’t think of anything to say, grappling with the hypothesis that the last remnant of Astarion might have been spent, trying to win her back.
“...There’s not very much to say, is there?" she tried. "It’s all happened now - and I did, in fact, fall for it. But the Ascendent asked you to tell him what would work and you were compelled to answer. It's not any fault of yours, that you were the one who knew me best... I’m glad that you thought to recommend he kill criminals. That was actually incredibly clever.”
Astarion looked so confused, it bordered on affront.
“And I’m… well, I’m glad it happened, I think,” said Rosalie, surprised how true that was. “Otherwise, I would’ve stayed here, and I never would’ve entered into his game at all. I never would’ve gone to that party, and encountered Hemlock, and you would still be trapped on the other side of that throne, or worse-”
“...Why aren’t you angry?” Astarion asked her suddenly.
“What?”
“Why aren’t you angry? Every single death, is because of me,” he pressed. “All seven thousand and-”
“Seven thousand and fifty-eight,” Rosalie finished for him. “If we include you.”
“More,” countered Astarion, quietly. "If we include the spawn I made.”
“That wasn’t you, though.”
“It doesn’t really matter, now, does it!” the words burst out of him. “Even without them, that’s more deaths than even the Dead Three!”
“Oh, gods, no. Not even close,” said Rose, waving a dismissive hand despite herself. “We found out extensive details about all their activities, when we did the work dismantling their power bases and the structures financing them-”
“Why aren’t you angry with me?” demanded Astarion a third time, shifting forward in his seat almost as if he wanted to launch himself at her. “You hated me, when we thought that my death toll would be seven people. You couldn’t even stand to look at me. And now I’m here, and not only am I responsible for the monster that tormented you, hurt you, and assaulted you, I'm also the one that told it killing people was a good idea! What are you… why aren’t you… I don’t think I can take it, if you keep pretending that this is all ok! You don’t need to lie to me! You know exactly what I’ve done. You were the main victim!”
“No, I wasn’t,” replied Rosalie. “You were.”
“...Stop saying it like that!”
“...Are you done?” Rosalie asked him, when it seemed the outburst had ended. Astarion’s only response was to glare some more daggers at her. Verity had, by this point, fallen asleep on the rug.
“Astarion,” she said, gently. “I stopped being upset over the Rite, a long time ago.”
Astarion shifted further forward in his seat. “But that’s not true,” he insisted. “I saw the fire of your fury, when you met me in the Ascendent. You hated me. I disgusted you. I’ve seen it clear as day, written across you face and your entire body, that you despise me!”
“No, I don’t,” replied Rosalie. “I despised him. He stole you from me. He took you away from me - we now know, he was holding you hostage - and then paraded around, wearing your face. Of course I hated him. He couldn’t have done worse, if he pushed me face-first down into your grave and let me choke on the dirt.”
“Shadowheart says-”
“- I know what Shadowheart believes,” said Rose. “And I won’t question it - she knows herself better than me. But she doesn’t know you. Perhaps I don’t, either. But what I did know, was that that person was not you. From that very first night, I knew something essential was lost-”
“-What if nothing was different?” demanded Astarion. “What if that was just me, and that’s all that I am, deep down?”
“Well,” Rosalie snorted, “that’s not true.”
“What if your hatred had nothing to do with what he was doing to do, and everything to do with what I’d already done?” he persisted. “I did the ritual. I became him. And I hurt you, Rose.”
“Look,” she said, frustrated. “I’m sure if I went back to therapy, I’d be told within minutes that the Ascendent was some kind of... no-holds-barred outlet, for some deep-seated resentments. But mostly, he was just a monster, hurting you - your memory, your body-”
“-Because of me,” said Astarion, “because of my choices.”
“I don’t deny you made a mistake.”
“Every single death is mine.”
“So?” Rosalie asked.
This word robbed the wind out of Astarion’s sails, stunning him mid-breath before he could start his next round of argumentation. “...So?”
“Let’s ignore the fifty-seven that led me to you, that you were compelled to suggest through an Infernal spell, and focus on the Rite,” said Rosalie. “I know how many people you killed, Astarion. I was, in fact, there.”
Astarion faltered. “I mean, I know you were there. I saw you, when I-”
“And I know why you did it, as well,” she continued. “You were afraid. You were afraid, and I didn’t help you, and so you were also alone.”
“Foxglove, will you listen to yourself-”
“Ok! Let’s ignore that, as well, then!” she persisted. “Let’s pretend you did it because you’re a terrible, evil person to your very core, and not someone who was conflicted and afraid, at a moment where you’d just fought for your life and faced down your tormenter of centuries, freed yourself from something terrible, only to have no guarantee that it would last. So… what, then?”
“I… I don’t understand what you…”
“Am I supposed to just let you suffer, and bear that on my conscience, knowing I could’ve done more? Is guilt all that’s left, for me, then?”
“You’ve already saved me,” interrupted Astarion, “I meant it, when I said you’ve done enough. You don’t need to be kind.”
“And you think I’m being kind, for you?” Rosalie asked him. “...Is it truly the way you say it is? That once I’ve done what I think is the right thing, there’s not one selfish desire left in me to lead me astray? Am I supposed to deny that I care about you, and not ever let myself falter, be tempted or persuaded, once I’ve been shown the right and the wrong way to do things? Can I only admit what I want, when someone forces my hand through violence? Am I destined to be miserable, forever?”
It was now Astarion’s turn to look increasingly frightened at this outburst. Rosalie took a sip of her wine, then continued.
“I’ve had plenty of time to examine and overthink every aspect of that day, and everything every single one of us could’ve done differently - not just you. I exhausted every avenue for anger I had, years ago, until all that was left was sadness, and exhaustion, and I decided I’d be better off, oh, I don’t know, doing something about it. What does being angry at you, now, get me? Another year of misery? Another ten? How many do I have to have under my belt, until I’m allowed to talk to you again? I’m not the one who’s immortal here.”
That final statement landed like a punch - it was clear Astarion had no idea what to do with it.
“But I… I've killed so many people,” he said, almost entreating her. “I did something terrible. I thought you’d-”
“I’d… what? Punish you for it? How, exactly, can I do that, knowing you what you’ve already been through? You think my imagination is up to the task?”
“You used to… I don’t know… judge me. ”
“I was younger, then.”
Astarion fell silent.
“But I’m older now, and I’m no longer responsible for fixing the world, so… what?” repeated Rosalie. “What am I supposed to do? Tell you that you’re not ever allowed to make a mistake, even one I had a hand in, and then just... accept that I'm not supposed to be happy, to have you back? What good does that do anybody?”
She sighed, then said with brutal honesty, “...it doesn’t matter anymore, Astarion. I decided that it didn’t matter. I had to do this, for myself. I knew about those 7,000 dead, and I still cast Wish. And now… for the life of me, I can barely bring myself to care about fifty-seven more, either. I thought they were my fault. But without them, I wouldn’t have found you, and I wouldn’t have bought you back. Maybe it was worth it, after all.”
Astarion looked like he wanted to speak, but words had clearly failed him. With his eyes upon her now, Rosalie suddenly felt like they were strangers. She wondered how much time had actually passed for him, and if it had felt like ten years.
Even if it had, it wouldn’t be the equivalent of her ten years. If Astarion had drifted, she had sunk, and then simply endured. It wasn't suffering, so it didn't feel fair to compare, but what it was, was time. Rosalie knew, intimately, just how much she had changed from the person she had been, when Astarion knew her. She’d kept hold of the scraps that she could - some of the willpower, an ounce of that fearlessness, that hardened into something else with age. But other things had long eroded away. Whatever had been fuelling her these last few weeks, it hadn’t been her once-heartfelt idealism. That hadn’t lasted much, past the Rite of Profane Ascension.
“Please don't ask me to punish you,” she said. “When you knew me, I had no fear in me - that’s what made me think I could take on the world. But I’m not really like that. That’s not me. Most of these last few weeks, I've been tricking the Ascendent into thinking of me as someone I’m not, so that I could pry information out of him, and somehow get the Wish to work. I only used rage because I had to, and every second of it was exhausting. I’m so tired, Astarion. And I’m sorry, but I can’t be that girl for you, anymore.”
The sombre silence that followed was unlike anything Rosalie thought she had ever shared with Astarion, in the times before. They had had their mute periods - fraught, tense, and full of unspoken hurt - but nothing quite so resigned as this. Rosalie felt all the ways she didn’t align with the woman he’d known - how if one was superimposed upon the other, they would no longer fit. And then she felt mostly just… old. She raked a hand through her hair, feeling a deep heaviness settle upon her. It was almost as if, in admitting how much she had exhausted herself to get here, all that tiredness came down upon her once more.
“Sorry,” she said, quickly. She’d lasted ten seconds, before saying it. “That was probably… a lot to hear. For me to say. All at once.”
“...I think, if either of us are going to have any peace, going forward,” said Astarion, ever so carefully, “I’m going to need you to stop apologising to me.”
“I mean, I can… try?”
“I’m afraid I must insist on a moratorium, effective immediately,” he said. “...For the next ten years, at least.”
Rosalie blinked at him, startled into a befuddled smile, when she realised those words had been chosen deliberately. Ten years. That was a promise - but what kind of promise, exactly? That they would both still know each other, then? Or that he would still be here, with her, as they were now?
Astarion smiled back at her, in a somewhat rehearsed way, and Rose felt even more flustered, when she realised that that was deliberate, as well. He’d said the words, to extend the olive branch. But to also make her smile, and distract her, and to smooth the conversation to wherever it would need to go next.
Exactly as he had used to.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she replied softly, trying to make it sound something like, ‘do you know how much I’ve missed you?’
“...Where did you get the cat?” asked Astarion, after another soft, sombre pause that felt lighter than the one that had come before. “Ser Verity, I mean. Did you trip and fall and find her somewhere, like you did with all the other animals we know?”
The conversation that followed, was altogether surreal. With the exhaustion of her outburst, and a glass of wine on a half-full stomach, Rosalie might have struggled to follow it anyway, but the truth was, it was just so… mundane. She started to catch Astarion up, on a handful of the silly things in her life that he’d missed. She told him about how Scratch had lived a long and utterly spoiled life, with lots of marathon sprints down the beaches here, and how she and Shadowheart had been with him together, when it was time for him to go.
And then, half a year later, Anala’s sister’s cat had had kittens, and Gale had seemed very invested in getting Rosalie to adopt one. Rose had followed him to Waterdeep, utterly befuddled as to why he’d insisted on accompanying her - supposed that Gale did, after all, love cats. She'd worried her friends had been talking about her behind her back, again, speculating on how she was doing without a dog to drag her outside twice a day. Much baser ulterior motives became clear, however, when Rose then observed some laughingly familiar, awkward-as-all-hells - and yet, still somehow smooth? - flirting from a polite distance, while she sat on her own like a lemon, in a pen filled with kittens. All until a very demanding blob of fur with a very intimidating, anvil-shaped forehead, had bumped blindly into her hip.
“I told Gale I’d take the cat, if he asked her out,” explained Rosalie. “More fool him of course - I would’ve taken Verity anyway. She basically fit inside my hand, at the time, and it’s not as if I’m made of stone. But it was getting painful - her sister was practically vibrating with frustration, in the corner, the whole time. Anala told me afterwards, that he had been that way for months-”
“-Maybe you dented his confidence?” offered Astarion.
“Oh, please,” she rolled her eyes, “whatever confidence I dented, a year of being the newest faculty member at Blackstaff fixed, and inflated beyond repair. We all knew he'd make a killing. I mean, with the heroic background, and that hair? Do you know how many student admirers he had? And he was so embarrassed about it, kept despairing at all these teenagers following him about like moon-eyed calves-”
Rose told Astarion about Anala, and how the sorcerer had shouted ‘fuck Mystra!’ from a bartop at her bacholerette party, flustering a group of unsuspecting Knowledge clerics sat in a corner. She told him about Shadowheart’s house, and all her animals. And the fact that Shadowheart and Lae’zel conducted their lives separately, but would then would disappear away for a ten-day together, once each year, and thought that no one else knew what they were doing.
Rosalie tried to think of what vein to follow next - should she dive into Avernus, when the Ascendent had already held a tentative friendship with Wyll and Karlach; or talk about her family, even though talking about her family involved admitting the circumstances under which they’d reunited… When suddenly, she yawned so wide that her jaw clicked.
The wine bottle was now empty. Rose hadn’t noticed, until now. The clock on the mantlepiece was a worrying sight - she hadn’t realised how much time had passed.
“Oh gods! Astarion!”
“...What? What is it?”
“I cannot be awake this late!” blurted Rosalie. “That’s not how this body works, anymore! If I stay up much past ten, my schedule is wrecked for the week.”
Astarion was curled up in his own seat, his chin resting in his hand as he watched her talk. He blinked, as if coming out of a stupor, when Rose suddenly stood up, breaking whatever comfortable moment they’d somehow managed to salvage.
Only, she stood up far too quickly - or the wine was involved. Rosalie felt a small dizzy spell hit her: the kind that made you catch the nearest surface, and still yourself in place until the haze across your vision cleared.
It was harmless - Rosalie knew as it happened, that it was harmless - but Astarion was by her side in an instant. She didn't see or hear him move. There was a hand on her shoulder, another steadying her arm, trying to take her weight as if she was about to fall. When Rosalie blinked the last of the bloodrush away, she was confronted by Astarion stood in front of her, holding her and watching her expression with clear worry. That jumper she’d wanted to bury herself into was now just inches away from her face.
To her surprise and utter mortification, her entire body went warm, all over.
…Astarion had always had that effect on her, of course. Maybe not in those first few days, when even tadpoled and fearless, it hadn’t occurred to her that she’d ever be anything for him to note. As such, Rosalie had found it very simple to put some nice compartmentalisation in place, and see him as annoying first, beautiful second.
But then, the first time he’d flirted with her, she’d felt almost struck down by it, stunned and a little speechless. Only at the time, she’d kept talking, because the tadpole had her all powered up and able to blitz through anything, even sudden, up-close conversations with people safer to admire from afar. What she’d been feeling hadn’t been anxiety, because she hadn’t any anxiety to feel. And so, she’d had to admit that all the fluster and blush and heat came from other parts of her, instead.
...The Ascendent had done it, too. Rosalie realised that now. She’d hidden it better, save for when it served her. And it had been much easier to push it deep, deep down, because she’d known that she could never let herself give in and have it, not even for a second. It had been too dangerous. Rose knew that it had never been real, just as she’d known that anything that did happen would be used against her, and how she would feel afterwards. That desire truly would be a weakness, when the Ascendent could make it so. And gods, how good she had gotten, at compartmentalisation - even more so than before, after a decade of keeping everything neat and separate, and never letting her body feel a thing that could hurt her.
Only now, she had no tadpole cannibalising her fear. And no logical excuses, to help keep every sensation and emotion she felt under lock and key.
As such, a crushing wave of feeling rose through her unchecked, and flushed her at all her edges. It was like getting hit full in the face, by a high-level spell you were too late to counter: that stunned beat before you began to hastily catalogue what exactly you'd been hit with. Rosalie was embarrassed to admit, even to herself, that it… left her a little weak at the knees. She had no idea what to do with that feeling, or where exactly to put it. It had truly been a long time, since anyone had touched her, and it had actually mattered.
“-ok? Is this just tiredness, or is something the matter?” Astarion was asking, leaning down over her and now looking extremely worried.
Rose realised she must have dipped out of the conversation, briefly. She was so warm, she knew she must be blushing. Astarion looked concerned: like she was going to drop unconscious on him again, if he so much as breathed wrong.
Even when she’d been black-out drunk, or on the battlefield demonstrating the true limitations of a wizard’s constitution, Rosalie couldn’t remember Astarion ever treating her like she was this dainty. He brushed some hair back off her forehead, then checked her temperature, his touch so featherlight that it was as if she was truly made of glass.
His hand was human-warm, and Rosalie nearly short-circuited.
“You don't have to do that, you know,” she said suddenly. It was strange, and sort of the opposite of what she meant, but her mind was near blank and she was still feeling hot, sweat gathering in small corners of herself - in the creases of her elbows, the base of her neck.
Astarion frowned down at her, “...Do what?”
“Treat me like I'm… fragile,” said Rosalie. “You never did that before, and it makes me feel… well. It makes me feel old.”
“It has nothing to do with age, Foxglove,” Astarion sighed, tiredly. “You nearly died-”
“But I didnt die, Astarion,” repeated Rosalie, this time with some of steel behind it, that she’d mustered from somewhere, because this was suddenly very important for him to understand. “In fact, what I actually did, was successfully recover from a very powerful spell, proving exactly how unbreakable I am.”
Something about this wording seemed to make Astarion look wary. Rosalie didn’t blame him. If he was going to be leaving this to her, things were only going to get worse, from hereon out.
Astarion let his hands fall away from her and examined Rose's face again, clearly trying to work out how to proceed. “You understand, yes, that most of the memories I currently have, are of dealing you grievous bodily harm?”
Amongst some other things, thought Rosalie, quite unable to help herself, and quite unable to keep the contents of that thought off her face.
If Astarion saw that thought, (she had the feeling he probably did), he to her utter consternation ignored it, and continued valiantly on, “I hope you can understand that I maybe wish to… redress that balance. A little.”
By keeping me at a distance, and treating me like I’m made of glass.
It was certainly one way to even things out in the other direction.
Out loud, Rosalie said, “I see.”
It came out stern. Astarion was still looking wary.
“And so it… it has a lot to do with, well, me, and not with…” he sighed, and gave up on articulating whatever it was he was trying to say. “I’m sorry, if my sudden worry that you were about to keel over on me felt patronising. It might have had something to do with the reveal that you apparently don’t eat, but it certainly has nothing to do with your age. I also have many memories of you killing me, of course. I was there for those, as well.”
“Of course.”
“I’m just-” he faltered, then turned his eyes briefly heavenward as he said, “I’m trying to be kind.”
“Kind?”
“...Gentle?” He hazarded, as an amendment. “I know I’m not doing very well at it. It’s kind of new territory for me.”
“What makes you think I want ‘kind’? Or ‘gentle’?” Rosalie asked him.
Astarion froze.
Again, she did not blame him. Not for anything, except forcing her to be the one to say it.
They both stood still for beat, and Rose saw the opening. The one where the old Astarion would’ve taken an effusive pose, winked, and said, “well, Foxglove, if our little foray into under-negotiated roleplay has broken down some existential barriers for you, do tell me now, in extensive detail. I’m all pointy ears.”
But nothing whatsoever came out of this Astarion’s mouth, or changed in his wrongfooted expression. He clearly had no idea what to say or do next. Silence seemed to be the only resource left to him.
Which left it… to her.
Rosalie felt heat, literally everywhere.
“I just mean…” she said, knowing she’d meant more, but also knowing Astarion would be able to tell, when she was lying. “I don’t need you to change, from the way you used to be. Not that it’s not ok, if you feel that you need to. It’s just… I didn’t bring you back, to be anything or anyone else, other than you.”
“Foxglove-” it held a note of warning.
“…And if you're,” she started. Stopped.
This felt very foolish, but maybe it needed to be said.
“You can… flirt with me, you know,” she heard herself saying. “Fair enough, if you don't want to. If it feels strange, or if it’s not something you’re interested in, anymore. But if you’re holding yourself at a distance, because of me, or what you think I might feel, I…”
Please don’t.
…That was a little desperate.
“Please don’t,” Rosalie said out loud, deciding desperation was what was needed. “There’s a difference, between what the Ascendent said, and what you used to say. How he treated me, and how you do, as well. So, if you… you won't offend me, at my end. It's almost stranger, to watch you hold back.”
It happened again, as she gestured towards him and pointed it out. Astarion’s entire body tensed, and Rose couldn’t tell if it was restraint, or discomfort. Was he holding back? There was no way to read this version of him. Which made it worse, that she had to be the one who was having to be bold enough for the two of them. It wasn't like she had even a chance of getting it right!
“...If you’re holding back,” she amended, hastily, echoing her own thoughts. “Gods. This is so presumptuous. I’m half-scared you don’t want to talk to me at all.”
At this, Astarion looked affronted. No, maybe that wasn’t doing it justice - he visibly despaired.
“Rose-” he said.
“I don’t-” she faltered again, “I don’t expect- You don’t need to do anything, is what I'm saying. You’re staying in my house, you know that I would never… but I had to say it. I don’t want to you to think that I - to think that I - that I don’t-”
Her voice trailed off. Rosalie couldn’t seem to get the words out.
But she couldn’t move her gaze away from Astarion’s face, either. So close now, that if she was a little braver, if things were more certain… but no. Closeness, she thought, was enough. This was the man she’d wanted, and missed like a lost part of herself, for so long. He was, at least, here. She drank in his expression, even though she couldn’t understand it.
Which meant she sucked in a breath like it was pained, and then she held it - when the hand at his side moved.
Astarion raised his hand, slowly and carefully, like he was scared the moment was more fragile than he worried she might be. Rosalie was still unable to tear her eyes away from Astarion's face. She willed for something to happen, but also for a sign to tell her what was right - to know what he needed from her, to know what it was she should do. After so long, if this was truly happening, she wanted everything to be perfect.
His fingers would touch her cheek, and then she would… what? Lean in? Hold it to her, and against her? Lean forward, and kiss him...?
Their gazes held. Her heart was hammering. His hand was barely centimetres from her face.
And then Astarion faltered, and he stopped. Something spasmed in him like pain, and the moment shattered. Rosalie could pinpoint the exact second that it happened - that some ghost of something haunted him, and severed the thread.
Astarion didn’t touch her. His hand fell away again.
She could tell, from the distraught look in his face, that it was too soon.
“It’s ok,” Rosalie said. She tried her best to mean it, even as a strange, hungry part of her felt desperate pain, as the longing and hope building up inside her was dashed. “It’s ok. Please, forget I said anything.”
Two days later, Rose received a letter in her office.
She did not receive this letter in company, which meant it was after breakfast - which Astarion had joined her for. Rosalie was both elated, and wishing she'd expected his company. Without any prior warning, and Astarion having descended on her halfway through cooking her meal, she had been forced to subject him to the porridge she'd been making for herself. His face had been unreadable, as she made it, and they'd managed to sustain a muted conversation over the kitchen counter as they ate. But Rose was certain, in her soul, that Astarion had no makings of a porridge person.
The day before, she hadn't even touched her stack of mail. The late night had indeed thrown out her entire schedule, causing her to sleep in till late morning. Then, Astarion had asked her if she cared to walk with him along the beach. She suspected he was trying to keep her away from her work, but of course, she'd said yes.
The letter was the sixth most recent addition Timothy had made to the pile, and so marked her nearly reaching the end of her backlog. It was now fourteen days since she’d souled Astarion. This was a missive that had been sent, not while Rose was in the Gate, but while she was here, unconscious in her own home.
…The letter burst into flames, the moment her fingertips touched it.
Rosalie startled, badly. Even wizards rarely encountered letters that spontaneously combusted upon contact, which struck her as highly impractical and not a little showy. She yelped, as the deep, forest green envelope burned up like it had been placed above an open flame, charring to ash and smouldering embers in her hand, to leave the parchment of the letter untouched, underneath.
The flames were blue, and they didn’t hurt her. This was the second warning sign.
As calmly as she could manage, Rosalie put out the smouldering remnants that had hit the desk, to avoid anything catching, and then examined the letter now resting in her hand. Beneath the green envelope, was a sheet of paper, black as sin, sealed with a violently blue wax seal embossed with a detailed and intricate pair of ram’s horns.
Well, thought Rose, as rationally as she could manage, that can’t be good.
She broke the wax seal, unfolded it, and saw it was penned in Infernal:
To the newest, and first self-appointed Duchess of my domain,
I have deemed it prudent, to meet with my latest vassal, even one so apparently unconcerned with etiquette and eager to unmake Cania’s borders as you.
It is my understanding, that you currently suffer the effects of having tampered with reality - an element of reality in which I held a stake, so of course I noted its alteration. My time is infinite, and I see no entertainment or savour to be had in treating with you in a weakened state. So please, I implore you, feel no apprehension at whatever delay you had in reading this missive.
Of course, once it is opened, I expect you within the hour. The geas impressed upon the paper wills it be so, and the consequences of refusing its call will prove severe. We should discuss the terms of your vassalage, your duties to me as my subordinate, and my expectations of you as your liege - as well as resolving any recent territorial or property disputes conducted within the perimeters of my territory, in which you were engaged.
I see no need for you to bring your stolen goods with you - the Vampire Ascendent is no longer welcome in my home. But I do expect to see the spell scroll which facilitated your exit from my lands.
Yours ever unfaithfully,
Mephistopheles
The Cold Lord, and Archduke of the Eighth Circle of Hell
“Well,” said Rosalie. “Fuck.”
Notes:
This chapter had so much ground to cover, I've been calling it the 'load-bearing chapter' in my chats with people. Then I remembered we're on the sex writing website, so... um... not *that* kind of load-bearing 😔😔😔 alas.
anyway, a combination of life (handing in thesis drafts, turning 30, jobs and car breakdowns and a blow up at work) and this chapter being a minefield to draft anyway, resulted in a wee delay. Please continue to be patient with me, as life does unfortunately continue, no matter how much fic I wish I could be writing.
Chapter Notes
- Copper wire is the spell component for the Message cantrip, hence why it's included in the walls. It was my way of inventing an Alexa/Siri,
- The Queen of Air and Darkness is an Unseelie archfey in 5e lore
- The Soul Cage spell has a function called 'Query Soul' - the soul must answer a question telepathically and truthfully, based on what it knew in life. It has the option to be cryptic, but I can't help feeling like Astarion's soul would not be cryptic lol.
- Rosalie: I'm not sad, what are you talking about.
Rosalie, three minutes and half a glass of wine later: are you trying to make me SAD, Astarion?
- Anyway, to anyone who noted 1. the Hellish Rebuke and 2. the change in bath temperature, it wasn't so much a vampire thing as um. A Duchess of Hell thing. (After some googling to double check my facts, hell's hierarchy in 5e goes Archdevils/Archdukes -> Dukes/Duchesses -> general devils -> general fiends).
- Someone heard her yelling back in Chapter 18, and alas. It was not the sourceless void :(((((
- A geas is a 5th Level spell that places a magical command on a creature within range, forcing it to carry out some service or refrain from some action or course of activity as you decide.
- I mentioned in my other fic that I used Chapter 11 as a factory reset to help polish and finish this one, so if you want a prime parallel timelines experience I recommend reading both :) why does writing an AU involve writing alternative versions of characters? can they not just be static and unchanging and not require some weird game of 4d chess that the author themselves has literally invented for themselves to play? asking for a friend.
Chapter 23: Chapter Twenty-Three
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Rosalie wrote her goodbye letter in Illusory Script on her desk, in case Mephistopheles decided to kill her. She then spent twenty more minutes of the allotted hour dithering over what to wear. She had never consulted with an archdevil before. She'd never been a ‘Duchess of Hell’ before.
…Armour seemed overtly confrontational. But wearing no armour said something along the lines of, “I’m fucking idiotic”.
Sometime in her unconsciousness, Shadowheart had returned Rosalie's carpet bag, and all of its contents. Rose settled on her archmage dress, with the pearls and the resistance to nearly all spell damage. Then, she worried about what Astarion would think if he saw her in the dress she'd murdered him in - say, if they happened to bump into each other on the stairs. So she put a long, velvet peacoat over the top, in the hope that it looked like a different outfit entirely.
As she dressed mechanically, Rosalie was already problem-solving in her head. Thousands of different possibilities and probabilities brimmed within her skull. What Mephistopheles could possibly want, how badly her theft had upset him, how badly the spell had upset him, what exactly the spell had given her, and what his purpose was in calling her to him, but without the Vampire Ascendent there-
This became the first problem to tackle: getting out past Astarion. The letter had told Rose he couldn’t come with her. That meant she couldn’t tell him a single thing - for who in their right mind would let someone go to Hell a second time, if they happened to mention it in passing conversation?
She spared a few moments to make herself a gameplan. Astarion was, in fact, reading in the ground floor living room, when Rosalie hustled by in the direction of the teleportation circle. She wasn't actually going to teleport - that was the only room that would allow her to travel in and out of the wards.
“Oh,” he said, sending a startled glance her way. “...Going somewhere? I thought you were working.”
“I am!” said Rosalie, pleased her voice sounded something approaching normal. “...To both! I’m going somewhere, but it’s for work! One of the more recent letters called me into a meeting. I've got to go right away!”
Astarion looked at her velvet coat, perhaps recognised what it was covering. And then he saw the staff on her back, and her nervous, fidgeting hands. He no doubt heard the way her voice failed to hide her nervousness, or more pressingly, how her heartbeat was thundering away in pure fear.
“...Do you leave this island often, Foxglove?” he gently asked.
And Rosalie almost started crying, then and there, because she realised Astarion thought she was having an agoraphobic episode. And she didn't have those anymore, but it was the first thing Astarion had thought of.
It also offered the perfect cover for her to leave for Cania, with him none the wiser.
“No,” she said, so very truthfully. “I do not leave, often. Only once or twice a month, usually. I conduct most of my work remotely, and all of the food is shipped in via teleportation circle - I have contracts with distributors in Waterdeep. So it's only really if I'm invited somewhere. I don't tend to leave… no.”
Astarion, who was hiding away in this tower with her to escape his own past, paused, then said: “...would you do better, with some company? Do you want some company, I mean?”
Rosalie really did want to cry, as she replied, “it's not really that kind of meeting, unfortunately.”
“Oh… I see.”
“I’m going directly to the person’s office!” she clarified. “I think. If it was a walkaround type meeting, maybe. But I can’t exactly show up with my-”
She paused, stuck on finding an adequate word. No word offered itself. Astarion watched her grapple with this extensively.
“With you,” she amended. “With another person. I don’t think I’m allowed to do that.”
“...I understand,” he said, reaching for his book again with practised nonchalance. “Maybe next time, then.”
This might be the last time I see you, Rosalie thought. All that her problem solving had made clear, was the number of things that could go wrong, in whatever negotiation she was about to engage in.
“...Could I have a hug?!” she blurted.
Astarion froze in his seat.
Rosalie realised what she’d done, and despaired. He had no context for such a silly request.
“Never mind! Ignore me!” she pinched the bridge of her nose, rubbing the space between her eyebrows hard enough that it was like she erased the memory. Walking to the executioner's block riddled with embarrassment - this seemed like it was on form, for her.
But when she opened her eyes again, Astarion had moved silently, to stand.
“...If you’d like,” he said, as carefully as he could manage, placing his open book back on the chair arm to leave his hands free. “If it will, you know... help?”
Rose blinked at him, for a second. And then she darted forward, before he had a chance to take back the offer, or she had any chance to second-guess herself. She felt Astarion tense up, exactly as she’d expected - as he’d once done, all those years ago - when she dived in and wrapped her arms around his slender waist. Unfortunately, she was a little too desperate to care. If she died, he’d probably thank her for this awkward moment later. She pressed her forehead against his chest, feeling the rasp of his latest woollen jumper (this time, it was claret red).
What she hadn’t expected at all… was the heartbeat, and the warmth of it. With Astarion so almost back to the way he was, Rosalie had forgotten that this was part of the package, now. She couldn’t quite press her ear against his ribcage - not without doing horn-related injuries - but she felt his pulse run through him, which meant it was with her, as well, as he tentatively wrapped her up in his arms.
A second of care, that fragile-glass touch. Then Astarion tugged and pulled her tightly into him, all at once. Rosalie closed her eyes, trying to memorise every aspect of the sensation. Just in case something terrible happened, obviously. He smelt, strangely, like her laundry soap, even though he hadn’t been here long enough for these clothes to be washed yet. She took several moments, wondering if it felt weird for Astarion to hold her like this, or if this was the same for him as it was for her: like stepping into a memory, from ten years ago, and finding it utterly unchanged.
Astarion seemed to realise this was going to last a while. She felt him rest his chin gently on the top of her head, in the gap between horns.
Rosalie shut her eyes even tighter, locked her grip even firmer, and decided to let herself be selfish. This what you did this for, she thought. And you did do it. Successfully.
No matter what happened next, it would all be worth it. There were very few regrets left for Rosalie to hold. Just being here, she felt something steel in her chest. The fear Mephistopheles’ letter had triggered began to dampen, and lull into something softer, as the determination she’d ran on for years until it was exhausted began to renew. She felt the hope she’d often cursed for existing begin to rekindle. Unlike the Vampire Ascendent, Infernal dealings were actually something Rosalie understood. She understood the language of them. She’d translated enough contracts, as a scribe in her time.
You can do this, she thought to herself, and was surprised to find she believed it. Again. One last time.
Especially if this was what she would return to… if she returned at all.
Still, it was a good memory to make, before one walked themselves back into Hell.
You should’ve asked for a kiss, you coward, Rose thought, before she loosened her grip, and stepped abruptly back.
“Are you sure you're… alright?” Astarion asked her, careful and confused.
“...Never better,” she said. Her voice was a barely steady rasp in her throat, but she knew that this would also register as true. Her hands were still at Astarion's waist: she quickly dropped them. “Right. Thank you. As you were.”
It was time to go meet an archdevil.
The moment she stepped through into the teleportation chamber - the door locked behind her, in case Astarion realised something was going on - Rosalie knew it was different. While the hallowed ground had protected her from feeling the effects of the geas the letter claimed to carry, this room was not consecrated. That was what allowed for travel. The moment she stepped through, she felt something tighten to a knot in her chest, like a string looped through the bars of her ribcage. Everything went taut. Rosalie was certain, if she tried to resist, that knot would tighten to the point of breaking, and everything within her would implode.
The spell shouldn’t even have been able to take, while she resided on Alaron’s soil… but she supposed Archdevils proved hard to evade, and even harder to deny.
As if it had heard her thoughts… something beckoned, and expected to be obeyed.
Though Rose had planned to use the Bloodrite, a second time, to return to the Eighth hell, she found it much simpler to… submit to that something.
And as she did… she felt herself tugged down.
This had happened when they had been summoned to the House of Hope, also - and was, of course, an ontological falsehood. The Hells were a separate plane of existence: it did not work the way philosophers of old had imagined, with the Celestial Plane above them in the sky and the other beneath them, deep underground (Rose did, in fact think that maybe some clerics had just discovered the Underdark, and misunderstood Faerûn’s geography entirely).
But that was still how her brain made sense of it as a sensation. It was like some primal part of her knew, that to give in to the Hells, was to fall.
She fell through the walls of her own home…
…and into an office.
It was a lovely office, not dissimilar to her own. The main difference was that there were no windows, and everything was lit by firelight. As a result, shadows danced in every corner. The howling winds of Cania were barely audible, suggesting she was deep in the bowels of some well-sheltered fortress.
Shelves lined the walls. The books that filled them were all arranged in neat, orderly lines. Between those bookcases, the walls were plain, white plaster, veined through with large, metallic columns like arteries, that pulsed even from a distance with a thrumming current of magic. The furniture was warmly varnished oak, and there was a vast array of iron machinery for computation, along with an abacus - a little reminiscent of a teller’s office in the Counting House.
Sat at the desk, a large tome open in front of him, was Mephistopheles, the Eighth Lord of the Hells.
He was wearing, of all things, a three-piece suit - black, with a jade green waistcoat. Yet unlike Raphael, the Archdevil did not bother maintaining the pretence of a human aspect. He was large, broad shouldered, and crimson-skinned, with a waxed goatee and long black hair tied loosely from his face. He had a massive, three-foot-wide set of horns, that jarred with the set of small pince-nez spectacles perched upon a handsome, prominent nose. While the clothes did not exactly strain against the bulk of the Cold Lord’s ten-foot Infernal form - they were clearly tailored to it exactly, in fact - it still looked like a costume. The outfit accentuated that this was a monster, dressed up in the barest façade of civility.
Rosalie’s feet landed on the granite floor. Her legs wobbled and felt weak, especially on the left side - a little from the disorientation, a lot from the fear.
“You're the girl who killed my son,” the Cold Lord noted, barely sparing her a glance from over his ledger.
“Umm…” this was not the most eloquent thing she could have said, when greeting an archdevil, but Rosalie hadn't expected that to be what he led with.
“I say it as a compliment. You have a habit of taking care of problems for me,” Mephistopheles continued, in clipped, measured tones. He dipped the nib of his pen into an inkwell, and signed something with a flourish. “Do not fret, that has been taken into consideration.”
He dropped the pen, and asked, “would you care to sit? I know you mortals are frail, fragile little things.”
“Am I?” Rosalie couldn’t help but ask, as she remained standing. “It was unclear from your letter, if that had now changed for me or not.”
“Well… I suppose that is one of the things up for negotiation,” the archdevil smirked. “Would you care to be immortal? Your paramour seemed to stalwartly believe that it would suit you.”
“Eternity holds little appeal to me, especially if it’s bound in service,” said Rose, as honestly and easily as she could manage.
“Really?” replied Mephistopheles, sounding almost amused. “Then I suppose it is time for you to settle in, and take your seat.”
A chair - velvet, the same dark green that seemed to be a hallmark of his taste - materialised in front of the Cold Lord's Counting House desk. Rosalie hesitated, but saw no reason not to walk forward and take it. She ignored the slim metal carafe of coffee and cup that materialised along with it. Food from the Hells wasn’t poisonous - that didn’t mean this man hadn’t poisoned it.
“Any being who enters this room is immediately placed under a geas to never divulge what is said within the walls, to any of my illustrious brothers and sisters. So I don’t mind admitting to you, this entire process has been nothing but an inconvenience, from start to finish,” said Mephistopheles conversationally, taking a draw from his own cup.
“First,” he said, “it seems to me, that the only beings with more time on their hands to waste than demons, are vampires. Cazador Szarr ambled around collecting souls, like an antiques dealer with a penchant for eccentric curios: there was no efficiency to his method! I’d have been better hand-commissioning each of those souls myself. I thought vampires were voracious, pathetic, starving little things, constantly hungering parasitically for anything the living might possess, but no. I could’ve had seven thousand souls within the year, had I had walked the planes, but Cazador Szarr idles away four centuries! - like I’m the one waiting on him! You’d think he saw himself as an amateur enthusiast, the way he acted like fulfilling his debt was a weekend hobby.
“In fact,” Mephistopheles sighed, “he’s so leisurely about it - and such a fan, seemingly, of delegation - that one of his own serfs has enough time to plan a little uprising. Instead of a man I can predict, who’s unhurried, feeble countermoves are simple to plan for, I get some intemperate upstart - one who hasn’t the first clue what to do with any of the power I give him, for he’s never had any before! He didn’t even speak Infernal, you know - and his writing was atrocious, when we started, let me tell you. The scarring! And what he did to the Rite! Well - you know now, indeed, how it ruined a veritable masterwork of intricacies. That spell was a thing of beauty… in the hands of under-appreciative peasants, from the very start.”
Mephistopheles’ voice was lilting, measured, and at a pleasing cadence, almost like his speech was rehearsed. When he paused to look at Rose, offering her an entrance into the dialogue, she was suddenly surprised. Rosalie was not struggling to follow the archdevil’s speech… but she was struggling to gauge what he thought she already knew.
Being spoken to as if an equal was undoubtedly some kind of ruse, but the meeting was already far more cordial than she expected. Rose had planned for a fight, or some display of threat, at the very least. Devils valued order so highly, that her rupture of Cania’s borders alone, if she truly was a devil, could border upon rebellion. That she wasn’t immediately being made an example of for others, was surprising.
As it had been with Raphael, the level of politeness offered to her meant Rosalie had something Mephistopheles must want.
But what? What was it that he wanted? She had to take advantage of this strange atmosphere, to find a means of measuring the success of Wish, and a way out of becoming a Duchess of Hell.
“Astarion… created a surplus in the deal,” Rosalie offered.
She felt stupid, as she said it. Yet Mephistopheles clearly enjoyed the sound of his own voice, so what she said may not even matter. Rosalie hoped he wouldn’t need much prompting.
“He created a surplus in the deal,” confirmed Mephistopheles, with another theatrical sigh, “and then didn’t even do that correctly. Cazador was barely bordering on competent, but he at least knew, what a devil’s offering should look like. The marks he left on his master? Ghastly. In many ways, your man is lucky that he still had his own scars, carved with such precision, and hadn’t thought to interrupt or desecrate them. Had he not also offered his own soul in the deal, the mangled washrag he used as his replacement-”
“-Cazador’s soul.”
“Cazador’s soul alone, would not have sufficed,” Mephistopheles told her. “He butchered those marks so badly, that only 23.4% of a soul came through. Well… the jury is out. on if that ashen husk had more than that to offer me in the first place. But moral assessments of Szarr aside, the fact remains all else was lost, or destroyed in transit. The Vampire Ascendent would’ve come in under quota, had he not offered himself up, as well.”
Rosalie could feel herself toeing along the edge of an equation. “So… y-you… you took 76.6% of Astarion’s soul? To reach your quota?”
“Oh, no!” Mephistopheles waved his hand, “I took the whole thing from him, of course. You know how devils work, my dear. What kind of fool walks into an Infernal ritual, with the markings of the self-same spell ingrained and preserved upon his own flesh? If a virgin sacrifices herself to me on an altar, unasked, I take her entire. The same principle applies here. I do not turn away those who quite literally throw themselves at me... if they are truly so desperate to condemn themselves to the Hells.”
"So. You ended the Rite with 7,000.234 souls,” said Rose. “And yet… one soul extra, than you bargained for. If you’re going word-for-word.”
If she understood correctly, Mephistopheles should have taken the soul to the decimal place, rather than empty Astarion out entirely. His own greed had unbalanced the Rite even further.
“Precisely! You understand my issue. That spell, like any high-level working, required certain components. Cazador and your man, it seemed, couldn’t even do their job as ingredients, correctly. I suppose that is the risk, when one conducts one's magics with living souls, not the trustworthy allies of diamond and pearl.”
Mephistopheles was a wizard, just as Rosalie was.
“It threw off all my calculations,” he sighed, the same way she might mourn a misfired transcription. “I spent nearly a year, just trying to rerun the empirical and metaphysical numbers, rebalancing that equation until it added up and became equal on both sides. Many a headache was had, in that first year of the Ascendent’s new reign, let me tell you. In fact, I was so distracted, by the many delicate instruments, elements, and procedures that a botched Ascendency disrupted and injured, in that first week, that you quite slipped through the cracks - didn’t you, my dear?”
“...I beg your pardon?” said Rosalie. Was he talking about how she’d run away from the Gate? That seemed like a highly personal issue for an archdevil to bother himself with. “I’m afraid I'm not sure I understand how this pertains to me. I was never a part of the Rite.”
Mephistopheles’ gaze sharpened, honing on that flaw in her knowledge like it was what fed him - perhaps, it was. This, Rose thought, was the first time she’d actually been stupid. She could tell she’d misunderstood what he’d meant, and he was currently trying to work out if she was sincerely ignorant, or simply playing coy.
Maybe it was better that Rose didn’t know what it was she'd missed. Lying to an archdevil wasn't something she’d be able to pull off, quite frankly.
Whatever Mephistopheles saw either intrigued or satisfied him. He picked up his pen, and made another note.
“I’m going to ask a question,” Rosalie said, into the silence that was filled only with scratching. “It’ll probably sound silly to someone like you, I’m sure.”
Mephistopheles shrugged, with a small, indifferent frown, not unlike the Watchful Order’s bursar. “No reason not to ask it, I suppose.”
“...The thing that replaced the soul, afterwards. That was inside of Astarion’s body, once the Rite emptied it. Whatever creature it was the ritual made, given that it described itself as being born,” said Rose, awkwardly, unsure how to articulate her question. “The Ascendent, if I were to give it a name. Is it… is it ok, now?”
Mephistopheles paused.
His scrutiny was so daunting, that Rosalie kept talking. Part of her wanted to know if the Ascendent was better now - but mostly, she asked in order to make sure she and Astarion weren’t about to become the victims of a crazed act of revenge.
“Now that it’s back in the Hells, or has its own body, or whatever it is that Wish did to him… is he - is it, I mean - happy? Or, um, happier, that is - if that’s not what devils can expect, here in Hell - in Cania. Is it at least… comfortable? Not quite so, um, out of joint?”
Mephistopheles put down his pen.
He turned the full weight of his attention to her.
“Fascinating,” he said.
“...I'm sorry?!” squeaked Rose.
“Elaborate for me,” the devil all but ordered. “You are under the impression, that the body was possessed by another entity?”
“...Yes?”
“Fascinating.” repeated Mephistopheles. He opened a separate ledger, scratched a small note, then closed it, and looked at her. “You must report to me, your emotions on hearing what I have to say next.”
“I’ll… try?”
“It was empty, my dear,” he announced, with the clinical look of a surgeon, and all the finesse of a butcher's knife.
“-I’m sorry?”
“The body,” he said. “It was empty. There was nothing in there, whatsoever.”
Rosalie thought about the anguish she'd seen in the Ascendent’s face, the moment it had met its end. She elected not to speak.
“...Are you feeling anything?” Mephistopheles prompted, for of course silence did not gratify him. “Were you perhaps…attached, physically attracted to, or invested in, the emptiness that masqueraded itself as the being you know as the Ascendent?”
Rose felt like a specimen under a microscope, pinned beneath glass. Devils knew how to wield sin and shame against their perpetrators, in equal measure. She didn’t want to let anything an archdevil said wheedle its way under her skin, when it was so clearly tailored to take whatever control it could.
That being said, being shamed for displaying emotion or sexual attraction, by a man, was hardly anything novel or new.
“...No? Not really?” She said, voice unsteady. “He was - I mean, it was... horrible to me. But… that meant it had emotion. It clearly felt things. Like hatred. And obsession. It can't be - you can't claim that there was simply nothing there.”
“That is not what I claim. Instead I state plainly, that nothing is precisely what it was,” replied Mephistopheles, studying her reactions with avid interest. “As much as it pretended otherwise. Oh! - Perhaps it would be pleased to know, that it had you fooled.”
He looked down at his ledgers again, fingers clearly itching to make another note.
“Fascinating,” he said, to himself this time.
Rosalie tried to keep herself as unreadable as possible, but it was a losing battle. How could something be nothing, and yet also be pleased?
“That was not the intention, of course,” continued Mephistopheles, with another small shrug, happy to fill the silence when she didn't speak. “In the version of the ritual I devised, Cazador retained his own soul - or whatever soul it is, that vampires so old lay claim to. He placed the consequences upon others. Bought his own Ascendency, through the lives of that ghastly little pyramid scheme - wondrously cruel, of course, still drastically inefficient! We would have no longer been in business together - part of the reason I counted down the days, quite frankly. I did consider placing a clause into the contract that made him my instrument upon the Material Plane, but he had already proven himself incapable of fulfilling my wishes in anything but a subpar manner. I couldn’t wait to be rid of him.”
“...Yet you worked, with Astarion.”
“With the empty vessel? Not exactly out of choice! But it was becoming a little desperate for guidance, poor thing. And when it comes to my door, like a lost little child, so eager for a shepherding Maker's hand, who am I to turn it away?” Mephistopheles tutted, as his story gained a repetition - a refrain.
“If it desired to work with you - if it felt a need for guidance - how could it be nothing?” Rosalie demanded, out of frustration.
Mephistopheles gave her a conspiratorial smirk.
“You’re starting to catch the thread that I too traced, my dear. Yet the fact remains, that fool man whom you lay claim to, conducted my Rite with the markings for the removal of his soul engraved into his own skin - what he thought would happen, I cannot imagine. As it, too, got excised and claimed, in the casting, there was truly nothing left but a body. He willingly gave all of himself to me, in his entirety.”
“I see.” ...Rosalie didn’t see.
It seemed she wasn’t supposed to, because Mephistopheles then made a grand gesture, as if to bring her into a beautiful, eloquent joke - into the fold of his own knowledge.
“And yet, what Ascendency had made was still walking - and talking, to my utter amusement! Can you imagine my surprise?! What an unexpected side effect of the procedure, that the body kept going, even once it was vacant. Not that it was living, of course - that it aped an identity, and lay claim to anything but muscles, blood, and bone. I’ve heard of the soulless before! - You have travelled to Barovia, have you not?”
“I have.”
“Those without souls there, are placid and complacent - easily swayed. Almost vegetative, and without personality! Utterly interchangeable! I’ve known of a man - one who still thinks himself virtuous, if you'd credit it! - who could slip souls from bodies like yolks from eggshells, and decant them into these other empty bodies, though the process was never quite neat enough to create anything but a wretch. What I seemed to have created was fashioned in much a similar manner, yet its emotional state was antithetical to that the soulless I knew of others’ devising - leading me to hypothesise, that its raw material must be pure hate.”
Not pure hate, Rosalie couldn’t help but think.
Even though she herself called the Ascendent hateful, it didn’t seem right. What about hatred made something so desperate for love?
Mephistopheles was, of course, still talking: “It was unclear, to me, if this hatred came from the souls it had harvested to make itself, or was simply its base matter - perhaps the magic itself produced such a disposition. I started to think it might be elegant, in a way - an almost ideal solution, I thought. Now I did, in fact, have an instrument of which I was in full control, and could have it carry out my will on the Material Plane, without having to watch others dally so much, in the plans I’d helped devise.
“But when I tried to take measures to then possess the body,” he said, “none of them would take. Like you, I assumed that was because something else, or Other, was already within residence. But as I said, it seemed lost, more than anything - it was certainly not executing any grand designs of its own! When it got into contact with me, about all that other business-”
He made a truly elegant hand gesture that was opulent with its very economy, encompassing a ‘Palace in Cania, housing the mortal soul of the person who’d been in the body before’ -
“I took advantage of its only seeming ambition, to try and… troubleshoot the programme. See what had slipped in. Continue rebalancing the equation, so to speak.
“It consented - this, perhaps, should’ve been my clue that there was nothing. For no stowaway would have such poor self-preservation, even one that behaved like that.
“Yet it seemed as desperate as I for answers. So I ran my tests accordingly, and the truth is: there was nothing,” said Mephistopheles, shrugging. “Nothing. Nothing at all! It was then, the Vampire Ascendent became fascinating to me. It was like… like watching a suit stand up, and begin to walk around, and become so adamant it was a person, that nothing and no one whatsoever could undo the buttons, or put their arms in the sleeves. There was nothing inside it, and yet it was so stubbornly retaining its ties to existence, that it was seemingly anathema, to any other life. I kept it around, more out of curiosity than anything. It retained a facsimile of the personality it had once housed, but other than that? There was nothing. Nothing at all. What a captivating anomaly to have created, and to have out there, acting in the world!”
“There-” Rosalie swallowed against a dry mouth, “there had to be something-”
Mephistopheles shrugged again, gesturing in her direction. “I’ve been examining your interactions together, to find any further indications of its true nature - yet all the data I collected as it performed its courtship has proven inconclusive. I've never found the answer, beyond the evidence I gleaned from monitoring its daily life. Perhaps, some scraps of soul remained - the entire Rite was botched, you understand, the whole thing was really not done any justice. Yet when I measured it in our various sessions, not a gram of its soul remained. What was left instead was but a few fixations - a personality it clung to, like a life raft. Yet even those crumbs amount to nothing more than a hollow echo, at most: you saw the crutches it employed, in an attempt to keep up the ruse of something real, lying beneath its surface.”
Mephistopheles glanced over at her, studied her again in a way that made her skin crawl.
And somewhere deep and terrible inside of herself, Rosalie thought survival, and tried to keep it off her face.
…Every choice Astarion had made in that room, that day, had simply been about survival
If the soul was ripped out, and wrenched away, and the body left behind knew it was empty, destroyed, and fashioned from pure nothingness… would that be the one thing that carried over, and kept driving any version of Astarion forward, through his life?
The Cold Lord saw the Ascendent as an empty void. But what if everything left within Astarion had strived simply to remain, exist, and endure, on the edge of becoming such an abyss?
Perhaps, this had led the Ascendent to had preserve the one thing Astarion had left it: the façade. The carefully constructed act, that had allowed Astarion to survive every other horrible, terrible thing that had ever happened to him in his life. Employed once more, to tackle the greatest horror he faced yet.
Either Mephistopheles hadn’t noted the formulation of Rosalie’s own hypothesis, or decided to goad her into admitting it.
“Fascinating to observe, really: it’s covetousness for anything authentic, be it feeling, sensation, or supposed connection,” he said. “Considering that it was a walking void, I quite liked to see what it reached for next, to try and patch up that starving maw that dwelled within itself. Perhaps I truly made the perfect vampire: something that hungered so desperately for everything the earth and living could offer, and yet had nothing of its own to give. A truly wondrous creature, created quite by accident. A being whose every instinct must drive itself to destruction, if not simple erasure… and yet.”
There was another weighted pause. Rosalie recognised Raphael’s own dramatic flourishes, in his father.
“And yet, there was a flaw,” Mephistopheles continued, glaring over his glasses at her.
“I construct the perfect Vampire,” he said. “It empties out its own soul quite fortuitously - so I should, in theory, have no ego left to contend with. A vacuum for me to fill. A creature capable of such destructive nihilism, it could wipe out the world entire and reduce it to a clean slate…
“...Except,” said Mephistopheles, enunciating every word with vigour, “it doesn’t want to. ‘I want to take over the world’, it says! ‘So kill these people for me,’ I respond! ‘Transform them, make them yours and mine in turn, and I shall make your every dream real’. ‘Oh, well, you see…’ it says, twiddling its thumbs, ‘some mortal woman told me not to’.”
…Ah. thought Rosalie - this explained the glare.
“This is the first time I have heard of said mortal woman, of course,” Mephistopheles looked over his glasses at her, “But then her name keeps cropping up, every single time the killer I invested seven thousands souls in making attempts to fight the impulses it ingrained within itself. Insisting on its infantile belief it has a purpose, when in truth it had literally nothing whatsoever to call its own. It fixates on a lost love, rather than any of the goals I take the time and care to craft for it. In fact, to even get it to consider those goals, I have to promise it things, that will get it this woman back. And then I - an Archdevil of Hell1 - am placed on hold, again, while it endeavours upon that process, and mangles it beyond all recognition, as seems to be its only unique talent.”
Mephistopheles leant over his desk, to regard her, chin resting upon steepled, clawed hands.
“Some people might get, oh… I don’t know…” he waved a hand, “frustrated, let’s say! Not I, of course! It is a frustratingly failed experiment, yes, but one that makes for excellent viewing.”
The devil gestured to her. “You were quite the coping mechanism, my dear - you understand, now, I think, my desire to meet you in the flesh! It’s not every day that I was able to witness a puppet walking around without anyone, even me, pulling the strings that it spent every single second of its life knowing were there-”
He glared at her, “And it’s not every day, that one meets the leash a soulless devil fashioned, for itself.”
“You… you mean to say…”
“I’m not sure what, if anything, resided in the Ascendent,” announced Mephistopheles. “Perhaps that negative space, hollowed out yet somehow still conscious, could eventually have given birth to some new type of devil. But whatever it was or could have been, you bound it in a pact within days of its birth! While I was busy, mopping up the mess it had made! Very enterprising of you! I might resent it, had I any belief it was intentional! But it all seems to me to be a very beautiful accident, on your part! What an enterprising young woman you must be, for your mistakes to flourish, where my masterpieces have failed!”
The voice that he was using was dangerous, and yet nothing about Mephistopheles' external demeanour had changed. Rosalie thought she must have imagined the shift in the atmosphere, for a second later, he cut himself off. He was leaning back again, to indulge in another elegant hand gesture, dismissing whatever it was that had come before.
“But as it seemed like a strange error... I decided to let it run its course. You would die eventually. What’s another sixty years, I thought, having already wasted four centuries? If your words and presence truly shaped its very being, impressed some kind of moral compass on it like a seal upon wax, I might actually have a new process to salvage from this entire endeavour, and use to my own ends in future… is what I thought.”
“Only now you’re here, offering me a Duchy,” said Rosalie. “I don’t quite understand what your intention is. If that makes me immortal, or immortality is something that you are going to place on the table in front of me, surely it doesn’t help you in the slightest?”
“Well, you already resouled the Vampire Ascendent, didn’t you?” said Mephistopheles, tersely. “You finally got to unmake the masterwork! Only once you had claimed it as your own - of course - and had both the body and its substance entirely bound to your will - of course. And it is - of course - interesting, that you imply I offered you anything. That this Duchy you speak of, isn’t yet another thing, that you happened to take.! To snatch from me, in your apparent bumbling!"
Libertatem diaboli, Gale had said. The freedom of devils, to pass in and out of the Hells, unimpeded and unmolested. The blood ritual had imparted this onto any tiefling of Mephistopheles’ descent, by claiming that even the most dilute blood from a monarch might constitute sovereignty within Cania’s boundaries, and dominion over his lands.
Libertatem diaboli only applied to devils… and their property. That was how Rose had gotten Astarion out of Cania: by insisting he belonged to her.
The only people that could travel freely - without the physical traversal of the gates of the Hells, which was a much more long-winded and unpleasant process, and still necessitated evading many, many guards - were those that belonged to a devil. That was how she and her party had first plopped into the House of Hope: Raphael had extended to them his own birthright. His own protection.
Rosalie had invoked the rites of her Infernal bloodline, traversed in and out of the Hells without restriction. Claimed a soul as her property. Extended to it her privileges, for good measure.
What else was a devil… if not someone of Infernal blood, who travelled the Infernal planes freely? Who wrote itself into contracts, and trafficked in the wares of the Hells?
“Oh, heavens,” said Rosalie out loud, realising what a stupid thing that was to say, locked and choked deep in the coils of Hell's spiral.
Not only had she invoked the Bloodrite spell. She had built upon it. Rose had known that was what she was doing at the time - she just hadn’t realised that she was doing it, in front of an audience.
She wondered if either Mephistopheles, or the wizard who had devised the spell in the first place, had ever known it was more than a teleportation. That - with the right balance of magic, willpower, and utter desperation - it could birth devils, within the Archduke’s own domain, without the Archduke’s permission.
Oh. Goodness. And Mephistopheles thought she had contracted intentionally with the Ascendent, years ago. He thought she’d been… doing all of this, deliberately.
And oh, how Rosalie wished that was important to her right now. But she had other things to think about.
“But… but…” she blurted. “The Ascendent came with me! In the bargain. When I claimed Astarion’s soul, and landed in Alaron. There must have been something in there, if-”
“Truth be told, I hedged my bets,” Mephistopheles told her with another shrug, this time with a cruel grin at her discomfort. “You made a demand, of me-”
Oh. That time, Rosalie heard the warning in his voice, underneath all that velvet cordiality.
“-quite suddenly. And the Ascendent had been cannibalising himself, extensively, by that point. The data on that front, was riveting - a solution to its problem at its very fingertips, but one it didn't want to take, for fear of its own aborted life! I didn’t know how much soul remained at the point of your… altercation, and the command you placed upon me. But even an ounce would leave me open to accusations of cheating you. In such a public arena - after you had yelled your little head off! Well, that couldn’t be borne! My reputation is what endures, above all else! So I threw him in for free, as it were. Let it never be said I am not generous.”
Liar, thought Rosalie, and she knew that thought was in her face.
Mephistopheles had been changing the parameters of his study to get more data, and that’s all the Ascendent's attempts on Rose’s life had been to him. He’d thrown a tiger into a cage with her, just to see what would happen. It would be foolish to expect sympathy from the Devil, after all - especially one mining a broken-down experiment for anything left that might be of use.
The Ascendent’s decision to target Astarion above herself, had likely been an illuminating datapoint.
Perhaps he’d just wanted to free the Ascendent from the pact that kept it shackled.
Or… perhaps Rosalie had just really pissed him off.
Ohhhhh. She was starting to worry it might be the latter.
“Why do you think we're here, archmage?” The Cold Lord asked her, dangerously. “It was me you spoke to, when you yelled that little diatribe, like a cat yowling at a closed door. How did you find it just now, when you were conducting your day with perfect civility, and then someone suddenly places you under yoke? Rudely demands that you divert your time to their little domestic issue?”
Rosalie swallowed.
That geas had gotten her out of the house very, very quickly, and not really with the most in-depth of preparatiosn. She was really starting to worry things might get lost in translation, in the tenor of that hastily penned note she’d left hidden on her desk.
It had all felt… very abrupt.
Something flashed in Mephistopheles’ eyes, and there was a shiver of flame across his skin - not the blue fire he used as his hallmark, but bright, warm amber, exactly as Raphael’s had been. He raked a hand through his smooth, dark hair, which only made it fall messily across his face.
“If I knew another one of my upstart bastards had overshot themselves,” he murmured, in a deceptively calm voice, edged in velvet, like a knife pressed lovingly between ribs, “and that their spell would not only allow for the passage of others into my domain, but then enable the enterprising among them to traffic souls and claim whatever of my property they chose… I might have killed him, sooner than I did. Or made it hurt more, when the end came.”
So, the creator of Gale’s spell had been caught.
“For there is nothing more tiresome...” observed Mephistopheles, examining his own claws, “...than a child who thinks they are above those, who are their betters.”
Oh, Rosalie thought, fuck.
“Eternity holds little appeal to me, especially if it’s bound in service,” is what she had said.
...To the devil she’d wrecked a four-century plan of. To the devil she’d stolen an expensive weapon from, before housing it in her impenetrable fortress of a home…
That she had demanded a Duchy from. Publicly.
After once killing his son and heir.
“Oh, gods!” said Rose. She put her hand to her mouth, utterly mortified. “...You think I’m trying to usurp you!”
Mephistopheles blinked at her from over the rim of his glasses, suddenly disarmed in a way that told her that was exactly what he was thinking.
“I’m really not!” said Rosalie, shrilly. Everything started slotting into place.
A devil had a passion project, almost half a millennia long. Not just a passion project, but one of the biggest deals the Hells had ever seen, with seven thousand souls in the balance. Enwoven through a spell - another demonstration of Mephistopheles’ own power, a hallmark of his personal might.
Perhaps, the Vampire Ascendent was just a weapon. But if Mephistopheles had bragged about The Rite to any of his rivals, colleagues, or fellow Monarchs, then the Vampire Ascendent was also political statement: a high-profile technological advancement of Cania’s own making, and a display of new wealth, that fed and agitated the cold war rivalry (no pun intended) between all the Nine Hells. It was no small transaction, and no small feat: there had to have been some grandstanding involved.
Yet Rosalie’s boyfriend had taken the helm at the last minute, derailing not only the enterprise, but the entire display of power. The foremost wizard of the Hells, utterly foiled, his every casting apparatus in disarray - Cania thus weakened. His rivals must have seen. And yes, Rosalie had left, but not without apparently having placed the Cold Lord’s invention under some kind of binding contract, first - making it look, perhaps, like everything that had happened had been her idea.
Like she was a wizard, of Mephistopheles’ own line, purposefully claiming his most powerful working.
Then she came back, ten years later, twenty times more powerful - and oh fucking hells, having also helped kill Zariel and Mizora, like she was getting some target practice in! Already with a man on the inside, who’s house she’d used as a base in Cania, alongside a spell that everyone had underestimated-
“Oh, my goodness, I am so, so sorry,” Rosalie started babbling, utterly beside herself.
Yes, this was the being that had made Ascendency. Did she hate him? Of course she did. Could she kill him? No! The fact that the devil thought she had a chance, or was making an attempt, was utterly absurd! She still had nightmares about that brutal fight with Raphael, and his horrible, bony-fuck face, and all that chanting, to this day.
…And right now, she was alone!
“I’m really not trying to do, what you think I’m trying to do!” she told Mephistopheles, “this is all just… a terrible misunderstanding! I was only ever interested, in Astarion - the man, who was the Ascendent, I mean. I’m sure you know that, but you haven’t used his name, so I just wanted to clarify! I’ll attest to that under any circumstances - you can place me under Zone of Truth, if you need to! If um... clerical casting is a practice you follow, here. Not because you’re Infernal, you understand - I know how clerics work. Because you’re arcane. And arcane-minded. You may not be a fan.”
Mephistopheles was approaching befuddled.
“Think about what you said, about the Ascendent!” she plucked desperately from the ether, “he submitted himself to testing, which he really shouldn’t have done, if he had anything to hide. Why am I here, if you think that I’m-”
“I summoned you here,” interrupted Mephistopheles, like he thought that was crucial. “You had no choice, but to obey me.”
“...Yes! Right! Because you’re really, really powerful! Way more powerful than me! And I know that!” Rosalie said, wondering if that was laying it on too thick.
Mephistopheles’ expression implied it might be.
“If there’s anything I hate more than misplaced ambition,” he said, “it’s the timidity to not even attempt to see a vision through, at its first challenge. I had hoped you would at least put up some sort of struggle, before I put you back in your rightful place.”
“I’m very... aware of my rightful place, and there isn’t any kind of vision!” Rosalie told him helplessly, “or rather… there was one, and now it’s literally finished! I’ve seen it through, to the very end, and I have no need to deal with you or your lands, ever again! I just wanted Astarion back!”
“You expect me to believe you undermined my dominion, for the sake of a single soul stupid enough that it damned itself?”
“Yes! And I didn’t honestly didn’t expect any of my actions to have consequences, beyond the fate of that single soul! I didn’t even realise you’d noticed!"
This seemed to offend Mephistopheles, more than anything that had come before in this conversation. Rosalie knew she needed to recover things quickly, in order to make it out of this room alive.
“-I could give you the spell!” she blurted.
Mephistopheles paused.
“The blood ritual!” said Rosalie. “I need to get out of Hell one more time, but I have no further need for it, beyond that. If we were now, say,.. in a negotiation… I could relinquish this Duchy I have, and the land upon which the House of Peace resides, which is now in my name, because the soul is mine…”
…Oh no, she thought. Astarion’s soul really is mine.
The language had been literal, and taken literally. But that was a problem for, oh… this afternoon, at least.
“I could tithe it all back to you, right here,” said Rosalie. “Sacrifice my entire Duchy, and my title. Relinquish any claim I have to Cania, save for the Vampire Ascendent - who is a fully failed experiment, I’m happy to confirm. One you need not waste anymore time on. He is no longer connected to Cania, as he does in fact belong solely to me.”
The words felt horrid, but they were the only language Rosalie knew Mephistopheles would honour, and understand.
“If you let me keep him, and visit upon us no more consequences for what you admit is, ultimately, Cazador Szarr’s poor oversight, I will vow to never again cross Cania’s borders and disturb you or your work,” she said. “And to prove this, I would give you my copy of the blood ritual, both the scroll and the one from my spellbook. Not only does this mean I would never be able to utilise it against you - it would also allow you to study it, dismantle it, and perhaps even destroy it, so that no one else would um… do what I did. Again.”
It suddenly struck Rosalie, as a rather dangerous spell to have out in the world. What if someone who actually wanted to rule the Hells got hold of it? What if someone decided to extend its terms to every tiefling in Faerûn, of every Infernal lineage?
And what if a lesser devil of Mephistopheles' line - like Raphael - accessed it and doctored it to their own situation - could they gain more power? If it couldn’t be changed, could Mephistopheles’ rivals still use it to undermine him? They were all related somewhere, after all. If the spell could make Infernal duchesses from tieflings…
She could tell, from Mephistopheles’ face, that this was all occurring to him in real time as well. As an archdevil entirely satisfied with his own domain, he was one of the few that could not benefit from the blood ritual, and had everything to lose from it.
…Which was, in fact, leverage.
“All I want, is safe passage from your realm to my own home, the moment this interview is concluded, and to then live a long, unbothered, mortal life, with every part of Astarion Ancunín,” clarified Rose. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, truly. And I am so sorry, for any misunderstandings or damage that my pursuit of this goal may have caused, at your end.”
Mephistopheles squinted at her. She wondered if it was more insulting, to know that this truly had all been accidental. That the Rite had not failed through any calculating sweep of power, but through one man’s desperate and uncoordinated actions.
But what she could tell Mephistopheles understood immediately, was that it made her far easier to manage. He’d probably been about to publicly humiliate her, give her the lowest standing in Cania and turn her presumed desires against her, condemning her to servitude for all eternity while also showing he was so unbothered by her little rebellion, that he was happy to keep her as a thorn in his own side.
Rosalie was glad, that for the first time, her success relied on her utter lack of deception.
The archdevil of Cania looked at her. “You did all of what you did… for him?”
Rosalie rather resented his tone of voice. As such, she didn’t bother dignifying the question with an answer.
“...I thought you were an archwizard?” added Mephistopheles, after another moment’s pause.
“Not that kind of archwizard,” replied Rosalie, scandalised. “I'm an academic!”
They drafted up the contract between them. Rosalie read it through thirteen times, before she was satisfied. She became paranoid that she had been caught in some kind of trap, but she hadn’t - at least, none that she hadn’t caught, by the third readthrough.
The terms of the agreement kept Astarion with her, giving her full ownership of his soul. It allowed her safe, immediate passage out of Cania, to her specified time and location, the moment the meeting was concluded. There was even a clause, promising that neither she nor Mephistopheles would do each other or their associated friends, lovers, and colleagues harm, at any point in the future. Each of them would go their separate ways, and live out their lives unmolested.
It all felt too good to be true. But Rosalie realised, this was because she was giving Mephistopheles everything he wanted, as well. He thought she’d been mounting an official challenge to his authority, in his own lands - one that might actually hold some weight, because it had worked. Instead, all she wanted was a ‘failed experiment’, that had by everyone’s admission, caused him far more trouble than it was worth.
To the outside observer, she had been confronted by him once, and as a result visibly submitted to his authority, and fled with her tail between her legs. Mephistopheles had, for all intents and purposes, won… in a world where she had wanted any of what the sustained challenge might have gotten her.
The other reason it felt easy was because this was an agreement between devils. Not a devil and their supplicant; like a warlock and their patron - or Karlach, Gortash, and Zariel. Even if Rosalie relinquished the blood ritual, her birthright, and any claim she held to Cania - even if she remained a tiefling with a tiefling’s lifespan - she had elevated herself, accidentally. Given the laws and love of Order in Baator, she would remain elevated - if only to avoid the bureaucracy, and the paperwork behind such an unmaking alone.
This deal made sense, if Rosalie accepted she had as much power as Mephistopheles did, in their transaction. That in itself felt unreal.
But she read the document thirteen times, and then a fourteenth time to be safe. Knowing it was this, death, or a new imprisonment in Cania serving the Cold Lord after humiliating him, Rosalie signed. The quicker she was out of here, to let him lick his wounds and plan his next abomination unrelated to her, the better.
And yes, whatever he did next, she couldn’t stop him…
...But Rose was kind of past the point in her life, where she wanted to shoulder that responsibility.
The contract was signed by both of them - that was the way it was amongst devils, as it had been with the Ascendent and Mephistopheles as well. Then, with the scariest handshake of her life, Rosalie bid the Archdevil goodbye.
“I actually thought you might be a threat,” said Mephistopheles, as if that was a compliment and not a death sentence. “But someone swayed so easily by their heart has no hope, here in the Hells.”
Rosalie thought about Hope, living and healing in Avernus and doing quite well, actually, after the two of them had slaughtered Raphael together.
She thought about Karlach, reclaiming her own heart - after becoming a machine had only made her feel more, and more strongly. And Wyll - already free from his pact - facing down Mizora and killing her anyway, because he didn’t want any other seventeen year old to face the same decisions he had.
She thought about Astarion’s soul, and how it had managed to hold on for her.
“...I don’t think it matters how well I would or wouldn’t do here,” replied Rosalie, as cordially as she could manage. “My metrics for success have already been met.”
And then, with one firm shake of their intertwined hands, she was teleported back to her basement.
Where she had her panic attack.
I spoke to an archdevil, she thought. I nearly declared war on an archdevil. By accident.
It hadn’t seemed scary, when it was Zariel. But that had at least been intentional - and she had been suicidally depressed at the time.
The first few minutes of breathlessness were enough to make her think she had been tricked, and that the teleportation hadn't been safe at all. Surely something had gone terribly wrong. But Rosalie knew that the force telling her that, was the very same thing doing this to her body.
Her panic room - panic suite - was full of buttons and dials and colours to count in her exercises. More importantly, it was soundproof, so there was no fear at potentially being heard, which always seemed to exacerbate things. Alone, Rosalie finally got herself back under control, though her heart still pounded with the leftover adrenaline.
She took another twenty minutes, before the room - suite - started to feel claustrophobic, and she left it, to walk silently up through the floors of her tower.
Astarion hadn’t moved, from the chair in which he'd been reading. He now had a purring ball of Ser Verity nestled in his lap. His book was splayed open on the armrest, and his hand was resting on the cat’s massive forehead.
“...Hello.” he said, like he’d been caught doing something wrong.
“...Hello,” said Rosalie, numbly.
Her staff was on her back, she was wearing armour, and she probably smelled like the Canian ice-cold. She had no idea how long she’d been gone. At least it was still light outside.
Looking at Astarion, she thought, I am the owner of your soul.
It meant no one else had it. But still.
“I’m just going upstairs for a sec,” she said, as valiantly as she could manage.
“...I mean, alright,” said Astarion, frowning at the volume. “Might I suggest you maybe eat, first?”
“No time!” she replied, already halfway to the staircase, body hot with shame and ears burning.
The note that she’d written under the geas was, thankfully, still on her office desk, and the illusory script still illusory. Rose hastily burned it, mortified that she’d updated Astarion about her impending death via cursive.
Then she did some more hasty-problem solving, and she wrote a new note, in a shaking hand.
When she came back downstairs, fifteen minutes later, Astarion was staring in clear consternation at Verity, who it seemed kept him unmoving in his seat. It became apparent that, even if he had wanted to run after Rose and maybe assault her with some kind of baked good, a happily sleeping cat prevented him from doing so. This is what happened to people, when were no longer soulless.
He looked surprised to see Rose again, so quickly.
“...Are you ok?” he asked her, “Are you going out again? Did something… happen?”
“I’m fine!” said Rose, at a perfectly adequate pitch and volume. “I’m not going out again! I’m here to stay!”
She bustled her way to the kitchen. She made herself tea with hands that barely trembled, and shoved three lemon shortbread inelegantly into her mouth, hoping the sugar would combat the anxiety.
Then, she walked back through with her cup, as casually as she could manage, and said: “there, I’ve eaten now. Here, this is for you!”
Astarion blinked up at her in confusion, as she reached into her pocket and picked out a rumbled, folded piece of card - not dissimilar to the notes she had scattered about the place, when he was in the middle of resolutely avoiding her. Rosalie hovered by the arm of his chair, awkwardly, with it presented in her outstretched hand.
Finally, her weaponisation of social pressure won out. Astarion reached out towards her, and took the note from her grasp.
On the front, it said: thank you so much for looking after Verity while I was out! :)
And on the back, in smudged ink and Infernal, it said:
I, Rosalie Frostsong, exiled devil of Cania, return to you, Astarion Ancunín, your soul.
The terms of this contract are here stated: if you take this piece of paper from my own hand, you have met the terms of my bargain. In return for the successful completion of your assigned task, I relinquish your soul back to you, to never lay claim to it as property, ever again. It will be only ever and wholly yours, to do with it what you will.
I hope you will take care of it for me. But this is not a stipulation of our agreement, and this clause is neither compulsory nor binding.
Rosalie felt a flush of relief, as Astarion's fingertips made contact with the paper, and she felt the contract take. It was the same feeling, as a successful spell working - a shift in the air that heralded intangible but undeniable results.
As Astarion read the front, the barest flush of pink bled across his cheeks.
- And Rosalie didn’t notice, because he then turned the note over once in his hand, and she nearly went into cardiac arrest.
“Is this…?” Astarion asked, glancing momentarily at the Infernal he wouldn’t be able to read, before turning it back.
“Sorry!” said Rosalie, hiding her ink-stained fingers behind her back, “the closest piece of paper I had to hand was one I’d already written on, so I just decided to use that! I hope that’s ok!”
“Well, of course," he glanced at her briefly, befuddled, then back to his lap. "But you know, you can just speak to me now, these days-”
Astarion’s voice trailed off, as he looked from the note in his hand, back up to her, then down again, brow furrowing.
Rosalie decided it was best to just make use of the distraction, and avoid having to find another careful lie.
“Bye!” she said.
She hastily turned, and started making a dignified - but hurried - exit towards the stairs.
“Um, Rosalie?” said Astarion, to her back. His voice sounded rough.
Rosalie had nearly made it. She tried her best to keep walking, but her guilt won out. She turned back, hand resting against the wall for support. “...Yes?”
“Now seems a good time to tell you that I…” Astarion cleared his throat with difficulty, “...speak Infernal.”
Notes:
There is nothing funnier to me, than a Level 19 wizard (she levelled up at the House of Peace) confused as to why people think she might want power.
Rosalie: I'm not powerful enough to take you on!
Mephistopheles: ...girlie I have more health but we literally have the same number of spell slots. You can make that play.Anyway, this is a very silly, very exposition heavy chapter, that I hope gives some answers to some questions commenters have had from the beginning. Thank you so much, as always, for reading, and making it to this point! Have another hot, evil man for your troubles!
Chapter Notes
- I started writing an explanation about the Vampire Ascendent, and dear god - it went over the endnote character limit lmao. I now have a tumblr meta post, here!
- All I will say is, I'm so sorry to everyone who was thrown off by the statues. Because I imagined the Ascendent being essentially an extreme, and magically literal, form of Astarion's dissociation, I decided to use the statues to show how he's become so far removed from himself, that he can now treat even his most painful moments like art to be observed. I knew this was something the 'true' Astarion would never do, and I became enamoured with the image of dissociation as the Ascendent framing each moment in time and viewing it from the outside. I'm so sorry for any confusion it caused!!
- What I *can* talk about here, is Mephistopheles, because the D&D lore about him is so interesting and part of what made me put in his cameo in the first place. According to the Forgotten Realms Wikipedia'Mephistopheles' [...] cool, pleasant demeanor gave him the outward appearance of a princely gentleman. He came off as sophisticated and charming when he spoke, an intellectual force of understated wit, reason and self-restraint [...]
HOWEVER, this was by no means his ordinary behaviour, but a facade [...] a veneer of elegance as carefully crafted as his traditionally infernal appearance. Despite his courteous persona, Mephistopheles was an unstable individual on the inside, the contrast between his cold surface and fiery core a perfect example of his existence as a walking contradiction. Mephistopheles was a vicious being with an outrageous temper, who when alone in his palace frequently flew into violent rages.'
So! What Rosalie wouldn't realise (because why would she?) is that the Mephistopheles here is a carefully calculated front - exactly like the Ascendent, only she knows Astarion well enough to recognise it. When confronted with Mephistopheles, she doesn't know what is and isn't real. "This man is being so nice to me!" she thinks - meanwhile I hint at about 3 separate places he might have murdered her. It just seemed like a really fun parallel to other themes in the fic, which is why I decided to give the man a starring role!
Other notes:
- Illusory Script is a 1st level spell that creates a secret message that no one can see - either only legible to the people it's intended for, or in this case becoming readable upon potential death. I didn't use it for the contract at the end, bc why would Rose waste a spell, when Astarion can't read Infernal? ;)
- My favourite comments on the previous chapter were "what will Astarion think when she tells him she has to go to Hell?" my loves, what about this woman suggests she is well-adjusted enough to be communicating???
- The soulless in Barovia are, obviously, people who are born without souls (essentially there are more births than there are souls in the population).The soulless are placid bc their bodies are never inhabited - meanwhile the Ascendent is a hollow shell that's clinging to what came before.
- The man Mephistopheles mentions doing experiments on Barovia's soulless is the Abbott, who was my funky little sorcerer goth's awful adopted father which is why he gets a little intertextual reference here, as a treat.
- I'm SO SORRY to everyone in comments who asked if Astarion spoke Infernal, or understood what Rosalie shouted in the blood ritual, etc, and for my replies!! He really didn't, at the point when you asked!!! He only gets the language post Wish, for reasons that will soon be explained!!!...But I also didn't want to spoil what I think is the funniest twist of the entire fucking fic, so I also kinda... lied. Or evaded the truth. I'm sorry!! I hope the reveal makes it all worth it!!!
Chapter 24: Chapter Twenty-Four
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Rosalie froze up, by the stairs.
“No, you don't,” she said, intelligently.
In the times before, this kind of articulate speech might have earned her some sarcasm, for her troubles. But the look Astarion gave her in response was so open and heartfelt, that it made Rose immediately want to hide whatever it was he saw.
“No, you don’t,” repeated Rosalie, very insistent. “Because I had to translate your scars for you. And Gale had to do it again, in the Rite. You don’t know Infernal, Astarion.”
Astarion looked back down at the note she had just given him, and cleared his throat again.
“Yes, well,” he said, “the Ascendent knew it. And then he worked under Mephistopheles, and so, he learned how to read.”
Rosalie couldn’t think of a response, to that.
“...What do you mean, ‘exiled devil of Cania’?” he asked after a moment, glancing back up and over in her direction. “Am I understanding that right?”
I could run, thought Rosalie. I could very literally run. Or Dimension Door, back down to my panic room. I successfully outran him, like twice. And that was when he was evil.
Astarion seemed to read some of that thought in her face, because he sighed and said, “Rose, the cat is asleep. She’ll be incredibly upset, if I have to disturb her. Don’t be absurd, now.”
But Rosalie was still panicking, as she began to filter through the implications of Astarion’s newfound knowledge.
“Does this mean you understood what I said, once?” she asked, with dread. “When you were… in the jar?”
Astarion had the grace to look sheepish. “Was this when you were… erm… yelling?”
Rosalie wanted to die. It must have been very obvious that she wanted to die, because Astarion hastily raised his hands, including the one holding the contract.
“No - don’t worry! You were speaking in a much older dialect, and I'm not a scholar. It's very hard, to try and translate something from a memory. So I didn't understand all of it, all that much,” he said. “But I, erm, do of course... k-know the word for ‘soul’.”
They both paused. The memory of Power Word Kill haunted the air between them.
Astarion coughed, “and you…”
He paused again, this time for the sake of delicacy, rather than awkwardness.
“...Seemed to be using the possessive, quite a lot,” he continued carefully. “If I’m following the speech, with any degree of accuracy.”
“I didn’t mean any of it!” blurted Rosalie. Only, the moment she said that, she realised it was a lie: she’d meant all of it. And oh, how she wished that had been a revelation for say… tomorrow morning. Because now she was living with that knowledge, she knew it would register on Astarion’s senses as a lie, as well.
She despaired. “...Ok, so maybe I meant it, but not literally, and the language of the spell left very little room for nuance-”
“-I’m not concerned about what was said before,” Astarion told her, very calmly, “I’m concerned about what is being said now.” He raised the paper into her line of vision, “what is this?”
Rosalie closed her eyes briefly, then sighed, resigned to her fate. “It’s a contract, for your soul.”
When she opened her eyes again, Astarion was watching her.
“I owned it, briefly,” she continued. “By accident.”
Silence.
“To get you successfully out of hell,” Rose explained.
...She was still riddled with leftover anxiety, twitchy from the aftermath of her panic attack. There was barely pause for breath, before the already unstable dam inside her broke.
“-And I promise you, I only realised today! And the moment I did, I wrote that-” she pointed to his hand, “to give it immediately back! And it’s definitely yours now - as I was the only one with a claim, which I’ve utterly rescinded - and that means Mephistopheles has no ownership over you whatsoever, so you’re safe! But… I’ve only just started to think through what it might mean, and the implications… and now I’m so, so worried, that everything I’ve asked of you, these past few weeks, you’ve been obliged to fulfil! When I all but asked you to stay with me... when I told you you could flirt with me… gods, when I asked you for a hug-!”
“-Hush now, for a moment,” Astarion said with a gentle authority, stemming the babbling spiral before it could drag her fully under. He gestured towards the sofa, next to the chair in which he was sat. “I’m going to ask you to sit down, while I read this through properly. It may take me a minute - is that alright?”
Dumbly, Rosalie nodded. She moved to the signalled seat, tea still in hand, and she even took a sip. The silence as Astarion read the contract -
- He speaks Infernal, she thought: the same way her parents, and her family, and her childhood friends spoke Infernal; the same way her teenage diaries were in Infernal; the same way she’d spoken Infernal to him, when she’d translated his scars in full -
- was filled with nothing but Verity’s rising and falling purr.
It was hard not to feel calmer, with that in the background.
Rosalie knew when Astarion got to the last line of the contract - which she would not have written, if she had ever known he could read it, it was quite extraneous to the contract itself - because of the way he changed. As he read through the rest of the document, his face held the shadow of the lawyer he once must have been. That same expression softened, as his eyes followed the text of her closing words. Rose felt her face burning, as he smoothed a thumb through a crease in the paper.
The moment he looked up at her, she said, "I’m really, really sor-”
But then Rose remembered: Astarion had ordered her not to apologise to him. She cut herself off, before she was finished - then dithered over her decision, because surely these were some exceptional circumstances-
“Good.” said Astarion, voice surprisingly firm. “I’m glad you know, that this is not something I want you to apologise for. I’ll repeat: what do you mean by ‘exiled devil of Cania’? Did you go back there, today? Is that how you found this information out? Was that your reason for you being so scared earlier? Did you return to the House of Peace?”
“Well…”
Astarion looked horrified. “Foxglove-”
“-It’s not what you think!” Rose said, then winced guiltily, because it was actually worse.
“What need would you have to go back there? What good could it possibly serve?”
“I didn’t go back, I promise! I went to Cania, but I didn’t go to the House of Peace. Neither of us have to go to the House of Peace, ever again. I can’t, in fact. That’s the um… exiled bit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something happened accidentally, when I cast the spell that got us out of the Hells. The one with all the… yelling,” explained Rosalie. “It was in the casting of it, that I became the owner of your soul and… I also caught Mephistopheles’ attention. The meeting I was summoned to, I was summoned to, by him, in his office.”
Astarion gave her an alarmed look.
“It’s all ok now!” she said, “it’s all sorted. Look! I’m back in one piece! Although, that’s why-” she gestured at all of herself, still so obviously jittery.
“...But I sorted it! It was all relatively easy, once we were on the same page. He thought I was trying to undermine his power in the Hells. Obviously, that’s something I’ve never wanted in my life, ever. It’s very easy to talk someone down, when the truth is the exact opposite of what they feared. We signed a contract-”
“-A contract!”
“A very benign contract!” stressed Rosalie, “and it was that or servitude, or death, which… oh fuck, now where have I heard that argument before-!”
“That’s not funny,” Astarion told her, severely.
It was a little bit funny, but Rosalie had made the joke quite accidentally, and now really wasn’t the time.
“I can give you that contract to read, as well, if you want to,” she promised Astarion, “once my copy gets sent through, which apparently takes three-to-five business days - only devils don’t have days off, so Mephistopheles' qualification seemed somewhat redundant to me.”
Astarion looked quite unimpressed with the casual way she was dismissing this. Rosalie continued, trying to be reassuring: “But it truly isn’t anything terrible! It was the best I could’ve hoped for, under the circumstances. I had far more leverage than the average contractor. Usually, these kinds of bargains - as we know - are conducted on a vastly unequal footing, but… um… something else happened, in the spell-”
Astarion had never been stupid, and so he caught on quickly. He looked even more alarmed, as he said, “you literally mean ‘devil’, don’t you, when you write it here? That’s why this is even a contract in the first place. Oh gods, are you-”
“Well, no, actually, that’s the funny thing,” said Rosalie, pleased that she had someone to try this rhetorical flourish out on, before she boasted about it to Gale. “Yes, and no. I am, what I’m thinking I might term in the eventual academic essay, a ‘paperwork devil’.”
She began to launch into what she thought might one day be a decent lecture: “The Hells' love of Order persists, above all else. Hierarchies are absolute, and free agents abhorred - that must be partly why Mephistopheles was trying to troubleshoot me so quickly. Typically, whatever causes the shortest period of disruption within one's domain, is adhered to. The spell made me a devil and then forced me to be acknowledged as such, but nothing about me changed. Mephistopheles expected me to want more power or myself transmuted in line with this… promotion, but I didn’t ask for anything. As such, I’m still a tiefling, still mortal, still me. It’s just, um... well I suppose it’s a little bit like taxes. There’s workarounds, but it's almost better to work within the system to avoid payment - and much harder to opt out, and with a lot more paperwork that way. People get made into devils, all the time - that’s a standard clause in Infernal pacts - so that kind of transition is probably accounted for on their books. The inverse… well. I imagine a new form and procedure would have to be made. So now I’m just kind of… here. A devil, only in name.”
“...You’re certain?” asked Astarion, sounding unconvinced.
Rosalie reached out her hand, and cast Hellish Rebuke. As a wizard, all of her furniture was flame retardant - although Verity did briefly stop purring, from the noise, before the sound renewed again with vigour.
The flames that emitted from Rose's fingertips were no longer blue. Which meant that particular boost had come from either having a soul as property, currency, and powersource; or her being tied to a Canian Duchy, specifically. What a relief, to have that proven to be the case.
“Well… a little bit more certain, than I was a second ago,” admitted Rosalie, shakily. "We’re still in some rather new territory. Having a lawyer’s eye double-checking over that contract will probably reassure us both.”
“...But you can still make bargains? Own souls? Surely that kind of power would entail consequence?”
“I mean,” Rosalie couldn’t help but feel a little offended, “it would, if I was ever going to use it.”
She paused.
“Oh, my gods,” she said. “It’s not like taxes. It’s like being a magistrate.”
Astarion stared at her, uncomprehending but also severely unamused.
“Think about it!" said Rosalie, “when you were a magistrate, it was a paid position. But there are now also civil magistrates, who do magistration- magistrating - administer justice voluntarily, alongside their other actual jobs, for a handful of days in a year. They are temporarily imbued with the station and its associated powers and jurisdictions, whenever they elect to conduct that role in society. They’re still a magistrate, though. For you, it was a profession, for others a position they adopt occasionally. In this, um, analogy, there are devils - career devils, who do devilry for profit - and there are… um. Non-practising devils? Devils who were once civil magistrates, but have left that life behind them? After only participating in it briefly… and volunteering for the role quite by accident?”
She could tell Astarion was wishing Verity wasn’t in his lap. If she wasn't, he probably could have attacked her.
“Now that I’ve given you your soul back, I’m 99% certain that’s the end of it,” Rose assured him. “I mean, I certainly won’t be taking on any warlocks, any time soon.”
Looking at Astarion's sullen expression, Rose thought he was going to scold her for signing the contract. Or tell her her analogy was terrible and made no sense, and that it would need to be revised extensively for its delivery at academic conferences.
But instead, all he asked was, “...Why didn’t you take me with you?”
Oh, Rosalie thought. He looked genuinely hurt.
“Mephistopheles forbade me from doing so!” she said, deciding to skip over the presence of the geas in case it worried him further. “I would’ve bought you with me, of course, if I’d had the choice.”
“You didn’t even say anything.”
“If you couldn’t come with me… I didn’t want for you to worry about me.”
“Worry about you? Well, what do you think would have happened, if you hadn’t come back?!” said Astarion, exasperated, before he then froze. “Ah. That’s what that hug was about.”
Rosalie felt guilty, at the first flash of the memory, and then she immediately felt even guiltier… she couldn’t remember her wording, in her own head. I definitely didn’t demand that of him, did I? she wondered. But did it even matter? She had no idea how soul ownership worked! If she had unknowingly forced Astarion, into doing something that he wasn’t comfortable with doing-
“Foxglove,” said Astarion.
Rose startled, brought back out of herself and into the room.
“Did I go for the walk on the beach, the first day you invited me?” he asked her, out of the blue.
“...No?”
“And did I eat any of the muffins?”
“...Did you not eat any of the muffins?” asked Rose, scandalised.
“No, I didn’t,” confirmed Astarion. “I haven’t been using the laundry baskets, either.”
“I mean, you really should use the laundry baskets-”
“-And on the day Shadowheart arrived, and was the one who actually fixed you, and knew how to wake you up, I very nearly left,” continued Astarion calmly, cutting across her. “Even though you had ordered me to stay - the only order you’ve given me, in fact, that wasn’t couched in a request. Given that I summoned her here from that room in the basement, I saw where she came through from. And I knew enough from the Ascendent’s dabbling with the throne to work a teleportation circle. And… I considered it. I considered leaving. If I’m being honest, I came very close.”
Rosalie felt a pang in her chest, over something that had never even happened.
“But I didn’t, and it wasn’t anything to do with being forced to make that decision. So stop making that face, and let’s stop pretending that anything I do here, with you, is anything other than a choice I have made, for myself,” said Astarion. “It’s not guilt, it’s not pity, it’s not obligation, and it’s certainly not compulsion. I know what that feels like. So for you to think otherwise, is to do us both a disservice.”
Rosalie couldn’t think of a single thing to say, in response to that.
“So… you’re not mad at me?” was what her absolutely useless mouth gave her to work with.
“Oh, I’m actually kind of furious,” Astarion supplied, off-hand. "But you have also just handed my soul back to me, in what strikes me as a very hammer-over-the-head kind of a metaphor. And you hadn’t even planned on taking any of the credit for it! So I’m… struggling a little bit, honestly. Why you keep thinking there’s anything you could do, that could undo all of the good you’ve done for me, is beyond me at this point, quite frankly. If there was ever a time to abscond off to Hell and sign a contract with the Archduke of Cania, two weeks after you undid all of my own bad decisions and saved me from death is probably the moment you should pick! If you have any pressing crimes you need an accomplice or an alibi for, now is the time to ask!”
“I'm pretty certain you’d help me do crime, any day of the week.”
Astarion gave her an indulgent smile, “yes - but right now, I wouldn’t charge you for it. So this, it seems, is your window for taking horrid, selfish advantage of me.”
There was a moment, when both of them took note of what he’d just said, and then noticed the other person, well... noticing.
Astarion looked briefly flustered - as if his words hadn’t been intentional.
“I mean, I’m not going to do that… and you can be mad,” Rosalie felt she should remind him. “Every time we inevitably have an argument, I’m not going to turn around and be like, ‘sorry, free pass actually, because I saved your soul from hell’.”
“Oh, really?” Astarion asked mildly, visibly grateful for the opportunity to recover himself. “Because you know I will be using the fact that you also entered into an Infernal contract - with Mephistopheles, no less-”
“...Oh, so you can make that joke, and it’s funny,” said Rosalie, “but when I make that joke-”
“-You find its delivery lacking?” Astarion finished for her, smiling despite himself. “It’s ok, darling. We both know who, of the two of us, can get away with murder.”
Okay, so now Rosalie was smiling back at him, and feeling herself finally start to relax. Her residual jitters faded. In Astarion’s presence, she felt her anxiety pass.
“I think I found something out, when I was meeting with Mephistopheles,” she said, after a small second of testing the surer ground. “About the Ascendent, and about you. I was going to pretend at a few more days of research, but if we’re just putting all our cards out on the table now… do you want to know what it is?”
“What does it pertain to?”
“What the Ascendent was. I think Mephistopheles gave me the answer,” replied Rose. “I also…” she turned an idea over in her mind, tested it: “I also think that, as a result, I know what it is the Wish did - or at least, I have a guess. But if you don’t want to know, or need more time, or you want me to wait until I’m certain-”
“-What about any of this conversation, makes you think I wish to be kept in the dark?” Astarion asked her.
“Before, you used to… I don’t know… shy away from-”
“-And look where it got me,” he said. As if he hadn’t been avoiding Rosalie in her own house, literally three days ago. This was a little too much growth to be boasting about, Rose felt. “I think it might be better, for us to just to get it over with.”
“Well… do you want the good news, or the bad news, first?”
“There’s both?” drawled Astarion. “What a delight for me.”
“Well, I’m not actually sure…” hummed Rose. “The thing is, I don’t think any of it is necessarily bad, it just won’t be pleasant. Every time we have a conversation, I feel like I’m putting you through hell.”
“Well, as the only person who’s ever pulled me out of hell, I think you’ve earned yourself that right.”
Rosalie bit her lip, wondering if he was being sincere, or just joking to skirt over the tension.
“Foxglove,” Astarion said tiredly, scritching Verity on the forehead, “don’t just say something like that, then leave me to rot in suspense.”
“Mephistopheles said… that your body was empty,” Rosalie told him.
There was really no elegant way to go about it.
So at Astarion’s first confused look, Rose just continued barrelling onwards. “He said that when Ascension happened, your soul was still marked by the carvings on your back, and so he just… took you. Because he could.”
“...We knew that,” Astarion pointed out, “I was the one in the jar, remember?”
“But I mean, he really took all of you,” said Rose. “He was quite certain - all of your soul was gone. He didn’t leave anything behind - even though he could have, if he'd chosen to. But he couldn’t help himself. No part of you remained in your body - until, obviously, the body started to um, cannibalise you. And start draining you for its own gain. Before that, Mephistopheles claims it was entirely empty.”
Astarion paused, and stared at her.
“But that makes no sense,” he said. “It wasn’t like I was catatonic. I was walking around and talking. Too much… some might say.”
“This is where I think Mephistopheles’ hypothesis was a little off,” replied Rosalie. She could feel her awkwardness and worry manifesting, in the logical tone she chose to adopt, when delivering the news. “He says he measured the Ascendent’s body for the presence of a soul, multiple times, and that there was none. He believed the magic of the ritual animated the body, and that it aped your personality, simply for a sense of purpose. Like a runaway mine cart, as it were - if it was kept on the tracks, and so long as there were tracks running before it in familiar lines, there was little chance it would crash.”
Astarion was listening intently, looking thoughtful.
“But I know you, better than he does,” Rose said. “And the thing is, everything about the Ascendent’s personality was, well…”
Rosalie stopped. She wondered whether she could continue.
“...Was what?” prompted Astarion. “You can say it. It can’t be anything worse than what I already think.”
“It was all the things you were, in the beginning,” admitted Rosalie, cheeks hot and feeling wretched anyway. “Flirtatious, overly seductive… all of the performance, without any of the feeling behind it… at least, that’s my understanding of what we were, in the beginning, from what you told me. And that’s what being with the Ascendent felt like as well, albeit… intensified. It was all of your… survival strategies, and your coping mechanisms, and well - again, if I’m understanding correctly, I can’t speak for you of course - what you retreated into… when you were hurt. The self-preservation mechanisms that you sought out…”
She swallowed, and then hated herself as she finished, “...when you were a body to be used.”
“Which would make sense,” Rose offered, “if all there was, was a body.”
Astarion was frozen, like his own statue in the House of Peace. It didn’t seem like he was going to be talking, so Rosalie did her best to fill the silence. It might not have been the right thing to do - in fact, she was certain it wasn’t - but it was also the only thing she was capable of.
“So, the thing is, it is a small part of you,” she said, quietly. “I think it’s impossible for either of us to pretend otherwise. I saw that same self-preservation kick in, when I knew you before - the moments when you tried to be that way, for me, and then the moments where it also turned into a desire to… hurt people, or hurt them back, at least.
“But it is also… not you,” she insisted. “Not you, at all. All of the things you were, had been taken away from it, and it was just trying to grapple with that reality. It was just… fear, and hatred, and survival, with power to spare, but without any of the parts of you that make you a person. That make you you. I - I know what it feels like, when your own mind robs you of everything, and when you convince yourself that whatever remains is all you deserve. But that was a lie for me, and for you, even more so. I really don’t want you to think that the Ascendent is who you are, deep down. Because it literally isn’t. That’s what caused it to panic so much - that it couldn’t be, or become, you. The essence of who you are… that’s what it always lacked. It isn't the barest, deepest part of you, or the core of your existence… it's literally the same shell I had to break through, to find you once before. All that was left, once who you really are was stripped away from it entirely.”
She watched Astarion, as she spoke, for any kind of movement. There was none. She was mostly just trying to make sure she didn’t lose him.
“I think that might be why the memories have that distanced quality to them,” she explained. “I think it was a person - or trying to be, desperately - but it was also a panicked response to some very complicated stimuli. Received through the very behaviours you used to remove yourself from situations like that, in the past.”
The silence that followed was deafening. But as Rose desperately searched for more information to tell him, or better platitudes to make it better, Astarion cleared his throat.
“I think I’d like that good news, now, Foxglove,” he said.
Though Astarion's words were deceptively calm, his voice sounded thick with emotion. His hands were still, but buried in the cat’s fur, like he needed something pleasant to anchor him down into reality.
How Rosalie wished she could touch him, and be that anchor for him - or at least know for certain, whether he even wanted touch. She wished she was like Shadowheart, and that emotions were something she knew how to fix. The older she’d gotten, she’d simply decided that wasn’t her job - but for Astarion, she would do it, if she were able.
There were, however, some things she could fix.
“Well, the good news is…” Rosalie imagined a world where she could say this better, with any finesse or the performance of a magician’s prestige, “...this all means that my Wish was kind of… easy.”
Astarion stopped staring into space, and turned to look at her with a frown.
“The problem the Ascendent had was always relatively simple to fix,” Rosalie explained. “He just didn’t want to do it.
“The thing is,” she said, “not to undersell myself, because it was still a very powerful spell! But… all I did, was I took a soul, that was now my property and not even stolen, and I just… put it back. Into a body, that was empty and soulless. That’s not even magic, necessarily! That’s more just… metaphysics. The bit that probably took actual work, was the fact that you were dead. The Ascendent had destroyed you and you were…”
She swallowed the echo of grief, “...moving on, so I had to bring you back. I probably used Wish to perform something along the lines of a Revivify, or a True Resurrection, depending on the definition of the time of death being either under a minute or eleven years... but both spells are well within the parameters of a Wish, anyway. One of its confirmed, recorded capabilities, in fact. A very straightforward usage, that in some instances doesn’t even place stress on the caster, and has no adverse effects whatsoever.”
“But you were out cold, and exhausted for days.”
“Well...” said Rosalie, feeling very embarrassed and very, very stupid indeed. “I’m not entirely certain yet, but if I were to venture a guess… my exhaustion, and my spell fugue, was a result that came from my… well, my bad wording.”
Astarion squinted at her. Rose didn’t blame him. This was actually ludicrous.
She looked at him, and said, “because if I’d already known the spell, and already worked out what the blood rite had made me, and I’d just said, ‘I wish to resurrect the soul I own and return it to its body’... I think it would’ve happened, without issue.”
More silence, that she didn’t know what to do with.
“I didn’t even undo Ascendency, Astarion,” she pointed out. “It turns out… that my reality-altering Wish... was really very tame indeed!"
“...Are you joking?” Astarion asked her, carefully.
“Well, I am, a little,” admitted Rose, “because I can’t quite believe this might be the truth. But also: no, not in any way that matters. I think… I think the consequences for my Wish have happened, Astarion. And I just… you know. I slept them off?”
Astarion looked bewildered. Rosalie was feeling much the same way - she was just more adept at rationalising it, and making it sound like a certainty.
It felt strange - downright impossible - for her to get everything she ever wanted, and not have some terrible fate looming over her for the rest of her days, as a result. She’d become accustomed to good luck working the way the tadpole had. Her illithid days had taught her that she could only realise her dreams and earn herself her best life, through the most dire of costs.
“I mean... it is still a reality-altering spell I spent ten years of my life learning,” she said brusquely. “It’s just… not one that’s going to bite us on the ass. I’ll do my research, of course! I’ll double- and triple-check. I might even see if I can still cast Wish on something minor. If it goes through without a hitch, that would mean that the stress wasn’t coming from the parameters of my casting, but instead my atrocious technique-”
“No.”
She glanced over at Astarion, amused, “I mean, I was going to swap it out for say, a ‘Comprehend Languages’, which should have no consequences whatsoever-”
“No.” he repeated, firmly.
“I’m sorry... ‘No’?”
“I don’t ever want to see you like that, again,” said Astarion. “I don’t want you to risk doing that to yourself. I don’t want to-”
He cut himself off, before the end of the sentence. Which was a shame, because Rosalie was sure her eyebrows would’ve reached her hairline by its conclusion.
“...Astarion Ancunín, turning down a chance at unprecedented power, with absolutely no repercussions?” she teased, unable to help herself. “Are you certain you’re quite well? Maybe I altered more reality than I thought!”
“I don’t want to lose you again,” he replied, with an unexpected and faltering amount of awkwardness. And a clear determination on his face, to even get the sentence out in the first place. “Any power or knowledge that could be gained from it, is not worth that risk.”
All of Rose’s humour and teasing fell away.
“Oh,” she said, again.
…But how were you supposed to react, when you heard the exact words you’d selfishly wished for, over a decade ago?
Once more, Rosalie wished she was someone else - someone who would know exactly what to do in this situation. Someone who'd have a reply that smoothed everything over, and communicated everything she was feeling, in perfect articulation.
Someone who might even be able to force out the words ‘I love you, too’, and say them as fact - without fear or expectation or shame.
But she was still just herself, and so scared of pushing too far, too quickly. Not to mention, also very aware that she’d begun this conversation with, ‘I owned your soul for a bit, and by the way, you were a walking void for ten years’. That was already a lot, for one conversation.
And it seemed that, finally, they had time.
So instead… she leaned over across the space between them, and when Astarion tensed, she pretended not to notice. Silently, she moved her hand to Verity’s forehead, and started to scritch behind her own cat’s ears, slowly and carefully and quietly. In the process, she felt her fingers incidentally brush against Astarion’s knuckles, but it was only the barest of touches. If he didn’t want to be near her, it gave him plenty of opportunity to move away.
Focusing on Ser Verity’s sleeping form and without looking up at him, she replied with the same answer she would always wish Astarion could've once given to her:
“Well. Ok, then. If that's how you feel, I promise I won’t cast it again. It's not like there's anything else I want or need in this world, anyway.”
She paused under Astarion’s stare, thinking through the unspoken implications of that sentence, and then carefully added, “that other spells can't provide, I mean. Is what I meant. Is all I meant."
The thing was, with Astarion and the way he was looking at her and the way he knew her, Rose was worried that he’d heard all of what lay underneath.
Nevermind the emotional context, the first-hand knowledge Rosalie now had of vampire hearing alone told her she was monumentally fucked. The longer she felt Astarion’s eyes on her, the more her heart pounded. She knew for a fact that, for all of their pretty, tame tableau, he could hear literally all of how her body reacted to him.
Astarion’s hand moved.
It captured Rose's own, where it now rested on the stoop of Verity’s soft shoulders. He rested his palm across the tops of her knuckles, and held her hand in place. Beneath the pressure of both of them, the cat’s purr became louder and louder, reaching levels of ecstasy. Ser Verity - around whom the world revolved - was clearly in heaven.
When time passed and Astarion didn’t let go of her hand, Rosalie looked up and found his eyes trained on her face. He gave her a small, taut smile in response, that looked only a little forced. Rose could tell he was doing his best to comfort her, to give her something to work with, but that the moment was still awkward, and there was literally nothing that could stop it from being that way.
“Thank you,” he told her, softly.
And that was all he said, simple and unadorned.
…So then why the fuck was Rosalie’s body telling her she felt naked, and giving her every single somatic response that accompanied that fact?
I could kiss him, she thought, wildly.
You weren’t even sure if he wanted to be touched, two minutes ago, a more sensible part of her brain reminded her.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, Astarion’s hand let go of hers. The immediate loss of warmth was devastating, and left her with only one clear answer: now wasn’t the right time.
But their gazes still held, and Rosalie knew that if she leaned forward, something would happen… and even if it was the wrong call, or too soon, Astarion had all but admitted that he’d forgive her for it. That he'd forgive her, for any mistake she chose to make.
No, she thought, with more certainty this time. Because even if there was something delicious in feeling reckless, she didn’t want to risk being clumsy. Not with him.
She let go of Ser Verity, and moved back into her own space. Some small emotion flittered across Astarion’s face - Rosalie couldn’t tell if he was disappointed, or relieved.
“...Right-!” she said.
“Well-!” he said.
She placed her hands on her skirts, wiping away the nervous clamminess, not to mention the cat hair. “You probably have a lot to process-!”
“From my understanding, you’ve had a very long and very stressful day-”
“-And you have a cat!” said Rosalie intelligently, making her move to stand, “so you obviously can’t go anywhere-”
“-And I mean, I was always very tired, after I visited Mephistopheles1 If memory serves, he was a somewhat… intense man-”
“-And I need to get myself out of these clothes, now I know I'm not going to be fighting anything-”
Astarion froze. Rosalie felt the fleeting urge to drop herself straight back into Cania, for the chance at an easier conversation.
“So I’ll just...!” she said, valiantly.
And then didn’t finish the sentence.
Astarion watched a grown woman's retreating form, as she fled upstairs.
Notes:
Look guys. Look. I know. I KNOW, ok? They DEFINITELY should've kissed at the end of this one!! I know it... you know it... we all know it! Could I have just shoved them together? Believe me, I fucking tried!!! But I've got a vision, ok? We've got to trust the vision!
...Because now they both know it, as well. 😌
Chapter Notes
- Poor Rosalie. You give *one* Omegaverse-worthy claiming speech while under extreme pressure and in the heat of the moment when you think you're all alone in the sky, and then it turns out both your boyfriend AND a prince of Hell hear the whole goddamn thing. I would simply.. kill myself 😔😔
- The joke Rosalie accidentally makes is a reference to Chapter 11 of An Honest Lie. Sorry, I couldn't resist.
- Now that we're 24 chapters in and you're all stuck here with me, I'm going to be soooo honest... I have no idea what kind of magistrate Astarion is supposed to be. I'm sure other writers have done research into it, and know a lot more about this than I do. But what Rosalie calls a 'civil magistrate' is just what magistrates are today, in Britain. At least, according to the government website. They're people from other professions who briefly volunteer in civil courts. So yeah. Her analogy works, in the UK. Lord knows if it does in Baldur's Gate.
- I really played myself, when I made Ascendency into the embodiment of dissociation, trauma, and depression. I played!! myself!!! :-))) Anyway, if anyone else reading this has ever had depression somehow convince them that the worst version of you is the only version of you... think of it like the Ascendent. Hit it with a poker, please! It's lying to you!!!
- I hope the Wish reveal makes sense. Again, I know this fic used to revel in angst, but Act 3 has relatively little drama! I think I wrote most of the earlier chapters so rabidly awful bc I knew where it was we were going. It's all going to be fine in the end!
- Speaking of... some people may notice that I've updated the chapter count, as I'm very nearly at the end of my draft. It feels very weird to have almost reached the end of this project. When I started it, I had absolutely no idea what it would become, and I have no idea if I'll ever be able to replicate something like this again in future. Thank you to everyone who took a chance and has been with me from the beginning, and everyone else who's joined us somewhere along the way.I know that having a final chapter count might be sad, and may even seem like the story is going to come to an abrupt conclusion, but I really hope I can give you all an ending that's worthy of all the time and support you've all shown me :) love you all xx
Chapter 25: Chapter Twenty-Five
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Rose had been struggling to sleep.
It had been two days since she visited Mephistopheles, two days since her conversation with Astarion... and two nights, of staring at her bed canopy.
It would be nice if this sleeplessness stemmed from the contract that had yet to arrive in the mail. Instead, her body was just stupid, and utterly betraying her.
Two nights, of telling herself she didn’t know the reason she was awake… yet straining, to listen for each creak of her house, tensing at every sound from the corridor. Telling herself she wasn’t maintaining some kind of vigil to hear them, just in case one noise happened to lead to a knock on her bedroom door.
She couldn’t be the one to go to Astarion, after all.
Under normal circumstances, Rosalie liked to think she would have caved by now. With a tadpole still in her, she definitely would have. That version of her would be certain of the answer she would get, or would throw caution to the win regardless.
But in her current reality, Rosalie was the one who’d told Astarion what she wanted, pushed too far and almost broken something. Rose wouldn’t deny being a coward - and after years of nothing but work, she was also woefully inept at dating - but she thought this was quite literally what people meant when they said the phrase, ‘the ball is in their court’.
All that meant was, she was lying awake, waiting to see what Astarion did with it.
It doesn’t even have to be sex, she thought, in a terse, silent parley with her own ceiling. It was the same ceiling with whom she had heftily debated the ethics of wanking in your own bedroom - allowed - when you knew the other person could definitely hear you wherever they were in the house - more questionable, unfortunately - just one night prior. If there's anything I could… if he just wanted to sleep here, with me. If there was just a way for us to be close.
So of course, on the third night, when exhaustion won out… Rosalie had a gods-awful nightmare.
She forgot its contents immediately upon waking, but one image stuck with her - of staking Astarion, as she had, that moment in the dining room. In the dream, she found it was like slicing into a doll made of paper. He’d been translucent, fashioned from thin, fragile material that creased and tore and bowed inwards with the contact. Dream-Rose had broken through and found nothing but a breath of empty air inside… and then, Dream-Astarion was gone.
Rosalie sat bolt upright, chest heaving. The how and the why evaded her, but that tableau lingered long enough, that she knew she wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime soon.
She had no idea what time it was - probably the early hours of the morning. Ser Verity wasn’t in the room with her. Rosalie had a sneaking suspicion that Verity had fully defected, because she hadn’t been in the room the previous night either. While Rose was used to it, she did wonder if Gale would recover from no longer being the favourite.
It meant there was no one to disturb, when she slipped out from her duvet, and padded to the door, in nightgown and bare feet. It was the kind of dream, Rose thought, running her hand through her unbound hair, that required a quiet hour of recovery with a book and a cup of tea. Something warm, and herbal.
She inched open the door and began to move along the corridor, choosing to head towards the library first. The entire house was dark, until one of the dancing lights in the walls detached itself, and followed behind her like a nightlight, bobbing along at her shoulder. The house was quiet enough that the whisper of floor length skirts and the press of skin to floorboard was all Rose could really hear. She guessed Astarion would be somewhere in the house, nigh undetectable as always - was he asleep, or would they run into each other by chance? Would he avoid her, to ensure that absolutely didn’t happen?
Definitely not why you’re going to the library first, Rosalie chided herself.
And it wasn’t! It wasn’t the fact that he might be there, that informed her decision. Going to the library ensured there was only one flight of stairs to walk up, rather than four consecutively from the kitchen. She could ask Tim to get her tea for her from there, and-
Rosalie turned the corner to reach the foot of the stairs. She craned her neck, and saw there was no Astarion to bump into by chance.
Even though it was a stupid thing to hope for, Rosalie felt her shoulders slump slightly. Was she wishing to dispel the maudlin image from her dreams, or if it was finally time to admit that she had been picking out her best sleepwear these past few days, for a reason?
Then someone cleared his throat from the other set of stairs - the one leading upwards from the floor below - and Rosalie nearly jumped out of her fucking skin.
She glanced down, and sure enough, there was Astarion: still fully dressed, his own light following sedately alongside him as he turned the coil of the staircase. It cast his hair, face, and dark shirt in the same pale blue glow. He moved into full view, and then he paused, a few steps from the top of the landing.
Rosalie placed her hand to her chest to calm the adrenaline… and then she found herself pausing, as well.
“...Hello,” she said.
Astarion watched her, silent and motionless, and he said nothing.
“I had a bad dream, and then I couldn’t sleep,” Rosalie told him, imagining there was a world where he’d asked a question. “I was just going upstairs, to…”
She trailed off, because she realised that telling him where she was planning to go and what she was planning to do would mean she’d eventually have to move and do it. Now that they’d both met each other here, and he was stood in front of her, not a nightmarish apparition… she didn’t want to give either of them a reason to go their separate ways.
Astarion still hadn’t spoken. It was disconcerting.
“...Do you happen to know the time?” tried Rose, weakly.
Utterly silent on his feet, Astarion advanced up the remaining steps. The way he did it, intent and predatory, sent Rosalie’s heart immediately racing. It was about then she realised his eyes weren’t even on her face.
She’d entertained hopes, of course, and she liked herself with her hair down - but Rose had no idea her nightgown was this powerful. It wasn’t her favourite! It wasn’t even see-through!
Astarion moved now onto the landing, and then he kept walking forward. He stepped so immediately into her space, that Rosalie backed up an inch on instinct, before remembering how this sort of thing worked. She fought to keep herself still. Maybe he’d been thinking about her, as much as she’d been thinking about him. Maybe he’d heard her moving through the house, because she wasn’t silent, and he’d wondered what she might be doing and why, and then he’d-
But it was unusual, for him not to say anything, first.
Astarion’s expression was unreadable, and his gaze just south of Rosalie’s face. She followed his eyeline down, glancing at herself, and realised that the strap of her nightdress had dipped and fallen off her shoulder, without her noticing. Well, maybe that explained some things - in either direction. Either a small glimpse of bare skin had suddenly triggered something, or he was literally just trying to help.
“Oh,” she muttered, almost to herself, and moved her hand to adjust it.
Without seeing it move, Astarion’s hand reached out and stopped her. He didn't take hold of her wrist, but instead gently pushed Rosalie's hand away before it reached its goal, blocking her from her destination.
He took another step forward. His gaze was still intent on her bare skin, a look of concentration on his face. It was a very meaningful step to take- at least at Rose's end. At that gentlest touch of fingertips against her palm, her heart was somehow hammering even more.
It was honestly mortifying. Now that she knew what vampire hearing was like, there was never going to be any living it down.
Don't move, she thought helplessly. Don't move don't breathe don't think don't ruin it gods please don't scare him off-
She glanced at herself again, and everything slotted into place.
Rose realised why Astarion was silent, and what Astarion was actually looking at.
Not at her... but at her scar.
Rosalie’s nightdress had a low neckline and no sleeves, leaving her shoulders and the spines of cartilage in her upper torso visible. But Astarion was not looking at any of the skin Rosalie usually covered. Instead, he was looking at her bite scar, the crescent tear at the juncture of her clavicle. The first scar the Vampire Ascendent had left.
Now mottled, marbled, and warped where the flesh had ripped away. At its centre, was a small uneven seam where the skin had fused and reformed through healing.
It must be the first time he’d seen it, usually covered by high collars, shirts, and sleeves.
Astarion pressed his thumb to the mark, lightly, then did the same again with his fingertips. As he mapped and measured, Rosalie jumped under the touch - body so alive it hurt, and all of it cleaving towards him.
But to Astarion, it was like she was barely even there.
“Oh,” Rosalie said, again. She went cold, even as she felt her cheeks grow hot. There hadn’t been anything charged about this moment, or their meeting. That was all her own, stupid mind. The only thing Astarion noted, once he’d caught sight of her, was the mark. Another thing to guilt himself over.
He probably didn't realise what his touch felt like on her skin, or what it would do to her. All he was seeing, was-
“Astarion,” said Rose carefully, unwilling to find herself in another impossible conversation, “let’s not-”
“I failed you,” murmured Astarion, as his hand stroked over the mark, tracing its uneven edges with the softest of touch.
Of course, Rosalie’s brain whited out.
She knew it had been a while, and that under the current circumstances, things were a little… strained with the proximity, but fucking gods. It didn’t seem quite fair that even the most incidental of touches had enough power to undo her.
Her mind returned, a little more stupid than before, and she finally processed the words.
It took her too long - Astarion accepted what he’d said as fact, and then read her horny fucking silence as acquiescence.
“No,” she replied, vehemently.
A very sad smile flitted across Astarion’s features: there one minute and gone the next. “You’re still a terrible liar,” he observed.
Then, he started to pull his hand back from her. The featherlight touch was gone, barely lasting seconds. Without thinking, Rosalie closed her own hand around his wrist, and kept him close.
“No,” she repeated, and held firm.
Astarion startled, and Rose felt resistance as he tried to pull back. Unlike every other time she overstepped, Rosalie didn’t let him retreat, this time. She tightened her grip in response. There must have been enough determination in her face, to show she meant it. Because if he’d wanted to, Astarion could easily wrench himself away from her. He was so much stronger, after all.
“I told you,” she said, holding them close and staring up into his face in challenge, “we’re not playing that game. I’m not having it. I’m not interested.”
He was looking anywhere but her, like the contact was poison. “You don’t have to pretend-”
“If you failed me,” she said, “then I failed you. We failed each other.”
“Foxglove-”
“If this is still what’s happening, then let’s run the script to the very end, shall we? As quickly as possible, please,” she told him, in the sternest voice she could manage. She raised her other free hand, and started counting. “ I let you do the ritual. I knew it was wrong, I should’ve stopped you. I didn’t. And then I ran away, and let you have free reign in the Gate for ten years… only wait! What I was actually doing, was hiding like a coward, while you - the true you, the one I thought I lost - was trapped-”
“-It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?” she demanded. “I know you’re new to this whole ‘self-flagellation’ thing, but I happen to be an expert. You can turn any choice into a reason to damn yourself. The thing is, I was actually present and in my body, for all of mine-”
“-And I was present, for the Rite," countered Astarion. "If nothing else, I made the monster that did this to you. You nearly died.”
“Well, that’s an exaggeration,” said Rosalie. She pulled his hand back to her body. “It wasn’t this bite, that did that. It was the second. Not to mention, that first time, all those years ago, back in the fucking Grove. Don’t think I didn’t notice how close that was to fatal. Yet you recovered from that, well enough. Why is this one any different?”
“You cannot seriously joke about-”
“Why not? You dismiss the harm that's been done to you, all the time. I get to choose when and where I'm made to feel like a victim.”
“You said yes, that first time,” stressed Astarion. “Even if you’d happened to bleed out, at least I didn’t attack you, like some kind of animal. You can’t honestly tell me, that-”
“Well, I could tell you it wasn’t you. And then we’d loop this argument again, and I might need to zap something,” Rose responded. “What I can also repeat, a second time, is that I don’t care. Whatever wrong you believe you’ve done to me, I witnessed your punishment, and that was more than enough. I won’t mete out more suffering, and I refuse to be the tool with which you cause yourself more pain. I told you: I don't want that, so don’t ask it of me.”
They fell into silence. Rosalie felt very awake: either it was the anger, or the fact they were still touching.
“There,” she said, carefully letting go of Astarion’s wrist. “...Are we done?”
Deep down, she was still fighting disappointment: it seemed sleepwear wouldn't make the difference after all, and it had been foolish of her to think that way. She took a deep breath, and planned her step back, only to be utterly blindsided when Astarion pressed his now-free hand back to the same mark.
…This couldn’t be good for her health.
“But I-” Astarion swallowed, wet his own lips unthinkingly with a dart of his tongue. His gaze moved from holding hers, to resting back on the mark, and then he continued. “I remember doing it, don’t you understand? I enjoyed it. How am I supposed to not feel guilt over that? When it’s there, clear as day.”
Rosalie paused.
It was a very long pause.
But it wasn’t a laugh... so that was what eleven years of progress did for a person.
“...Why are you making that face?” he asked, glancing back up at her. “You look like you’re about to sneeze.”
“Astarion,” Rosalie said, with as much maturity and patience as she could manage. “Of course you enjoyed it. Hells, I mean… I should hope so! I enjoyed it. And you were the one getting the free meal.”
Astarion froze.
“...You didn’t enjoy it. What are you talking about?” he said, suddenly looking wary. “You screamed, to my memory. Your rejoinder was, in fact, to kill me.”
“Correct,” replied Rose. “But that was less an issue with the content… so much as the delivery. Some of what happened in that room was fucking stellar. If he’d played his cards right, we could have a vampire bride situation on our hands, right now.”
“-Is any of that supposed to make me feel better?”
“That’s how I knew it wasn’t you,” she told him, adamantly. “Don’t you get it? That’s why I’m teasing. If any of it had been you, you would’ve waited for permission. You wouldn’t have pushed, and I'd have never needed to leave that room. The result would no doubt end up being incredibly, incredibly hot.”
Maybe she shouldn't be saying this. Astarion didn’t seem to know where to look. But ideally, Rose wanted to reach the point she’d been trying to make in the first place:
“...So of course that memory feels strange. I can’t imagine it feeling otherwise. Everything was all mixed together, for the both of us, then. If the fact it was pleasant is making you feel bad, then I’m telling the truth, when I say I didn’t hate it all either… and I don’t have a dual consciousness to make my excuses for me. I pretended I was in that room for practical purposes, but part of me just wanted to be near you. After it happened, that was the first time I knew it wasn't you at all, and I no longer needed elaborate lies to make myself feel better. So I simply had to sift through those feelings, compartmentalise, and move on.”
She sighed. “But surely you know, that the things that feel good don’t always have our consent. It’s no different here. You can’t implicate yourself in something you had no control over.”
Astarion didn’t look convinced. “When I think about what I could’ve done to you-”
“Well, if you’ve never fantasised about bleeding me dry, not even once, then I must be doing something wrong.”
Astarion’s mouth tensed unhappily, and Rosalie hastily clarified, “I’ve lived the other side now, remember? I nearly munched on two strangers, just because they smelled vaguely pleasant. And yet here you are, utterly unbothered by me. I have to believe I’m the tastiest delicacy in the room, Astarion - for the sake of my own health. My ego will never survive, otherwise.”
“Unbothered?” he murmured, hand still against her skin. “By you? ...Is that what you think I am?”
Rosalie swallowed, her mouth suddenly very dry. Now… that was a tone of voice she hadn't heard in a long, long time. But, glancing up at Astarion’s face and seeing his single-minded attention on the wound, she didn't think he'd even used it deliberately. Maybe it had just slipped out.
…Which was sexier, she decided, than having it be any part of a conscious performance.
“Well...” she said, lightly. “You don't need to eat anymore. Unless I've been actively starving you for weeks. So I assume you’re-”
“...Indifferent? To the first blood I ever tasted?”
Something shifted in his demeanour. Astarion's hand moved from the mark, to the rest gently on the column of Rosalie's throat. Rose, who knew her pulse was thundering between the cradle of his fingers, let it happen.
Oh, she thought, hells.
It felt really, really good.
“I have that memory of the study, which means I still taste the echo of you, everywhere,” Astarion informed her, though it was almost like he was talking to himself. “Ascension took my thirst from me. When it's no longer hunger, that makes it desire - something that can be mastered. But this bride ritual he conducted... and simply being around you… it turns it all back to want.”
There was no pressure behind Astarion’s grip, his hand was just holding her - not even in place. It didn’t seem to be conscious behaviour. If it was, Rosalie was certain he'd stop himself… not that she wanted him to. She didn't need to be choked out to be rapidly losing braincells, if she was honest.
“I mean...” she said intelligently, looking dazedly from his eyes to his mouth, then back again. “You can - I - i-if you want to, we could-”
Astarion paused, their gazes locked, and she saw him recollect himself. He blinked, and immediately let go. He stumbled back, his chest heaving either with panic, or for the same reasons as her.
...Not indifferent, then.
It was almost a relief, knowing he had to employ some kind of restraint around her, the same way she was doing with him. Although... it made Rose wonder why the fuck either of them were bothering, when it felt like that, the moment they gave in-
“Oh!” she said. “You can't! You can’t bite me.”
“No.” Astarion bit out, sounding harried.
Rosalie searched her mind for any semblance of critical thinking. After what had just happened, it was a struggle.
“-Because of the ritual?” she asked.
Mute, Astarion nodded.
“...That's a shame,” she told him, and meant every word.
Astarion found - somehow, for the first time - and then visibly employed, the patience of a Saint.
“I thought you didn’t want to be a spawn,” he said, tersely.
“I don’t. And I’m guessing you don’t want to make any more of them, either,” replied Rose. Her hand was already at her own neck, chasing the ghost of touch, and utterly belying her words. “We’re both in agreement there. Doesn’t mean it’s not something I…”
She cleared her throat, and then folded her arms across her chest for good measure. This nightdress was very thin, and she didn’t want to embarrass herself.
“...We can find a way to undo the bride ritual?” she offered, into the silence that followed. “I’m sure there’ll be an eventual solution, if that’s something you’d like to do in future, to stop any discomfort at your end. Or to make things… easier, or to, um, open up our options…”
She gave a self-aware shrug, and a small smile, “I mean, I’m clearly game.”
Astarion looked flustered in a way Rosalie chose to find flattering, given her own state.
“There are other avenues... for you, I mean,” he said. “After all, there’s that Queen you used to smell like, that Loretta von Zurgan, or whatever, you said that you-”
“Oh, Astarion...” interrupted Rosalie, covering a laugh from more than just the wilful mangling of a name.
“What?! It’s the same principle, as when I wasn’t interested in sex,” he muttered, awkwardly. “You know I was happy to let you go elsewhere, and you did say-”
“-You really think I just want to get bitten? Really?! Of all the things I said, the one I meant most - and the one I hope you remember - was that vampirism isn’t a fetish for me,” she told him. “Not on its own, anyway. It all holds very little appeal to me, when it isn’t about you. If I miss getting bitten, that’s only because it’s a thing we used to do, together. I miss being close in that way, to you.”
The air between them was suddenly heavy, weighed down with the memories of years past. Rose hugged herself with the ache of it - she knew what those moments meant to her, and thought she knew a little of what they meant to him, as well.
Just because she was good at denying herself, didn’t mean the longing wasn’t there
“Which you should take as a compliment, because Lyssa was fucking stunning, honestly… But I was just um, making you the offer.”
Astarion blushed.
“Otherwise, I can live without it. Don't you worry about me,” Rosalie said, lightly, as she pretended not to notice.
Astarion cleared his throat. “Well, in this case and maybe no other, I support the sensible decision. Some things aren’t worth dying over.”
Rosalie waggled her eyebrows at him, unable to help herself.
“Aren’t they? And this is one of them? …If you say so.”
Astarion paused, weighing up her tone, then rolled his eyes good-naturedly as he saw her offer to lighten the mood. “Nice try, Foxglove. But remember, the last time it happened, I was the one getting killed. Repeatedly. So I am speaking from experience.”
“So you’re saying it.... wasn’t worth it?” asked Rosalie, as innocently as she could manage. “Dying, just to get a taste of me? Not even a little?”
Astarion shot her a dark look, devoid of amusement, but couldn’t seem to come up with a satisfactory answer. Rosalie noted how he now kept his eyes resolutely on her face.
“But you’re definitely right,” she said, nodding very solemnly, knowing this was a point to her. “We should absolutely pick the sensible option. You are always the voice of reason, Astarion.”
“Ha ha. Very funny.”
“I can always trust you,” intoned Rose, “to know the difference between right and wrong.”
“Ah,” said Astarion sarcastically, “I see now. This is why the Ascendent wanted you under control.”
“I think that was more of a sex thing,” Rose replied, “but you could be right. Maybe I was just really annoying, and he had hidden depths.”
Astarion startled, at the irreverent tone of the joke. But there was also something underneath his surprise, that made it all worthwhile.
“I can’t help but notice, that you’re not taking me or this situation very seriously,” he noted, as he recovered. “You are, in fact, doing that thing you used to do, where you act like you’ve already domesticated me.”
“Well... haven’t I?” asked Rose. “I mean… you’re literally living in my house.”
Astarion choked on whatever he was about to say next, momentarily stopped in his tracks.
“Not only that,” Rosalie leaned back against the wall, placing more space between them, and continued airily, “you’re also taking care of me-”
“Now, listen here-”
“Telling me what to do, so I don’t make a foolish decision in the heat of the moment. Keeping me safe…”
“Biting you could literally entail a metaphysical change, that I might not even be able to control. I don't know what he was thinking, quite frankly! He could've killed you! That’s not morals, Foxglove, that’s just common fucking sense-”
“Treating me like a gentleman,” she said, with a flourish between the two of them, and the very respectful distance between their bodies. “Placing my needs and wellbeing above your own, even though I drive you mad with hunger, apparently -”
“‘Mad with hunger’? What are we, a bad melodrama?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, was I grabbing my own throat just now…?”
Astarion coughed, caught out. “...Now I see what you meant, when you said you needed the ego boost of pretending you’re a gourmet delicacy. How are we feeling, about our personality and self-worth, these days-?”
“And you, poor thing, you must be so close to feral! And yet you're restraining yourself, and all for me!” she teased, grinning, “how noble of you, Astarion! How virtuous and principled and - and self-sacrificing-”
Astarion started to look monstrously bashful, and then absolutely furious about it. “Rose-”
“Look at you, Astarion Ancunín, with all your newfound incorruptible morals,” continued Rosalie, full-on smiling now, searching her memory for the phrases he used to throw at her, “you definitely shouldn’t compromise any of that precious virtue, on my behalf. I truly insist! In fact, I suppose I should start looking to you, for fortitude and guidance-”
“-Are you laughing at me?” he sighed. But Rose could tell that he was trying to divert attention away before she actually got to him. She could already see the corner of his mouth fighting an upward twist.
“Not at all,” replied Rosalie with even more mock seriousness, maintaining eye contact. She waited a beat. “...I personally find it very attractive, when a man has a moral backbone.”
Astarion looked flustered all over again, then tried his level best to meet his cue: “Really? Because all I remember from those kinds of situations, and oh, I don’t know, that kind of company, was the relentless nagging, and the constant self-righteous litanies-”
“-Tell me again, how I should hold everything the Ascendent did against you?” countered Rosalie, smoothly and sweetly, with a single bat of her lashes.
And Astarion faltered. Suddenly, the smile he gave her was the one he used to - wolfish and full of teeth. It had been entirely accidental, and she saw him catch himself doing it a second later, suddenly conflicted over whether he was allowed to find that funny or not.
Both of them lapsed into silence. The hallway felt filled with a potential that Rosalie didn’t quite know what to do with. She hadn’t been focusing on where the conversation would lead them, or the possibility of a destination.
She’d just been, well… having fun.
“I guess, if you’ve turned over a new leaf, I can try my hand at being the corrupting influence, from time to time,” said Rosalie, carefully. “My bedroom is just down the hallway... if you ever feel the need to be led astray.”
“...I know where your room is, Foxglove,” replied Astarion, obviously missing the point. “I was there with you, when you were sleeping. And when you woke up.”
“Yes, well…” Rose blushed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear awkwardly. “That was kind of my first attempt. At ‘leading you astray’, that is.”
“...Ah,” said Astarion, very astutely.
“It’s ok,” she smiled, “we all knew it wouldn’t be my thing.”
That’s why I used to admire you, she thought, and how easily you knew how to get what you wanted.
“I guess we shouldn’t switch roles, after all,” she said.
“I suppose-” Astarion started.
Rosalie paused, not daring to let herself hope, then hoping anyway. “You suppose…?”
“I suppose, if you don't feel equipped to lead anyone astray… then you’ll just have to settle, Foxglove, for being the only person capable of putting everyone back on the right track, instead,” offered Astarion. “For getting us all right back, to where we need to be.”
And she knew what an admission it was, and she heard the way he said it, and Rosalie knew, deep down, what feeling lay behind the words.
But the thing was... it still wasn’t quite right.
“Astarion,” she said quietly, willing him desperately to understand. “I don’t do this, for ‘everyone’.”
Astarion looked confused.
“I know that some part of you still thinks this only happened, because I can’t help but want to save everyone, no matter who they are. But… I don’t martyr myself for other people, anymore. I only wanted to do this, for you. This time, I only wanted to rescue you.”
Astarion halted. He looked surprised that his wonderful speech - even one that hadn’t been rehearsed several times, to several different sets of ears - had not landed the way it was supposed to. It seemed that they were both out of practice with seducing one another.
“So… if you ever want… just tell me where it is you need to be,” said Rosalie, gently. “And I’ll do my best to help.”
The corridor was quiet, the light ethereal.
“Well,” said Rose calmly, pushing herself up and off the wall. She pulled the strap of her nightgown back up onto her shoulder, finally, and rearranged the rest of the fabric to neatness. “I think you may have helped me forget my nightmare. If I’m keeping you… I won’t, any longer. Good night, Astarion.”
And as she turned to go, Astarion asked:
“What about you? What if I want to help you?”
Rosalie paused. She turned back to face him.
“...If you could have anything right now,” Astarion asked her, quietly. “What would it be?”
Rosalie raised her chin.
“You,” she replied, without a moment of hesitation, without even blinking. “I’d want to have you. In whatever way you’d be comfortable with having me.”
Astarion looked back at her, eyes wide and face yearning, and still so far away. She could tell automatically, that he didn’t believe her.
But he also could tell, whenever she lied, and whenever she told the truth.
“I didn’t pursue Wish as an intellectual exercise, Astarion,” Rosalie continued calmly. She kept her eyes directly on his face, gaze not wavering once. “I knew exactly what I wanted. I literally asked for it. And it’s not an obligation, or an expectation but… well. That doesn’t mean it’s not kind of obvious, wouldn’t you say?”
Her confession was met, initially, with silence. Rosalie bunched her hands in her skirts, frustrated, for she had no indication that anything she'd said had gotten through. What more, exactly could she do? Was she now just supposed to leave?
“...You talk more, than you used to.” Astarion said, after a pause. Then he huffed, close to a laugh, “I honestly didn’t know that was possible.”
Rosalie gave him an incredulous look. She’d spent nearly all of the last decade alone, and she remembered most of it passing in oppressive, cloistering silence. So she had no idea how that could possibly be, either. She talked aloud to Ser Verity more than she should, admittedly, but that hadn’t exactly made her chatty...
“Oh,” she said, once she realised what he meant. “I talk a lot less than before, actually. Less rambling. But I think it’s often more direct, as a result. So perhaps I get my point across, or maybe even beat it over the head. I don’t dance around shit the way I used to. I mean, who has the time?”
Astarion was confused, and then immediately looked guilty.
“...But you’re losing time, right now, aren't you?” he asked, “waiting for me?”
Rosalie squinted at him like he was a moron. “I don’t count that as ‘losing time’. I don’t think I could even do that, with you.”
“I know I’m - I know I’m not-”
“Spending ten years avoiding the inevitable,” continued Rosalie, “now some might call that losing time. Maybe even wasting it.”
“You became the most powerful version of yourself you could ever be,” replied Astarion, automatically, in a rehearsed way that meant Rosalie knew he'd thought it before. That meant he must once have resented her for it, too, at some point in his imprisonment, or his recovery. “If you hadn’t waited, we have no guarantee that you-”
“-Or maybe, if I’d just had an extremely busy two months, I’d have gotten there at the same pace with which I was suddenly capable of facing the Dead Three,” Rose countered. “All I’m saying is… I’ve exercised patience, in my time, often at the wrong moment. You think I need to, right now? That I see what we’re doing as a stop-gap? This is the reward Astarion: this is what I waited for. I’m living it.”
“But we’re not… together,” said Astarion, awkwardly. “You just said that you wanted me. I can hear that you want me, do you understand? And you don’t, we’re not-”
Rosalie smiled, trying not to be embarrassed at the confirmation of her worst fears: he would always know more of her, than she ever could of him.
“Well, we are together,” she said, gesturing at the two of them, in the same hallway, in the same house. “I said ‘in whatever way you’re comfortable having me’: this matches that description. Do I want more than that? Of course I do. I’m glad to hear I’m being obvious about it, because then I can stop having to mangle it every time I say it out loud. But I wished for you back, not in my bed, Astarion. I’m not taking any of this for granted.”
“...This is your reward?” he echoed, disbelievingly.
Rosalie’s smile renewed with force behind it, because otherwise it would’ve come out self-deprecating.
“It is,” she said, calm enough to not let any hurt show. “Let me know when you’ve… found yours. So I know you’re… um. In on the action. I can also help you find it, elsewhere, if you want.”
Astarion paused. His eyes widened, then his head snapped to hers as if yanked by a chain, and he looked briefly horrified. At what, Rosalie wasn’t sure, so she just settled on some easy platitudes, to calm whatever panic he was now going through.
“It’s ok, Astarion,” she told him. “Truly. It’s not like I don’t know the man I’m in love with, and what you’ve been through, and honestly? I’m just so, so glad to have you back. Do you know what a joy it is, just being around you again?”
Somewhere around her use of the word ‘love’ - unthinking, and unheeded at her end - something in Astarion’s horror settled.
He watched her.
The stillness of him was a little different, than all those tentative moments where the edges of boundaries were tested. It was more the kind of hesitation, that came with a realisation.
…Rosalie hadn’t noticed, of course.
After saying she spoke less these days, Rosalie was still talking a lot, around Astarion.
“So please, take all the time you need,” she was saying. “I’ve gotten everything I ever wanted, I’m not about to complain. And I mean it, when I say I’ll let you leave the house soon, if that’s what you want. I was only cagey in the beginning, because I was just so afraid of letting go of you at precisely the wrong moment, exactly like before-”
She stopped talking, suddenly. Astarion had reached out, and captured both of her hands. As she fell as silent and as still as him, he pulled her forward and into him, just a careful inch. Rosalie followed.
Rose blinked up at him. She felt scrutinised, his gaze roving across her face like she’d been placed into a test she didn’t know how to pass.
The hallway was very quiet indeed.
“...Is something wrong?” she asked him, gently.
But whatever Astarion must have seen in her, whatever answer he must have gotten, seemed to satisfy him.
“Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing at all, I’ve suddenly decided.”
And that was when he silently leaned down, and kissed her.
Notes:
Me in chapter 24: you need to trust my vision, guys!
My 'vision': a little gremlin in my brain whispering "put that sexy bitch in a nightgown. do it."...and still, it didn't work!! come on lads!! how many more healthy conversations must I put you fucks through, before we - oh, thank god, they're finally kissing with tongue. And they're... no, I shan't say. (Not until the next chapter).
I have a work conference this week, but hope to update again soon... possibly before the conference? Idk man, we'll see I guess. Chapter 26 is, or so I've heard, fully drafted and ready to go.
There aren't many notes today, I am too exhausted from Fighting These Demons (two characters I accidentally traumatised into the most awkward versions of themselves).
Chapter Notes
- Rosalie fighting a laugh and succeeding is a little reference to the fact that in every other fic I write I'm mean enough to turn this man bearing his soul into a comedy moment. This is how you know this is the angsty fic.
- Astarion's little Ascendent moment is bought on by the bride ritual and the thought of her blood. Also it's hot. Also I was trying to get them to kiss. Why it didn't work, lord only knows.
Chapter 26: Chapter Twenty-Six
Notes:
CW: sex. I don’t consider myself a smut author, and the rating of the fic hasn’t changed, so please be gentle (or rough, if that's what you prefer x)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It was ill-choreographed, as kisses went. Astarion missed his mark, slightly off-centre, with more of her top lip than the rest of her mouth. That had never happened quite so obviously before, so he must have been nervous. His skills rusty.
It didn’t matter. Of course it didn’t matter. It was him. The sensation tore through Rose like a lightning strike, heart so full in her chest that it ached. As the angle of their mouths adjusted like a homecoming, she was already lost. Her mouth opened to his, and she reached up to cup Astarion’s face between her hands. His were at her shoulders. Tentative, perfunctory: like he could break them apart if something suddenly went wrong. That didn't matter to Rosalie, either. Finally, finally she could show him the comfort she had wanted to, from the beginning, the tenderness she knew he deserved. She poured all the love she could into the gesture, as gently as she dared.
Finally, she could apologise with more than words.
Astarion relaxed by increments. The kiss was soft enough to shatter, but it wasn’t very heated. It felt more cautious, than anything: as if they were both prodding at a bruise, testing to see how much it hurt. There was an edge of pain to it, the kind that ended sweet. When their mouths broke apart, their breathing was ragged from holding it, as if they’d both been scared to admit to human need and risk rupturing the moment. Rosalie wrapped her arms around Astarion like he was the entire world, and pulled him in close as his head dropped artlessly onto her shoulder. His hands were in her hair - he followed the curls down, down, down her back, then wrapped both his arms around her waist and bundled her into him. Her whole body, soft under the loose fabric of her night clothes, pressed all along his as she stroked a line down his spine and then tugged him closer still. She buried her own face in his neck and crushed herself to him, unable to quite believe any of it was real.
Chest against chest, she felt and heard Astarion’s heart pounding out a steady, frantic rhythm, perfectly in time with her own.
Neither of them said anything. Rosalie felt like any words she had to give were inadequate. How could you encompass a feeling as big as this?
Was there any point in articulating it at all, when you knew that wasn’t even needed?
When you knew the other person was feeling the exact same thing, and that knowledge was amplifying the emotion within you, a hundredfold?
She breathed in, and Astarion was there, and everything, everything, was finally ok.
Time passed, in that hug, in that silent darkened corridor, in her empty house which was no longer empty, because Astarion was there, with her. Rosalie found herself realising how much of her tower had been planned around Astarion’s absence - so much so that it only felt complete, with him stood there in it, alongside her.
Rosalie had no idea how long their embrace lasted. She felt no impatience - there was no end to how much her heart could hold, after being starved for so long.
But gradually, the air changed, and something between them shifted imperceptibly. She felt the ache in her chest leak out into other parts of her body. If they were to break apart and Astarion chose to look at her, she would have to make her excuses and blame certain things on the cold.
Luckily, when Astarion leaned back again in silence, his eyes were only on her face, and they were night-dark and shadowed with want. Rosalie could only be relieved, because she had become worried that what she was suddenly feeling was about to make their beautiful, tender moment exceedingly awkward.
Instead they made the same, wordless decision in tandem. When they crashed back together this time, their mouths on each other were frenetic and coarse. Rosalie felt her spine bow back with the force with which Astarion moved into her space, cradling the back of her head and manoeuvring her, to drink from her mouth like wine. As their tongues tangled together, she worried it was shallow of her to start calculating distances to her bedroom. She didn’t want to presume-
Then Astarion took a decisive step in the right direction, proving her wrong. But Rosalie hadn’t expected it. Her hands had been busy thoroughly mangling the collar of his shirt, and their mouths were still attached, so their legs smashed together and they both overbalanced. It mostly just ended with her slammed against a wall, swerved to the left last minute by vampire reflexes - a failsafe, to stop them both from falling.
Not that she minded. The breathlessness was only a little from the impact.
It had been a long time, Rosalie thought, since she’d been slammed against a wall. You started to worry those days were behind you, once you reached a certain age.
“You alright?” Astarion asked her, nose-to-nose, one arm braced on the wall next to her. The words were spoken nearly into her mouth.
“Mhmmm,” Rose nodded eagerly, hand at his jaw, wanting to convey that yes, she was in fact perfect. She swallowed, then pulled back less than a centimetre, to ask: “Are we-”
She didn’t manage to finish the sentence. When she raised her gaze from his mouth and saw the way he was looking at her, it stole all her breath away.
Astarion gently lifted each of her hands from where they rested on him. His thumbs pressed soft, into the indents of her palms. He moved them both, to the buttons of his shirtfront.
“Yes, I think we just might be,” he informed her quietly, and then he kissed her again.
Rose pressed herself to the wall, through him - demanding all the weight of his body against her with one urgent tug. Then, her hands scrambled to follow his silent instructions.
She took Astarion’s shirt off there, untucking it from the waistband, pulling it off him, and discarding it blindly to the floor. She didn’t notice where it landed, too consumed with the sight of him in front of her. She immediately began running her hands over every inch of pale, exposed skin. A flash in her mind, unbidden, of the Ascendent: so untouchable, always fully clothed, never once without armour. Rosalie willed it away and instead focused on the man she was with, the one who trusted her with this, as her fingers relearned every line of a body that they had never really forgotten. The taut muscles in Astarion's back, pebbled with scar tissue. The swoop of those perfect, elegantly sculpted shoulders.
His skin was warm now, no longer cold. When she laid a palm possessively over the place where his heart lay, skin to skin, Astarion shuddered under her hands.
“Ok?” she panted, breaking their mouths apart just long enough to ask the question.
He made an inarticulate noise, immediately searching to reclaim her mouth.
“I need you-” Rose was fighting for her life, but there were certain things you wanted to make sure you got right. “I need you to say it clearly for me!”
“...Grand!” replied Astarion, with a burst of effort, in a voice that strained in all the right ways. His head dropped to her chest, as he muttered. “Just living again, for the first time. No big deal, really.”
The idea of it, of dragging him back to the living, of forcing him to experience his body the exact way the ritual had promised, meant it was Rose’s turn to make an utterly unintelligible sound. She raised his chin with finger and thumb and kissed him again, hard, biting deep into his lip. Taking both his wrists, she tugged him down the corridor. The journey was fumbling and blind, because they couldn’t keep apart for long. Walking them backwards, Rose finally reached her bedroom, groping the air until she found the door handle. She dismissed the Dancing Lights with a wave of the other hand, as she kicked it the rest of the way open with her heel. Astarion gave her two seconds to make her way successfully inside, before they both agreed it was two seconds too long. She reached out for him desperately with grasping hands, and he immediately surged towards her, mouth reclaiming hers and hands burying deep in her hair.
And then they were inside, and it was like a dream Rosalie had played out in her head a thousand times, then denied ever remembering the next morning. She knew this was real, however, because none of it felt sleepy. Not a single sensation was dulled. Her nerves felt pressed up against the very edges of her skin. She felt both a tug of desire, then a stab of adrenaline, when Astarion’s hands moved to her shoulders, to the straps of her nightdress.
They hesitated there, waiting for permission.
“I-” Rosalie swallowed, trying to moderate her breathing and find sense. She pulled back ever so slightly, looking up into Astarion’s wrecked face, knowing they had both made a ruin of each other.
“I’m not - I look a bit different than I used to,” she warned. “It might not be-”
“-Don’t you dare,” Astarion warned her, in that same strangled, frayed-edge voice.
“I’m just saying-!”
Astarion moved both hands immediately to her ass and yanked her bodily towards him, before kissing her senseless again, there stood at the foot of the bed. Normally this kind of argumentation lacked rigour, but Rosalie actually felt that he made a very compelling point. What use, exactly, were clothes to her, at this moment in time?
She reached for the straps while they were still caught up in each other and her eyes were still closed, hoping to hide from the thrill of vulnerability in a distracted moment. But Astarion felt her move and he paused, still and quiet and patient. His hands left her, giving Rose an audience as she pulled the nightdress from her shoulders. It fell from her body to pool on the floor, revealing nothing underneath.
Her tail lashed once, nervously, as she planted both her hands back on his shoulders in small little fists, to combat the urge to cover herself.
Astarion swallowed.
“Yep,” he said intelligently. “Still beautiful. Thank the gods we didn’t turn you evil.”
Rosalie didn't want to see where the blush started.
“Just so you know?” she murmured quietly, looking directly up into his face. “When it's from the right person, I really, really like praise.”
Astarion shed the rest of his clothes then, and she pulled him towards the bed. What came next under the dim light of the canopy was faltering; a little desperate, a little clumsy. Touches that were once sure felt uncertain - they both knew what the other person liked, but not what had changed. Everything felt fragile, like it was certain to break. Edges kept catching, but something about that made it sweeter, left her shuddering.
At one point, Rose found herself laid out on her back. Astarion crawled to kneel above her, in the space between her legs where she had kicked out and left them splayed in the sheets. Eyes following his own progress, he trailed an open hand across the ridges at Rosalie's throat and between her breasts. He followed the finely serrated edge down, across the prickling line of her sternum, and the starburst of her navel. His fingers came to rest against the soft lower curve of her stomach, but went no further, until her body began squirming in place with the thought of everything she was being denied.
She thought she knew what would come next: a kiss to the thigh, a pressure to pin her in place. She shivered, sensitive to a touch that wasn't even there.
And then suddenly, he stilled. What had started out as deliberate became something else entirely.
Rosalie recognised the look. “It's OK,” she said automatically, pushing up on her elbows as his hand fell from her, “we can stop.”
“No, I don't want to stop,” Astarion said, dragging his gaze away with such slowness that it was like he both couldn't stand the sight of her, yet struggled to look away. “I want-” he let out an unsteady breath, entire chest heaving, “I'm just so scared of getting it wrong.“
“Oh, my darling,” Rose said, unable to hide the sadness in her voice.
The ache in her heart and the ache of arousal began and ended as one. It all bled together - yet, somehow, none of it felt bad. She knew it was impossible to have one thing without the other, and there was nothing Rosalie wanted, more than this. This moment was always going to hold a little pain. But that didn't strike her as a bad thing: it just was.
She placed her hand to Astarion’s face, glowing pale in the blue light, and turned him back to face her. “Being apart from you, that was the only thing that was wrong.”
And then she traced his lip with her thumb and kissed him again, willing him to believe it. The moment softened, then caught like tinder. Rosalie pulled his naked body back over her, hooking her feet into the bend of his knees. From the noise he made, she thought everything might once again be perfect.
But then she realised that their positioning reminded her of one dream with the Ascendent, and she suddenly had to ask them to move.
Another awkward break in their choreography, as it was rearranged.
“Do you still like-”
“If I touch you here will you-”
“Tell me what you want. Slowly.”
It certainly wasn’t perfect, but it was theirs, and this, more than anything, was what seemed to set Rose’s body to molten pleasure. No one else could do this, the way they could do this to each other.
They finally found themselves with Astarion sat in the sheets, and Rosalie was still kissing him, spreading her now soaked thighs and clambering into his lap.
She broke the kiss only once. She was knelt above him, poised in such a way that their mouths were separated by the difference in height. Her bad knee suddenly twinged, faltered, and nearly gave out.
She jolted inelegantly, bracing herself on Astarion’s shoulder, and then she paused… momentarily considering logistics.
After a careful assessment, she placed her hand to her own chest, and cast Enhance Ability, to increase her body’s strength. She felt her knee stop its warning tremor on the mattress, and become secure underneath her. She straightened herself up again over him, tested its mobility. Astarion watched her and the way her body moved, the whole time.
“Not… a… word,” she told him, as sternly as she could manage. One hand was pressed to the indent gathering blue shadows beneath his exposed throat, and the other rested over his lips.
And Astarion smiled at her, beneath and between her fingers. It wasn’t a flirtatious, knowing smirk, but fully joyous, almost boyish in its sincerity.
“Really, darling?” he asked her gently, the fingertips of one hand skating from the sensitive hollow of her treacherous knee, all the way up her bare leg to cup her ass and steer her over him. “...not even one?”
Rose did her level best to frown, then lost all strictness when she watched his expression stutter and eyelids shut, as she took hold of him and eased down onto his lap - settled him into her - and guaranteed a moment of silence for them both as they gasped.
“Well, you can always thank me later,” she murmured into his ear, as she breathed in deep and relearned the sensation of him. She pressed her lips to the skin she spoke against, then down his neck, open mouthed and languorous, decadent as the stretch. She felt his hand move up to span the curve of her waist - finally that pressure she wanted, full of barely-repressed strength - as she littered kisses across his chest and neck. His fingertips - index and middle - tapped once to her skin, then tightened bruisingly into her flesh, before she anchored a hand in his hair, and began to move.
She was a little out of practice, but it was little wonder that wizards could get lazy in their dotage: some spells really did carry the bulk of the work for you. If there was one thing Rosalie could claim mastery of, it was concentration. Hers held fast as it began to stretch taut, and became deliciously tested.
Astarion ignored her instructions - or maybe just listened to earlier ones - and started to whisper a litany of praise in her ear. Each word out of his mouth turned Rose’s whole body scarlet. He laughed breathlessly, each time her body rippled reflexively around his and tightened in response.
One sentence turned devastating - had her humming out this reedy, high sound that rose and fell with her body. It came out barely steady enough to even be considered a moan, before it just broke and collapsed in on itself in the middle. Heat built between them, in the friction as their bodies moved - he was just so warm now, she wasn't doing the work for two. Rosalie clung to Astarion like he was the fire that could warm her, her arms around him and her tail almost wrapping them both full circle. She coiled herself to him, tried to hold him as close as possible, with every part of her body. Her pounding heartbeat and aching breasts pressed against his chest. She felt the ridged welts of scars under her nearly clawed hands.
She kept trying to do the right thing and be good, check in on Astarion through her lashes as their foreheads pressed together, to look for any signs of discomfort. But honestly, from the first time he thrust himself upwards to meet her pace, became just as much of a part of this as she was, she was suddenly so overwhelmed that she could barely think beyond herself. Beyond this body, and how empty it had felt until now.
His eyes met hers, for just the briefest moment, catching her in the act, and the intensity of the held stare made Rose whimper, then screw her eyes tight shut. It was all just too much.
Rosalie thought she understood the Ascendent a little, in that moment: the intense belief that you could crawl inside a person and consume them, until they were your only source of meaning and life.
It couldn’t even be termed greed. Not when she knew it was desperation.
“Rose, love-” Astarion gasped, “-please.”
“I've got you, “ she murmured. “I'm with you. I'm here."
Astarion came, and then she finished on her own hand with him still inside her, gasping and panting, forehead pressed into the curve of his neck.
The feeling came slow, still holding that sweet edge of pain. The same kind of pleasure as picking at a seam until it unravelled, or a scabbed wound until it bled. Pressure built and built, and then - with a whispered nickname in her ear - it broke all at once. Her frail, mortal body went lax, against the monument she'd made of his. She gasped and spasmed her way through it, eyes still tight shut as if the moment would shatter with her.
But then, Astarion’s arms reached around her body, one hand anchoring on the vulnerable spot at the nape of her neck. He held her to him, and suddenly he was real again.
It was all real.
“I can’t believe I built all these bathtubs big enough for two, and I didn’t even realise it,” Rosalie intoned wretchedly into her hands, feeling utterly fucking mortified. “Do you know how much I judged you, before, for the way that you-”
Astarion’s hand snuck around her waist from behind, and he pressed a kiss to her damp shoulder. “All I take from this, is that we both have faultless priorities, and excellent taste,” he observed, with a smile she couldn’t see but only hear. “I personally love it, when a bathroom is capable of meeting quorum, if pressed.”
It was the early afternoon of the next day. Sunlight flooded in through the window, and Verity warbled sadly by the closed door.
Rosalie and Astarion shared a bath that had been deemed thoroughly necessary. For all the first time had been awkward and uncertain, the second, and third and fourth had become much easier. Familiarity, it seemed, could be recovered, once they stopped treating each other like they were made from fine china. Rosalie thought that building up an earnest routine would only help smooth matters further. But for now they were sweat slick, and stank, and they hadn't wanted to be apart.
Luckily, it turned out she had built every bathroom with this eventuality in mind.
“Tiefling horns are very wide,” she stressed, certain that this had been her reasoning at the time.
“And also two people long,” murmured Astarion in agreement, pushing the thick length of her wet hair to one side and moving his lips to her spine.
“Do you need your hair done?” Rose asked, glancing backwards, “or is this not a wash day?”
Astarion raised an quizzical eyebrow.
“I remember there being some kind of routine to... this,” She said, gesturing at all of that… hair, which was currently very dishevelled. “Or an alchemy, of sorts. I'd hate to disrupt a delicate cycle.”
“....It depends,” he said, “if I say no, do I miss out on an exclusive one-time offer? Or will we be putting your many, many palatial bathtubs to good use?”
Rosalie made a show of looking pensive, mulling it over like a hardship. “I mean… if you play your cards right, and you're nice to me, and you’re very, very good-”
For a second, she saw something flicker across Astarion's features: an uncertainty. A 'will I ever be deserving?'
Then his face smoothed out again.
“- Isn't that your thing, darling?” Astarion said innocently.
Rosalie decided then and there that she'd never tell him anything, ever again.
Astarion saw the look on her face, and laughed out loud. And even though seeing that joy in him already had Rose immediately banishing every regret, she started to struggle her way down the ludicrous bathtub as if offended. The water (which was gold, and glittered, and smelt like citrus, because she'd gotten out the good toiletries) sloshed around her as she made a show of beelining towards the opposite end. This ultimatum had precisely the desired effect - Astarion immediately hugged both his arms around her waist and dragged her right back to him.
“No, no!” He said into her ear, “I'm sorry! I apologise! Hand on heart, I promise to never bring up your incredibly subtle and not-at-all obvious tastes-”
“And you won't, not in any public forum-”
“...How is this public, my love? Is there something salacious you’re not telling me?!”
“No, that’s very much your thing, actually. But Verity is at the door. And she is very impressionable!”
“It's cute, that you're embarrassed,” he informed her, smiling into the crook of her neck.
Rose shifted so she was more sidelong in the bath, to regard him more directly. “I'm very old and worldly now, Astarion,” she said, as primly as she could with her tits out. “I don't get embarrassed.”
They both caught each other's eye just a second too long, Rosalie’s mouth twitched, and then they were both giggling.
“...I think I'll take that hair wash,” said Astarion softly, some time later.
The laughter had subsided, but they hadn't stopped looking at each other.
Rosalie cleared her throat. “Well, if anything goes… floofy, don't blame me,” she murmured, “I pay through the nose, to avoid having to worry about that kind of thing.”
Then she turned in the tub and raised herself up on her knees in front of him. Astarion was supposed to bend his head forward a little so she could see the crown of his head, but she was gratified that her body held his attention for long enough and with such apparent interest, that the Shape Water she cast and dropped on his head made him shout with surprise.
“...That did take somatic gestures, you know,” she informed him smugly, as he glared at her through his now dripping hair. “You must have just missed them.”
Although it would still probably ruin whatever delicate economy or magical ritual that made his hair look the way it did, all of Rosalie's cosmetics were very expensive, and as such felt divine. She had one shampoo left over from the salon that did her enchantments. She used it, in the hope it would give her natural talents a little saving grace.
Halfway through the lather, Astarion groaned, the sound coming from somewhere low in his chest. Rosalie paused, and wondered briefly how this would affect her future budgets for haircare.
She rinsed him off - the Shape Water, much less… abrupt… this time - then started combing his sopping hair back from his face with her sharp, water-soft nails.
“Why did we never do this before?” He asked in a contented rumble. Rosalie was still knelt above him, so he pressed his forehead to her sternum. “We should have been doing this, for always.”
The obvious reason wasn’t needed, so Rose grinned down at him. “Well, brackish Underdark streams and lakes where Withers is the resident lifeguard lacked a little… Oh… I don't know… atmosphere? Ambience?”
His arm looped around her waist. “Thank goodness you only wish to have your wicked way with me in castles now, little love. I find I can be quite agreeable, under the circumstances.”
Rosalie stopped in her tracks, her hand still anchored at the top of his head.
“...‘Little love’?” she said, carefully.
Astarion stilled, and his voice was worried, as he pulled back and looked up at her, suddenly regretful, “...is that not… alright? I thought, from what I could remember, that that might have been one of the few things you liked, about… well, about before.”
Rosalie looked down at him, gnawing at the edge of her own lip. In the pause, she turned over the phrase, and what she knew of herself, in her mind. She felt like she was teetering on the edge of admitting something dangerous… then realised that all she was actually doing, was being honest.
She raked her hands once more through Astarion’s hair, then rested them against his glistening wet shoulders. She met his eyes, and asked. “...Say it again?”
“Little love,” he said, carefully, as if on command. Then, he leant forward and gave an open-mouthed kiss over her breastbone, gaze holding hers the whole time. He murmured into her skin: “my little love, my Foxglove, my Rose-”
Rosalie all but tackled him. It was an utter travesty. She was lucky she had a magical servant - the bathroom floor was completely flooded after.
The Ascendent had found her weakness, after all.
Notes:
“She doubles her carrying capacity on me till I…”
God... do you know how embarrassing this is? I really wish I could pretend this was all some grand practical joke, some elaborate long con where I start an Ascendency AU and then troll everyone by ending it on the kind of vanilla sex where they both probably cry afterwards. But the punchline is in the next chapter! None of this was intentional! This just happened!
...At least the Ascendent prevented it from being missionary :’)
Chapter Notes
- 'Enhance Ability: Bull's Strength' is not a particularly sexy spell, but luckily for us all Rosalie is a particularly sexy wizard.
- To that one beloved commenter I still think of to this day who told me they got knee pain and thought of Rosalie… do you see why I laughed?? Do you see why I was beside myself?? When I’d drafted this, the day before?? this one's for you, queen ~ x
- To the beloved mutual who pointed out how big Rosalie's bathtub was. What a valid observation for you to have <3
- And of course, this fic wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the pet name 'little love', so I get to keep it. It's mine, now!Rosalie, 43, now worldly and aware of her desires: I have a 😔😔 praise kink 😔😔
Astarion: babygirl, don’t worry, the rest of us worked that out 4 fics ago. This is my superbowl.
Chapter 27: Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Text
Over the next few months, everything changed. It was subtle, like a shift in gravity. As if the tiller of a ship had been moved by scant degrees, and that was enough for the wind to catch and pull the vessel back on course.
Everything happened so easily, and so without thought, that Rosalie only found herself noticing how different her life was, in the smallest of moments.
She was on her knees in the library, and she was panting. Tears dried stickily on her flushed face. Her head rested pressed against Astarion's thigh, the open plaquette of his trousers soft under her cheek.
She looked up at Astarion, sat above her in his chair, with his own chest heaving like he'd just run a very fun marathon. The hand once knotted in her hair now stroked it back from her face. He got this flush, these days, with his beating heart - a delicate touch of rose pink, crawling all the way up his neck. Mottled and devastatingly human: still beautiful, like the rest of him.
She caught his own dazed gaze, and grinned, equally blissed out and entirely too pleased with herself.
“Told you,” she said, smugly, as she swallowed a second time against her sore throat. “‘In a heartbeat.’”
“You are… so perfect.”
It seemed Rosalie had no intelligent thoughts left to speak, because all she could do was hum in agreement, eyes briefly fluttering shut under the feel of his hands. “Mmm, say it again.”
“Perfect,” Astarion repeated, voice harsh and reverent in equal measure. Rose peeled a sleepy eyelid open with great effort, and saw a matching look on his face.
No rest for her, then. She was smiling again, as she surged upwards from between his legs with a hand on each knee for leverage, and kissed him, long and hard. Astarion immediately began work on the laces at the back of her dress. Up until now, the two of them had remained fully clothed.
This was going to be a nightmare on her knees… but she had certain spells automatically prepped, these days. And in general, Rosalie found her body to no longer be working against her. It was not, in fact, perfect… still a little creaky. But it seemed some things were finally healing. And some aches had disappeared overnight, without her ever even noticing.
Another day, she was sat in that same chair in the library, wearing one of Astarion’s stolen jumpers, sifting through papers that she’d spread out on the coffee table (moved back into position, the scuff marks on the rug barely noticeable). She had been asked to examine a Master’s dissertation in the Divination School, but the student had many different diagrams and figures in a separate appendix, that she kept having to refer back to. It was a cumbersome, messy endeavour. But she tended to take work out of her office, to wherever Astarion was, these days.
Verity was in her lap. A rare occurrence, and it was only because Astarion was pacing, perusing the shelves.
He came up behind the back of Rose’s chair, placed a hand on her shoulder, and a kiss to her hair. Though her eyes didn’t leave the documents in front of her, Rosalie leaned back into the touch, with a small pleased hum.
“So… what does an archmage do, exactly?” Astarion asked her.
“Oh, you know,” said Rosalie. “I conduct my own research under the name of the Watchful Order, then I complete commissions and consultation work for those who require my expertise and pay my fee. I am forced to do marking for the school, so that nobody grievously resents mer. Then I give two or three guest lectures each semester, on whichever topic I deem most relevant.”
She paused, then added, “I think my next one will be on Mephistopheles.”
Astarion stilled, above her.
“Does that seem… wise?”
Rosalie turned, and gave him the closest she would ever come to a confident smirk. “Well, the geas he placed upon his office was, in his own words, capable of stopping me from telling his business to any of his fellow archdevils and co-rulers in Hell,” she said. “But I explained everything to you, easily enough. So I’m thinking... if I share my findings with a room full of people, just once…”
“...He’ll kill you?” prompted Astarion in a drawl.
“He can’t kill me,” Rosalie said. Astarion had read through the contract, and confirmed it. “And I can’t kill him. But, if the Order advertises, and anyone in that room happens to be a hunter of archdevils and happens to hear me talk, and feels like they want to use that knowledge to a certain end… that’s hardly something I can control, or be liable for, don’t you think?”
“I am thinking a lot of things, believe me.”
“It wouldn’t be anything scandalous. A first draft of the ‘paperwork devil’ article, with a little more flare to keep everyone interested. The Order like it, when I flash my hero credentials - I’m something of a local celebrity, you know. The front row of the lecture hall is always filled with my fans.”
“I should’ve known that brief stint of self-preservation was too good to be true,” Astarion said, mournfully. “We don’t have to go up against an archdevil, you realise? That’s something we simply do not have to do.”
“I’m not going to touch him. Doesn’t mean I can’t cause him some minor inconveniences, for my own amusement.”
Astarion paused, then looked at her.
“Gods… is this what you consider misbehaviour? Writing a vaguely damning… lecture? Gods,” he repeated. “I forgot. I forgot what you were like. I was in the Jar too long!”
‘The Jar’ was becoming an odd turn of phrase. An in-joke, that made about as much sense as ‘the Table’ had used to. Say, for instance, that Astarion insisted on still not putting laundry away in the hamper, even though he was now sharing her bathroom, and was literally in a house that did every other chore for him? Rosalie threatened him, with the Jar. She annoyed him? He lamented the passing, of the Jar. Ser Verity clawed some particularly fine fabric Astarion was wearing? She, like every nuisance before her, was destined for the Jar.
“The thing is,” said Rosalie. “The Magister was a lot more um… receptive, to my having fucked off with no warning at the start of term, when I casually dropped the fact that I’d dealt one-on-one with Mephistopheles into the conversation. It stopped him in his tracks, actually. He was about to go off on a diatribe, but I got him six minutes in, just as he was warming up.”
“So... it’s not even misbehaviour? It’s just… contractual obligation?”
“You can see why I’m trying to have fun with it,” said Rose, glumly. “Luckily, it was all I needed to use as a bargaining chip. My next move was going to be a promise to start teaching undergraduate classes again, now I don’t need to stay in the tower. But nobody wants that, Astarion. First-year wizards are so highly strung! They cry, every time they get a B! And while I’m not some awful stern horror, there’s only so much emotional labour I can do for my students before I’m crying too.”
The meeting had been terse. The Magister was a miserly old thing, that counted coin with a single-minded attention he had certainly never transferred to his spellcasting. But at least Rosalie hadn’t broken in and commandeered the Plane Shifting equipment, this time.
“I managed to talk myself down from probation, to a couple of showy appearances, and the potential for either a doctoral student or an apprentice next year, depending on our living arrangements and situation,” Rosalie explained. “And don’t worry, I didn’t mention Wish. I don’t think we should be advertising that I know it, in any capacity. That sort of thing gets people kidnapped, in this day and age.”
Astarion seemed to consider something, and then he asked her, “...What if you threw a day-walking vampire into the mix, instead?”
Rose paused. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t want you to be made into some kind of spectacle-”
“Yes, heavens forfend I become subject to attention.”
“You haven’t-” we haven’t left yet, Rosalie wanted to say. And in fact, they hadn’t. If the Ascendent was the kind of thing that could still exist, it would probably be green with envy over the whole ‘housebound honeymoon’ situation they were currently engaged in. “I’ve lectured on vampirism before, but I always bring up the fieldwork in Barovia, or I bring Wyll along for a more practical discussion of monster hunting. There’s really no need for you to-”
“-Would having a lecture on the Rite of Profane Ascension be enough, do you think, to earn you not only clemency for this period of leave… but maybe, earn you a sabbatical?”
“...A sabbatical?”
“I just think,” said Astarion with deceptive calm, wrapping a curl of her hair idly around one of his fingers, “that you’ve earned yourself a break. Your time off was hardly a vacation. You nearly died, multiple times.”
Rosalie considered it. For all she’d fucked about in Avernus and, now, Cania, she had a lot of goodwill with the department. Her yearly stipend was not small, but unlike her colleagues - who regularly raised the dead, visited other planes of existence, attempted to stop time - she very rarely budgeted any of her research activities back to the school. She never asked for platinum, gold, or pearl. She found her own dragon hoards to claim.
She’d taken a year of research leave, six years ago after killing Arauthator and making archmage… but that had been to clear out Alaron, with the Blades. She’d also written two journal articles, and her star-mapping spell, in that year. Sabbaticals in academia weren’t really holidays. They were just giving you time away from teaching, to complete the seven other tasks you’d overcommitted to. She had meant to write a book, but never gotten around to it.
“We could go on a holiday,” said Astarion, gently.
“...Could we? What about Verity?”
“We could travel via the teleportation circle, and then we could come back here to rest, every single night.”
“...You already thought about Verity.” Rosalie said, oddly touched
“Well,” Astarion shrugged, and looked away, “I also figured it would save us money on accommodation.”
“How sensible of you. We’re ever so strapped for cash.”
“Well, I’d opt for fancy hotels and nights spent between sheets of Amn cotton!” he sighed theatrically, “but you were the one who chose to own a house that makes all that pale, in comparison!”
Rosalie put down her papers. She got up out of her chair, moving over to him. “...Where would you want to go?”
Astarion wrapped his arm around her waist, but looked almost embarrassed as he admitted, “I don’t know. I’ve never really… been anywhere. Not for several centuries, anyway. So honestly, Foxglove, we’re spoiled for choice”
“We could go on a long trip, then,” she said. “If we’re teleporting, we can see many, many places, with no trouble at all. Anywhere you want to go, we can make that happen.”
“We should find an excellent piece of ocean,” Astarion told her.
“We have an excellent piece of ocean, right outside the door.”
“We should find an excellent piece of ocean... that doesn’t freeze my fucking bollocks off,” amended Astarion.
Rosalie laughed. “It’ll be warmer, in summer, I promise. But fine - I suppose I’ll take you south then, where it's warm for you, sweet prince. I wonder if you’ll freckle.”
“Excuse you, I’ll tan.”
“...We could go see friends,” said Rosalie, tentatively, placing her hand over his heart. “If we were going to lots of places, we could drop in on people, and say hi. Maybe get some excellent dinners, from the Dekarios clan - and some much more, um, rustic ones, at the Blade Guildhall?"
“Yes," Astarion said softly. "We could do that.”
“...I’ll think about it. No, you know what? I’ll ask. I’ll still have to work on that thing I’m doing for Lyssa, and on the paperwork devil essay, but…”
“...But I can help you procrastinate on those for months, and then cram them last minute, if needed.”
“How the fuck are you doing that, exactly, my love?”
Astarion looked shamefaced. “By… telling the servant to make nice dinners for you?”
“Yes,” Rose leaned in, and kissed his cheek. “That’s what I thought.”
But it turned out, Astarion could help her more than either of them had anticipated. Breaking the news of a vampire blessed to walk in daylight caused quite a stir in the Watchful Order. Neither of them mentioned Mephistopheles, or the Rite, using only Cazador Szarr’s name… but certain people were already drawing their own conclusions.
Hypotheses surrounding what could create such a being - a vampire, with every mortal attribute, but also in possession of a soul! - began to circulate. A few wizards found it fascinating that Astarion could read and speak Infernal. Rosalie was placing her bets on them for getting to the right conclusion first.
The diabolists, the Infernalists, the necromancers, the transmuters, the monster hunters, the Dread Domain historians, and those who followed the Van Richten school were all in a ruckus - not to mention the Warlock tutors, who struggled desperately to find a drawback in Astarion’s entire deal. Everyone treated Rosalie like she was a geologist, that had found a very intriguing and particularly enthralling rock - even when she introduced said rock as her partner.
Since the attack on Baldur's Gate, and many incidents since, Monstrosity Studies was a particularly lucrative field. It was very highly valued, by government stakeholders.
“Why didn’t you tell me that this was what that strange little vampirism tangent was all leading up to?" said the Watchful Order's Magister. "I quite lamented watching you fall down that rabbit hole, like many thoroughly adequate scholars before you. But we could get awards for this! Grants!”
“She just loves to keep a secret, all to herself,” Astarion said breezily, from the chair next to Rosalie. He reached over to rest his hand on her knee, closer to the inside of the thigh than was perhaps polite. The Magister noticed, and blanched. He was the kind of man that preferred to imagine women over thirty as sexless organisms - which was worrying, given that his own wife was fifty-seven years old.
“There are many places a being like yourself could aid the advancement of our studies,” the Magister said, clearing his throat. “If you were willing to provide insight or expertise, to certain practical or theoretical fields-”
“If you get an honorary degree or, gods help me, a lectureship, from this,” Rosalie seethed in Astarion’s ear, one day after reading through letters that, she noticed, shifted in tone depending on whether it was her or him getting addressed. She was the one that had done all the work, but did it matter? No! Not to men in academia! “I will kill you. Gale will kill you. We will both kill you, together.”
But in fact, all Astarion negotiated for, was a new contract for Rosalie: entailing both her promotion and, somehow, a reduction in her hours. The two of them vetoed all experimentation on the Vampire Ascendent, but Astarion agreed to a three month stint, in which he would happily take interviews, and submit himself to spells that were - Rosalie quadruple-checked - all minor inconveniences at worst, and entirely covered by ethical standards at their thankful best.
“You’ll hate it,” she told him, one night, laid out beside him and still conducting debates with her ceiling, even with her head laid on his chest. “You don’t have to do this. You’ll hate it.”
“Three months is nothing, little love,” Astarion told her, with clear amusement. “And it’s three months, I’ll get to spend with you. In your place of work. Either you’ll be there, watching over me protectively and making me feel all special, or you’ll be working. Then I’ll get to see you be all… erudite, and stern. How diverting! I do hope someone misbehaves in class.”
“What if someone tries to kidnap you?” she said, feeling her anxiety spiral out of control. “What if they try to use you, for diabolical ends?”
“Foxglove, are we thinking about the same people? They were all terrified of me. I can take care of myself, you know. I can snap necks with my bare hands, et cetera.”
“I could just... stop being an archmage? I could quit! I could stop! I don’t need to do this job, not now you’re-”
“...Do you want to quit? I thought you liked your job?”
Rosalie pressed her face into his chest, and despaired. She did. She really did like her job. Now that it wasn’t all about curing Astarion, she liked it even more.
“Well, what a lucky coincidence,” he said, lightly, stroking her hair as she had her little breakdown, “for I love being the unemployed house husband of a very powerful woman, and never having to work another day in my life. What happens, if you quit? Do we have to leave this castle? Do we have to move to some kind of a dual income?”
He said it, like it was a fate worse than death.
“Three months, for a lifetime of leisure? You think even I can’t do that very simple mental arithmetic?”
“If the wrong sorts of wizards catch wind of you, it could-”
“-Well, then you’ll have to protect me from them, won’t you?” Astarion murmured, “I hear you can be quite formidable, if pushed. And this tower of yours is a veritable fortress. Maybe you should lock me away here, like your most precious treasure. I need you, little love, to keep me safe.”
“Please stop being silly.”
“Why not stop me, from being silly?” he dared her. And then Rosalie kissed him to keep him quiet, and somehow he won the argument, and she was furious.
But sometimes, Astarion’s shameless ability to turn the conversation to his own whims worked out in her favour. Through something truly silver-tongued, that Rosalie would admit quite affected her, and meant they fucked in the library twice that same day… Astarion somehow made it so that all the interviews and discussions and examinations - not to mention all her promised lectures, papers, and treatises - happened after the eighteen month sabbatical, and not before.
“We need to conduct a thorough, thorough period of research, before we feel truly comfortable considering ourselves experts in this field,” he smoothly asserted, meeting her gaze slyly across the table.
- and ok, yes, it had been three times, and then she’d washed his hair for him while she sat around the back of the bath, because he was a needy bastard... but actually, he’d earned it.
His negotiations meant that, only three months after returning to work, Rosalie repeated the odd experience of closing her house down. She placed Timothy on automation, with an added protocol to refill Verity’s food on an intermittent cycle. She locked the front door of the tower from the inside, for the second time within a year.
By then, it was starting to look like spring. She still wore Astarion’s jumpers as a matter of course, liking the way they’d gone soft and worn, on the both of them. She’d purchased Gale his own sweater for the Simrill festival, to say thank you.
The house was quiet. Her office desk was bare. Rosalie had just finished her favour for Lyssa von Zarovich, gaining her entry for one into Barovia, and leaving her with nothing much else to do. Verity was asleep and purring on the sofa, unaware she was about to be utterly abandoned (for eight to fourteen hours, depending on how late they stayed out at the restaurant Rose had booked - the one with an ocean view of the Sea of Fallen Stars).
“Are you ready to leave?” Astarion asked her, gently, hand pressed to the small of her back.
And yes, Rosalie rather thought she was.
Two months after that, their envoy returned from Barovia with the information they needed. They’d been touring the Lake of Dragons that day. It was one of the biggest in-land saltwater lakes, which was - Astarion informed Rose - a very boring fact, but it also meant it was populated by dolphins. They’d gone out on a boat trip that day to go see them. Astarion had playacted utter disinterest, but then had to use all his strength to yank Rosalie back into the boat when she leaned so far out she’d nearly tumbled into the water. They spent another warm, lazy evening stretched out on the white-pebble shore, before returning home to a letter in the dumbwaiter (at 6am, the time difference involved in continent hopping was a bitch).
“Do you want to do this now?” Rosalie asked Astarion, “there’s really no rush. We can wait.”
“Best not to let it fester,” he replied. “You remember Mephistopheles’ complaints about Cazador. The longer we leave it, the more likely it is we’ll have an uprising on our hands.”
So they changed their plans - it was easy to change plans, when you had no accommodation to cancel - and rather than spending the day in Marsember, they went instead to Baldur’s Gate.
Because the universe had a sense of humour, that day was bright and unseasonably warm - still spring, but with the stirrings of an early summer.
The two of them walked through a garden that had grown wild, after being left untended for nearly half a year.
Astarion regarded the replica of Cazador’s mansion that his hollow echo had built with obvious nausea. Rosalie had felt the way his body trembled, through their clasped hands, as they’d walked up to the gate. Now they walked arm-in-arm, her pressed up against his side to remind him he wasn't alone. They finished their business, with a walk through the maze, towards the wrought iron cage at its heart. Astarion had wanted to see it - though Rose worried, it was not for the right reasons.
At Astarion’s other side, was Hemlock Bartelle.
In the blistering daylight, Hemlock’s beauty was sharpened to even more dangerous edges. Her milk pale skin was without imperfection, her dyed hair coursed down her back like spilled blood. She raised a rail thin hand, to examine her bare skin under the warmth of the sun.
“Hm,” she said. As if she had just checked the time, and found herself late to a meeting.
“Hm?” Rosalie said, beside herself. “That’s all you can think to say?”
“I see why you did what you did even more, now,” the mage informed Astarion, ignoring Rosalie entirely. “It’s only been nine years, but… yes. The sun is, I think, something I have missed.”
Treating with Lyssa von Zarovich had gotten Rosalie access to Strahd’s archives, once before. To all his diaries, and his academic tomes documenting the nature of what he referred to as his ‘Dark Power’.
This time, Rose herself hadn’t felt like making the archive visit. There was no appeal to be found, in reading all about vampire brides and their uses in the miserable dark. Not when she could be floating in the ocean, trekking the streets of some new and foreign city, or getting shitfaced with Astarion in some beautifully sophisticated and overly priced bar. Instead, she’d hired someone to go do the dirty work for her. One of the Blades was a wizard, who wanted more experience in the field - Karlach had sent them. Apparently, they were, well. Besotted. With several different people. But that tended to happen, around vampires.
In their months of research, the lone Blade of Avernus had found a text from another vampire Strahd had admired, discussing the practice of promoting already turned vampires into Brides. The vampire in question had been a general at war. He noted that - once stripped of its romanticism and left with only its function - the ritual was a ruthlessly efficient method of promotion. Anyone he converted, he could control as an extension of himself, when they were in the field.
Astarion glanced at Hemlock distastefully. Now he was souled, the two of them kept a ten feet distance, and if they happened to look at each other too long, all their hackles raised. It had made the ritual exceedingly awkward. Rosalie had kept telling Astarion he didn’t have to do this. It wasn’t necessary-
“Foxglove,” he’d said, “tell me: what do you want?”
Rendered silent and mortified by the thought of assigning any value to her own desires, Rosalie’s face had burned when she’d told him.
“Well, I don’t want to kill her, after being the one who made her like this. And if I leave her to her own devices, then she’ll try to kill me, for a chance at what I can simply offer her now, freely,” said Astarion. He’d sounded tired, and his face was grim, but Rosalie thought she believed what he said, and saw how he truly felt. He looked at her, ran his hand through his hair, and continued, “please give me the chance, to attempt to clean up my own mess for once. It seems that I now have a conscience, and I thought you were into that sort of thing.”
“But - it’s - and your-”
He would be using his body, and he would be using it with someone he didn’t want. The ritual didn't take sex, or even much prolonged contact, but it certainly forced a kind of intimacy. Rosalie wasn’t sure it was something she could stomach asking Astarion to do.
“And you didn’t ask. I’m the one who's choosing to do it,” he told her. “As you’ve said yourself, such things make a world of difference. I may not enjoy it… but after what I’ve done to these people, they’ve earned themselves the smallest moment of my own discomfort.”
Now, he looked at Hemlock, the second of his kind.
“You have full autonomy,” he told her. “I’ve given you as much freedom as I’m comfortable giving you. You can walk in the daylight, you can experience the world as you would whilst living. And quite frankly, you can also have the house.”
“...And the spawn?”
Astarion had only turned people, who consented to be turned. Those that had wanted it, those that saw the pleasure and glamour of undeath as worth the sacrifice… Because of this, many of them had stayed, once he’d freed them from their orders to attack Ramazith. The house Astarion had built still smelled of sex, and the revels the spawn had hosted, unsupervised, just the night before. For all the Ascendent had been something monstrous, he had never been a beast that glut itself on misery, as Cazador did.
Astarion sighed, “any spawn that wants to stay, can stay. It’s their house, if they want it. But they’ll have no master.”
“Unless they want one,” Hemlock noted, smugly.
Astarion’s gaze sharpened.
“I have given you what freedom I can offer,” he repeated. “But if I hear of anything untoward - any nefarious plan, any mistreatment, any wrongdoing, well…”
There was a change in the air. Something passed unspoken, between Astarion and Bartelle, while Rosalie watched. Hemlock tensed up uncomfortably, her mouth pursing with a just-hidden distress. She trembled, minutely, but eventually her pride won out.
And then, it ended.
“That bond is always there,” Astarion informed Hemlock, calmly. “I’ll keep it closed, at my end - gods know you can’t, at yours. You hold absolutely no interest to me, unless you choose to make it so. If you ever try any unpleasantness, or I hear of any designs on either my or Rosalie’s life…”
“Alright, I got it,” Hemlock said, petulantly. “I won’t touch you or your precious pet, you’re so terrifyi-”
“...I will find you, through this connection, as easily as breathing. Unless I don’t feel like doing the work, in which case I’ll make you walk yourself to me, across land and sea, not stopping to rest or eat or drink,” Astarion continued, as if she hadn’t interrupted him. “And then I’ll see how I’m feeling, on the day, about second chances. It might serve you best, to keep Foxglove alive, because she tended to have fonder thoughts on them, than I.”
Hemlock fell silent.
“You have gotten yourself an immortal life, with all the pleasures of a mortal one. Your sickness is cured,” Astarion said pleasantly, after a second. “I believe that was what you wanted, is it not? And you didn’t have to kill anyone for it, this time.”
“Yes, thank you,” Hemlock deadpanned. “What a beautiful prison you’ve crafted, for me.”
“Yes. I thought so, too. It’s the kind of prison I would’ve prayed for, once upon a time. I’d counsel you to have a little less ambition, and one day, you may even find yourself happy.”
“You didn’t hire me, for my lack of ambition.”
“No. I didn’t,” Astarion replied, “and thus, this was deemed necessary.”
Hemlock cast an angry glance towards Rose. “Did you make him do this? Is this solution based on your crude understanding of mercy?”
“Oh, no,” Rosalie said, sweet as pie, “you were a murderer, before you were ever turned. I voted for him to kill you outright. This was our compromise.”
Hemlock blinked at her, genuinely surprised.
“It goes without saying, I’m in charge of Plan B,” Rosalie added.
When Hemlock left them both in the centre of the maze, Astarion dropped the Ascendent façade. The high hedges around them offered him enough privacy, for that brief vulnerability. He looked tired, and a little disgusted. When Rosalie walked to him, and pulled him into a hug, he all but collapsed against her. She took all his weight as best she could.
Afterwards, he glanced around the garden.
“I told him foxgloves,” he said, as if offended that his advice on courtship had gone unheeded.
“You grew me a whole garden of foxgloves, in the House of Peace,” Rosalie told him, “you already had that angle covered, and he knew he had no chance of besting you. Now, do you want to do something extremely cathartic?”
“...Here?” Astarion looked briefly scandalised, but not a little titillated, glancing around the glade before leaning in towards her. “Now, love, I’m back to being my adventurous self, and I won’t say I don’t welcome the distraction, but-”
Rosalie summoned Cazador’s staff from the pocket dimension she’d kept it in since Cania. Then she silently looked at him, fighting laughter.
“...Ah,” Astarion said, intelligently.
“You forgot.”
“I forgot.”
“...Well,” said Rosalie. “I don’t have any super strength, so I believe this honour falls to you, out of necessity.”
“Do I have to… touch it?”
“I can put it on the ground and you can stamp on it, if you like?”
Astarion considered his options, and then he held out his hands. Rosalie handed Woe over. He took it, with only the slightest of flinches as she deposited it into his grip.
“Do you have anything special you want to say, to mark the occasion?” he asked her, his voice wavering a little on the joke.
“Fuck Cazador,” said Rosalie, with feeling.
“Yes. What an absolute cunt that man was,” Astarion mused, almost conversationally, and then he snapped Woe in two with his bare hands. He looked at the sheared pieces, as a dark crimson magic started to leak from the fracture like blood. “May he rot in Hell.”
“His soul sucked so hard, he didn’t even make it,” Rose pointed out.
“Unlike some people, of a much finer calibre.”
The staff disintegrated into red dust on the breeze, scattering across the garden. The two of them watched it go, and then Rosalie spat into the grass, for good measure.
They headed back to Alaron early, that evening. Timothy cooked them a fine meal that both of them awkwardly picked at. It was like the shadow of Cazador’s mansion still lingered, weighing on their bones and leaving a slickly unpleasant feeling on their skin.
They moved, to sit in the living room in silence. Astarion stroked Ser Verity quietly, clearly distracted. The cat got lap privileges, so Rosalie rested her head on his shoulder as she read a book she wasn’t really paying attention to. She mostly wanted to make sure she kept Astarion anchored. She focused on casually being here, in reach and close by, just in case he needed her.
“Could you read it aloud?” Astarion asked her, suddenly.
Rosalie squinted up at him. It was not a request he’d ever made of her before.
“It’s really, really boring,” she warned him. “Even I think it’s boring. I have to vet it for Gale, as a course text. He always picks books above reading level, and then his students complain.”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” said Astarion. “I just want to listen to your voice. And you’ll get all flustered, if I make you talk about yourself.”
So Rose read him one chapter about the three key principles of Illusion, and another on the use of all five senses in multifaceted illusory craft. And then, Astarion seemed to make some kind of a decision. Rosalie wouldn't have noticed him make it, if not for what came after. Between one comma, and the next, he was kissing her with the single-minded determination that came from banishing one’s demons, swallowing a sentence halfway through.
He pressed Rosalie back in her seat, hands locked around her wrists. The book tumbled over the back of the sofa, fell to the floor. Squished and utterly offended, the cat jumped from his lap, shook out a disgruntled leg, and sauntered away to a quieter part of the house in protest.
There was something about Astarion transforming Hemlock into a vampire bride, that was very important. For it turned out, new-born vampire lords could only make one bride in a century. This was, the vampire general had noted, the only drawback to his preferred mode of promotion - it took so much of his power, to raise one such as he, that he could only replicate it with a select few. He had held trials, to ensure he chose the right people to receive such a boon.
The metamorphosis from vampire to bride was less taxing than taking someone mortal and dragging them kicking, screaming (or shuddering with pleasure) into an immortal marriage… but it still took a lot of power.
…So much power, in fact, that any previously incomplete rituals failed in their casting. Because all existing magic was funnelled into elevating the current candidate, instead.
It would be at least fifty years before Astarion could even think about making another bride - and even then, it would only be through intentional bites.
Rosalie’s curse was ended. It had been given to someone else, who wanted it.
There were other things, she had finally admitted to wanting more.
And so that night, Astarion told Rosalie to point to all the places where she needed him to touch her, and then to ask him very, very nicely, for what she wanted. Trembling like prey under his hands as they stripped her, Rosalie complied. Astarion pressed her down into the couch, and drank from the spots she indicated. His teeth pierced through her skin quickly and cleanly, with taut pressure and very little pain. But he then took deep, long draughts from her that seemed to pull Rose's whole body along with them - like he was trying to rinse any lingering unpleasantness from his mouth.
And as he did it, Astarion stroked her between her legs, and the thing about the first taste of pleasure without consequence was there was nothing for it to bump up against - no fear left to restrain it. It just kept ratcheting higher and higher, with nowhere to go. Rosalie started with her hands buried in Astarion’s hair, but by the end they were both just clapped over her mouth, and she was sobbing into the heels of her palms, stupefied and incredulous that the noises she was making even came from her in the first place.
Her body had changed, these past few months - all the sun and sea and sand had softened and warmed her, eased aches and pains and plastered every inch of her now dusk-coloured skin in freckles. Once she’d had her third orgasm, she was left boneless and dazed. She barely recognised herself.
Astarion moved up her body and kissed her. His tongue in her mouth was bitter with iron.
“What do you want?” she found herself whispering frantically against his mouth, his temple, willing him to understand that whatever he’d just done for her, they had to end the night even. “What do you want? What do you need? What can I-?”
“Don’t be foolish,” Astarion reprimanded. His breathing was ragged, making each word jagged and almost cruel with want. “‘What do I want?’ When you’ve laid yourself out here in front of me, my love, my literal feast-”
Astarion left bruises on her thighs as he parted her legs, entered her roughly and fucked her, and Rosalie curled her body around his and laughed breathlessly into his shoulder with relief because, honestly? Thank the gods. Thank the gods all he needed was for her to be here, and for her to exist, because she didn’t want to move from this sofa. Not just because this sofa was now her absolute favourite place in the universe, but she honestly didn't think she could. She didn’t know if she would’ve been capable of peeling herself off the cushions. Her body was so weak from the bites, and the overstimulation, that her final orgasm didn’t really do him any justice. It was just the weakest twitch of her hips, a small, exhausted and desperate flutter, even as it made him groan against her throat in triumph. Afterwards, Astarion had to carry her upstairs, because she was too… what was the word?... fuckstruck, to think about coordinating her own limbs.
The next morning, once she was returned to the land of intelligent thought, Rosalie had to prestidigitate her own stains from the upholstery. The act of doing so gave her the giggles.
Although… maybe that was just the bloodloss.
Rosalie’s 44th birthday was on the horizon, just over a month away. With every day filled with new wonders and almost entirely without work, she had struggled to think of how she wanted to celebrate. Astarion had been the one to propose it become a weeks’ long affair.
They began in Waterdeep - a clandestine act, for if Gale had gotten wind of their presence, they’d be pounced upon and forced into some magical trap that would resolve itself into a four-seat table in a restaurant. Rosalie showed Astarion her favourite places - the haunts she’d gathered, not in the years she was a scribe, but in the visits she’d made as archmage. Under Nondetection spells, she’d collected small comforts for herself - the few pleasures she’d allowed, during her years of solitude in Alaron.
She had a particular weakness for elven cafes and bakeries. In one of them, Astarion and Rosalie found drinking chocolate - imported from the same supplier the Ascendent had used. This time, it was flavoured with orange and rosemary and sea salt, some classically pretentious elvish flair. Rose joked it sounded more like a spa treatment than a confectionary, but it tasted gorgeous, so rich that the two of them shared the same cup.
They surprised Gale at Blackstaff, with the kind of impulsiveness that Rose never would’ve possessed if Astarion wasn’t there to enable her. Last-minute guilt meant she cast Sending twenty minutes in advance, but it was still sudden enough that no elaborate preparations could be made or restaurant tables summoned from the ether. Rather than a grand event, they bought coffee to the balcony of Gale’s office, instead. Blackstaff was beautiful, though Astarion did his level best to complain about the sounds of the younger students, and the twee beauty of the school’s ivy-covered facade.
Rosalie put Gale’s book on Illusion back down on his desk.
“Best book I’ve read all year,” she announced cheerily, which resulted in the extremely novel experience of seeing Astarion be the one to turn bright red.
Gale cast one look between the two of them, and said, mildly, “...you’re both well, then?”
“...I heard tell there's a double date, somewhere in my future,” Astarion replied casually, after a second’s pause. Gale still ruined all his affected cool, by bounding up from his chair to hug them both anyway. That seemed to only fluster Astarion more.
From Waterdeep, they travelled by coach. They slept over in Alaron as usual, and could easily have teleported to their next destination, but Rosalie wanted to show Astarion the drive. They travelled down the coast on the carriage’s hard wooden bench, hand-in-hand. Astarion complained the whole time - about the cramped confines, and the toll on his superhuman muscles. He still fell silent, and dutifully looked, every single time Rosalie spotted a sight familiar to her, and pointed it out through the window.
The coach deposited them in a picturesque little town, at the way-marker nearest the duck pond. At the look on Astarion's face, Rosalie laughed.
“It's not that bad,” she told him.
“I think I'm going to understand a lot of things about you, very quickly,” was his caustic reply.
Peregrine’s Rest was not exactly a small town. But it was in a very sleepy part of the countryside, where seeing a falcon might once have proven notable enough, in times long past, to build a hamlet and then a village about it. Or maybe it had been founded by someone called Peregrine - the jury was out on that one. Rosalie took Astarion by the hand, and walked him along the edge of the duck pond, into a park where there was a much bigger and beautiful lake worthy of his begrudging attention. The two of them sat by the water’s edge, on the damp grass. Trees fat with cherry blossoms lined the shore, shading them from the sun.
She could tell he was bored out of his mind, but willing to indulge her.
“How are you feeling about your birthday?” he asked.
It was a ten day away, and after a few days here, they were planning to spend it in Baldur’s Gate. Rosalie had invited the Blades, and all the people in Ramazith Tower. Her first gift to herself was to be the dispelling of her own simulacrum, which she had left with Shadowheart to help with the clear up and repairs to Rolan’s place of work.
It would also be the first time Astarion had seen everyone together, since he had been gifted his soul. Both Lae’zel and Halsin were travelling to the city, just for the occasion.
“I think it might be the happiest birthday I've ever had,” Rosalie admitted, turning her face towards the sun. “I don't want to jinx it, but then, I also don’t think that’s possible. I don't think I've ever been this happy before, in my life.”
Astarion watched her silently. When he went too long without a reply, she peeped at him through one eye.
“What about you?” she asked, “how do you feel about it?”
“It's not my birthday, Foxglove.”
“Is it OK, with you? That I'm ageing?”
The thing was, the last few months of laziness and light had made her look younger, if anything. When they walked down a street together, no one did a double take, or called out in horror. In looks and appearance, they appeared matched.
But Rosalie wondered if, when Astarion looked at her, he saw something of an hourglass, the sand sifting through. If he was already imagining that one day, she'd be gone.
“Of course it's OK,” said Astarion. He sounded surprised at the question, in a way that made Rose start to wonder if he’d ever thought that at all - but perhaps, he was just a very good actor. “No one loves that beating heart of yours, more than me.”
“If your feelings ever change on the matter... There are solutions, you know. ”
“I think that taking a second bride, in such a particularly suicidal combination, would mean I'm destined to be murdered in my sleep.”
“I didn't mean that.” Rose protested. “Just… there's spells. I have a lot of spells.”
Astarion peered at her.
“...We have some options, with True Polymorph. Not vampirism again, because even without a master I think I’d rather not risk being that murderous, but… there are some things we could choose.”
At his look, Rosalie rolled her eyes. “for their long lifespans’, you absolute perv.”
“Ever the practical one, my love.”
“...You really haven’t thought about it?”
Astarion shaded his eyes to look at her. “You’re the overthinker in this relationship, darling, not me. I think in order for me to plan that far ahead, I’d have to start taking for granted that you’d still choose to wake up beside me, every day. And I’m not quite there yet.”
“But…”
“But…?”
Rosalie hesitated. Only for a moment, before she remembered what cowardice had gotten her, in the past.
“It’s not just me, that spells can help,” she said, gently. “If you ever want to leave this behind… this form, and what it means…”
Astarion looked over at her silently.
“Well,” Rose gave him a small smile. “I know Ascendency has very few drawbacks, these days. But I wondered if it still might feel like a prison sometimes, all the same. And, well, we have this Wish text… that I outbid some extremely pompous asshole for, and that I now know how to complete-
“-You promised me you were never going to cast it again.”
“I promised you that I wouldn’t cast it again, for something meaningless,” she countered. “Some things matter, Astarion.”
Astarion frowned, thought for a second, then said, “I still don’t think I want you to do it.”
“And if that never changes, that’s totally ok. Because… we can always hire someone else, who could do it for us, and no doubt better than I ever could.”
“You were the one, who told me that advertising such a thing would risk us getting kidnapped or murdered.”
Rosalie plucked a loose petal from the grass, and said casually, “Yes, well. I only meant some people couldn’t be trusted. Not every single person in the world. And especially not those, who already possess the power in the first place.”
“...Why do I feel like you’re dancing around something?”
“When I told Gale what happened, all those months ago… I asked him if he would mind talking to somebody, for me. He told me yesterday that he’d managed to get hold of them. And apparently, if there was anything in the world that would get the great Elminster Aumar to agree to a spell commission, a trade for the only manuscript copy of Wish in existence is, in fact, it.”
Astarion straightened in his slouch, “You’ve started planning-”
“I haven’t planned anything,” vowed Rosalie. “I promise. I just wanted to bring up with you, casually, that you have options. For yourself, and for what you want for us to be, together. It’s up to you, to choose what you want to do with them.” She looked at him, “for me, right now, I promise you I wouldn’t change a single thing.”
Astarion looked at her distrustfully. But as always, Rosalie’s sincerity won out.
“Did anybody ever kiss you, here?” he asked her, and it took Rosalie a few embarrassingly dazed moments to realise he meant the spot they were sat in, under the trees by the lakeshore.
“Well, this is the first place I ever got drunk,” she admitted, glancing around, “so… yes. A boy. But he was really bad at it, and proved himself to be really, really undeserving, in the long term.”
“I just thought…”Astarion trailed off, glancing up at the canopy of flowers above them, and the sunlight lancing through it.
Unsure of how he planned on finishing that sentence, Rosalie chose this moment to move over, straddle his waist and pin him to the grass, and kiss him with much more skill than the first boy had ever managed, and had ever deserved. At one point, a pair of women walked nearby, and made a scandalised sound when they noticed the two of them wrapped up in one another. Rosalie faltered - it was worse getting caught here, than in Cormyr or Sembia, where the two of them were strange foreigners whom people were likely to never see again.
Astarion fisted his hand in her hair, and pulled her mouth back down to him, before Rose could even glance over at their accidental audience and see if she recognised them.
Maybe it didn’t matter, Rosalie thought. She had meant what she’d said. So there was nothing they could shame her for, but being happy.
They walked back through the park, down a cobbled highstreet, past a school building, and a house on a street which had once been the home of the local enchantress, who hosted magic lessons in her living room three times each week. Then, they began to meander northwards - by then, it was just past midday, and the sun was high in the sky.
“How are you feeling about my birthday, generally?” Rose asked him. “Sorry, I turned it all existential. For a moment, I forgot-”
“- that I’m going to soon find myself in a room filled exclusively with people whom I have managed to skilfully and single-handedly upset or piss off?” Astarion finished for her.
“...I am worried Lae’zel might challenge you to a duel,” admitted Rosalie.
“Why?! She won the last one! She beheaded me, and I certainly won’t be making a fuss about it!”
“Yes, but if Shadowheart is upset at all, then…”
“...But I’ve only ever been nice to Shadowheart!” protested Astarion. “By my standards, believe me, that is the gods’ honest truth! If she’s mad on your behalf, fair enough, but anything else is… well, probably still deserved, but gods, as if life wasn’t hard enough already!”
They walked another block in silence. Rosalie turned them both left. They were now on a street lined with trees.
“...I’m most worried, about Wyll,” admitted Astarion, unprompted. “Karlach, I hurt badly. But I know she understands… well. Not to be trite or obvious about it, but: I know that she at least understands self-destructive rage.”
“I’d take an educated guess, that Wyll has gotten angry too, sometime in his thirty-so years of life,” chided Rosalie. “He’s not some faultless Saint who’s never known any bad emotion - he’s just a person. You used to always do this, Astarion. You used to position the both of us as perfect, faultless individuals who would never understand a moment of weakness.”
“The two of you only ever made choices that hurt yourselves, before others,” argued Astarion. Then, he sighed, “It’s not that I’m scared he won’t forgive me. I’m just scared that, deep down, he won’t mean it. He’ll just be doing it, to make me feel better. At least with you, I know there’s something selfish to it all. Something to be gained, from being so forgiving of me-”
He caught a glimpse of her expression, and said, “you know what I mean. Even if it’s not truly like that, on the days when I need to rationalise it…”
“I can’t make the joke I want to make,” said Rose lightly, “so instead what I’ll say is, maybe being your friend is also a unique joy that can enrich someone’s life, Astarion. Maybe Wyll will find his own things to be selfish over.”
Astarion looked incredibly sceptical.
“If you don’t feel that way right now, you can always work on making it so,” she offered. “I feel like you’re not bad at it - friendship, that is. You’re just very out of practice.”
“Hmmm.”
“...I still worry they’re friends with me, for the same reason, if that helps.”
He scoffed, “oh, come on, Foxglove, let’s not have a pity party, where all of the gifts you bring to the table are just hallmarks of self-deprecation-”
“-I mean it!” Rosalie insisted. “Not for anybody else but… for Wyll and Karlach? If you only knew what I put them through. Yes, I helped them in Avernus. I was also a grim fucking deadweight, half the time. I was an utter liability. I definitely said and did things, that hurt them. And I’m also terrified that they never ended up with each other, because they felt so guilty about being that way, around me, being the world’s most depressed and soul-destroying third wheel. They had to live with me, every day, at my worst, exactly as you fear they had to do with you. Are they so monstrously kind, that they’ll never admit it was ever a hardship? Of course. But the good thing about that is, it meant they never deprived me of the chance to make it all up to them, once I was better. I think they’ll do the same with you.”
“...The thing is, Foxglove, with you, you were just… I don’t know… sad-”
“Yes. And when you made your decision, your life was all sunshine and roses.”
Astarion groaned.
“Oh, come on - who’s being ridiculous now? We know exactly what you were feeling that day, Astarion. And everything that came after…”
She waited, and waited. Until Astarion rolled his eyes, and completed the sentence for her: “...Wasn’t me.”
“Exactly!” Rosalie beamed.
With a tug of their hands, she turned him right. This led them to a dead end street: a small and very green cul-de-sac, that ended in three cottages.
“You'll be fine,” promised Rosalie. “The first night, we’ll get everyone drunk, and then we’ll trauma bond through the hangover, and the second night will be for the deep feelings talk. By the third day, we’ll be ready to have a birthday party! But I don’t think it’ll even take that long. Everyone knows you, and now they also know why you were what you were… oh and also, you have this really hot and really nice girlfriend, who’s spent years building up a rapport and vast reservoir of goodwill, and-”
She stopped talking. She cast a glance towards the first cottage of the three, on the left.
“-And... why am I worrying about what might come next week, when I opted for today's trial by fire, out of voluntary choice and not an ounce of duress?” Astarion finished for her, following the direction of her gaze.
“You'll be fine,” Rosalie repeated. She sounded less certain this time.
At Astarion’s amused glance, she sighed. “Ok, so… you won't be. But that’s because this is painful and torturous for everyone, at least a little.”
She paused, then added, “...don't mention the part, where I became a Duchess.”
“Oh,I see! So you're fine if I look bad upon first meeting, but when it comes to preserving your own spotless reputation-”
“-I just don't want them to worry,” Rosalie told him. “Ever since Elturel, people of their generation get a little cagey, whenever the Hells are mentioned. And it's all dealt with now, after all.”
She squeezed his hand, and then noticed the way his pulse was pounding in his palm and through his fingers. “Are you nervous?” she gasped.
“...You look like you regret coming here,” said Astarion, ignoring the question entirely. “Are you scared I'm going to show you up?”
“Oh, that's cute, that you think you'll be the problem here,” said Rosalie. “Brace yourself, my darling. You'll need to, with that kind of thinking.”
“Any advice? Any last minute secrets I can be party to, that will give me an instantaneous advantage?””
“Just be charming,” Rose told him. “This is going to be an absolute nightmare, trust me. But it was also your idea, you literally asked for it, you were the one who put it in the fucking postcards - so just put on that big pretty smile of yours, endure it, and be charming.”
Together, they dragged themselves up the path to the left hand cottage. Although she’d rearranged her clothes in the park, Rosalie did a last minute check to see if any bitemarks were on show - they weren’t, thank the gods. Even without them, the two women in the park might be enough to spread the gossip like wildfire, if they knew who she was.
Which they might. Peregrine’s Rest hadn’t produced many archmages, in its time.
With a resigned sigh, Rosalie knocked on the front door.
After a shuffling pause in which she considered knocking again, the door opened. An woman of seventy stood on the threshold, in a practical purple dress. She was a tiefling, with ram-like horns coiled tight at her temples. Her hair was storm-cloud coloured, a mixture of purple and grey, steely in texture and losing its curl. Her weathered skin was the pale colour of bluebells rather than lilac, but her eyes were unmistakably Rosalie’s. They both had that same pinprick of firelight, in the centre.
“Oh, look at you!” the woman said, rushing at Rosalie with a hug tight enough to steal all her breath away. “You look so pretty! You’ve caught so much sun!”
“Mother-”
“It’s so good to see you - right on time as always, my pocketwatch of a girl!”
“Mother-”
The woman turned from her to Astarion, and then lost all of her momentum. She blinked through her spectacles at him, several times.
“Oh,” she said.
“Hello, Mrs. Frostsong?” said Astarion, as gamely as he could manage.
He still had Rosalie’s hand in a vice grip. His pulse was ratcheting, but you wouldn’t have known it, looking at him from the outside.
“Oh!” the woman said, clapping her hands to her mouth, “oh, my goodness. I was going to hug you, but now I’m not sure what to do with myself! Rosie said you were handsome, but… oh, my.”
Astarion faltered. “Rosie-?”
“Mother,” said Rosalie tersely, already playfully gallows-bound in her demeanour, to set Astarion up in good stead. “That cannot be the first thing you say to him. You'll make me sound unforgivably shallow.”
“I mean, you can afford to be a little shallow, when he’s the one walking around looking like that!” Imelda Frostsong, Rosalie's mother, cried, her gaze still riveted mostly on Astarion's cheekbones.
Astarion reached up and adjusted his curls, a little self-consciously.
“Oh, well…” Imelda said, clapping her hands on the front of the apron she wore around her waist. “That’s that month Rosie spent crying on the sofa, explained, then! My goodness! I thought it was all a rather… extravagant display, considering she was alive and breathing… but it all makes perfect sense, now! You’re the prettiest person I’ve ever laid eyes on! I’d be heartbroken, too!”
“Mother.”
“Now, now, Rosie, we can't blame a woman, for her highly perceptive ways, and extremely good taste,” beamed Astarion.
Rosalie tried to tug her hand free in protest. But Astarion simply tightened his grip, and tugged her back with enough force to make her stagger and fall into place at his side.
The fawning clearly helped him to find his footing. With a wink and a small bow in her mother's direction, Astarion continued: “What an utter pleasure it is to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Frostsong. I must of course apologise for any crying that has happened on my account, in the past. I am thankful to have warranted an invitation to your lovely home, in spite of it - though I promise that, to this day, I am still heartily atoning for any previous sins.”
“...You really do talk like that,” Imelda said, dazedly. From the look on her face, Rosalie knew she’d ignored the contents of Astarion’s speech entirely.
“I… beg your pardon?”
“When she told me about you, I just thought she was putting on an accent, for dramatic effect,” said Imelda. She looked quite overcome. “Oh, well… of course you had to visit! And of course we had to meet you! She's never going to let you leave, if you look and sound like that!”
“...Mother!”
Imelda spared the briefest of glances her daughter's way.
“Oh, please, Rosie, I’m the one who knows all about the books you used to think you'd hidden successfully under your bed.” She leaned in towards Astarion conspiratorially, to tell him, “high elven princes featured heavily, from my memory.”
“...Oh, did they now?”
With them both making eyes at each other over her clear discomfort, Rosalie had to find a way to recover the situation.
“-Is dad here?” she asked. “Or are you going to embarrass me a second time over, with the same script?”
“She’s so serious,” Imelda lamented forlornly to Astarion. “I don't know where she gets it from. Her father and I often speculate over where the dourness must have slipped in. We did raise her to have fun, you know.”
“Well, if it's any consolation, I find her extremely entertaining,” confided Astarion, lowering his head as if they were sharing a secret. “As for the seriousness… I’m attempting to help her break the habit.”
“I can tell. We've been telling her to take a holiday for years, and now look at her!"
“Mother, I'm the one facilitating our travel-”
“So pretty! Practically glowing!”
“I couldn't agree more.”
“You must be good for her.”
“I happen to think she's good for me.”
“I'm stood right here, and as I’m an adult, all my habits are well-worn and snug by this point. So stop it, both of you,” Rosalie said, with as much sternness as she could manage. “No colluding until we’re at least a bottle of wine in.”
“Oh, listen to her! The next thing she’ll do, is remind me that she’s in her forties - and with that exact face!” Imelda tutted. “You’ve got at least half a century to go, Rosie. Don’t wish yourself ancient before your time.”
“What is it that they say in Cania?” Astarion offered, off-hand. He made a gesture, as he recited an Infernal proverb that, in this hell timeline, he’d probably learned at Mephistopheles' right-hand: “One shouldn’t judge a soul by the weight of its coin, but instead by every possibility of what that coin could buy?”
There was a pause.
“Oh, my,” said Imelda, again, ever so softly.
“That literally doesn’t make any fucking sense,” Rosalie muttered - less than charitably, because she supposed it was about age versus vitality.
But Imelda was entranced. “Does she speak Elvish as prettily as you speak Infernal?” she asked, enraptured.
“Oh, please,” Astarion continued with his hand gesture, which was still going, “I wouldn’t dare to pretend I hold a candle to Rosie’s brilliance.”
Rosalie knew, from the look in Imelda’s eyes, that her mother was hearing wedding bells inside her own mind.
Rosalie cleared her throat. “...Mother, are you going to let us in?”
Imelda caught herself. Astarion noted the fact of her having to do so, and raised a pleased eyebrow in Rosalie’s direction, daring her to comment. Rose refused to give him the satisfaction. He was already looking insufferably smug.
“Oh, yes!” said Imelda, “What am I thinking? And when you’ve spent the whole morning travelling - you must be exhausted! The food’s almost ready - though you know, you really should've let us pick you up from the coachstop-”
“I wanted to show Astarion the walk home,” explained Rosalie. “We went the long way. Visited some old haunts.”
“Your town is lovely,” said Astarion, and only someone who knew him well would hear the force behind the flattery. “Very quaint.”
“I had to dissuade him from the idea of moving here immediately,” Rosalie deadpanned, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I told him that even he shouldn’t come on so strong.”
And then, she pulled the Vampire Ascendent by the hand, across the threshold of her family home.
Even if Astarion had been the type of vampire that needed an invitation, he was more than welcome here.
Notes:
So... that's it! That's the fic!
I write that pretty much every single time I finish a project, but there's something a little different about writing it down this time, when so many people have come along for the ride. See, I told you! When I say 'eventual happy ending', I really do mean it!!
The punchline is that from the very beginning, I knew the Ascendency AU and the Vampire Ascendent would end up being the version of Astarion Rosalie took home to her mother. Me, looking at Chapter 7: this is the man she introduces to her parents.This is the timeline where it takes him less than a year to meet her family. Get loved and cherished, idiot. Get fucking treasured.
Thank you everyone for reading, and being so nice to me as you did! This fic wouldn't be anything close to what it has become (and it seems, what it now is, because it is in fact finished) without everyone's kindness and support.
I hope that the ending was worth it, and that the journey has been as much of a joy for you as it was for me! :)
Chapter Notes
- surprise! Rosalie isn't that ancient after all!! She's just fucking clinically depressed!!! To all the people who commented on how her age was represented in the fic, yes, it was a little bit overexaggerated at times, I hope you all feel vindicated <3
- me, writing an escapist fantasy in the final year of my PhD as I begin to confront the prospect of attempting to find a job in academia: the hottest thing a vampire boyfriend can do, is get his woman a sabbatical. (This is the part of the fic that I worried most strained credulity... but fuck it, it's AO3).
- The Watchful Order's full title is 'The Watchful Order of Magists and Protectors', so I decided to name the Provost/Vice Chancellor, whoever the fuck is holding the purse-strings, the Magister. I don't think it's canon compliant with the Forgotten Realms or anything lol.
- The Sea of Fallen Stars, The Lake of Dragons and Marsember etc. are all places on the East side of Faerûn. I'm sure in the canon there's probably a lot of fucked up Orientalism going on there, here please just imagine them on a nice and unoffensive gap year, with no racial stereotyping.
- I don't know how people will feel about how I resolved Hemlock's plotline. I felt like I wrote myself into a corner, because I couldn't imagine a world where Astarion was comfortable killing any spawn he had made, even if (as Rosalie said many times in their not-pictured argument) they happened to be evil. But for anyone who feels cheated, please remember that I explicitly stated that being a Vampire Bride is Not Very Fun and it is, in fact, a prison.
- If that still doesn't work, please imagine being forcibly made into the platonic third to the hottest and most insufferable couple in existence. No, Hemlock, they don't want to fuck you. In fact, they're only doing this to you so that they can fuck nasty, the way they want to fuck nasty. I turned the tragic cycle into a romcom actually x
- As for how I fixed it, all this vampire bride lore was made up for the sake of my happy ending, but I decided it makes sense. If Brides didn't take a lot of power, or weren't a limited resource, Strahd is the kind of dude to have like... hundreds of them.
- I don't know if anyone hanging out in this notes section watches Dimension 20: Fantasy High, but me accidentally leaving Rose's simulacrum lying around in the plot after certain revelations there, is very funny to me. Rolan and R2 are having an affair (jk)
- People who have the Rosalie lore deep dive on lock will know what Astarion's questions about kissing by the lake is in reference to (see Bleeding Heart, Ch.2)
- thank you for reading my chapter notes! people who found them funny did wonders for an ego fuelled by the stand-up comedy autism. Here is a second goodbye, for the readers who make it this far <3 x