Chapter Text
“Good,” says Melusine. “Feeling nothing is a good sign.”
You’re not sure anything about this is good. It certainly doesn’t feel good. It feels as though you’ve lost something you weren’t even aware that you had until now. Still, there’s no taking it back now. That much, you are sure of.
“So I’m truly free?”
“Oh, we wouldn’t say that,” she says, accompanying her words with a melodic giggle that feels entirely out of place in the face of Astarion’s grisly state. “You’re a vampire, are you not? We’ve freed your soul, yes, but you and your master will always be bound by blood.”
You feel a yawning emptiness within you: something like hunger, but more raw, bleeding, bloody.
“So all of this was for nothing?”
“We wouldn’t say that.” Melusine tilts her head, her pretty nostrils flairing as she sniffs for something you cannot perceive in the air. “You need to go now.”
“What? I can't just go— go where? Astarion is in no state to travel—”
“So leave him.”
“What?!”
She shrugs. “Leave him. What is he worth to you, after all this?”
“I'm not— what? No! I might not love him but I'm not just going to abandon him in the damned hells—”
“So take him, then,” says the succubus, sounding bored. “But you will need to take him now.”
There's something in the way she says it that brooks no argument. She begins waving her fingers through the air, snagging fingertips on strands of magic or matter that are entirely hidden from your mundane eyes, and you know she must be using her fiendish powers to summon the portal she promised you. You crouch over Astarion, shaking him gently by the shoulders, tapping at his pale cheek in a desperate attempt to garner some kind of reaction. His eyelids twitch but do not open.
“Come on,” you mutter at his lax face, trying to ignore the sparks and thrums of magic that are filling the hut at the succubus's summoning. “Please wake up.”
A portal crackles into life across the hut, and you swear under your breath.
“Just give him a moment to recover,” you say, turning to Melusine.
“We cannot, beloved,” she says with a sweet smile. “We are needed elsewhere, and here is not a safe place to stay. Lilith only bade us to teleport you, after all. It matters not to us whether he stays or goes.”
“Fine. Shit. Fine.”
You pick up one of Astarion’s limp arms, looping it around your neck then clasping it in one hand, then standing and lifting him up with a hiss of effort. He is heavier than he looks - or perhaps you are weaker than you thought - so wrap your spare arm around his waist in an attempt to keep him there. You’ve never been the strongest, and your recent ordeal has sapped what little strength you had, but you can draw up just enough force to drag him to Faerûn with you. From what you remember, you owe him that much, at least.
“Wait,” you say, turning back awkwardly to face Melusine, “he's a soul, or part of a soul, or something. His body is already in Faerûn. How will he exist if I take him through with me?”
She laughs her musical laugh, and the beauty of it grates on your frayed nerves. “Oh, you fleshlings and your corporeal husks. If you take him with you, he'll be made in the image of his soul. Your bodies are not nearly so complex nor unique as you would like to believe.”
You might be offended by her tone if you had the energy to feel anything beyond exhaustion. As it is, you simply nod tiredly and turn away from her, adjusting your grip on Astarion as you move towards the portal.
“Where does it go?” You call over your shoulder, unwilling to waste any more of your waning endurance on turning, encumbered as you now are.
“To Faerûn, of course.” You fancy you can feel her mocking smile slicing through the gloom behind you, sharp teeth perfectly shining out from her perfectly full lips.
“Where in Faerûn?”
“Somewhere you and we both have a pull.”
You resist rolling your eyes at her ambiguous answer. You have no energy left to bandy words with her. You are done with these fiends and their riddles. You’re done with the hells and their torments. Wherever the portal leads, surely it will be better than here. You take another step towards the portal when a tremor in Astarion’s arm makes you pause to study his face closely.
He finally seems to be stirring; his eyes flutter open to stare dazedly at the floor, before trailing slowly up to your face. You think you feel him try to pull away from you, but it's so weak that it could be your imagination. You tighten your grasp on his arm, pull him closer, and step into the flickering light of the portal.