But it was a close thing. Astarion lost control. He lost himself in Talven’s blood. Gods below! It wasn’t enough for Cazador to pimp and torture him—nooo. He had to take this from him too. The one thing that might’ve made the centuries under his heel bearable. Blood of thinking creatures.
What a rush it’s been! He still feels it, hours later, coursing through him. His hands and feet are warm, his nose. Not as warm as healthy, living flesh, but, for the first time in two hundred years, not as cold as death. He’d give anything for a glance at the mirror just now. He thinks this may be… what a blush feels like. And the strange, giddy restlessness, this feeling that anything’s possible—he thinks that might be… optimism?
Tav would be sleepless even if not for the full moon intruding upon his darkness through the seams of the makeshift tent. Too much has happened too fast. The tensions in the Grove. The missing Archdruid. The bejeweled skeleton with the power to recall the souls from the beyond. Karlach and her engine, Wyll and his patron, Gale and his arcane hunger—it just doesn’t stop, day in and day out. Half-digested moments of terror and relief flit before his wide-open eyes like a waking dream. Too tired to will them shut, too tense to quiet his mind, he squirms in his bedroll, feeling every bump on the ground under it.
It’s only when he hears Astarion that he realizes he’s been waiting to hear him.
I commissioned one of my favorite artists, the amazing Joe Eason, to draw a portrait of Talven Vrinn, my character from Baldur’s Gate 3, and it’s spectacular. Just look at my Golden Boy. He’s a vision! 💞
Yay, I finished another fic for Baldur’s Gate 3! This one’s a direct sequel to A Godsdamn Kraken and the first featuring Astarion’s POV.
In a verse where Tav and Astarion met prior to the events of the game, had a wild adventure together and ended up kissing in a dark street corner, they now meet again in early Act 1, each carrying his own load of troubles and secrets.
He jerks and sits up, heart hammering away at some nightmare he’s already forgotten. Except for her voice. Talice. It was as if she’d whispered right in his ear. He feels the side of his face, like he might catch her breath on it still. Gods.
The fire has burnt to embers. Next to it, Gale lies with an arm under his head, snoring softly. It doesn’t look like Tav’s abrupt waking stirred Lae’zel either. But Astarion holds himself up on an elbow, watching him.
Tav rises gingerly and makes for the trees to relieve himself. Everything hurts. He’s well-used to hours of walking, but not in the sun, with a worm wriggling inside his brain, little to eat and nothing but the hard ground to rest on.
The good news is that Astarion’s charming, but alarmingly frail and undeniably weird new friend can, in fact, handle himself in a fight, despite his near-sighted, sun-struck squinting and his tendency to faint. He’s also decent at staying unseen and unheard, even without his magical cloak. They had no trouble sneaking up on the congregation of four-legged brains inside the disemboweled mind flayer ship. Even with Astarion to assist Talven’s aiming, his fire spell missed—but ended up turning the lot of the monsters to ash by hitting some flammable spillage instead. Pure luck, obviously. But then he managed to smack one of the grotesque little beasts so hard with his staff that it took to the air. Which happened to save Astarion from getting clawed, or bitten, or worse, as he stood defenseless, having already knocked an arrow. He proceeded to shoot the thing mid-flight, entirely deserving of his friend’s compliments and awe, but it had been a close thing.
