*𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫...

a death sentence, the title : 𝐅𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐄𝐑.

[hauntedurge]

#SHADOWHEART : IF I BEND UNDER THE WEIGHT THAT THEY GAVE ME / THEN THIS HEART WOULD BREAK & FALL.

an independent & low - activity multimuse roleplay blog for various canon & original characters from baldur's gate 3, written by rain (  they / she / he  ).  headcanon - based, not spoiler free.  RULES & MUSE LIST.

#BLOGROLL : sunhalf, badnikbreaker, ahlite, devolusion, esperhood, ghoullest, hichai, biasfactor, hauntedurge, strawnav.

[trevaler]

They smile. It’s a pretty smile, they know — disarming, in the way beauty most-often is. It’s pretty because they’re pretty, of course, with their pretty eyes and pretty lips and pretty everything, and it’s been the downfall of many-a-person, both intentionally and not. It's a pretty smile, but it’s not a kind one. It’s a promise. 

It would be a cruel thing to placate her with empty hope, and though Ionrillis would seldom name himself benignant, he would never call himself cruel.

“Certainly.” He states it like it’s simple, pretty smile and pretty lips and pretty everything framed by the flickering, crackling campfire. He likes Briar. He likes her not for who she is but who she tries to be, for her candor and her forthrightness. For baring her scars to them all with no recompense for herself. It’s a shame that the fondness he has for her — for the way she fights her nature / what she knows of her nature to be — will never equal trust, and it’s a shame that, for Ionrillis, the difference matters more than it does not. Then again, if he trusted her as much as he likes her, he could never have promised her this. 

He gestures to the seat across the fire. “Describe it to me, won’t you? This urge.”

[hauntedurge]

They're pretty / they're pretty / Ionrillis is a snake, but better a snake than a rabid dog. Briar is pretty, too, so pretty that it even stays when her face is twisted in a snarl, as it isn't, now. Her perpetual bored - irritation twists, for a moment, as if hurt, eyes rounding and glittering doe - like and large. It's not pain at his assent but a kind of relief so sharp that it comes close. None of the others take it seriously. None of the others take Briar seriously.

They're both pretty. Flowers with thorns. Briar at least tries to announce hers, the foolish, idiotic thing, shunning blood and destiny and the only warped love that has ever been given to you.

"Thank you," Briar says, voice shuddering around a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Her chagrin from a moment ago lessens, now, seems gone almost - entirely. She sits where he gestures, eyes widening again when he asks about the urge. They take you seriously, isn't that all wrong, isn't that so much fun? It will make it more euphoric when you kill them, the lack of surprise, replaced with the miserable, drowning sense that this was always going to happen. The corpsething's / corpsemaker's hands curl into the dirt and try to banish the imagining of what it would feel to curl fingers into Ionrillis's intestines.

"You need to breathe," she bites out after a long moment, the sharpness not meant to wound him but a simple expression of the pain she is in, every second / the pain you are in now, denying your instincts, your nature, your purpose. "Your body knows it needs to breathe, or it will die. If you tried not to breathe for long enough, your body would do everything in its power to force you. It would wrack you with pain. The pain would get worse and worse. If you were weak, it might simply override your will and force you to open your mouth and inhale."

Her fingers leave the dirt. Briar imagines wrapping them around her own throat again. She laughs unkindly, quietly, feeling wounded and small and stupid. It's a shit metaphor. It doesn't get at the lack of autonomy. At how it feels to have your body — your body, corpsething? It's not that, and we both know it — usurped, made vessel for something else. Something you wouldn't choose. But you don't truly get to make choices. It would hurt less if you stopped trying. SHUT UP.

[spirestar]

Astarion has put up with a lot of things. Not by choice. Never by choice. He's free now, isn't he?

Never. Never. Never. Wont be until--

She releases his collar and he shoves her away even further as soon as he can, something fearsome and festering and angry writhing in his chest at the suggestion that he should be glad for any bit of his circumstances / GRATEFUL? SO BECAUSE IT'S BAD FOR YOU, I SHOULD BE GRATEFUL? Far away, he knows that's not it, knows that he's picked at everyone's scabs in the hopes they'd explode on him, kept himself safe enough to not draw real harm but to exert some kind of control on his own circumstances, and it almost hurts to be reminded that he's right about knowing how people work. He's cruel because the world is cruel because life is a cruel and nobody gives a fuck about that fact until everything is cruel to them / It's why he needs power.

"Oh! Yes, of--course," he squares his feet to keep himself upright, looking ready to take a hit / What's another smack or punch or stab to an immortal face? How is it any different. "Because it's my fault you have an insatiable need to kill -- My fault you can't remember. Would that make it better?"

He wouldn't usually talk like this. Like he's been cornered. But it feels like that's exactly what he is. Astarion can keep lashing out, biting and clawing until he's thrown out, or stay quiet. He's had enough of that in his life. "So sorry you didn't get to stay in Cazador's dungeons! If he'd known you wanted that so badly, I'm sure he'd have sent me to find you and then watched to see what you'd do to me with that greatsword of yours, two toys for the price of one--"

Because that's what the two of them are, isn't it?

[hauntedurge]

They're both so awful — they're both freaks — and maybe the happy ending would be this, the both of them slaughtering the other in this camp, ridding the world of two MONSTERS THAT SHOULDN'T EXIST. Briar doesn't claim to be good but she values goodness, but she wants to be good, but some part of her recoils at what she's saying and what he's hearing both. No! she wants to insist. I didn't mean that! I just hurt every second and I'm scared of my body and the way that it's just a vessel that can be usurped at any time and when you treat my lack of personhood like it's a joke I feel like I'm going to die, and not even quick. Because Briar CARES FOR ASTARION, despite the itch in their blood and the Butler insisting she shouldn't, despite the bone - deep sick - bad desire to spill his blood and swallow it. EVERY MOMENT SHE DOES NOT KILL THEM FEELS LIKE BEING - KILLED AND YET ———

"What would make it better —" she hisses back, teeth barring, you remember the warm sense of safety and satisfaction that came with Alfira's blood all over your hands, you just want to be safe and full, not desperate, not on edge, not airless and starving, don't you, you detestable beast. "What would be better is if you could keep your fucking mouth shut. I don't make jokes about YOUR fucking servitude."

And she doesn't. She wouldn't. Sick and cruel and ugly as she is, that is a line she would not cross. ( is that better? it's funny. MIGHT BLACK OUT AND SPILL YOUR VISCERA ALL OVER THE WALLS, BUT AT LEAST SHE WON'T PROD AT YOUR TRAUMAS! )

Finally those awful hands of yours release him, a pity, too, shoving your twin monster back and way as if you can't bear to touch him. If you want to die so badly, why not kill him? It's practically the same thing. ( that's why she had to do it. even like this, body screaming for his blood, she does not want to be the thing that kills astarion. whatever thing that makes her body not - hers, does, but briar needs control. will kill for control of herself. )

[elfcollector]

[ wave politely ]

[elfcollector]

BALDUR’S GATE 3 (2023) — developed by larian studios.

[feral-ballad]

Yves Olade, from Bloodsport; “When rome falls”

[crownmemes]

Concerned Sentences, Vol. 4

(Concerned sentences from various sources. Adjust phrasing where needed)

"You can't save everybody."

"This has been going on for almost a week. You want to talk about it?"

"Where did you get those cuts?"

"How long have you been up?"

"How do you live like this?"

"You must be so lonely."

"I am worried about you, okay?"

"You blame yourself for what happened to him, don't you?"

"I appreciate your concern, but I wouldn't have done that anyway."

"When was the last time anyone touched you with affection?"

"You're thinking with your heart, not your head."

"You're scaring a lot of people. You want to just calm down?"

"If you have an allergy to psychologists, I suggest you get that looked at."

"You spend so much effort shutting down your feelings that you forget how to start them up again."

"You don't have to lie. Not to me. I understand."

"I did do the right thing, didn't I?"

"I'm sorry, I can't trust your judgement right now."

"Don't you ever sleep?"

"You can't help me. No one can help me."

"If you don't work through the grief, it'll paralyse you."

"I don't know; it kind of seems like a terrible idea."

"If you keep drinking, you're going to get fired."

"You drink too much. I get why, but I wish you wouldn't."

"You can't just flip a switch and become someone else."

"My demonstration of concern would not change what has happened."

"You hide it, but you do have feelings."

"How can you love him without trusting him?"

"You set standards for yourself no one could meet."

"You could be wrong! Don't throw away your life on a mistake!"

"Don't you realise that what you intend to do will be hopeless?"

"You mustn't keep this to yourself! I want to help you!"

"Careful. Too much love is dangerous."

"How long have you been alone? Are you lonely?"

[hauntedurge]

i'm sorry for disappearing off the face of the earth! got distracted with life and other blogs, but i miss my kids! like this for a short starter tomorrow to help me get back into gear!

[crownmemes]

Secrets & Lies Sentences, Vol. 2

(Sentences for those that lie, conceal, and seek the truth. Adjust phrasing where needed)

"Sometimes when people tell you they're your friend, they're not telling the truth."

"If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself."

"What you want to confirm, they will deny. What you want to find, they will hide."

"You feel you can lie as freely to me as to yourself."

"You damn me for my secrets, but you're afraid to speak the truth."

"I don't understand the need for secrecy."

"In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

"It's time to start telling me the truth!"

"I'll thank you not to test my intelligence or credulity with your ridiculous fabrications of truth and fictions."

"I obviously know how it looks, but I am telling you the truth."

"I can handle imposition. What I can't handle is secrecy."

"Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss."

"What about my face says 'let's share our secrets'?"

"Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies."

"I came here to put a bullet in you."

"Sometimes you have to keep a secret, even if it means hurting someone."

"There are truths you wouldn't understand even if I attempted to explain."

"What are you talking about? I don't have any secrets!"

"There's a truth even you're afraid to speak."

"Your eye is twitching. When people aren't being honest, their eye twitches."

"Whatever they told you, it's not true."

"What is it you want me to understand? The secrets or the lies?"

"I'll ask you no questions, and you'll tell me no lies."

"There's no such thing as a single truth. Everything must be seen from its own point of view."

"You hear nothing but truth from me."

"Look, we've all done things we're not proud of. We all have secrets."

"Truth is fluid and alterable."

"If you want to kill someone, just choose your victims carefully."

"I don't keep secrets. I'll tell you anything you want."

"You should just give up. This will all end really badly if you don't."

"People keep secrets for all kinds of reasons."

[hauntedurge]

@spirestar / astarion & briar!

Her hands fist in his collar / your hands, that have spilled so much blood, just like the hands of the man that hurt him, it feels good, doesn't it, to be just like the man that hurt him / and her teeth grit. And she is just like Astarion, terrified every goddamn second and lashing out, and he's so goddamn smug, he's so goddamn cruel, her violence breaks her heart and chains her, turns her puppet to a monster she cannot remember, and he —

"At least you knew," she hisses, voice furious and thick with unshed tears and envy. "At least you knew why you weren't free. At least you knew who was holding your leash." She crumples / your hands release his collar, the butler will be so disappointed, and that frightens you for reasons you can't articulate, the sense that he might tell someone / teeth gritting. He's so fucking smug, but she is SICK with furious, feverish jealousy, she would kill to at least know the name of her captor. "Some — something else owns my body, turned it into a tool I can't control, and I don't — even know who ——"

[hauntedurge]

talk about astarion and sex below the cut! i really hate the tone a lot of fandom takes about his relationship to sex and how his trauma informs his sexuality, so i want to lay out my particular read here, so there's no confusion / assumptions that i'm following any particular fanon. the obvious trigger warnings apply, particularly for talk of sexual abuse and rape.

i also want to clarify that a lot of this headcanon is based on my own experiences and the impact they had on my sexuality and sexual attraction — do not accuse me of talking out of my ass here. i will kill you.

especially towards the beginning of the game, astarion is functonally ace and also hypersexual. he doesn't experience sexual attraction in any meaningful sense, and is uncomfortable when those close to him view him in a sexual light ( despite going out of his way to ensure that they do; one of the many fucked up cognitive distortions his trauma hoisted upon him ). he's not sex - repulsed, but he associates sex with lack of autonomy and freedom, which does repulse him. that being said, this is influenced by his experiences being raped, and had he not experienced sexual traumas his sense of his own sexuality would be different. this is not me saying that being ace is inherently a result of trauma, just that traumas can influence one's relationship to sex/sexuality. this shit's weird and fluid.

but — especially when he is being romanced by someone who is actually good and kind to him and treats him well and encourages him to break the cycle of abuse — his relationship to both sex and attraction can change. his mind and body can, given time, recalibrate their relationship to both, reframing sex from 'a way people assert power over me and harm me, but also the only way to stay safe' to 'something i can share with people i trust that is enjoyable and builds intimacy and connection.' he begins to feel sincere sexual attraction again. his abuser took so many sources of joy from him, and he'll eventually reach a place where he can reclaim many of those things — given time, he'll come to reclaim sex!

the kind of sex he enjoys changes; he'll seek it out less, and i find the way that he becomes less interested in group sex or the like post - cazador very interesting and very true to my own experiences. he finds that he likes sex again, but also that, now that he's finally free to do so, he wants to be pickier about the kind he's having, and who he's sharing that part of himself with.

i'm extremely uncomfortable with any kind of talk that suggests that sex with astarion is inherently abusive or akin to assault, and i especially reject the idea that survivors of sexual abuse are inherently sex - repulsed and naturally too damaged to have or enjoy sex. it's infantilizing and, worse, manages to end up sounding like a more polite way of saying that abuse survivors are untouchable damaged goods. some abuse survivors will never want to have sex ever again, and some will. neither is more real or correct than the other. people are different. folks who headcanon astarion as being somewhere on the ace spectrum are stellar, obviously! i'd just ask people to be sure they're not infantilizing sexual abuse victims or their partners when they talk about this guy.

[spirestar]

There are many times that Astarion thinks he may have no feelings at all. That they could all be yet another illusion of choice, his mind a malleable thing, built to be manipulated rather than be allowed to choose anything. If he were wired this way then maybe the decades upon decades of enforced obedience might not hang over him like a hangman's axe — His rage so unbridled that he must laugh to keep it at bay. Would Cazador want him to feel that way? To make being dragged home hurt more? To remind him that he's nothing more than a tool to be pointed towards its work, an object that foolishly believes it has any more purpose than what it was made for? The sun on his skin is sometimes his only lifeline in this. Cazador would never let him have it. Giving to take away is one thing, but even giving a toy a breath of freedom like this wouldn't even be something the bastard would consider. A walk out at night, maybe; One followed by weeks locked up without more than cockroaches to feed on because he dared to believe he had earned time to himself. Never the sunlight. Never clear air and people who look at him as if he might be useful for more than what he's done for as long as he can remember—

He has plenty of time to question it. After all, elves don't truly sleep and too many lifetimes of never resting at all have left him bereft of most meditation skills. Astarion listens to cicadas. He counts their many scratching notes as if their legs are tiny violins serenading him teasingly. There's always something to look at, too: Karlach's blazing heart crackling louder than the camp's dwindling fire, Wyll's tossing and turning as he slowly but surely grows accustomed to his devilish form, Lae'zel's almost-comically tense posture as if she is a stone knight cast on a coffin, sword covering the length of her body. At times he wonders, with a kind of undeniable glee, that they never wake to stare at him in horror. For a not-quite-vampire, it only gets better than that when one is allowed in a building.

Tonight is different though. Astarion is awake once again, of course, but the difference is in his companions. All are asleep, save one — the cleric he's still not quite sorry he jumped at the coast that proves herself more and more useful as the days pass by. He has to think of people that way. Else he'll stop being able to question how he feels and be forced to come to terms with it all.

She's looming. And Astarion should know, he's an expert loomer. Propping his chin up slightly on his makeshift pillow, he takes in her odd position at the center of camp. Eyes far away and face flat. Usually he'd leave things be. People are wont to do as they will whether he says anything or not. But how can he — How can he possibly do that when he can't control what she might do next? If she's only contemplating whether to wake someone up and venture out, that's one thing. Maybe she wants to go kill a few extra bandits just to feel their blood on her skin. Astarion would understand! Instinct is a funny thing. After living in a state of alert most of one's life, it refuses to quiet down for any anomaly.

"Briar," he hisses softly, shaking his head with irritation (mostly at himself, also because she's made him think too hard). "Dear, what are you doing? You're not a statue, you're a half-elf."

@hauntedurge

[hauntedurge]

It's a strange thing, her face — it's strange to her, too. Her face. Your face? Little belongs to you, you desiccated corpse / corpsemaker, short of the blood you spill. That's why you need to spill more. There is so little to Briar that feels like Briar, an identity — it's all - instinct, memories gone but some strange scars remain. Constant reminders : YOUR BODY IS A WOUND, EVEN IF YOU CAN'T REMEMBER WHY. Her face feels all - wrong, not on the skull right, stretched too - tight and too - loose all at once. She can't feel her lips, even as they tremble, just barely.

It's a strange thing, her face. Her face, which can be so cruel, so sharp, so hideously monstrous, and so — young. So small, so afraid. The others have seen both. Have seen her grinning at violence, black eyes glittering with monstrous mirth — and they've seen her eyes go rounded and doe - eyed, surprised or afraid. Her name is hissed — almost - angry, almost angry? why does that feel familiar, why do you hate that? — and it's the latter expression that steals across her scarred visage, head whipping to face him, body almost stumbling. Her eyes round, lips parting, just barely. She hardly looks like a killer. She barely looks like a woman at all. For a moment, she is a little girl.

And then the expression breaks, smoothing into something more in - line with her usual bored - irritation. Your teeth bare, for just a moment, it's so quiet, and if you broke his jaw you could kill him slow and he wouldn't be able to scream and wake the others. You could open him up. You always preferred doing it without the butler. STOP IT. Her lips press together, teeth grinding behind them.

She doesn't remember standing from her bedroll at all. Her eyes flicker to her hands, the edge of her nightdress, and it's a relief that they're not stained red. She didn't — she didn't, she just — needed to stand. She breathes. Her ribs are too tight on her lungs, caging them.

"You startled me," she hisses back, taking a step closer, freezing, and then — sitting where she was, knees pulled to her chest. "I was —" Her voice fails, goes out of her like a held breath. "I don't — I don't know what I was doing."

[spirestar]

How did he get here? How did they? When did he fuck up so royally? And why isn't he asking himself that anymore as Karlach speaks?

❝ You're not alone. ❞ A bit of blazing light puffs from beneath her skin, leaves her glowing in the darkness like a beacon. ❝ You'll never be alone. Not as long as I'm here. ❞

For all the many gods he doesn't believe in, if there was a new one elected to some pantheon for their ability to ensure everyone in a camp was asleep when things like this went on, Astarion might have been influenced to consider their divinity. Because he's desperately grateful no one else can hear her / Can see the unbridled shock that overtakes his every feature. There's no twinge of a pompous smile he can manage to level her with: She means it.

Astarion wishes he could make himself very small. He often does it already with words. Obfuscating his true self beneath something larger than life comes to him naturally. As if he's a wild beast with an inviolable exoskeleton. The armor is an innate part of him. Take it or leave it—and he makes people leave it. Karlach was meant to, too. But where the others were often more focused on their own goals and issues, she too often took time. To poke at him, to realize when things have begun to wear him down, to know when he's not ready to speak and when he needs to. It's disgusting really! Awful! People are meant to be their usual selfish selves around him so he can have his way. It's all he thought he wanted in this new world of tadpole-induced freedom. A little space to exist and soak up the sun before some awful thing steals it all away from him someday.

Astarion's voice breaks like a dry twig snapping, "I—" Crimson eyes dart back to the campfire's last embers. On nights like these, everyone's better off surrounding Karlach for a fire than its sad excuse for warmth. His pale curls bounce as he shakes his head incredulously. "Stop that." He's not sure what else to say. It almost sounds like a promise. Astarion hates promises. They only exist to be broken. He has to refuse it, to push back—Clearly he should have before / Should have known he was too honest and too much like the part of him that's cocooned beneath his defenses. The one he pretends doesn't exist at all.

"No need to be so sentimental, dear!" Course correcting, Astarion waves his hand in the air to dissolve whatever intimate—not the kind he uses, but the kind of intimacy that terrifies him—tension his brief lapse might have built up. "It's not as if we're planning to split up any time soon. After all, I've never had as lovely a meat shield as you, Karlach." His usual haughty tone is hollow, though. Far away. If she presses, he'll have to let up. If he can't distract away, he'll be forced to lash out or. Be truthful. Either one would flay him open. Astarion finally tries to smile again. "Why would I ever give that up?"

@hauntedurge

[hauntedurge]

People bleed different.

The same knife's in her that's been buried in him — turned a tool, tortured, a monster's possession. Her wound's finally starting to scar, now that she's almost - free, and the scar makes her kind, or too enamored with life to deny it to anyone else, at least. He's not allowing his wound to scar at all, he keeps picking at it with the cruelty he thinks will keep him safe. She's known plenty of men like that in her time, and she doesn't judge, because she'd gotten like that, too, during the worst of it.

Astarion course corrects and is cruel and she knew he would, wouldn't have said that if she couldn't handle it, but godsdammit she deserves better treatment than this, let alone from somebody she counts as a friend. Her eyes narrow, arms crossing over her broad chest, and she says, "you don't get to treat me like a jackass just because you can't deal with people being kind to you, Astarion."

She can handle him at his worst — she can take him at his most deranged, and she wants to, she really does — but that isn't the same thing as taking cruelty laying down. Astarion is Astarion, capable of great hurt and great selfishness, but it's an insult to both of them to pretend he isn't capable of being better than this.

People bleed different. She'll help him dress the wound, but he doesn't get to stick pins in her while she does, like it's less frightening if they're both bleeding. "I'm not gonna stop, and you damn well know that. I mean it. I'm not gonna let you be alone — in your head, in your hurt — while I'm here. No matter how much of a dick you try to be to make me go, it's not gonna work, so you might well lay off."

[bhaalborn]

@hauntedurge said : " 💢 from astarion! "

" you don't understand the true implication of what you're saying, do you? " ulysses' anger is a LIVING THING- quiet, a rivulet of ( too much? no, not enough. do it, do it, do it- ) water disturbing an otherwise unbroken pond. they crowd into astarion's space and emanate a physical HEAT from how loudly their rage is roaring, clenched fists resting at their sides. they reach for nothing and do not move, but the intent that is clearly reflected within their gaze is saying something else entirely.

" i spend every waking moment fighting back the parts of me that beg to maim and kill. the sleepless nights, the insatiable need, the utter DEPRAVITY that colors every thought that i have. if i threw that away and took even one innocent life- " the next breath they inhale shudders, " -i wouldn't be me anymore. i'd be someone else. something else. "

starter prompts ( angry ), STILL ACCEPTING

[hauntedurge]

Astarion knows what a dangerous person looks like — there is absolutely nothing he is more familiar with than what a dangerous person looks like — and he knows, too, that there are far more who claim they don't wish to cause harm than there are who mean it. He finds Ulysses confessed and obvious bloodlust curious if only because they truly seems sincere in their desire to resist the worst part of themself when few others would bother — that was why he'd pressed the issue at all. Because he had thought Ulysses too wilting and weak and good. He hadn't expected this — a stronger person, a person who enjoys hurting, who enjoys the sound of another's scream, too close.

He raises his hands, not pushing them back, merely surrendering. This is a dance Astarion knows the rules of. This is a game he's played before. "Apologies for pressing what is obviously a sore subject," he says, not quite wilting, a note of sarcasm still threaded through the words. But it's just that — a thread. Playing at being the Astarion Ulysses knows to keep from being pathetic as the Astarion Cazador does, but feeling much more like the latter. Ulysses, at least, would have the decency to just kill him outright, rather than ——

His eyes drift and lower, looking anywhere but the murderer who's trapped him in a corner. ( this is what he gets, he supposes. for forgetting his place. the others certainly aren't keeping him around to have debates about morality with him. ) "I was just making a suggestion. I'm familiar with what happens when an appetite is suppressed for too long; it spirals out in humiliating ways. Better to choose it, is all I'd meant. If you feel confident you can keep it in check, then I trust you." He absolutely does not, but that's the right thing to say, isn't it?

[heartinhands]

No tradition exists for Medraut back home, in that tiny village beneath the waves -- their expression furrows for a moment, like she looks deeply concentrated, before cautiously taking Delight's pinkie and wrapping her own around it. "Like so?" They've seen other people do it, children mostly, which makes sense since that's what Delight has said, but she's never made a promise like that herself before. Medraut doesn't really believe in promises, but she makes them and keeps them all the time. It feels sacred. They know it was wrong to ask for Delight to commit to something they don't even believe in. Maybe for the act of divinity - something created and held between two people / the closest they can get to feeling whole.

Suddenly embarrassed, Medraut smiles and withdraws their hands, palms going to cover their mouth to hide their flustered expression. "I'm sorry. It was silly of me to make a request like that of you. Circumstances come and go -- I know that."

[hauntedurge]

"It wasn't silly," Delight counters — thinks of the tradition that drowns them, even when they've shed the name tied to the history — and means it. It wasn't silly. It's brave, to acknowledge when help's needed. If it wasn't, maybe they could manage it. The script is simple and the charisma is practiced, but the kindness isn't a lie. ( it can't be a lie. delight knows themself, even past the mask. they allow it to slip, just a little. they and medraut are very much alike. ) "I want to help, and I can stay. I'm good enough at magic that if I'm needed I'll just conjure up a double and send them off." They could, too, at least for a time.

Delight breaks promises, sometimes, but not these kinds. And they always find a way to make it work. That's what being a hero really is — finding a better option and taking it with all their might. Their smile softens, goes truer as it fades. "You've got a real future in making pinky swears, by the by. That was a great one for a newbie."

[celestieu-deactivated20231116]

`` @hauntedurge said: patch . from astarion! || prompt.

SOFT PITIFUL WHIMPER ; it's bitten down and swallowed like poison, practiced aptitude in keeping quiet. she's a healer, she should be able to do this herself, has closed more grievous wounds than this a thousand times over. but she's tired, and the magic fails to manifest in any way potent enough to guide the wounds to close. tadpole, it's the tadpole. she has to remind herself she's not the only one, all of them have been feeling weaker, feeling drained. as if something was obstructing them from the gifts they'd mastered over time.

❝ i . . . sorry, i should -- i should be able to fix this. ❞ but she can't. and without a healing potion between them, they're back to basics : ripped fabric to act as makeshift bandages, spun tightly around the gash torn into her arm. the more pressure they apply, the more stable her ability to think becomes. with her clarity, eyes immediately shift to watch the vampire's hands, focused on the blood staining pale skin and how quickly she'll need to have him clean it before it reverts. crimson to gold. ❝ ugh, and i am complaining instead of thanking you. thank you. have you . . . done this a lot? ❞

[hauntedurge]

Her apology — her guilt — only serves to rankle the man further, though he keeps from letting it show on his face; only his eyes harden, barely. She needn't apologize for being less powerful than she might be without a tadpole in her skull, and it comforts him, that she needs to depend on him. Far easier to keep others under control, to keep safe, when others owed you something. He breathes out as he finishes wrapping the wound. He's done a good job — and while the blood, that close, is a temptation, he's not a savage.

"Don't apologize. You're not dead, and what's what matters." He sits back, thoughtlessly wiping the blood from his hands with a rag to lessen the scent. "I have," he answers, head tilting. Not his own wounds — he cannot truly remember if he was regularly wounded regularly before this life, though he doubts it. And when Cazedor hurt him — the monster became very cross when any of his toys weren't appropriately appreciative of the gifts he gave them. But he'd bandaged his false siblings' wounds, and they his, always in private. "I always thought I ought to invest some training in learning at least some rudimentary healing magic, but it wasn't available to me."

[hauntedurge]

delight actually really disapproves of a lot of wyll's heroism, particularly in that he's allowed a situation to brew where the sword coast is so dependent upon him. they're of the opinion that that sort of dependence is likely to lead to more death and is, at best, selfish. often the sign of a hero more invested in their ego than in protection. this doesn't come up immediately because delight likes wyll interpersonally a lot ( they get along so well! ) and because it's apparently very early on that he's not just doing this to feed his ego. that being said, to the extent that the two ever have any kind of meaningful conflict, it's based around that.