FSBE 80 - The Feast
The rogue finds a snack.
On AO3.
Blood. Hot and living and Astarion is starving. Empty, cold, a dead thing hollowed out and his teeth sink into warm flesh, fangs popping through skin in the same manner of a poet describing luscious fruit. It spurts into his mouth. Coats his tongue and teeth and he gulps greedily. Seizes the thing in his grasp as it thrashes and makes distressed noises.
None of that matters. Not his prey’s wet squealing, not the shouting or the spells slinging about. Only this. Only the glorious life filling his maw. The heat traveling down his throat. The taste of salt, of dedication. This one is a true believer. Hints of bitter pain, acrid fear and sour misery, but a rich devotion that brings up ghosts of a feast, of a thick sauce shining with fat. The sparkling certainty washing it all down and filling up the clawing, scrabbling void of his gut.
Being safe.
The man lashes out. The final, almost gritty dregs of desperation. Astarion makes a sound, grabs his head, shoves it to the side to rebury his fangs and draw all that delicious blood into himself.
There’s no escape. The realization sinks in along with the cold, the grasp of death closing around the man’s heart. Astarion tastes his end.
He does not stop. Not until the man hangs lifeless in his arms. The fluttering pulse stops entirely and lungs rattle their last. One, last mouthful—the sweet bliss of blood, rich with experiences—and he swallows it down.
Finally, he looks up. His gaze catches on something humanoid, moving wrong. Wounded. It’s a predator’s vision, some dim part of him notes. It’s walking weakness and so utterly delicious.
He lunges. Takes this one lightning fast. Only this one is shorter than even he. Smaller, but more compacted muscle. A strange scent of spice and deep, damp dark.
“Iblith!” It’s all she manages to spit out as he grabs the woman—a drow woman, how exotic—and yanks her to him, fangs aching.
Sharp pain in his belly. She’s slipped a knife up under the seam of the (ha) drow armor he now wears (of course she’d know its weaknesses) (aside from looking positively fantastic) and stabs him in the navel. But hot blood from his last meal floods his withered veins, plumping out dessicated flesh, and something as insignificant as a bit of a knife wound isn’t about to stop him now.
He bites. His eyes might happen to roll back into his skull. Gods below, she’s glorious. Sharp and biting, an aged, dry red (ha). A life of scheming and murder and oh, there’s betrayal in there. Something drove her out of the dark and into the arms of the Absolute and it tastes divine.
She fights harder than the man before her. What an exquisite people, drow.
He takes her to the ground. Pins her with his weight, with the halfway feral strength of a half-starved vampire spawn finally let loose to feast. There is nothing in this or any other world that could pry him off her.
Yet she fights. Strikes at his head. Manage to claw an ear.
He savages her for that. Rips into her soft meat like one of those beastly little ankle dogs with a rat. Rips out a great chunk of flesh and shoves his tongue into the wound.
He’s never been this full in his entire unlife. Not once. Maybe the bear. But two large thinking creatures that don’t reek of goblin piss? Not some sour, gritty duergar? But a human and a drow?
His stomach…strains. He has no idea how much he can hold. Has never been able to test that. Perhaps he’s about to. Perhaps he’ll drink and drink until he splits down the middle in a burst of showered gore.
Like that monstrosity of a Thorm. Only far, far more attractive.
He giggles. Face coated in blood, his prey’s heart beating erratically, the wings of a hummingbird buzzing uselessly beneath him.
He does not burst. Her body gives out before that can happen. He finds himself lapping at the shredded meat of her neck for a moment when the relative quiet registers.
Astarion lifts himself. Settles on his knees as the dim chamber seems to sparkle around him. The room swims and he sways, just a little. A phantom memory of true drunkenness. Gods, it’s so good. His trousers are a bit tight, and he wonders fleetingly where dearest Eleanor got off to.
Ah. Right. They’re in the middle of storming that awful tower and murdering all the cultists. The harpers pick through the bodies—attempting to treat their wounded—while giving him a wide berth. He catches the Blade staring at him, nose wrinkled slightly in self-righteous disgust.
Blood slicks the entire lower half of Astarion’s face. Some has gotten up his nose. It slicks the front of his armor from neck to groin (thankfully hidden because drow do think to cover that particular vulnerability). It’s so difficult to dine civilly in battle (after he goes so long without) (he’s gone without for much longer than this, but not since he’s had a taste of the ambrosia that bastard has denied him all this time).
Astarion holds the Blade’s eye (ha) as he grins. Makes a show of licking his lips, sucking some of the spatter off his gloved fingers.
The young man looks away first. Serves him right.
The tower is filled with the scent of more blood and bowels. His stomach nearly sloshes as he stands (what an interesting sensation). The others appear to be in one piece. A few wounded.
…no Eleanor.
Shit.
He doesn’t scent her blood in all this mess. Nor does he spot her—or a piece of her—lying around. Unless she’s been taken.
He picks his way over bodies and the wailing wounded. Scans the ground, looking for her familiar shape, her dark hair, those lovely, black eyes,
Finds instead a smear of blood and a boot print. He’s not some ranger to track others about with nothing more than that. But he knows. Something in him, perhaps the tadpole or perhaps simple familiarity (what a concept, but not one he’s prepared to delve into just now) knows, and so he follows the patter of spilled blood. Not hers. He makes sure to breathe as he goes in case the scent changes, but it doesn’t.
It’s not hers.
(He’s also not going to delve too deeply into the way that unclenches some knot in his chest, surely that’s because she’s his friend, people think things like that for friends.)
He tracks it to a small alcove, an even smaller room. Quarters for a rotating watchman, perhaps. It has no windows and one door, partially open, and through that a powerful waft of blood, still not hers.
Disgusting sounds spill out from that cracked open doorway. Wet and meaty. He reaches out, pushes it the rest of the way, to find dearest darling Eleanor. And what remains of Disciple Z’rell.
The half orc must have dragged herself to this place. There’s a small table with two chairs, one of those knocked over. Yet the oil lamp sitting upon the table remains upright, flame flickering. Enough to cast dramatic shadows over the deranged tableau.
Whatever Z’rell sought in this room, what she found was an ambush. She lies on her front, legs straight, arms curled—what must have been defensively. It didn’t help.
Her face is gone. The meat is still there, but it’s only meat. Anything recognizable has been bludgeoned to an over-boiled pudding by the blunt end of dearest Eleanor’s spear.
She’s still whaling away. Specks of blood fly as she strikes again and again. The dead skull bounces in such a way as to suggest a broken neck. Though he doubts that part was on purpose. Or came first.
Eleanor’s eyes are wide and wild. Her teeth bared in a silent snarl. Blood spatters her face, her hands, down her front.
The two of them almost match. How adorable.
“Darling,” he says.
She doesn’t hear him. Puffs a few words in between panting, “fucking bitch pig” and “die fucker die.”
So she’s in a state. Hmm. He knows she’s prone to such a thing—her inexperience at violence does tend to provoke such a reaction. Still. He doubts she’ll be happy about it once she comes back to her senses.
And he knows better than to grab her. Not like this. He’d be just as likely to be clubbed in his own, beautiful face, and that would be a tragedy for all of them.
He looks around (fucker!). There’s a chest in the corner—that could have been what the good disciple was trying to reach (bitch!). He flips it open, skims over potions and what looks like a poorly-concealed half of a molding sandwich (fuck!) and plucks up a threadbare shirt.
“Fuck you fuck you fuck you!” says Eleanor.
“Oh darling,” he says, and lobs the shirt at her.
It hits. She jerks. Would likely have dropped her spear if not for her white-knuckled murder grip. She flails the end of the spear about, clearly expecting an attack. Meets nothing but open air.
And him. He leans against the wall and smiles. It’s cute when she gets worked up like this. Now that he’s thinking on that, all those tendays ago when they first met—not when he pinned her with a knife to her neck, but the first time she did something interesting—it was just like this. Instead of a halfling she’d just stabbed to death, this one is a half orc with whom she (and he) hold something of a grudge against.
He wiggles his fingers. “Hello.”
She blinks a few times. Face goes slack. When she speaks, her words come thick, her tongue clumsy. “Astarion?”
“Very good, Welcome back, dear.”
She blinks at him again. Turns to ogle her own handiwork. Stares for a long moment, brow scrunching. Like she doesn’t recognize. Like she can’t remember.
She sways a little.
Well, he can’t have her injuring herself now, can he. She doesn’t even flinch when he takes her by the shoulders. Guides her out of the carnage. Regards her a moment—eyes are glassy—and clucks his tongue. Finds his own (unused) handkerchief (shoves down the urge to use his tongue in its place) and starts to wipe the spatter from her face.
She would be upset to know it was there. Even though the sight sends a thrill through him.
“You don’t seem injured?” he says as he works.
Prompts her to look down, notice her grimy hands. He tuts her and lifts her chin. Makes a show of cleaning her throat so she doesn’t think on it. Can’t look back down.
“I think I’m fine?” she says.
“You’re certain?” He stares into her eyes even as he takes her hands into his own and begins to wipe down her fingers.
Sustained eye contact flusters her enough to look away from him entirely (more, even, than when he touches her).
“Yeah. But adrenaline. I don’t know.”
He assumes “adrenaline” is her word for the red mist that clearly took her. She’s such a delight.
“I suppose we ought to get our former-Sharran to check,” he says. “Just to be sure.”
She nods. Still dazed. Then frowns. “You’re covered in blood.”
It doesn’t seem to phase her when it’s on him. He smiles wide enough to show a glint of fangs. “I had a lot of fun.”
Instead of recoiling or looking at him with disgust, she only nods. As if she expects this.
“You got enough to eat?” she says.
He’s not sure how to answer her for a moment. He’s a vampire. His survival depends on death. But she seems less concerned about that than she fusses over his…his comfort.
“I did, yes.”
She nods again, and he shoves down the strangest urge to tuck her lengthening hair behind her curved, tiny little ear.
She doesn’t protest as he nudges her before him and herds her towards the door.
He pauses there. Looks back to the shattered corpse of Z’rell. His Eleanor took what happened to him very personally. He already knew that, but this? He had no idea this lurked behind those sharp eyes.
Their journey certainly is taking its toll on her. She’s nearly unrecognizable to the woman who folded the moment he grabbed her outside that wreckage. Who stared up at what could have been her own death so horrifically resigned.
The half orc deserved it. For killing him. For upsetting his only friend. Were he any less civilized, he’d spit on her corpse.
Instead, he hustles dearest Eleanor back to the group of weirdos, now dragging bodies to the sides to clear the floor and setting up barricades of their own.
“Did she lose another limb?” their confused cleric says.
Darling Eleanor really ought to start a tab so she can get that juice she mutters about.
“Not this time!” he says, beaming.
