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Debris falls to the floor.
Astarion peeks around the desk he’s hiding behind and flinches back as one of the bookshelves tip over and crash down. People scream in the distance as they book it toward the exits—ka-clump, ka-clump, ka-clump—he bites back a yip as the bronze beast that just dropped through the library roof stomps and kicks into the other tables. He pats around his desk, staying down and snagging paper by paper because he has been hardly trancing the past tenday working on his mock litigation draft and there was no way he was leaving it behind just because another monster decided to trample through Baldur’s Gate. The ground shakes beneath Astarion. He squeezes his eyes shut, stuffing his papers against his chest, thinking maybe if he ignores it hard enough—
He looks up. Some crystal for a helmed eye lands on him and begins to glow brighter. Astarion screams, snatches one last sheet off the desk, and runs. Light, thunder, magic blasts out of the thing and from the sounds of it, the desk he was just hiding behind is combusted to splinters.
Astarion dashes through one of the aisles, tossing a glance back as the construct turns after him and lashes out an arm, knocking into one of the shelves. He squeezes his papers closer, and running is all he can do as another strike hits another shelf, sending them down one by one after his heels.
It was supposed to be a nice summer day. The horrors could not have waited until he should have been done with his work tomorrow, or they could have done this last tenday when he was still procrastinating on it. The automaton whirls hard and Astarion risks another glance back, gasping and skidding on the tiled floors as it clamps onto the fallen bookshelves and launches into the air. It sails over his head and sends cracks through the floor when it lands at the end of the aisle just ahead of him. He spins back around. The shelves are caved in. The construct takes three hulking steps toward him. There is not enough time to start feebly climbing over what mess the library is now.
Astarion turns again, clutching his papers protectively to one side as he gestures up a hand and whips a mote of fire right at the thing’s ‘face.’
“IGNIS!”
It hits. It does much of nothing. The gem under the construct’s helm starts glowing again.
“Ah, well,” Astarion says. “I tried.”
Something hits the side of its helm and explodes in thunder. Magic crackles the air and the automaton crashes into the bookcases alongside of it. Astarion tosses up his arms as shelves crack and one bookcase snaps in two.
“...that! Have some yourself!” Light flashes and smaller shots of force blast into it, each knocking it back, one, two, three, then stumbling to the floor.
Somebody red, a mighty tiefling woman darts into view and raises a war-hammer and brings in down right onto the crystalline helm. The construct jerks. She gets another hit and Astarion gasps as it whirls, almost knocking her aside but she leaps back just in time. More people flood between the shelves. A magician’s hands crackle, his brow furrowed but mouth pressed in a focused smile. Another woman with near-white hair cracks a glowing weapon into one of the joints in its other arm. A third, green-hued, long-eared, and decked in silver leaps over it and slams a sword almost as big as her into the construct’s gem socket, shattering pieces off of it.
The tiefling glances up and gasps at the sight of Astarion standing there gawking like an idiot. “Fangs! Guys, it’s him! Wyll, come on!”
Astarion yells as she charges after him. He spins around and throws himself at the pile of what used to be bookshelves, scrambling as some of it caves under him.
“Hup! Hold on!” Too late. She was already on him. Astarion sobs as claws snag the back of his doublet and plucks him right from the mess. Wood clatters to the ground. He’s thrown over a leathered shoulder. “Got him!”
Another tiefling—no, just a man with horns?—gives a quick grin and charges through the remaining bookshelves with a rapier braced before him. “This way! We’ll need to go around!”
The automaton’s metal creaks before another smash sends a boom through the library.
“Oh, gods!” Astarion hollers. “Corellon, save me!”
A shake runs through the floor. He doesn’t even want to look up. He doesn’t want to see any of these people get flung and splat on the walls or squished or their heads exploded. He clamps a hand over his eyes as he’s jostled against this fiery woman’s backside, his papers still clutched tighter to himself than a thief on a fat coin purse.
Astarion flinches as daylight hits. They got out of the library. His rescuers, kidnappers, whoever they are run past bricked walls and down alleyways. The woman is breathing hard, something churns within her as she follows the horned fellow. A horse drawn wagon almost runs them over as they dart across a main road.
“Hells!” Astarion yells again as the driver yanks on the reins and hollers. “Will anybody tell me what’s going on?!” He sucks an inhale with his stomach bent against the woman’s shoulder. “My family has money, they’ll pay whatever you’re asking, just stop jostling me-e-e-e!”
They’re back down another alley way and actually stop. The horned man is full of breath and laughter, “Calm down! We’re here to save you!” He then takes Astarion’s wrist into a clawed hand and shouts a spell. The world rips and Astarion is going to lose his breakfast. They land in a dark room, somewhere with four walls and a solid roof overhead, so it is admittedly a bit of an improvement with no hulking metal constructs aiming to crush or vaporise him.
The tiefling woman sets Astarion to his own two feet, giving a winded whoop for air. He stumbles back, mind whirling but catches himself. He still has his paperwork. Still has his head. They’re in an abandoned flat with just a bed frame and an old table. Wheels clatter on the streets and people talk in the distance, but it’s quiet beside the blood pounding in his ears. The strangers steadily stare at him. The woman’s skin pulses underneath like she ate a fire. Both have tails twitching behind themselves, but the man is no tiefling.
They keep gawking, really, and the bottom of Astarion’s boot scuffs against the floorboards as he takes a step back and turns a shoulder onto them. “And just what in the hells was all of that?!”
“Ha!” The woman throws back her head. With a laugh, she says, “Yep. That’s still our Astarion, all right.”
“How do you know my name? What is really going on? Who are you people?”
“Easy,” the man starts, holding out his hands. “We have no reason to see you get hurt. Quite the opposite, really. We’ve been hunting down that thing through time and time again.” His smile his soft, his one eye twinkles. A charmer. “Our friends are taking care of the last of it and once they all come back, we’ll take our leave. We only wanted to make sure you’re all right.”
“Well...I’m fine. I think. I still don’t know who any of you are.”
“Arm’s bleeding,” the woman points.
Astarion glances down and the world immediately swelters. His tongue gets thick and takes a few dizzy steps back but there isn’t much else to go. “If you’re not here to shake payment out of me or anything...thank you, I suppose. Being squished like that in the library would have put a damper on my day.”
Unfortunately, they must be people-people or just up to no good and follow him as he tries to shirk around the room. She’s close and loud and hot; Astarion can feel the heat from her clam his face, “It’s no problem! Guess we should introduce ourselves, right? No harm.”
The man just keeps smiling at Astarion warmly and shrugs. “I don’t see why not.”
“I’m Karlach. This is Wyll. It’s nice to meet you like this—“ She gasps and suddenly leans forward. Astarion’s back goes rigid as bright amber eyes bore into his. “Oh, my...gods,” she whispers.
His cheeks are warm. It must be from the fire in her chest. He tries not to stare. “W-what?”
“Your eyes! This must have been what they look like—I have to tell you when we—I mean...you’re alive!” It’s a jumble of words and hands flapping as she turns away to pace in a tight circle. “I mean, of course you are, it’s just we must’ve been sent back further than I thought and—"
“Karlach,” Wyll warns.
Karlach stops her pacing, spinning around with another excited gasp, “Wyll! That means this is before everything with Caza—“
“Ssh! I know, I know. Remember, we can’t say anything.”
“Nothing?! Pssh, come on. What’s going to happen? One of the gods gonna come down and squish me under their thumb? I’d like to see them try.”
She sticks up her hands as Astarion shrills, “Sent back from what?! Will one of you tell me what is going on?”
They glance to each other.
“What was that thing? How do you know me?!”
Wyll grimaces as Karlach makes a few uncertain noises.
“Tell me, damn it!”
“We can’t,” she says.
“Yes, you can.”
“We can...we’re just not supposed to.”
“Who says?”
“Withers.”
“Who?!”
Wyll steps in, “Exactly! Who. Even if we were to give all the answers we can give, you’d still be hard-pressed in understanding it out of context. All you need to know is that we’re after those things that were hunting you—"
“Things? There are more of them?”
“Not in the way you think. Here and now, there are only one of them, and we just took care of it.”
“So how do you know to go after it? Why are you going after it?”
“We were sent by a friend. You’ve seen what those things are capable of. It’s in everyone’s best interest we prevent destruction like that in the city.”
“Uh huh,” Astarion says. “And how is it that you know my name?”
Wyll may keep a good face, but his eye flickers toward Karlach.
Karlach, who says before he can use that breath, “You’re like, the most infamous magistrate in Baldur’s Gate! How do we not know you?”
Astarion’s brow falls to a glower. “I’m looking to become a magistrate. I’m still in law school.”
“Oh…”
“You should leave the tall tales to your friend.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Wyll groans and his head falls into hand.
Astarion just huffs and turns his back to them, nearing one of the boarded windows to gaze out at the streets.
They start whispering to each other like he can’t hear them.
“I don’t know how much we can tell him,” Wyll says. “If we’re supposed to tell him at all.”
Karlach doesn’t seem like the kind to whisper, “It’s a bunch of bullshit, that’s what it is. Astarion is standing right there in front of us like this and we can’t give him a warning whatsoever?!”
“You heard Withers. We can’t risk it. We’re here for one thing, and one thing only: stopping these monsters and making sure we’re all alive.”
“But you know what’s going to happen if we don’t say something here and now-!”
“We can’t. Even if we got away with doing something like that, you don’t know how it’s going to change our time. Something worse could happen.”
Karlach scoffs. “Something somehow worse than that batty bastard?”
“Us not being able to meet one another and do everything we’ve done for the good of the Coast, if circumstances are changed so much.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Oh.” Then, “Ohhh,” and Wyll urges her on, “Yeah, yeah, I get what you’re saying.”
“I can hear every word,” Astarion tells them crisply.
One of them sighs.
He turns from the window, approaching them, but stops a few steps away. “Fine, let’s believe your little story for a while. You’re all from the future and were sent to stop some monster that goes back in time to kill me, kill us, is that it?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“How far back?”
Karlach purses her lips. Both of them avoid his gaze.
“Let me guess, it’s something else you can’t tell me.”
“Sorry.”
Astarion rolls his eyes.
Then he starts to think. He starts to wonder, “You must know someone powerful to be able to go back like this.”
“Yeaaaaaaah, you can say that.”
Wyll clears his throat.
Karlach raises her voice, “Can’t tell you anything, though!”
There’s a thump on the other side of the door. Both whirl around. “Shit!”
“The gods coming down to smite you for spilling their secrets,” Astarion says. He’s almost already died once today. Wyll and Karlach set their hands on their weapons and approach the door as he glances around for somewhere to hide. There’s very little by the time they walk over and unlock it.
“Hey!” Astarion startles at the noise. It’s a miniature celebration.
A bearded man with his long hair pulled up and longer robes comes into the room, hands shaking in beat, “I believe if we combine this with the other two crystalline structures we have, we may be able—" Two others follow him in, one half-elf woman and the other alien. Wyll closes the door. Astarion does a double take. As soon as the other man gets one look at him, the stranger barks a laugh. “Would you look at that!” He comes forward, eyes and smile glimmering, only to set a hand to his chin and the other to his hip as he rounds Astarion, thoughtful noises and all. Astarion just leans away, then to the other side as the man comes up again. He leans in just like Karlach did, though more inquisitively, eyes narrowing. “So this is what you were like two hundred years ago.”
“Two—"
“Gale!” Multiple of them shout.
Gale flinches and tosses up his hands, backing away. “Apologies. Inquiring minds and all that."
“Oh, hells.” Astarion catches sight of the cracked clump of what used to be the automaton’s ‘head’ tucked under the alien woman’s arm. A cut had streaked red down from her elbow, and the world doubles. “Oh, hells,” he bemoans again. “You’re bleeding.” He stumbles to press a hand to the closest wall. “I need to sit down. I’m going to be faint.”
“No way! He’s queasing at the sight of blood!” Karlach cackles like this is the funniest thing in the world. A couple of them start snickering with her.
“Tch. I suppose his lack of bravery is longstanding, then.”
“Lae’zel,” someone warns her, but it’s in a giggle.
Astarion takes a few deep breaths before giving them some glint from the corner of his eye. A light cracks into the middle of the room. He jerks up with a gasp, his back bumping into the wall.
“Don’t tell me that’s another one of those—“
It blooms into a cloudy swirling maw, but nothing comes out of it.
“There it is,” Gale says calmly. They’re expecting this. He tips out a hand and nods in farewell before stepping into the portal. The alien woman sends back a look to Astarion, something almost like a smile, a smirk. The other woman hurries toward him, hands glowing and cups his elbow.
“Just real quick,” she says.
It’s good. The cut on Astarion’s arm closes, though the same couldn’t be said about his sleeve.
“Shadowheart!” Karlach calls. Wyll is already standing beside her in the portal. “Hurry before it closes without you!”
“Coming!”
“Wait!” Astarion calls. “That—that’s it?! Just a clobber some beast on its head and goodbye?”
Shadowheart steps inside and tosses them a look. “It feels crude not to give him a warning, at least.”
“A warning about what!”
“What could we possibly say that will prepare him for what lies ahead?” Gale isn’t seen, but his voice is an echo, “Ah. I believe we already said too much.”
“You said too much,” Lae’zel says as something starts taking them up and inward.
Astarion stumbles forward, not sure he should grab out to them.
Karlach clamps a hand over the edge of the portal, “Fang—Astarion! Listen, there’s going to be somebody—"
“Karlach!” Wyll and Shadowheart grab onto her. She growls out and tries to elbow them away. All of them start to struggle and it’s something stronger than any of themselves. “We can’t risk breaking the timeline!”
“Fuck the timeline!”
“You’ll just have to hug him extra hard when we get back, all right?!” Shadowheart pleads.
“Whatever happens—we’ll be there, you hear me?!” Karlach gives one last roar and lets go.
“I-!” The portal sucks her in. It snaps shut. Light and magic dissipate. They’re gone.
The room is quiet. It is the way it was, and Astarion is alone.
Whoever those people were, are, whoever they will be, time travelling two hundreds years from the future, the library destroyed, that giant mechanical beast—Astarion glances around uselessly at the walls that have no answers. His eyes sting. A headache is coming in.
He eventually slips out of the room. Everybody else in the building is none the wiser, but he knows. Something will come. Something that sends dread to the pit of his stomach.