Chapter Text
The one problem with the Shadow-cursed lands is that it is always cold.
Well. Really, there are a few other problems—the company could be improved, for one thing, and for all the novelty of being in a place where he doesn't have to worry about the sun, Astarion is not that much of a fan of the dark. But the cold. That eats at him, in a way the other concerns don't. He doesn't like the feeling of cold stone on bare feet, or cold metal in his hands. The titular curse seems to make the shadows not just hungry, but biting. The air feels cold, in a way that seeps under any layer of clothing and seems to dull any fire, no matter how bright. Even inside the relative protection of Moonrise, the cold persists.
That's the other problem: for all that the Absolute freed him from Cazador, he's somehow found himself in a cage once again, this time without even the freedom to step outside and get lost in a crowd.
Not that Astarion's complaining! Cazador always sneered at him for being ungrateful and Astarion intends to prove him wrong now that he finally has something worthy of gratitude. The Absolute is—well, she's better than the city of Baldur's Gate could ever hope to be. It irritates him, the way the others talk about her, acting as if she's some stupid god. Most of these so-called "True Souls" act no better than common cultists, praising her name and her great works from dusk until—well, still dusk because there isn't a dawn anymore. The point remains that even Bhaalists are less sycophantic.
No. The Absolute is so much better than a god. She isn't some distant, cold statue to pray to, staring down at you with inanimate indifference.
The Absolute is his friend.
Astarion has never, actually, had a friend before. He's admitted this to her, quietly, when no one else is around to hear. He's not really sure how she can hear him, or when, but he likes to talk to her out loud. It feels more real that way, more tangible than trying to get her attention with just his thoughts. He imagines she can see him all the time, waking or sleeping, maybe even read his mind—and yet somehow, despite knowing him more thoroughly than any person ever has, she isn't repulsed by him. She loves him.
Astarion has never been loved before, either.
So what if the others think he's crazy for talking to thin air. So what if those sniveling fools look down on him for treating her like a person instead of with all the pomp and prayers and stifled formality reserved for a god. He's been corrected for his irreverence more than once. Punished and reeducated, too, not that it's ever stuck. He's not terribly fussed about torture—not now that he has someone soothing his pains from inside his head.
The others just don't understand. She doesn't mind that he's a blasphemous little shit. She loves him. She understands him. She doesn't want him to grovel and beg; she just wants him to kill in her name.
Astarion is very happy to kill in her name.
He gets to eat the people he kills, now. She broke all of Cazador's compulsions, even the ones that kept him starved and cowed for two centuries of servitude. No worthless god ever did that for him before, now did they?
It is with this in mind that he sits in the rafters over Ketheric Thorm's throneroom, watching the newest selection of refuse be dragged before Z'rell with his hands tucked into the frigid pockets of his doublet. The great Ketheric can't be arsed to show up for this filtering process, of course—he's far too busy being brooding and worshipful and jerking his room-temperature cock to portraits of his dead wife to bother with the day-to-day running of the cult he supposedly oversees. But that's what Z'rell is for. And Astarion.
Shortly after arriving at Moonrise, Astarion learned that lower-ranking members of the cult are sent out into the shadowcurse every few days to scout—usually with a moonlantern, although Astarion thinks it's much funnier when they're sent without one—and they frequently come back with a motley mixture of creatures and monsters and mortals of all sorts who have wandered into the cursed lands for one reason or another. Most of these wanderers are new recruits—those who have heard the Absolute's call and followed it all the way to the one place on the planet that's more miserable than Baldur's Gate.
Sometimes, though, they get a handful of misplaced refugees, or beleaguered travelers, or potential enemy infiltrators. An encampment of Harpers has popped up nearby, and everyone is getting paranoid about it—not that those flimsy so-called freedom fighters stand a chance against even the lowliest goblin in the Absolute's forces. Most of them don't even make it to the Tower alive.
But because of all this confusion, Z'rell or one of her lackeys has to divide up the ones the scouts bring in and send them to their proper places—the true believers to their brand-new barracks, the potential prisoners to their crowded cells, and the fresh meat to the slaughter.
Astarion is in charge of the slaughter. No one ever gave him the job, of course—he assigned it to himself. Hidden up in the rafters, bow across his knees, there's nothing anyone can do to stop him from sniping the disobedient and the unworthy. It pleases the Absolute, and gives him a very tasty range of thinking-creature blood to sip on when he slips down from his hiding place to help dispose of the bodies.
Today, unfortunately, it seems like there won't be a need for his arrows. There are only five supplicants brought before them today—some days Astarion has seen as many as twenty be dragged to Z'rell muscular feet, usually when the goblins manage to waylay a caravan somewhere in the mountain pass.
Each of today's five has passed Z'rell's inspection. More importantly, they've passed the Absolute's. She tells Astarion, sometimes, if people are traitors. Alas, she's being terribly silent today. Of the souls below him, four of them are the usual gutter trash from the Gate and beyond, called to the Absolute's service with brainless fervor. The fifth is a little more interesting, but sadly not in a way that Astarion can drink from without consequences.
He is a True Soul. But not one that Z'rell has ever met or accounted for, apparently.
His name is Wyll. With a y—the spelling is evidently important enough for him to specify when Z'rell asked him to introduce himself. He is not particularly tall or short, not especially broad or thin. He's not even an interesting species—human, as far as Astarion can tell from this distance. His hair is neat and secured practically out of his face, and his skin is rich bronze-brown. He's handsome enough. If Astarion had met him in different circumstances, he would probably buy the man a drink—and then presumably drag the man's corpse out of Cazador's guest bedroom a few hours later, but that's neither here nor there.
Most curiously: the man is a True Soul, but he doesn't know what True Souls are.
At first, the man is reluctant to tell Z'rell much. Of course that doesn't last very long—Z'rell isn't the sort of person who takes no for an answer. She pries open Wyll's skull, and Astarion follows her connection into his mind, brushes the tips of his fingers past the thoughts that she delves deeply into—strange images of bloody battlefields and fire-streaked skies.
"You were in the Hells?" Z'rell says, interested.
"…I was," this man, this Wyll, says, with the resignation of someone who has realized that struggling will only make the ropes tighter. "I was in the fight of my life. And then—I, I'm not sure what happened then. But when I awoke, I was crawling out of smoldering wreckage somewhere in the Trielta Crags. And there was this voice in my head…"
"The Absolute," Z'rell says, with the firm not-entirely-patient voice she uses on the new recruits. "You've heard Her calling." Astarion can hear the capital letter. "She has chosen you for a glorious purpose."
Astarion leans forward. He doesn't realize, yet, that this is a mistake—that this is going to be his downfall and bring this little bubble of dubious peace he's found for himself to a terrible end. At the moment, he has no idea of the danger as he shifts his weight, and leans over the side of the rafter, and gets his first proper glimpse of Wyll Ravengard, haggard and handsome and smiling.
"I suppose she has," Wyll says, in a voice so warm that Astarion feels it cut straight through the tower's deathly chill.
Two months ago—or was it three? Or four? Honestly Astarion has lost count; it's not as if Moonrise Towers features an overabundance of calenders—some unknown and unimportant number of months ago, it was Astarion's turn to present himself before Z'rell. He had been fresh from the city, high on the freedom the Absolute had given him, and not even being dragged through a wasteland by a troop of smelly goblins was enough to dampen his spirits. He's not sure what he said or did—he remembers the moment through a soap-bubble sheen of giddy terror and terrified glee—but he's fairly certain that nothing, short of ramming his fangs into Z'rells throat, would have damned him in her eyes. The Absolute had already chosen him. He held her blessing in the withered remains of his heart, and however much Z'rell disliked him she was not about to question the judgment of her precious goddess.
(Astarion wouldn't question the Absolute's judgment either, of course, but not because he thinks she's a goddess on some distant celestial plane. He trusts her because she's her. That's all.)
So Z'rell had given him a once-over, opened his mind with a cursory glance, and the moment of truth was over almost before it had begun. He'd been given a bed in the barracks, and it was everything like being in the dormitories in Cazador's manor except that it was nothing like that at all. Yes, he had to share the room with others—with strangers who joked and jostled and fought with one another, though never as harshly as Astarion had with the other spawn. Most everyone here was so cheerful it was almost creepy. More than that, they were all strangers—not a single familiar face amongst the lot of them. Astarion was so thrilled to be away from his siblings at last that he spent three consecutive nights stifling sobs into a pillow instead of trancing.
There were only three beds in the room, too, which seemed an unfathomable luxury after the cramped dormitories. Perhaps all those cultists in Baldur's Gate were onto something, if all cults treat their followers this way. For the past several days, Astarion had even had the room to himself—whether his previous roommates were out on assignment or dead he wasn't entirely sure, nor did he care. The important part was that he got the bed that was defensibly wedged into the corner, and as far as he knew, no one else had discovered his secret stash of trinkets, poisons, coin, and knives that he'd tucked into the hollow center of a bedpost and a hidden nook in the headboard.
So you can perhaps imagine his lack of enthusiasm when, upon returning to his room that night (or day), he finds it already occupied.
Wyll, that ordinary human with the Absolute's blessing and an extraordinary smile is standing in the middle of the floor examining the bunks as if they might be concealing something lethal—which, to be fair, Astarion's most certainly is, though Wyll isn't likely to notice unless he starts dismantling it. He turns at Astarion's approach and has the audacity to flash that smile at him once again.
Fresh from the Hells or not, Astarion decides that this must be a man used to getting his way. How could he not? Even the scars crossing his cheeks seem to soften when he smiles. Astarion isn't sure if he should be alarmed or impressed by the charisma that seems to waft from this man in waves.
"Hello and well met," Wyll says. "I don't suppose you could tell me if any of these bunks have currently been claimed? I was assigned to this room but I'd rather not offend its current occupants."
Astarion sniffs. "It's a bit late for that. This is my room. I was having a lovely time enjoying the privacy of it until about, hm, thirty seconds ago."
"I'm sorry," Wyll says, with apparent sincerity. "I would leave you to it if I could. Alas, this is my assignment, and I have the feeling management would not take kindly to a request for a change in lodgings. I'm surprised you had this room to yourself at all; I thought space would be at a premium with so many of us in one place."
"Well, it helps that people are always coming and going," Astarion drawls. "On mission, off mission, assigned to different camps out in the valley, blown up by kobolds—no one stays put for long except for the support crew and the higher ups. I imagine you'll be out of my hair in, hm, a few days at most."
He means it to be a jab. But Wyll just keeps smiling, almost as if it's a shared joke. "Good news for you, then," he says. "I promise, until that day I'll be as quiet as a mouse and as well-mannered as a pigeon."
Astarion almost bristles at that—first at the word mouse, because even if there is no possible way that Wyll could know this, Astarion spent the better part of two centuries being taunted for feeding off of bugs and rodents while Petras dined off of dogs—and then at the word pigeon, because there's nothing less-mannered in Astarion's experience than a creature that shits in mid-air and fights over breadcrusts in the gutter at all hours. The affront and the bafflement meet each other square-on and seem to cancel each other out, leaving Astarion capable of saying, neutrally, "Well. I should hope so."
With no obvious way out of it, and Wyll still looking at him, Astarion is forced to gesture to the far bunk.
"That one is mine," he says. "If you know what's good for you, you'll stay away from it." He is careful to punctuate the sentence with a slight baring of his teeth, letting Wyll glimpse the fangs in his mouth. No longer having to hide his vampirism has some unexpected perks, as it turns out. All are equal under the Absolute, in theory, but in practice many are still wary of undead, especially those who are not docile and meek under a master's control.
Astarion will never be under a master's control again. He will make sure of it.
Wyll seems unfazed by the sight of those fangs. He merely nods and places his belongings—a single well-mended but well-used pack—on the bed farthest from Astarion's, leaving the one in the center of the room empty. Neutral territory.
There is a brief moment where Astarion considers leaving—he is not interested in smalltalk or getting-to-know-you questions. But before he can decide whether his time is better served stalking back out of the room (letting Wyll know that he is much too busy to hang around and get chummy with a stranger) or climbing onto his own bed and taking up as much space as possible (letting Wyll know that he has seniority and is not about to pushed out of his own room by a newcomer) Wyll breaks the silence.
"So, which are you?" he asks.
Astarion blinks. "Pardon?"
"You said that the only people who stay in the Towers for long are the support crew and the higher ups," Wyll says. "It stands to reason you must be one of the two."
Astarion forces himself to smile.
"Why, darling, I'm something else entirely," he says. "To you, I am dangerous."
Astarion does his best to put Wyll out of his mind while keeping him in his periphery from then on. He pays exactly as much attention to his new roommate as necessary to make sure the man doesn't plan on staking him in his sleep, and otherwise ignores him utterly. Thankfully, Wyll makes this easy by spending most of his days outside of their shared room, only returning back to it to collapse into bed, where he sleeps for hours and hours at a time, as humans are wont to do.
After a few days of cohabitation, when Astarion is reasonably satisfied that Wyll isn't about to do anything interesting, his lot is finally drawn for patrols.
Astarion wasn't lying when he told Wyll he was dangerous, of course. In addition to the obvious fangs and claws and his skill with bow and dagger, Astarion has a sneaking suspicion that Z'rell tries to keep him out of the field as much as possible, either out of fear of him "going rogue" and abandoning the mission or out of punishment for his perceived slights against the Absolute's holy honor. Astarion doesn't really mind—lazing around indoors is certainly preferable to digging through the muck of a centuries-cursed countryside where even the trees want to see you dead a second time—but even with the occasional distraction of fresh meat in their ranks, he's not immune to boredom. He's already stolen everything out of the Tower that's worth stealing but isn't likely to get him excommunicated, and there's only so many times he can hang upside down from the rafters and shoot arrows out the crumbling bits in the walls before even that loses its charm. This is the first opportunity he's had to get out of the Tower in days. He half-wonders if Z'rell is finally letting him go out of fear that his boredom will cause him to start eating his fellow cultists.
Of course, he isn't going out there alone. Five other members of the cult's worst and dullest will be going with him, though at this point at least everyone, even the newcomers, know to stay out of his way on a mission.
All of them but Wyll, at least.
Wyll, proving himself to be quite an oddity yet again, corners him on the way out of the Tower, intent on knowing Astarion's movements ahead of time—how far away Astarion intends to wander from the rest of the group, and in what directions, and if he'll be staying within eyesight.
"Wyll," Astarion says, with the thinnest shreds of patience remaining to him, "I am an assassin. If you could see me, I would hardly be doing my job."
"If a fight breaks out, certainly," Wyll agrees. "But the landscape out here is treacherous. The rest of us will be staying in the Moonlantern's light. If you go far out of that radius, the only thing protecting you will be your torch."
"I know that," Astarion snaps. "I'm not an idiot."
"If we have at least some idea where you are, we will know where to look for you if something goes wrong," Wyll says.
This is, obviously, the rudest thing the little twerp could have possibly said to him. Why is he so certain that Astarion is going to do something wrong? Astarion has been chosen by the Absolute! He's one of her very favorite cultists! He's not some expendable little footsoldier!
Astarion doesn't dignify Wyll with a response, partly because he doesn't deserve one and partly because Astarion is too furious to form sentences. He storms right past him, ducking into the darkness as quick as he can.
"Don't take it personally," he hears one of their fellows telling Wyll. "Astarion's always like that."
Astarion does nothing wrong, of course. The same can't, unfortunately, be said for the rest of their group.
Those blasted Harpers have set up another ambush along the edges of a ruined town. Their hunger for a Moonlantern is almost as pathetic as their attempts at martial intimidation—not that that stops the rest of Astarion's group from blundering right into the trap.
Astarion is off the main road at the time, skulking around the perimeter of the light his allies carry and doing a damn good job not being seen despite having to keep out of the shadows, if he says so himself. But even though he spots the figures lining up along the walls of a ruined house across the avenue, he has no time to issue a warning to his companions. All he can do is loose an arrow through the throat of one of the waiting Harpers and watch the chaos unfold as cries of shock rise up from both sides of the battlefield.
Astarion isn't trying to pay attention to what the rest of his fellow cultists are doing. It's always more important to keep your eye fixed on your enemies in battle—he's not a cleric, and if his allies can't keep themselves alive on their own, they're not worth the effort anyway. But as the broad-shouldered human is speared by a Harper's blade and that weedy little goblin takes the Harper out before being brought down by a mace to the back of the skull, Astarion's eye keeps catching on movement.
Wyll.
Astarion knew Wyll was proficient with swords. He'd heard him talk about it enough, caught glimpses of him from the rafters as he went about slicing training dummies to ribbons with his rapier. But he hadn't expected Wyll to be capable of turning into a puff of smoke the instant before a blow found him and reappearing on the other side of the battlefield unscathed. He hadn't expected that sword to glow with a green-black light as he swung it with a cold efficient grace. He hadn't expected to find himself losing track of Wyll's position as he blended into shadow only to leap free and cut down a Harper an instant before the arrow could leave Astarion's bow.
Astarion has gotten used to being one of the most capable members of any scouting party he is sent on. He came to the Absolute a sniveling wretch, incapable of much more than hitting a target nine times out of ten, and he has spent almost every moment since exploring his newfound freedoms, exercising the strength that regular meals has given him. He is determined to be useful—he will not be abandoned, will not be thrown away, will not let anyone tell him that he hasn't earned his place beside the Absolute.
But the way Wyll fights is mesmerizing.
Even with two of their fellows down and the Harpers outnumbering them, the tide starts to turn in their favor. The Harpers aren't prepared for the rain of Astarion's arrows, and they aren't prepared for the way Wyll weaves between their blades and spells as if they simply cannot touch him. They are close, so close, to scattering the last of them.
And then something slides around Astarion's neck, and the world goes from dim to dark.
If Astarion had been capable of thinking anything before losing consciousness, he probably wouldn't have expected to wake up again. He might, even, have thought about what Wyll said—that infuriating nonsense about staying nearby so they could find him if something happened. What a joke, the thought that anyone would bother looking for an injured vampire when their own lives were on the line. Ridiculous, the idea that there was anything Wyll could do for him, even if he found his mangled body somewhere in the dark. Either Astarion's wounds would mend themselves, or they wouldn't, and he'd be truly dead at least. It's not like healing magic would do anything to save him.
But Astarion does wake up again.
He wakes to a flare of blue-gray light—to a starburst of pain beneath his neck—to shocking constellations of pain shooting down his spine to his fingertips, feet, groin, chest—to spluttering, air he doesn't need fighting for space in his mouth with something he does: something hot, wet, thick. Sweet.
Astarion doesn't realize it's blood, at first. All he knows is that he needs more of it—that he craves it, craves the warmth of it, that each fresh mouthful overrides even the pain into a manageable blur. He sucks harder, worrying the bit of flesh beneath his fangs, terrified that it will be ripped away from him at a moment's notice.
"Easy," a voice says. "Don't move—you're going to be fine."
Fine? Of course he's going to be fine. He feels better now than he has in years. In centuries. He feels like when he first heard the Absolute's voice—no, not even then. Hearing the Absolute was like being plucked out of his body, out of his miserable excuse of an existence, and finding himself in an untouchable fortress, kept safe on all sides. This is like… falling into the river. If rivers were warm. And didn't dissolve his skin like acid. And tasted like blood.
The metaphor is getting away from him.
"Mfmh?" Astarion asks.
"Don't talk with your mouth full," Wyll says—because it's Wyll, strangely enough, that seems to be standing above him. Or over him. Whichever. "Swallow—there we are. You're looking better already."
Astarion's fingers twitch against the dirt. More things are coming into focus, as the pain recedes and the world swims into brighter colors. The warmth beneath him—that's an arm below his head, lifting him off of the cold dead earth. The warmth in his mouth—that's another arm.
That's—Wyll's arm?
"Plthmg!" Astarion says.
Wyll laughs. It shouldn't be comfortable, being laughed at by stranger while in such a vulnerable position. But there's an odd tension in that laughter, something that Astarion can notice while still being too addled to name.
At long last, and still too soon, Wyll starts to pry his arm free of Astarion's jaws. Astarion, not sated, lets him do it with reluctance.
"Easy," Wyll says again, keeping a hand behind Astarion's back as he sits up, blinking owlishly at their surroundings—which are distinctly not what he remembers from before he blacked out. There are more bodies beside him, for one thing. And these bodies are uglier, hairier, and more naked than the Harpers he remembers. And most of them seem to be quite thoroughly stabbed.
"What happened?" Astarion asks, finally. His voice sounds rough.
"It seemed the ambush was hiding a second ambush," Wyll says. The tone of his voice suggests he wants to make light of it, but the look on his face is grim. "Our skirmish with the Harpers caught the attention of these." He kicks a boot at one of the hairy half-naked corpses. "Can't say I was expecting to find meazels here, of all places. But I suppose it's miserable enough for them."
"What in the Absolute's name is a meazel," Astarion says, prodding the corpse with a finger himself and grimacing—both from the stench of the thing, and the still-too-tight feeling in his muscles.
"A very hostile creature of the Shadowfell," Wyll says. "Ah—careful. Don't stand up too fast."
Astarion isn't sure whether to be irritated or amused at Wyll's insistence of fussing over him. He might be feeling more irritated if he hadn't just been given a surprisingly filling meal. While the Absolute has never fed him rat—and Astarion would make his displeasure known if she did—most of what he's eaten for the past months has come in the form of bowls of animal blood, or occasionally bowls of gnoll blood. He rarely gets the chance to drink straight from the tap, as it were. And never from such a willing donor.
"I'm fine, Wyll," he says, watching as Wyll—a little unsteadily—gets to his feet himself. "I'd be more concerned about yourself. You let me, ah, drink quite deeply."
"Nothing I couldn't spare," Wyll says, with a not-entirely-convincing smile.
What right does he have to be so pleased with himself? What manner of madman is pleased with himself for feeding a vampire?
Astarion turns away from the madman, surveying the rest of the battlefield. The Moonlantern is stuck into the ground a few steps from Wyll's feet. They seem to be huddled behind a rocky outcrop, several paces west of the dead Harpers on the ground.
"Where are the others?" Astarion asks. "Dead, I presume?"
There's the briefest sigh before Wyll answers. "I'm afraid so. I did my best to avenge them, but several of the Harpers escaped after the meazels showed. Blast them."
"Ugh." Astarion sighs. "Typical. Bloody typical. Now we have to carry their gear back with us." He hefts the Moonlantern out of the ground. "Come on, no point waiting around."
Wyll follows him back to the site of their fallen compatriots, though Astarion keeps an ear cocked for the sound of his footsteps just to be sure he hasn't keeled over from bloodloss. Mortals are so fragile. Undeath might be more-or-less an unending misery, but at least Astarion is spared the indignity of fainting.
"Are you just going to stand there?" he drawls, stripping the armor off the nearest corpse—the goblin, he doesn't remember her name. Most goblin names sound like insults or sneezes to him. "Help me. I'm not going to be the only one getting my hands dirty."
"Astarion," Wyll says. "These are our comrades. Fellows in arms."
"Well, they were." Astarion sniffs. "Now they're corpses. And not the handsome kind, like yours truly. So would you please stop having compunctions and help me loot them? Don't tell me you have some kind of moral objection, it's not like they're using any of this stuff—"
Wyll crouches down beside him. With surprising gentleness, he takes the corpse out of Astarion's hands and begins undoing the clasps of her armor himself, more carefully than Astarion had been.
"I see there is not much love lost between you," Wyll comments, raising no further objection as Astarion turns his attention to the nearest Harper corpse instead.
"I should think you'd know that already, darling." He checks the Harper's pockets and finds only lint. "Hasn't Z'rell told you I don't play well with others?"
A pause. "I can't say I put much stock in Z'rell's opinions."
This takes Astarion aback. "Really? Most people around here worship the ground she walks on—or skitter away from it in fear, I suppose."
"I don't trust those with power who use fear to control those without it," Wyll says. "I've seen where that road ends. I can't say I'm eager to see it again."
Astarion stares at him a moment more, but Wyll continues methodically stripping the goblin of all but her clothes. Astarion moves on to the next Harper.
"You're very strange, for a cultist," Astarion says.
Wyll laughs, once, though Astarion doesn't know him well enough to know if there's any real humor in it. "I could say the same to you. Why do you insist on calling us a cult?"
Astarion sits back on his heels again. "It's what we are, aren't we?"
"I don't know many who would call a religion a cult and then willingly join it."
"All religions are cults," Astarion explains. "This one just happens to be about a goddess who's actually worth a damn." He pauses—his self-control wavering over the words he shouldn't say, and then he says them anyway. "Assuming she's even a goddess. Which I doubt."
"You don't think she's a goddess?"
"I don't think goddesses actually do things." Astarion slices the purse off the dead Harper's belt with a satisfying slip of his knife. "The Absolute actually does things. So either she's the only goddess who doesn't spend her days sipping wine on the Astral Sea or wherever the hells gods are supposed to go, or she's something else entirely. Something real."
"The gods are real," Wyll says, quietly, as if afraid to be overheard by more than the shadows and the dead. "The question is whether they are malicious, or merely indifferent."
"Not a fan of religion either?" Astarion feels his lips quirk into a sharp smirk. "I don't know many who would disdain religion and then willingly join one."
This time, Astarion is certain Wyll's laugh has real humor behind it. "I suppose I feel much as you do," Wyll says on the heels of a hearty chuckle. "Whatever I may feel about other gods—or whatever the Absolute is—I owe her my life. She plucked me from the Hells and showed me the error of my ways. I will defend her now until the end, and spread her word until everyone, everywhere has the chance to know this peace."
"Are you ambitious, then?" Astarion asks. "You wish to rise through the ranks, put your stamp on the cause?" He lowers his voice and—on an impulse that he couldn't name the source of under actual torture—nudges Wyll in the shoulder. "You can tell me if you're planning to usurp Z'rell, you know. I promise I'm not about to tattle to Daddy Ketheric. Nobody listens to a damn thing I say, anyway."
Wyll gives him a strange look, as if he's not sure if Astarion is joking—or as if Astarion has gotten straight to the heart of a conspiracy without even trying. One of those two, probably.
"No," Wyll says, quietly dashing Astarion's hope of a shake-up to the Tower's leadership in the near future. "I can't say such a thing is in the cards for me, even if I wanted such power."
Astarion frowns. "Why not? You're good looking. You're human, yes, which is a bit of a disappointment—but nobody's perfect. You have at least as much of a right to run this place as Z'rell! What—why are you looking at me like that? You know I'm right."
That bemused look is still on Wyll's face.
"Oh, tell me this isn't another moral issue," Astarion huffs. "The cult is already here, I don't see what's so bad about wanting to be the one in charge of it. You're not one of those nutters who believes Z'rell was divinely appointed and all that, are you?"
"You really don't care for authority, do you?" Wyll says.
"Don't be ridiculous. I like authority well enough when I'm the one who has it. I just didn't join the Absolute to be ordered about by a bunch of pretentious cultists." He's had enough of following orders for several lifetimes. It's the rest of the world's turn to take orders from him.
Wyll's brow furrows the faintest bit. "Do they mistreat you?"
The question is so abrupt Astarion thinks he's misheard. "What?"
"The others," Wyll says. "Our superior officers—and our fellow cultists." When Astarion continues to stare at him blankly, he continues. "I've wondered… I imagine it isn't easy, being one of the only vampires in the Towers."
"What, do you think I'm lonely?" Astarion sneers at the thought. "Vampires are very territorial, if you must know. I'm perfectly content not having to compete for scraps with my fellow spawn."
"Still," Wyll says. "I know we are all meant to be equal under the Absolute, but… it seems many of us disagree. I have seen how much prejudice there is among the ranks. Goblins against humans, elves against orcs… Linsella's pet gnolls." This last he says with a grimace.
"Oh, are we caring about gnolls now?" Astarion scoffs. "Go on, try to free them if you like! I don't think you'll find them very grateful—unless you count eating you alive as a form of gratitude. They're practically animals, you know."
"Some would say the same about vampires," Wyll says. Astarion's jaw snaps shut hard enough to rattle his teeth. "Evil monsters, driven solely by obsession and bloodlust."
"Yes. Well." Astarion fusses with the pockets of the corpse before him. "I can't say they'd be wrong. Have you ever heard of a nice vampire? Ridiculous."
"I suppose you do seem filled with bloodlust," Wyll says, sounding horribly like he's throwing Astarion a bone—or a blood-filled rodent, in this case. "Have you been concocting an evil scheme to rule the world this whole time?"
Astarion flashes him a smile. "If I was, I certainly wouldn't tell you."
Wyll puts a hand over his heart. "Not even after you asked me to confide in you my secret plans to overthrow Z'rell? Astarion, I'm hurt."
It's ridiculous that Astarion feels like laughing at that. It doesn't seem plausible, that Wyll gets to be both handsome and funny at the same time, not to mention competent in in a crisis. The universe is rarely ever so generous.
They finish stripping the bodies. Wyll tries to take the bulk of the loot back himself, and probably would've killed himself in the process if Astarion wasn't there to put a stop to it.
"Honestly, I can carry more than you can," Astarion says, shouldering an extra set of armor and several of the more valuable weapons onto his back, lashed together with twine. "I'm a vampire, remember?" He may have been the runt of Cazador's spawn, but he still has greater endurance than a human ever could.
"Please don't hurt yourself," Wyll says, all but wringing his hands.
For a moment, Astarion can scarcely form words. Wyll keeps finding new and unexpected ways to insult him.
"Hurt myself?" he splutters. "I am fine. You just lost a not-inconsiderable amount of blood—for which I'm grateful, of course, but you look as if a stiff breeze would knock you over."
"Then it's a good thing the air is very still under the curse," Wyll jokes.
Astarion glares until Wyll stops trying to get him to smile.
"Astarion, when I saw you on the ground, I thought—" Wyll hesitates. He lowers his voice, as if the lack of volume will make what he has to say more palatable. "For a moment, I thought that meazel had taken your head clean off," he admits. "I wasn't sure if even fresh blood would be enough to revive you."
Astarion blinks. "…oh."
"I know that a vampire heals much faster than a mortal would," Wyll says. "But… I would rather not see you push yourself past your limits, all the same."
Astarion fiddles with the ties of the burdens freshly lashed to his back, feeling a bit like Wyll had just added to their weight. "You know… I should thank you," he murmurs. "Not many would give their blood to a vampire. I won't forget this."
"I have been the sole survivor of a fight before. It's not an experience I'm keen to repeat." Wyll gives him a grim smile. "That you're still alive is reward enough to me."
Absolute help him, he sounds like he means it.