Astarion and the Dead God's Blood

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This one’s for the whole D he’d done the best he could. Did they want to be hanged?

One of the toughs spat on the ground. A voice behind him said, “Not real interested in your rulings, guv.”

“Oh,” Astarion said, then a club swung toward him, and he lifted his arm to defend himself, and…

Actually, there was no real point in dwelling on the bit after that. It was perhaps best described as an excruciating blur.

And now here he was.

It will be fine, Astarion told himself. Nothing a cleric can’t fix. Or a healing potion.

His right arm was clearly no good. He tried his left, watching the wine-colored sleeve shudder, then lift a trembling inch. The lace at the cuff was dyed a brilliant red.

Good color, he thought. Clashes with the wine, though. Might look good with dark purple. He looked at his hand, then wished he hadn’t. Two of his fingers were bent at a nauseating angle, but the arm itself seemed mostly intact.

It’s fine. Two healing potions will put everything to rights.

He got his hand to the side of his head. His hair was soaked with something. He wished he could believe it was rain. He ran his good fingers gingerly over his skull.

The bone moved, with a crunching noise that he did not exactly hear but that briefly filled up his entire world.

That is…not fine. That is very bad.

I will bathe in healing potions, and everything will go back to normal.

He stopped touching his head. He was fairly certain that there was nothing good to be learned by continuing.

I have to get to a cleric. Or any healer, really. This was not the time to be picky. He’d even let a paladin lay on hands; normally, he insisted on a few drinks first.

To get to a healer, he was going to have to crawl out of the alley.

“Right,” he whispered to himself, and tried to get to his knees.

Blinding agony erupted through his chest, and he collapsed back to the cobblestones. It was suddenly very hard to breathe. Or rather, he was breathing, but nothing seemed to be happening.

Oh, I’ve punctured a lung. I see. That’s bad.

It occurred to Astarion that he was dying.

So this is it. After all I’ve done, after everything, my life is worth less than a dead deer.

He’d never given much thought to his eventual death.

Elves didn’t have to for at least the first two or three centuries.

When you got to five or six hundred, really started getting up there, then you began to think about it.

You prepared yourself for the inevitable, which usually meant making peace with your loved ones or doing a lot of research into how to become a lich.

He had never wanted to be a lich. Not one of them had decent hair, and as for their skin…oof.

Also, he didn’t actually have any loved ones, now that he thought about it. He had friends. Some friends. People who were always glad to see him and then were enormously catty behind his back.

The gods help him, his favorite person in Baldur’s Gate was probably Madam Saffron, who ran the best brothel in the city.

Not that he had to pay for that sort of thing, but she hosted magnificent salons and was charming company, and then—this was the important bit—they would both go their separate ways and not think about each other again for at least a tenday.

Oh, there were more than a few people who were madly in love with him, but that only showed good taste on their part. There hadn’t been anything reciprocal since he came to Baldur’s Gate.

He wondered if any of those conquests would spring for a revivification. It seemed unlikely. Two of them were poets, for Tymora’s sake. They could barely afford wine, let alone dragging someone back from the dead.

Also, they’d have to find me first.

He tried to call for help, but there was hardly any air in his lungs, and what came out was barely a whisper.

“…help me…”

He had been tasting blood for so long that it no longer really registered, but the coppery taste went suddenly bright and arterial. His mouth filled with it, and he swallowed, feeling it tear up something inside him.

“…please…someone…help me…”

A long time passed, or not much time at all. Astarion could no longer tell if he was calling for help or simply thinking the words.

“…I don’t want to die…please…”

“Is that so?” someone asked.

His first thought was that it was one of the toughs, come back to finish the job…

but no, the accent was wrong. This voice was careful and formal and old.

He blinked a few times, seeing a blurry man-shaped shadow, but when he tried to turn his head for a better look, he regretted it instantly.

“Please,” he said through the terrible clangor inside his head. “Please…a healer…”

“I am a healer…of sorts.”

Relief flooded Astarion, a cool wash that prickled against his skin. Gods above and below, thank you, he thought.

And then, the tiny nagging magistrate’s voice that always made him check the paperwork twice, the one that always looked for the flaw in the witness testimony, whispered, What does of sorts mean?

“You’re dying,” the shadow observed dispassionately.

“…hadn’t…noticed…” It was perhaps not the wisest idea to use one’s last breaths to be snide toward the person who could save you, but Astarion was what he was, and it was certainly too late to change now.

The shadow didn’t laugh. It knelt in the pool of blood and leaned over him. Cold seemed to radiate from the figure, or perhaps the heat had simply bled out of Astarion and onto the stones of Baldur’s Gate.

“I can save you,” the shadow said. “For a price.”

Astarion wanted to yell that he’d pay anything, he was dying, this was not the time to haggle, but the magistrate in him made him whisper, “…price…?”

White teeth flashed in the darkness. Slowly his rescuer swam into focus. White teeth and pale skin and red, red eyes.

“The price,” the vampire said gently, “is immortality.”

…Oh.

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