21 #6
It was effective, though he didn’t enjoy it.
“I’m not sure how I feel about this,” he informed his companion, bashing in another one’s head.
“Oh?” The aasimar knocked another one down and crushed it beneath his massive boots. “How so?”
“It lacks finesse. And, I don’t know. Hitting them with their own bones feels wrong somehow. Somewhere between masturbation and cannibalism.”
“Ah.” Den Suriel broke one over his knee in a contemplative fashion. “Ever seen a cow drink its own milk?”
“No, and I could have lived many more years without thinking about it, thank you very much.”
Astarion clubbed another skeleton in the back of the knee.
“Something along those lines, though. If you made one of those edged clubs and lined it with my teeth, then beat my head in with it, I would be very upset.”
“More so than just having your head beaten in?”
“Possibly. It violates my sense of aesthetics.”
The paladin knocked the last skeleton out of the archway and turned to wave Astarion through. “How does your sense of aesthetics feel about running like hell?”
“You may now observe the elegance of my heels,” Astarion said, and took to them at once.
For a man wearing a great deal of plate and chain, den Suriel had a decent turn of speed.
Fortunately, the tunnel here ran reasonably straight and had high enough ceilings that Astarion didn’t worry about bashing his forehead on things.
He was rather more worried about traps, trip wires, and unexpected pits full of spikes, but since the paladin had come this way initially, presumably he would have found them already.
You can only run for so long, though, even if you fear that mummies are after you. Astarion slowed to a jog, then a stagger. Behind him, the paladin was doing the same.
They collapsed against the wall. Den Suriel was breathing hard. Astarion was, too, though more out of a feeling that he should be than from actual necessity. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the vials, checking them for cracks, and was relieved to see only smooth glass.
Gods and devils, what a night it had been. You spend decades in the same routine, with nothing more exciting than the occasional burglary, and then you’re set loose for a night and find yourself fighting your way out of the clutches of an undead cult.
He started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. He probably sounded like a madman, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so alive. Possibly not since he’d been alive.
“Err…Petras?”
It took Astarion an instant to remember that he’d lied about his name. He wiped tears from his eyes and tried to control himself. “Yes?”
“Is there really a bird that eats hedgehogs?”
“Damned if I know. I left the countryside as soon as elvenly possible. There was far too much clean air.”
That set den Suriel off laughing as well, which eventually led to them both collapsed against the wall holding their sides. “It wasn’t even that funny,” Astarion said plaintively, which only made the paladin laugh harder. “It’s just…heh…release of tension…”
“As the cleric said to the dryad’s daughter.”
Astarion didn’t even know the joke the aasimar was referring to, but it set him off again. If his ribs hadn’t been stabbing with every laugh, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to stop.
When they’d finally finished catching their respective breaths, den Suriel raised one eyebrow at Astarion. “Sure you don’t want to go back and try to fight them all?”
“Gods, you really do have a death wish, don’t you?” He straightened. “Are all the weasel people like that?”
“It’s a badger. And I wouldn’t call it a death wish. More like a blaze-of-glory wish.”
Astarion shook his head, sobering. “Well, I don’t have either. Anyway, maybe you’ll be lucky and they’ll send someone after us.”
“Ooh, really?” Den Suriel looked back the way they had come.
“I certainly would. I’d be afraid that you’d go tell everyone in your order about a nest of undead under the city.”
The aasimar snorted. “There’s not very many of us, and we’re widely scattered. It’s been a while since I’ve even seen one.”
“Yes, but do they know that?”
“Clever as well as handsome, I see.”
“My dear paladin, you don’t know the half of it.”
“I look forward to finding out.” Den Suriel winked at him and began to stride down the tunnel. Astarion grabbed his arm. Granted, this was rather like a fox grabbing a draft horse, but the aasimar stopped anyway.
“While I realize that paladins think of traps as those things you open with your face, may I suggest allowing me to check ahead?”
“I came this way once already.”
“Yes, and our friends below are doubtless aware of that fact. If it were me, I would at least have placed a guard.”
“…Yeah, that’s fair.”
Astarion slunk down the hallway, studying the shadows intently. The walls here had collapsed in several places, and the ground was strewn with rubble. Some of the broken areas had spaces large enough for an enemy to hide.
He saw nothing suspicious and turned to wave den Suriel forward. The paladin’s faint glow made it seem like he was standing in his own personal beam of light. Astarion felt his stomach turn over.
Seriously? Those are not butterflies in my stomach. That is ridiculous. I haven’t felt butterflies since that marvelously shy young swashbuckler in Silverymoon. The one with the incredibly impressive sword tattooed across his back.
Den Suriel hurried toward him, and his stomach quivered again. Maybe it’s not just that he’s attractive. Maybe it’s the idea of despoiling all that determined goodness.
It was hard to tell where those pale eyes were looking, but the aasimar suddenly lifted his head, and his mouth turned to a grim slash. Astarion spun around, expecting to see something with teeth and tentacles bearing down on him.
Nothing. The corridor held nothing but dust and tumbled stone. Astarion backed up, wondering what the paladin had seen.
The faintest gleam of light from above caught his eye. He looked up.
A sigil flickered on the ceiling, then died away. It was part of a line carved into the stone that ran down one wall, then vanished beneath the dust. Astarion stared at his own footprints and the sigils just barely visible beneath them.
It hadn’t been butterflies. The quiver had been because he was standing in the middle of one of the wards.
Wards that the living couldn’t cross.
Fuck you, Tymora, he thought, just as a mailed fist closed over his neck.
* * *