faderift | [ OPEN | PLAYER PLOT ] This is how it feels to take a fall

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[ OPEN | PLAYER PLOT ] This is how it feels to take a fall

WHO: Tiffany, Barrow, Astarion and...you??
WHAT: an assignment gone terribly wrong
WHEN: week 5, segueing into week 6 of the plot, just after dragon tracking concluded with a terrible, literal bang
WHERE: the most silent portion of the Silent Plains, nearer to Hasmal, and not far from Tevinter's very nicely constructed base
NOTES: cw for injury, darkness, being stranded, absolute idiocy | OOC POST: here

Previously: having successfully scouted Primus Taxarchis’ base in the Silent Plains, Tiffany, Barrow and Astarion make an unsuccessful escape under the fully alerted watch of the base’s active forces— provoking a near lethal counter attack that sees them crash landing not far away, and forcing the stranded trio to desperately petition for help.

That’s where you come in.

The ravine runs like a crooked gash throughout desert sands, deep and layered, sloping inward at an angle too steep to safely (or reliably) climb. Easy to spot from above, not as easy to get into without breaking an ankle or an arm, and impossible to freely clamber out of once inside: the stone is brittle and flaking to the touch, lean too much on it, and you’ll drop right to the earth along with it.

The caverns connected to it are far more accessible— the only downside is they’re labyrinthine in their knotted nature: it’s easy to reach an end too narrow to be traversed, or so broad that it loops back on where you’ve already been, descending downward in steeper layers, becoming a near honeycombed network at points.

Of course, you also might not be alone in the dark. This territory isn’t as unclaimed as appearances might otherwise suggest, factoring in proximity to the base the three had been previously scouting. Luckily no overwhelming force has been sent to give chase and comb the desert in pursuit, but that’s not to say there aren’t still eyes to be found in the depths of lightless pathways. Armor-clad agents working for the exact same reasons you are, their noses to the trail.

Well. Not the exact same reasons.

The temperature is freezing cold at night, and in the fuller depths of the caverns where light doesn’t reach, that’s a near consistent constant. Firelight might draw attention, for better or worse. Magic, too, and— despite earning the label of Silent— there is wildlife occasionally to be found. Proof of life’s perseverance even in the harshes of places, fleeting and skittish.

Or dangerous.

Whatever approach is taken, one thing is clear throughout: none of this is going to be easy.

[ooc notes:

-The trio rest at the very bottom of those lightless depths where they’d initially fallen, in varying states of wellness and action.

-they’re lacking in supplies, warmth, healing, mounts, protection, a way out— you name it they need it.

-time is a given: none of this will go quickly, so feel free to handwave or assume anything you need to to make your dream threads come true.

-this timeline wise takes place at the end of week five segueing into week 6, when Riftwatch forces are free to head home if they care to, but given that this is technically hostile territory between Primus Taxarchis’ base and Hasmal, it’s probably going to be a deliberate choice if your characters decide to come here.

-pls just don’t do anything to officially alert the nearby base in full, that would be Bad— and super difficult to do from a hole in the ground but mostly just Bad. Otherwise chase your bliss and make your wildest spelunking/survival/heroic fantasies a reality.

-ooc post is here, for all your delving needs and details.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Here's hoping you have talent, or all this effort to get your attention will have been for nothing."

Still, where normally something along these lines would warrant a swift, sulking hiss or two, Astarion leaves her to fuss as she will without commentary. Something about perceived weakness, about needing to be cared for. Irony living in the fact that he all but begs for attention half the time. Context, it seems, is key.

Trust even more so.

The blankets sting as they shift— well, everything stings, in all fairness. He only twitches just slightly for it. Nothing visible in the dark.

"...you brought one for yourself, correct?"

"Guess you'll have to see when it's light enough."

Ellie laughs under her breath, but refrains from telling him he's full of shit. Instead she works off her knapsack and lays it down on the ground, settling to use it as a pillow, and wraps herself up in her cloak.

His question comes just after she settles, and her shoulders relax a bit, a deep ache in her chest. Astarion has a way of demonstrating that he cares without question at the times when it's bound to cut deep. It feels good, but it stings, too.

"Brought my cloak," she answers. "S'plenty warm."

She pauses, and stares up through the darkness to the way the sparks climb upwards from the fire, like snowfall in reverse.

"Spent a winter on the floor of a basement once when I was fourteen," she says, casually. "Deep in between blizzards in Colorado. I'd get up in the middle of the night to curry the ice off the horse. I didn't have boots, or gloves. Made hunting a real bitch."

She pauses again, thoughtful.

"Compared to that, this is nothing."

“You know...all things considered, you haven’t told me much about your world aside from the worst of it.”

Not that sharing pain isn’t personal. Astarion would be the first to argue that it is— in essence— as deep a gesture as bleeding before someone else. Allowing the vulnerability of it to take without a defensive show of fang or claw.

In the end, however, the negative space forms only the vague outline of prior paths: the dark shadows in paintings that provide depth, not vibrance.

Then again, some paintings are wholly devoid of color. Light. Beauty.

So the unspoken question left slung in the air between them as he opens his eyes to watch her becomes exactly that:

Was there anything— anything at all— worthwhile?

It's a hell of a thing to point out, and sadder to realize that it's true. There weren't a lot of things that Ellie felt compelled to share that were good, and for the first time, she considers why that is. Maybe because so many things that were good were also lost.

She's silent but for her breathing, watching the sparks of the fire with half-lidded eyes, before she turns onto her side, towards him. The shadows fall across their faces, but her eyes are still green even in the dark. This close the light catches her scars, turns them silver. The hollows under her eyes make her look older, but the fire catches her hair, and brings out the red.

When she was younger, it would've been lighter, easier to see.

"I traveled a lot," she says, softly. "Probably more than most people." She wets her lips, continues.

"Most of my world is ruins, but... it's not all bad. We'd go weeks sometimes, just walking, cutting through cities and old country roads. Broken-down malls and office buildings. Farmhouses, and downtowns. Mountains and forests. Caves, and subway stations."

She pauses again, her eyes half-shut.

"There was a zoo, in one of the cities. And when things went to shit, the animals, I guess -- they broke out. They started living in the ruins. So there were all these animals, animals that were from across the world, just living there. Like they'd been there all along.

"One of them came right up to us... it was tall enough to put its head in a window a few stories off the ground. Just wanted to eat the plants. It let me pet it."

Ellie's eyes fall shut.

"I always thought... it was awesome. That even if they didn't really belong there, they made it work. They lived. Made it their home. Even when everything fell apart for everything around them, they ended up surviving."

Throughout, she'll find herself in possession of an attentive audience: crimson eyes bright beyond the haze of aching drowsiness, undeviating in their leveled gaze, long ears fully attuned. Ruins? A menagerie unchecked? More importantly—

“We?” he asks, turning his own stiffened neck towards her despite the pain of it. Curiosity unstifled.

Obviously she’s suffered, he isn’t blind. Obviously the memory of everything prior to, or— no, perhaps within that suffering has marked her deeply. Changed her, from the outside in.

But he imagines if he oversteps in his inquiries, she’ll likely push back.

Ellie's expression shutters a little before she can shut down the feeling. It's fine when she works up to it, but getting blindsided with it never gets easier. Not when it's fresh all over again, coming from where she did.

She presses her lips together, releases, weighing it.

"Joel," she says. It's not the first time she's mentioned him to Astarion, even if it's never been by name.

"We kinda got thrown together by chance. Depended on each other to stay alive. Old man taught me most of what I know."

The look on her face. The sunken set to her expression. The way it flickers when he asks her to clarify. He reads it like penned lettering, quick to grasp on instinct for the meaning lurking just between the lines.

“You talk about him like he’s— “

Normally he’d be better at sidestepping the fumble, but his thoughts are swimming in a puddling mess: he’s a half step behind where he intends to be, and so it only clicks just a second after he’s already started speaking.

Oh.

“Oh.”

Ellie doesn't quite make eye contact as he puts it all together, setting her jaw against what will inevitably feel like pity, even if it isn't.

It's not nothing, it's not okay, she's not over it and never will be. It's not something that she can brush off and be strong about, or say any optimistic words, anything light and encouraging. The most she can do is lock it down.

"Yeah," she says quietly. Just confirming it for him.

Ellie lets the heartbeats stretch out for a second, two, and then, to her surprise it comes bubbling up.

"First time I ever killed somebody -- like, a person -- it was this asshole trying to drown him."

“Sympathy from a vampire, darling.” Scoffed ever so gently, those faintly embittered words. He likes Ellie, more than most anyone else he’s come across, that much is strangely undeniable— but there’s no helping his nature, not even in good company. Not even in suffering.

“I’ve lured thousands to their deaths over the years.”

It's only a sign of that unique shell of trust between them that a man never given to empathy finds the will to add just a beat later:

“I’d say you were lucky to have someone worth killing for.”

Ellie lifts her eyes back to Astarion's face, strangely comforted by the lack of coddling. She's had her fill of sad looks and condolences.

"Think you'd be surprised by how our body counts stack up."

It's said casually, though they both know that it's no casual thing, and Ellie sighs deeply, aching. Yeah. She's had more than a few people worth killing for.

"Really? Nobody? Out of all the people you've ever met?"

He makes a noise there. Thin, gone stiff with something unreadable, bordering on defensiveness given the way his brow pinches. He's walked her right into that question.

He can't walk her out of it now.

“I...might not have been entirely honest with you earlier.”

A slow confession. Teetering across the tip of his tongue before tumbling free under the steady pull of weariness and lingering pain— that lack of a present filter that sees him far more sincere than he’d otherwise care to be.

“You see, disappointing as I'm sure it is to hear, I’m not actually a true vampire— only a vampire spawn.”

"I wouldn't hold you to being honest," Ellie says, ready to give him an out. Which is probably the safest way to go about things -- but his manner gives her pause, leaving something serious in her eyes, and she settles down to fully listen to him.

There's more to listening than someone's words.

Ellie's attention follows the signs of pain, knowing what it is to be close to death, feeling the brush of icy fingers along your nerves, wondering if you'll see morning.

It's important to him, though. To tell her this. For someone to know this.

"Is there a big difference?"

So she doesn’t know.

Vampires seem to be a strange sort of fiction elsewhere as far as he’s gathered, and in truth this would be easier if she were well versed enough to understand the nature of his own segue without the need for explanation.

But that’s not how these things go, of course. Not even in Faerûn.

“An eternity’s worth.” he says, the words sallow. Sunken into the rough shape of all things pitiable.

And resented.

“Traditionally speaking, the exchange is a simple one: once you've been bitten, your siring master would hypothetically return the favor— allowing you to bite him in turn, thus fully transforming you into a true vampire: a powerful force, beholden to no one. Unstoppable save for the matter of sunlight or perhaps a well-placed stake. Both easily avoided by even the most nascent of converts.”

He pauses there, imagining it might be obvious by now, exactly which part of the story comes next.

“My master never completed the process.” Bitterness coats his tongue like bile, but his tone is something more like lamentation rather than outrage; what a fool he'd been, to trust his heroic savior so completely. “He’d never intended to, in fact— after all, the fine print of our desperate agreement favored him over myself.”

“I was left a vampire spawn. And a spawn, my dear girl, is a creature without the mercy of free will. Our minds are aware of everything, of course, but our bodies obey only the commands given by our masters. Their living puppets.”

He scoffs into the empty air, his breath too cold to produce so much as a puff of condensation, leaving his throat dry when he adds:

“...and Cazador was especially cruel.”

Still, history is history. And there's a relevance to this story that he still intends to impart— skipping instead to the end to spare her asking after it.

“I only escaped an eternity of that thanks to this world somehow breaking the spell of it. Proximity, perhaps. Or...something else entirely. Either way, to cut to the chase: there was no one for me but him.”

Edited 2021-08-09 10:37 (UTC)

Ellie lays there in the dark, letting the compounding horrors of it roll over her in waves. It gets worse the more she thinks about it -- Ellie knows all the darkest parts of human nature, and vampires can't be any better. She knows what it's possible to do to another person, and how much worse it could be without free will.

Ellie, even with the horrors she's seen in her short life, still can't fathom just how bad it could be, or the things it does to a person over time.

"Jesus."

Lifetimes.

"How long did he keep you like that?" she asks, her voice quiet, faint and cold.

“Two hundred years.”

He slips a hand out from beneath the blanket after a moment, hating the silence for everything it is. The potential for pity that it holds.

In the end, he uses that motion to gently rap his knuckles against her arm— though the effort of it aches in protest— mouth working its way into the ghost of a faint smile.

“Barely a blink of an eye.”

Ellie rolls her eyes at the little tap, caught between fondness and the rest. He gets playful when things are sad, taking the edge off. She's reminded of too many people who did the same, reminded of how much she misses them. All of them, gone. But she does have them to miss.

It occurs to her how deeply and how quickly Astarion latched onto her. He likely held himself apart from connections, from people who could be used against him.

It doesn't make her sad. It pisses her the fuck off.

Rolling abruptly onto her side to face him, Ellie puts her arm down to fully turn toward him, her eyes utterly serious.

"What would happen to you, if I killed him?"

“Don’t.” He warns, voice gone low and sharp in the span of a single instant. Too warding to be mistaken for part of her inquiry so much as a demand that she stop it entirely:

“Hypothetical games are for children and fools. I'm neither.”

A pretty indulgence. Fanciful fantasy. Neither saved him. Neither helped. And for it his teeth are sharp behind the curl of his lip when he punctuates that sentiment, red eyes vivid in the dark. Unblinking. Unwilling to pull away from her stare.

“Besides. If he somehow made it into this world, you’d be dead the moment you thought to look at him. And I’d be the one to kill you.” Not a threat— a certainty, and by now she no doubt understands precisely why.

“Never forget that.”

He has to exhale to bleed out the harshness scrawled across his features. The residual fear— the paranoia— everything he'd left behind in Faerûn. Everything he'd thought he'd left behind, only rearing its detestable head in the face of vaguely posited possibility. Everything forced from his mind only a beat later, under the reiteration that it would never happen. Cazador won't ever set foot in Thedas.

And even if it's living in denial, it's what he needs.

“...broadly speaking, however, if a vampire lord dies, its spawn are freed from their servitude— though they remain spawn, all the same.”

It's possibly the most serious he's ever been with her.

Ellie stops short, meeting his ruby-red eyes, staring intently back at him. She's always been the type to feel strongly about people, and it's nearly always against her will, but she's surprised by how protective she feels already. What surprises her is how much he seems to be in return.

It comes from a place of fear. It always seems like it does, doesn't it?

Slowly, Ellie relents, her eyebrows knitting together in frustration, the tension seeping out of her shoulders as it does from Astarion's face, the standoff melting away at the same time.

"... gotcha."

With a deep sigh, Ellie picks at the edge of her cloak, pressing her lips together.

"Other than the eternal bullshit deal... how are you different from a-" Ellie pauses, frowning. She'd been about to say human, but Astarion's an elf. "-regular person?"

“...I’m not quite sure yet.” A real confession, wary and tentative and tender as the wounds beneath his skin.

“Normally I’d be cinders in sunlight. Water would burn like acid. I’d need blood just to survive, and my cold, dead heart wouldn’t be beating like it wants to die. Vampire spawn, you see, aren’t possessed of overwhelming power like our masters— it’s the drawbacks of vampirism that we’re gifted for our stupidity. And an eternity to wallow in them.”

He’s still watching her, having turned himself ever so slightly her way. It isn’t the most comfortable position for resting in the wake of being shot through with magic and dropped headlong into a ravine, but it is the most comfortable way to talk— and he’d rather see her face than the rocky crag lines overhead.

“But ever since I set foot in this world, the rules have changed: obviously I’m not reduced to ashes come daybreak, and I can eat and bathe and drink without the affair being absolutely miserable. I can even trespass without an invitation, free to move about wherever I like.”

The elation of it had been intoxicating when he’d first arrived— now, however...

“...I suppose in a lot of ways, someone might say that makes me mundane. But as you can see, I’ve still got my teeth, my quickened reflexes— I can smell and see with sharper prowess than most. And given the way I look...” Pale as a ghost down to the curls in his hair. Crimson stare. Long fangs. Albinism wasn’t always his curse, he imagines. “Perhaps only the downsides have shifted. I just don’t know.”

“And I haven’t been able to bring myself to test it out for certain...what blood might do, were I to drink it again, freely. What it even tastes like.”

Hesitation flickers in his voice. The uneasiness he hasn’t confessed to anyone just yet.

“It’s terrifying, in a way. Alluring in another.”

Ellie winces visibly. She's had repeated and intimate familiarity with acid burns; there are horrible scars all over her arms to prove it, and even the tattoo she wears on one of them can't hide them.

It's up there on her list of the worst types of pain.

So she listens, turning the idea over in her mind, surprised at the impulse that bubbles up to the surface.

"The way the Rifts work is all kinds of weird," she mumbles. "I knew they fucked with magic, but I didn't realize they could fuck with..." she makes a generalized waving motion at all of Astarion.

"Could be that it just tastes gross now. You think you'll ever want to find out?"

“...yes. But I— ”

Mm.

His brow tangles, stare flickering. “Yes, I suppose. But I don’t want to drink from lowly, twitching vermin the way I'd been forced to before.”

No, a correction:

“—I won’t drink from them ever again.”

Not even the promise of wild game compels him to dip his fangs even a fraction as much as the vivid company he keeps. Curiosity to only be sated by drinking of a thinking creature, bright as the stars at night.

Supposedly they taste better, he'd been told.

“So now you see my problem: I can’t afford to lose whatever safe harbor I’ve been granted in this world by biting one of our own. And I can’t pluck off some alleyway vagrant without risking my own neck if I’m caught drinking blood in plain sight.”

And he won’t have his first time involve lapping up meager droplets of shed blood on a battlefield. Scavenging like a rat.

Ellie opens her mouth as if to say something, momentarily breathless with how pissed she is.

"Fuck that guy," she whispers under her breath. They both know who that guy is. It doesn't seem like enough, though. She curls her hands into fists to stop the fine trembling, the buzzing in her blood, until it passes.

She tries not to think about it. She's glad that Astarion hasn't made her promise anything. She knows she won't be able to keep it.

But of course, that leaves the question left unspoken, and that at least is distracting enough for Ellie to pull all of her attention to it. What would her blood do to him?

"I'd offer," Ellie says, frowning to herself. "I mean, for the sake of science, but-"

She hesitates. Even now, years and years later, Joel's warnings still hang heavy on her. Even in a world where it can't possibly matter.

"It wouldn't be a good idea. I don't know what it'd do to you."

Humor would normally be his crutch. A way to skip lightly from the ache of his own confession right through the near-miss of her offer; he’s never been graceful when it comes to being declined, even on the friendliest of terms.

So when he doesn’t sink immediately into pettiness or anything of the sort it's a testament to how much she’s earned from him. By being here. By listening. By not letting it all wash away like some cruel joke.

“...why not?” he asks, the slowness of its start the only sign he isn't certain he wants to hear the answer to that question. Or the one that subsequently chases it, both as cautious in their tone as though he's walking across only the thinnest of splintered ice.

“Are you ill?”

Edited 2021-08-13 01:08 (UTC)

Ellie breaks eye contact. Not nervously, but the look of thought on her face is the distant frustration of someone trying to figure out how to explain something complicated.

"Not exactly," she says, slowly.

She pauses again, trying to reason through her words. She doesn't want to freak him out or anything, but she doesn't want to make light of this either.

"Y'know those fucked up monsters I've talked about, from my world?" She shifts her gaze back to Astarion's face, hesitating again. The edge of her mouth twists.

"They're that way because of an infection. Spreads through bites. If someone gets bitten, they... y'know. Turn into one of those things."

She makes a gesture with her hand, uncomfortable, and rubs her palm over her right forearm.

"I've been bitten. More than once. But... luckily, it didn't take. As far as anybody can tell, I'm immune."

Astarion remembers that conversation well: myconids— or something like them— only unfathomably worse. Not likely contained by the deep hollows of the earth, the way they would've been in Faerûn. Not if she had to guard herself so absolutely— ever on the move, and ever wary.

The sort of instincts they both maintain, after all, don't come from anything short of hellish.

“...an infection spread by being bitten? We’re more alike than I thought.” He doesn't see the way her fingertips coast smoothly across her forearm. The way it seems to almost illustrate the subject at hand— his tired eyes fixed only on her expression, and how she shifts to look away. “Well, theoretically, anyway. I imagine the ability to withstand conversion might make more than a few souls jealous.”

Still, his humor’s short lived, easing back into taxed sobriety only a moment later; he can sense it, after all, the uneasiness of the topic at hand.

And it is quite the topic at that.

“Have you told anyone else about this?”

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