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faderift2022-03-08 10:59 pm
illithidnapped) wrote in faderift2022-03-08 10:59 pm
Entry tags:
[CLOSED] AND YOU'LL KNOW THE NEXT TIME I WAKE UP SCREAMING
WHO: Astarion, Fenris, Bastien, Emet-Selch, Mobius, Ellie, Dante, Loki
WHAT: fear spirits are no joke when you're a bag of broken glass
WHEN: backdated to Crossroads plot hours
WHERE: the Crossroads
NOTES: so many content warnings: mind control, slavery, torture, blood, mutilation and abuse of every conceivable/literal shade, possibly more warnings to be added later, not joking this is a very horrible space. There's a reason why I'm divorcing this from the main log; Astarion's canon is, in short, unkind.
WHAT: fear spirits are no joke when you're a bag of broken glass
WHEN: backdated to Crossroads plot hours
WHERE: the Crossroads
NOTES: so many content warnings: mind control, slavery, torture, blood, mutilation and abuse of every conceivable/literal shade, possibly more warnings to be added later, not joking this is a very horrible space. There's a reason why I'm divorcing this from the main log; Astarion's canon is, in short, unkind.
source
no subject
And they are moving closer.
Astarion doesn’t dare stray from whatever magic (or no— the antithesis of it) Mobius provides, and so he only draws one of his daggers, flicking it back into a readied grip, red eyes so hatefully set. Teeth bared. Ready to rip that spirit to tatters the moment it’s vulnerable.
Only it’s smart.
Or perhaps self-serving.
Perhaps, like a spider exposed to the light, it knows better than to try and strike out at a losing battle against prey when it has other souls ensnared elsewhere to feed upon.
Perhaps a Templar frightens it instead.
Whatever the reason, it twists like a struck snake once they close in, illusion slithering around it like waved smoke— tendrils of reality coiling as they settle once more— and the demon, the spirit that had hungered so deeply for fear, rushes away into the shadows.
Leaving them in silence.]
...I...
[No. No, better to wait until they’re clear. He pulls faintly on that hold he’s keeping, mercifully light, now.]
I can smell fresh air.
This way.
[It takes a few minutes of walking in silence, but eventually they find their way back to the light, hostile and headache inducing as it is. An agonizing balm if ever there was such a thing.
Astarion’s grip abates almost instantly; he tucks his gloved fingers over one another somewhere in front of him, picking tediously at leather seams.]
I should...
[Ah, no. That’s not right either.
Start again.]
Don’t tell anyone what I told you back there.
About my master. What he— [His sigh is tired. His head aches. Everything aches.] No one would understand.
no subject
Could be that's from the tumult of emotions, too. Best to only parse that later.
He could fight a spirit or demon or what-have-you, he's sure, but best to let it run away and leave them in peace. For as light as Astarion's hold becomes, he's still pretty sure he can feel bruises along his arm and wrist from earlier. And when he's released into the (strange wrong altered sickening) light and air and ground and sight of it all, he sheathes his sword at last and lowers himself to the ground, sat against a rock. Runs his hands through his short hair and ruffles it out of place.]
Haven't had to do that in a while.
[He glances up at Astarion, sidelong, from an angle, rather than directly.]
I'm not gonna just tell people your old master indulged in a more fucked up than usual form of blood magic and had you fetch people to feed him. He's not here, you're not that, not anyone's business.
None of it is.
no subject
Is that still, bearing the marks from his past in full.
Even so, it’s a relief, hearing that the most damning aspects of it all aren’t about to be dragged out into the figuratively blinding Thedosian daylight (Astarion could always lie if he had to: blackmail and cheat and deny every last scrap of unsettling truth— but it’s difficult to be believed over a Seeker), and doubly so that he doesn’t seem judged for it besides.
His movements are tentative, like a wary stray inching nearer to an offered meal, but Astarion does settle down opposite to Mobius there, braced against the sickening hammering of his heart within his chest (against the painfully stark vertigo of the Crossroads, too, and you know what, maybe he’s done with all this mess for now, once they’ve finished their impending chat). Hands to his knees, posture slouched.]
I didn’t have a choice, you should know. [He says it just in case. Just in case Mobius lies now, adrenaline still pumping in his chest. Just in case he changes his mind later on a whim, or decides he no longer cares for Astarion’s presence.
A thousand different precautions all drawn up by a survivor's mind, one conditioned to see avid threats lurking in every potential corner, no matter how far away from his master that he is.
(But then come to think of it it doesn’t really matter if Astarion did have a choice: all those times he’d spent watching the delicate fools he’d lured in howl in betrayed anguish, and what wouldn’t Astarion have done to protect himself from Cazador’s ire?
Their ends were quick, relatively speaking.
Astarion’s wouldn’t be.)] My enslavement in its totality was exactly that: total. Absolute. An eternally binding curse in the most literal sense.
My mind remained my own, but my body would always adhere to his commands the moment that he spoke them— no matter how cruel.
[A puppet. A toy to be broken or mended at will. One of so many others.]
And he was cruel.
[A pause there, his own stare lowering.]
What was it you saw...? What did the demon show you.
no subject
He sees now more of the wounded dog that he had glimpsed in their first meeting at the tavern. After Mobius had read parts of him like an open book. This is playing defensively. The elf thinks no one can be trusted, and that Mobius will inevitably break his word. Say one thing, then go running off to everyone to blab about the elven blood slave and his otherworldly master and the murders perpetrated. Cast him out.
It had been sad to see then, and it remains sad now. But that Astarion cares enough to expand on any of it means...something. Even if it's just from the shared experience.]
And slaves to blood magic and enthrallment more so. I'm sorry.
[It doesn't mean much, even if it's earnest. He has questions, of course. Astarion might be from elsewhere, but he seems to bear a few similarities. Those teeth are probably not merely decorative, and those eyes are probably not exactly natural. But he's not sure how he would react if his partner in this nonsense suggests he also partakes of blood. Maybe actually better not to get into it. Digging deeper invites digs deeper. The elf asks. Mobius leans his head back against stone and blinks up at floating bits of land and a bizarre sky. So much better than a sea of blood and dead mages.]
You asked me about the red lyrium dragon, before. And I answered honestly. [Big ol' dragon crusted with the hateful stuff. He has to imagine. He hasn't seen it for himself.] I don't know if you've ever had to fight Red Templars. Same thing, but in a person. It doesn't...end well. For anyone.
[He's not necessarily afraid of fighting them if he has to, and he's in no danger of actually accepting an offer it if came to him. But. Something could happen. It could somehow end up happening to him. They could rise up and take power from the Chantry and drag everything down with them-- He breathes out slow. That's hardly the only thing. Frankly the least scary thing, even if Astarion's version was his most frightening.]
Unless we wanna talk about the dead people. Or the things it said.
[His throat feels very dry suddenly. He keeps staring at the sky. Even if it feels wrong, is it not still the Maker's light in some form? He'll take it far more readily than the dark.] You can ask questions. I can't promise I'll answer.
no subject
Nine months free and it’s still too vivid a memory, after all. The ones that never needed the figurative whip to fawn and scrape at their master’s heels. The ones who so often convinced themselves their suffering would somehow be eased if they were the favored few amongst the flock. The adored. The cherished.
They never knew how wrong they were.
But Mobius isn’t relying on platitudes.
That counts.]
I’ve only seen red lyrium embedded in corpses. [He stops there, correcting himself with a thin gesture down towards nothing in particular. A sort of stand in for an acidic little shrug; how wretched their enemies are.
How abysmal their measures.]
Or a dragon. Or corypheus, when I saw him last.
You knew templars that subjected themselves to it?
no subject
I knew Templars who got convinced by certain ideologies or who thought they didn't have a choice. I couldn't tell you what actually happened to them specifically, but I've got a pretty good idea. Don't ever mess with that blighted stuff. [Even literally, Blighted lyrium.] It's corrupted to its core.
[Even the memory of it makes the lyrium in him feel wrong. So he latches on to something that caught his ear. Rather than ask about the master, the bodies, the duke's estate (which he still is curious about), he instead looks over properly at Astarion.]
You've seen Corypheus?
no subject
There's a good reason why he's wary about letting his own status as a Rifter slip beyond the bounds of their collective organization these days...or even within it.]
Once. Only once. [As if that wasn’t enough, as far as anyone should ever be concerned.]
He didn’t actually know I was there, of course. Otherwise the question as to how I’m still here— unaltered and unscathed and still serving Riftwatch— would be an undeniably appurtenant one. But yes, I saw him in the flesh.
The hideous, melted, unsightly flesh.
It was during a scouting mission, just after Tantervale’s undoing. I’d been sent alongside two others to track down where Corypheus’ pet dragon was nesting down, so to speak. We followed it for a number of utterly destructive days— until it returned to its master’s side, at a hidden base within the Silent Plains. [The rest of that tale, he opts not to get into. Aside from being a long story, it's not a particularly flattering one, either.] Believe me when I say that it was more than enough of an unsettling sight to last a lifetime, even from afar.
How anyone can bring themselves to serve anything so nauseatingly vile is—
[Well.
He flicks his attention away once more, returning to the prior subject:]
They thought they had no choice, but you knew better, I take it.
no subject
[There are those who willingly choose to serve evil, whether out of fear or greed or other weaknesses of the psyche. Astarion may not have had any choice, technically speaking, but Mobius will make the gentle rebuke anyway. They've both at least known people who have served things greater and more horrible than themselves.]
You got close enough to him and the dragon to see them. Don't know that I could've stopped myself from doing something daring and extremely foolish. [Charging in, sword held high, to lop something off. Surely there were extenuating circumstances including but not limited to a whole army around. Surely.]
There was...a schism. A Templar had the idea--I don't know what he faced or what his circumstances were, but he was involved in red lyrium and wanted to outfit the Order with it, so that with their new strength they could oust the Chantry. Do away with it for slights real or imagined and run the world free of the Chantry entirely. It came from elsewhere, too, I think. Other bands of Red Templars that popped up here and there. I don't know if by design or by accident or what. Related to the Seekers, too, when there were still more around. Plenty of Templars were convinced that it was another tool in the arsenal, and just as many who thought it was a bad idea. In the group I was with, some left to go join, thinking it'd give them more power to help end the war.
[His fingers play at the hem of his sleeve between thoughts. Maybe it's become obvious by now. And if they're going to speak of the difficult...
It's still no easy thing to say. With Barrow, he saw a compatriot, a kindred spirit. The same with Ortega, if somewhat different with her reluctance to keep using lyrium. To someone outside the Order, even to a Rifter, it feels wrong. It feels frightening in its own right. He takes a breath as if to speak, and then says nothing. And then he does it again and finds the words.]
I'm not a Seeker, actually. I'm not anything right now. But I was a Templar. Still got the skills to prove it.
no subject
A mess of tangled feelings. Selfish, soothing pride— all shattered.
Self-loathing, at times.
He turns his attention downwards, picking at his gloves once more. The fixation helps— though it doesn’t brace him for what follows: stare flicking sharply upwards as he blinks a few times in muted surprise as it all clicks into place.
Ah.]
A Templar. But you never took red lyrium.
[His head tilts, curiosity pervading.]
Why?
no subject
Whatever Mobius is anticipating, it isn't what comes out of Astarion's mouth. A Rifter doesn't have the same kind of history, wouldn't normally be instilled with any kind of fear or hate for Templars. The question isn't even about why the lie (he never lied, just let Astarion come to a conclusion and not correct him), and the question that is asked seems absurd.
Wasn't so absurd to those who went off to join Samson or Lambert or who the fuck ever else. Glass, stones. Take a breath. He stretches out his legs before him, sets his palms on the ground, solid beneath him, even if it's only magic keeping it up. That with effort, he could undo the very foundation they rest upon. Only for it to come right back.
He is small here. Let that be enough.]
Because I didn't want power. I didn't want to overthrow the Chantry. I didn't want to cause any more harm than necessary.
[The hands aren't there anymore, but he can still feel the ghost, the sense-memory of them, fingers pulling at his trousers, a grip around his ankle.]
I just-- [And he breathes through a sudden spike of emotion. The thing he's wanted for nearly ten years. And it feels so stupid and foolish and childish to give voice to the words. It's small. He is small. Is that not enough?] --wanted things to go back to how they were.
[His bunk in the tower. The endless books. The friends made, Order and mage and Chantry all alike. The simplicity of doing his duty and then retiring for the evening.]
And some new strange lyrium that supposedly increased your strength tenfold wasn't going to help things. It would only help if the goal was domination. Over mages, or the rest of the people, or the Chantry itself--didn't need it. Didn't want it.
[And if they're going to ask questions, he wants to change the course of the topic and ask some of his own, but he's careful. Wants to avoid any large pitfalls with sharpened sticks lining the bottom if he can. He's not sure that he can.]
How long have you been away from your former master? [Or--was the connection severed when he got here to Thedas? Or before that?]
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Even if the storm has passed.
...and truth be told, he likes Mobius. A great deal more than he’s willing to let on.
So instead he only listens for a while, his fingertips finally stilling in their restless fidgeting.]
What were things like before?
[There's such longing Mobius' voice for something that must have been small, if power didn’t tempt him away from service. If overthrowing the status quo meant nothing— and Mobius hardly strikes Astarion as the oppressive sort: the kind of Templar the mages of Riftwatch so fretfully fear.
No, he doubts very much that was ever the case.
And because he wants to hear the answer, he forestalls his own.]
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There's still some resistance. Doesn't care to talk about himself much, prefers to look forward, to pick at others and get them to talk about themselves instead. But now that Astarion knows-- Is there any harm in it?]
Where I was, [still neglecting the specifics, out of habit if nothing else] it was...pleasant. Our Circle didn't have the kind of now-well-known abuses that others did. You'd have some...transgressions, yeah, of course, but it-- [He takes a breath, starts again. Don't get into the nitty gritty.] At least for a Templar, on my end, it was nice. Nice city, well-stocked Circle. Clean, cared for, big library. Genuinely gorgeous library, stacked floor to ceiling. You have to understand, I was there for most of my life, barring missions elsewhere. It's what I knew. I was an established presence. Friends. Good friends, among the Templars and the mages. Occasionally exciting, mostly not. But it's where I felt I belonged.
[And that belonging was thrown out in an instant. His faith shook right up until the tipping point, and the unanswerable questions came again and again, rolled around in his head. Still do, sometimes.]
I know that's not much. [Small. He shuts his eyes and tries not to feel small, like he's about to wake up and forget everything but the Maker's light--] But we had a home, and we were doing good work, or thought we were. We weren't out in the world trying to figure out where to go; we weren't hunting mages and killing friends, weren't bickering with each other and fracturing into smaller and smaller pieces.
[He thinks that maybe they should start moving. But whatever was after them, it isn't following them. They are in the light. They are safe, in a relative manner. Take a breath, hold it, let it go.]
Your turn.
no subject
In the last two hundred years, Astarion’s found himself dreaming more and more frequently of the simplicity of so many other’s lives, resenting their steadier peace for the fact that he lacks anything similar; appreciating it because it stands as the absolute antithesis of all he’s known. Since coming to Thedas, that stands true now more than ever.
So no, he doesn’t need to be a Templar with a long lost Circle to grasp precisely what it is Mobius misses.
And he isn’t one for sympathy, but—
Well. Maybe his expression runs a little softer. His voice a little quieter. Gentler, when he exhales:]
Nine months.
[And, because he knows what’ll no doubt prove relevant to that confession:]
My master held me in binding slavery for two hundred years, before your world tore me from his side.
no subject
Possible. But is it probable?]
Did your binding include giving you teeth like that?
[Is he like his master, is the real question being asked.]
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[Low, that confirmation. Only a sliver of a breath, segueing into a subtle pause.]
His curse, passed on.
I could tell you I had no choice, and to a certain extent that was true enough: I’d been attacked on my own the night he found me, beaten to death’s very door in the street by a pack of spiteful humans. [A lone nobleman who never stood even the slightest chance, and where so much of his memory has ebbed away into nothing at all, he still remembers it vividly now. Every last painful second.
It shows, no matter how he masks it, in the stiffened lines of his expression. The wooden sound of his voice.]
I was already dying by the time he chased them off. My only chance to avoid its damning grasp was to take his offer of immortality. To let him bite me, drink what little blood I had left, and allow him to change me from an elf....into a vampire, like him. [And by now, he suspects the definition in its simplest form is obvious to a mind as sharp as Mobius’:] Red eyes. Long fangs. Eternal life— at the cost of a taste for blood, but with the benefit of power beyond any mortal’s possession.
He could command wolves. Shift into the very air itself, dominate minds and shrug off undoubtedly fatal wounds, with beauty so profound you wouldn’t be remiss in thinking he was some sort of god, if you weren’t already in the know. That is what I assumed I would be, elevated to his side. My rescuer. My merciful salvation.
[Alluring. The dream of it still clings, even now, despite how he knows better.]
But the joke was on me, of course.
In order to become a true vampire, I would’ve needed to drink his blood in turn... [The twist too obvious. The betrayal he, stupid and trusting and desperate beyond belief, never saw coming:] Cazador never intended for that to happen.
The very second my blood stained his lips, I became a vampire spawn, instead. Altered, yes, but significantly weaker. Unable to defy him— to do anything but serve his every last whim right down the last detail.
I couldn’t have bitten him no matter how much I wanted to, he made damn certain of that.
no subject
An impossible choice. And he doesn't know what kind of magic exists in this other world, what kind of prejudices if any exist against it, or against elves (although. it certainly sounds like there may be similarities.), but actively dying and being offered something that isn't death? Impossible. Part of him wants to judge, but he can't. What would he do in that situation? He has no idea.
And what of mages who choose to turn to blood, or who turn to demons, when they have fear for their lives? Mostly they choose and then fear for their lives, but sometimes, on rare occasion, it seems that there's little choice. At least in their eyes. Mostly it's power and greed and hunger and defiance. Is it fair to judge others differently? Hm.]
And do you...partake? Of blood.
[He also doesn't know what he'll do if the answer is yes. Two hundred years, and then suddenly having freedom in a whole new world, if he had gotten used to a lifestyle or has a need for it, why would he stop?]
Could you do the same to someone else? [Not would he. Just...if he possesses the power.]
no subject
[No. A lie, but not a full one: beacause yes and no would technically be the truth regarding that first, overshadowing question, and there’s a risk in withholding the full scope of his answer, he knows—
But he’s afraid, still. A knot tangled in his stomach, twisted up like twine. Like wire. A barrier between opening the lid on shared honesty in everything, and keeping a few unsightly cards tucked in close against his own chest.
Just a few.
(He only indulges now for pleasure with those who willingly share. Or for self-defense when all the world turns dire in its cast. But what would either fact do to comfort a man that’s only ever known blood magic? Demons? Nothing. Nothing at all good...
He’s sure of it.)
So Astarion shakes his head, settling the whole of his stare on Mobius; keeping every inch of him relaxed despite everything.] And I was never permitted to feed on thinking creatures, besides. Only putrid rats or dying flies. Something to keep me repulsed in my starvation, yet still alive, and always hungry. [A short scoff, and then:] Appetizing, I know.
Still, whatever magic brought me to your world, it...changed me. [Which is true.] I kept my fangs, but my inability to dwell in sunlight? My weakness in water, my appetite for blood and my master’s binding hold— gone.
All gone.
And I was never capable of conversion, so believe me when I say you don't need to go clapping me in irons or locking me away in the nearest Chantry tower: spawn lack the capacity, and I'll prove it if it means putting any possible wariness to rest.
After all, only a true vampire is capable of adding to their cadre by amassing thralls that hang on their every whim.
no subject
He won't pick at it if Astarion won't.]
I believe you. [Quiet. Sure. About the converting, at the very least, and the details as given.] You don't have to prove anything to me.
[He can't speak for others. But this isn't about anyone else. Not right now.]
Two hundred years...and then suddenly free. Or as free as a Rifter gets. Must've been a fun adjustment period. No wonder you don't want to go back home.
no subject
Fenris was there right from the start. [A beat, and then:]That was before his memories were stolen, of course.
He made it easier. [He still does.]
Understand that I need this world. I don’t want to leave it, for all the obvious reasons, and I’d rather not be enslaved again either— which is what every Rifter inevitably would be underneath Corypheus’ rule. And yes, I realize telling a Templar that I’ve no intention of being locked away within a Circle is absurd, but I don’t. I won’t ever be.
[No more binding tethers, no more bordering walls, no more lack of agency. Of freedom. He knows precisely what the Chantry plans to do if the war's won.
He won't have it.]
Not again.
[But that isn't aimed bitterly at Mobius. It's only honesty, ugly and coarsely cut. It falls away not long after just as Astarion's crimson stare lifts, honed in with a sharper focus.]
Regardless of all the rest, what I mean is that I’m on your side. And you’ve a weapon against me as much as you have proof that I’m not your enemy, after what you’ve just seen.
[Terrifying, that thought, to someone like Astarion. To have someone holding something so utterly fragile. An easy way to unmake him.]
I hope you realize what a massive generosity it is on my part that I’m not killing you to protect it.
no subject
[Astarion more so; he realizes this. Mobius being a Templar isn't some near-automatic death sentence, just uncomfortable, would make some people wary and others angry, and that's it. What Astarion is, the combination of things that he is, would be greeted with much more vehemency and violence.
It doesn't seem fair. This isn't about fair. It's not about equal exchange. But still. He looks at Astarion, really looks, takes in this elven man from another world whose life has been lived far too long as a whole, and too long under the unbreakable control of an actual monster. This kicked dog, this cornered wolf, who has tasted freedom and never again will allow himself to get corralled into another cage. This funny, self-assured, dangerous man.]
I can't make any promises about what'll happen when this is over. I don't know if Circles will come back, and I don't know if what Rifters can do should be classified as magic in the same way that natural-born mages are, and I don't have any future sight. But I'm not judge, jury, or executioner. Not anymore.
Used to be. You might have seen your victims in there, but I saw mine. I'll defend Templars until Andraste hears my final breath leave my chest, but I know we're not innocent. I killed people. Good people. Because someone decided they broke a rule just enough that it made them too dangerous to live. Because when everything broke loose, they all became too dangerous. I followed orders until I couldn't abide by it anymore; I had that choice. I always had a choice.
[And when you're entrenched in certain ideologies for decades, it's easy to get numb to it all. Easy to hear someone that is supposed to know better than you 'this is a blood mage' and to draw your sword against it. Easy to not think too hard or look too deep. It doesn't make him different or special that he thought too hard or looked too deep, because he still did as he was ordered, even if others thought he was too soft about it. Some didn't bother making friends or being nice or treating others with basic dignity. Some only saw themselves as a weapon begging to be used.
Doesn't make a difference now, does it?]
I'm not gonna hurt you. Not deliberately; not with this. I'm not a sword hanging over your head. I left that behind me years ago.
[He's not in the business of unmaking people. Not unless it's to build them back up to be better.
He makes to stand and holds a hand out to Astarion to help him do the same.]
We're both on the same side here, so I appreciate the whole not killing me thing.
no subject
But maybe this isn’t the time to ask that just yet.
Not when they’ve both suffered enough.
So he takes it, fingers clasped tight around an easier grip, rising to his feet with little ceremony spared outside the gesture itself. The very least he could do.] It’s a difficult sacrifice for someone like me. But I imagine I owe you, now. Just a little.
This’ll just make us even.
[Normally that’d come with a grin. Not right now, though. Not today.
All that said, though:]
I’m leaving the Crossroads. [Definitive. Decided.]
You should too.
[This place is no friend to them, and Astarion can’t stomach the thought of stumbling into another trap or grasping spirit just yet. Tired as they are. Worn thin as they are, maybe it’s better to retreat while they still can, and leave the rest to the Wardens or native elves. Hardier things.]
Be a shame if a spirit ate you right up.