Chapter 3
That morning, that one final morning in the hells, I awoke to the screech of steel blades being sharpened. And soon, when I walked towards the end I walked with steps weighed down by armor and, finally, courage. How I had missed it. How I recognized myself. Behind me, the steady orchestra of my friends’ weapons clanging, steps tapping marble, the humming presence of their magic.
All the portals gaped empty, doorways into nothing. Black voids, all but one. A bleak, blue light shone within, and an icy cold poured out of it and into the room, frozen air glittering. Our breaths turned white.
”So”, I heard Karlach behind me, smiling stiffly. ”Cania, huh? Can’t say I’ve been. Never really felt … tempted.”
Another moment of frozen silence followed, during which I felt my friends wait for me to take the lead. Slightly, I turned my head to the side, half wishing to see Astrion next to me. Instead I found Lae’zel, her back straight and chest puffed, her silver sword drawn and her steel gaze awaiting mine like a general’s.
She nodded, once.
”First the vampire”, she hissed. ”Then the hammer.”
In her strength I found my own. And I stepped into the storm.
I felt them follow me. I felt our bodies transporting, together, out of this realm and into another, gone for a moment and suddenly, with a great sucking sensation, we were there.
The wind howled, the cold cut into the skin on my cheeks and burned my eyes. My chest pounded, and already, in the depth of the blizzard, I saw the great, black house of Mephistopheles rise before an empty sky.
Then: the doors closing, soundlessly, behind us. The storm quieting. Thick, trembling silence. A great lonely house, and a sense of being watched, so many burning eyes following us from some hidden place while we stealthed through the black marble corridors, in and out of shadows, beneath monstrous portraits in gilded frames, generations of horned devils.
I think we all felt it in the same instant. An invisible hook latching onto something inside our brains. A channel opening up, a connection establishing. A presence, familiarity, a flood of relief. Astarion, close: the sensation past through the five of us like a shiver, I felt it as much in my head as in my heart. Like a fist to the chest. I hurried my steps, hearing Shadowheart’s whisper only as if from a great distance, urging me not to do anything thoughtless.
We climbed several winding stairs and reached what looked like a library, or rather a museum, every surface seemingly untouched for millennia, with several curved balconies opening up towards the frozen wastelands of Cania. The cold was almost unbearable. Our breaths still hung like clouds out of our mouths.
We first saw him in the backlight cast by a great window overlooking the storm. His unmistakable silhouette seated by a small table, long legs leisurely stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles. I almost called out to him, but the cry, his name, caught in my throat when he turned to look at us, silver curls bobbing around his face.
”My darling friends!” he said, red eyes alight, as he tossed a hand of cards down on the table before him, ruining a half finished game of solitaire. Next to it stood an empty bottle of wine. ”So you finally managed to break Raphael’s cheap little amnesia trick. It is like I’ve always said: you lot are much smarter than you look!”
He stood, laughing gingerly as he came to greet us. And we just stared at him, a cautious silence ringing in our collective mind.
Astarion was beautifully dressed, with lace cuffs buttoned all the way up to his delicate hands and a ruffled collar hugging his throat tightly. As he came closer I saw a small pearl cameo pinned to the fabric just below his chin, depicting a ram horned devil.
Our vampire friend stopped some feet away from me, his forehead creasing when I didn’t move. His hands hung between us in an unfinished gesture. Finally, he asked:
”What … are you doing here?”
A tremor of anger in the midst of my fear. Only then did I understand how scared I was.
”We’ve come to get you”, I said. ”Astarion, we’re going home.”
I reached out to take one of his hands, finding it hot with newly stolen blood. He let me.
”Home?” he asked softly. As if the word was foreign to him.
And for a brief moment he was serious, contemplative, before breaking out laughing again. He slipped his hand out of mine to cup both sides of my face, holding it lovingly up to his as if to kiss me.
”Tav, Tav, Tav”, he cooed. ”I’m fine. I told you I’d be fine, I will always be fine!” He gestured around us, at the beautiful room perhaps, or towards the lack of both guards and torture equipment, the absolute non-danger he was in. ”Am I not – finally – living like some underworldly prince? Quite deservedly too, don’t you think …”
His gaze swept across our faces, and seemed to find only suspicion in our eyes. In a telepathic flash I felt Karlach suggesting we simply knock him out and carry him out of there. Astarion held his hands up before him as the message seemed to reach him as well.
”Look”, he said. ”Mephistopheles is weird – as are all ancient beings, I might add – but he mostly leaves me alone and …”
He was babbling. I was trembling. I was scared and annoyed. No, terrified and furious. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take it. And the next time he waved one of his bony hands in some deflective gesture I reached out to grab his wrist. I don’t know what willed me to do it. I just knew. It was simply the way things always were.
With a single tear I ripped one of Astarion’s lace cuffs, revealing the skin beneath it to be riddled with half-healed cuts in white and pink and red. Blood was still crusting on raised scars in the shapes of Infernal symbols, much like – if not identical – to the ones carved into Astarion’s back.
Astarion’s breath stilled. His eyes widened, staring at the exposed cuts. For a moment he was silent, lips tense with terror, before he said, softly:
”Oh … Oh, dear …”
He pulled free from my grip, and with increasingly shaky movements he started to unbutton his other cuff, revealing even more scarring.
”Astarion …”, I sighed, my chest tightening. I heard Wyll groan behind me.
”No, no, no …”, Astarion whispered, tugging at the collar of his shirt and finding carved symbols there as well, across his collarbones and chest. The ram cameo came lose and fell clattering to the floor.
Shadowheart stepped past me then, swiftly reaching up to take Astarion’s chin in her hand, steadying his face before her as she looked into his eyes. Astarion stilled, caught off guard, and simply stared back at her. We waited, as Shadowheart seemed to look for something in his gaze.
Finally, she let out a little sound, as if having confirmed a suspicion.
”It’s another amnesia spell”, she said. ”Whatever torture takes place here during the night he forgets it by sunrise …”
I interrupted her.
”Can you break it?”
Shadowheart let go of Astarion’s chin, closing her hand thoughtfully before her.
”I can try.”
She hardened her grip around her staff, and as she moved another inch towards Astarion he recoiled from her, violently, clutching his arms to his chest as if to protect his mutilated skin.
”Are you insane?” he exclaimed, and almost tripped over his chair as he kept stumbling backwards. ”I don’t want to remember, if Mephistopheles … If Mephistopheles has been gracious enough to let me forget …”
Blindly reaching back, his hand trembling, he steadied the chair behind him and sat down.
”Astarion …”, I tried, but he shot me a lethal glare, his voice hardening again.
”I don’t need any more precious memories of torture, Tav. Gods know I have enough. I am fine here. I am better than I have ever been.”
Another twitch of anger in my chest. This one felt like heartbreak.
”Astarion. We will be free.”
He made a wild gesture.
”It’s the breaking free that I can’t do. Not again, do you understand? It will destroy me.”
I felt Karlach beside me then, and before Astarion could pull away she had closed one of her great clawed hands around his, squeezing it.
”Mate”, she said tenderly, and I thought I saw him try to pull free, but Karlach’s grip was unmoving. ”Don’t get comfortable here.”
Astarion hissed.
”I haven’t been comfortable in my entire life -”
”Gods know I was comfortable being Zariel’s soldier”, Karlach continued, a sad chuckle in her voice. ”It was literal hell but it was also … comfortable. Because it was what I knew, and I knew … how much it would hurt to break free.”
I glanced up at her then, and found her eyes quivering with emotion.
”It was hard”, she said. ”Honestly, it almost kind of killed me off. But trust me, mate. It was worth it.”
She gave Astarion’s hand another squeeze, and when he grimaced I couldn’t tell if it was from the bones creaking in his hand or from what Karlach had said.
”I thought my only place in the world was in the worship of Shaar”, said Shadowheart then, thoughtfully, as if only now realizing it. ”It was my home, no matter what I had to do in the name of it. I still grieve it.” Her steal eyes hardened. ”But I regret nothing.”
And Lae’zel scoffed behind me, her voice a contemptible hiss.
”For too long I was content being a slave to Vlaakith”, she said, before straightening her back, and lifting her chin as if to look down on her opponents. ”I was blind, but I chose to see, even though the light burned my eyes.” Something changed in her gaze then, as it fel on Astarion. Perhaps it softened. ”I will never close them again, however comforting the darkness.”
Astarion just stared back at her, massaging his hand absentmindedly. Behind me, Wyll said nothing. The thought of Mizora hung between us like an unspoken betrayal.
Carefully, so that he wouldn’t try to escape his friends, I approached Astarion and knelt on the floor by his chair. Reluctantly, half hiding behind his silver locks, he met my gaze.
”I made a promise to get you out of here”, I told him. ”And I intend to keep it. Wether you like it or not.”
A long, stretched-out moment of silence followed, as a thousand arguments and counterarguments passed between us through our neural link. Finally, Astarion sighed so deeply his chest sank.
”I hate you all”, he said, with a low voice. ”Fine. Undo me, I guess.”
I had barely stood before Shadowheart was between us again, she seemed to not want to waste another minute of our time. And her hand was on Astarion’s brow, her fingertips only grazing his forehead as his eyes bulged in terror, staring up at her as if at some horrifying godess. She raised her staff, and a soft silver moonlight seemed to trickle into the room as she spoke, banishing all shadows.
I could feel magic working, a thaw in the frozen air, yet I couldn’t seem to follow the spell as it worked, trusting only that I would notice on Astarion’s behavior when his memories returned to him, when all the pain afflicted on him here would make itself known on his skin anew. Perhaps I thought he would cry out. But he didn’t. He barely sighed. His gaze became distant as he stared into nothing, eyes widening with the flood of memories. The red of his irises looked, for a moment, just like blood, spilling, before his face contorted with such silent and total pain that I felt my heart crumble in my chest. And I went to close my arms around him, tightly, holding him together so that he did not fall apart. Soon I felt Karlach’s great hot arms fold around us, enveloping us in warmth.
And I felt Astarion’s hair against my mouth, I breathed in his scent and felt his breath tremble in my ear.
”We will kill him”, I whispered. ”We will kill him and then we’ll go home.”
Astarion scoffed softly, and it sounded like a defeated sigh.
”Home?” he asked, once more, and I told him:
”Yes. Home.”
And sure, I barely knew myself what that meant. But my voice didn’t waver.