Chapter Text
All of their group had their own little secrets. One by one, they were being dragged into the sunlight, far faster than Astarion would have thought possible.
Shadowheart, on around day three, was revealed to be a Sharran of all things. The group was tense on this, but Shadowheart was near the leader of the group. She pointed out that Lae’zel worshiped Vlaakith, a lich queen, and therefore was not one to criticize her.
It was strange that a Sharran was unable to keep this a secret for long, but then again, they had these little niggling tadpoles that could connect up memories, reveal things you didn’t want revealed.
That wasn’t how Shadowheart was found out though. She simply shit-talked Selune too many times to where Gale turned around and laid out a bullet point list on how she was clearly a Sharran. The only thing Gale judged, apparently, was dishonesty.
Which was hypocritical, really, because Gale on day four revealed he had a bomb inside of his chest that could level a city if he didn’t feed it magical items. He didn’t want to reveal this, but the hunger his orb had had become precarious due to the group having not given Gale anything. Astarion wisely pointed out that maybe Gale should be a city’s distance away from them, and very few people listened to him about his excellent reasoning skills.
And then there was Wyll.
Wyll was too good of a thing to be true, so clearly he wasn’t. Astarion was convinced that that was the real secret. What he was actually getting out of the hero business, where the con was at.
Astarion hadn’t been expecting a devil, furious that Wyll hadn’t killed Karlach on her orders.
Watching someone else turn into a devil turned out to be a deeply unpleasant thing. Wyll’s flesh was the first thing to burn in black fire, before the fat under his skin caught, and he went up like firewine. The bone snapped like kindling, reforming and twisting, and at least there wasn’t much sound coming out of Wyll. It probably would have been shrill.
He smelled terrible though. Brimstone of the worst variety, and something sharper than that as well.
It, for some reason, smelled like putrid rats, and it was hard to keep focused with a smell like that. The stench of it almost seemed determined to drag Astarion into the darkest place in his mind.
Not just rats. The smell of stone and dust and his own blood.
Wyll’s transformation didn’t seem to last long. Maybe a few minutes at most, and the char that flicked off of Wyll left a devil underneath, smooth skin with a number of rather decorative ridges, long curling ram horns and a long tail to match. Claws and fangs and a devil’s eye and two wings.
It was a war of instincts in Astarion.
Minutes. Really. Wyll was wheezing and on his knees, tears streaming, over minutes. Should he be so lucky. Oh sure, there was probably a time dilation effect, maybe he’d burned for an hour or so from his perspective for whatever weird hell magic had happened, but Astarion had been in a rack for a week once, and he’d stopped feeling sympathy for his siblings’ screams a long time ago.
But then, there was still that smell of dust, and there was a flicker of a memory, of Cazador sneering.
“Worthless boy. I spent eleven years impaled. I spoil you with a single soft year, and still this is how you act.”
Envy turned sour in his mouth.
Astarion could still remember dying. He couldn’t remember what he looked like, but dying was engraved on the back of his eyelids. His bones had mostly been shattered. He could not remember his parents’ names or where he grew up, but he remembered distinctly that they’d shattered his femur first, so he couldn’t run.
His ribs had been next, lower chest cavity shattering under a club. And then his skull had been partially caved in.
Cazador’s bite hadn’t killed him, not really. It stuck him in his shell of a body. He’d been unable to die fully, and he’d been painfully conscious as every bone slowly snapped back into place, in just as much pain as when he’d been struck the first time, but prolonged and exaggerated.
The agony of the transformation had been one of the worst things he ever felt, including Cazador’s torture, still to this day.
He wondered if turning into a devil was similar.
On impulse, Astarion looked to Karlach, who’d spent ten years in the Hells. She’d be a good judge of what happened.
Karlach looked horrified. She looked near sick, hands clasped over her mouth.
The envy finished crumbling, and it left Astarion feeling hollow. The story made sense. Wyll hadn’t wanted to spare Karlach at first because this was what was going to happen. He couldn’t have been pacted for more than a couple of decades, so he hadn’t done his devil equivalent of a year in a tomb. He was young and stupid and probably still believed someone might save him some day. He’d gone to bat for a sweet, darling woman, and this was what he got.
It had been familiar. The way Mizora had humiliated Wyll, oh, Astarion knew that like a second set of scars on his back. Most of Cazador’s parties were for rubbing elbows where the spawn would be deeply punished if they showed up. Cazador didn’t want victims from the upper echelons and also didn’t trust his ‘children’ to not embarrass him in front of his peers, but he had his occasional special party, and Astarion was, at times, the entertainment, on display in front of people.
It hadn’t always been sexual even.
Karlach fluttered over Wyll, and that made the envy churn a bit, a few embers flaring before dulling again. Fine, he decided, but this was still distasteful. He would most begrudgingly extend a little sympathy to Wyll in these moments. He didn’t want to. He wanted to hold onto his envy.
“A single year, and you won’t stop sobbing. You are a disgrace. You were a mistake to turn.”
He just didn’t feel like envy right now, was all. He’d be envious of others later, he decided, of everyone else, but maybe Wyll would have a little slack.
“Will he be okay?” Gale nervously asked. Wyll was mostly twitching, trying to get his bearings probably. It’d make sense if hellfire was extra bad or something. The Hells were supposed to be distilled suffering.
“I’ll sit with him,” Karlach said. She kept making abortive gestures, like she wanted to drag Wyll to safety, but she couldn’t touch him. It seemed to be distressing her, that she couldn’t even offer that to Wyll. All Astarion could think of was how he wished no one could touch him.
“It seems extremely petty,” Shadowheart said, eying the spot Mizora had vanished into. “To turn Wyll into a cambion like her.”
“That’s devils,” Karlach said, a decade of exhaustion in her voice.
Shadowheart pulsed some amount of healing into Wyll, for whatever good it would do, and he was taken to his bedroll to rest by her and Lae’zel. Karlach sat out at front, on guard, like instincts that never fully died away.
Astarion sidled up close to Karlach when everyone else vanished.
“It seems a shame,” Astarion said. “Strangely, I don’t think he’ll even learn a lesson from it, turning into a devil over you.”
It was a lie. These were simply the lessons one learned in services to monsters, and one Wyll already seemed half-familiar with. Wyll hadn’t wanted to spare Karlach, not at first. The group had been divided on whether or not to trust Wyll or Karlach, and ultimately they came down on the side of Wyll, if for no other reason than he’d been with the group longer, a mere day. It really had been Karlach who had broken through to Wyll that she wasn’t a devil.
And now, ironically, because of that, Wyll was a devil.
“I don’t know why he did it,” Karlach said softly. Her tail was half-curled around herself, and her voice was raw. “I don’t think I would have. I don’t think hardly anyone would have. I don’t understand it, but I’ll fucking honor it.”
Astarion raised an eyebrow judgmentally. “So he has your eternal loyalty now or something?”
Karlach snorted. “What. If someone picks getting tortured over hurting you, you don’t get a thing for it?”
Gods, that was the thing, wasn’t it? That was the fantasy dream that never came into fruition. People like that simply didn’t exist, except for apparently Wyll.
“I suppose he does look rather fetching now as well.” Astarion meant it to come out dismissive, but his voice betrayed him, and it came out far more longing than Astarion would ever want anyone to ever know, thanks. “Honestly, that man.”
Karlach frowned at that, uneasy, and Astarion suddenly felt self-conscious.
“What, staking claim already?” Astarion asked. “I can’t blame you I suppose.”
“Hey, I can’t claim shit,” Karlach said. “That’s for him to decide. But I think I can help him where few others can. This is going to be tough on him. And it’ll be weird for me too, I guess. I swore I wouldn’t ever go after a devil like that, but here I am.”
So Wyll really was a devil now.
“Ten years in the Hells, and you weren’t once tempted?”
“Never said nothing about tempted, but that would have gone terribly, for so many reasons. But Wyll?” Karlach looked wistful and guilty for some reason and more wistful. “Anyway, even if he doesn’t want me like that, I think he could use a friend. And I’m going to do that for him. He did that for me, so I’m going to be his bestest friend from now on.”
“He made his own choices,” Astarion said. “You don’t owe him shit.”
Karlach gave him a look. “I never said I did. But people like that, like Wyll, just don’t exist. I’ve been around near three decades and haven’t met a single person like Wyll, and if I find one, I’m gonna hold as tightly as I can.” She paused. “Without hurting him.”
Astarion stole a single glance inside the tent, where Wyll was resting. There were tiny little shivers running through his body, whether due to temperature or nerves. The horns looked almost more like a halo on him than anything else.
“Well, have fun guarding then,” Astarion said, and he turned and walked away.
—
The thing was, the problem was, once Astarion had decided that Wyll would be a singular exception, that he wouldn’t feel envy for Wyll, Astarion couldn’t help but notice him.
Wyll was really, really fetching to look at. And he clearly hadn’t gotten the memo that fairy tale bullshit was all bullshit. He was a monster hunter though, which was terrifying, and Astarion was hoping his little reveal wouldn’t happen any time soon.
But it would. A Sharran got revealed. A bomb got revealed. And now a devil employer had been revealed. It was only a matter of time, and Astarion needed to have a game plan for how to survive his reveal while also trying to delay it as long as possible.
If Astarion cozied up beforehand, maybe he could spend some time stroking Wyll’s ego, soothing his wounds, laughing at his jokes, and once Wyll had grown affectionate of him, then bring up the spawn issue. People tended to react better when you simply told them your secrets rather than finding out through some unpleasant means, like finding stray bite marks on a boar. And this way, Astarion could control the narrative and make sure he emphasized Cazador, the abusive sire who’d hurt Astarion.
Was it really manipulation if it was true?
Well, yes. If Wyll knew, Wyll might try to fight Cazador if he ever showed up, and then Cazador would kill Wyll.
But it would give Astarion potentially enough time to flee.
The problem was the day after, Karlach had practically glued herself to Wyll’s side, and worse, it seemed requited. Apparently deciding to burn for some beautiful woman you just met broke something in your brain. Astarion would almost claim it was sunk cost fallacy, of having already sacrificed this much for Karlach, Wyll was willing to double down on everything, except, well, it was Karlach, brash and beautiful and so full of life that it was annoyingly infectious.
Wyll volunteered in a heartbeat to help Karlach track down the paladins after her, and Karlach kept close to Wyll’s side, aside from her understandably burning the building down in a fit of rage.
What was interesting was Karlach didn’t seem like she fully trusted the group with Wyll now that he’d been devilfied. She wanted the group to prove trust, or some nonsense like that.
It was perhaps a bit overprotective, as the group had, aside from potentially Gale who had just been terribly queasy about the whole thing for some reason, been on the side of Wyll. Even Lae’zel had voiced approval for Wyll’s convictions.
Still, Astarion carefully noted their reactions. Devils were far far worse monsters than vampire spawn, and so how people reacted to Wyll would be of some use to knowing how they’d react to him. The group didn’t seem to mind Wyll too much now. Granted, Wyll had been human shortly beforehand, and that made it easier to extend personhood.
Wyll, at least the day after, seemed to have changed not one whit in personality. He still wanted to save the tieflings, despite their annoying droning and their pickpocketing and their whinging.
Wyll, despite burning, had apparently not learned the lesson of the pointlessness of saving people who were doomed to die. Astarion wouldn’t say anything, but Karlach didn’t seem like she was the type to live a long life, and Wyll was now a devil forever. There was a simple matter of maths that Wyll was blatantly ignoring.
The tieflings were going to die three days out on the road from something else, and Wyll was still determined that they take out the goblins for the tieflings’ ‘safety’. Wyll was willing to risk his life and Astarion’s life over little more than beggars who would not do the same for Wyll.
And this wasn’t conjecture.
They’d gone back to the grove, and the tieflings Wyll had been helping were suddenly much colder and more fearful towards Wyll now.
“It’s understandable, Astarion,” Wyll had said, like Astarion was the slow one here. “They’re refugees from the Hells. It’s right for them to be wary of devils.”
It made Astarion unspeakably angry.
—
Here was the sticky part of it all. Wyll had saved a woman, had burned for it in all of the suffering of the Hells, and apparently wanted to keep saving people.
Astarion had saved someone, had spent a year in a tomb, and then he stopped saving anyone at all except for himself.
Of course he had. Why would he try to skirt the edges of the compulsions Cazador had drilled into his brain for nothing but pain and suffering? That was the reasonable, logical thing to do. It was what literally anyone else would do.
Except, with actual blood in his system, his brain snagged at the threads of this logic.
There was Dalyria, who tried to devise a way out of vampirism despite how often Cazador punished her for it. She’d gotten more and more creative trying to find ways to cure vampirism around each new order and each new punishment Cazador inflicted. None of it changed a thing.
And Yousen had tried dozens of escape routes. Cazador had tried to torture it out of him. It’d been, oh, half a century? More? With Yousen around. And still, every few years, Yousen would find some new scheme on how to try to escape Cazador. If anything, the repeated torture only seemed to do the opposite it had done to Astarion. Yousen only doubled down further and further, becoming a creature of absolute spite.
Astarion had been convinced Yousen’s brain was broken, in the opposite way Petras’ was, as Petras still believed that Cazador actually gave a shit about any of them.
Maybe that was it, actually. Any reasonable person would do as Astarion had. But occasionally you got some insane crazy person like Yousen, or maybe like Wyll, who when faced with pain and torment refused to change.
Astarion didn’t know what happened of the man he saved.
And that man had been saved. That made it worse, in a way. Cazador couldn’t find the man Astarion had told to run, to flee Baldur’s Gate for his safety.
It had been so hard too. He’d been ordered to bring that specific man back for Cazador to consume in one of Cazador’s thankfully rare cravings, but Cazador hadn’t said when. The compulsions sometimes tugged anyway, wanting the spawn puppet to do what Cazador wanted best. It had been so hard to fight that much, to fight around what his brain told him to do, to tell the man to run and come back ‘when it was safe’, hoping the man would be wise enough to know it would never be safe. He’d shown the man his teeth and his bite mark, said he couldn’t say more.
That sweet man had looked horrified. And then he said he understood. He’d kissed Astarion sweetly on the forehead, crying, and then he’d run off into the night.
It had worked.
And that was so much worse.
Because then he knew that some of them could be saved, if it was worth a year in a tomb for. And Astarion had decided against that. All the lovely sweet people he found were delivered to Cazador instead.
If it had been earlier, if he’d still been under Cazador’s thumb, Astarion would have killed Karlach or Wyll in a heartbeat.
—
Before they went to go fight the goblins, they went to Auntie Ethel’s, who was, shockingly, a hag. And there was a damsel. So they fought the hag. The damsel was at first very ungrateful, until Wyll told her what had happened to her brothers, and then the damsel had broken down crying. They then found the evidence Kagha was working with shadow druids, and now their timeline for saving the tieflings had been extended.
That night, the party had a little celebration, even if Wyll kept trying to point out the hag wasn’t actually dead and would return.
“Can’t you even enjoy your own heroics?” Shadowheart teased.
Gale passed out bottles of wine, and Wyll retreated next to his tent, drinking his out of the bottle.
Astarion still couldn’t decide if his terminal hero addiction was attractive or murder-inducing, but it didn’t matter what Astarion really thought. What mattered was the safety Wyll would bring, and Astarion already had a good guess on how Wyll would treat Astarion.
So Astarion sat down next to Wyll, elbows practically brushing.
“May I?” he asked, gesturing to the bottle.
Wyll laughed. “Gale’s got plenty. You can get your own.”
Karlach then plopped down next to them, heat radiating off of her in waves, even with her little upgrade going. Astarion tried not to lean too far into that heat too obviously. He hadn’t eaten today, and the warmth of the boar had already left him.
Karlach passed him a spare bottle, and he grinned at her, careful not to show too many teeth.
“You’re my new favorite person,” he announced, and he took a swig of vinegar, but at least it was still good for a buzz. The poison still worked, even if the flavor was terrible. He’d had that, at least. He could be half-drunk when someone had railed him against a wall.
“Joining the monster corner, huh?” Karlach asked.
Astarion tamped down on his reflexive urge to flinch, and he spun it into another smile. “Please. I’m a magistrate. I’m far more of a monster than either of you.”
Karlach laughed, tail thumping once against the ground. “From Baldur’s Gate you said? I haven’t been there in ten years. How’s she doing?”
Wyll’s eyes locked onto Astarion’s. He was desperate for this information too. There was a hunger in his eyes Astarion hadn’t really seen on him before.
“Much the same I suppose,” Astarion said. “The Bhaalists have been sprouting up again.”
Wyll smiled. “They do seem to get more active in late summer.”
“Why is that?” Karlach asked.
“It’s the heat,” Wyll said. “There’s a peak level of heat that brings out the urge to murder your fellow person. At a certain point though, the heat becomes too hot, and people don’t have the energy for it. And in the winter, usually people are too cold and don’t want to go outdoors for a spot of murder, so all the murder happens inside.”
When it was too cold, Astarion had to be quick to a tavern, or else his fingers would be unnaturally frigid against someone, which usually, though not always, ruined the mood. He’d have to sit right next to the fire to warm up before trying his hand at seducing anyone. Though he had once lured someone back to the manor over ‘I need help getting to my home before hypothermia kicks in’. More than once, actually.
“How informative,” Astarion said dryly.
“I am a monster hunter,” Wyll said. “Late summer is usually the time most of the monster hunting happens for a reason.”
Karlach leaned back, which should have put her breasts on display, but it more showcased the glowing of her engine. “It’s weird. The Hells are far hotter than anything else, but it’s an unnatural heat. You shouldn’t be able to survive it, but you can. Or, in Avernus anyway. Some of the other layers are frozen over, but we never fought there. Zariel didn’t want to risk losing any tech to other archdevils. But this is a bunch of sad conversation. Come on guys. What’s the place you are looking forward to when we get home, huh?”
None of it. The thought filled him with a feral scrambling terror.
“The Blushing Mermaid of course,” Astarion said. “People are easy there.”
“The vendors outside of the city for me,” Karlach said wistfully, head tilted back. There were words tattooed across her unburned arm in some language Astarion couldn’t read, but Astarion would bet a pretty copper was Infernal. The ink looked unnatural, like an oil slick gone wrong. “You can get some great fresh fried fish that way. I still remember the smell of it.”
“The beach for me,” Wyll said. “I liked to watch the sun set over the ocean. It made the world seem so vast and magical, especially when the rays hit the clouds just right.”
“See?” Karlach said. “Things to look forward to. We’re all going to go there after we get these tadpoles removed. We can get smashed in the Blushing Mermaid, order some fried fish, and then stumble on down to the beach. Easy.”
If nothing else, the fantasy was lovely.
—
They talked for a while longer, drinking and reminiscing, or for Astarion, pretending to share fun memories.
But all Astarion could think about was Cazador, and the nerves were getting to him. He wanted another drink. He didn’t want to think about what would happen when he got back. It didn’t matter if Cazador commanded him to respond truthfully; all Cazador would hear were excuses on why he didn’t return home sooner. And then jealousy on how Astarion could now walk in the sun and enter into places uninvited.
Cazador was a mage of great power. He might insist on vivisecting Astarion to figure out how he was doing this. Astarion wouldn’t even have the luxury of unconsciousness.
So Astarion slipped off and stole another bottle. He didn’t want to find out if he didn’t have permission to take another or get lectured about supplies, and so he was just going to avoid that.
He slid off to the side and drank and drank some more, and his gut churned at it, face wrinkling in disgust. But the alcohol did its trick. His nerves quieted for a bit, and then he decided to return. Not because it was a thrilling conversation, but he was trying to build up something with Wyll, and perhaps Karlach too just to smooth it over that they were both vying for the same man.
The hushed whispers were what he heard first. It was pure instinct that he immediately plastered himself into the shadows, a reflex. Hushed voices meant his siblings were tiptoeing around something, which meant there was a good reason to hide.
The group wondered how he was so good at sneaking, and the answer was simple.
If Cazador was in a poor mood, and he didn’t see you, he would take it out on your hide. All of his siblings had their own coping methods on how to deal with Cazador. Astarion told Cazador whatever he wanted to hear, and he fucking hid when Cazador was angry.
Astarion crept forward, and Karlach and Wyll were talking in very low voices, Karlach pressed up as close to Wyll as she dared.
“I can’t risk it,” Wyll was saying. “On multiple levels, Karlach. You know why.”
Astarion gritted his teeth. Just say it out loud then Wyll.
“Maybe someone would be willing though,” Karlach said.
Wyll snorted, and it was a bitter, ugly sound, not one Astarion had heard from him before.
“I’d be,” Karlach said then, soft. One of her hands reached out and rested a few inches away from Wyll’s, the closest she could get. “But I physically can’t. I mean, it’s kinda my fault.”
Wyll looked at her then, uncertain and fond and soft. “It’s not your fault at all. I’m the one who made the pact. I knew there would be consequences at the time. I should be the one to shoulder the responsibility. And not only could I never ask that of you, but you know what would happen. Even if you were willing-?”
“Please,” Karlach said. “I don’t care how you made this pact. You don’t deserve this.”
And then, of course, they stopped talking about whatever it was.
This was very bad for Astarion. They already had some deep bond over something Wyll wasn’t sharing with anyone else, and that left Astarion out in the cold.
Fine.
Tonight was a wash anyway. He would try again tomorrow.