Chapter Text
Tendrils of floral steam withered into the aroma of oud and dusty leather as Amariel Stockhold stirred thoughtful circles around her china cup. Before her, the foreign characters quilled on candlelit parchment disassembled into squiggles that danced in and out of focus.
With an exhausted sigh, she rubbed her eyes. The hearth beside her hissed.
Gazing up towards the lancet window overlooking the upper gallery, she watched the brooding moon spill through soot-stained glass and across the towers of books lining the opposite wall. In the sepulchral library seldom graced by sunlight, thirsty darkness swallowed its light between fluted columns.
What other crimes had the moonbeams seen tonight? she darkly wondered.
No sooner had the reflection threaded her mind when the stillness shattered in response. Just beyond the walls, a shuffling of padded boots quickened their pace as they raced through the corridor, followed by wisps of excited murmurs.
Not a moment later, the solid oak doors swung open. A halfling burst into the room, springing Amariel off her chair.
“Portia!” She scolded in bewilderment at the short woman dressed in a kirtle of charcoal wool beneath a stiff linen apron.
“Mistress! Come quick!” She puffed. ”They’re about to turn someone! And by the looks of ‘im, he’s a high-born, too!”
Her alarm dissipated into intrigue. Instantly, Amariel slammed shut the tome, sending the pile of fragile pages fluttering into the air, and bolted up from her desk.
These toilsome days, precious little excited her; but at the Szarr Palace, any grisly bloodbath or necromantic rite provided the height of entertainment. Like a public hanging, it roused even guileless eyes in curiosity.
Besides, anything to break the monotony of translating ancient script day after day.
Throwing one last disdainful glance at the mess of unfinished manuscripts, she chased the portly, eager woman out the door.
Descending down several creaky half-flights of stairs and through the labyrinthine corridor, she followed the endless stretch of crimson runner that wound through each turn like a river of blood.
Guarding the arched entryway stood high-relief armored statues, nearly twice the height of a fully grown man, bordering the walls in their eternal vigil. In the flickers of the chandeliers, Amariel felt the leering eyes of the Szarr wardens rebuking her advances. For some reason, this time, they penetrated with deeper foreboding.
The lighting fixtures grew sparser as the ochre glow dimmed to a liminal hue. The space between the pilasters darkened, so every winding turn appeared to diverge into the unknown.
Here, the musk of incensed air soured into a mildewed, metallic stench. Wallpaper and wainscoting gave way to Ashlar masoned walls just as Amariel’s foot left its soft, carpeted spring and crossed the threshold onto a hewn stone slab.
This was the precipice where theatrics of civility met theatrical barbarism. It was known as the “kennel,” or so she had heard her master refer to colloquially.
Carved into the interior of the manor, this squalid dungeon served as its nucleus in both form and function.
It was accessible only through a secret door whose outline disappeared seamlessly into the wallpaper, clearly intended to eschew unwanted attention by unsuspecting guests.
But despite its imperceptible entrance, the carnage it birthed was a public affair to the entire household. Whether as a display of prowess or warning, every conquest was deemed worthy of ceremony.
If these were the horrors put on exhibition, she didn’t dare conceive what chthonic secrets festered beneath in the subterranean vaults. She had known that Dwarven caverns snaked through the mountain over which the Szarr Palace was constructed, but she could only dream of their magnitude or atrocity.
All she had deduced through the hushed exchanges was that any unfortunate soul dragged into their depths never returned - living or otherwise.
She poked her head inside the chamber, faintly illuminated by trembling torchlight. A blast of cold, cellar air rushed past her nose, assailing it with a miasma of a low lying pond and decomposing flesh. She instantly recoiled, scrunching her face into her sleeve.
Peering back in, her eyes landed on two central pillars around which chains were fastened with shackles like tentacles awaiting their next prey. The wet stone floor was littered with white twigs of vermin bones. Hastily swept to the sides, they were collected together alongside some large enough Amariel guessed could only be of humanoid origin.
Farther back, at the side of the room, Amariel spotted the backsides of a handful of tall, menacing men donned in simple plate armor as they eased one of the coffins bordering the wall towards the pillars.
Over their low murmurs, a constant trickle fell from the prodigious height above with an acoustic splatter. Amariel looked up towards the source, wondering how many screams these gothic groined arches had captured.
The nudging of shoulders yanked her focus back downward as other members of the staff began huddling at the doorway to ogle at the spectacle. They were quite the sordid family indeed, she mused, gathered outside the bedchamber waiting to welcome the arrival of a firstborn.
And like the birth of a child, every transformation was unique, though all predictably included some degree of shrieking, writhing, and a copious splattering of fluids. But there was something she found uniquely fascinating about a soul suspended between the throes of life and death while it was being crushed into diamond.
She had once refused to witness these flagitious crimes; yet now, guilt merely grazed her mind without ever taking root. And in a manor fueled by torture, joy itself was similarly fertilized by suffering. Perhaps this is what the absence of light does to a soul, she thought.
The slam of a heavy door thundered behind her, then cursing. Instantly, she wheeled around. In front of her, the servants froze in trepidation like a group of rabbits hoping to avert the predatory gaze of a nearby fox.
From down the corridor approached Cazador, ashen face drained of blood against inky hair he neatly slicked back. His eyes, orbs shining like fresh viscera, offered the only vivid hue overlaying his silhouette.
As usual, he was overdressed in his ostentatious brocades of black and deep jewel tones, accented with ornamental filigree and the Szarr crest emblazoned across his lapel.
Slumped over his shoulder was what looked like the rump of a limp, finely dressed elf.
The servants sprung back and parted at the entrance, holding their breath as he stormed past. An even colder rush smelling of brimstone and iron whipped behind in his wake.
Her eyes followed the trail of blood leaking from the drenched dark doublet and hovered over the lifeless man. From behind the matted mess of silver hair, Amariel guessed he couldn’t be a day over forty, in human years.
Wait a moment. A spark of adrenaline shot up her neck. Have we met before? Sure, all the pompous dandies mimed each other like clucking hens, but something about this man’s likeness pricked her arms with goosebumps. Still, the crusted blood flecked onto his face made him hard to discern.
Her reflection was broken by a reverberating thud as Cazador flopped the bloodied figure onto the stone like a slaughtered steer, just as two guards hurried over. One hoisted him up while the other secured his wrists to shackles to hold his form upright. Once secured, his body swayed over to the side, dangling by the arms.
Cazador produced a jeweled athame and examined it closely. From the far end of a shadowed corner, an umbral, armored figure clicked its jaw in disappointment before interjecting.
“Pity this one’s bled out. The blood of aristocrats is ever so unctuous… like the duck and wine they feast upon."
With what sounded like a creaking of joints, he wryly laughed. “And acrid, too. Woefully devoid of suffering, innit?”
“Plenty of time for that, Godey.” Cazador sneered at the motionless mop of hair as he raised a hand to signal the guards.
Knowing what was soon to come, the servants exchanged a series of nervous glances as half the torches were instantly snuffed, cloaking the prison in a thicker haze.
Like a vulture circling a carcass, Cazador voraciously swooped back towards the crumpled man and leaned in, pointed teeth bared in salivation.
Scarcely had he pierced his neck when the man’s head shot up as he cried out, instantly locking eyes with Amariel. She could see their whites in his wild and desperate stare.
A shockwave of rage surged through her with instant recognition. His head slumped back down while Cazador drank him in deeply, but the burn from those electric blue eyes still radiated through her chest.
The room tilted and spun, brightening into a palatial courtroom where those same eyes, now cool with indifference, glanced down at her from behind the magistrate's bench. Her pleas of protest were met with languid annoyance as that fateful scraping of quill against parchment dug into her ears. Syncopated sobs, frantic drumming of heartbeats, more scratching, and the muffled clanking of metal tossed into burlap drowned out the external world.
“Something the matter, mistress?” Portia’s raspy whisper from below tore her from her trance.
Amariel stared defensively back at the scene and watched Cazador draw his blade and run it across his own wrist with finesse. He extended it over a silver chalice on the nearby altar and watched it trickle out with wicked satisfaction.
She turned back down towards Portia and whispered, “I-I know that man. His name is Astarion Ancunín, the magistrate.” Through strained breaths she tried to console herself as she continued. “He’s… the reason why I’m here.”
Portia let out a muffled gasp. “Well, seems the fool ‘ad it comin’. I’ll spare my prayers for this one, then.”
“The fool did indeed,” she sharply agreed.
Normally, once the vampire's prey lay helpless upon the doorstep of death, fleeting pangs of sympathy would clench her stomach in the muscle memory of her past life. But now she was equally nauseous by the discovery as she was ravenous for vindication.
Cazador gingerly raised the chalice to his blue lips with one hand, cradling his drooping head with the other, and slowly poured. A stream of blood dribbled out from the corners of his mouth.
Cazador roared at the corpse. “Drink it, you filth. You never did deny yourself one before.” A few muffled laughs rippled through the more sadistic members of the audience.
Once he emptied the chalice, Cazador casually smeared his bloodied fingers across the dead man’s cheek, using his skin as a soiled rag before he retreated a few paces.
Amariel watched in revulsion as the body began to twitch and convulse like a reanimated corpse, gurgling with inhuman noises. As he flailed, chains violently shook in deafening echoes. He squirmed in torment, eventually releasing a blood-curdling scream that bounced off the walls.
Then silence. Only drips from the ceiling broke its stillness. Every mortal spine straightened, erect in suspense, as a soul transcended realms.
The next time Astarion opened his eyes, they smoldered like liquid metal. With an uncanny, almost inhuman agility, he steadied his balance back to his feet. Sniffing the air, he yanked at his chains, snarling and lashing in the direction of the living like a rabid dog.
Cazador, the proud midwife of devils, stepped back to assess his handiwork, hands outstretched in approval. The corners of his mouth twisted into a serpentine grin as he spoke.
“Congratulations, Astarion Ancunín, honorable Magistrate of Baldur’s Gate – or so you were – and welcome to the Szarr family.”
Astarion grunted in another direction, still locked in an animalistic stupor.
“May you walk honored in the wake of this momentous occasion.” Cazador concluded, oozing with facetious platitude, just before Astarion collapsed again with a loud clamoring of chains.
He gestured back towards the two helmeted men on the periphery, who approached the dead weight with a jingle of keys.
As the entertainment drew to a close, quickly as a mischief of house mice, the palace residents scattered to their dormitories, lest anyone be so unlucky as to cross paths with the vampire lord.
Still paralyzed with disbelief, Amariel lingered; yet while she tried to steal another glimpse of the man before he was thrust into the coffin, she shrunk back.
Cazador glided forward. It wasn’t her he wanted; instead, he moved towards the pool of blood that had puddled beneath him and casually dropped a handkerchief over it.
Too graceful for an accident, she thought, Amariel hesitated again, poking a single curious eye out from behind the doorframe. Transfixed, she stared at the vivid scarlet wick up into its linen folds, fanning out until nearly the entire cloth was drenched.
Cazador’s talon-like fingers plucked it by the remaining unstained corner and arched his neck back. Looking more like a bird of prey than ever, he wrung out the afterbirth over his outstretched tongue.
◆ ◆ ◆
Back in her attic, Amariel sat stiffly upon the edge of her bed, still frozen in shock. While she bled the consequences every day, his likeness had been a haunt she tried to bury, a ghoul she had morphed into mere legend. Now it was an abomination that had resurrected before her.
She fought back the moisture building in the corners of her eyes, but she could no longer contain the raw emotion. It swelled, then surged, spilling over the inner dam as tears released into a sob.
She shook her head to expel it and caught the motion of her hair in the adjacent mirror hanging above the dresser. Reluctantly, she turned her gaze towards it. Two vitreous silver irises shone back from within the hollows of her eyes like two moons trapped in the reflection of a murky sea. Sliding a finger over the crack cutting through her fine lips, she scarcely recognized herself: the sun elf that would have once glowed under candlelight had long since sallowed.
Over the last five years, she watched the luminous honeyed hue of her skin fade to a soured milk, as if the necrotic vapors of the Palace had slowly wound around her, choking the life from her, too. Even the saturation had faded from her hair, stripping its brilliant copper to a straw yellow.
You did this to me, she grieved. And now I must live under the same roof as you. I hope you suffocate in your treachery.