[If ever voiced aloud, he might press the one time she'd gone straight to Ellie to crack the figurative hammer down right overtop his very finely sculpted skull— but that was, after all, blackmail, and even Astarion knows the difference.]
Then without further adieu, I offer you what few memories I still have of my own prior existence: and the knowledge that even amongst vampires, not every monster is created equal. [If nothing else, he has a storyteller's voice: it works now to twist the pain of recounting something far deeper into a tapestry of well-distanced recitation, as though the life he's talking about isn't his own, despite the obvious truth. As though discussing whether or not rats have been in the Gallows kitchen again, or when the snowfall might come to a sudden stop at last, making room for warmer stretches.]
All that I can remember of my former life was that I was attacked in the street the night I died. [One memory. One left, etched into his mind like stone.] A lone elf cornered by a pack of Gur— humans, to oversimplify for the uninformed— and subsequently unmade by their contempt.
I was bleeding to death when he found me, the vampire that sired me, Cazador Szarr. A vision cloaked in power itself.
He cut down my assailants with indescribable ease, scattered them all like rats. And, as I lay dying, he offered me salvation. Rescue from the inevitability of my own fate.
I took it.
[Of course he took it.]
Or so I thought.
You see, vampirism is a shockingly tricky thing: get bitten, and you turn, yes, but to secure the bargain, you need to bite your sire in return. [The little caveat no one ever talks about. The one not mentioned in superstition.
Astarion wonders now just how deliberate a factor that is.]
The second part, Cazador had no interest in. He never did.
Instead, without his blood on my lips, I became a vampire spawn. [He says it with all due ugliness: tongue curling, eyes narrowed. Bile pooling across his tongue:] A thrall, bound body and soul to its master, unable to resist his every command, right down to the very last uttered detail.
He could demand I throw myself from the highest tower in the city, and, no matter how much my mind might rail against it, on my body would walk, all too happy to damn me for his amusement.
For two hundred years, he and his sadistic ilk asked infinitely more of me than that.
no subject
Then without further adieu, I offer you what few memories I still have of my own prior existence: and the knowledge that even amongst vampires, not every monster is created equal. [If nothing else, he has a storyteller's voice: it works now to twist the pain of recounting something far deeper into a tapestry of well-distanced recitation, as though the life he's talking about isn't his own, despite the obvious truth. As though discussing whether or not rats have been in the Gallows kitchen again, or when the snowfall might come to a sudden stop at last, making room for warmer stretches.]
All that I can remember of my former life was that I was attacked in the street the night I died. [One memory. One left, etched into his mind like stone.] A lone elf cornered by a pack of Gur— humans, to oversimplify for the uninformed— and subsequently unmade by their contempt.
I was bleeding to death when he found me, the vampire that sired me, Cazador Szarr. A vision cloaked in power itself.
He cut down my assailants with indescribable ease, scattered them all like rats. And, as I lay dying, he offered me salvation. Rescue from the inevitability of my own fate.
I took it.
[Of course he took it.]
Or so I thought.
You see, vampirism is a shockingly tricky thing: get bitten, and you turn, yes, but to secure the bargain, you need to bite your sire in return. [The little caveat no one ever talks about. The one not mentioned in superstition.
Astarion wonders now just how deliberate a factor that is.]
The second part, Cazador had no interest in. He never did.
Instead, without his blood on my lips, I became a vampire spawn. [He says it with all due ugliness: tongue curling, eyes narrowed. Bile pooling across his tongue:] A thrall, bound body and soul to its master, unable to resist his every command, right down to the very last uttered detail.
He could demand I throw myself from the highest tower in the city, and, no matter how much my mind might rail against it, on my body would walk, all too happy to damn me for his amusement.
For two hundred years, he and his sadistic ilk asked infinitely more of me than that.
[So. As he clasps his hands and smiles.]
Let’s just say I would’ve preferred the tower.