Astarion: I've Been Thinking About You.

Chapter 6!!! Is here!!! A direct continuation from the previous chapter, May is tasked with saving her new housemate only to realise she's being faced with than more than she'd first thought, MUCH more than she could've prepared for.

Definitley trying to add more bits and pieces of wolrdbuilding throughout, as well, so let me know if it flows well!

tw: blood, gore, fire, burning, mentions of war, death, bodily horror

Ch. 6

The laceration on May’s arm throbbed as blood gushed from the wound, only fueling her desire to cut down the man responsible for it.

There were no shouts of warning as the first volley of arrows was released into the main courtyard of the manor. The whistles of easily a hundred arrows arching with grace over the main wall, many hitting the cracked cobble at their feet and too many more sinking deep into flesh. A score of men downed in but a moment; she was caught with her backed turned. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

Her sword bit home in the neck of her opponent, sending a hot spread of blood back at her. Her men had started surrounding the outermost section of the courtyard, working their way towards the center and slaughtering everything in their paths as tight units of fifteen to thirty men. They were efficient; May trained her men to be deadly.

Her sword killed one man after another, the rage she felt becoming the passion of the Winds. Her heaving breaths of unbridled anger became the steady breaths of a woman singing in the Gods praises. Her feet were weightless underneath her as she spun and ran through entrails, the death rattles of the fallen a prayer to her victory.

Time both slowed and flowed faster, men seemingly growing old and dying as May severed an arm here and slashed across a chest there, a whirlwind of honed chaos. She continued pushing forward, a large group of her men now rallying behind her as they met the center of the courtyard. Their main advance would be towards the contingent of archers that managed to huddle towards the manor’s gate.

As May lifted a dead man’s shield from his corpse, instinctively blocking arrows as they headed towards her, she caught a glint of something from the corner of her blood-red eyes. Off in the corner, towards the right of the manor, smoke started to bellow from the peaked roof.

The attic.

She was smart to have listened to her instincts those few weeks back, vacating the few valuables from the room and cleansing it in whatever means necessary. Putting the remainder of the old texts and records either in the vault or the archives, the room was merely a little secret hiding space that made for a good saferoom in this particular instance, where Oryn’s safety was in danger.

Oryn? Why would this be about Oryn?

It didn’t matter. She needed to protect them—hide them—and Demetrius was the only other living person who knew of it’s existence.

Something much larger was at play here. Someone deeply connected to May and Ilucia had infiltrated the system she fought so hard to build, making her seem a fool. As she watched the first soft licks of orange cascade across the eaves decorating the attic, her resolve quickly returned.

“Squads four and nine, come with me! Everyone else,” she turned, her throat already horse from breathing in smoke and screaming as she killed, “Kill the rest of these bastards!”

Although she’d already seen more than a squad or two lying dead on the cobble, the morale in her remaining men didn’t waiver. They stood tall, weapons ready, in the exact formations they’d practiced. They stomped their feet in time, yelling their war-cry as praises for their Duchess.

She started towards the side door of the manor, the two squads called for quickly falling into a defensive formation around her. As they ran, May couldn’t keep her eyes off the roof being enveloped by the flames.

The manor itself was hardly damaged but for a broken window here or a scuff along the mortar there. It’s as if the goal here wasn’t to destroy, only to kill—and to do so quickly. The fact that the fire was now reaching towards the sky in only one part—specifically from one room—There must have been another motive, a plan…

Sprinting through the side door and running straight for the closest set of stairs, May noticed just how quiet the manor was now that all who are usually patrolling it took up arms to fight out in the courtyard. This is my fault, she thought to herself, but not because of the weight all of her fallen men; because Oryn was sat in a burning cage and it was May who had put them there.

Out of breath but nowhere near exhausted, they arrived at the top floor, May ripping the door off the closet. The heat was nearly unbearable, the immediate wash of newly born flames reaching from what was once the sealed entrance. May’s blood rushed through her, her heartbeat loud and persistent in her ears as the hum slowly started seeping into her skull.

The men behind her stood back, staring at the soft blaze set before them.

The clang of a desperate fight could be heard over the roar of the flames, someone battling for their life.

“Get me up there!” May screamed, turning to her men with her jaw set and eyes ablaze.

“But—”

Without thinking—without even a second to blink or take a breath—May’s sword cut deep into the abdomen of the Squad Four Commander, the hilt meeting the soft leather of his armor as the blood seeped onto May’s hand. Her eyes were dark, determined.

She turned to the other’s, their eyes wide and mouths slack.

“Get me up there,” she repeated, her breath low and hot.

Without a second thought, she was all but thrown by her men off the floor and up into the searing flames of the attic entrance.

The pounding hum resonating beneath her skull got stronger as she hoisted herself up on burning beams into the center of the alcove. The smoke burned her eyes and left her in a wake of dense fog, unable to see much of the world around her besides the roaring flames slowly dissolving the wooden room. She gasped and hacked as the ash entered her lungs, burning her insides with a fierceness she hadn’t ever felt before.

“Oryn!” She called, her voice horse and meaningless amongst the raging fire. The fighting continued, the clanging of steel just barely making itself heard. She stepped forward, her own bloodied sword held in front of her.

She was getting closer, the battle sounds growing louder, her vision fading with each step she took, her skull vibrating as the pressure of the pounding built. She cried out, falling to her knees, the flames seeming to edge their way closer and closer to her with each passing moment.

There was a shriek of pain, something almost animalistic in nature. The ripping of skin, grinding of bone, tearing of sinew and blood coursing through changing veins.

Fuck, May thought, heaving up smoke as tears rolled down her cheeks Not here. Not now!

The pounding in her head slowly turned from raging, meaningless rumbles into the staccato beats of something being beckoned forth. She didn’t feel any pain, but the soft mush inside of her skull slowly separated, something new emerging from the inside. Her eyes snapped open as the rush of something powerful washed over her. She lifted herself from her knees, her vision steady and clear as she saw what unfolded before her.

Demetrius was fighting neck and neck with two soldiers May had never seen before, wearing the livery of a duke or duchess she didn’t recognize. Their faces were covered in what must have once been white linen, now burnt at the edges and covered in soot. Their skin had been scorched in places and was completely barren in others. How they continued to wield a swords was beyond her comprehension.

With a new weightlessness pushing her forward as the thrumming became a hymn in the back of her head, May threw herself alongside Demetrius, her own sword flying in beautiful arches over her head as she tried to even the odds.

Demetrius was worse off than those they were fighting, a large slash across his face leaking a garish trickle of blood. His leather plate was slick and oily, his hair plastered to his head as he swung his sword ruthlessly. There was nothing but the power and flow of the Wind behind his eyes, the battle rage holding his spirit.

As May ducked under a slash from the enemy, she quickly brought her sword behind the legs of him. As his tendons were cut deep and a spray of blood hit May’s hands, she stood and turned towards the hulking creature behind her. She made a final puncture to the soldier’s throat, killing him.

May could barely make out the full shape of the beast, her vision clearer than it should’ve been in the smoke but unable to focus on whatever Oryn’s form was. She could just hardly see Alec peeking out from behind what must have been the right shoulder of the beast, clearly hanging on to the protruding thorns and masses of skin running down its back. As it steadied itself on its two legs, finally meeting eyes with the fight between Demetrius and the other soldier—flames roaring just barely behind him— Oryn let out a deep, guttural cry.

Oryn leapt into the fight, Alec hanging on tight, trying to hide his face in whatever he could find to block out the smoke. The pads of Oryn’s feet hit the smoldering floor like a clap of thunder, sending shudders through the attic and bringing both May and Demetrius to their knees. It was instinctual: cover your ears. As Alec did the same, the pounding in May’s head ceased. She watched the remaining soldier bring his sword up above Demetrius’s bowed head as he knelt, readying himself for the killing blow.

His arms, strong and lean and glistening in the light of the fire—were steady, the linen finally falling from his face and being devoured by the flames. Then, something changed.

The silence finally enveloped May’s skull once again as she lifted her head to meet the eyes of the man ready to kill her most valuable soldier; one of her closest friends. Holding his glowing sword high above his head, his arms began to shake. The veins in his arms started to bulge, his skin draining to become a ghostly white. His veins started to move, the blood inside of them seemingly thick and collecting in places. As a slow drip of blood started to leak from his nose, his head exploded.

May couldn’t tear her eyes away. Blood and chunks of brain matter and shards of sharp skull bits flew with force from the viscera, a loud hisssss being heard as the fire licked the liquid into more smoke for them all to choke on.

She was yanked to her feet by something that wasn’t a human’s hand and lobbed over the beast’s shoulder, feeling a scared hand reaching out and holding on to hers as Oryn then picked up Demetrius, who was just as stunned by the scene that unfolded before them. Alec squeezed May’s hand, Demetrius gripped the monster’s ever-moving flesh, and Oryn barreled through the outermost wall, letting the group of them fall into the courtyard below.

some fucking resources for all ur writing fuckin needs

* body language masterlist

* a translator that doesn’t eat ass like google translate does

* a reverse dictionary for when ur brain freezes

* 550 words to say instead of fuckin said

* 638 character traits for when ur brain freezes again

* some more body language help

(hope this helps some ppl)

I do not care (I care very deeply 😌) about the cyclic pattern of toxic ascendantxspawn relationships because, AT THE END OF THE DAY, the story is about two people who deeply love each other. SO deeply that they allow themselves to fall victims to their worst fears by bringing each other's deepest desires to fruition. AND THE FACT THAT all of this can be happening and he can still look at his partner and go "you're right. But I love you still, and I'll protect you for everything you've given me. Just give me time."

IM SO NORMAL ABOUT A!A 😫 I DONT CARE--

Shared this rambling with some server friends the other day, but I was rewatching some Ascended Astarion dialogue (swimming in the brainrot, as one does), and was struck by one of the dialogue options in the conversation after he turns Tav. I hadn't really given it much focus/attention previously.

You can say something like "You've seemed distant since the ritual" and when he responds, he owns it, saying something like "huh, maybe you're right," before going on to wax about how everything seems so much slower because his new instincts are kicking in, and he's still riding the tide of that change.

I thought it was sweet and sort of telling that while he doesn't apologize for it, he acknowledges his SO's feelings/assessment of it as a fair one, and offers them insight into his own current feelings of acclimating to this monumental change he's going through.

And I think this gets glossed over because yes, he's a bit arrogant here, he's still Astarion after all, but he doesn't rebuke his partner for pointing this out. There's a level of care and responsibility he shows his partner by accepting their assessment, offering his own feelings on the matter, and clarifying that any distancing between them isn't intentional or out of lack of love. It's in his own Astarion sort of way, but I see it as an attempt to reassure his partner all the same.

And, as a friend pointed out to me, his insistence that his powers will come with time could be out of want to reassure his SO they made the right decision, and that Astarion will be their protector here on out instead of the other way around (see also: "You need not fear anything.")

It might not be the most popular interpretation, but interactions like this make me feel like if his consort was like "hey you seem upset" or distant or angry or anything like that in the future, he would listen earnestly and attempt to assuage those concerns/admit to his role in them.

It's the implications that his SO is being deprived or left wanting for something (like freedom for example) that provoke the angry reactions from him, as he feels very strongly that he's providing everything for them and sees himself in that provider role, I think he takes that as more of an insult than an observation.

mmh. the beanbs.

Half assed ms paint doodles

hey guys now that mr qi is officially on some glitchy 4th wall breaking hidden creepypasta bullshit can we finally make him the tumblr sexyman he's always deserved to be

Okay!! I've been working on something for a really long time with some oc's that are near and dear to my heart ♡ I've gotten quite a bit already written, a bit less edited. I'm thinking of doing some more in-depth posts about the characters and their lore, if anyone would be interested! Possible first chapter post tomorrow?

Also, you're not allowed to make fun of me for the shit formatting of this post. I'll figure it out eventually, I swear.

tw: heavy mentions of sa, p*dophelia, abuse, death, murder

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Broken Legends

Prologue

Leandra’s father abused her as a child, but everyone could see that clear as day. The people knew of the king’s predilection for little girls, but none seemed to care enough to do much about it. Either that, or their fear was too great to intervene. Blood right, birth right, sovereign right, whatever they wanted to use as an excuse for the deranged, disgusting behavior of the man whose father’s father staked his claim on the coastal kingdom of Aphoreum.

He never touched his son; little boys weren’t his taste. He rarely touched his wife—may her soul flow freely—but she certainly seemed to keep him in line. Until her death, there was a restraint to him that withered away as she did; rotting and leaving a smell no one could erase from his soul.

Queen Imogen died under seemingly un-mysterious circumstances. She didn’t fall suddenly ill after a lifetime of health, she didn’t claim abuse, and she certainly didn’t suspect that someone quite close to her could be the cause of her failing body. Everyone mourned for the appropriate period of time.

Everyone except the children, of course. They still find themselves mourning the idea of a mother they could barely remember. To Leandra, her mother was strong and wise, the way a woman should be. To her older brother, Callum, there was the abandonment of the only woman who would unconditionally love him. She chose to remember a legacy, while he was bound to the anger he felt towards the undeserving dead.

The first child, the original heir, was sickly; an affliction seen often in the more recent royal blood. Really, though, the only difference from the royal blood and that of all peasants was its incestuous nature. That was something the Terrance Reign brought back to the royal line after nearly a century of free marriages.

Heir to Aphoreum, Prince Terance VIII, died peacefully in his sleep on the night of his tenth birthday. Those who said his mother killed him to give him a better life soon found their heads in burlap sacks, so not many say that anymore. It was soon after Terance was dead that their mother went to join him.

Callum was named the successor to the throne just a day after his mother’s funeral. After the grand ceremony, as the succession of High Councilors and Noblemen kissed the stones at Callum’s feet, Leandra’s father took her away where no one would see for the first time.

From that moment forward, Leandra had a new understanding of her place in the palace. While her brother grew up to become the king he wasn’t meant to be, her father taught her what being a woman of royal blood really meant: when her brother left on his journey to become a man, she would go with him and ensure pure heirs.

Aphoreum’s soul was born of the blood shed by those who fought and killed the demons plaguing the land. Countless villages were saved, small kingdoms sprouting throughout. As men pushed forward, demons fled back to the oceans, leaving Aphoreum to be conquered by whoever was left. At least, this is what was taught to the people.

There are thousands of dusty and cracked scrolls of parchment scattered throughout all cities and towns in Aphoreum containing the history of the land; how the Gods rewarded us with lush fields and bountiful rivers for banishing all of their enemies to the sea. That is, to this day, where they are said to dwell.

Things started crumbling at the end of Aphoreum’s War, started by none other than Terrance the First. It took five generations, yet they reigned victorious. For the first time since anyone could remember, the entirety of Aphoreum was ruled under one king. None of the other prior kingdoms were proud of that. With their previous rulers executed during the Reckoning—the day Aphoreum’s War was officially won—they fell into disarray. Villages plundered, women sold to richer men, entire ways of life decimated under the fist of a barbarian king. For King Terrance VII, the duty to uphold total power over all of Aphoreum was a goal only completed by the iron fist of his forebearers. He held to the pride of men who fought for honor while he sat upon his plush throne.

Leandra was literate thanks to an old wetnurse that her father had killed when she was eleven. Once she was no longer needed to feed Leandra’s bastard half siblings, she was sent with the Wind. After that, the only person ever present in Leandra’s life was High Councilor Jonas, a man who never touched her unless to pat the top of her head. He taught her of Natural Chaos and what tarnishes the soul, but he also taught her that there are good odds and ends in the world, too. She just had to look very hard to see them.

Jonas was the sole educator of both Leandra and Callum, but also their father before them. He was a truce sent from the church to Terrance VI, begging him to forgive them for not modifying their scripture the first time he asked. After Grandpa Terrance killed the High Priest residing in the palace chapel, they changed their tune. Jonas, however, understood the weight of the duty he’d been assigned. To teach the young is to mold the innocent in whatever way you see fit. But not every child is as easily molded. Terrance was a child full of hate, instilled in him by his own violent father. Callum seemed to be taking after his father in more ways than one, although Jonas continued every day to try to stray him from that path. Leandra, however, was different.

Before being sent to the palace, Jonas’s congregation of High Councilors—beknown to him or not—swore upon themselves that they would right the wrongs of the Natural Chaos afflicting the royal blood, whether that be by violence or sacrifice or any other means necessary. This was a promise the church sat upon for far too many generations to count if it hadn’t been for the numerals after each king’s name. But they had to bide their time. They had to bend their rules, change their faith, modify their scripture, all to appease the man they planned to overthrow. Another mighty aspect of the Terrance Reign was the slow and steady separation of the church from the crown, an unspoken duty bestowed to each heir as the generations passed.

It was through Jonas that Leandra learned of the world, the scrolls of scripture being her main escape, but not the modified texts of the Terrance Reign. Jonas was molding Leandra to be the savior Aphoreum needed, and this was the beginning.

Leandra would read the stories of the Gods who seemingly abandoned her. She found solace there, between the pages of their legends. The comfort of long forgotten rules set by wrongly worshipped Gods was the only kind of comfort she could afford.

Terrance was of a breed of man who more closely resembled their primal counterparts: feasting, fucking, and fighting. Not much else crossed his mind.

There are those who know better, despite class or background or who sits upon Aphoreum’s throne. But the rage projected by King Terrance found a home in the hearts of his men, creating a society of violence. There were few pockets throughout the kingdom where none could be found, most of which were under attack by those taking after their king.

On the day Callum turned twenty he found himself embarking on just such a conquest, yet one of a much different scale. A Wandering is any man’s rite of passage, giving him a year to stake his claim away from his family someplace else amongst the Waters and Winds. If they never returned after a year’s time, they weren’t ever meant to be a man. With Callum, however, his Wandering was an expedition into the known world with an army at his back and a ship full of wine. As were the odds of all those who could afford it, he would likely return more of a man than those without the gold in their pockets.

It was a simple plan with a grandiose design, allowing a full year of celebration for the future king of Aphoreum. Ships made of the finest timber harvested from the southern coasts, casks of wines and spirits shipped from around Aphoreum, clothes and finery made by request for his highness. With him would go his soon-to-be wife, Leandra.

The relationship Leandra shared with her brother wasn’t one of solidarity. He was to be his father’s spawn as Leandra was to be an instrument in his success. The moments of torture and humiliation caused by her father were in preparation to be used by the future king. Knowing this, she harbored many emotions for him, none of which she understood. She knew he was tainted the same way their father was before him, and their children would be after them, and she prayed that something—anything—could steer her fate in any other direction, for she knew his never would be.

When Jonas approached her after class, crumpled parchment in a High Councilor’s shaking hands, she took it without question. She looked in his eyes and saw the pain he felt, the longing for the Gods to make the world what it once again should be.

When she unfurled the note, she needed no further explanation than what was found there. Stained with the sweat of her mentor’s hands, four simple words bleeding into the page; Jump. You’ll know when.

The final weeks leading to her brother’s Wandering were full of tension. Leandra unfurled the parchment in her hands night after night, feeling the scratches of ink fade away as she rubbed it between her fingers.

Jump.

She could barely contain her excitement. She was going to weasel her way out of the chain of command. The only man who ever truly understood her the way the Gods intended had devised a plan for her to escape.

You’ll know when.

Stiff in her seat at the Grand Table, Leandra watched her plate as the men feasted around her. Tomorrow morning the Wandering would begin, and as the fleet of Aphoreum’s ships left the harbor, she would have to be ready to flee at any moment. She knew what Jonas meant about knowing when: she needed to wait for a message from the Gods. She would pray and worship and fast and deny herself the pleasures of life to prepare herself for the message she knew the Gods would give her. She would be ready.

When the sun rose over the harbor the following morning, Leandra was at peace for the first time since she was last held by her mother. She felt as though there was finally a real purpose to her plight in life and that she would be able to break the mold that her many greats-grandfather had created here. She felt as though she—alone—could crumble the system built by generations of the world’s most appalling men.

They set sail on a glorious day. Callum made a speech just after King Terrance, pushing the entire kingdom into a week-long celebration. Bottles broken, oars heaved, sails unfurled, and they were out of the mouth of harbor in just a few hours’ time.

For the first week of their voyage, Leandra didn’t speak with Callum. Not that he had much to say to her, anyway, besides the remarks of needing to secure an heir before the year’s end. Every night he’d mention it, and every night she’d comply, silently awaiting the sign promised her.

After that first week, Leandra grew a bit restless. And the week that followed that one made her even worse. The further they traveled from Aphoreum, the more the bruises left by her father healed, the more Leandra thought that there wouldn’t be a message, or maybe she had missed it… She started toying with the idea of living a life with her brother and what that could entail for her. She couldn’t stomach the thought of living in a world that her Gods had forsaken, but if she could make her brother see things the way Jonas had intended, maybe there could be a change.

When she finally spoke to her brother, she asked him if he’d care to know her, because, really, they just knew so little of each other.

He said he very much would. He was strong, but he was nervous. He couldn’t ever rule the way his father intended, but he wanted to try.

She said she could help him, if he’d let her.

They were children. What little they could have learned through life was filtered through their father’s vision. But he wasn’t here with them now.

The storm hit just three days from where they would dock. As the rain pelted the decks of the ships and the waves swelled, Callum’s men remained calm. They knew how to work a ship in a storm. For a while, everything remained intact. The fleet, the men, even Leandra.

But the storm became something else. After countless hours of toiling under the whip of rain and wind, the air started to become heavy with the stench of something bigger. As the waves turned from rolling hills to staggering cliffs and the raindrops into daggers, the men started to lose themselves.

The young ones jumped first. Callum was called from his cabin, forced to peel Leandra from his side. As she huddled amongst the furs adorning the mattress, Callum entered into a scene from the pits of the Gods’ hatred.

He was met with a force of nature never defeated by any king. As the ship was flung from one wave to the next, Callum’s men were dropping to their knees and scraping themselves towards the rails, throwing themselves into the raging sea. As he inched over the deck, grabbing the rigging and buckets dropped by his men, he saw a look on their faces that reminded him of his mother’s corpse in her ornate casket; there was no soul within them. Not anymore.

Screams were swallowed by the waves and the winds, words lost and breath wasted. As Callum pleaded with his mean until his throat was bloody and cracked, it overtook him.

She was calling to him. No, no…

Singing.

It was subtle at first, a slow drone playing at the base of his skull, humming away as he grabbed at his men bent on suicide. The more he pleaded, the harder his skull thrummed, filling his head with a desire unknown to man. As the irritation started to spread and his screaming and howling continued to fail, the soft beads of sound started to poke pin-pricks in the humming, driving Callum to gasp and shake with momentary relief before again being swallowed by the desperation. As another wave threw the ship far off course and doused the men in water colder than ice, he broke.

“Mother?”

She was there. Her golden hair cascading down her shoulders, her naked form hovering above the railing of the ship, situated the way a God would be. When Callum locked eyes with her, he felt that she was truly there, waiting for him to reach her.

She called to him, sang to him, cooed over the man he had become. Tears mixed with the rain and sea as they poured down Callum’s cheeks. He slowly made his way towards her.

Leandra emerged from the cabin as the thrumming started to overtake her. Her shift whipping in the wind and her hair matted to her head from the rain, she saw the horrors on deck.

The Gods had sent their message.

Tears brimmed in her eyes, too, but they didn’t get the chance to meet the wood of the ship. Leandra trusted her Gods. She trusted Jonas.

She jumped.

There was no sound as she hit the water. There was no cold embrace of the ocean, no being swallowed by the waves. She let herself be taken fully, succumbing to her fate.

Although she wasn’t expecting pleasure, nor was she expecting the pain.

Hands grabbed at the shift plastered to her skin, ripping it from her body in mere seconds. As the thrumming ceased in the back of her skull, she was taken in a way no one had taken her before. Not the man slaves who lurked after her in the palace, not her brother who she grew to love, not even her father, who defiled her in a way no other living thing could.

While her soul was ripped apart, shredded down to the sand that littered the ocean floor, she knew her Gods had forsaken her.

-

Leandra had no recollection of returning home. One moment she was suffering the pain of all the Natural Chaos, and the next she was dragging herself across the wharf, blood trailing in her wake. The moon was full.

Jonas found her and took her back to her father at the palace.

Her skin was burnt, her hair missing in chunks. Her bones poked through her skin like they wanted to free themselves from its cage. Her eyes drooped in their sunken sockets, unable to comprehend the world around her. She cried her story to Jonas, who begged her father to let a healer see her, even just one from the church. He refused.

For Leandra was with child, and heavily so. Her body, slowly failing her, was feeding something inside of her that wasn’t human.

She was pregnant when Jonas lifted her from the harbor, but the progression of her state was faster than it should’ve been; her stomach bruising and aching and protruding more every day. Her bones became brittle, her legs sitting at crooked angles and her neck unable to support the weight of her head. Upon the next full moon, when the tides were high, Leandra called for Jonas with what little strength she had left.

He leaned down to her ear, her breath almost too light to decipher the words.

“Please,” she whimpered, “don’t let him kill my daughter.”

That night, as her screams of labor began, Jonas pleaded once again with the king. Terrance, with a glare in his eye, allowed for a wetnurse from the palace chapel. He wouldn’t permit anyone besides himself and Jonas in the chambers, let alone a practiced healer. The nurse was the most she would get.

When she arrived, the horror that overcame her hit a part of her soul that hadn’t ever been touched before. The king demanded death to the child upon delivery, bolting the door behind them as he left.

When Jonas asked her to defy him, her soul said yes, as the woman had done for him many times before.

She died without seeing the full moon that night. As her child took their first breath, Leandra took her last.

Her child was a beautiful monster. A writhing mass of body, shifting in form while the wetnurse clung to his mottled skin. Within a moment, the child opened his eyes, and ceased being a monster. He was a baby, covered in his mother’s blood, eyes peering into those of the woman who held him.

When the king asked for proof of the death of the monster upon the following morn, Jonas provided a mangled piglet’s corpse. The wetnurse, covered in cattle entrails, told Terrance it took more work than she’d have thought to kill such a small beast. He was satisfied.

Leandra’s body was burned in the kitchen fires by Jonas’s hand, as Terrance commanded. There would be no funeral. There would be no knowledge of the children who failed at their Wandering. That would be the end of their stories. Terrance would find a concubine to produce a legitimate heir amongst the few cousins he had left. Aphoreum would live on.

But so did Leandra’s child, deep in a forest untouched by man, left in the hands of powerful women that the Gods would grow to fear.

Happy pride month to her

SOMEONE DRAW ANGRY GNOME ASTARION N O W 😫

Had a stupid idea of the BG3 group getting magically race swapped Dungeon Meshi style

Shadowheart - Githyanki (pretends she is unaffected, but is actually screaming internally and that close to losing it)

Lae'zel - Human (utterly disgusted at THE NOSE)

Gale - High Elf (the orb is still there, but his glorious beard isn't)

Wyll - Drow (the very drow Baldurian romance novels want them to be, call him Rizz't. but also give him a hug because the poor man is getting tired of all these uncalled transformations)

Astarion - Gnome (inconsolable. defeated. grieving. refuses to leave his tent. the "you laugh you lose your femoral artery" challenge)

Karlach - Dragonborn (smoking hot, soldier!)

Halsin - Halfling (the most ripped, beefiest halfling you've ever seen, excited about the new perspective. climbing Mt. Halsin is not an option, but people want him to climb them now)