Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Hunger hit first
Before thought. Before memory. Before the cold stones of the crypt even reminded you that you were still trapped beneath Cazador’s estate, deep in the belly of the city that would burn you alive if the sun didn’t reach your delicate skin first.
You woke again – if it was even considered waking– your teeth already aching with desire. That emptiness in your gut that no amount of blood could ever quite fulfill. Not that you were given much. Every drop that met your tongue was sanctioned, rationed, a cruel joke of a leash around your neck.
Somewhere above, the city was alive–Baldur’s Gate breathed and bled, oblivious. You could almost smell every beating heart. Almost.
But down here you belonged to Cazador Szarr. You weren’t a person. You were a possession. A toy. A monster in a cage.
And something in you–something buried behind the obedience and silence–was beginning to stir.

For some time you counted the days by paying attention to the chiming of a clock–marking the cold tombs with stones and bones. That was until Cazador found out and corrected you. You had never done it again; the mark of punishment printed into your skin as a reminder.
There was no time down there. Only orders. Silence. Hunger.
And him.
Cazador Szarrr. Your master. Your maker. The architect of your living death. His voice, smooth as silk yet twice as cold, still echoed in your mind even when he wasn’t present. “You are mine. My fangs, my shadow. You only exist because I allow it. Remember that”
And remember it you did.
You remembered everything.
The screams in the lower crypts, the desperate sobs of new spawns who hadn’t accepted who they had become. It was so akin to what had once been yours. The cruel smile he wore when he broke someone's will and made them his.

You remembered Astarion.
He was the only spark of light that shone through the cracks of this ever suffocating tomb. Sharp witted and beautiful. Defiant in a quiet and subtle way that went under the nose. He tried to never give Cazador the satisfaction of seeing him broken, even when it would’ve been easy.
Sometimes in rare moments when you dared to meet his eyes across the feeding chamber or in passing in the blood-drenched corridors, he’d give you a look. You could never tell what it was. Maybe pity or disdain. Maybe even silent understanding.
Then one day he was dragged away and made an example of like any spawn who dared to go against Cazador’s orders.
His looks were never the same. Empty and cold like the rest of the crypt.

Then a day just like any other, something peculiar happened. The sky opened underground.
It started as a sound–a pulse, low and wrong, like your body was screaming inside of you. Then light, searing and violet, cracked open the air above your crypt like the world above was being torn apart.
It all went black a couple seconds later.
When you awoke in a foreign place, pain bloomed in your skull. You dropped to your knees, clawing at your head as the voice–the alien, impossible voice–slithered into your mind.
Do not be afraid. You are chosen.
You were out again before you had much time to react.

Chapter Text

You awoke again with a hard thud to the ground.
You felt shackled. But this was far worse than the pain with Cazador.
The air pulsed with wet, inorganic heat. The desecrated walls breathed. Flesh, metal, and magic into one grotesque machine–a ship, you realized dimly. You weren’t alone. Or at least at one point you weren’t alone. Bodies and other figures sprawled around the dark room. Some corpses twitched by reflex, others far too burned to even try.
You didn’t know if this was salvation or damnation.
But one thing was certain:
Cazador no longer owned you.
Something else did.
You staggered to your feet.
Every joint ached, your muscles like torn sinew clinging to brittle bone. Your head throbbed, a pulse behind your eyes that wasn’t your own. It was still there–that presence. The one that whispered in a voice too smooth to belong to anything natural. It slithered in the hollows of your skull, curling like smoke in the spaces where your thoughts should have been.
Chosen, it had said.
But for what?
You limped forward, one hand dragging along the warm, pulsing wall for balance, a slimy residue left on your palm. Every inch of the ship around you seemed alive–slick and shuddering, like it breathed with you. Or in spite of you.
A gash in the corridor wall led to a sloping hallway filled with debris, torn metal, and smoldering embers. You moved with instinct, half-crawling over warped bones and shattered crystal, your long nails scraping over unfamiliar sigils etched into flesh-like floors.
You found a door–more like an orifice–and pushed through it. The slick walls gave a nauseating wet shluck, and suddenly–
Light.
You cried out, instinctively stumbling backwards as your arms covered your face.
The brightness pierced through your eyes like knives–sharp, white-hot, and merciless. You hadn’t seen real light in so long, it felt like the sun itself had reached down to choke you.
You collapsed to your knees, clutching your face. A distressed sound escaped your throat. Not from pain. From fear.
The sun was death. You had always known that. It burned your kind. Reduced you to ash in seconds.
But you weren’t burning.
Not yet at least.
You forced your eyes open a sliver, just enough to take in the scene around you–blurred and painful, but real. You were no longer in the sky. The nautiloid had crashed. The grotesque vessel lay in ruin, half-sunken into the side of a bloodied beach, surrounded by shattered rock and splintered trees.
And the sun… it was out. Yet you weren’t engulfed in flames. The fear mocks you.
Your thin shirt clung to you, torn and sweat-soaked. You fumbled with it, your fingers numb and shaking, until you ripped a shagged strip of cloth from the hem. It wasn’t much, but it would do.
You tied it around your head, binding it across your eyes. Not tightly, just enough to dull the burning brightness. A makeshift blindfold. A thin line between accepting the present and clinging to a darkened past.
You breathed in–slow, steady, sharp.
The scent of salt, ash, and burning metal filled your nose. But beneath that, fainter… life. Blood. Mortal blood.
Your stomach twisted, the hunger rising again, cruel and unrelenting.
You had escaped one master only to crash into the hands of something worse–bloodlust.
The world was open now. The crypt was gone.
And for the first time in what felt like centuries, you were outside.
You didn’t know what awaited you beyond the wreckage. Or who was beyond it. Or if there were any like you, taken against their will by the mindflayer and taken over.
But you would find out. Even if it took crawling through hell to do it.

Chapter Text

The world was too open.
Every step felt exposed–like walking into a dream that could swallow you whole. The sky was a muted gray, the smoke from the smoldering ship making harsh clouds in the sky. It softened the sun's fury, but not enough to remove the blindfold. It was the only thing keeping you from feeling blind.
The ship had torn through the land like a god’s tantrum. Trees snapped at their roots. Craters smoked where infernal metal met earth. Bits of the nautiloid still steamed, scattered like a giant, twitching organs ripped from some celestial beast.
And through it all, the scent of blood lingered.
Not like the carefully rationed drops Cazador permitted you. No, this was fresh. Still in the living body. Warm and throbbing in the air, singing through your senses like a cruel lullaby.
Your fangs ached.
A shout caught in your keen ears.
You turned your head, blindly picking your way towards the sound, following the scent of adrenaline and iron-rich panic. You didn’t walk–you hunted. Soft-footed. Patient. Like you’d always been taught.
Voices–three of them. Arguing.
You crept towards a cluster of broken trees and ducked low behind the twisted remains of the treetops. Peering from under your blindfold, you saw them.
Tieflings.
One man and one woman. They stood near a crude iron cage hoisted into the air by rope. The two gestured angrily at the one occupant.
Inside the cage, pacing like a coiled spring, was a githyanki. She was slightly injured–green skin smeared with blood from minor cuts, her golden eyes sharp and furious.
“Lae’zel,” you muttered under your breath. You didn’t know her; in fact, you had never even remembered meeting her. But something knew her. A twisted connection between her and you.
“...Should just leave her to rot,” one of the tieflings growled, his hand resting on the hilt of his dagger.
“She’s dangerous,” said the woman. “I can’t believe she was just roaming around. We should kill her before she kills us. And what if she’s infected?”
Your stomach twisted again. Their blood–god’s, it was right there. You could taste it in the back of your throat.
They hadn’t seen you yet.
Your mind buzzed–options, instincts. Feed. Flee. Speak.
But before the hunger could take over, the githyanki’s voice cracked through the air like a whip:
“You there. Lurking in the shadows! I see you.”
You froze.
“Coward or hunter?” She hissed. “Speak now–or I’ll assume the latter and crush you when I’m free.”
The tieflings turned in alarm, blades half-drawn–until they saw you. Your pale skin, your too-still body, the deep humming growl that left your throat as you held back your urges. You made it so painfully obvious what you were. You couldn’t even hide it.
The smell of blood and the sound of their hearts in their chest was becoming far too overwhelming.
And as your eyes flicked back towards the Githyanki there was a pounding feeling, a connection between the two.
You felt the clawing need to assist her from that cage by any means needed.
In a blink you were on the first tiefling. Your claws gripped their shoulders as your sharp and ready teeth tore into their jugular. They didn’t even scream. They didn’t even have the chance to as you pulled back with flesh in your teeth. Your patience was shattered like broken glass. No blood had ever tasted this decadent before.
As you rose you let the corpse hit the ground, taking deep breaths to ground these new urges. The other–his companion–already had their weapon drawn. They screamed at you. Cursed you. They even begged.
You didn’t hear them.
The hunger had its claws in you now.
When the second fell you held them longer, sucking them as dry as the sands on the nearby beach. The way their blood danced across your tongue–it wasn’t just sustenance. It was a cruel, sacred thing. The first real choice you’d made since Cazador had his grip on your soul.
When it was done, the world felt quiet in a new way.
You stood over their cooling bodies, blood dripping on your lips and neck, your hands shaking not from fear–but release. This wasn’t sadism. It was a language of species you were never allowed to touch in your tomb.
You were free.
The githyanki in the cage didn’t look away. She’d watched it all with the unblinking interest of a predator recognizing another.
Lae’zel met your gaze as you approached.
“You took your time,” She stated, almost bored. “Were they really worth savoring?”
You said nothing in return as her words began to snap your better consciousness back into place.
You instead took a dagger from one of the now dead tieflings and cut the rope of the cage. She stepped out with a grace of a soldier long denied of her battlefield, her eyes gleaming with restrained judgement.
“Vampire spawn,” She said, as if confirming something. “You reek of it.”
She tilted her head, studying you. “You should be ash under this sun”
You looked down slightly. Her words were sharp like when Cazador ordered you around. Something made you want to just shut up and listen.
“Well? Say something. You’re infected. I can feel the tadpole inside you. Same as me.” She said,
You took a moment to answer. The weight of truth now pressed hard against you. “It speaks to me,” You finally spoke, your voice meek and shy like a servant afraid to project. “In whispers. Like a second heartbeat.”
Lae’zel’s face darkened. “Then we are both cursed. And time is short.”
You watched her, cautious. She didn’t reach for her weapon. She didn’t attack. That was as close to trust as you were going to get.
“So what now?” You asked.
“We form a pact,” she said. “Temporary. I need allies to survive. You need someone who won’t scream the moment they see your face.”
You thought it over a bit. “It’s not that obvious, is it?” You asked.
“Maybe if you clean up you’ll pass as just plain weird.” She hissed back.
You were brought to silence again. “...And when the worm is gone?”
“Then I’ll decide if I’ll let you live. You’re a disgusting creature of the night after all.”
You could only pathetically nod.
She turned away from the carnage without a backward glance. “I will check the area more thoroughly. You go down to that beach and clean yourself up. I don’t want to fight someone every time they lay witness to your bloody mess.” She demanded
You nodded again and quietly walked off down the path once more.
You could smell more blood.
More living beings down the way.
It was a good thing you were full.

Chapter Text

The scent of blood still lingered on your hands, clinging to your skin like a curse that no tide could wash away.
You trudged toward the shoreline, the wreckage of the nautiloid a twisted silhouette behind you—part grave, part omen. The salt-heavy breeze ghosted over your face, sharp and cold like teeth dragging across flesh. Waves lapped the sand with a slow, hissing rhythm, whispering secrets in a language older than memory.
But the hunger didn't care for poetry.
It pulsed inside you, steady and ceaseless.
No matter how much you took, it never left. It just... waited. Watching from beneath your ribs like a serpent coiled in silence. Sated, but never satisfied.
Your body felt heavy. Blood-heavy. You’d left the tieflings in a heap, crimson painting your skin like a ritual you hadn’t asked to perform. Even Lae’zel had turned her nose up, demanding you clean the filth off before you drew more unwanted attention—or worse, her blade.
You knelt at the edge of the tide, letting the sea claw at your boots, the cold foam rushing over your fingers as you scrubbed at yourself like a sinner at the altar. But it wasn’t water that stained you. And salt couldn’t absolve what you'd done.
It never truly faded. The stains, the screams, the knowing.
You didn’t know how long you were there. The rhythm of the waves lulled your thoughts into silence, gave you something close to peace. Not quite, but close. Until—
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Your head snapped up, instinctively, your heart–what was left of it–pounded in your chest. Your eyes scanned the area.
Your eyes found her almost immediately.
A woman sprawled unconscious on the sand. She wore dark, rough-hewn armor, and the symbol of a goddess you didn’t recognize was engraved on the pendant hanging from her neck. Her breathing was slow and shallow.
Without thinking, you approached her, the hunger clawing its way back up. But your will began to push back, a mental warfare in your mind.
Feed. Flee. Wake.
The beast howled in your mind, pressing forward, licking at your resolve. You should take her. She wouldn’t stop you. She couldn’t.
But you didn’t.
You hesitantly reached out, gently shaking her shoulders. The touch was enough to rouse her, her eyelids flickering before her gaze snapped open, sharp and wary. Her dark eyes met yours, confusion and distrust written on her face.
You withdrew slightly to give her space, hands held to show peace. The blindfold hanging loosely against your eyes was probably an odd sight. You were only glad the crimson smears were now gone.
With a sharp gaze her eyes flitted to the wreckage around you. “The ship.. It crashed.” Her hands flew to her head, her expression twisting as the pain bloomed behind her eyes. “Gods, the tadpole…”
That word made something in your skull shift. You grimaced.
You couldn’t help but lean in slightly closer. Careful. You could hear her heart–pounding, full of life. It took everything not to give into insatiability.
She noticed the way your nostrils flared, your stillness. She narrowed her eyes before pushing you away. She likely thought you were just some pervert.
You thought differently though.
You thought she saw through you and knew what you were.
“I don’t mean any harm..” You said, quieter now.
“Forgive me,” she said flatly, “I don’t take you at your word just yet.”
She pulled herself to her feet with effort. Wobbling slightly, but confident. Defiant. Her armor clung to her like a second skin–scratched and in some spots dented but unyielding, much like the woman herself.
“Shadowheart,’ she said after a pause. “Cleric of Shar.”
The name itched in your memory. You yourself didn’t know her. But something deeper in you did–whispering at you almost overwhelmingly. You didn’t want to know.
“You’re infected too,” She said, her voice colder now. “I can see it in your eyes.”
You nodded. “We must find a way to remove it, we’ll both become monsters.”
She snorted. “Speak for yourself.”
But something in her eyes betrayed her–dear, uncertainty. Not for you, but for herself. For what was now living in both your skulls.
You could respect that.
A flicker of heat rolled off the wind, brushing your cheek. It carried the scent of the burning ship, distant and fading. Along with something else–movement up the beach. A survivor, maybe. Or something worse.
Lae’zel stepped into view behind you a moment later, and Shadowheart’s expression immediately soured.
“You.” She spat, her tone was sharp as steel.
Lae’zel sneered. “The priestess. Still breathing, I see.”
“Barely. And only because I haven’t seen fit to drive a dagger through your throat. Yet.”
They moved towards each other, two storms colliding.
You sighed, stepping between them like a reluctant shepherd among wolves. “Enough.”
They paused.
Your voice wasn’t loud, but there was a note to it–something honed sharp by centuries of obedience and recent carnage. It cut through their standoff like a blade.
“I don’t care what gods you pray to, or how many skulls you’ve cracked. The parasite wins if we’re too busy tearing each other apart.”
The silence was taut, but held.
Shadowheart eventually looked away first, brushing past Lae’zel with a muttered, “Fine. But I’m not turning my back to either of you.”
Lae’zel didn’t reply. Just followed as you moved up the beach, the sun still hidden behind smoke and clouds.
Three cursed souls now walked together.
A spawn of Szarr. A Githyanki outcast. A priestess of shadow.
And the day was far from done.

Chapter Text

You walked alongside them,
Lae’zel, silent and coiled like a blade, and Shadowheart, whose eyes flicked toward you too often to be casual. She hadn’t accepted you. Not yet. She didn’t trust you.
But she hadn’t left either.
And that was something.
The beach gave way to a twisted stone and scorched grass, and you followed the faint crackle of magic in the air. It sang to your ears like a broken music box–off-key, maddening.
You reached a clearing just past the rise, where rock met ruin. And then up a hill towards a stone wall.
At its center stood something seared purple into the stone.
A portal. Small. Flickering. Sickly violet and pulsing like a wound.
You stepped closer, eyes narrowing. The sigils writhed beneath the surface—arcane, frayed, panicked. It radiated desperation.
Curious, you reached out and grazed it with your fingers.
It burned.
You hissed, pulling back–But the sting felt familiar. Like home. Like punishment.
Then, a hand reached out desperately.
“A hand? Anyone?”
A man. Trapped.
It seemed as though he couldn’t fit through the rather unimpressive and small portal. You assumed he might be an amateur wizard. Very amateur.
“Another survivor,” Shadowheart said, her voice low and uncertain. “Or… At least what’s left of him-”
Lae’zel immediately cut in. “Or bait. Let it rot.”
You stood still and just watched the figure for a moment.
The hand on the other side flailed uselessly. You could hear it—his heartbeat. Fast. Full. Delicious.
And that hunger in you… it rose. Not slowly. Not politely.
You tilted your head. Imagine your teeth sinking into the pale stretch of wrist—veins so close to the surface. The warmth of it. The surrender.
“Please! I can hear you out there! A hand? Before the portal collapses!”
You moved forward, not out of sympathy. But curiosity. Skepticism.
Lae’zel’s paranoia was infectious.
So, you tested it.
You slapped the hand.
“Let me reiterate–A helping hand? I’m going to die in here!”
You sighed. Grimaced. And then reluctantly wrapped your fingers around his wrist.
It was warm. Too warm. A quick and desperate pulse.
The tadpole in your skull twitched the moment you touched him, and your hunger screamed. You clenched your jaw and yanked. Once. Twice. A third time.
With a rush of displaced air and a howl of tearing magic, the man spilled out of the portal—toppling onto you, limbs tangled, breath heaving.
You hit the ground with a grunt, dust clouding up around you both.
He rolled off you, brushing ash from his shoulders. Dark eyes flicked toward you, assessing. His gaze lingered too long. Too critical.
“...You’re not exactly the image of divine rescue.”
“I’m not divine,” You murmured.
He studied you for a beat longer than necessary and clicked his tongue. “I can tell.” He said.
Another beat.
He then stuck out his hand for you. “I’m Gale of Waterdeep. Apologies, I’m usually better at this.”
You stared at his hand.
The memory of his pulse still hummed in your fingertips.
You took it anyway. “At magic or introductions?”
Gale let out a small chuckle, amused by what he assumed was a joke. “Funny,” He stated. “Well, I didn’t exactly practice my spell last night. Wasn’t best prepared for an attack-by-squid…Which I’m assuming is what brought you three together.”
“What makes you say that?” Shadowheart muttered, sarcasm masking exhaustion.
Gale only let out a small hum, his eyes sharper than they’d seemed.
He knew.
The way his eyes thrummed and so did yours. The pain stitched behind each of your temples.
The worm you all shared.
“Shall we try… Cooperation?” He offered, his voice pitched carefully.
You let go of his hand finally, the feeling of his pulse against your skin leaving.
Your eyes flicked–just briefly–to the exposed line of his throat.
Then nodded once
Lae’zel growled under her breath. “If he slows us down–”
“He won't,” You affirmed, to which Gale nodded in agreement.
And then cutting through the air was a plea for help down the path. But this time you heard no heartbeat attached to it…