The night is dark, the group exhausted; none more so perhaps than Astarion, who is fairly sure that he's lost more blood in the last few days than he's ever managed to drain in his lifetime.

The weakness, the hunger-- it's too much. Animals aren't enough... if he's going to be free of Cazador, he needs to be free of the rules that keep him crippled and cowered. The blood of thinking beings--He's got to try it, at least once, even if it kills him. Better to die trying than die without tasting life first.

Tavscarf is awakened from uneasy sleep, to find Astarion looming over his face with his lips parted-- lips that quickly flinch back into a self-reproachful "Shit," as the pale elf jerks back. "It's not what it looks like! I swear!" he protests, as Tavscarf scrambles to his feet, glowering like a grumpy Muppet.

"Not what it looks like? No? You--" If this wasn't Tavscarf we were talking about, you might even say he was actually angry. But really, he's just disappointed.

"You come creeping over here while I'm soundly sleeping-- all right, my bad, it was probably not the best idea to have dinner consist of thirty-nine drinks and one potato-- trying to crawl into my bedroll, press your lean and hungry body against mine, and wake me from my slumber with-- a kiss! How -dare- you, sirrah?"

"I was-- what?"

"Oh, I know one when I see one," Tavscarf grumbles. "It's always the way. You see my handsome, heroic features, my natural bardic charm, my whimsical, approachable nature, and you think, 'that's a bit of all right, I'll have some of that'. Romance, sex-- You ignore who I am and turn me in your mind into what you want me to be, and then you try to -jump- on me, and think I'll go up like an alchemist's fire at the spark of your interest! Did you intend to smother my protests with your soft and sensuous lips while your nimble rogue hands explore my--"

Astarion isn't used to being actually innocent of what he's being accused of, and it throws him. "What!? Gods, no!"

"No?" Tavscarf folds his arms and glares, and does a really good eyebrow-arch. Astarion, no mean slouch in this department himself, is rather impressed. "What were you doing, then? Planning to steal my tonsils and sell them to an alchemist?"

"Look, I wasn't going to hurt y-- all right, no, but I wasn't going to rape you. I swear. I just wanted... I needed... well. Blood. Please."

Astarion had known there was a chance he'd be caught in the attempt; that was why he'd chosen Tavscarf for his little snack. There was certainly no way the pacifistic idiot would have run a stake through him.

He'd come up with a variety of plausible persuasions and excuses, but he is still taken aback, and even further so when Tavscarf squints at him, blinks, and then shifts into a cheerful smile of relief.

"Oh! You're a vampire!" Tavscarf exclaims, and Astarion flinches.

"Do you mind? Not so loud, or everyone will want one," the vampire grumbles, eyeing him warily.

"You just want to -eat- me? Oh, thank goodness. That's different, and really, totally understandable after that fiasco of a dinner."

"I just--"

Tavscarf rolls up a sleeve. "Blood, right? I've got a clean cup somewhere, but you're probably better with a knife, if you don't mind--" He holds out a brown wrist with a smile.

Astarion looks at the wrist. Two hundred years eating rats and bugs and worse things, and now, finally... His first time. And he's expected to use -cutlery-?

"You want me to--"

"Well, I don't -want- you to, but you're hungry, you want some blood, I have some to spare, so let's be civilized about this." Tavscarf brandishes his wrist again. "Across the street, not down the road, mind you. And watch the tendons, I need them for fingering. The flute, that is," he amends hastily.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"I... It doesn't work that way," Astarion says, bullshitting wildly but with a sneering confidence that's better than Guidance. "It's not about raw protein, it's about, well, essence. Life force. If all I needed was blood, there's any number of corpses I could have drained by now. It's got to be living blood--pulled from a beating heart--right from the source, as it were."

Tavscarf looks dubious. "I don't think I have a straw, but maybe I could improvise something--"

"--and it's really got to be arterial," Astarion adds, inspiration striking. "Wrists won't do, unless I'm cutting deeply enough to take your tendons and most of your wrist along with them--"

"Wait just a moment, here," complains Tavscarf. "This is looking less like a kind gesture and more like suicide, although I'm not exactly the best judge."

"No, you're not," Astarion agrees. "Look, it's a perfectly natural-- supernatural-- process. I bite you, I have a sip-- a taste, only, even!--of your blood. If you hadn't gotten lucky, I could have done it without waking you up. My fangs are exquisitely designed to feed without undue damage. A knife would actually hurt -worse-." He smiles, showing those fangs glinting keen and sharp.

Tavscarf's expression wrinkles up in various ways as he considers this. "So you have to actually... suck on me? It's just... well, that's a bit intimate, isn't it? You might get... ideas. I just finished explaining that I'm not that sort of--"

"Totally platonic, I assure you," Astarion says smoothly. "I have no feelings of attraction towards you whatsoever. I do have standards, you know. I want neither your heart nor your body. Just your blood."

"Does it have to be my neck, though?" Tavscarf grumbles. "Right up next to my face?"

"Well," smirks Astarion, "There's also those lovely femoral arteries, darling, right down next to your--"

"No, no, the neck is fine," huffs Tavscarf, flopping back on his bedroll and flinching like a kid at the dentist. "But don't get carried away."

"I... of course not. A taste, a sip-- not a drop more than I need. I promise."

It hurts, but not as bad as Tavscarf had suspected. It seems like a lot more than a sip, but what does he know?

Poor fellow, he must have been really hungry-- is Tavscarf's last thought before he slips into a peaceful death.

Astarion's first time of tasting the blood of thinking beings, from the source, all official and raw, is... not like he'd imagined.

Imagine being starving, craving, a delicious very rare steak-- and you actually bite down and discover that some malicious prankster has fooled you, and what looks like steak is, in fact, actually cake--! With cleverly shaped marzipan fondant. I mean, it's still food, and actually quite tasty, so you keep going, thinking surely this must be simply a quirk of the senses.

Senses which swirl and sharpen as the power of blood fuels the vampire fires, the strength and energy and growing euphoria. But then it keeps going-- The night seems to fall away, Astarion feels as though he's slipping out of his own body as Tavscarf leaves his. He seems to hover somewhere above, seeing his own form (too distant and from behind to get a good look at his face, more's the pity, but Astarion can tell that's his own perfect ass down there crouched over-- whoops-- Tavscarf's sprawled and emptied corpse. Odd shapes hover around the vision; cards and symbols, like tokens from a divination set.

He sees his own body fall over backwards, with little swirly lights above his head, as his mind dissolves into chaos.

Freefalling through countless realities, over and over, lives he's lived and died and never been and always was, flickering fast as flames. Around him whirls a maze of mirrors-- mirrors that now actually show him a reflection, he can recognize that the white-haired, red-eyed handsome elf must be him but each and every image is slightly different, which one is real? Some of them aren't even-- he gets a haunting image of a man, handsome for a human and somehow familiar without being recognizable-- wearing a black bodysuit studded with odd buttons.

Gale and Shadowheart stand on opposite sides of the messy little scene by the campfire. Tavscarf's body is sprawled awkwardly, one leg gently toasting in the embers. Next to him, Astarion lies flat on his back, eyes unfocussed, hiccuping. There's blood everywhere.

"Perhaps a wild boar tore through camp?" Shadowheart suggests weakly.

"One with a sense for staged mystery and dramatics?" Gale's voice is heavy with the burden of being the only member of the party with a decent Intelligence score. "No, I think in this case we may assume that the most obvious conclusion to draw is in fact the correct one."

"I knew he was a rogue, but not an -assassin-," Shadowheart says, and Gale grabs Astarion's unresisting face and smooshes his cheeks so the fangs stick out like those of a walrus.

"He's a VAMPIRE, Shadowheart. For Mystra's sake-- pale skin, red eyes, he even has fangs--! How could you miss it?!"

"You knew, and you didn't say anything!?" Shadowheart protests, as Gale drops Astarion's face and wipes his hand on his robe in disgust.

"I knew, but I was curious how he was managing to walk in the sunlight. So I wasn't ready to announce my theory without further observation and testing. But now, I think we can conclusively say that our pale chum here is in fact a sanguinous undead predator of the night."

He nudges Tavscarf's corpse with a boot. "I knew our daft little friend here wanted to get drunk last night, but I don't think this is what he intended."

"I'll go get Withers," sighs Shadowheart.