Chapter Text
She did not trance, not in the way that she used to. Even when she came to rest her body, her mind would be wakeful, stretching out from the flesh that was at peace. Here she found herself beyond the concept of just one confining form as she took her place amongst the very spirit of nature. Her arms were the roots that buried themselves deep, creating a network of slow but powerful thoughts that moved across the forests of Faerun. Every creature that flew, swam, walked or crawled, became her eyes, the vision of thousands becoming one whole picture that allowed her to send her consciousness far. Her blood ran in the streams and rivers, the arteries of the world that kept its heart beating in constant chorus of nature's grand design.
It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measures, and a lesser mind might have broken under such weight. Druids practiced caution when connecting with the wilds so closely, for it was easy for a lesser mind to become overwhelmed or untethered in their journeys. But the old spirit's power was hers now, and her mind had grown, enough so that the returned spirits of the old tribe now wandered its vast expanse instead of crowding her head as before.
It was so easy now, to just reach out and feel everything at once without losing the balance of her thoughts, though it had frightened the hell out of Astarion at first. This was due to the fact that once her mind had gone so far, her body had risen from the ground where she had rested in his arms, suspending itself while she wandered, seeing how far her consciousness would spread. He had woken her in panic, somewhat annoyed by her calmed expression when she finally came back down to earth.
There were concerned lectures which she listened to with good grace, before firmly informing her newly acquired husband that her mind would not suddenly come loose while she stretched her powers limits. He above all things, was her strongest tether, and even as she now flew, and climbed across rolling hills and churning seas, she could feel him there beside her, or below her. Even while at rest, his heart ceasing to beat at all without him to reinforce the gesture out of sheer habit, she heard the faint echo of her own heart, the piece that lived within him. She felt its steady rhythm along with hundreds of others.
Beyond this little patch of forest, the hearts of all the druids, wolves and animals in the folly created a symphony of beats. She felt the joy of the old tribe as they flitted among those resting bodies, finding the likes of Nalzhuul and the others, parts of their past they thought to be as lost as they had been.
Thousands of miles away, a fox slipped through dark trees, carrying her mind with it., taking her further and further until she began to feel the first stirrings of a warning that she was reaching the limits of her grasp. The progress of her mind was stopped, like a dog pulling at its chain for a piece of meat that was just out of its reach. Part of her wanted to risk stretching those boundaries, but it would be both a selfish and foolish thing to do so close to the end. There was no telling what might happen if she pushed too far, and while the world stretched temptingly beyond her reach, perhaps a little of the old spirit's patience had been passed onto Verlaine as well as his power.
Carefully she withdrew, her mind flowing back to a body that slowly descended from where it had hung, the sun’s light finding the almost blue highlights in her unbound hair as she came to rest upon the forest floor once again, still as naked as she had been made the night before.
Arms came about her, pale and lit by the same sun that warmed her bones, and she wondered if she would ever stop feeling relief for the fact that she had found a way to protect him. While cool kisses climbed her throat she changed her mind. No she didn’t simply protect him from the sun, she had given him back the daylight that Cazador had stolen from him. She turned her head, finding his mouth ready for hers, as if he’d simply been waiting for her to come back to earth in order to snatch another few moments.
Warm kisses in the sun, such a small thing to miss and yet it still hadn’t lost its significance as she tasted him on her tongue and allowed herself to be pushed back into the sweet smelling earth. Wars had been won for far less than the sight of Astarion naked and free in the sun's light, and she stalled his slow crawl over her body just long enough to look at the work of art that was hers. He would always be more than just his beauty to her, but she’d not scorn it for the want of appearing humble either, he was stunning, and he wore his freedom well.
“If you spend any longer looking at me like that, someone will come to find us before I can have you again, beastie.”
She snorted, propping herself up on her hands and jerking her head back towards the main area of the Folly’s pools, “Well then, I suppose we’ll have to hurry up and make it awkward for anyone attempting to find us.”
It was a challenge he would no doubt always be willing to rise to, and he began by tasting the sun dappled areas of skin that shivered and twitched under his wandering tongue. His mouth became a tool of worship, sampling the curve of every scar and turning her quiet laughter into soft, shivering gasps when lips closed around stiffening nipple. Her voice was played like a well loved instrument now, subject to the whims of tongue, lips and teeth as he plucked and tortured hardening flesh until she was helpless to do anything more but squirm beneath him.
If they’d had time, she knew he might have gone on torturing her like this for hours, and part of her privately vowed that she would go to war just for that time alone. She wanted to spend hours and days in that embrace, watching the world flower around her while they both fell into a timeless ecstasy that would live on in the very roots of the forest.
For now, they settled for this very mortal moment in time, hands and limbs fumbling for purchase, her thighs splayed by his knees while she pulled him in close to warm his throat with her mouth. His pulse beat with her own, that shared heartbeat pulsing with the ebb and flow of the earth beneath her, the song of the earth rising and falling with his own sweet, aching sounds while he ground against her hip. She bit at his cool flesh, feeling him twitch and clench hands reflexively in hers. Fingers laced with fingers as she tilted her hips, inviting him into her body, the gold of her eyes turning molten when a shift of his body buried him inside her, making her whole and turning sighs into a long guttural moan.
They could name her the spirit of damn virtue and she would still make sounds like a cat in heat when he was hilted inside her, her body accommodating and gripping him as if she truly were made for the vampire alone. With her hands occupied it was up to her mouth to explore what she could while he began to move, his body in tune with hers which in turn moved with the swell of the earth as it drank down their passion.
Grass stretched a little further from the earth and small multi-coloured flowers bloomed in the wake of her mouth blazing a trail from his ear to the curve of one shoulder. He sang for her in desperate tones that urged her body to work against his, the apex of every thrust joining their voices just as seamlessly as that heartbeat.
Her thighs and legs wrapped around him, showing their strength as she gripped him hard and flipped them both, bearing his back to the earth as she let go of his hands to stretch her own towards the sun, her own body keeping up that timeless rhythm. She had always been terrible at expressing herself, she didn’t have a way with words like he did. But now she could tell him with both her body and the way the very nature of the forest reacted to her desire for him, just how beautiful she found him.
The forest floor bloomed around them, the breeze carrying a sweet perfume of sun warmed wood and fresh grasses, the hint of newly born wildflowers alighting on their skin. She would spend a lifetime being a conduit that would cause the forests around her to become bountiful and fertile, but this morning the whole forest sang for him in her stead. He felt it too, she could see it in the growing wonderment in his eyes and the way he breathlessly grasped at her hips, encouraging their languid roll as he arched into her.
She rode him without hurry, feeling every steel bright moment of pleasure and sharing it with the song, imprinting this moment into the very earth so that it might be felt hundreds of years from now. They didn’t race towards any kind of conclusion, time be damned, instead they rode that climbing rise to pleasure together until it was almost painful in its intensity and she could see him gritting his teeth, willing his body to hold on just a little longer.
A gathering wind carrying dried fallen leaves and loose petals began to surround them in a gentle cyclone, perfectly translating the climb of her pleasure. His thumb rode over and pressed at the aching gathering of nerves just above where they joined, causing her body to arch like a tightly drawn bow as she moved against him, finally quickening her pace. It was her turn to sing for him now, and she held nothing back, uncaring of who might hear, or who might judge. Later they would begin their march towards a war she didn’t know if she could win, but this moment in time was all hers and she would not apologize for it.
She felt the heave and strain of his hips, finding herself enchanted by the way he shook beneath her, his thumb slick and firm in circling her cl*t until her own thighs began to tremble. She bent her body over his, finding his mouth in a desperate kiss that breathed her moans against his lips as her whole body heaved with the effort of driving them both over the edge. Astarion went over the edge first, his arms circling her body fiercely as he cried out sweetly enough to drag her with him. His voice would always push her over that final hurdle, and the music of his pleasure warmed her flesh as effectively as the sunlight that poured down on them both.
While her body pulsed and tightened around him, that growing maelstrom flung itself in every direction at once, leaving a light rain of leaves and stray flowers to fall upon them both while they still shivered and whimpered in the wake of a long, drawn out climax. An act that had always been perfunctory at best and embarrassing at worst, had now become not only natural, but beautiful to her. It was sacred because it was her only way of really showing him how he made her feel without stumbling over her own tongue.
If they made it out of this war alive, she would spend the rest of her life leaving echoes of their desire over every square inch of the land. She would banish his darkness over time, and make the likes of Cazador a mere speck on the horizon of his eternity.
~o0O0o~
They were growing, their numbers beginning to swell as the small army marched its way across the map towards the Archwood. Druids, wolves, the ancient creatures of the dire forest, he even suspected he saw some of the forest's more shy denizens keeping up with them in the shadows. More joined as they passed through the wild lands, drawn by rumour and the pull of the network as her ‘song’ reached them. They might have been able to ignore Verlaine the Land Walker, but a true forest spirits call was hard to deny, even if this one were still encased within her mortal flesh.
She welcomed them all, even those that had shown her nothing but disdain, or wanted to outright slaughter her in order to keep the peace for a while longer, once again proving she was far better a person than himself. She welcomed them all with open arms and without ceremony, the social crimes of the past forgotten while a war loomed before them. Despite the potential for infiltration, it would have been hard to get near her to plant a dagger in her back at this point. A nucleus of wolves and were-beasts surrounded her along with her inner circle, and once they started letting more people join the march, he found himself glued to her side.
Anything with just a hint of a vampire's scent that wasn’t his own, wouldn’t have made it through the first barrier of wolves, not that he imagined Ruven had much time to spare given that the moon would rise full tomorrow night. His window of opportunity was almost here, and it seemed he wasn’t going to waste resources in last desperate acts.
He’d asked her last night about the blood required for the ritual, since she had been adamant that it had to be given rather than simply taken from her, his hope relying on the fact that they could kill Ruven before he put her in a position to have such a thing happen. His heart sank when she had looked at him guiltily and explained that in Ruven's twisted logic, she had given permission when she had given herself up, for him. He’d felt himself begin to slip a little, spiralling away from the solid ground of her presence as his own guilt tried to find him. Verlaine had surprised him by striking him quickly across the face, bringing him back to her before he could fall too far, and her soft admonishments forbade him from blaming himself. She had made it clear under no uncertain terms, should he ever be stupid enough to think that she could have been made to make a different decision that day.
The choice had been hers, and she would wrest that burden of guilt from his hands should he try and take it from her.
The closer they got to the Archwood, the more surprised he was to find his own resolve unshaken, though admittedly it came from a far more selfish place than that of his wife and the rest of them. He wanted this over and he wanted her safe and free to live a life that had been denied to her all this time. He might have spent his life in the shadows, but so had she, it just so happened that the shadow in question had been her own guilt and isolation.
Tonight they rested on the outskirts of another forest, where he slipped away to hunt for the last time before they would breach the final battlefield. He was still paranoid enough that he might have dragged her along with him if she didn’t have a whole wolf pack and a host of were beasts to watch her back. Still, he made no sport of his kill, wanting to get back to her as soon as possible, not wanting to admit this was because they had no certainties left to them now.
Despite wanting to ignore this fact until he absolutely couldn’t anymore, his own words, spoken from another reality came back to him as he first stalked and then chased down the deer that gave him a run for his money. There hadn’t been time for a long explanation, and he wasn’t sure he believed half of it anyway, but his counterpart had been firm on one thing above all else; he had to trust her. It seemed a rather generic thing to say at the time, but the closer they came to the Archwood, the more it began to make sense to him.
The desire to take her away from this fight, to stow her away somewhere safe until it was over or until Ruven’s design came to fruition, was strong, even before they had reached the battlefield. It didn’t matter how strong she was, or how many people were now looking to her to lead them, he wanted her safe. He didn’t want her to have to face Ruven again. He didn’t want to have to face losing her, whether that be at the ascendant vampire’s hands or because she did something brave but stupid.
But he would trust her and curb that desire to steal her away, because he loved her, and knew she would never again be the same person if she didn’t face Ruven now. If they didn’t face him. People spoke of bravery as always wanting to do the right thing, no matter the cost. To him, it was wanting to do the wrong thing, and not doing it, despite the cost.
He found himself contemplating this as he went through the business of gutting and skinning the deer, not quite as adeptly as his lady love, but he’d learned enough over the months to make a pretty decent job of it. There was a time when he would have left the carcass to whatever scavenger came upon it, but repurposing his hunts had become second nature now. Still, he found himself redoubling his grip on the skinning knife when something rustled in the overgrown bushes behind him, only relaxing when Nalzhuul stepped into the clearing.
“Is it time to leave already?”
The lion shook its shaggy mane, dipping it’s head to nose at the pile of innards that had been set off to one side, before seeming to shake himself again as all but towered over the vampire, his voice a softened rumble, “No. The others are still preparing. There are those among us that have choices to make, including me.”
Astarion didn’t have much in the way of practice with creatures like Nalzhuul, who had once been just as mortal as he had been, but he caught the subtle air of gravity in the lions words, and set aside the skinning knife before coming to rest on a fallen log, Nalzhuul coming to sit beside him.
“It has been a long time since we have gone to war. If we are to do so again, I would choose to be at your side when the battle arrives.”
For a long while, he didn’t know what to say, not that Nalzhuul seemed to be in any hurry to hear his answer. Before Verlaine, nobody but Tav had ever really had much faith in him, and though he didn’t know the in’s and outs of the were beasts traditions, it didn’t take much to understand that this was more than an honour Nalzhuul was proposing. It touched him in a way that left him unable to find the right words, until he found himself asking “Why me?”
Nalzhuul stretched out on his front paws for a moment, his monstrous looking teeth revealed in a long yawn before he sat up again and slowly blinked at the vampire. “Without you, we would still be hiding, and perhaps our end would have come without us ever knowing it. I would have died in that tiny room, and so would she.”
Astarion wanted to argue that this was simply circ*mstances and his own selfish need to have her at his side again and out of harm's way. But even as he opened his mouth to do just that, he stopped himself, realizing that this was just one amongst many ways that he put distance between himself and others. It was easier to stand apart from people rather than accept any responsibility that came with such attachments.
For so long, he’d barely been able to live with himself, and though that line of thinking was hardly healthy, it was seductive enough in its simplicity, that he’d continued to believe he would never amount to anything that could be considered good. But now? While he would never be forced to look at himself in the mirror, he did have to face a life where he would always have to look at himself through Verlaine’s eyes. Alone he could have continued to indulge in self deprecation in an effort to never be in the position to disappoint, but with her, he wanted to be everything she saw in him.
“Well, we did make something of a formidable team last time. I would be…honoured Nalzhuul.”
It was strange to both see and hear the lion laugh, and Astarion found himself smiling despite not yet getting the joke. Nalzhuul stood again, his tail lashing while slow blinking eyes took in the vampire, “The honour is mine, one I had to fight for. Verlaine is our queen, our last hope, and you are the light that keeps her strong. There isn’t one among us who does not know how important you are.”
He didn’t know what to say again. What could you say to such a declaration? It was an honour he was sure he didn’t deserve, but he wasn’t about to say so when Nalzhuul sounded so sincere. He’d just about been able to wrap his head around being important to Verlaine, never mind anyone else, and Nalzhuul was all but implying that he would give his own life for the Vampire’s if the need arose. It was a lot to take in, and a whole lot more to accept, and yet they had little time for such a nuanced debate and he would have felt worse refusing the lion based on his own inferiority complex.
In the end, he stood and reached out, his palm held up flat in lieu of a handshake or any other form of formal acceptance. Nalzhuul bowed his head, nudging at that pale hand with the soft furred space between his yellowed eyes. There was no need for words, and he was glad for that because he hadn’t had a lot of practice with gratitude, there was just an understanding that while on the battlefield, they would be as brothers, each fighting for the life of the other.
The strange moment was dispelled when more rustling came from the bushes beyond the clearing, and both of them drew apart as the greenery birthed the large and bad tempered looking boar who trotted out of the trees. “Nalzhuul, prepare your rider, we are moving on to the final leg of the journey.”
Astarion couldn’t help but blink and stare. The Boar was intimidating in its own right, but the effect was both enhanced and somewhat spoiled by the squat and wrinkled figure of Mags sitting on its back. The old woman grinned at him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking, which was that the boar couldn’t have picked a more suitable battle partner. The whole tableau was topped off by the fact that Anthony was squatting on the old woman's shoulder, those empty bulbous eyes regarding them all almost regally.
“It seems I’m not the only one to be chosen as a comrade, are you sure you can hang on up there Mags?”
The boar tossed its head indignantly as if to say he would do nothing quite so dishonourable as allowing the dwarf to fall from its back, and Mags laughed as she slapped a meaty thigh, “Got a grip that could crack melons in half lad!”
Once again, the old bat had provided him with a mental image he would all too gladly like to forget, but he smiled despite himself, because Mags turned out to be another of those impossible people who seemed to think him worth a damn. She liked him for who he was, which was just one more step towards the understanding that perhaps Cazador had been full of sh*t when he engrained such a feeling of worthlessness in him. Of course, someone like Mags wouldn’t have counted in the eyes of someone like Cazador, which only went to show that after hundreds of years, the bastard really hadn’t learned anything. Which was precisely why he was dead.
As Nalzhuul bent his lower body, Astarion paused long enough to wonder if he could have ever guessed at such a moment in his lifetime, and part of him wistfully wished he could have seen Tav’s face as he retold this story. There was still time he decided, as he climbed onto the lion's back. After all, he’d pretty much proven that stranger things could and did happen to him on a regular basis. So perhaps there was a future where he would once again sit around a campfire with his old friend, who would see and understand that he had finally grown beyond what the monster had made of him.
~o0O0o~
When the light finally fell from the sky, she sent out scouts, calling upon the animals she had brought with her in her wake, the call to arms reaching every creature that still wished to call the wilds of Faerun their home. Birds and beasts had begun to trail after them, her call reaching out wherever their path took them, gathering Korred's and sprites, while Mol’baran’s magic called upon the trees themselves while gathering a low fog that hid much of their numbers but not their approach.
There was no way to hide so many of them, and even if they could fool Ruven’s army, they would not get the element of surprise when it came to the ascendant himself. Ruven would feel her coming just as she could feel his influence creeping into the earth the closer they came to the Archwood. Her scouts ran alongside them for miles, spotting and picking off any of Ruven's people he’d dispatched to perhaps throw a few thorns in their path.
The beasts of the Dire Forest had chosen their comrades, and Verlaine was not surprised to see Astarion sitting comfortably on Nalzhuul’s back. She would be lying if she said that part of her didn’t want to exercise some of her new found authority to have the lion run to safety with the vampire on his back. But she couldn’t do it, to either of them. Nalzhuul had waited long enough for this confrontation, and Astarion would have carried the guilt around like a weight about his neck if things went wrong and she didn’t survive this.
Win or lose they would do this together, and if her life were to end on the battlefield, then she prayed for his face to be the last thing she saw. It was the most she could ask for, other than winning of course. She loved him, more than anything in the world, and not once did she ever believe that life would allow her such a thing as an undeniable love that was equally reciprocated. It was more than she ever expected, and until this night was done, she would ask for no more than that.
For now, it was time to put hopes and dreams aside, for they would not win this by wishing. Tonight would be won by blood alone, and this was made very clear when the darkness suddenly flared with a sickening scarlet light that flashed like lightning, turning the black void of the horizon into a brief but frightening glimpse of the great tree’s outline. Ruven had already used her blood, and now the thing stood before them like a motionless titan, that scarlet flare receding, but not disappearing.
There was just enough light to reveal the valley between them and the trees, enough light to make out the sea of movement of the army that awaited them. There were thousands waiting, more than what she had, but as she looked out at the wide expanse between herself and the great tree, she was convinced that not even half of them would fight with the conviction her own army would. The spawn had been drawn to Ruven by fear, and it was fear alone that would drive them as they faced down a true and final death.
She didn’t need to give a speech, having said all that needed to be said on the journey here, they all knew that tonight would mean the difference between life going on, or life becoming a twisted facsimile of a long mad vampires past. All around her, she felt the divine touch of the gods of the land as druids tapped into their magics. Elementals erupted from the earth and sky, flaming into existence besides wolves the size of carts. Druids wildshaped and stood beside their dire counterparts, panting and pawing at the ground as the battle fever moved through each of them one by one.
In the forests, the whoops and hollers of Korreds running alongside a woodland that now came to life with treants, and Verlaine could not think of a more fitting metaphor for the land reclaiming itself. She looked to her inner circle now, Bugash and Conner standing beside Arla's blonde wolf form, her size only topped by the great white wolf queen and her burning blue eyes. Mags sat astride her boar, looking more determined than Verlaine had ever seen her, her skin glowing a faint gold with the shields she’d worked over herself and her Dire companion, and beside her, Astarion.
As she looked at him, she understood that even if she could have voiced everything she ever wanted to say to him, there would always be more to say at a time like this. But she didn’t need to say it, not when he place a hand over his heart, his meaning as plain as the percussion playing in her own chest. She gave him one last smile of understanding, before she stepped back to take them all in one last time, her vanguard, and her family, all of them here, all of them ready to fight no matter how much she wanted to keep them all safe.
She had no speeches to give, and she probably would have fumbled it if she tried. Instead she drew on her own magic, closing her eyes as her body flowed into that somewhat new shape, and when she opened them again, the only one to stand as tall as her, was Mol’baran. As the leopard, she reached out with her mind, her voice reaching every man, woman and creature assembled before her, delivering a single imperative.
“Get me to that tree!”
With her command given, Verlaine lifted her head to the sickly glowing night and let loose a roar that shook the ground beneath their feet. Wolves howled, while every creature, big or small joined the chorus of animal sounds alongside the cries of ancient oaths from the druids. It was the most chaotic sound she had ever heard, and yet only the earth's song was sweeter to her ears at that moment.
Before the last echo could die down, Verlaine took off, leading the vanguard as it bounded forward towards the valley. As she raced towards that sickly light, spirits poured from her body to run either side of her, their own tasks in mind as they first ran alongside her, then ahead.
There would be no more running and hiding, this ended here and now, as she led the forest itself into war.
~o0O0o~
