Astarion doesn't say a fucking word on the way, like he's terrified even speaking one syllable into existence will somehow ruin this. Once they're finally at the drop-off point, he slams the door behind them, the dilapidated wood creaking with the force of it, and presses himself against it like he's worried someone might burst in behind them and take all of the gold away.
(They won't, the small part of his mind that's rational thinks. None of those employees had the guts to abandon their post and follow them.)
He's committed a lot of crimes, and none of them have ever made him feel such an adrenaline rush. Most of the time, he'd felt bored—they'd mostly been just another task to complete for someone else's benefit, nothing he actually cared about beyond avoiding retribution for not achieving whatever needed achieving. This time, though, he's sweating a little, entire body tingling, head swimming. He laughs, a little hysteric, inexorable grin spreading across his face.
"We actually did it." Unbelievable. "Gods! I'm getting out of this hellhole."
"Fuck yeah," Bull agrees. It's not just that Astarion's hysteria is contageous, Bull can feel it too, the rush like watching an axe slam a killing blow into the space you just were. Adrenaline only bolstered by the deep rightness he feels at cloaking himself in deception, a certainty of purpose that was trained into him too young to ever be rid of it.
He lights a burnt down candle in the wall sconce so he can calm his own twitchy paranoia that they're about to get jumped — qunari can't really see in the dark. Then slips the pack off and leans against the wall, horns thunking back against it.
"Haagh. Okay. Mage is staying at the Helm and Cloak," Bull says, naming the fancy inn of the Upper City. He can tell Astarion is still kinda in fight or flight, is talking half to himself, trying to stay on task. Keeps moving the bag from hand to hand — maybe it's the ancient draconic ancestor, but he likes the jingling weight of it. Will it be enough? He wishes he'd had time to count it. "There's more gold at the Mermaid, plus whatever's left of your little beach stash. And we gotta pick up the fork from the diabolist." Always with the fucking fork, but there's a reason people don't just plane shift around amd it's because the tuning fork component is a bitch. Bull has had half a dozen plates in the air for the past forty-eight hours straight, and they're starting to feel precarious, but if they can get the last pieces assembled in one place then yeah. They're getting out of this hellhole.
Bull talks, and Astarion barely hears it, ears ringing, blood rushing. High on hope that he hasn't felt in two centuries. He isn't really the type to say so, but— yes, fuck yeah indeed.
"Huh?" he says after a conspicuous pause, then— "Right, yes, of course. All of that."
Gods, he's still trembling, but this time it's from an almost deranged amount of happiness. Is this what it feels like? Being happy? He bounces back and forth on the balls of his feet, nowhere to put all of this energy.
"We should go right now. Get rid of this awful place before the sun rises again." Which is an insane thing to say, and even he recognizes so after a moment. He hadn't been fully listening to Bull's list of tasks left to complete, but it had been pretty long. "—Tomorrow. Not a minute after sundown."
Insane, but Bull wants to get on board so badly. If they wait another day it's all gonna come crashing down. "We can do it. We split up. Pick up the stuff we need — I'll give you my room key. Get you into the Helm and Cloak before dawn." Because of Astarion's drow heritage sun allergy — it's never gonna twig that it's anything else, Bull doesn't know what a vampire is. "Keep the curtains shut tight while whatever magic shit needs to happen happens."
Though that means there's no time to waste. Bull pushes off the wall and fishes through the coin in his pockets with agitation until he finds the key to his room. "Purse in the rafters." Astarion might have to climb something. "And my pack, if you're feeling real generous."
His face actually hurts from smiling; the muscles he's currently using are withered and atrophied, unused to such strange and foreign contortions. He snatches up the room key in an instant, cradling it to his chest like it's something precious. By dawn, he'll be unreachable by anyone that ever hurt him. Starting over, somewhere new. One thing he knows for sure: he's never going to go hungry ever again.
"I underestimated you, Bronco," he says, genuinely complimentary, and this time he's only calling him that as a tease and not because he doesn't know Bull's real name. "You've proven yourself to be quite the advantageous ally."
Slipping the key into his pocket: "Where shall we rendezvous, then?"
Bull rolls his single eye, but he's smiling. "And hey, you're not as much of an asshole as I first thought." That or he's just acclimatising to it. "Meet you in the Helm and Cloak. Ask for Gale of Waterdeep." Who will probably be sleeping at this late hour, but for the amount of gold they're paying him Bull truly doesn't care.
He pauses, and then messes up Astarion's curls a little with one big hand. "Don't fuck it up."
Unfortunately Astarion comes with a built-in fuck it up fish-hook lodged in his brain and it will occur to him, with unnatural thought like a cold whisper through his secret places, that Cazador wants him home. Not a command, not yet, just a little tug of the leash to remind him it's still around his neck. Ignorable.
When he unlocks Bull's room at the Mermaid, it's Leon and Violet, always so competitive, who are waiting for him. Well, they're waiting for the tiefling he's been seen going shopping in the Upper City with. It's a public room, they don't need an invitation.
"Astarion!" Violet says, jumping up out of her waiting crouch, clearly not expecting him to be the one coming in through the door. Leon already has a blade out. "We've been wondering where you went, and I suppose here's our answer. Our master wants to see you." Presumably not about the empty vault, otherwise the tugging in his head would be... louder.
"That tiefling with you?" Leon asks, already coming forward to get Astarion in grabbing distance.
"Gods, you— idiots," Astarion snaps as he jumps back in shock, every cell in his body suddenly painfully alert. Gods, of course his so-called siblings are here to ruin everything, just when he's finally on top of the world. Don't they always?
He steps back, keeping his distance. Where had Bull said his things were? Up in the rafters? Astarion glances up, then quickly back down to the roadblocks in front of him. He wonders if maybe he should just run out, lead them on a wild chase around Baldur's Gate before ducking into the Helm and Cloak and having this Gale of Waterdeep poof him into another dimension— but Cazador might actually command him back if he's not quick enough about it, and then he'd be up shit creek without a paddle.
"The tiefling," he spits, "isn't here right now. But he's obviously... a surprise sacrifice, for the master. If you two don't fuck it up."
"Not a surprise any more," Violet says, circling him with a smirk.
"We were to bring him back," Leon explains. "He came to the house, apparently — talking about the Counting House. Do you know anything about this, brother?"
"No no," Violet says, linking her arm with Astarion's. "Don't tell us. Come tell Master. Leon can wait here—"
"I swear, Violet, if you think you can worm into his good graces just by bringing back Astarion," Leon sighs, brushing hair behind his shoulder disdainfully. He lifts his sword to whisper along Astarion's jaw. "Why don't you hunt the big tiefling and I'll take him home."
This is so fucking stupid. Neither Leon nor Violet will actually dare harm him without Cazador's say so, so the attempted menacing is more irritating than anything else; besides, he's heard the sounds Leon makes when the pliers come out, the way he begs for his daughter—there's no universe in which that intimidates him. What does intimidate him is the thought of having to answer to Cazador, though, and he swallows.
"He has a very generic face. Honestly, that could have been anyone at the palace."
Astarion does a quick run-through of every possible scenario here, looking for one where he somehow still comes out a winner. It's not looking so good. Jaw tight: "He's my prey—why don't we all go tell the master about my wonderful surprise and see who he wants to do the hunting, hm?" A pause, and then he adds, "Unless you'd like me to tell him that you made the decision for him. I'm sure he won't mind!"
Leon sheathes his sword hard. "Fine," he says snippily; clearly still plotting, Leon is always obsessing over keeping the favoured spawn privileges, and it occupies most of his thoughts.
"Let's go," Violet says, taking the chance to switch sides and pretend to be Astarion's friend instead, the same thing she's done about a thousand times since they met. Her demeanour switches from attempted threat to friendly gossip. "Tell me what makes him so special — Petras did say he was very big."
Even if he were really trying to hunt Bull for Cazador, he certainly wouldn't share any details with Violet. Or any of the spawn, really—they all despise each other at the end of the day, because Cazador wouldn't have it any other way. But he steps out of the room, lingering in the doorway and staring longingly at the rafters he won't get a chance to climb up into for just a moment before he says, "All the more blood pumping through him, yes?"
One last look inside, and he closes the door, tossing the key on the floor in front of it before hurrying along down the hall. He wonders, briefly, what Bull will think when he doesn't show up at the Helm and Cloak. Probably that he's just as much of an asshole as Bull had thought him to be, and that he's standing him up on purpose. Maybe he won't even care; now that he has the coin, he can leave Astarion behind without any repercussions.
"Well, come along already," he snaps, mood darkening as he trudges down the stairs and out into the night. "You don't want to keep the master waiting."
What Bull thinks, when he's somehow the first one to the inn, is that Astarion had someone he wanted to say goodbye to after all. An old friend or lover, or maybe just a last drink overlooking the docks, for all he'd disparaged the city. It's stupid, but Bull's been doing a little of it himself in between everything else, so it's forgivable. There's still time before dawn.
So for a little while he just waits. Sits with the wizard in his purple pajamas — "Is it normal to interrupt a man's beauty sleep so rudely where you're from? Very uncivilised." — while an Unseen Servant counts the coin. Gale's ordered a frankly stupid amount of high tea, and Bull polishes off little sandwiches and watches him set up a circle in the middle of their expensive room, do something glowy with the fork. Tries to read one of the books the wizard teleported with him, a more advanced treatise on the planes, shit that Bull's been struggling to wrap his head around for weeks. Fails.
"Ah," says Gale, coming over to refresh his tea. "Forgive me if this is broaching a delicate subject, but you did say there were two of you off on this little adventure. Might it be in any way possible that your partner has... how do I put this... cold feet?"
Bull thinks of Astarion's bright joy, and crushes a blue macaron between two fingers, the shell cracking. "Nah," he says, pushing his chair back, dropping it uneaten onto his plate. "Might have run into some trouble though. You wanna come get some air?" However harmlessly nebbish and obtuse Gale strikes him, Bull is reluctant to leave him alone with more than fifteen thousand gold and a portal to his home.
"I think you'll find me uniquely suited to handle whatever trouble might be thrown at us," Gale says in a way Bull finds deeply, intensely irritating. It only gets worse when he snaps his fingers to change into a set of gold-embroidered purple robes. The Unseen Servant comes to tidy up the food, and Gale casts more spells. "A little something to discourage any would-be thieves. Well, lead the way!"
Bull heads back to the last place he knew Astarion was, and finds it as the vampires left it: a little rummaged through, but his things still in the rafters and the key on the floor — the one, he explains, he gave to Astarion earlier. He's been here. "Gimme a sec," he adds, "I'm gonna change."
"Do you think," Gale suggests from the other side of a closed door, "That he meant it as a message of some kind?"
"No," says Bull. "Not the message you're thinking of. C'mon."
He tries the Guild first, finds out from Glitterbeard that their heist hasn't been sprung yet. One of the guys who do top-floor jobs claims to have seen a pale-haired elf headed to the Upper City with a tiefling and a long-haired human man (which is confusing considering Bull and Gale could just as easily match that vague description.)
"Baldur's Gate after dark," Gale says once they're back out on the streets again. "This is all very invigorating. And quite, ah, athletic. This city has a lot more hill than I'm used to, I'm afraid."
He's not wrong: Bull's picked up the pace, storming up the steepest road to the Upper City towards the Szarr palace. Worried, now, too worried to pay Gale any attention. "You know how to get into a place with magic?"
"Certaintly. There's Knock, of course, but one can also Misty Step through a window if one is so inclined. One time I flew myself up to the third floor of a friend's tower and came in via his hovering garden, just to give him a little surprise&mdash"
"Great. Pick one of those things," Bull says, "We're doing this the uncivilised way."
"I'm not so sure," Gale pants, trying to keep up, "That I signed up to do any breaking and entering — I've enjoyed, of course, this little venture into the underbelly of the Gate, but I do feel it necessary, as the Chosen of Mystra, to uphold the principles I learnt at my mother's knee, and—"
"Those include rescuing a victim of kidnapping?" Bull says impatiently. "Helping him escape from his uh, tyrannical master?"
This is, of course, true, but Bull is mostly exaggerating so the mage shuts up and breaks them into the manor. It works, enough that Gale murmurs, "Well, if heroics are called for," and pulls Bull with him through a Dimension Door into one of the only rooms with windows, a dim and empty kitchen. Politely gives the qunari a moment to adjust to the teleportation: "If you didn't like that, my well-hornéd friend, we may need to give you a bucket for the Plane Shift. Now. Where are we."
"Better question," says Bull, shaking off the nausea and checking the axe strapped to his back. "Where's Astarion." A question he intends to keep asking people.
Astarion is, as it turns out, in the kennels with Cazador, currently trying to lawyer his way out of getting his fingernails ripped out or toes crushed. Spinning every story he can think of that might paint him in a better light. It wasn't even Bull who came to the palace. Or maybe it was, but only because Astarion was trying to lure him there in the first place so that Cazador could drain him. If anyone saw him out in the Upper City with a tiefling, it's because he was leading him back to the palace and the fool wanted to stop in a boutique along the way, against Astarion's will, but it's not as if he could just say no—
"You know I hate to listen to you whine," Cazador says, although what he really means is that he hates to hear Astarion talk at all, "and I hate even more to listen to you lie."
Meanwhile, in the strangest set-up for a joke yet, a qunari and a wizard teleport into a kitchen AND ACTUALLY YOU SAID IT'S EMPTY SO the halfling woman furiously scrubbing at an already-spotless VASE IN THE HALL OUTSIDE yelps in fear when she sees them, eyes wide like she doesn't know if screaming out will make this better or worse. The master of the house will be furious at her if she doesn't alert him, but furious if he finds her up here with two strangers, too. (And on top of everything, he so hates for his servants to make noise.) Master Cazador will never give her the gift of eternal life if she fucks this up.
"I don't know!" she hisses upon being questioned, her whole body shaking in fear of the master's retribution if he ever knew that she spoke to the intruders. ...She's also shaking in fear at the very large, very well-armed behemoth of a man who just magically popped into the palace, though—less so the dapper little wizard beside him, sorry to Gale—so she adds, "The master was angry with him, and when he's angry, he always takes people down into that h-horrible place down the hall."
Her eyes turn wide, and she clamps her hands over her mouth. They're red and cracked from the incessant CLEANING OF VASES AND NOT DISHES. "But you mustn't interrupt Master's discipline!" is muffled into her palms.
Terrified obsequiousness giving real Tevinter slave vibes, so Bull doesn't hurt her, wouldn't even if he wasn't aware of Gale's watchful eye. "Great," he says. "Don't worry, we'll make an appointment. Let's just pretend we never saw each other."
He doubts it'll work, she has that same thought-obliterating terror he's seen in Astarion a couple of times, and in Seheron a whole bunch more. But he isn't exactly planning on doing this quietly.
Gale offers a, "Have you considered—" as Bull heads down the hall checking doors, but Bull doesn't listen, and he doesn't stop for a nervous servant's inquiry, either. Not too different from the Counting House, just barrel through confidently and hope to be gone by the time people decide what to do about it. At least one servant just goes back to dusting with her eyes closed, prioritising doing her job to Cazador's complete satisfaction over the potential ramifications of getting involved.
He pushes open the door to the kennels and shoulders his way in, expecting Astarion but also finally coming face to face with the aristocrat who ah fuck he's a mage. Fuck. Bull immediately regrets all the choices leading him to this moment: nobody who wields gleaming red threads of magical power is good to fight.
Fortunately, he's brought along an archmage, who also steps into the room with a, "Good evening — or I suppose good morning would be more appropriate, in this moment."
Perfect timing! Cazador is just in the middle of telling Astarion how, if he's only going to use his tongue for lies, perhaps it should just be cut off. Astarion braces for the worst, and then— saved by the Bull, at least for the moment.
It's beyond shocking. If he'd had to guess who would come bursting through the door in that moment, Astarion's very last guess would have been Bull. Wait, scratch that. His second-to-last guess would have been Bull; his last guess would have been this guy in wizard robes that he's never seen before in his life, who's politely greeting them like he didn't just step into a dingy old torture dungeon.
Astarion and even Cazador are stunned into silence for a brief moment, jaws slack. Then, although he isn't proud of how quickly he does it, Astarion begins the pleading: "I swear I didn't bring them here. I don't even know who that is—" The sentence is cut off with an oof as Cazador pushes him back against the stone wall—with magic, of course, because he'd never deign to dirty his hands.
"You imbecile," Cazador spits out in that reedy voice of his. His gaze drags over to the newcomers in the room, then, and somehow it's filled with even more disdain than when he looked at Astarion. His eyes had been harsh when looking at Astarion, but it's like the two mortals aren't even worth his hatred. Like they're no more than disgusting pests to be crushed underneath his shoe. He says as much: "You've brought vermin into our home."
And Cazador would never deal with vermin directly. He has people to do that for him. A curl of his fingers, and an armored skeleton in the corner of the room reanimates bit by bit, rising jerkily as it reaches for the greatsword on its back. Typical Cazador, always getting others to do his dirty work. "We'll discuss this," he says, "once the rats have been exterminated."
"Well that's a bit rude," murmurs Gale, as Bull unhooks his axe from his back and steps forward. "Look, honestly, I'm not here to quarrel. I'd hate to ruin your lovely home. If you'll just let us borrow your ah, servant—"
Fucking mages, Bull mouths to himself as he falls into combat with the skeleton, swinging to try and scatter some of the bones before it comes whole.
"Oh, don't bother fighting the construct," Gale back-seat commentates, "He'll just put it back together. Fight the necromancer! Surely that's the first thing—"
"You fight the fucking necromancer!" roars back Bull, lunging so the greatsword smacks into his shoulder pauldron instead of his bicep, though the blade still skims off and bites ice into his skin.
Gale huffs and adjusts his sleeves. "Well all right then." He feels a little bad about attacking a man in his own home, so he's going to try Hold Person on Cazador, which fizzles due to his lack of personhood. Which is a bit of a worry, contextually, so the next thing he'll try is a friendly Banishment to get the man(?) out of their hair.
Cazador laughs at the attempted Hold Person—and then immediately gets popped out of existence on this plane with that Banishment. (Funny; that's exactly what Astarion has been trying to do.) Astarion has no idea if it's permanent, but can only assume it isn't, both because Cazador is far too powerful for such an easy thing to work and because, well, otherwise everyone would be walking around Banishing everyone they didn't like.
But for the moment, it's just them and the undead construct. Astarion had been far too afraid to do anything to Cazador himself, but while he isn't here, he's more than happy to bang the handle of his dagger against the skeleton's temple, cracking the bone there slightly and making the thing stumble back briefly.
"You idiots!" he hisses in the meantime, because Bull really should not have come here. Admittedly, he could currently take or leave the wizard. "Now we're all fucked."
When Cazador inevitably returns to this plane, he's far more incensed than before. "You stupid little wizard!" he shouts, obviously angry, and Astarion almost enjoys how impotent his rage sounds. The benefit to this rage is that Cazador is single-minded to a fault, and now has little on his mind beyond winning a pissing contest with the human wizard that's invaded his home. With a spat-out incantation of perē, he raises a hand and surrounds Gale with cold, necromantic energy, the kind that would sap a non-archwizard of their vitality and vigor but quite possibly just tickles level 20 Gale.
Not that Astarion really cares about that—again, he could take or leave this guy. He's more concerned about the reanimated skeleton currently swinging its greatsword across Bull's very exposed chest. "Move, you twit!"
Bull ducks and takes it on the horns, which he feels down the whole length of his spine, like landing on the coccyx wrong but in reverse. But it lets him really get in with his own low swing, try to sever the skeleton's pelvis. This is the third hit he's taken; it's clean too much of his fighting style is tanking damage in order to get his axe where he wants it, which probably explains why he looks how he does, scar-wise.
"We gotta go," he says (again, since the moment Cazador vanished he definitely told Astarion we gotta go like there wasn't a whole-ass construct trying to fight them.) This time he's more emphatic about it, blood-slick hand grabbing Astarion's wrist as he shoulder checks the skeleton off its last legs and it collapses back into bones again. Temporarily.
Gale doesn't love getting blighted, but it does mean he at least gets serious about this fight. One can't always be a gentleman, and so on. He flicks a piece of quartz into the air and gestures as it tumbles to the ground in front of Cazador before bursting into a wall of ice that curves and surrounds him like a giant sphere, hemming him off until he can break through - which won't be long, Gale is still underestimating him. Albeit a little less now, since he also backs out to the corridor so he's out of range of retaliation.
Nearly loses his concentration out of sheer surprise when one of the servants smacks at him wildly with a broom for attacking the master. He grips her arm with a bright shock of electricity that sends her reeling. "It does seem we've tapped the hornet's nest!" And he's not wrong, there's movement in the spawn dorms, too. "A little expedience, perhaps?"
Part of him feels the urge to pull away and stay here, because if any part of this harebrained escape goes sideways, his entire life is forfeit. He'll be in the coffin again for sure, and this time not just for a year—for the next hundred years, at least. The ice cold shot of fear he feels at that thought makes him pause, even with Bull urging him to move.
But if there's anything he knows about Cazador, it's that Astarion will end up taking the blame for all of this no matter what he does. He feels an ice cold shot of fear at that, too, and— well, fuck it. He's doomed either way, so he might as well try to scramble his way out of this like the rat that he is.
So, he shoots out the door and into the hallway himself, pushing past the wizard with a sharp elbow to his side. As he bounds down the hall, Petras emerges from the dormitories first, fingers curled around a dagger like he's itching for a fight. If Astarion were the empathetic type, he'd think that he could hardly blame him, because Astarion would be eager to prove himself loyal in this situation, too— but he's not the empathetic type, so instead Astarion kicks him in the groin.
"Gods, you— asshole," Petras chokes out.
He'd love to stick around and gloat, but Astarion can hear the cracking of ice from the kennels, shards of it pelting out into the hall from the doorway, and Cazador's furious, "Kill them already, you halfwits."
Violet bursts through the door nearest Gale at that, pushing Petras aside to stab him in the shoulder, and her bared sharpb teeth and the muted pallor of her tiefling skin, the necromancer's red light shining behind her eyes, finally manages to tip Gale off about what's going on here.
Bull is with Astarion, running for his life even though the head wound is sheeting blood down his grey skin. Gale bellows some complicated Latin phrase and pops down a celestial to start handing out radiant damage, before Misty-Stepping up to the next floor so he can start raining fiery death on the vampires as they all nicely cluster in fireball range for him. Several copies of himself spring from nowhere.
Bull is slightly concerned they're going to lose the portal wizard, but he seems to be handling himself — not a huge surprise for someone who can charge 15k gold for a single spell. Fleeing isn't usually his go to, but this is a shit place to fight, narrow corridors, people popping out of doors, so he puts it all into barrelling up the stairs instead of fighting. And he wants to get Astarion out of here before sunrise — they're cutting it really fucking close though.
This is a mess. Radiant magic whizzes by his head, and hells, the last thing he needs is to get burnt to a crisp by that. He eagerly heads for the main foyer, no plan in mind besides get out of the blast radius of— well, everyone. As he turns the corner, he can hear the sizzling of radiant energy on skin, followed by the crackling of lightning. Cazador must be pulling out all the stops; for just a brief second, Astarion allows himself to feel giddy at the fact that someone is showing Cazador up in his own home.
The happiness passes quickly, though. As they turn into the entryway, one of the servants chucks a vase their way; Astarion narrowly manages to sidestep the projectile decor, responding in kind by picking up a heavy paperweight and hurling it. It hits the servant square in the face, and he crumples.
It's usually deathly quiet in the palace, but now it's so loud, the sounds of shouting and magic echoing off the walls. If that weren't enough to give Astarion a migraine, he can smell the coppery tinge of Bull's blood in the air, so hungry that it makes him nauseated. He shakes his head, willing the hollow ache away.
"Tell me you have that damned fork," he hisses, because he needs to be out of this plane of existence yesterday.
"Mage has it," Bull confirms, as he bursts through the tall double doors and onto Cazador's estate. "Keep running." The sky is dangerously pale, the elegantly paved Upper City hushed with the held breath of pre-dawn. Somewhere nearby, a Flaming Fist is yawning as his gaze passes blandly over the creepy old Szarr manor, which has no windows to display the bright pops of magic taking place inside.
"I think it might be best if we all put Baldur's Gate behind us," Gale says as he appears from nowhere, hair a lightning-singed mess, clearly including himself in that. "I did not expect to be antagonising a vampire lord today. Not my best showing. If you'll link hands, gentlemen? Quickly now." He taps the tuning fork to make it sing, takes one of their hands in each of his, and it's almost anticlimatic as in the space of six seconds they blink out of one plane and into another, the first rays of the sunrise cresting to light the empty space.
And then they pop out into a muddy field, lit by Thedas' two moons, startling a herd of dozing domesticated druffalo, who immediately grunt and snort and start moving away from this sudden incursion in one mass of bovine fur and horns. "Marvellous," says Gale, dropping their hands to clap his, once, smug. "Though I did hope we'd come out in a city. Farm animals are a good sign for some sort of civilization, I suppose, however rural. Well, as you left everything back in my rooms, I'll do you a good turn, and help you set up camp, since you do look as though you could use a rest—"
Bull isn't listening, really. He has to remind himself that he survived the rift that had taken him to Baldur's Gate so he'll survive this too, but right now it doesn't feel like it. Teleportation just does something to his insides, like how some people get sick on boats. The nausea mixes confusingly with the pain of his injuries and the first low stirrings of a feeling too big for his chest to contain, and he doesn't let go of Astarion's hand. "Hey," he says, quiet to Astarion under Gale's carrying on. "Welcome to Thedas."
This is all very overwhelming. That had been quite possibly the most afraid Astarion has ever felt in his life; he's covered all over in a thin sheen of cold sweat, incredibly aware of how chilly and clammy his palm must feel. Out here in the fresh air, he can smell Bull's blood stronger than ever, the scent making him sway. And he's free, a fact so unbelievable that he could start sobbing right here.
Gods, he can't believe Bull actually came. He's not as smart as Astarion thought.
All of that, and the obnoxious wizard won't stop talking. Astarion slips away from Bull, crouching down with his head between his knees. Let them all think he's just nauseated from the interplanar travel.
"I think I'm going to vomit," he says, and the only reason he doesn't is because he has nothing inside to retch up.
"Yeah," Bull agrees, on a long exhale. "Me too." He definitely should not have eaten all those little sandwiches.
Gale is still rambling on, doodling arcane symbols in the air to test the difference in the Weave, and probably making half the demons in the Fade perk their ears up.
Bull takes a few deep breaths of bracing air, relying on old trainings to ignore his stomach trying to climb out his throat. "Think we're somewhere in Fereldan. Might wanna go easy on the magic, people here are uh..." how can he explain this to someone from the world they just came from. "Superstitious."
"Not to worry," Gale says. "A night to recover and then I'll be on my way, I think." And then before Bull can ask where he expects to be recovering in the middle of a field, Gale sketches a door out of nowhere, shimmering amidst the grass. One more Gale ex Machina for the road: he upcasts a Magnificent Mansion, somewhere much like his tower to relax and regain his spell slots. But Bull and Astarion can use it too, one night's respite before trying to make their way to Skyhold.
Astarion had thought they'd just pop right into Skyhold. The realization that they're going to have to travel is an unpleasant one, considering they don't even have a tent or sleeping bags, and his shoes definitely aren't made to hike in. Maybe they can hitch a ride on a caravan...?
All problems for tomorrow. Astarion stands, the world spinning slightly less now. Hopefully, this Ferelden is close to wherever Skyhold is. (Are they cities? Countries? Fuck if he knows. He probably should have asked more questions.)
But he can see the slight glow of the sun now, feels a faint prickling on his skin. Astarion, as quick as anything, heads toward the doors of the makeshift dwelling, then— stops. He hasn't been invited in.
"Ah." Fuck. "What do you say we all go inside, hm?" A pause. "Really, say it."
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(They won't, the small part of his mind that's rational thinks. None of those employees had the guts to abandon their post and follow them.)
He's committed a lot of crimes, and none of them have ever made him feel such an adrenaline rush. Most of the time, he'd felt bored—they'd mostly been just another task to complete for someone else's benefit, nothing he actually cared about beyond avoiding retribution for not achieving whatever needed achieving. This time, though, he's sweating a little, entire body tingling, head swimming. He laughs, a little hysteric, inexorable grin spreading across his face.
"We actually did it." Unbelievable. "Gods! I'm getting out of this hellhole."
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He lights a burnt down candle in the wall sconce so he can calm his own twitchy paranoia that they're about to get jumped — qunari can't really see in the dark. Then slips the pack off and leans against the wall, horns thunking back against it.
"Haagh. Okay. Mage is staying at the Helm and Cloak," Bull says, naming the fancy inn of the Upper City. He can tell Astarion is still kinda in fight or flight, is talking half to himself, trying to stay on task. Keeps moving the bag from hand to hand — maybe it's the ancient draconic ancestor, but he likes the jingling weight of it. Will it be enough? He wishes he'd had time to count it. "There's more gold at the Mermaid, plus whatever's left of your little beach stash. And we gotta pick up the fork from the diabolist." Always with the fucking fork, but there's a reason people don't just plane shift around amd it's because the tuning fork component is a bitch. Bull has had half a dozen plates in the air for the past forty-eight hours straight, and they're starting to feel precarious, but if they can get the last pieces assembled in one place then yeah. They're getting out of this hellhole.
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"Huh?" he says after a conspicuous pause, then— "Right, yes, of course. All of that."
Gods, he's still trembling, but this time it's from an almost deranged amount of happiness. Is this what it feels like? Being happy? He bounces back and forth on the balls of his feet, nowhere to put all of this energy.
"We should go right now. Get rid of this awful place before the sun rises again." Which is an insane thing to say, and even he recognizes so after a moment. He hadn't been fully listening to Bull's list of tasks left to complete, but it had been pretty long. "—Tomorrow. Not a minute after sundown."
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Though that means there's no time to waste. Bull pushes off the wall and fishes through the coin in his pockets with agitation until he finds the key to his room. "Purse in the rafters." Astarion might have to climb something. "And my pack, if you're feeling real generous."
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"I underestimated you, Bronco," he says, genuinely complimentary, and this time he's only calling him that as a tease and not because he doesn't know Bull's real name. "You've proven yourself to be quite the advantageous ally."
Slipping the key into his pocket: "Where shall we rendezvous, then?"
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He pauses, and then messes up Astarion's curls a little with one big hand. "Don't fuck it up."
Unfortunately Astarion comes with a built-in fuck it up fish-hook lodged in his brain and it will occur to him, with unnatural thought like a cold whisper through his secret places, that Cazador wants him home. Not a command, not yet, just a little tug of the leash to remind him it's still around his neck. Ignorable.
When he unlocks Bull's room at the Mermaid, it's Leon and Violet, always so competitive, who are waiting for him. Well, they're waiting for the tiefling he's been seen going shopping in the Upper City with. It's a public room, they don't need an invitation.
"Astarion!" Violet says, jumping up out of her waiting crouch, clearly not expecting him to be the one coming in through the door. Leon already has a blade out. "We've been wondering where you went, and I suppose here's our answer. Our master wants to see you." Presumably not about the empty vault, otherwise the tugging in his head would be... louder.
"That tiefling with you?" Leon asks, already coming forward to get Astarion in grabbing distance.
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He steps back, keeping his distance. Where had Bull said his things were? Up in the rafters? Astarion glances up, then quickly back down to the roadblocks in front of him. He wonders if maybe he should just run out, lead them on a wild chase around Baldur's Gate before ducking into the Helm and Cloak and having this Gale of Waterdeep poof him into another dimension— but Cazador might actually command him back if he's not quick enough about it, and then he'd be up shit creek without a paddle.
"The tiefling," he spits, "isn't here right now. But he's obviously... a surprise sacrifice, for the master. If you two don't fuck it up."
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"We were to bring him back," Leon explains. "He came to the house, apparently — talking about the Counting House. Do you know anything about this, brother?"
"No no," Violet says, linking her arm with Astarion's. "Don't tell us. Come tell Master. Leon can wait here—"
"I swear, Violet, if you think you can worm into his good graces just by bringing back Astarion," Leon sighs, brushing hair behind his shoulder disdainfully. He lifts his sword to whisper along Astarion's jaw. "Why don't you hunt the big tiefling and I'll take him home."
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"He has a very generic face. Honestly, that could have been anyone at the palace."
Astarion does a quick run-through of every possible scenario here, looking for one where he somehow still comes out a winner. It's not looking so good. Jaw tight: "He's my prey—why don't we all go tell the master about my wonderful surprise and see who he wants to do the hunting, hm?" A pause, and then he adds, "Unless you'd like me to tell him that you made the decision for him. I'm sure he won't mind!"
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"Let's go," Violet says, taking the chance to switch sides and pretend to be Astarion's friend instead, the same thing she's done about a thousand times since they met. Her demeanour switches from attempted threat to friendly gossip. "Tell me what makes him so special — Petras did say he was very big."
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One last look inside, and he closes the door, tossing the key on the floor in front of it before hurrying along down the hall. He wonders, briefly, what Bull will think when he doesn't show up at the Helm and Cloak. Probably that he's just as much of an asshole as Bull had thought him to be, and that he's standing him up on purpose. Maybe he won't even care; now that he has the coin, he can leave Astarion behind without any repercussions.
"Well, come along already," he snaps, mood darkening as he trudges down the stairs and out into the night. "You don't want to keep the master waiting."
apologies, i wrote you a fanfic
So for a little while he just waits. Sits with the wizard in his purple pajamas — "Is it normal to interrupt a man's beauty sleep so rudely where you're from? Very uncivilised." — while an Unseen Servant counts the coin. Gale's ordered a frankly stupid amount of high tea, and Bull polishes off little sandwiches and watches him set up a circle in the middle of their expensive room, do something glowy with the fork. Tries to read one of the books the wizard teleported with him, a more advanced treatise on the planes, shit that Bull's been struggling to wrap his head around for weeks. Fails.
"Ah," says Gale, coming over to refresh his tea. "Forgive me if this is broaching a delicate subject, but you did say there were two of you off on this little adventure. Might it be in any way possible that your partner has... how do I put this... cold feet?"
Bull thinks of Astarion's bright joy, and crushes a blue macaron between two fingers, the shell cracking. "Nah," he says, pushing his chair back, dropping it uneaten onto his plate. "Might have run into some trouble though. You wanna come get some air?" However harmlessly nebbish and obtuse Gale strikes him, Bull is reluctant to leave him alone with more than fifteen thousand gold and a portal to his home.
"I think you'll find me uniquely suited to handle whatever trouble might be thrown at us," Gale says in a way Bull finds deeply, intensely irritating. It only gets worse when he snaps his fingers to change into a set of gold-embroidered purple robes. The Unseen Servant comes to tidy up the food, and Gale casts more spells. "A little something to discourage any would-be thieves. Well, lead the way!"
Bull heads back to the last place he knew Astarion was, and finds it as the vampires left it: a little rummaged through, but his things still in the rafters and the key on the floor — the one, he explains, he gave to Astarion earlier. He's been here. "Gimme a sec," he adds, "I'm gonna change."
"Do you think," Gale suggests from the other side of a closed door, "That he meant it as a message of some kind?"
"No," says Bull. "Not the message you're thinking of. C'mon."
He tries the Guild first, finds out from Glitterbeard that their heist hasn't been sprung yet. One of the guys who do top-floor jobs claims to have seen a pale-haired elf headed to the Upper City with a tiefling and a long-haired human man (which is confusing considering Bull and Gale could just as easily match that vague description.)
"Baldur's Gate after dark," Gale says once they're back out on the streets again. "This is all very invigorating. And quite, ah, athletic. This city has a lot more hill than I'm used to, I'm afraid."
He's not wrong: Bull's picked up the pace, storming up the steepest road to the Upper City towards the Szarr palace. Worried, now, too worried to pay Gale any attention. "You know how to get into a place with magic?"
"Certaintly. There's Knock, of course, but one can also Misty Step through a window if one is so inclined. One time I flew myself up to the third floor of a friend's tower and came in via his hovering garden, just to give him a little surprise&mdash"
"Great. Pick one of those things," Bull says, "We're doing this the uncivilised way."
"I'm not so sure," Gale pants, trying to keep up, "That I signed up to do any breaking and entering — I've enjoyed, of course, this little venture into the underbelly of the Gate, but I do feel it necessary, as the Chosen of Mystra, to uphold the principles I learnt at my mother's knee, and—"
"Those include rescuing a victim of kidnapping?" Bull says impatiently. "Helping him escape from his uh, tyrannical master?"
This is, of course, true, but Bull is mostly exaggerating so the mage shuts up and breaks them into the manor. It works, enough that Gale murmurs, "Well, if heroics are called for," and pulls Bull with him through a Dimension Door into one of the only rooms with windows, a dim and empty kitchen. Politely gives the qunari a moment to adjust to the teleportation: "If you didn't like that, my well-hornéd friend, we may need to give you a bucket for the Plane Shift. Now. Where are we."
"Better question," says Bull, shaking off the nausea and checking the axe strapped to his back. "Where's Astarion." A question he intends to keep asking people.
PLEASE i'm delighted
"You know I hate to listen to you whine," Cazador says, although what he really means is that he hates to hear Astarion talk at all, "and I hate even more to listen to you lie."
Meanwhile, in the strangest set-up for a joke yet, a qunari and a wizard teleport into a kitchen AND ACTUALLY YOU SAID IT'S EMPTY SO the halfling woman furiously scrubbing at an already-spotless VASE IN THE HALL OUTSIDE yelps in fear when she sees them, eyes wide like she doesn't know if screaming out will make this better or worse. The master of the house will be furious at her if she doesn't alert him, but furious if he finds her up here with two strangers, too. (And on top of everything, he so hates for his servants to make noise.) Master Cazador will never give her the gift of eternal life if she fucks this up.
"I don't know!" she hisses upon being questioned, her whole body shaking in fear of the master's retribution if he ever knew that she spoke to the intruders. ...She's also shaking in fear at the very large, very well-armed behemoth of a man who just magically popped into the palace, though—less so the dapper little wizard beside him, sorry to Gale—so she adds, "The master was angry with him, and when he's angry, he always takes people down into that h-horrible place down the hall."
Her eyes turn wide, and she clamps her hands over her mouth. They're red and cracked from the incessant CLEANING OF VASES AND NOT DISHES. "But you mustn't interrupt Master's discipline!" is muffled into her palms.
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He doubts it'll work, she has that same thought-obliterating terror he's seen in Astarion a couple of times, and in Seheron a whole bunch more. But he isn't exactly planning on doing this quietly.
Gale offers a, "Have you considered—" as Bull heads down the hall checking doors, but Bull doesn't listen, and he doesn't stop for a nervous servant's inquiry, either. Not too different from the Counting House, just barrel through confidently and hope to be gone by the time people decide what to do about it. At least one servant just goes back to dusting with her eyes closed, prioritising doing her job to Cazador's complete satisfaction over the potential ramifications of getting involved.
He pushes open the door to the kennels and shoulders his way in, expecting Astarion but also finally coming face to face with the aristocrat who ah fuck he's a mage. Fuck. Bull immediately regrets all the choices leading him to this moment: nobody who wields gleaming red threads of magical power is good to fight.
Fortunately, he's brought along an archmage, who also steps into the room with a, "Good evening — or I suppose good morning would be more appropriate, in this moment."
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It's beyond shocking. If he'd had to guess who would come bursting through the door in that moment, Astarion's very last guess would have been Bull. Wait, scratch that. His second-to-last guess would have been Bull; his last guess would have been this guy in wizard robes that he's never seen before in his life, who's politely greeting them like he didn't just step into a dingy old torture dungeon.
Astarion and even Cazador are stunned into silence for a brief moment, jaws slack. Then, although he isn't proud of how quickly he does it, Astarion begins the pleading: "I swear I didn't bring them here. I don't even know who that is—" The sentence is cut off with an oof as Cazador pushes him back against the stone wall—with magic, of course, because he'd never deign to dirty his hands.
"You imbecile," Cazador spits out in that reedy voice of his. His gaze drags over to the newcomers in the room, then, and somehow it's filled with even more disdain than when he looked at Astarion. His eyes had been harsh when looking at Astarion, but it's like the two mortals aren't even worth his hatred. Like they're no more than disgusting pests to be crushed underneath his shoe. He says as much: "You've brought vermin into our home."
And Cazador would never deal with vermin directly. He has people to do that for him. A curl of his fingers, and an armored skeleton in the corner of the room reanimates bit by bit, rising jerkily as it reaches for the greatsword on its back. Typical Cazador, always getting others to do his dirty work. "We'll discuss this," he says, "once the rats have been exterminated."
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Fucking mages, Bull mouths to himself as he falls into combat with the skeleton, swinging to try and scatter some of the bones before it comes whole.
"Oh, don't bother fighting the construct," Gale back-seat commentates, "He'll just put it back together. Fight the necromancer! Surely that's the first thing—"
"You fight the fucking necromancer!" roars back Bull, lunging so the greatsword smacks into his shoulder pauldron instead of his bicep, though the blade still skims off and bites ice into his skin.
Gale huffs and adjusts his sleeves. "Well all right then." He feels a little bad about attacking a man in his own home, so he's going to try Hold Person on Cazador, which fizzles due to his lack of personhood. Which is a bit of a worry, contextually, so the next thing he'll try is a friendly Banishment to get the man(?) out of their hair.
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But for the moment, it's just them and the undead construct. Astarion had been far too afraid to do anything to Cazador himself, but while he isn't here, he's more than happy to bang the handle of his dagger against the skeleton's temple, cracking the bone there slightly and making the thing stumble back briefly.
"You idiots!" he hisses in the meantime, because Bull really should not have come here. Admittedly, he could currently take or leave the wizard. "Now we're all fucked."
When Cazador inevitably returns to this plane, he's far more incensed than before. "You stupid little wizard!" he shouts, obviously angry, and Astarion almost enjoys how impotent his rage sounds. The benefit to this rage is that Cazador is single-minded to a fault, and now has little on his mind beyond winning a pissing contest with the human wizard that's invaded his home. With a spat-out incantation of perē, he raises a hand and surrounds Gale with cold, necromantic energy, the kind that would sap a non-archwizard of their vitality and vigor but quite possibly just tickles level 20 Gale.
Not that Astarion really cares about that—again, he could take or leave this guy. He's more concerned about the reanimated skeleton currently swinging its greatsword across Bull's very exposed chest. "Move, you twit!"
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"We gotta go," he says (again, since the moment Cazador vanished he definitely told Astarion we gotta go like there wasn't a whole-ass construct trying to fight them.) This time he's more emphatic about it, blood-slick hand grabbing Astarion's wrist as he shoulder checks the skeleton off its last legs and it collapses back into bones again. Temporarily.
Gale doesn't love getting blighted, but it does mean he at least gets serious about this fight. One can't always be a gentleman, and so on. He flicks a piece of quartz into the air and gestures as it tumbles to the ground in front of Cazador before bursting into a wall of ice that curves and surrounds him like a giant sphere, hemming him off until he can break through - which won't be long, Gale is still underestimating him. Albeit a little less now, since he also backs out to the corridor so he's out of range of retaliation.
Nearly loses his concentration out of sheer surprise when one of the servants smacks at him wildly with a broom for attacking the master. He grips her arm with a bright shock of electricity that sends her reeling. "It does seem we've tapped the hornet's nest!" And he's not wrong, there's movement in the spawn dorms, too. "A little expedience, perhaps?"
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But if there's anything he knows about Cazador, it's that Astarion will end up taking the blame for all of this no matter what he does. He feels an ice cold shot of fear at that, too, and— well, fuck it. He's doomed either way, so he might as well try to scramble his way out of this like the rat that he is.
So, he shoots out the door and into the hallway himself, pushing past the wizard with a sharp elbow to his side. As he bounds down the hall, Petras emerges from the dormitories first, fingers curled around a dagger like he's itching for a fight. If Astarion were the empathetic type, he'd think that he could hardly blame him, because Astarion would be eager to prove himself loyal in this situation, too— but he's not the empathetic type, so instead Astarion kicks him in the groin.
"Gods, you— asshole," Petras chokes out.
He'd love to stick around and gloat, but Astarion can hear the cracking of ice from the kennels, shards of it pelting out into the hall from the doorway, and Cazador's furious, "Kill them already, you halfwits."
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Bull is with Astarion, running for his life even though the head wound is sheeting blood down his grey skin. Gale bellows some complicated Latin phrase and pops down a celestial to start handing out radiant damage, before Misty-Stepping up to the next floor so he can start raining fiery death on the vampires as they all nicely cluster in fireball range for him. Several copies of himself spring from nowhere.
Bull is slightly concerned they're going to lose the portal wizard, but he seems to be handling himself — not a huge surprise for someone who can charge 15k gold for a single spell. Fleeing isn't usually his go to, but this is a shit place to fight, narrow corridors, people popping out of doors, so he puts it all into barrelling up the stairs instead of fighting. And he wants to get Astarion out of here before sunrise — they're cutting it really fucking close though.
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The happiness passes quickly, though. As they turn into the entryway, one of the servants chucks a vase their way; Astarion narrowly manages to sidestep the projectile decor, responding in kind by picking up a heavy paperweight and hurling it. It hits the servant square in the face, and he crumples.
It's usually deathly quiet in the palace, but now it's so loud, the sounds of shouting and magic echoing off the walls. If that weren't enough to give Astarion a migraine, he can smell the coppery tinge of Bull's blood in the air, so hungry that it makes him nauseated. He shakes his head, willing the hollow ache away.
"Tell me you have that damned fork," he hisses, because he needs to be out of this plane of existence yesterday.
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"I think it might be best if we all put Baldur's Gate behind us," Gale says as he appears from nowhere, hair a lightning-singed mess, clearly including himself in that. "I did not expect to be antagonising a vampire lord today. Not my best showing. If you'll link hands, gentlemen? Quickly now." He taps the tuning fork to make it sing, takes one of their hands in each of his, and it's almost anticlimatic as in the space of six seconds they blink out of one plane and into another, the first rays of the sunrise cresting to light the empty space.
And then they pop out into a muddy field, lit by Thedas' two moons, startling a herd of dozing domesticated druffalo, who immediately grunt and snort and start moving away from this sudden incursion in one mass of bovine fur and horns. "Marvellous," says Gale, dropping their hands to clap his, once, smug. "Though I did hope we'd come out in a city. Farm animals are a good sign for some sort of civilization, I suppose, however rural. Well, as you left everything back in my rooms, I'll do you a good turn, and help you set up camp, since you do look as though you could use a rest—"
Bull isn't listening, really. He has to remind himself that he survived the rift that had taken him to Baldur's Gate so he'll survive this too, but right now it doesn't feel like it. Teleportation just does something to his insides, like how some people get sick on boats. The nausea mixes confusingly with the pain of his injuries and the first low stirrings of a feeling too big for his chest to contain, and he doesn't let go of Astarion's hand. "Hey," he says, quiet to Astarion under Gale's carrying on. "Welcome to Thedas."
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Gods, he can't believe Bull actually came. He's not as smart as Astarion thought.
All of that, and the obnoxious wizard won't stop talking. Astarion slips away from Bull, crouching down with his head between his knees. Let them all think he's just nauseated from the interplanar travel.
"I think I'm going to vomit," he says, and the only reason he doesn't is because he has nothing inside to retch up.
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Gale is still rambling on, doodling arcane symbols in the air to test the difference in the Weave, and probably making half the demons in the Fade perk their ears up.
Bull takes a few deep breaths of bracing air, relying on old trainings to ignore his stomach trying to climb out his throat. "Think we're somewhere in Fereldan. Might wanna go easy on the magic, people here are uh..." how can he explain this to someone from the world they just came from. "Superstitious."
"Not to worry," Gale says. "A night to recover and then I'll be on my way, I think." And then before Bull can ask where he expects to be recovering in the middle of a field, Gale sketches a door out of nowhere, shimmering amidst the grass. One more Gale ex Machina for the road: he upcasts a Magnificent Mansion, somewhere much like his tower to relax and regain his spell slots. But Bull and Astarion can use it too, one night's respite before trying to make their way to Skyhold.
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All problems for tomorrow. Astarion stands, the world spinning slightly less now. Hopefully, this Ferelden is close to wherever Skyhold is. (Are they cities? Countries? Fuck if he knows. He probably should have asked more questions.)
But he can see the slight glow of the sun now, feels a faint prickling on his skin. Astarion, as quick as anything, heads toward the doors of the makeshift dwelling, then— stops. He hasn't been invited in.
"Ah." Fuck. "What do you say we all go inside, hm?" A pause. "Really, say it."
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