Unbelievably, even to her, Belle woke early the next morning, the pre-dawn light filtering through the canvas of her tent. She felt great! Energized! Like she was in her late teens again! All those pesky little aches & pains one grew to live with as one aged had simply vanished, leaving her body feeling young again! She went to roll out of bed, groaning as those aches & pains came flooding back the moment she moved. Ah, well, it was nice while it lasted.
She supposed the combination of the 'fungi concoction' & the emperors …uh … whatever it was he did; she wasn't a hundred percent sure on what that was technically … had contributed to her getting a good night's sleep for once. She wondered if the stuff Gus had given her, was addictive, for … science reasons. It had possibly been the worst tasting thing she'd ever consumed, but the effects were pretty rad.
Sitting up, she got a whiff of herself. Oh, pew-yew, she could smell the stuff she'd drank last night, now seeping from her pores. Combined with sour sweat smell, she was getting ripe! Time for another quick wash off, then. Grabbing up her shower gear & fresh pants & shirt, she only had the one corset thing, so had to make do with using it again over the top of the fresh clothes.
Poking her head out of her tent, she spied Lae'zel, doing some Highlander sword stretching exercises. Wyll might be somewhere on patrol, she guessed. No-one else seemed to have stirred. Emerging, she headed on past Astarion's tent. She stopped as an admittedly evil little idea occurred to her. Grinning, she grabbed up a water canteen by the fire & very carefully, very softly, lifted the flap on his tent, her tongue peeping out the side of her mouth.
No one was home. Shit! It was such a good plan, too! If she had to guess, she would say he was off hunting somewhere. Well, no use in drawing attention to it. Dropping the water canteen, she squinted as the sun breasted the horizon. It wasn't a common occurrence for her to be up this early & she wasn't used to the brightness. Feeling like a vampire herself, she shielded her eyes as they watered, turning left, out of camp, to go & try and find a way down the embankment leading to the stream nearby.
Roughly thirty minutes later of stumbling & crashing her way through the underbrush covering the embankment, it finally plateaued enough for her to reach the water. Her head was down to watch her footing the entire time, & she only lifted it as she approached the water. And swivelled on her feet to head straight back where she'd emerged from, her face going blotchy red.
"OhmygodI'msosorry" her voice came out high pitched in her embarrassment of having caught him unawares, like she'd stubbed a toe. She'd seen him open his eyes before she'd about faced.
The image burned into her retinas was of Astarion, naked as the day he'd been born, facing the dawn with his arms outstretched to greet it. The sun had reflected off his skin, making him glow. Combined with his silver hair, the man looked like an angel of death, beautiful & deadly. Why hadn't he covered up at her less than graceful approach? She must have sounded like a herd of elephants crashing her way down to him! He'd been facing her way & she'd seen ev-rey-thing!
And, stupidly, her mind chose to focus on that morning coolness had no effect on shrinkage factor for the undead. Her mind's eye zeroed in on it, while she chanted at it to concentrate on something else, anything else. But her mind refused, because, it had been a while since she'd seen a willie, so it was a novelty.
So, while she blundered her way back up the embankment, clutching her bathing gear in one hand, the other out to balance her, her mind focused in on his cock.
'Was it more purple, or bluer?' it asked her, analysing the colour.
'It doesn't fucking matter, go back to camp, rinse off later!'
'Yes, but, if we look at the skin under his eyes, it matches, don't you think?'
'Gale will be up now, let's help him with breakfast!'
'Do you think it's pigmentation, or blood supply?'
In the middle of such an argument with herself, her emotions sawing back & forth between embarrassment, hilarity, morbid curiosity & the heat that had bloomed, not just in her cheeks but in her middle, her tadpole decided to wake up & knock heads with his.
She had no idea that you didn't need to be in eye contact for that to happen. Her tadpole must have found what she'd been concentrating on peculiar, because it felt like her mind expanded, extending an invisible force, like a tube of clear water, taking some of her consciousness with it, to go & ask his 'hey, buddy, is this normal?'. She felt it hit him with soft force, enveloping his mind, & his own consciousness connected with hers, the two mixing like coloured dye.
And she wasn't oblivious to what her tadpole shared with his. She'd thought, going on the game, that you were simply presented with brief visions, snippets, of the other's past without being aware of what was shared from your end. Not so. No, her tadpole took what she'd just been fixating on, & shared that gleefully with his tadpole.
Not only that, but it also took all the interactions she'd ever had with downstairs equipment (both men & women) & shared that across the connection. Having done what she'd done for a living for the past twenty-four years, that was a lot of pussies & doodles she'd waxed & lasered. Many, many more than the roughly thousand people that Astarion had bedded. Shit, she'd be falling behind in her kpi's if she had less than a thousand a year.
But now, his tadpole woke up & said, 'well now, that's interesting, here's what I found that looks like what you're talking about.' And then…she saw Astarion in sooooo many positions, fingers working holes, his mouth at work sucking, licking, biting (but not drawing blood because that was forbidden), people making use of his hole (& not just with their body but with objects, sometimes objects that were way too big or …. sharp), people biting him on the balls or even his cock … & how he'd crawled up & died inside at every interaction, how he'd pushed everything away, everything aside, because he couldn't say no, it wasn't an option, to balk was to incur the wrath of Cazador …
She wrenched her mind completely away from that, breaking that connection, severing it. Panting, she felt tears pouring down her cheeks. Wiping them away viscously, she looked at her own hand that was shaking uncontrollably.
Never, ever had she thought of it in those terms. She'd only ever vaguely thought of it in terms of plain old vanilla sex with those victims of his. The level of depravity she'd just seen, just experienced, she felt like the one who'd been violated.
Belle had always saved the spawn, sending them into the under dark. Thought she was doing the right thing, that every single one of them were innocent. More than half of them had used Astarion in such a feral way, as if he'd just been an animal to fuck & hurt & leave for dead afterward. Even the ones' who might have presented themselves as decent during their daily interactions, when lured back, & told that they could indulge any fantasy they'd ever hid away in their deepest, darkest selves … did so.
And Cazador's presence, not seen, just felt, permeated every single one of those memories, like his very aura increased the violence in an act that should have been fun, or intimate & trusting. A loving act that became an act of hatred, despoiling it. No fucking wonder he wanted to ascend. She finally, finally understood it.
And how the fuck could she look him in the eye now? He'd be aware of that horror having being shared, just as she was.
Sniffing, she straightened. Glanced back down the embankment. He was finishing pulling his silly, frilly & what she found darling shirt back over his head, letting it fall over the scars decorating his back. He wasn't looking her way, seemed fixated on the stream in front of him.
He had the right of it. How could they just approach each other with 'hey wassap?' after seeing that? What the hell had he thought she'd done, as well? God, it would have come across as torturing people.
She was pretty sure waxing as a job didn't exist in Faerun; if it did, it'd be a primitive form & found in the Middle Eastern equivalent. Ergo, she was some sort of BDSM master.
Snorting at that thought, she left, funky smell to be dealt with later.
Arriving back at camp, she dumped her stuff inside her tent & went to help Gale, who gave her a tight little nod.
"You OK?" she asked as he seemed a bit subdued this morning.
"Oh, yes, I'm fine, weird dream visitors in the night aside." He continued chopping the bacon on the wooden board.
Oh, yeah, Superman. Glad for the distraction, she quizzed him about it.
"Me too. Was yours really, really good looking or what?"
He considered it as he continued chopping.
"More ethereal than good looking. I take it that we shared the same dream, then. What do you make of it?"
"It's the person shielding us from turning into mind flayers. You can trust them, to a point. I personally wouldn't consider eating any more tadpoles, but if you want to, be my guest." In her opinion, Gale was the only one who looked hotter as a half illithid, so she wouldn't be all that averse if he decided he wanted to.
"Is that those senja'si abilities Lae'zel elaborated on last night?" he paused, looking more interested in her now than in all the time they'd spent together in domicile bliss.
"Yeah, that's them, all right." She guessed the lizard had taken the liberty of sharing that with group at large. Now she got to repay the favour & share something about the gith to the party at large, when she could be bothered.
He nodded.
"Then I'll take your advice with due consideration. What else would you know about this person."
"Don't set your mind in stone on how they're presenting themselves. It's a projection. A very hot, very convincing projection, but not the real them." She sighed lustily.
"I take it yours was to your liking then?" he seemed amused at her sigh.
"I invited him back every night, but I think I scared him off."
Gale went red at that. Wooow, he was easy to embarrass!
"Sorry, Gale, just ignore me when I say stuff like that. It tends to slip out."
"No apologies necessary, Belle … but I appreciate it, all the same. And, moving forward, I'll try my best to ignore your more … colourful displays of your personality."
He paused, his brow crinkling as he put down his knife, his hand going to his chest & kneading it.
"Oh shit, are you having a heart attack, or is it gas?" It was a Netherese orb attack, she knew that, but she had to watch her mouth. She'd already slipped once today, not but a few minutes ago.
"No, no, it's that condition I have. I think I mentioned it when we met?"
"Maybe? I can't remember. Is there anything I can do?"
"No!" he said quickly, digging at his chest now. He looked up at her. "Neither you nor Gus can help. One of the others, if they can go to my tent, I have a golden mask sitting on top of my trunk. Get them to bring it to me. You'll have to wait over there with you father."
She nodded. Made sense, especially seeing as how her & Gus were magical black holes. She beelined for Shadowheart, simply because she appeared to be doing nothing but her little prayers right now, so Belle figured, two birds one stone. Stop Shart praying to the wrong Goddess & get her to retrieve a magical artefact for Gale to consume.
Belle sketched in quickly the situation with the near Sharran, who didn't look happy to be disturbed, but then, when did she ever look happy? Girl needed to get laid. Barring that, do something fun like go on a rollercoaster or retail therapy.
She retreated to the far end of camp, just outside Gus' tent. She could hear him inside, grunting & smacking his lips & all the normal morning sounds most men made to announce to the world at large they were awake.
"Hey dad," she called as she sat by the tent to let him know she was alive after the night before.
"Belle! Morning; you ok now?"
"Yeah, thanks for the magic mushies, worked a treat. How's your dreams?"
He poked his head out of the tent.
"Funny you should ask, I dreamt of mum last night. We were in this weird Roman place, & she was talking about the tadpoles."
Oh, fuck her, she was gonna cry, hearing that on top of what she was currently trying to ignore she'd witnessed in her head earlier. She sniffled, nodded, & concentrated on Shadowheart thrusting the gold mask at Gale. Huh, turned out it was the golden shapeshifter mask.
"It wasn't mum, dad. Don't freak out, it was the mind flayer protecting us all."
He toppled out of the tent.
"What?"
"He uses the shape most attractive to us to put us at ease. Don't worry bout it. He's generally good people, insofar as we can trust him to do right by us; as long as we help free him entirely from his elderdbrain. Which happens to be the one producing these mutant taddies."
"Bloody hell, how do you keep all that in your head? There's so much to this!"
She shrugged.
"I dunno how to explain it to you, dad. There's so much that's changed in just twenty years. The internet was only just getting started in a big way when you … left."
"What's computers got to do with this?"
"I learnt everything about what's going on now through them. The game's on computer, as well as other devices. If it ever becomes relevant, I'll explain it. Otherwise, we'll be here until the elder brain wins before I could cover everything."
She watched, fascinated, as Gale took the mask, holding it in both hands & in front of his chest. It glowed light blue & disintegrated like it had been left too long in acetone. As it did, she felt something backwash over her, like a tugging sensation, there & gone. Weird. But it didn't repeat, so she dismissed it.
"I keep thinking I've seen everything this place has to offer. Shows how wrong I am." Gus had watched it as well. He clapped a hand to her shoulder, using her to lever himself up to his feet.
"Time for brekkie, then to hit the road again."
"I found a place to cross, bout half an hour that way." She nodded in the direction she'd taken earlier on her disastrous attempt to get clean.
"Good girl, saves us time." Belle felt a glow at the approval she'd just received, melting some of the horror away that had clung to her in the aftermath of her tadpole waking up. Getting up, she packed up her tent, had a bite to eat for breakfast even though she had no appetite & tried to pretend she didn't notice when Astarion wandered back into camp.