Blood & Wine - A Spawn Astarion Fan Fiction

Astarion

As I descend the stairwell and deeper into the darkness below I can feel the surge of adrenaline coursing through my veins, turning them to ice. Every feeling of needing to flee disappears and is replaced with a white hot anger that threatens to burn my chest from the inside out. I keep my hand firmly on the hilt of my dagger, ready for whatever is below.

I'm surprised at the level of engineering put into the stairwell, it feels much more complete than the other crypts I've been in before. Everything is deliberate and bordering on ornate. The steps under foot are evenly spaced as if a lot of care was taken for those who would be walking them regularly even though the mausoleum entrance above was left relatively undisturbed.

At the bottom of the stairs is a hallway, it's swallowed up by a darkness that my keen eyes can barely penetrate at first, but as I move closer the grand design comes into view.

To say this was a crypt was to put all other crypts I have seen to shame, it felt more like a mythical labyrinth. Large sweeping rooms with with high vaulted ceilings break off into smaller burial chambers carved into the stone with the same care. From the architecture alone, although fairly primitive, it set the stage of another time when the dead were almost revered as something holy.

Karlach lets out a low whistle behind me, "I'd rather like being buried in a place like this if given the choice. Reckon I'd be resting on a nice fluffy pillow for the rest of my afterlife. This place is massive."

"What exactly are we looking for?" Nymeria asks as she walks up beside me.

"My guess? Whichever of these crypts belongs to Cazador." I say looking around.

The world once again painted in the familiar shades of grey does nothing for my unease, my emotions are beginning to run thin, my fear tugging at the end of it's lead. I'm starting to feel him again, looming behind me and around me, it's almost suffocating. Waiting for that familiar sensation of being lost and hopeless. Losing control of my body while my mind screams behind the shadowed veil of his control.

Nymeria places a hand on my shoulder and I can feel her warmth seep into me.

"Should we split up?" Gale asks, "Is that even wise in this situation?"

I look around, my eyes passing over the scattered bones on the floor. There is a finality in the way they're positioned, unlike the skeletons from the necromancer's grave. This looks to be their final resting place. I wonder about them, if they are former spawn to the previous vampire masters or just meals that have been long forgotten, a makeshift graveyard in the Szarr family crypts.

"What about a creepy tomb tells you that we should split up?" Karlach laughs.

"It was just a suggestion. This place is massive." Gale says.

We continue forward, deeper into the crypts and down the yawning hall and I smell it, the change to subtle I could have missed it before. Decay. Not the fresh hint of sweetness that turns your stomach, but something long decayed and sealed away.

"Smell that?" I ask, inhaling it's scent again.

"I don't smell anything." Nymeria says beside me.

"You." I smile, "The one with the wolf inside of her?"

She inhales again and her nose wrinkles, it might be the cutest thing I have ever seen.

"Gods." She places her hand over her nose then begins rubbing at it as if she could wipe the scent away, "What is that?"

"That, my dear, is death. It will happen to us all in time." I say looking around.

It's then that I see it, the coffin down the way with the lid ajar.