Blood Magic

Chapter 4

223 days after turning

It is so much more pleasant to speak with a nurse who is alive rather than a nurse who isn't.

"After the battle was over," Nurse Marge begins, "the city hospitals were filled with wounded fighters and civilians and animals and you name it! Even had a zombie drag his way here weeks after the battle was over, mumbling how the city hospitals wouldn't take him in! Said they was focused on healing the living! That sure gave me and the girls a good laugh! Reattached his leg and he was back on his feet, limping his way back home in no time!"

Nurse Marge cackles aggressively as she continues to lead me to the ward within the House of Healing. When she finally gathers herself after alternate bouts of laughing and composing ensued, she continues, "But now that it's been so long, the hospital hasn't been so full since, so we're glad to have the company, even if it is a little unusual of company. No offence."

"None taken," I assure her. I am unusual company, after all, coming back to Reithwin half a year after my first arrival here, now a dangerous vampire spawn who moves the local heavens at her magical whim.

We corner the hall to the ward, and for the first time, I feel no sense of dread in this place. In over seven month's time, the House of Healing has been restored significantly, although not completely. Like the rest of Reithwin, the small hospital stands as ruins slowly patching itself back to full strength. The stars still smile down through the holes in the roof, but the ground floors have been cleared of skeletons, debris, and shadowrot. Nurse Marge prompts me to lay on any empty hospital bed, so I select the bed, now replaced with a clean mattress, where a special skeleton once lay: the previous owner of my ring's sister, True Lover's Embrace.

"Alright there miss?" Nurse Marge asks as she grabs a syringe from a nearby cupboard.

Another nurse enters the ward with a vial of blood, prompting me to salivate so much that I can barely get out my next words. "Just feeling weak is all," I manage. My stomach feels as if it is lurching out at the blood vial as the nurse approaches my bed. I am sure I look paler than the lassoed moon to these women.

"To keep everything nice and clean," Nurse Marge began, "we have opted to deliver the blood transfusion via syringe. This way, your body isn't overwhelmed by a feeding and can slowly regain its strength through a series of transfusions. Just relax while we get you fixed up."

Nurse Marge injects the syringe needle into the vial and suctions up the blood far too slowly for my hunger. The buildup to the injection nearly sends me over the edge, and had she taken any longer, Nurse Marge and her assistant might have fallen under the sharp edge of my fangs, but just as the monstrous urge to strike bubbles to the surface, I feel a wave of euphoria wash the urge away as the blood enters my body.

Over the course of the next few minutes, the two nurses deliver six syringes worth of blood transfusions, and in that time I come back to myself with urgency to get moving once again. I thank the nurses and begin to rise off the hospital bed, but they immediately block me from moving further, holding me down gently with their hands.

"No, no, miss," Nurse Marge says. "We mixed the blood of a werejackal into those vials to give you much needed rest."

"What?!" I ask furiously. I quickly begin to panic as my vision begins to fade. "No, no, no, I have to get out of here. I'm being followed! I'm—" The next words wipe from my mind, never to be spoken as darkness takes hold.

* * *

Looking into his eyes, I try to see what's driving his decision.

He means to ascend, and foolishly I have encouraged him to pursue it all along the way, but he lacks all confidence at this moment, burning with fear. There is no going back from this change. The power of ascension would grant him a life free of fear—to do anything, to be anything.

I did not save him. No matter how many times I return to this scene, I choose to give him the power he desperately desired. I thought it was a gift, but I cursed the both of us that day to a life of fear, Astarion included. He fears my betrayal, more than anything now that Cazador is gone.

Once again, I give him my eyes to see the scars on his back as he brutally carves the Infernal runes into Cazador's back, completing the Rite to Profane Ascension. All moments pass precisely in the dream as they occurred in life, only a shift in the air made the ritual even more sinister than I had experienced previously. As Cazador and every spawns' bodies burst and their blood floods the floor, Astarion completes his transformation and immediately charges toward me rather than relishing in his new power.

I turn to run toward the stairs of the ritual room, but my party forms a wall to block me and grab onto me, forcing me down onto my knees as Astarion towers over me.

"Where do you think you're going, my pet?" he asks condescendingly. "You don't get away from me that easily."

"Maybe you should have better surveillance. You underestimate me," I retort.

"Please go on about how powerful your intelligence makes you when that brain of yours can never kill me. Even if you were to best me, you sold your soul for eternity with me. There is no escaping that fact, so here I am and here I return until the last stars burn up. Isn't that what you've always wanted? To be mine forever? My dark consort. My right hand. My most beloved spawn."

"I never wanted to be your spawn! I wanted to be your equal, to take part in a powerful vampire dynamic that all of history could envy. I never wanted this!" I cry.

Astarion lets out a devious laugh. "You could never be my equal. A vampire is nothing compared to its ascended superior."

"But I would be my own, and I would still choose to love you. I would choose to stay by your side. We would have everything together, like you promised."

He takes a step back and furrows his brow. He lets the moments pass staring into my eyes, and there isn't anything I wouldn't give to see his eyes soften and his mind change. But Astarion blinks away any ounce of empathy he could have felt for me and utters, "It's too late."

With a snap, my body is forced backwards, falling perpetually into the void. Lifetimes pass until a distant star appears below me. My body falls closer and closer to the star, threatening to burn me down to less than a breath, but the void stays the same throughout, pleasant and warm. At last the star embraces me as I fall into it, welcoming me home.