Chapter Text
Rosalie didn’t know why she was here.
Outside, the sounds of revelry and cheer echoed through the newfound gaps in ruined buildings, the remnants of the narrow street. Eventually, it reached the windows of the Elfsong, boarded over with paper until new glass could be fashioned and installed. The victory parades earlier in the day were now giving way to music and drunken shouts, as the crowds descended into a more decadent celebration, with the darkening of the night sky. All of the older members of their party, the ones who were old hands at adventuring, had chosen to enjoy themselves alongside those toasting to their names. Everyone else had simply retired to their rooms. Wyll, Karlach, and Lae’zel were gone, and that left the rest of their party - well, all but one - pensive. They’d slept since they’d defeated the Nether Brain, but only for one night. More sleep was needed, to rest after what felt like the decades of exhaustion and heartache, and to rid themselves of the lingering tadpole migraine.
But Rose couldn’t sleep, these days. And there was nothing drink could offer her, other than oblivion. She knew of no real way to respond to the pitying looks Jaheira and Halsin kept giving her whenever they bought her drinks, even if it was easier to pretend Minsc was really going to the bathroom when he asked her if she wanted to hold Boo.
And so, she was here.
On the balcony.
With him.
And she didn’t know why.
She didn’t know what either of them were doing here. Why he would deign to give her an audience, and what she thought she could do with one.
She didn’t know what she thought she could say to make things better. There was nothing that could fix this.
“Thank you for staying with us, until the very end,” she tried to say, anyway. “You didn’t have to.”
“Of course I did,” he told her. “I had a debt to settle, in the shape of the glorious new future you’ve gifted me. I couldn’t leave you to fight alone - that would be extremely ungenerous. After all, it’s not as if I had anything to lose - it’s not like I could die.”
The stranger wearing Astarion’s body smiled condescendingly at her. His beautiful face showed no mark of fatigue, and certainly no sign of sadness, or loss. He was dressed in a dark, blood-red outfit, with golden trim, that left him looking sinful - exactly as intended. Rosalie had no idea when he had found the time to purchase it - perhaps it was simply one of the many suits they’d found in the cabinets and wardrobes of Cazador’s palace. Maybe it didn’t bother him, to wear those clothes.
Rose smiled back, tightly.
“Besides,” Astarion drawled, examining his nails, “you know, I would do anything for you, dearest heart. There was a time, not so long ago, where I assumed the feeling was mutual - but I’m not the one who has changed. The only person who is fickle, here, it seems, is you.”
Rosalie kept the placid smile on her face, even as it became brittle. Since he had completed the ritual, Astarion wielded words like a knife, with unprecedented calm - but, if his provocations triggered any reaction other than acquiescence, he also proved volatile and erratic. Emotions could lead him in unprecedented directions. She wasn’t quite sure how she’d come out of the conversation they’d had, the night he asked to change her, alive.
“And, yet, despite that,” she continued, “you stayed with us. I’m... grateful.”
“Are you, pet? How grateful, exactly?”
Rose ignored the innuendo lacing his tone like velvet, and replied with careful neutrality, “Wyll was going to be in charge of distributing our assets - Gale’s now offered, instead. Gortash’s estate will be halved, between us and the City, to help them with repairs. I haven’t been told exact numbers yet, but it should be more than enough to repay us all for our work over the last few months.”
She didn’t ask him what he was going to do with the money. Four nights ago, while the others had spent the evening doing whatever they felt was needed to prepare for their final battle, and Rose had laid in an empty bed staring blankly at the ceiling until the sun rose, Astarion had gleefully burned Cazador’s entire palace to the ground. He had used explosives taken from the Ironhand gnomes... but there had been no casualties, he assured her, when she'd awoken to black smoke still belching into the sky.
No casualties, save seven thousand.
Rose assumed Astarion planned to claim the land, and rebuild from the ashes using the spoils of their quest. She knew the dungeons would still be intact, and that one day, he would probably use them.
The vampire lord in front of her pouted. “Well, once again, you prove to be absolutely no fun. Such a shame, that you lack imagination.”
“That’s me,” Rose said flatly, before she could stop herself. The tired sarcasm in her tone caused him to raise an eyebrow.
“Does this mean you’re leaving, then?” he asked, “if dull, old Mr. Dekarios is in charge of our settlements. Are you not going to stay? Not even to order us all around some more?”
Rosalie thought of her bags, already packed in her room. No one save Shadowheart knew that she had booked herself onto the first stagecoach that was leaving Baldur’s Gate that night, as the world returned to normal and travel began anew. She’d written letters to everyone else, explaining herself, that would be handed out tomorrow morning. There was no way she could stay.
“What orders are left to give?” she said. “The adventure is over. We’re all cured. The Absolute is gone.”
“Aren’t you at least going to go throw yourself gleefully into hell again, to become part of the polycule of foolish martyrs?"
Rose fought a wince, the pain of yesterday morning flooding back fresh. She'd felt like such an inadequate audience, watching Karlach in what should've been her last moments, too numb to have anything to give. It was Wyll who'd proved himself the better person - who'd ended up saying all the right things.
"Or would you prefer to stay and keep tabs on me?” Astarion gloated. “Aren’t you worried what I might do, unsupervised? Don’t you want to stand in a corner and tut - see if that’ll rouse my soul to goodness? I can certainly think of a few outfits you could do it in, if you want to guarantee you’ll hold my attention.”
“You can do whatever you want now, Astarion,” Rosalie said quietly. “And we will both just have to live with that.”
She had thought she was giving him freedom. This, she thought, was what freedom looked like.
…When had she realised she had made a mistake?
Was it when he’d told her he planned to make her immortal? As if that had ever been a thing she’d wanted, or asked of him?
Or was it when she had simply… stood there, silently watching Cazador’s shirt be ripped clean from his back, and the tip of Orin’s stolen dagger plunge into the skin? The sobbing had left her sick - but he was a bad man, she’d told herself. An evil one, who deserved no sympathy. She’d thought she’d been doing the right thing.
No… she’d never thought they’d been doing the right thing, deep down.
But above all else, she’d figured it wasn’t her place to decide.
How did you walk through Cazador’s halls, meet Astarion’s torturers face to face, and believe you had a right to say what retribution was enough? How could you think that you were the one who knew when to draw the line? How could she ever pretend to understand what had happened to Astarion, or claim that she knew what was best for him, in a situation that went so far beyond any pain she was capable of fathoming?
Or, any pain she’d been capable of fathoming, then.
Before, when Astarion was himself, he had accused her in his darkest moments of her love being just another yoke he fell under: a means for her to control him and make him into the person she wanted him to be. She had worried, in that moment, that he was right: who was she to tell him what to do?
And so, she had stayed quiet. And in keeping her silence, she had lost him entirely.
The monster in front of her was one that Rosalie had created.
“Such melodrama,” it sighed, rolling Astarion’s eyes. “You know, we’re not in a relationship anymore, darling - all this starry eyed, self-righteous, self-sacrificial bullshit really does wear thin, when it’s not accompanied by the more… enjoyable parts of you.”
That bored gaze leered its way down her body, from head to toe, leaving Rosalie feeling nauseated and ashamed. But where it lingered was on her neck, the last fading bitemarks nearly erased entirely. He didn’t need the blood anymore. But above anything else, it seemed the monster was still somehow always hungry.
“Don’t be cruel,” she said tiredly, folding her arms over herself for comfort. “I didn’t ask you here to fight. I just wanted to say thank you. And now, I’ve said it.”
“That’s all? Underwhelming, as usual, darling. It seems you truly aren’t worthy of my time.”
Rosalie stayed silent, at this. It was true, after all - she had utterly failed him.
After a second where his barb got no reaction, Astarion sighed, and adjusted his cuffs, flicking a strand of hair out of his perfect face.
“Well, if you’ve said everything you needed to say, and your conscience is thoroughly unburdened, then I really must dash. I’ve got some hero worship to partake in,” he said. “I’m sure I can find some lovely, pretty things somewhere in this city who are just so very happy to be alive and so very grateful that I saved them. Nothing like a brush with death to leave everyone desperate to make their lives mean something, if only for a moment. Who knows what the people who are sensible enough to celebrate their victory and continued survival, rather than moping around like a sullen child, will want to tick off their bucket list tonight. It’s going to be a wild ride.”
Rose stayed silent, as her heart ached and her face burned. She was so very tired.
If Astarion noticed her discomfort, he still looked annoyed that he hadn’t got a true rise out of her. He took two steps in towards her, until they were chest-to-chest, crowded all into her space. He looked down his nose at her, equal parts lecherous and condescending, as if he was undressing her with his eyes, but only to find all the ugly parts of her - to remind her how far beneath him she truly was.
He decided to go for the heart, merciless, as he said: “unless, of course, you could be persuaded, dear heart? One more for the road, as it were?”
He smirked, “if you’re very, very good, I’ll might even keep my fangs to myself.”
This is… nice. Her Astarion had told her, as he held her hand.
“No, thank you,” Rose said, voice weak and pathetic. The words hurt, as they passed around the lump in her throat.
“Ah,” he said, and immediately stepped back, the aura of sensuality gone and dropped like a jacket onto the floor. “Our heroine is not as selfless as she would like others to believe, it seems. She could’ve saved a few lives, tonight, if only she was willing to get off her high horse and debase herself a little. Such a shame the only thing that fucks you, these days, is the stick up your arse.”
“Don’t kill anyone,” Rosalie said, ignoring all the other horrible words in that statement.
Astarion raised an eyebrow at her, as if it amused him to watch her dare defy him. “Funny,” the Vampire Ascendant said, “Cazador wouldn’t let me feed from the people who liked me best, either.”
“I mean it. Don’t kill anyone, Astarion. You’ve gotten what you wanted. Seven thousand lives was enough.”
“I don’t take orders from you anymore. You just said so, yourself.”
“The moment you kill someone,” Rose replied, “is the moment I'll know that my next task is to stop you.”
“Darling,” Astarion grinned, “I would sincerely like to see you try.”
Rose tried to think of something else she could say, but there wasn’t anything. He was right: it wasn't the night of the ritual anymore, when he was newly reborn. Now, he was invulnerable, with a coffin hidden somewhere in the city to regenerate from. Her threat was completely empty. This was the future she had chosen for herself - this guilt, this knowledge that she had made the wrong choice - and there was nothing she could do to fix it.
Astarion tsked, as he moved towards the door. Hand on the frame, he looked back at her, pressed into the corner of the balcony, hugging herself, making herself as small as possible in the hope she would disappear.
“Poor little Rosalie,” he said, voice holding a lilting, sing-song quality. “You worked so very hard, and on the night of your victory, here you are, all alone. So scared of what it is you truly want. Does it make you feel good, in your little heroic knickers, to stay so spotlessly virtuous, so very perfect, all the way to the very end?”
Rosalie took one more look at his face - his beautiful, perfect face - and the monster that had claimed it as his own. Did he think she thought she was perfect? Did he think she thought she’d done anything right?
“I hope that self-righteousness makes for a good bedwarmer,” Astarion noted. “I, myself, will settle for three-to-six living, breathing people - and maybe they’ll stay that way till morning, to appease you, my beautiful, sad little saviour.”
And then, he left.
Rosalie waited alone on the balcony until the pain faded - until only the guilt remained. Then, she took her bags from where she’d hidden them under her bed. She cast Disguise Self, just in case Astarion had someone watching the inn. And she walked across the ruined bridges of Wyrm’s Crossing, to Rivington, to catch her stagecoach. To flee.
And two days later, she arrived on the doorstep of her family home for the first time in five years. She fell, sobbing, into her mother’s arms, and told her the story of how she had killed the man she loved, when all the while she thought she was saving him.
Eleven years later, on a day much like any other, Archmage Rosalie Frostsong woke up in her home - a remote tower, on the coastline of Alaron.
It was a beautiful day: cold but with pale, seaglass skies. The only sound was the waves crashing against the base of the cliffs, and the call of gulls. The island of Alaron - already far from civilisation, in the middle of the Sea of Swords - was sparsely populated, but she had chosen to renovate an abandoned ruin on the rocky hinterlands to the north. As such, it was the only building for miles around.
As she moved from bed, donning her plum-coloured silk robe and mooching to her kitchen to make her breakfast, her back twinged. Rosalie was now forty-three years old. She didn’t quite wear that age as a human would - while some wrinkles now weathered her face, her hair remained blissfully, beautifully free of grey - but it was starting to feel like an unavoidable fact of her life. A year ago, she’d found out all those years hidden in the archives meant she needed glasses. She’d hastily contacted Shadowheart for a quick clerical solution, given that she felt it was embarrassing to still be able to see in the dark, but not three feet in front of one's own face. Then a month later, her knee had been royally fucked when hiking to a dig site in Silverymoon, where her expertise on illithids had been commissioned to make sense of the ruins of an ancient mindflayer colony.
Another ten years or so, and she knew that her students at the Order would see her as an old woman.
It was her work at the Watchful Order that had earned her her position as Archmage - rising through the ranks of the Divination School, with a quick, poorly-planned trip to Avernus and a few more monster slayings to earn her fast promotions and an undeniable amount of CV-able expertise. Above the fireplace was the stuffed, severed head of the white dragon she’d slain to finally secure herself the title. Quite a gaudy trophy, if Rosalie was honest, but also, if you went through the fucking harrowing experience of trying to slaughter a dragon, and then did it twice more, you wanted some kind of fucking reward at the end of it.
But she rarely went to Waterdeep these days, except on the days she was scheduled to give lectures. Though she and Gale had hand-painted the teleportation circle in her basement together, it was getting used less and less. Unless she was appraising an artefact or a geographical location, she conducted most of her meetings and freelance consultations via projection. Alaron was so peaceful, but it was also… easier.
She didn’t dare take on an apprentice or student that would take her to the Order more often, for fear that either she would force them into a life of similar solitude or-
Just think it, she said, as she spooned more oats into the porridge saucepan. No one’s here to hear it.
- Or for the fear that any display of more-than-average favouritism would endanger them, when she left them undefended on the mainland.
Rose would hate to move anyone to the Alaron tower against their will, but she’d feel far more wretched about leaving anyone with a commute from Waterdeep that left them outside of her protective wards, non-detection spells and mindblank sigils, for the majority of their day-to-day lives. At this point, it was probably just paranoia, to think that any of these things might hold meaning. But if she ever took that risk, and she was wrong…
She hated that her life was fulfilling nearly every wizarding cliché: her, alone, amongst her powerful artefacts and her books, with her cat Ser Verity (that Gale had insisted she get, after Scratch unfortunately passed).
But maybe clichés were clichés for a reason. Maybe... this was how wizards were supposed to be.
Rose ate her breakfast, not really tasting it. Ser Verity collapsed on the table next to the empty bowl, and she scritched the cat’s ears absently as she worked through her morning’s correspondence. Three translation requests; four consultations for divination readings - two from city officials, and two from rich people who felt entitled to her services above any other practising wizard on commission; a report on her enquiries into conjuration texts from the libraries of Candlekeep, giving her absolutely nothing she wanted; and a letter from her father, asking if she was well, and when she would next visit. A line, cautiously asking, is there anyone else we should make room for, at the table? the only sleight, amongst an otherwise kind and well-meaning note.
Movement to her left - her unseen servant (she’d named him Timothy, just because “you” felt awkward) - was dusting the shelves in its morning routine, engaged in a constant battle against the amount of hair her evil, monstrous beast shed on every available surface, priceless or otherwise.
Maybe Timothy could be my plus one, Rose thought ruefully, without even a tinge of pain.
Silent, quiet, peaceful. It was a day like any other.
Until it wasn’t.
As she was clearing away the plates (to stack next to the sink for Timothy to wash - what was the point of being an archmage if you still did your own dishes? That was what Rosalie wanted to know), there came a brief flash of white light from the living room. This was nothing out of the ordinary - the majority of her post was mailed to her via arcane means from her pigeonhole in the Watchful Order, and this was simply the flare of magic that heralded a late arrival.
Tying up her hair and adjusting her robe, Rose moved through into the other room, to the dumbwaiter in the wall. It wasn’t actually a dumbwaiter, of course - it was a magical portal that she’d managed to convince, through extensive spellcraft, into thinking itself as a dumbwaiter, so that it didn’t rip too big a hole in space and time. She liked it, aesthetically - it reminded her nostalgically, of the hatch in the Elfsong Tavern, and the bets they’d all used to make on which food would come up next.
“Nondescript stew of the… game-y persuasion,” had always been what Astarion said. But Rose had never divulged that she’d asked Lakrissa to forego sending stew to them, on the grounds that it avoided sending Gale into indignant lectures on underseasoning.
And so, he’d always lost.
Rosalie lifted the hatch. Inside was a rolled newspaper, tied with black ribbon, and a white envelope, sealed with a golden wax imprint of a moon that made its sender clear. Rose swallowed nervously. Shadowheart - who’d decided to fully embrace life as a Selunite, albeit with all the skills and savvy Shar’s teachings had instilled in her - was not the only one of their party who remained in Baldur’s Gate. But she was the only one who sent Rose honest updates. After keeping her company in that rough six months in which she'd used one of the Nine Hells as a solution for a messy break up, Wyll and Karlach tended to sugarcoat things.
She picked up the envelope, and popped the seal. The card folded itself out into a brief, characteristically direct note.
It’s finally happened. Was all Shadowheart wrote.
Feeling sick, Rosalie picked up the paper. If her friend hadn’t felt the need for any further explanation, then it was clear what this probably pertained to. She untied the ribbon, and unfurled the newspaper to see it was indeed a copy of the Baldur’s Mouth Gazette, dated today’s date, with the headline:
A Dance With Death
57 aristocrats murdered at an anonymous, late night party in the Upper City, in an unprecedented orgy of violence.
Rosalie read the article, twice, and then she remembered there was a sofa next to her, for her to sit down on. She felt a little numb, though her bad knee wobbled, and gave out as she finally parked herself down.
It had, indeed, finally happened.
The Vampire Ascendant had finally started killing people.
And that meant, just as she had promised that night over ten years ago, Rosalie's next task was to stop him.