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What had Cazador been doing all these years with Astarion, if he had not been filling his vapid head with survival lessons? He'd swaggered in actually proud of himself. The group of men behind him must have seemed like an easy bounty and, of course, he'd never bothered to think beyond his immediate gratification, never bothered to question why they'd follow him so readily. Cazador sensed the presence of them before they entered the foyer. He alsosensed weapons he'd specifically warded the Palace against.
The wards were slowly being undone, right beneath Astarion's ignorant nose.
Cazador flung the doors open, casting his own magic out into the night.
A wash of sunlight-bright light whipped him back. Astarion shrieked somewhere beyond the blinding rays of it. They must have at least one powerful mage, and a cleric of Selune, working in concert. Cazador summoned his skeletons and as many ghouls as he could muster, only for them to turn on him, grabbing and slashing until he'd no choice but to dismiss them. Someone with the ability to control the undead too? That collection of skills was so perfectly engineered to defeat him, it could not have been a coincidence.
Had Astarion's lips been looser than he'd anticipated?
Cazador placed a gulf of Evard's black tentacles and darkness between them and himself. Astarion did not seem to be harmed or being harmed, but he was shouting something that Cazador couldn't catch despite vampiric hearing. The questing light met his darkness and slowly started to pare it back. Perhaps he had been wrong about the cleric? The intensity of it should have burned Astarion to ash if it was mere daylight.
Something scratched his cheek. All of his spells and wards instantly evaporated. He stared at the arrow that clattered to his feet, uncomprehending at first.
“Master?” Astarion said. He was on his knees, being held at bay with a simple wooden stake pointed at his chest.
Cazador leapt. He'd teach these fools that he was not to be taken lightly, even without his magic. He was about to sink his claws into the nearest one, when he was plucked out of the air, and then slammed against the wall. He should have been able to recover from that, but a combination of turn undead and hold person grasped him and he fell heavily. That unnatural light flooded into the foyer without his own spells to abate it, sapping his strength. When he tried to rise again, he was encircled by various swords, arrows and daggers.
“I told you this was the nest,” the only unarmed man said. “That one's just a spawn.” It was a wizard, hands still tracing the somatic components of the hold person spell. It must be a variant on the common one. No common one would have held Cazador at all, let alone for this long. “This is the real one.”
The necromancer was also moving, keeping the turn undead spell active. Every time Cazador thought it had loosened enough to break, its grip redoubled.
“He's pretty,” one of the assembled men said.
Pretty? It had been centuries since someone had dared talk to him, or about him, in such a demeaning way.
Cazador cast a sidelong glance at Astarion. The one keeping him captive was a brute of some sort. Astarion should be able to overpower him, given the right opportunity. He sought the source of that light again, and saw just for a fleeting second, the archer who must have loosed that cursed, coated arrow. An unusually talented rogue. He saw nothing of whatever was causing the light. It was like nothing he'd ever encountered before, sapping him but not burning him.
One of the non-mages tried to lay a hand on him, and Cazador slapped it away, shocked at how limply it landed. The owner of the offending hand laughed – laughed! – and tried again. Cazador should have been able to tear it off at the wrist. Instead all he could manage was another half-hearted slap.
The wizard's grinning face swam into his vision. “Perhaps you could behave yourself?”
Cazador tried to bore into one of their minds, searching out the weakest-willed of them. It was one of the warriors: a human with a laughably compensatory giant sword. Cazador would have pierced through if someone -- or something -- else didn't yank him back.
“Oh no you don't,” said the wizard. “Will you just get on with it?” This was an aside to the first man who'd tried to touch him.
“He keeps slapping me!”
“He's going to try a lot worse than that.” The wizard conjured a couple of mage hands, and sent one of them to slap his companion also, while the other tried to grab at Cazador again. They did not seem to have any particular direction in mind, but buzzed about him like gnats, a new one popping up every time he swatted one out of existence.
“Like a cat,” one of the men said, which the others found very droll.
Cazador batted the next mage hand away with a little extra force, and found himself so wearied by the motion it made him double over. A warm, sweaty, mortal hand settled on the back of his neck. It was not skin-to-skin contact. His thick doublet prevented that. But the hand intruded further, slid up his nape, his scalp, settling in his hair. He was jerked back by it, head tilted up to expose his throat. He flung his arms back, trying to claw at it, and found his claws wouldn't unsheathe. Instead he tried to rip at the hand holding him with blunt, uncooperative fingers. Which left his front undefended as several of the others pawed at him.
They worked their way into the fastenings of his doublet, paying no heed to whatever blows he dealt to them. It was a farce. Even as a spawn, even as a mortal elf, he had been strong enough to fight off intruders, but it was as if he had fallen into a waking nightmare where gravity did not exist. Even when they did connect, his punches and kicks had no discernable effect. His arms and legs were caught and pinned by nothing more than the average strength of an adventurer.
He cast out his awareness to the rest of the Palace, but found only Astarion within his reach. His siblings were out for the night and would not dare return until they'd found him fresh prey. He should punish them for dallying. He had taught them to be quick and furtive but they were often out until just before dawn. Yes, there would be many changes once he'd dealt with this rabble.
The servants were not an option for anything other than cannon fodder. Godey wouldn't fare any better. The werewolves were on other business. There were no corpses for him to reanimate.
Yet.
Cazador locked eyes with the man trying to pluck at the ties of his collar, and he faltered. “Are you sure it can't do anything to my mind? It's an old one.”
The wizard scoffed. “If you're so scared, go and play with the spawn.”
“I don't want the spawn,” the other man said sullenly.
Emboldened, he finished his work on Cazador's collar. It was a mere sliver of flesh. More than Cazador had shown any unworthy fool for centuries, but nothing more titillating than the column of his throat, but the man's pupils dilated at the sight if it. He continued his ministrations, undoing Cazador's doublet down to the last button, exposing his cotton undershirt. “Can I rip this?” he asked the wizard.
“Why not? He won't need clothes anymore.”
Cazador shifted his glare to the wizard, who wore an unaffected smirk. Most irritating, but he wasn't the primary concern. Cazador continued to search for the source of the light. Once he regained his strength, and whatever potion had been on that arrow had worn off, the rest of them would be a trifling matter. Cazador squinted as he tried to pinpoint the direction of it, eyes watering at the intensity of it at its brightest.
The man ripped his undershirt open and then greedily delved his hands underneath the scraps, groping at Cazador's pectoral muscles. He had known what they intended, academically, but he had not expected it to... affect him. An ancient, queasy feeling in his gut accompanied the rough probes at his skin. The man squeezed his pecs together and shoved his face between them. Crude, base creature that he was. He nipped at Cazador's skin with his blunt teeth. Cazador did his best to ignore it, concentrating on continuing his search. There was something. A mote of shadow inside all of that coruscating light. If he could just get closer--
The wizard grabbed his face and forced it to look at him. “Don't get any ideas.” He dragged his companion away from Cazador. “Tie him up properly before you get carried away.”
They tied him with silver manacles, an enchantment burning him where they touched the bare skin of inner wrists, and hauled him up to his knees. The wizard caught his face again and traced his lips with his thumb. “If you bite,” he said. “I'll stake you. Then you won't be able to move a muscle.” He pushed his thumb between Cazador's lips and boldly traced his fangs. Cazador tried once more to fling himself into his mind but it was a steel trap. He could still bite. It would be a futile act of resistance. Currently, they could drive a stake into him quite easily, and though it wouldn't destroy him outside of his coffin, it would paralyse him.
Astarion's sudden screams made his attention drift but the wizard blocked his view. He parted his robes, and drew his hardening cock. Cazador tried to lunge for him, and was immediately yanked back by several pairs of hands. “Suck it.”
“You'll die in agony, worm.”
The wizard chuckled. He dragged his cock over Cazador's face, smearing his lips and cheeks in pre-come as he blanched away. “Open up.”
He wouldn't do it. They'd have to stake him, damn them, and have their fun with him while he was limp and uncomprehending.
“You're thinking we should go ahead and stake you,” the wizard said. “You won't die from it right away. You probably have a bag of tricks to stop us finding your final resting place. And that's a fine plan, but the spawn will die much more easily.”
Whatever they were doing to Astarion, he was screaming in a way Cazador hadn't heard in far too many years. In a way Cazador had thought him no longer capable of.
Regardless, Astarion was too important of a component to waste.
He opened his mouth.
“Good boy,” the wizard said. He fed his cock into Cazador's mouth slowly, inch by wretched inch.
This had not been done to him since Vellioth and, he'd thought, when he decapitated the bastard, that it never would again. Foolish. The same kind of pitiful naivete he'd beaten out of his spawn. He glared at the wizard, even as his foul cock breached his throat. He would not be cowed by such a trivial act.
“It's a shame you can't choke anymore,” the wizard said, a little breathy with whatever pleasure he was eking from this. He tucked Cazador's hair back behind his ears. “I'd love to see those eyes all full up with tears. But I wonder. You're taking me so easily. Have you done this before?”
When he was a young man, barely more than a boy really, and the Szarr household had fallen to nothing more than a name, Vellioth threatened him with suitors who had the wealth it had lost. A world that had welcomed him, pampered him, became hostile overnight. You're an attractive prospect, Vellioth had said, and dressed him up in pretty clothes like some sort of doll. The lust for power among the peerage had been an ambient noise until then, and burst into sudden, eardrum-piercing sharpness. And with that clarity had came the awareness of another kind of lust. Hands placed boldly on the small of his back. His hair brushed out of his face. Lingering kisses on the back of his hand. Nothing too blatant, at first, just his still-beating heart pounding in his chest and an unease he didn't really understand.
He did choke, the first time.
Someone had given him wine. It had a strange aftertaste that made him queasy but it was the first time he'd tasted alcohol – Donella had disapproved of it, and Vellioth outright forbade it – and as far as he knew, that was normal. It was a pointless act of rebellion and he followed it with another. He went out to get some air, and to keep out of Vellioth's sight. Whenever he was trotted out for Vellioth's gatherings, he kept his eyes downcast. His guests took it as demureness, when it was simply that he couldn't stand to look at them. But it was this habit that meant he didn't recognise the man who'd offered him the wine when he struck up smalltalk again. Events became hard to track after that but time must have passed. They must have went indoors.
The next memory was razor sharp, preserved for all of time. The cock felt like it was jammed all the way to his lungs. He was choking, throat spasming, trying to scream, his nose and eyes all pouring, hands shoving at the flabby thighs of a patriar, convinced he was going to die.
He vomited after the patriar spent himself. And then he ran. Ran all the way back to Vellioth's side, and never discovered whether Vellioth had engineered the whole thing.
“Swallow,” the wizard said, grip turning vicelike on Cazador's jaw.
He did. It made less of a mess that way, although vampiric digestion hated anything but blood. It was strange, what the body could get used to. How muscle memory took over. How Vellioth was preparing him for an event he couldn't possibly have foreseen. He glared up at the wizard, who had not stopped pawing at his face.
“You must've sucked a hell of a lot of them before mine. All dressed up like a patriar, but you brought me off like a whore.”
Cazador scoffed. “Your words are as insignificant as your member.”
Some of their audience laughed. The wizard grinned. “Well, good job you're efficient at it.” He gestured to his fellows. “Your turn.”
There was some infighting until the wizard barked for order. Cazador took the time among the pushing and shoving to first check for Astarion. He had drawn a small crowd of his own, but by the sounds of his caterwauling nothing had been done to him that wouldn't heal. Then he concentrated on the small mote of darkness he had seen amidst the light. It wasn't perfectly still, he realised, and closed his eyes. Instead of sight, he concentrated on the sounds. Heartbeats. Ten in a cluster around him. Five nearer to Astarion whose continued dramatics were making this harder than it needed to be. Two still in the foyer, but less nearby. Two. One was the rogue archer, pacing around on the upper level. The second was close to that... His bats and their echolocation would have made this easier, but they hadn't thought to throttle his vampiric hearing. He listened for that second figure. He concentrated on that heartbeat. Slow, relaxed, nothing that showed interest in the proceedings below. Cazador opened his eyes. Someone was wearing the source of that light. Some rare magical item.
He need only destroy it.
The surrounding men manhandled him into position. One of them yanked at his undershirt, so it slid down his shoulders, and bared more of his chest. The same kind of attractive dishabille Astarion often lured prey with, in that flounced shirt of his. He hadn't had those exhibitionist tendencies before Cazador's tutelage. Cazador had never had them, despite Vellioth's efforts. If anyone wanted him stripped, they'd had to tear the clothes from his body.
“Over here, pretty,” one of the men said. Pretty again. He caressed Cazador's neck, stopping to play with Vellioth's bite, before he slid up and behind Cazador's ear. He ran the pads of his thumb up behind the point, making it twitch. “Cute.”
Cute.
Cazador would immolate him! He'd show him cute. He snarled. The man laughed, fondly, as if it was a kitten kissing at him. Then he shoved his revolting cock at him. Astarion-- damn the boy, what were they doing to him? His wails had reached a fever pitch. Cazador opened his mouth to receive this bastard, and tried to use his peripheral vision to get a look at Astarion. It was no use. There were too many of them too close to him, working themselves into hardness, standing shoulder to shoulder and still trying to nudge each other aside to get their turns in.
“Shit...” the man in his mouth said. “You really are good at this.”
A belly-deep laugh erupted from him, high and hysterical. Yes, he'd had quite the education. The man violating him had the audacity to look concerned for a moment, before Cazador worked his throat, and finished him. Cazador winced, and turned to allow another of them to use him. Get it over with, that was the key. Get them distracted. Never stop looking for an opening with which to free himself.
Someone was tugging at his boots. “Here, how much do you think these are worth?” Cazador kicked at him for the principle of it, though he was easily batted aside. “Is that real silver, do you think?” Once he was divested of his boots, the thief took the family ring from his finger. “The stone's good in this.” Cazador would have liked to give him the beating he was so blatantly courting, but the next man finished in his throat, and the next took his place. The thief, now finished with his valuations, set to removing Cazador's trousers. “Oh, that's...” He stroked Cazador's stockinged calves, past the sensitive point at the back of his knee, and spent some time groping at the muscles of his thighs. “We could turn him out. Kozakurrans are popular here. Kozakurran elves probably go for a lot.”
Cazador lunged for him. They had forgotten to hold him down in their eagerness to use his throat, and he got as far as bearing down on the thief before he was restrained and wrestled back to the ground, with his bound hands trapped underneath the small of his back. One of the men held him by the shoulders, while two apiece held down his thrashing legs.
“I saw a drawing like this once,” one of the men said, apropos of nothing. “Was in a cathouse. Tiny black smalls and stockings just like that. Was a woman, though. And she didn't look so angry.”
The thief brushed himself off and rose from where Cazador had felled him. “Can you take their fangs out?”
“They grow back,” the wizard said. “Even the spawns' do.” He moved between Cazador's legs.
“What the hell?” one of the others said. “You already had a go.”
“And I'm going again. His mouth's still free if you can't wait.” He reached for Cazador's underwear. Cazador tired to lurch up but was immediately pinned down. The wizard took his time baring him, slowly rolling his underwear first down his hips, to reveal the base of his cock, and then further. His pupils were blown at the sight, dilating more as he continued to remove them. “It's a shame you're no virgin,” he said. “Turn him around.”
They flipped him onto his stomach. No one had dared. Not even those who thought he was simply a reclusive patriar. Not a soul had dared so much as speak out of turn for centuries. The wizard and his cronies scythed his legs apart, shoved his knees under him, and that was all of the warning he got before the wizard entered him.
Vellioth was the first. Cazador had ripped at his stomach like he could claw the accursed thing out of him. How he'd screamed, loud enough to lift the roof, but he did not weep. Even as a small boy, he hadn't been prone to crying. As a young man, he had known it to be pointless. Whatever was done to him would be done. And so much was done, in the interim between then and now. He was like an expensive wine, uncorked, and left to spoil. All of Vellioth's ilk could tell somehow, what had happened, and he was fondled and fucked and passed around and wondered if Aunt Donnella had been the only thing between himself and this fate before then. But he never cried. And over time he learned to stop screaming too.
He didn't make a sound as the wizard ripped into him, though he was dry and rough. It would have torn him if vampiric healing didn't close the wounds before they'd had a chance to open fully. The wizard made enough noise for both of them, moaning out his pleasure in a way he suspected was exaggerated. He rambled on about how tight Cazador was as he thrust harder, getting deeper with each buck of his hips. Cazador rolled his eyes. He'd heard it all before. The sensation of being breached still made him want to claw himself open but he knew better now. Any reaction only encouraged them. Not that this one needed overmuch encouragement. He bent low over Cazador, and nibbled at his ears. They were not as sensitive as non-elves seemed to think, but it was unpleasant all the same. Intimate, and at odds with the way he was rutting into him with wild abandon. The grotesque, wet slapping sounds of thigh on thigh were almost drowned out by Astarion begging.
Tentatively, Cazador reached out for his mind. There, there, endure for a little longer. But his powers were still dammed.
He squirmed as the wizard climaxed inside him, holding his hips until every last drop was spent. 'The wizard thrust a few more times, until the others started to complain that he was 'hogging the goods'.
“Is he just going to lie there?” one of them complained further.
“If you need a reaction do the spawn,” the wizard said. “He's weak.” With some reluctance, he finally pulled out of Cazador. He gave his backside a ringing slap.
Cazador gritted his teeth and stayed in the debasing position he'd been placed, with his face on the ground, and his rear in the air. It was less physically painful than if they decided to get creative, and there were still nine more of these beasts. More if some of the ones preoccupied with Astarion decided they needed more entertainment.
One of them jostled his way to the front. He grabbed two handfuls of Cazador's arse and pulled it apart. The motion caused the wizard's seed to drip down between his buttocks. “That's nice,” he said, tugging at Cazador's hole to make more of it ooze free. The temptation to buck away and try to fight again almost overwhelmed him, but he resisted. He must conserve his energy for when a real opportunity came. Someone else grabbed at his face, and pulled him on to his cock, as the other grew bored with prodding at him. He stabbed into Cazador's arse. Cazador grunted, trying to wriggle onto him at an angle that was less painful, while the one at his face immediately got deep enough to smash Cazador's nose into his pelvis.
He ignored their moans, their comments, the way they thrust like they were trying to impale him from both ends, being pincered between them as they each fucked him any which way, he ignored it all. And must Astarion continue make such an embarrassing scene? Did he truly have the mental fortitude for this?
Perhaps Cazador could trance, and restore his magic that way. It would also be a fine way of showing these interlopers how insignificant they truly were. He closed his eyes and tried. Astarion had drifting outside of his body down to an art, Cazador often had to compel him to stay in the moment. Why he wasn't making use of that particular skill now, Cazador couldn't fathom, but it was something he'd never been able to do himself. The loss of himself was worse, somehow, than simply outlasting the violations. And though he tried, his body would not yield to sleep.
Endure, endure.
The rest of them took their turns with him. Such things tended to blur together. They pulled him to and fro. At one point, they flipped him onto his back, so they could see his face while they fucked him. His hand closed over something on the floor. The arrow.
He hooked his leg around the man currently fucking him, red-faced with exertion and pleasure, and drew him in further. “Is that truly all you've got, boy?” he purred. The man let out a shocked moan and came almost immediately. Cazador sneered at him, and sought out the wizard. “Your cadre has a lot of excitable whelps. Don't you know anyone who can last more than a minute?”
“Hey!” the man between his legs said.
The wizard grinned. He had wandered over to Astarion -- still crying, still too lost among the crowd for Cazador to identify what was happening – but he strolled back to Cazador. “I wish I'd known you before you turned into a bloodsucker. Someone obviously knew how to put you in your place then.” He jerked his thumb at the man panting between Cazador's legs, and he scrambled away.
As soon as the wizard got close enough, Cazador straddled him. One of the others tried to shout out a warning but too late. Cazador drove the arrow down into his gut.
Freed from the hold person spell, Cazador was able to move more freely. He leapt up and tore up the stairs, dodging arrows as he did. Though his eyes burned and his muscles ached with the effort of it, he aimed at the light, landing heavily on the person at the centre of it. He ripped off the magical item – a delicate, gold necklace whose chain broke easily – that felt blistering to touch but did not actually burn him. The enchantment blinked out. His strength returned.
Cazador pulled the manacles on his hands apart. He hesitated for a but a second. If he let them live, he would be closer to the seven thousand souls required. Ultimately, he decided that he couldn't stand to look at them.
“Master?” Astarion called.
“Kill them, Astarion.”
Without the wizard and the enchantment, they fell quickly. There was no cohesion to the way they fought. Probably sell-swords. It was over in a matter of minutes. Appalling, really, that it had ever gotten this far.
Cazador reviewed the wreckage. His clothing was somewhere among the dismembered bodies, but in no fit state to wear. He noted, with grim realisation, that one of them had used his underwear to masturbate with. The rest of it was torn up, the only thing intact his boots. He retrieved his family ring from a pile of gore and slid it back on his finger, and then turned his attention to the other mess.
Astarion was bloody, bruised, streaked with come, and still sniffling. “I'm sorry, Master. I didn't know. I swear I didn't know--” He cringed away from Cazador as he approached. “Please. I'm so sore already, Master, please--”
“Stop your blubbering.”
Astarion sniffed himself into silence. He was tremoring. Cazador sighed. “Get cleaned up. We'll discuss this another day.”
“Thank you, Master. I'm--”
“Go.”
Astarion shot out of the room. Cazador surveyed this new collection of corpses. He considered that the wizard had gotten off rather lightly. He waited until his magic returned, and cast revivify. The wizard scuttled back, raising his arms to cast, but Cazador had already summoned his ghouls.
“Feast,” he said.