[ That smile, slight though it may be, is everything. Affection blooms in his chest, the intensity of it more terrifying than the prospect of rabid spawn. ]
Hells, [ Astarion breathes out, shaking his head. ] It should be a crime how you make me adore you.
[ He politely doesn't make any innuendo about the sort of punishment he'd have sentenced Iorveth to as a magistrate. He's too endeared, too charmed, too genuinely besotted to make a joke out of it. He does adore Iorveth, which is a strange realization. Two hundred years of trying to keep his distance, and it's some forest-dwelling freedom fighter who's enthralled him.
Staff in one hand and Iorveth's palm in the other, he leads them back toward the spawn in their cages. Some of them look to be despairing, certain he's left them for dead. Others are simply too tired to care anymore. He should probably make an announcement, perhaps even a speech of some sort, to mark this moment. ]
Well, [ he says, ] here goes nothing.
[ He raps the staff against the ground the way he's seen Cazador do hundreds, thousands of times. It erupts in warm arcane light, glowing so brightly that it hurts to look at it. He closes his eyes, and when he can finally open them again, the ornate iron doors begin to slide open, creaking loudly like they haven't moved in ages.
For a moment, the spawn stare. After so many years, they must wonder if it's a trick. Then, slowly, laboriously, they begin to filter out. ]
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Hells, [ Astarion breathes out, shaking his head. ] It should be a crime how you make me adore you.
[ He politely doesn't make any innuendo about the sort of punishment he'd have sentenced Iorveth to as a magistrate. He's too endeared, too charmed, too genuinely besotted to make a joke out of it. He does adore Iorveth, which is a strange realization. Two hundred years of trying to keep his distance, and it's some forest-dwelling freedom fighter who's enthralled him.
Staff in one hand and Iorveth's palm in the other, he leads them back toward the spawn in their cages. Some of them look to be despairing, certain he's left them for dead. Others are simply too tired to care anymore. He should probably make an announcement, perhaps even a speech of some sort, to mark this moment. ]
Well, [ he says, ] here goes nothing.
[ He raps the staff against the ground the way he's seen Cazador do hundreds, thousands of times. It erupts in warm arcane light, glowing so brightly that it hurts to look at it. He closes his eyes, and when he can finally open them again, the ornate iron doors begin to slide open, creaking loudly like they haven't moved in ages.
For a moment, the spawn stare. After so many years, they must wonder if it's a trick. Then, slowly, laboriously, they begin to filter out. ]