[ For a moment, the entire tent crackles with power. Astarion will be shocked if it hasn't lit a beacon for the rest of the party to discern exactly what's happening here; but he also knows from his own late night prowling that the flood of purple light must not be so conspicuous, or he'd have clocked Gale's mealtimes before now.

Astarion has watched more than a lifetime's worth of suffering--and pleasure, always in the service of pain--but the magic held in precarious balance in Gale's body is something new to behold. He feels like he's watching something vulnerable, and for once isn't dissociated around it.

Cracked open, he thinks, and his fingers flex against his knee. Somewhere, there's a goddess who once thought Gale a very interesting little ant, and now he's living with the profound consequences of one moment of her attention.

Can he blame her? Gale is lovely on his knees. So very human, despite his brush with the divine. But for all that Astarion covets power, the cruelty of the gods is something else. ]

It's different though, isn't it? [ Watching the color bloom again on Gale's skin, lifeblood that is his instead of something stolen. Astarion's expression is serious as he drinks him in, not masquerading as predator or charlatan. ] I can go quite a long while without blood. It's not pleasant, but it's possible.

[ Cazador loved to deny them. And when he wasn't denying them, they were fed worse than scraps. ]

I don't know what it is to be alive on the knife's edge of death. I haven't felt alive in a very long time.