mickume/dnd_drow · Datasets at Hugging Face

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"Oh my god," said Tav.
"They have nothing to do with this," the bat Astarion snarled.
"What’s it saying?" asked Karlach, fascinated.
"It's...." Tav’s mouth worked. She was trying so hard not to smile. From the way Astarion glared at her with his beady little red bat eyes, it was not working.
"Don’t you dare," he demanded.
"...That’s Astarion. Oh my god. You fell to Polymorph," said Tav, and relief made her giddy. She put a hand over her face and tried to muffle the laughter in her voice.
"You’re kidding," said Wyll, his voice warming.
"He’s so cute," Karlach said helplessly, and her grin was snaggle-toothed.
"I’m so glad you’re all having a great time at my expense," said Astarion, his voice translated into such a whine through the magic, "but perhaps we could fix this? Now? Please stop laughing and pull yourselves together."
He sounded so put out that Tav lost it. She turned and had to brace against Wyll’s shoulder, her own shoulders heaving with the laughter she was trying not to sound.
"I thought she sent you to a plane out of existence," Tav said, helplessly.
"Tav," Astarion scolded. "Please."
"He’s kind of nice like this," said Wyll, the edges of his mouth twitching. "Look at you, all small and cuddly. Shadowheart’s going to love this."
The bat skittered back in Karlach’s cupped hands in complete dismay.
"You aren’t going to take me back to the Elfsong Inn, are you? Like this?" he screeched.
Tav took pity on him and pulled her shit together. She carefully scooped him out of Karlach’s grasp and found him so incredibly soft against her palms. It was like touching his hair, but even softer. He bat-crawled into her hands as she lifted him to her face, feeling an odd kinship for Minsc and his hamster.
"Where else are we going to take you?" she asked him. "Gale needs to see this. Hopefully this is the normal version of the spell and you’ll be back in an hour."
"Gosh, this is like watching Minsc hold a conversation with Boo," said Karlach in echo of Tav’s own thoughts.
"It's sort of fascinating to hear the one side of the conversation," said Wyll. "I bet he’s complaining up a storm."
"Again, I can hear you--oh, forget it," Astarion curled up in her hands. Tav realized abruptly he was warm, which was weird, because she associated him with a comforting temperature just below ambient. "This is just how today is going to be, apparently."
Tav studied him. The urge to press his soft body to her cheek nearly got the better of her.
"Do you want to fly and follow us?" she asked, offering him some dignity. "I could also put you in my pocket."
The little bat Astarion lifted his tiny face in her direction.
"I think I’ll fly, thank you," he said, sulking. She watched with fascination as he crawled to the edge of her hand and his little feet curled around her pointer finger so he could hang upside-down, beating his wings. They were larger than she’d expected as he stretched them out, and then after a few tentative beats, he’d fluttered up in the air to circle above them.
Karlach watched all this with a general warm humor and a touch of wonder in her her eyes.
"You know, Astarion, this isn’t bad," she said. "Bats can see in the dark. They’re small. You’re the perfect little spy up there."
"Tell her to spare me her attempts as consolation. I much prefer having hands," Astarion grumbled. Tav’s mouth twitched.
"He says thank you for the compliments," Tav said, followed by Astarion’s angry chittering. He dove at her head and she ducked, laughing, the sound echoing away and back to her in the tunnels.
"Oh I am sure," said Wyll. "Let’s see if we can find orders on these bodies and get back to the surface."
"My favorite part," Tav said, dry, and she turned back to twisted forms of the shapeshifters they’d killed to rummage their pockets. They didn’t have much in the way of anything novel, mostly just a scrawled message with wet ink that Tav and her party had been spotted in the area. Tav sighed and pocketed their gold and dropped their murder knives into the water.
Astarion held on well until they clambered back out into the sunshine, when suddenly her hair was full of bat.
"What’s this about," she muttered, catching her balance. His little body had completely thrown off her sense of movement as he clung to the fall of her hair.
"The sun’s too bright," he complained. "These eyes are awful. I can’t see at all."
"You’re a bat," she told him, mouth curving as she reached up to gingerly try to collect him out of her hair with her cupped hands. Soft. He was so soft. "Generally nocturnal. Close your eyes and use your echolocation or something."
"How do you even know these things about this horrible little creature," Astarion said.
"I read a book at least once," Tav replied, dry, while Karlach shifted the manhole cover back over the sewer access next to them. "Stop being a drama queen about it. You’re fine and you’ll be fine."
Her thumbs quietly brushed through his soft, white fur. His body felt so small and fragile in her hands that she was gripped with the sudden terror that she’d crush him by accident. His little wing-thumbs were clutching the edge of her hand.
Bat Astarion muttered something about the fact Tav wasn’t the one suddenly four inches tall and crawled towards her sleeve. Instead, Tav lifted him to her shirt collar. There was a little space between her jaw and the protective curve of her gambeson, and he fit right in. Her hair covered it to keep him mostly out of view; he matched the heather white and grey of her hair, anyway.
The amount of kinship she was starting to feel with Minsc was starting to get alarming.
"How about we head back double-time," said Wyll. Tav was ignoring the way he was looking at her careful handling of the transformed Vampire and the knowing look that passed between him and Karlach.
"It's not an emergency. Polymorph doesn’t last forever," Tav told them. She still struck off down the street in the appropriate direction with a long, ground-eating stride. "But the sooner, the better."
Once they got back to the Elfsong Inn, as predicted, Shadowheart lost her mind.
"Look at you!" Shadowheart crooned. Astarion glared at her from the safety of Tav’s jawline. "You’re so adorable like this. I think it's an improvement. I like you much better this way."
"How very nice for you," Astarion said, which came out only as angry chitters to the gathered party. "Now stop gawking and do something about it!"
"I have to admit, it's a pretty good look," said Jaheira, amused where she was perched on a couch with her arms crossed. "And all of that talking, talking, talking." Jaheira mimed a mouth opening and shutting with her hand. "Its hurts my ears, but it's nice to have no idea what he’s saying."
"EXCUSE ME," said Astarion.
"Be nice," Tav said, to everyone present, as she cupped her hand over him to dull the sharp chitter of his yelling in her ear. He was panicked. She could tell he was holding on by a thread from how his responses had been getting less and less creative.
"Bat Astarion," said Minsc slowly to himself. "Batstarion?"
A hush went over the room.
"Oh no," Astarion chittered. "No. This is not a thing. I refuse to allow this to spiral even more out of control than normal. You’re all a bunch of weirdos having so much fun at my expense--"
"Batstarion," echoed Shadowheart. "You know, it has a certain ring to it."
"You are all insane," said Lae’zel, who had shown initial curiosity but was now pretending none of them existed while slowly scraping a whetstone along the giant Gith’yanki blade balanced across her knees. "Simply kill the creature and it will return to its original form."
Tav curled her fingers protectively over Astarion’s little body as he choked.
"She is correct," said Gale, who had been spending most of the conversation where Tav had explained the situation standing back with an inescapable smirk on his mouth and his hands on his hips. "Polymorph traditionally has three options to end its duration."
He held up a finger. "One, you disrupt the concentration of the caster."
"Well it's too late for that," Astarion muttered.
"Two, you wait until the duration of the spell expires, typically an hour," Gale said, adding a finger.
"An hour," Astarion despaired.
"Three, you destroy the creature’s temporary form and it will revert to the original, much like how the shapeshifters return to their true forms when killed," said Gale, adding a third finger.
"Does that....hurt?" asked Karlach, brow furrowing. Displeasure twisted her mouth. "I mean, that’s what happens when Jaheira and Halsin shapeshift, right? And they seem okay."
"It’s not pleasant, if that’s what you mean," said Jaheira, amused. "It doesn’t take much to take down a cat, and it’s even less for a teensy little guy like him." She pinched the air between her fingers; Astarion’s grumbling chitters had reduced to a mutter.
"So, what are we waiting for?" said Wyll. "We can turn him back right now."
Tav felt her jaw set. Her protective curl of her fingers over Astarion’s little body tightened.
"We’re not killing him," said Tav. "We can wait."
She paused, awkwardly trying to look down at him even though he was out of her line of sight. "What do you think?"
"I would love to avoid the feeling of impending death," Astarion said. "Fine. If the easiest method is simply waiting, I’d rather do that. Then this will all be over and we’ll never speak of it again."
"He says he’d rather wait," Tav translated.
"Batstarion," Karlach said under her breath, grinning. Tav rather doubted Astarion’s pride was going to escape the situation unscathed.
"Ridiculous," said Lae’zel. "The sooner this is over, the better it would be for everyone."
If you asked Tav a few weeks ago about the tone in Lae’zel’s voice, she would have told you it was a little harsh. Enough time had passed, enough things had happened, that Tav could read the concern that actually lay behind the statement. She really did mean everyone - and that included Astarion, himself.
"I’m the one who got turned into a bat, I think I rather get to have the final word," Astarion muttered. He was soft and warm and his fur tickled against the underside of her jaw as he defensively crawled further under her collar.
"I agree," she told him, then louder to the rest, "We can wait an hour."
A murmur of assent ran through their rag-tag group. She hadn’t been the only one beginning to look uncomfortable about the idea of purposefully killing the small bat just to get Astarion back to normal. It was one thing in the heat of battle, it was one thing when it was Halsin or Jaheira doing it themselves to transform one way or another, but to purposefully take the small bat in her hands and wring its neck...
Tav couldn’t bring herself to do it.
They slowly drifted back to their various tasks around the shared room, one at a time, until Tav was standing by one of the windows and leaning her shoulder against it to look outside. Astarion had crawled out from under her jawline to settle right over her collar-bone as a small, nice little warm ball of soft texture and sharp tiny nails.
Shadowheart drifted up to her, peering at him.
"Batstarion," she addressed him, somberly. He stiffened and squeaked at her. Tav felt her mouth twitch as her brows lifted.
Shadowheart continued, "Considering that this state will only last an hour, I must ask you, much as I dislike it, for a favor."
Astarion cautiously left Tav’s collarbone to crawl onto her shoulder.
"What, exactly, is the nature of this favor?" he asked warily.
"He’s asking what you want," Tav said. The tiny nails somehow made it through to pinch her skin. And her mouth twitched.
"Please." Shadowheart said, her gaze not leaving his little body. "Please, can I hold you for just a moment. I don’t know when I’ll ever get the chance to hold a bat like this again."
There was a long pause.
"NO," said Astarion. "I am not your plaything!"
"Ow, ow, ow," said Tav as his little nails scrabbled at her skin as he dove back under her collar. She twisted to try to cup her hands around him and not throw him off as she fought the shiver of ticklishness and tiny pinpricks of pain.
"Oh come on," said Shadowheart. "Just for a minute? You’re just so soft looking."
"You know, if you ask extremely nicely and promise to be very good, Minsc could ask Boo if you could hold him," said Minsc, looming up behind her. He also had a curious look to his eye. "If you must hold something small and fluffy and experience the joy that is a tiny creature in your hands. As long as you are not going to do any funny business," he added, eyeing her.
"I--yes, but--" Shadowheart gestured at Tav and Astarion. "Look at him!"
Astarion paused. Tav could feel the wheels turning in his currently bat-sized brain.
She covered him with her hand so she could whisper to Shadowheart without him necessarily hearing her.
"You might want to try complimenting him for real," she mouthed at Shadowheart.
Shadowheart’s brows lifted in a, seriously? Sort of way.
"If you want to hold him, you need to be nice," Tav said, more audibly. "It's his choice, anyway."
Shadowheart’s urges warred visibly in her expression between her pride and the utterly charming fluffball that Astarion had become. She struggled as she weighed her options. Astarion, sensing he had somehow gained the upper hand in the matter, crawled back out from under her collar. Tav spotted him with one hand hovering over him, as if afraid he might fall off, while he settled like a brooch on her collar. He tilted his head up and to the side, in a strange little imitation of his normal haughty manner, which translated into a cute, puppy-like cant of his head.
Tav swore he made his eyes somehow bigger.
"That depends on what she’s willing to give me in return," Astarion said, arch.
"What does he get out of it?" Tav translated.
Shadowheart wavered with her hands pressed together by her chest.
"The bonds of our unwavering friendship," Shadowheart said.
"I have no use for that," said Astarion. "Try again."

"Oh my god," said Tav.

"They have nothing to do with this," the bat Astarion snarled.

"What’s it saying?" asked Karlach, fascinated.

"It's...." Tav’s mouth worked. She was trying so hard not to smile. From the way Astarion glared at her with his beady little red bat eyes, it was not working.

"Don’t you dare," he demanded.

"...That’s Astarion. Oh my god. You fell to Polymorph," said Tav, and relief made her giddy. She put a hand over her face and tried to muffle the laughter in her voice.

"You’re kidding," said Wyll, his voice warming.

"He’s so cute," Karlach said helplessly, and her grin was snaggle-toothed.

"I’m so glad you’re all having a great time at my expense," said Astarion, his voice translated into such a whine through the magic, "but perhaps we could fix this? Now? Please stop laughing and pull yourselves together."

He sounded so put out that Tav lost it. She turned and had to brace against Wyll’s shoulder, her own shoulders heaving with the laughter she was trying not to sound.

"I thought she sent you to a plane out of existence," Tav said, helplessly.

"Tav," Astarion scolded. "Please."

"He’s kind of nice like this," said Wyll, the edges of his mouth twitching. "Look at you, all small and cuddly. Shadowheart’s going to love this."

The bat skittered back in Karlach’s cupped hands in complete dismay.

"You aren’t going to take me back to the Elfsong Inn, are you? Like this?" he screeched.

Tav took pity on him and pulled her shit together. She carefully scooped him out of Karlach’s grasp and found him so incredibly soft against her palms. It was like touching his hair, but even softer. He bat-crawled into her hands as she lifted him to her face, feeling an odd kinship for Minsc and his hamster.

"Where else are we going to take you?" she asked him. "Gale needs to see this. Hopefully this is the normal version of the spell and you’ll be back in an hour."

"Gosh, this is like watching Minsc hold a conversation with Boo," said Karlach in echo of Tav’s own thoughts.

"It's sort of fascinating to hear the one side of the conversation," said Wyll. "I bet he’s complaining up a storm."

"Again, I can hear you--oh, forget it," Astarion curled up in her hands. Tav realized abruptly he was warm, which was weird, because she associated him with a comforting temperature just below ambient. "This is just how today is going to be, apparently."

Tav studied him. The urge to press his soft body to her cheek nearly got the better of her.

"Do you want to fly and follow us?" she asked, offering him some dignity. "I could also put you in my pocket."

The little bat Astarion lifted his tiny face in her direction.

"I think I’ll fly, thank you," he said, sulking. She watched with fascination as he crawled to the edge of her hand and his little feet curled around her pointer finger so he could hang upside-down, beating his wings. They were larger than she’d expected as he stretched them out, and then after a few tentative beats, he’d fluttered up in the air to circle above them.

Karlach watched all this with a general warm humor and a touch of wonder in her her eyes.

"You know, Astarion, this isn’t bad," she said. "Bats can see in the dark. They’re small. You’re the perfect little spy up there."

"Tell her to spare me her attempts as consolation. I much prefer having hands," Astarion grumbled. Tav’s mouth twitched.

"He says thank you for the compliments," Tav said, followed by Astarion’s angry chittering. He dove at her head and she ducked, laughing, the sound echoing away and back to her in the tunnels.

"Oh I am sure," said Wyll. "Let’s see if we can find orders on these bodies and get back to the surface."

"My favorite part," Tav said, dry, and she turned back to twisted forms of the shapeshifters they’d killed to rummage their pockets. They didn’t have much in the way of anything novel, mostly just a scrawled message with wet ink that Tav and her party had been spotted in the area. Tav sighed and pocketed their gold and dropped their murder knives into the water.

Astarion held on well until they clambered back out into the sunshine, when suddenly her hair was full of bat.

"What’s this about," she muttered, catching her balance. His little body had completely thrown off her sense of movement as he clung to the fall of her hair.

"The sun’s too bright," he complained. "These eyes are awful. I can’t see at all."

"You’re a bat," she told him, mouth curving as she reached up to gingerly try to collect him out of her hair with her cupped hands. Soft. He was so soft. "Generally nocturnal. Close your eyes and use your echolocation or something."

"How do you even know these things about this horrible little creature," Astarion said.

"I read a book at least once," Tav replied, dry, while Karlach shifted the manhole cover back over the sewer access next to them. "Stop being a drama queen about it. You’re fine and you’ll be fine."

Her thumbs quietly brushed through his soft, white fur. His body felt so small and fragile in her hands that she was gripped with the sudden terror that she’d crush him by accident. His little wing-thumbs were clutching the edge of her hand.

Bat Astarion muttered something about the fact Tav wasn’t the one suddenly four inches tall and crawled towards her sleeve. Instead, Tav lifted him to her shirt collar. There was a little space between her jaw and the protective curve of her gambeson, and he fit right in. Her hair covered it to keep him mostly out of view; he matched the heather white and grey of her hair, anyway.

The amount of kinship she was starting to feel with Minsc was starting to get alarming.

"How about we head back double-time," said Wyll. Tav was ignoring the way he was looking at her careful handling of the transformed Vampire and the knowing look that passed between him and Karlach.

"It's not an emergency. Polymorph doesn’t last forever," Tav told them. She still struck off down the street in the appropriate direction with a long, ground-eating stride. "But the sooner, the better."

Once they got back to the Elfsong Inn, as predicted, Shadowheart lost her mind.

"Look at you!" Shadowheart crooned. Astarion glared at her from the safety of Tav’s jawline. "You’re so adorable like this. I think it's an improvement. I like you much better this way."

"How very nice for you," Astarion said, which came out only as angry chitters to the gathered party. "Now stop gawking and do something about it!"

"I have to admit, it's a pretty good look," said Jaheira, amused where she was perched on a couch with her arms crossed. "And all of that talking, talking, talking." Jaheira mimed a mouth opening and shutting with her hand. "Its hurts my ears, but it's nice to have no idea what he’s saying."

"EXCUSE ME," said Astarion.

"Be nice," Tav said, to everyone present, as she cupped her hand over him to dull the sharp chitter of his yelling in her ear. He was panicked. She could tell he was holding on by a thread from how his responses had been getting less and less creative.

"Bat Astarion," said Minsc slowly to himself. "Batstarion?"

A hush went over the room.

"Oh no," Astarion chittered. "No. This is not a thing. I refuse to allow this to spiral even more out of control than normal. You’re all a bunch of weirdos having so much fun at my expense--"

"Batstarion," echoed Shadowheart. "You know, it has a certain ring to it."

"You are all insane," said Lae’zel, who had shown initial curiosity but was now pretending none of them existed while slowly scraping a whetstone along the giant Gith’yanki blade balanced across her knees. "Simply kill the creature and it will return to its original form."

Tav curled her fingers protectively over Astarion’s little body as he choked.

"She is correct," said Gale, who had been spending most of the conversation where Tav had explained the situation standing back with an inescapable smirk on his mouth and his hands on his hips. "Polymorph traditionally has three options to end its duration."

He held up a finger. "One, you disrupt the concentration of the caster."

"Well it's too late for that," Astarion muttered.

"Two, you wait until the duration of the spell expires, typically an hour," Gale said, adding a finger.

"An hour," Astarion despaired.

"Three, you destroy the creature’s temporary form and it will revert to the original, much like how the shapeshifters return to their true forms when killed," said Gale, adding a third finger.

"Does that....hurt?" asked Karlach, brow furrowing. Displeasure twisted her mouth. "I mean, that’s what happens when Jaheira and Halsin shapeshift, right? And they seem okay."

"It’s not pleasant, if that’s what you mean," said Jaheira, amused. "It doesn’t take much to take down a cat, and it’s even less for a teensy little guy like him." She pinched the air between her fingers; Astarion’s grumbling chitters had reduced to a mutter.

"So, what are we waiting for?" said Wyll. "We can turn him back right now."

Tav felt her jaw set. Her protective curl of her fingers over Astarion’s little body tightened.

"We’re not killing him," said Tav. "We can wait."

She paused, awkwardly trying to look down at him even though he was out of her line of sight. "What do you think?"

"I would love to avoid the feeling of impending death," Astarion said. "Fine. If the easiest method is simply waiting, I’d rather do that. Then this will all be over and we’ll never speak of it again."

"He says he’d rather wait," Tav translated.

"Batstarion," Karlach said under her breath, grinning. Tav rather doubted Astarion’s pride was going to escape the situation unscathed.

"Ridiculous," said Lae’zel. "The sooner this is over, the better it would be for everyone."

If you asked Tav a few weeks ago about the tone in Lae’zel’s voice, she would have told you it was a little harsh. Enough time had passed, enough things had happened, that Tav could read the concern that actually lay behind the statement. She really did mean everyone - and that included Astarion, himself.

"I’m the one who got turned into a bat, I think I rather get to have the final word," Astarion muttered. He was soft and warm and his fur tickled against the underside of her jaw as he defensively crawled further under her collar.

"I agree," she told him, then louder to the rest, "We can wait an hour."

A murmur of assent ran through their rag-tag group. She hadn’t been the only one beginning to look uncomfortable about the idea of purposefully killing the small bat just to get Astarion back to normal. It was one thing in the heat of battle, it was one thing when it was Halsin or Jaheira doing it themselves to transform one way or another, but to purposefully take the small bat in her hands and wring its neck...

Tav couldn’t bring herself to do it.

They slowly drifted back to their various tasks around the shared room, one at a time, until Tav was standing by one of the windows and leaning her shoulder against it to look outside. Astarion had crawled out from under her jawline to settle right over her collar-bone as a small, nice little warm ball of soft texture and sharp tiny nails.

Shadowheart drifted up to her, peering at him.

"Batstarion," she addressed him, somberly. He stiffened and squeaked at her. Tav felt her mouth twitch as her brows lifted.

Shadowheart continued, "Considering that this state will only last an hour, I must ask you, much as I dislike it, for a favor."

Astarion cautiously left Tav’s collarbone to crawl onto her shoulder.

"What, exactly, is the nature of this favor?" he asked warily.

"He’s asking what you want," Tav said. The tiny nails somehow made it through to pinch her skin. And her mouth twitched.

"Please." Shadowheart said, her gaze not leaving his little body. "Please, can I hold you for just a moment. I don’t know when I’ll ever get the chance to hold a bat like this again."

There was a long pause.

"NO," said Astarion. "I am not your plaything!"

"Ow, ow, ow," said Tav as his little nails scrabbled at her skin as he dove back under her collar. She twisted to try to cup her hands around him and not throw him off as she fought the shiver of ticklishness and tiny pinpricks of pain.

"Oh come on," said Shadowheart. "Just for a minute? You’re just so soft looking."

"You know, if you ask extremely nicely and promise to be very good, Minsc could ask Boo if you could hold him," said Minsc, looming up behind her. He also had a curious look to his eye. "If you must hold something small and fluffy and experience the joy that is a tiny creature in your hands. As long as you are not going to do any funny business," he added, eyeing her.

"I--yes, but--" Shadowheart gestured at Tav and Astarion. "Look at him!"

Astarion paused. Tav could feel the wheels turning in his currently bat-sized brain.

She covered him with her hand so she could whisper to Shadowheart without him necessarily hearing her.

"You might want to try complimenting him for real," she mouthed at Shadowheart.

Shadowheart’s brows lifted in a, seriously? Sort of way.

"If you want to hold him, you need to be nice," Tav said, more audibly. "It's his choice, anyway."

Shadowheart’s urges warred visibly in her expression between her pride and the utterly charming fluffball that Astarion had become. She struggled as she weighed her options. Astarion, sensing he had somehow gained the upper hand in the matter, crawled back out from under her collar. Tav spotted him with one hand hovering over him, as if afraid he might fall off, while he settled like a brooch on her collar. He tilted his head up and to the side, in a strange little imitation of his normal haughty manner, which translated into a cute, puppy-like cant of his head.

Tav swore he made his eyes somehow bigger.

"That depends on what she’s willing to give me in return," Astarion said, arch.

"What does he get out of it?" Tav translated.

Shadowheart wavered with her hands pressed together by her chest.

"The bonds of our unwavering friendship," Shadowheart said.

"I have no use for that," said Astarion. "Try again."