[Looking back on his own warning, Astarion supposes that on figurative paper it doesn't sound so bad. But the difference between saying 'death by poison' and 'death by Midnight Tears' are entire worlds of horror apart: without elaboration or insight, there's no telling whether it'll be a lulling nap or a screaming, foaming transformation involving disintegrating bones and punctured skin.

Ugh. He's kicking himself for going down this trail, but— well. He's never been one to refuse Leto on even the worst of days.]

Assimilation of all relative life.

[And that's to put it lightly.]

They steal whoever they find, without discretion— and if they don't outright clamp their parasitic jaws filled with finger-long teeth into your skull and devour your mind in both the metaphorical and literal sense, or pry their tentacles into your ears or mouth to do the same, they choose the worser fate: they imprison you, and implant a larval worm within your skull that'll eventually hatch, thus condemning its host— i.e. you— to a nightmarish conversion into one of their hive-bound brood, the details of which I'll mercifully spare you. Just know it's—

Just know that you don't want to know.

[That glassiness in Astarion's voice— is he— ]