[It's horrifying. So much so that his mind almost rejects it at first: hearing terms like tentacles into your ears and larval worms, oh, it's nauseating. Like a horror story crawled out of the depths of the Deep Roads, that's all he can compare it to. Like the worst sorts of rumors about broodmothers and darkspawn, and perhaps he'd compare one to the other, but—
But that tone. That glassy, brittle tone, and it isn't that Leto isn't familiar with it. He is. Of course he is. It's just that he is not used to hearing it in Astarion's voice anymore; it's just that he almost never hears it in his voice anymore, not nowadays. Perhaps in the very beginning, when they would speak of Cazador and his cruelties; when Astarion told the story of the vivid scars on his back, that awful precise pattern . . .
And of course, Astarion is whole and hale. There are no tendril scars on his body, and trust Leto would know. But . . .
Larval worm, he thinks, and feels himself grow cold.]
Astarion . . .?
[It's gentle. Tentative, because he does not want to tread too firmly on something he doesn't yet understand. And it makes no sense, for when even would such a thing have happened? But perhaps it wasn't to him. Perhaps it was some companion, some potential prey or another spawn . . . but there must have been something. He knows Astarion well enough to know that, at least.]
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But that tone. That glassy, brittle tone, and it isn't that Leto isn't familiar with it. He is. Of course he is. It's just that he is not used to hearing it in Astarion's voice anymore; it's just that he almost never hears it in his voice anymore, not nowadays. Perhaps in the very beginning, when they would speak of Cazador and his cruelties; when Astarion told the story of the vivid scars on his back, that awful precise pattern . . .
And of course, Astarion is whole and hale. There are no tendril scars on his body, and trust Leto would know. But . . .
Larval worm, he thinks, and feels himself grow cold.]
Astarion . . .?
[It's gentle. Tentative, because he does not want to tread too firmly on something he doesn't yet understand. And it makes no sense, for when even would such a thing have happened? But perhaps it wasn't to him. Perhaps it was some companion, some potential prey or another spawn . . . but there must have been something. He knows Astarion well enough to know that, at least.]