Big Blue Elf

One of the meat things—gone.

One stays. Still on its knees.

The rest, trapped.

Try the bars. Get free.

Arms shove. No resistance. The bars of the cage swing open.

Free. Free to

pave my path with corpses

The meat on its knees looks up, scrambles to its feet.

they should all be running

It stumbles towards him instead, unsteady, but drawn to him as if yanked by some invisible, unbreakable filament. No hesitation.

walk in death first body for the harvest

The meat reaches out to him. Open hand. Trusting. It speaks, but the words are just sound.

Grab pull bite tear throat open hot blood spray

Eyes staring up wide, pleading, urgent. Thumbs in eyes, shove, dig, make them jelly, so easy

Odd eyes. One deep blue, one rich brown.

Known—

He knew those eyes.

They’d been dead, the last time he gazed into them. Wide and dull, haloed in blood. Empty. And when he’d looked into those dead eyes, instead of the exhilaration he knew from making things dead, he’d felt only…

Only…

Heartbreak.

Loss, a loss like half of himself was ripped away and the gory wound left behind would never heal.

He swayed as the world began to pitch and tilt with a sickening roll that unmoored him, brain and guts feeling lost and unconnected, and the living face of the man before him was all that kept him from tumbling into space—

Squirming wildly, the tadpoles in their heads connected with a single shared vision:

[[A pair of dragons, great wings spread wide, racing each other on the wind. Iron-dark and moon-pale, soaring free alongside one another, necks outstretched as they cut through the sky with joyful speed.]]

Lightning shot through his head, fire exploding in its wake. The scarred man crumbled in towards himself with a deep groan, clutching his head in both hands. He pitched forward, falling to the deck—

And was caught, strong arms stopping his fall, holding him upright.

“I’ve got you.” Arms steadying him, holding him against a broad, lean chest. “It’s all right, I’ve got you.”

The scarred man raised his head, and as he met the gaze of the man holding him, he felt a shiver pass through the other’s body. Yet the man with the mismatched eyes held on, keeping him steady until his feet were under him and dizziness faded. Only then did he begin to ease away, grip still firm and strong on his elbows.

It was the first kind touch the scarred man could ever recall feeling.

“Are you all right? Steady now?” Those singular blue and brown eyes searched him, worry-lines creasing the brow above. His ears were delicately pointed at the tips, not rounded like a human's, not as long as an elf's, but a blending of the two races. Like his eyes, he was neither one thing nor the other, but existed somewhere in-between.

The scarred man struggled to form words, opening his mouth to shape them, but the sound that should have come up from his throat died there, strangled before it could be born.

just like he should strangle this misbegotten halfbreed

His fingers stretched. Hands clenched. Unclenched.

And stayed at his sides.

“This might help—”

A hand on his head, palm hot and dry against his forehead, long fingers firm against his scalp. Another kind touch that was as strange and unfamiliar as the first. For a moment there was nothing. Then...a pleasantly cool frisson passed through his skull and radiated down through neck and shoulders, filling his chest, tingling down through the rest of his body, all the way to his toes, and in its wake he felt energized, stronger. Clearer in his head.

The fingers lingered in his hair, rubbing carefully, probing his scalp, and the man with the mismatched eyes frowned. But after a moment he slid his hand away. “Better?”

Was this what it was like to not be in pain? Even the squirming in his head subsided, as if the tadpole in his skull was soothed as well. There wasn’t much in there besides the parasite and confusion. But now, with the pain eased, there might be room for other things to come back, things he’d lost.

Or things that had been taken from him.

“Talk to me,” his companion said, voice pitched a little sharper now. “Can you stand on your own?” Even with the tension in his tone, it was a comforting voice, warm and velvety and it curled into his ears and soothed the jumbled thoughts in his brain.

The scarred man worked his jaw, trying again to make words. “Y…yyyyes.” His voice was like a heavy rusty gate that hadn’t opened in months, sunken into soft ground and overgrown grass, and it took effort to push open.

But that was good enough. His companion nodded encouragingly. “Lean on the pod. I have to free the others, try to help them.” The man with the mismatched eyes guided his hands to the just-vacated pod and made sure he was steady, before moving on to the pod next to them.

Try to help. The scarred man leaned against the open pod, watching. What did that mean, to help? He watched as the man with the mismatched eyes went from pod to pod, yanking the twisted cages open, shaking each victim within, trying to rouse them, working faster and with growing agitation as none responded.

Get out of here. Yes. That was a good idea. Better than the first one he’d had, about killing. He was in danger here. The fires still guttered, burning low as the moist fleshy surfaces fed it slowly, tempering the hunger to engulf the room. Much like this hunger in his gut to kill, to tear and maim and destroy—it burned within but something kept it in check.

He really didn’t want to kill the man with the mismatched eyes.

He looked down, seeing himself for the first time. Big hands. Hands that could kill, had killed before, with a twist, a strike, a squeeze. He raised them up, turning them about, studying, wondering at the blood smears sunken into the lines of his fingerprints, dried and crusted under his fingernails. As he raised his hands, the loose sleeves of his stained linen smock sagged away from his wrists to bag down at his elbows, revealing thick, muscle-corded forearms. Both arms bore long vertical scars, connected to short horizontal scars at each end—

forearms tied down, flayed open, laid bare to a slender silvery probe

He groaned and leaned heavily against the pod, head bowed and throbbing at the image. A memory or a fantasy? He could not tell. Looking down, he realized his legs were similarly disfigured, ladders of scars reaching from his ankles to his knees, where short, loose linen breeches covered him from the knees on up. He was barefoot, and even his feet bore slim, carefully cut-and-stitched scars. He scraped lank hair back out of his eyes with one shaky hand, and found a rough, thick ridge of scar tissue on his scalp. It was dry and healed over, but not so old that it wasn’t tender when he pressed against it.

What am I? Who did this to me?

Who am I?

A word, a name, came to him.

Maekar.

His lips moved silently, tasting the shape of the name. It felt right. It felt true. He could hold on to this much, until the rest came back to him.

He looked up again, watching the man with the mismatched eyes reaching up to an unconscious woman in one of the open pods, shaking her, begging her to wake up.

Why was he familiar? Not just for his strange eyes, but…other things. The voice that soothed. The neat, proud line of his profile, roughened by a scruff of beard. The broad but fine-boned hands, reaching out to others…

Trying to help.

I have a name. Maekar. I can hold on to that.

He could hold on to the strange man with mismatched eyes, too.

“By His claw, wake up….” Baelor gritted out a plea as he reached up to grasp the woman’s limp hand and tried to focus healing energy into her. It was harder now—he’d spent much on alleviating the scarred, pale-haired man’s mental fog and physical weakness, and could now only channel a trickle of power; it wasn’t enough. None of the captives stirred. He didn’t know if they were under magical effect, or if their malaise was a result of illithid abduction methods, or perhaps it was some biological narcosis forced upon them by the pods themselves…it didn’t matter in the end, because one way or another it meant they weren’t moving.

Baelor scanned the room back and forth quickly, desperate for options and finding none. The fire was slow but continued to burn. He’d channeled what restorative magic he could. There were too many victims to carry, and the one who was roused, the bloodstained one with white hair, seemed to be having his own challenges just staying upright and cognizant. The man was not old, despite the whiteness of his hair and beard; he only looked to be in his early to mid-thirties, perhaps, but he held on to the empty pod as if his strength was gone and this was the only thing keeping him on his feet.

Come to that, you’re not at your best either.

He didn’t blame the Githyanki for leaving on her own, without trying to help anyone. From what he knew of them, they were ruthlessly pragmatic folk. Still, it would have been nice to have another set of hands to help—and someone with a weapon. He’d been disarmed, presumably at capture, and the white-haired man just wore some kind of baggy linen tunic and breeches, didn’t even have shoes. No weapons on him. He was splashed with blood—on his clothes, his face, it was even crusted in his pale hair—but none of it appeared to be his own, or at least, not from any open wounds. He bore strange scars on his arms and legs, but they looked to be long since healed.

If Baelor waited, one or more of the other victims might wake up, and be able to make their way out with them. Or he might linger for nothing, and doom himself and the one other prisoner who was conscious.

It was one of the first lessons he learned, after taking up the Oath of Devotion. One of the first, and one of the hardest: you did your best and hoped it was enough. Sometimes it wasn’t.

He pivoted, again scanning the circle of the room, praying for a sign of movement or consciousness, and found none. He took a deep breath, and coughed on the gathering smoke.

“If you can’t save all, save one,” Master Kerrhylon used to tell him.

Baelor returned to the scarred man and offered his arm. “If you can walk, we have to get moving now. I’m Baelor.”

The scarred man stared at the arm, the open hand, as if he’d never seen such a gesture before. Something flickered then in his eyes, something dire that Baelor misliked, but so fleeting it might have been a reflection of the cinders floating around them.

The man’s own hand snapped out, grasping Baelor’s forearm. “Maekar,” he replied, his voice creaking. Baelor grasped Maekar’s arm in response, and for a moment they held the clasp, meeting each other's gaze. No dramatic visions of dragons this time around, and the tadpole in Baelor’s skull seemed content and still. If there was any purpose for conjuring a vision of dragons the first time they looked at each other, the tadpole offered no insight.

“Come.” Baelor let go of Maekar’s arm, and tilted his head towards the smoking gap in the hull.

But as he and Maekar got their first look outside, Baelor knew in an instant they weren’t getting out that way. A blast of furnace-hot air slammed their faces. Through veils of smoke, they looked out upon a vista of bare rock and jagged mountains. Islands of stone hung scattered through an iron-colored sky, gravity be damned. The underside of the dark clouds above winked with red lighting and blazing brimstone falling like meteors. Gouts of fire sputtered and spat from vents in the rocky ground, and a river of blood twisted its way across the land. The broken hull led out to nothing, no path of escape unless one were inclined to climb the curl of the nautiloid itself, trusting questionable handholds and one’s own agility.

Neither of us can make such a climb. Probably not even on a good day.

Baelor didn’t need to cast Detect Evil to feel an infernal presence permeating the very air itself, an energy that stung and prickled his skin like hundreds of tiny ant bites. It was as tangible as the heat that was already making rivulets of sweat drip down his face and catch, tickling and itchy, in his beard.

“We’re in one of the Hells,” he announced. “Avernus, by the looks of it.”

Even saying it out loud, it still seemed unreal, like something from a ridiculous dream. He coughed out a laugh at himself, that he could relay this as just another piece of information, instead of having the pants-shitting breakdown the situation really warranted.

Maekar looked at him curiously. The poor man probably thought he was stuck with a lunatic.

“Just laughing at the absurdity.” Baelor dragged both hands down his face; his palms came away damp with sweat and streaked with black soot. “This morning, I broke my fast in a lower city alley. Stale bread with apricot jam. The dregs of yesterday’s coffee. It was all so very normal. And now I’m in Hell.” He grinned at Maekar with a confidence he did not feel. “We’ll get out of here. Maybe not by this route…but we’ll get out of here.”

I don’t know how we’re getting out of here.

The Hells were, by design, typically a one-way trip. Unless you had access to a handy portal.

Or a plane-hopping mind flayer ship…

The thought lingered—not yet a plan, but the seed of one, half-formed and taking root. It had about as much likelihood of success as the Platinum Dragon himself swooping in to rescue them, but the audacity of it was a point in its favor. It was irrational, stupid, and completely mad, therefore the last thing their mind flayer captors might expect. It might even allow him to save the rest of the captives, if absolutely everything else went right.

“I think I have an idea…but we have to act now. If the mind flayers spot us, we must pretend to be thralls. Obedient slaves. If we can get to the helm, we have a chance. Will you trust me?”

The scarred man—Maekar—stared at him as if he didn’t quite understand his words, and the moment stretched into a longer silence, until Baelor began to wonder if the scar he’d felt under his companion’s hair indicated a deeper, more dire injury than a simple Lay on Hands could fix. Finally Maekar dipped his bloodstained head in an awkward nod, as if remembering how to do it. As if even this simple gesture had gone unused for a long time.

Maekar cleared his throat. “What’s your plan?” Maekar’s voice was deeper than his own, and as rough as if his throat were full of grit, but Baelor was glad to hear it.

“The flayer opened this room with a thought. We can try to do the same, since we carry their parasites. The ship may respond to us as one of its own.” He was working on wild assumptions and hope, but it was better than nothing. “And if it does, then we take over the ship, and jump it back to the Material Plane.” A lot of things would have to happen between getting out of the nursery and taking over the ship, but one step at a time.

Master Kerrhylon would be laughing at me now. I used to get so vexed when she’d say “I’m making this up as I go along.” And here I am, living up to her example.

A frown creased Maekar’s face, as if he immediately saw the weaknesses in this proposed plan. His jaw clenched, grinding his teeth first to the right, then the left. After another moment, he managed another nod, jerking his head up and down stiffly. The sweat popping out on his face was starting to leave tracks through the blood-smears. “All right. I’m in.”

“We’ll lean on each other, and make our way.” They were of a similar height, and it was easy to let Maekar put a hand on his shoulder, steadying himself as they retreated from the gap. He rested his own hand on Maekar’s shoulder in turn, finding a reassuringly broad shelf of thick muscle under his fingers.

We might need that muscle before this is over.

“Wait.” Maekar took another look around the room, his craggy face creasing in a deeper scowl. He stumbled towards the unconscious Yartar city guard, Baelor keeping pace as he realized Maekar’s intention. His scarred companion reached up and fumbled with the buckles on the guard’s belt.

Good idea, Baelor realized. I should’ve thought of it. As Maekar came away with the guard’s longsword and scabbard in hand, Baelor found himself smiling. My new friend might be a bit scrambled, but he’s no fool.

Maekar studied the sheathed longsword; one hand stretched and flexed, as if he thought about gripping the hilt. Suddenly he turned and pushed it against Baelor’s chest. “You take it,” he said.

"Are you certain?” Baelor wondered idly why Maekar seemed eager to get the sword out of his hands, but he couldn’t deny he was glad for the weapon. He unbuckled his own cracked leather belt and let it drop, along with the empty scabbard; it took only a moment to buckle the new belt and let the weight of the new blade settle comfortably at his hip. “We can search the others for a different weapon, if you don’t want a sword.”

“No,” Maekar snapped. “Just…let’s go.”

Baelor took a deep breath, coughing again on smoke. And now we test my theory. If it doesn’t work out…perhaps we’ll see how the flesh and cartilage of this vessel yields to a blade.

He began another circuit of the nursery, this time ignoring the pods and touching the wall itself, one hand probing flat against the moist surface, seeking some give, some opening that might indicate an exit. Maekar watched him curiously for a few moments, but seemed to quickly get the idea; he slid away from Baelor’s hand and pressed both of his own palms to the wall of their prison, moving in the opposite direction.

“Feels like raw meat,” Maekar muttered. Baelor silently agreed; it did remind him, unpleasantly, of handling a freshly-skinned kill, preparing meat for roasting over an open campfire. The stink of the slowly-cooking nursery, however, was not like boar or venison or rabbit or any other wild game. It was metallic and pungent, and the walls seeped with a thin slime coating that smelled faintly, to Baelor’s mind, of vinegar, salt, and chalk.

He did not have time to think on it overmuch though, as his hands passed over what felt like a long slit in the wall, sealed for now, but the tadpole in his head twitched energetically, like an excited child expecting gifts on Caravance morning. Baelor slid a finger along the seam, testing…

The tadpole eagerly supplied a vision The wall parting along the seam like a curtain Yielding to his…

[[Authority.]]

And the living wall of the nursery chamber bent to his will, to his desire, to the image in his head of an opened passageway. The seam split and peeled apart with a wet squelch, revealing a short tunnel and a larger chamber beyond. Fresh air filled Baelor’s lungs. The tadpole shivered, and a sympathetic tremor of pleasure ran through Baelor’s body, leaving him gasping. It lasted but a moment, but the feeling was unmistakable, as was the calm satisfaction that seemed to radiate from the tadpole. As if it…liked being used.

Baelor filed that away for later consideration.

A dead mind flayer lay slumped in the corridor beyond, silver blood pooling from deep slashes in its throat and guts. Its eyes were dark holes, no spark of life or thought.

Baelor startled as Maekar appeared at his side, staring down at the flayer’s body and studying it as if committing the sight to memory. His gaze was avid, alive, almost excited, the way his nostrils flared and his skin flushed pink.

He looks the way I felt a moment ago, Baelor thought.

“Maekar?”

The scarred man shivered and looked away blinking, as if waking up from a bad dream. “Our luck holds.”

Baelor offered a weak smile and rested his hand on Maekar’s shoulder again, and together they made their escape from the nursery.

The room that stretched out before them was longer than it was wide, and cavernous, open to the outside at one end with visible light beyond and a view of flashing sky. A semicircular section of the deck was cut out in the middle of the chamber, leaving a gap in the floor one could jettison a cart through. The gap was split by a dark, arrowhead-shaped platform with a strange, flower-like console at the broader end of it, tall as an average human, with dull red petals surrounding a central cluster of tiny villi, like the floret disk of a mutated, nightmare sunflower.

Fires guttered here as well, low and smoky, slowly smothered by moisture that seemed to weep from the walls and deck. But it was different from the womb-like, close confines of the nursery; this room seemed more of a laboratory.

At least, the goblin laid out and dissected on a table to their immediate right indicated something of the sort.

Beyond the goblin, along the right side of the room, there appeared to be workstations, with high-backed seats and crescent-shaped desks that seemed to be made of the same hard, twisted black material that had kept them bound in their pods. The curving desks were shaped like the jagged claws of huge crustaceans, surrounded by jars of brains and less-recognizable specimens…frond-like plant things cultivated in vats of glowing red liquid that bubbled languidly. The jars themselves seemed to be growing from the nautiloid floor itself, organically part of its living structure.

It was alien, and yet Maekar could not shake the feeling that he’d seen something similar before.

Jars of organs. Bodies cut open for inspection.

Maekar studied the dead goblin, its open body cavity laid bare all the way down to the bloody spine, entrails and organs removed. Standing over a corpse was a familiar thing as well, as familiar as the idea of organ jars. Too familiar. Too comfortable. The stink of the creature’s blood and emptied corpse did not sicken him, did not make him wince in disgust the way it did Baelor, as the man reached out to pick up a rune-covered slate next to the body—left there like some sort of forgotten physician’s notes.

“Poor blighter,” Baelor murmured. “May Kelemvor guide him in the lands of the dead—”

Any further prayer was cut short as Baelor’s fingers brushed against the rune slate. Images flooded Maekar’s mind, a rushing river overflowing with

[[Goblins, goblin species, goblin histories, goblin weapons, goblin traditions, goblin booyahgs hurling fire and goblin sharp-eyes shooting arrows, prayers to Maglubiet and myriad obscenities and curses in Ghukliak]]

Baelor staggered back, breaking the connection with the slate as it slipped from his hand and clattered to the deck. Maekar swayed and caught himself on the dissection table just before he could pitch over.

For a long, long moment, he thought his head might explode. When he finally looked up to meet Baelor’s gaze, he appeared similarly overwhelmed.

“That,” Baelor finally said, still blinking with wide, stunned eyes, “was more than I ever needed to know about goblins.”

"What…the fuck…just happened?” Maekar gritted out between his teeth. His head still pounded with the tread of a million goblins marching in unison, singing “Pillaging Villages Dawn To Dusk,” clashing their pot-metal pikes and beating human-skin war drums.

“The tadpole, I think. I touched the rune slate and it connected us to the hive mind, for a moment. Specifically, all their research about goblins.”

Brainfogged or not, Maekar knew he didn’t like the idea of interacting with a flayer hive mind any more than necessary. It was like plucking on a giant spiderweb: sooner or later, you’d get a monster’s attention. “Baelor?"

“Yes?”

“Don’t touch things.”

Baelor nodded slowly. “You’re right…if a touch connects us to the hive mind, then the hive can connect right back to us. Let’s keep moving.” He rested one hand on Maekar’s shoulder again, a weight both reassuring and oddly unsettling.

Maekar wasn’t sure Baelor should touch him, either. Not when the monster might be me…

[[Help us.]]

A plaintive little voice echoed in their heads, freezing them both in place.

“Did you…” Baelor looked at Maekar, then around the room. “Did you hear that?”

“No,” Maekar insisted. “Keep walking.”

[[We are trapped.]]

“It sounds like a child.” Baelor said. The little voice that spoke directly into their heads did sound childlike, high and meek and frightened.

“It sounds like bait,” Maekar pointed out, feeling his jaw tense up. He had to work it a few times to loosen it enough to keep talking. “You just said if we can touch the hive mind, the hive can find us. Maybe it just did.”

Appearing helpless was a fine way to lure victims—appearing helpless, or hurt. Another piece of knowledge Maekar couldn’t account for, didn’t know why it was in his head, and wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

“Then why resort to tricks?” Baelor turned about slowly, inspecting the room. “Why not just mind control a couple of wayward thralls like us and be done with it?” He glanced upward, his attention caught by a second level on the other side of the room. “There’s a platform. And something’s up there.”

To Maekar, it looked like just more brain jars and alien horticulture on the platform above, but Baelor was already heading towards it as if summoned.

“What about ‘let’s keep moving?’” Maekar said, following close behind. His legs felt steadier under him, but he didn’t want to let Baelor get too far away. Even if he was starting to irritate.

“We are moving,” Baelor replied. “Towards someone calling for help.”

On cue, the childish voice sang out in their heads again, pleading. [[Help us. We will perish here.]]

Maekar realized he was grinding his teeth. “Why are you so stubborn?” He couldn’t keep the irritation out of his voice now.

Baelor didn’t look at Maekar immediately; he was studying the platform, looking for a way up. “I made an Oath,” he murmured. “To help those in need. Wouldn’t you want help, if it was you?” He tilted his head to gaze sideways at Maekar then, fey eyes searching in a way that made Maekar feel as though he were being measured. Not condemned in judgement, but still measured.

It was not a good feeling. For a moment, Maekar had a flash of an image

gouging out those eyes that cut straight through to his core

And then shame flooded him, a tightness that bound his chest and made him feel as though he should curl in upon himself and try to disappear.

“I think you’d stop to help,” Baelor said quietly. “Even if I weren’t here.”

Maekar wasn’t so sure of that. He wondered what Baelor perceived, that he could say such a thing. He wondered even more that a sudden desire flared deep inside, wanting to be whatever it was Baelor saw in him. The wonder beyond all that was that he would even want to, when Baelor was proving to be as troublesome as he was magnetic. He was on the arrowhead-shaped platform now, examining the glowing flower-structure, and Maekar strode up behind him a second too late to stop him from prodding the damned thing.

“We just agreed not to—” Maekar cut himself off as the platform jolted and began to rise. “Not to touch things,” he finished with a sigh.

Baelor glanced over his shoulder with a grin that transformed his solemn face into something boyishly mischievous, at least for a moment. “No harm was done. I sensed no connection to the hive. We must learn what we can of their strange machinery, if we are to use it to escape.”

His grin vanished when the lift jolted again, docking against the second-level platform, and they had a clear view of a shirtless prisoner reclined in a chair that seemed part insect, part surgical table. More brain jars lined the wall behind the victim, the containers seemingly growing out of the floor like stalagmites in a cave.

Baelor and Maekar exchanged glances, then step by slow step, approached the body in the chair with all the caution of a pair of feral cats. It felt natural to Maekar, as if they had been working together for a long time before this, and knew how to match each other without words. The prisoner jerked once, a twitch of arms and legs that immediately fell limp again, and it took them up short for a breath, but then they continued their careful approach.

It was an elf, Maekar could now see. A shirtless elf, with the elegant features and long, pointed ears of his race, but his face was blank, staring, mouth wide in a lopsided gape, eyes half rolled-up in his head. His bare chest was still, with no rise and fall to indicate that he might be among the living.

As they rounded the back of the chair, it became clear the elf was never getting up again.

“By Bahamut’s claw.” Baelor whispered.

The top of the elf’s skull was completely removed, exposing the dome of a pink, fleshy brain.

And then the brain began to move, jiggling around against the hard edges of bone that kept it contained.

[[Yes! You’ve come to save us from this place. From this place you’ll free us!]]

Baelor looked faintly ill; Maekar found himself cautiously leaning closer, peering at the exposed, quivering brain.

[[Hurry! Before they return. They return.]]

“What devilry is this?” Maekar frowned.

[[A newborn. Born new from this husk.]]

Baelor’s mouth tightened as he studied the brain, tilting his head like a particularly critical bird of prey. “It’s an intellect devourer. A mind flayer minion. They usually guard illithid colonies in the Underdark. I’ve never seen one in the…infant stage, though.”

[[Remove us from this body. From this case, free us. Please.]] The tiny voice chimed pitifully in their heads. The dead elf’s head twitched back and forth, jaw working silently, like a marionette controlled by broken strings and an inexpert hand.

Baelor leaned closer, studying the trapped brain. Maekar wanted to warn him not to get too close—there was no telling if the thing might jump out of the skull and attack, but he was already too close, running his fingers along the edge of the sawed-off skull. “Edema,” Baelor murmured. “Swelling. It’s trapped. We’ll have to be careful not to compress it too much when we pry it loose.”

“You’re not going to set this thing free?” Maekar felt himself scowling again. It was a comfortable expression, like he’d done it often in his life before whatever this was. “You said it’s a flayer minion. An enemy.”

“It’s not an enemy yet.”

“So we kill it before it becomes one.”

“It’s helpless.”

“Best time to strike.”

“The creature has made no threat, and done no evil yet. I cannot harm an innocent.”

“I can,” Maekar replied bluntly, and raised his hand to plunge it into the brain.

Yes a brain full of holes, like your own, tear the soft whorls apart, sink your fingers into the tissue and crush it like jelly—

Baelor caught Maekar’s wrist. Maekar glared; Baelor held his gaze, unblinking. Maekar felt his lip curling as something angry and feral coiled inside…and then he felt it shrink away from Baelor’s steady regard, a look that told of conviction solid as mountains, unyielding as a storm. The feral viciousness inside Maekar curled up in a corner of his soul, grumbling and baring its teeth, but it remained cowed.

“Fine,” Maekar grunted. “But if it attacks, I’m turning it into a smear on the wall.”

“If it attacks us after we help it, it will have earned that fate,” Baelor agreed, his intensity of a moment ago now quelled, as if he’d shuttered a lantern that had been blazing bright in the dark. He turned back to the open skull and carefully sank his fingers between the bone and the swollen brain. As Maekar watched the attempted extraction, hearing the wet sounds and seeing the dead elf’s body twitching madly, slack-jawed face still conveying a look of horror even though no life gleamed in those rolled-up eyes, fleeting images passed through his own brain like smoke billowing from fire.

His own hands removing brains. Removing organs. Nestling them in jars filled with everwater, preserving…

Trophies.

“Aha!” Baelor exclaimed triumphantly, as the brain slid free of the skull with a sucking sound. It jiggled in his hands, and…jumped to the floor. There was no other word for it. It jumped, animated wildly by a will of its own.

Several thin tentacles sprouted from the brain, whipping around like the tails of agitated rats. The creature tilted to the right and then left, as four squat little legs unfolded from the brain-body, and it sat before Baelor and Maekar like a bizarre dog. The legs, Maekar noticed, ended in wickedly thick, sharp black claws.

[[We are free! Our freedom is ours! Friends!]]

“I think it likes us,” Baelor murmured, wiping his hands on the cuffs of his gambeson.

“Oh, wonderful.” Maekar eyed the intellect devourer, wondering idly if he could kick it into the wall and claim self-defense. It tried to whip me with one of those tentacles. “I suppose you’ll try to make friends with the mind flayers next.”

“If that will get us closer to the helm,” Baelor replied.

[[To the helm!]] The intellect devourer bounced eagerly on its crouching legs, and Maekar felt the worm behind his eye perk up…paying attention. [[We must go to the helm. At the helm we are needed.]]

Baleor and Maekar exchanged glances. “You can lead us to the helm?” Baelor asked the creature.

[[Yes! We are needed to navigate. To leave this place. There are enemies. So many enemies.]]

Maekar rolled his eyes as Baelor grinned at him, but it was more of a conspiratorial grin, rather than the look of a man who’d been proven right and wanted to rub your face in it. “As you said, Maekar, our luck holds.”

“For now,” Maekar said. “So what do we call this thing? Brain?”

[[Us. We are Us.]]

“Very well, Us. Lead the way.” Baelor gestured to the lift. The creature scurried ahead.

[[To the helm we go! My friends and I are going to the helm!]]

“I hope you don’t mean to keep it, when you get to the Material Plane,” Maekar muttered as they got back on the lift. “I don’t trust it.”

“It’s true, we might gain unwanted attention with an intellect devourer following along,” Baelor said. The lift jerked away from the platform and drifted back down to the lower deck, settling with a softer landing than it had granted when it went to the upper platform.

Maekar cocked his head, thinking over Baelor’s words as they stepped off the lift and followed the creature that called itself Us. “We? You want to stay together?”

“We share the same problem. It makes sense to stay together while we look for a healer who can remove these tadpoles.” Baelor’s expression was solemn once again. “We have seven days to do it, at most. We’ll need to help each other.”

There was that word again, help. Help each other. Maekar, to his surprise, found he liked the idea. It was better than facing this alone. Unbidden, he rested his hand on Baelor’s shoulder again as they followed Us onto the nautiloid’s outer deck.

The footing was uneven, with a little give—again, more like a bodily organ of pink muscle and glistening tissue rather than a construct of metal. To their right rose the great curve of the nautiloid shell, broken in places and exposing what seemed to be tendons as thick as a man. To their immediate left—a deadly drop into thin air, sure to end with a wet splat on the banks of the Styx. Maekar and Baelor kept close to the shell, trying to keep as much distance between themselves and the edge as possible, while Us capered and bounced excitedly as it led them along.

A red dragon soared above, the wind of its beating wings enough to throw them against the nautiloid shell.

“The dragons followed us even here!” Baelor exclaimed, as the massive beast vanished around the curve of the deck, tail trailing behind it. “Extraordinary.”

Maekar grunted, putting an arm around Baelor to hurry him along. When they got back to the Material Plane he could gawp at dragons to his heart’s content. Once they got rid of the tadpoles, at least. “Is it?”

“For Githyanki to follow mind flayers even into Hell? Yes. There must be something on this ship they want dearly, and it’s not just to collect a few flayer heads. I wonder who the Githyanki prisoner was.”

"Someone important?” Maekar wondered.

Before Baelor could respond, Maekar felt a warning twinge at the back of his neck, some awareness of danger about to strike from behind. Baelor must have felt the same, because they turned as one—

Just in time to see the Githyanki woman in silver armor sailing over their heads in an impossible leap, sword in hand. She landed neatly in front of them with unexpected grace, blocking their way.

“Abominations!” The githyanki warrior brought up her sword in an offensive guard position, holding the blade horizontally at shoulder-level, knees bent and ready to spring in a lunge forward. The blade was close enough that Maekar could see notches in the metal. “Thrall filth, I should have ended you! A mistake I shall now rectify.”

Notes:

Father Lorgan’s letter had brought him to Baldur’s Gate, a place he once called home, but these days avoided unless there was need. Which was exactly the word Lorgan used. “I need your help, old friend. Every day, more of our people go missing, and the Flaming Fist are useless.” No surprise there; Baelor had never known the Fist to care much for the poor, or to be there when the innocent needed protection. What did surprise him was the elderly priest’s next line: “I fear they are not falling to simple misfortune. There are murders in the city, more than usual, and bloodier than usual. Whispers of some kind of cult activity. I do not know if it is a resurgence of the Murder God’s followers, or the Cult of the Dragon reborn, or some new mischief altogether.”

After a good deal of digging and too many pints of cheap ale, his quest led him into a lower city alley near the Blushing Mermaid, following a pair of thugs who’d caught his attention particularly for the strange pendants they both wore: a skull marked with a handprint, above an inverted triangle. The sight of it had made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle up, as if something foul and cold suddenly skated against his skin and then vanished.

He thought he’d kept enough distance to go unnoticed. Instead he walked right into an ambush. Fool. The moment I found myself alone, I should have dodged the attack coming from behind.

A blow to the head, and now he was bound. Not immobilized by common rope or chain, but—

Bones?

No—not bones, but something more akin to bone than iron. Something…

Organic.

Wet, slimy, and hard, black as tar, with a gnarled surface similar to twisted tree roots. There was a slickness to it as well, like the carapace of a roach. Not like any bones he’d ever felt. But the bonds were riblike, the way they wrapped about him and held him fast in the close confines of this...rib coffin. The ribs shifted ever-so-slightly, like teeth loose in their sockets, but their give was deceptive, their hold resilient; they kept him secure and upright, angled just enough that when he craned his head to look upwards, he could make out some kind of bas-relief carved into the dark ceiling above. The chiseled, pitted ceiling reminded Baelor of a sea cave, the kind that might empty at low tide, leaving behind dripping rock and ocean slugs.

The floor of the prison was less the texture of rock and more like the ridged striations of raw muscle. Baelor breathed deep and tasted stale dead air—sour, musty and faintly metallic, a stink of old blood.

Against his back, the rib coffin shifted and pulsed, a slow swell and release, as if the very fabric of this place were partly alive. Breathing.

Baelor swallowed the tightness catching his throat, forcing himself to take long, controlled breaths even as his heart began to trip faster, recognizing danger even if he didn’t yet know the manner of it. Panic would not serve. Observe. Assess. Then act. This was no makeshift prison in a smuggler’s warehouse, nor dank cargo hold of a slave ship. This was not Baldur’s Gate.

It was not, as far as he could tell, the handiwork of any native race of Faerûn. Which left a few possibilities, all terrible, all adding up to the very strong chance that he was fucked.

The only question was the exact nature of the fuckery.

His prison was a circular room, with a squat central pod, as long as a man and chest-high, sitting like a great slime-glistening toad in the middle of the chamber. It was shaped like a fat, onion-shaped flower, petals folded inward, but not sealed tight enough to stop a pale orange-gold light from spilling out between the gaps. Coffin-pods identical to his own ringed the room. The prison itself was dark, but each pod glowed with dull red light that oozed into the shadows, not strong enough to fully illuminate but enough to help make out some details.

It helped, too, that his eyesight was better in the dark than a true human’s. One of the few benefits of his mongrel blood, courtesy of an elven father he’d never met, and a human mother who, every once in a while, he wished he’d never known.

Most of the pods appeared to be empty, but as Baelor allowed his eyes to adjust, he could see two other prisoners.

Directly across from Baelor, trapped in a pod on the far side of the room, there was a man. Human-sized, human-shaped, with a shock of pale hair partly obscuring his face, and a short beard as white as the hair on his head. He could tell little else about the prisoner; the man sagged in his bindings, head bowed as if in sleep.

To Baelor’s right, if he craned his head enough, he could just make out a woman trapped in another pod, and she too appeared to be unconscious. Yellow-green skin, dark mottling around her closed eyes, tiny batlike nose, notched ears longer than an elf’s. She wore a silvery cuirass that gleamed under the dark rootlike ribs of her coffin.

How did they capture a Githyanki? Baelor wondered. They’re ferocious warriors. Githyanki were a rare sight, and never one you wished to encounter, for it would likely be the last thing you ever saw. And you never found one alone. But here was a lone Gith, and she was a prisoner like himself.

Baelor took physical inventory. Other than the slightly-faded headache and a tenderness where he’d been struck, he found no injuries. Some dizziness, and the tingling residue of fading magic—maybe they’d dosed him with a potion, to keep him under long enough for transport. Feet were a little numb, but the circulation came back fast once he started wiggling his toes. He still wore the mail shirt and nondescript leathers of his mercenary guise; he’d left his good armor and gear, with the azure-and-argent dragon tabard, back at Sharess’s Caress. Nym and Sorn would keep it safe until—if—he returned.

Grunting with effort against the tight hold of his confines, he managed to bend his elbow enough to touch his belt, and spanned his fingers out to feel for the hilt of his short sword. Empty. He could tell his abductors had confiscated the dagger in his boot, too. That complicated things. He could channel some magic, but he preferred a blade.

Baelor rubbed the fingers on his right hand against each other, and felt the reassuring weight of his mother’s ring. One good thing about it being worthless—even thieves and plunderers weren’t interested.

Hopefully his Oath signet ring, which he’d hidden away, had gone unnoticed.

Across the room, the white-haired man was yet to stir. The Githyanki slept on, her head reclined back against the gnarled back of her coffin. If Baelor was to help them, he’d have to get out of his own bonds first. He shifted in their grasp as much as they would allow, testing their strength, testing for weak points.

This wouldn’t be the first cage he’d had to break out of. There were always weaknesses.

After what seemed like ages, but was probably only a few frustrating minutes, Baelor heard a wet, tearing sound, like hide pulled from the meat of a carcass. For a moment, his heart leapt with hope that the sound was the tearing of some cartilaginous connection, and the bars of his coffin would give way. Instead, a section of the wall to his left pulled apart like a fleshy curtain, and a rectangle of light spilled into the room.

A figure stood in silhouette, casting a long shadow across the pitted floor.

It was humanoid, in the sense that it had a discernible head, trunk, two arms and two legs. But as Baelor’s sensitive eyes adjusted to the sudden light, he could see it was the furthest thing possible from human. It had a high-crested, purple-skinned head, and a long, bony face. Tiny orange eyes glowed like coal embers within deep sockets. Four rubbery tentacles dangled where a mouth should be, hanging nearly to the creature’s waist. It wore a stiff wide collar and kilt that seemed less like fabric, and more like the ridged, chitinous exoskeleton of an insect, as if the armor itself was as organic as the creature that wore it. Baelor tensed as an icy chill spread from the pit of his stomach up into his chest.

Mind flayer.

Baelor had always favored making prayer of one’s deeds, rather than words, ever since he devoted himself to Bahamut the Justicemaker and took up his Oath as a paladin. But he could not stop from whispering a prayer now.

Lord Bahamut, cover me with your wings, let your scales be my shield...

In spite of himself, his breath came fast and hard and loud in the closeness of the coffin. His heart galloped in his chest, hammering through the pulse in his neck and up into his head, where the fading headache suddenly increased threefold.

The mind flayer ignored him. It rose a few inches off the floor, levitating as it entered the room, propelled by nothing but the psionic powers its kind were known and feared for. It lofted one hand in a lazy and strangely regal gesture towards the Githyanki woman; the rootlike ribs near her face crunched wetly as they slid back while the rest of her bonds stayed in place, keeping her pinned from the chest down. The mind flayer did not even look at her as she began to stir, shifting her head back and forth and blinking rapidly as she took in her surroundings.

It drifted towards the bulbous pod in the middle of the room. The container split open to some unspoken command, petals peeling apart and spreading with a sticky squelch, mucus stretching between them; the glow from the pod, previously filtered through cracks between the petals, now filled the room as the thing opened to give up its secrets.

A sharp, sour scent of brine and bile filled the room. Baelor’s stomach turned over, threatening to send the Blushing Mermaid’s ale back up the way it came.

The mind flayer reached inside the open pod and drew out…something. Baelor could not see exactly what it was—just a tiny wet gleam on the mind flayer’s claw.

A tiny wet gleam that moved.

The flayer turned towards the Githyanki woman. She was fully awake now, grunting as she fought the bindings of her pod. Her silver breastplate gleamed bright against the dark twisted bones holding her fast. The tiny braids of her hair swung around her face as she twisted, growling between clenched teeth.

The flayer lifted a hand in a slow and careless gesture, and the Githyanki woman went rigid against the back of her pod, head held straight as if from an invisible grip. She panted like a rabbit caught in a snare, awake and aware but not in control of her body. The flayer raised the other hand, bringing the wriggling wet gleam to her face. Whatever paralysis the flayer held her with, it did not stop her from bellowing a roar of pain and...disgust. A sound of outrage that seemed dragged up from her deepest self, muffled by the moist flesh of their prison when it would have rung out and echoed against proper stone. The mind flayer backed away, and she fell silent, sagging against her bonds.

Tadpoles. Mind flayer tadpoles, Baelor realized, and he surged against his restraints, blood pounding faster as he fought their hold. This was no slave prison.

It was a nursery. A forced reproduction center.

The mind flayer turned back to the open pod and reached in again. The coffin ribs near Baelor’s face drew back, exposing him to receive the tadpole that would turn him from a man into a mind flayer...

Baelor threw himself against the bonds with all his strength. They gave an inch, then held. He slammed himself against them again. Something cracked, and he felt a give, a loosening.

The flayer turned to face him, holding up another glinting tadpole that wriggled and twisted in its pinched claws like an angry child trying to break free from its mother's grasp.

His bonds were looser—he could bend his arm enough to brace one palm against one of the ribs holding him in place, and he shoved, using the back of his coffin for leverage. He felt the rib start to bend—

The flayer closed in, and the tadpole stretched and reached towards Baelor as if it knew where to go.

Baelor stopped trying to break free, and instead focused his will into a dagger-point, drawing deep on what magic he could summon to drive a single Command into the flayer’s skull:

RUN.

The Command died even as he drew breath to say it. The mind flayer’s psionic power pinned him back, held him fast, held his eyes wide open as it raised the glistening tadpole to his face. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t turn away, couldn’t fight.

The tadpole was maggot-pale and bristled with tiny hairs. An inch from Baelor’s eye, it opened a round maw, revealing tiers upon circular tiers of needlelike fangs. Thin tentacles sprouted from the parasite, grasping for him, and Baelor cried out in helpless fury and revulsion as it lunged into his eye, forcing itself under his eyelid, penetrating, violating—

–taking him using him–

The last shred of awareness Baelor had before he passed out was the feel of it burrowing into his brain, and the despairing knowledge that his body was no longer his own.

Lae’zel’s entire being narrowed down to the wretched pulsing in her eye socket, the slither along her optic nerve, the squirming in her brain as the tadpole burrowed deeper. Shock obliterated all else, and her own body would not obey her.

That, if anything, was what finally allowed her to focus—a swelling rage at losing control of herself.

I am Lae’zel of K’liir—I will not be ghaik! Her mouth would not work, so she thought it, screamed it to herself as if the fury of her words alone might burn the tadpole from the folds of her brain. If she could, she would tear her own eye out, plunge her fingers into the soft brain tissue to rip out the invader.

I will not be ghaik!

Every breath of her life, from the moment she hatched with her clutch, had been spent preparing to hunt ghaik. She’d honed her blades on some of those clutch-mates, the ones who were too weak or too stupid to survive the rigors of their training. It was the sole reason she existed, to be Vlaakith’s blade in the war against ghaik—those Illithid abominations the istik called “mind flayers.” Her people were enslaved by the Illithid Empire for thousands of years, forced to labor, to be experimented upon, even bred for food—until Great Mother Gith led the uprising that brought the Empire low.

It was the purpose of every Githyanki hatched since then to keep it from ever rising again.

After proving herself as part of a combat unit, Lae’zel had been granted the honor of her first solo mission: to slay a ghaik on her own and take its head, and in doing so, prove herself worthy of Ascension.

To her shame, the ghaik had caught her instead.

But there was still a chance to set things to rights, if she could get free. If she fulfilled her mission and took a ghaik head back to her Sa’varsh, she could be cleansed of the tadpole. She might still find favor with Vlaakith, the Undying Queen. She might still Ascend to bear a silver sword and ride a red dragon, like the greatest of her kin.

Lae’zel’s fingers twitched as she thought of her own sword—she felt it still in the sheath on her back, pressed hard against her spine. Good. Her body was becoming hers again, at least as much as could be with a tadpole scurrying through her brain. It would obey her. She would make it obey.

I am Lae’zel of K’liir—I will not be ghaik! She forced her lips to form the words of the Tla’ket, praying for strength: Vlaakith’ka sivim hrath krash’ht. Only in Vlaakith may we find light. Vlaakith, tavi na’zim. Vlaakith, open the truth to us.

I will not be ghaik!

She blinked, finding her eyes could focus again, although the left one still burned and throbbed as though it would burst. She watched in simmering hate, hands clenching so hard that her claws drew blood from her palms, as the ghaik abomination glided past her again, exiting the nursery back the way it came. The thing spared her not even a glance, as if she were of no consequence, its only interest in her being to seed her with a tadpole.

When she broke free, it would find out just how big of a mistake that was.

Two istik shared her prison. Males, if the breadth of their shoulders and the hair on their faces were true indicators. It could be difficult to tell with istik. But one thing was almost certain: they would be useless in a fight. Useful only to the ghaik themselves, for making more ghaik. One of them still leaned heavily against his bonds, head bowed, face obscured by a curtain of white hair. The other, the dark-haired one on the opposite side of the room, lay with his face angled away from her. His chest rose and fell with rapid, shallow breaths.

No matter. The istik were thralls now, subjugated by their tadpoles and enslaved to the hive mind. She herself seemed to still have her own wits and will for now, but that was surely due to her rigorous training and preparation.

A vast shudder suddenly ran through the nursery; the bars of her cage, the flesh-floor under her feet, the hard cartilage against her back, all vibrated as if the entire room just heaved a sigh. A heavy groan shook the nursery, then came a deep and continuous rumble, quiet but distinct, accompanied by the more subtle but steady vibration of something vast and ponderous waking from the inertia of rest, and shifting into inexorable motion...

An eldritch nightmare emerged in the sky over the Sword Coast city of Yartar.

First came four long purple-grey tentacles, unfurling from cloud coverage, the underside of each tentacle covered by suckers and spikes. Then the rest of the vessel nosed into view: a flat, open gun deck bristling with armament, whiskery tentacles to port and starboard, and then finally the massive, curling nautilus shell of the main hull itself. It drifted aloft over the city in defiance of gravity and all reason, casting a shadow that swallowed multiple blocks.

The thing’s true size first became evident as it reached out with one of the long forward tentacles, wrapped it around the city’s watchtower, and squeezed. The tallest structure in the city, made of thick stone and solid mortar, crumbled in the middle like dry waybread crushed in a fist. The top of the tower, with its enormous bell, crashed down to the street below in a killing avalanche of rubble. Those bystanders who weren’t crushed, ran. The four great tentacles reached down, grasping for prey in the streets below, needing but to touch one fleeing citizen after the other to pluck them like grapes, and send them, caught and teleported, into the depths of the ship where the tadpoles awaited.

The air inside the nursery suddenly shifted, displaced with an emphatic FFFWMPH. A new istik appeared, trapped in the pod next to Lae’zel: the particles of skin, muscle, tissue, and bone that made up a man, ripped apart from where he’d been and then hurled back together here, captured. This new prisoner wore the armor and tabard of a city guard. Then came a second small explosion of displaced air; another istik, a woman in plain homespun dress, materialized in another one of the pods.

Then came another victim. Another, and another, and more still. One by one, the pods filled in quick succession until the nursery was full of fresh prisoners. All thralls-to-be, doomed to the ceremorphosis that would, over seven days of unspeakable agony, transform them into vile ghaik. Even the lowest of istik did not deserve such a fate.

Lae’zel realized she was trapped not in a rooted colony, but on a nautiloid: an Illithid spelljammer ship, capable of travelling among the stars, hopping between the planes—and more to her immediate concern—transport. Transport of goods, and transport of thralls, using the forward tentacles as teleportation conduits. Standard crew is ten ghaik, with one captain and one first officer, Lae’zel thought, recalling her lessons. Twelve to twenty thralls, usually of the human, dwarf, and elven races. Standard armament: three medium ballistae, one medium catapult, one piercing ram, jettison in the rear. It takes three to man the catapult, two to man each ballista.

My chances are poor. But I am Lae’zel of K’liir, and I will not be ghaik. I will be free, or die in the attempt!

The ship suddenly rocked, throwing Lae’zel against the side of her pod hard enough to knock the breath out of her. Brine from the tadpole nursery splashed out over its open sides, spilling across the floor and scattering dozens of squirming tadpoles. The ship itself let out a mighty groan as if in pain.

It may indeed have been in pain. Lae’zel’s heart gave a jump, sparked with hope that her odds of escape might have just improved.

Outside, the alien ship was suddenly not the only hunter in the sky. Behind the nautiloid shell, a vast whirling black portal yawned wide, splitting the clouds with a ring of silvery-blue magic.

From out of the portal, racing on great leathery wings, roared three red dragons, Githyanki riders crouched on their backs. The Gith rode as daredevils, with no saddle, using only strength, balance, and timing to stay astride. The lead rider aimed his mount for the attack, and the dragon angled its wings to come in low. It sailed close, spewing a trail of fire along the nautiloid’s port side as it streaked past.

A second dragon pounced on the vessel, grasping one of the tentacles along its hull and ripping another tentacle off in its jaws, hurling it away like a piece of frayed, useless rope. Gobbets of ship-flesh splattered in the streets below. The dragon launched itself airborne again and swept around the bow of the ship, coming in range of the gun deck. One of the massive forward tentacles caught it first, swinging around like a titanic arm, smashing into the dragon, knocking it backwards end-over-end in midair. Its rider tumbled off, plummeting towards the open water of the city’s bay. The Githyanki rider fell spreadeagled, bony arms and legs wide as he dropped belly-first towards a bone-shattering impact. Meters from the churning water, his dragon streaked under him, catching the rider, long red tail churning a white wake in the water before it arced up towards the nautiloid again.

A third dragon landed atop the curled crest of the ship, punching open a cart-sized hole into the hull with its claws. The dragon’s flame came with no buildup, no need to pause and draw in on itself; it simply opened its maw and fire spewed out, scorching along a tunnel inside the ship, a blast of heat and distorting haze leading the way down into the nursery...

At the helm, a mind flayer staggered as the ship rocked again. It fired a message to the hive mind with the speed of thought:

[[Threat assessment: outmatched. Subjects obtained, mission complete. Escape is logical.]]

It grasped the navigation transponder to steady itself, then reached for one of the transponder’s tendrils waving before it: a garden of exposed nerves waving like long grass, reaching for connection. The flayer took a different tendril in the other clawed hand, and drew the ends of the two together. Slender filaments reached out, joining together as easily as lovers clasping hands, sealing the connection.

The flayer plucked the newly-joined nerve.

The nautiloid winked out of the sky over Yartar, air slamming into the empty space it left behind with a thunderclap so loud, it shattered windows across dozens of streets below—

—and emerged two hundred miles away, over the frozen peaks of the Spine of the World. The force of air displacement blasted snow and spindly pines off a desolate mountainside, leaving behind bare rock. Still burning, the wounded ship raced on through a narrow canyon, seeking cover from the winds battering the broken hull.

In its wake, another portal spun open, spitting out the three dragons and their Githyanki riders. The dragons shot forward, their beating wings turning the wind in the canyon into a small hurricane as they took aim on the fleeing nautiloid.

The nautiloid rocked back and forth as if shaken by a titan, and lunged into a still-narrower passage, dodging rock cliffs and outcroppings as it tore through ever-smaller openings in the effort to lose its pursuers. It sheared too close to a jagged cliff face and jolted as the rock tore open a gap near its underbelly.

Pale light and frigid cold blasted into the nursery.

Deep in the womb of the nautiloid, awakened by whipping wind and the stink of scorched flesh, something dark stirred. Something with a heart colder than the frigid mountainside, more dangerous than fire, mind flayers, dragons, Githyanki warriors, or paladins and their pathetic Oaths. Something that watched and waited, stoically enduring pain, silently simmering with rage.

When its chance came, it would savage the world.

Snow flurries dusted Baelor’s face and crusted his eyelashes, kisses of frost that melted against the heat of his skin, then froze again from the searing cold that bit through leather and mail down to his bones. The ship shook him like a toy caught in the jaws of an enormous hound. He focused through the pounding in his head, the agony in his right eye that made it feel swollen three times what it should be, and he took in flashes of chaos around him—fire licking along the walls of the nursery, smoke drifting up and thickening along the ceiling where it obscured the bas-relief, ripples of heat coming in waves against the relentless cold, the smell of burning meat, the Githyanki woman squirming and twisting in her pod as she fought to break free—

And then, absurdly, a dragon’s head appeared through the gap in the wall, peering into the prison. It was so incongruous and unexpected, he might have laughed if he’d had time to think about it. The scaly head was too large to fit through the hole, but Baelor could see distinctive large red fins on either side of its face. Red dragon. One of Tiamat’s creatures. Its terrifying aspect might have overwhelmed someone else into fear-paralysis. It might have paralyzed Baelor, under different circumstances.

Instead hope swelled in his chest, filling the spot that instinctively shrank at the dragon’s appearance. The enemy of my enemy, for now. Baelor noted the glowering, intelligent golden eye, the black vertical pupil widening as it looked past him and focused on the trapped Githyanki...and then past her, to the hard and rubbery flesh of the prison itself.

Flesh that reacted to pain. And enough pain might override its mandate to keep the prisoners secured.

At the transponder, the mind flayer regained its balance in time to see the ship hurtling towards a dead end, seconds from slamming into the side of a mountain. Without pause to consider, the flayer seized two random tendrils and stretched them to connect—

Baelor drew a deep breath and shouted in Draconic, making it resonate in his chest, letting his body channel the force of his will into a single word:

“Ixen!”

He never knew if the dragon actually heard him, or if it would have even mattered if it did.

The dragon blasted a plume of fire across the fleshy floor of the prison all the same. Spilled tadpole brine on the floor caught alight in a flash—

–psionic screams echoed in Baelor’s brain, magnified a hundred times as tadpoles turned to ash–

–the nautiloid itself screaming–

Baelor felt his shackles suddenly tighten, clenching almost hard enough that he thought his ribs might crack, as if the vessel recoiled—then it released, giving way, finally sundering.

The ship rocked as the flayer plucked the new connection. The nautiloid blinked out of existence on the Material Plane—

—and emerged with a booming thunderclap over the River Styx, in a sky lit by red lightning.

A tanar’i demon and bearded devil paused in the midst of battle, blade against claw, staring upward in identical looks of gap-mouthed shock. Their moment of distraction cost them dearly, as a heavy war-axe cut down the both of them in a single mighty swing. As they fell, a red-skinned devil with a broken horn, and clad in torn, scorched leather, leaped over their remains, axe hefted in both of her hands. She didn’t waste time or energy looking up and gaping.

She was too busy running for the nautiloid.

In the brimstone sky, a fleet of bat-winged imps stopped short in their race towards the combatants on the ground, and hovered in place as they watched the crippled nautiloid listing over the river of blood, streaming billows of smoke like a wounded animal bleeding out.

With chittering, furious war-cries, they took aim at this new target.

Lae’zel tumbled out of her pod as the rib shackles slid away from her body, and she crashed to the nursery floor with a grunt, hands smacking the floor hard. The sting of impact gave way to her will as she forced herself to gather up and climb to her feet. To her left, the dark-haired istik dropped out of his pod as well, but he hit the floor with less grace, and he lay there dazed and gasping like a stranded fish.

Just as she suspected, weak and useless.

Lae’zel glanced around the room; none of the other istik prisoners were released, and none seemed to be moving. No matter. Her priority remained: she had to escape first, then seek purification. She flexed and clenched her sword hand as she considered the istik on the floor. A thrall now. Helpless. She should kill him and end his suffering, end the potential threat he posed. She should kill them all, really, even the new ones who were not yet infected.

No, she decided. A waste of time, and there was no honor in it. She had enough enemies to kill, between here and the helm, and the broken hull appeared to be her only route of escape that wasn’t blocked by fire. With luck and skill, she could get out through the smoking hole, climb the outside of the nautiloid shell, and drop right onto the gun deck. From there it shouldn’t be far to the helm, if she remembered her studies of ghaik vessel schematics.

As Lae’zel crossed the room and passed under the white-haired istik still trapped in his pod, she spared an upward glance at him and realized he was not unconscious after all. Head bowed, yes—but he watched her from under that fall of white hair over his forehead. Watching with malevolent pale blue eyes that were colder than Wildspace, more feral than a maw demon.

As she turned away and raced for the gap in the hull, Lae’zel thought it a good thing he was still bound.