"All my friends are heathens, take it slow
Wait for them to ask you who you know
Please don't make any sudden moves
You don't know half of the abuse..."
Everyone woke up bright and early the following morning, courtesy of Astarion. "Rise and shine, my darlings," he crooned as the rest of them groaned sleepily. "The sun is up, the birds are singing, and the tadpoles are a-wiggling." His pale skin practically sparkled in the early morning light, and he seemed positively giddy this morning.
Del yawned and stretched, but didn't spend any extra time protesting. He rose quickly, then automatically began to put away and organize the meager supplies their group had found the night before.
"You seem used to this kind of life," Gale noted. "Have you done much traveling before?"
"Yeah, did some camping on the road to Baldur's Gate," Del replied. "But we had proper supplies then, like food and tents and all. It'd be good to find some of those now. Well, that and a healer of course."
Gale nodded, but Del could tell that his busy mind was thinking of more questions to ask. Del hoped the wizard's brief glimpse into his mind the previous night hadn't revealed anything too incriminating. The man was intelligent, and Del didn't think he could hold off any suspicions about his origins for long.
"I think we're ready," he said before Gale could open his mouth again. "Everyone else good? We should get going."
As they set off, Gale let Shadowheart and Astarion in on the ceremorphosis timeline he'd discussed with Del the previous night. The mood among their little group that morning was one of cautious optimism, tempered by the concern that the transformation could still begin at any moment.
That concern, however, was soon replaced by a more immediate worry as they turned a corner and were greeted with the sound of raised voices. Del tightened his grip on the handle of the axe he had found embedded in a tree stump during the previous day's journey, just in case it was needed.
Up ahead, alongside the path, two tieflings stood in a small clearing in the woods. A man and a woman, both staring up at a wooden cage hanging suspended between two trees.
"Zorru was right," said the man. "Yellow as a toad, and twice as ugly."
"That thing's dangerous," agreed the woman. "Leave it for the goblins to kill."
The tiefling man caught sight of their group as they approached. "Step back!" he barked. "That creature is dangerous."
Del looked up and saw with some amusement that the dangerous creature caught in a trap like an animal was Lae'zel, the Githyanki woman from the nautiloid.
Lae'zel stood proudly with her arms crossed in that ridiculous hanging cage, scowling as she met Del's gaze. Though her lips did not move, she unleashed a flood of foreign profanities that the tadpole allowed Del to hear in his mind. Then, she directed the stream of her thoughts in his direction.
You, istik from the ship! Get rid of them, if you know what's good for you.
"Careful, I don't know if we can trust her," Shadowheart warned. "She wasn't exactly friendly on the nautiloid."
Del was inclined to agree. He thought of Lae'zel's first words to him on the ship - she had called him an abomination when she'd thought he was enthralled by the Absolute. What would she do if she found out that her accusation held at least a partial element of truth? Githyanki and illithids were mortal enemies for a reason. But, at the same time, Lae'zel's tone was so demanding and authoritative that something inside Del itched to listen to her. Nothing good had ever come from disobeying a direct command, regardless of who it came from...
The Githyanki wasn't stupid. She could see their hesitation, and began a poor attempt at catching flies with honey instead of vinegar.
I know what grows inside you. And I know where we can find a cure.
Well, that's interesting, Del thought back, trying to project the words in her direction. You sure you're not just saying that so we'll let you out?
He could feel Lae'zel's surge of anger at the question, but she contained herself well enough to think, We must find a Githyanki creche. These... teeth-lings say they have seen my kind before, so there must be a creche nearby. There, we can use the zaith'isk and be purified.
All right, all right, we'll see what we can do, Del acquiesced, at least partially to rid himself of the writhing ball of anxiety that settled in his guts at the thought of refusing her demand. He had no desire to step into a nest full of Githyanki, but if it was the only way to get rid of the tadpole...
"Hello! You there? Should we start charging admission?" The tiefling woman had clearly gotten sick of them just standing there and staring at her prisoner.
"Here, let me handle this," Astarion said. "I have something of a way with words."
Del couldn't quite catch what the pale elf said to the tieflings next, but based on his dramatic hand gestures, he seemed to be exaggerating the threat the Githyanki posed.
"Don't want to deal with that," Del overheard the woman mutter. "We have to get back to camp, anyway. Let them handle it."
It turned out that the tieflings were only too happy to leave the Githyanki to Del and the others, since they needed to be on their way. Apparently they were refugees from the fallen city of Elturel, and the rest of their group had taken shelter with some druids further down the road.
Druids... That might be worth investigating. Weren't druids supposed to be good at healing?
Lae'zel didn't thank them when Gale used a cantrip to blast out the bottom of the cage from under her. (Del found that he was getting used to the sight of magic surprisingly quickly...) Sure, she did get dumped out of the trap rather unceremoniously when the bottom fell out, but Shadowheart still groused that a 'thank you' was in order. Del, for his sake, was just relieved that Lae'zel didn't seem angered by the slight delay.
"I must go to the creche to be purified," the Githyanki announced. "I don't know if they will allow an istik into the zaith'isk , but you are free to follow me and try."
"Do you even know where this creche place is located?" Shadowheart asked.
"Not in exact terms, but it should not be hard to find. I need only to follow the trail of ghaik corpses and the silly rumors of the natives."
The 'silly rumors of the natives' proved to be quite useful, in fact. The tieflings, or "teeth-lings" as Lae'zel called them, had given Astarion directions to the enclave of druids nearby. All they had to do was walk through the forest just a bit further, then skirt around a blighted village and follow the Risen Road until they found it.
Apparently they'd had a bit of bad luck thus far. If they had gone the other direction along the river Chionthar, they would have found it much sooner, but there was nothing that could be done about it now. So the five of them set off in the direction the others had gone before them, giving the ruined houses of the village a wide berth. Apparently the whole town had been taken over by goblins and wasn't safe to enter for those who wanted to keep their heads.
Traveling was much easier once they joined up with the Risen Road. Their group made better time when they no longer had to worry about getting lost or tripping over tree roots, and for some time they walked without incident. However, their streak of good luck didn't last very long.
Astarion spotted the disturbance long before the rest of them. The pale elf squinted further up the road, frowning, and said. "Looks like a fight up ahead. We may want to go around."
"Chk," Lae'zel scoffed. "Your first instinct is to avoid battle? You would have been culled as a child in Creche K'liir."
"In a lot of drow villages, too," Del agreed despite himself. He'd left his first home too young to have any real memory of it, but knew that he would have likely died early in childhood if he'd stayed. Though rather than cowardice, Del's particular crime was that he'd been born half human... "I say we go see what's going on."
"All right, all right," Astarion huffed, sharing an exasperated look with Gale, who also didn't look thrilled at the prospect. "But it's your funeral."
Gale and Astarion insisted on a cautious approach, and so by the time they arrived the fight was already over. A red-skinned tiefling woman with a broken horn stood panting over the fresh corpse of a dark-skinned human, growling obscenities to herself as she wiped the blade of her battleaxe on patched-together leather pants that had clearly seen better days. Del looked at the weapon enviously. What he wouldn't give to have something like that instead of the much smaller woodcutter's axe he'd picked up the day before.
"Some battle," Lae'zel scoffed. "From the way the elf carried on, I expected to see an army."
The tiefling stood up straighter and looked in their direction. Her skin was so red it practically glowed, and Del thought he saw smoke rising off her skin, streaming off Iike mist into the air...
"This isn't what it looks like," she said quickly. "Bastard's been trailing me for weeks. I tried to tell him I wasn't what he thought I was, but he Just. Wouldn't. Listen." She punctuated each word with a kick at the rocks nearby.
Del and the others just stared at the strange woman, not sure if they should reach for their weapons.
"I could've really used a friend after falling off that ship," she continued. "But no, the universe says 'Screw you, Karlach.' What do I get instead? A crazy hunter calling himself the Blade of Frontiers, who thinks I'm some kind of devil! I'm just a tiefling, and I swear to you guys, this was all in self-defense."
One part of the tiefling's rant stood out to Del. "Wait, you were on the ship too? The nautiloid?"
"Yeah! I hitched a ride on it to get out of Avernus, but wasn't expecting to pick up a little hitchhiker of my own. Still, might be worth it, since I managed to escape the war."
"A defector?" Lae'zel asked suspiciously. "Did you just admit to abandoning your comrades in the middle of battle?"
"I don't think it counts, considering I didn't exactly sign up to be in Zariel's army in the first place!" She was getting angry again, and Del could see now that it hadn't been his imagination – the woman was, indeed, actually smoking. Del hadn't met many tieflings before, but somehow he didn't think that was normal for them.
"Zariel?" Gale cut in. "You served a devil in the Blood War?"
"Not by choice!" The woman who had called herself Karlach snapped. "I was kidnapped ten years ago, forced into it. Zariel took my freedom, my literal heart, and the best years of my life. But I'm free now, and you'd better not have any issues with it. And if you do, you'll end up the same way as this guy right here."
Del could tell that, beneath all of Karlach's bluster, she hadn't wanted to kill the man who lay at her feet. "It's okay," he told her, stepping closer to her slowly as he would approach a skittish animal. "I don't know much about the Blood War, but it sounds like this man threatened you, so I get it. You or him, right? I won't judge you for wanting to survive."
Karlach nodded warily, lowering her axe a notch. "Yeah," she said slowly. "Him or me. Didn't help that my nerves were frazzled already after fighting some fake paladins, who were also hunting me, by the way! Ugh, damn it all. I was hoping I could stop killing so much when I got out of the Hells."
"What do you mean, Zariel took your heart?" Gale asked. "You don't look undead to me, and no living being can survive without one."
"And that's where you're wrong. Infernal engine for a heart," the tiefling thumped her chest, which rang with an oddly metallic sound. "Had it for years now, courtesy of Zariel. Keeps me burning hot and helps in battle, but it's been running in overdrive since I left Avernus."
"You can come with us," Del offered, cutting off Gale before he could ask Karlach a million technical questions. "We've been infected too, and we're going to the druids to try to find a cure."
Shadowheart, who had been silent up until now, cut in with a "Really? We're recruiting every random murderer we see now?"
For some reason, Shadowheart's doubt got to him for a moment, making him doubt his own decision. Who did he think he was, to just unilaterally invite people into their group? But then Del looked up and saw that Gale and Astarion were nodding. "The more the merrier," said Gale. "We can't just leave her here to turn into a mind flayer."
"I know what it's like to fight for someone you hate," Astarion said darkly. "And to have to kill to save your own skin. No hard feelings there."
Even Lae'zel was eventually convinced, once she got it through her thick skull that Karlach wasn't a traitor since she'd never actually agreed to serve Zariel in the first place. Shadowheart, for her part, was at least partially swayed by Karlach's respect for the dead, since the tiefling insisted on digging a shallow grave for the man she'd been forced to kill before moving onward.
And so, they were six.