A creature floated through the alien, biomechanical walls of the nautiloid. The body of the living ship quivered in fear, as if knowing that it was being hunted. That didn't matter to the floating vessel's master however; it had matters to attend to before it worried about that.
The room the strange creature levitated through was circular, with a cauldron-like pool in the middle, but instead of water, it held a murky, yellow brine, its consistency not unlike that of lymph fluid. Around the half-crescent room, chitinous pods stood arrayed along the fleshy walls, each one holding a restrained occupant.
The bulbous headed captor carefully reached into the briney pool, its large, grey head pulsing with a barely perceptible glow as it pulled out one of its writhing inhabitants. From the confines of one of the pods, a prisoner watched as the strange creature approached the pod to his right. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the prisoner in question writhe in discomfort as an agonized yell rang out into the room before it suddenly faded.
The prisoner watching couldn't quite see what had happened, but shifted uneasily as his captor went back to the pool and reached in again. He watched as it turned back, holding something on its finger, the four tentacles on its face waving placidly.
The levitating creature floated back to him and now the captive saw his fate. On the monster's finger was a small, tadpole looking creature, though a grotesque one to be sure. Restrained as he was, he had no means of defense as the tadpole was placed on the side of his face and used its small, slime-covered tendrils to crawl like a slug across his face and up to his eye.
The feelers latched around his eye, holding the lid open as it revealed a bizarre, but terrifying lamprey shaped mouth. The prisoner's heart quickened, struggling uselessly as he realized what the creature intended to do. He tried to shake his head, but the bigger monster that had put the tadpole there in the first place held him fast. Then, like a maggot eagerly burrowing through carrion, it lunged forward and neatly slid behind his eye.
The monster, the creature the common people of the world called a mind flayer, turned its squid looking head as it felt a tremor from the nautiloid, indicating that the ship had arrived at its destination. Using its innate psychic abilities, it began hovering again, using the strange form of locomotion to make its way to the helm of the ship. Even though the nautiloid was alive, it was still very much controllable, more akin to a mobile plant with a nervous system than any actual animal.
With a mental command, the protective shell of the helm's surface flowered open like a fleshy orchid and revealed the city stretching across the landscape. This was the mind flayers target.
From down below, bells sounded and people scattered at the sudden appearance of the alien vessel. It became worse as an appendage one would only find on that of the largest kraken reached down and shattered the very bell tower that had first spotted the vessel. And even as the survivors of the tower's collapse pulled themselves from the rubble, smaller tendrils creeped down from the ship, and using what to the untrained eye, appeared to be a work of pure magic, began making those same people disintegrate into thin air, where their previous forms having once stood, now naught but ash remained.
Of course, if that same untrained eye were then to look into the hold of the nautiloid, one would find that those same people were now inside rows upon rows of pods, ready to be implanted with the same tadpoles that were now comfortably settled inside the previous prisoners' skulls.
The mind flayer's attack had not gone unnoticed. From a portal behind the squid shaped vessel came the source of its fear; red dragon riders. Three of them flew from the tear between realms, their sole intent to eliminate the Ghaik, the mind flayers.
Each dragon was full grown and massive. Each one was red as ruby and their eyes blazed a hideous yellow. From atop their backs, they bore knights, though they did not wear armor and they were not human. The warriors had skin not unlike that of a toad, their hair was short, they were speckled with black spots, and they were far lengthier than any human.
The riders descended upon the nautiloid, ripping off titanic tentacles and scorching the hull with brilliant blazes of dragonfire.
While the vessel itself was many times larger than the dragons, their speed made any efforts to fight them off futile. Instead, the mind flayer linked to the nautiloid began to initiate a retreat. It would connect the nerves of the nautiloids transplanar organ, which would in turn, allow it to shift itself to a different realm. If it did this enough times, it might be able to lose the knights pursuing it.
That was the mind flayer's goal as it did just that, connecting the nerves of the living helm and giving them a light thrum with its clawed finger.
Almost instantaneously, the ship disappeared from its current reality in a cloud of black smoke and a ripple as reality bent itself to the ship's whims. The riders were close behind, opening yet another portal and following the nautiloid into a freezing wasteland.
The desperate ship crashed through jagged rocks as it flew through the freezing canyons of the new landscape. When the mind flayer noticed its attackers had followed, it prepared the same ritual it had before, unable to take the time to choose an exact destination. Before it could, however, the ship trembled as one of the dragons burrowed through the hull, ripping off a chunk of the nautiloids armor.
The mind flayer coaxed the ship left, shaking the dragon off the hull, but it crashed into another boulder in the process, shattering the vessel's frontal armor, sending debris flying. One of the boulders hit a pursuing dragon, sending it tumbling from the sky.
The mind flayer turned back to the neural transponder, grabbing the nerves of the transplanar organ. Even as it did this, it felt one of the dragon riders return. The creature stuck its head through the hole it had previously torn through. The prisoner watched as it surveyed the hold, then with a gout of dragonfire, scorched the entire room. The flames breathed across the surface of the brine pool like a roiling storm, curling over the cauldron and igniting its surface. Just as the nautiloid left its current plane. The starboard side cargo hold plummeted to the bottom of the nautiloid, crushing the room below it and rocking the entire ship.
The two remaining dragon riders, left behind from their pursuit, readied another portal to continue their hunt.