Eirina and Lae'zel moved through another sphincter of flesh, the sound it made as it spiraled open made Eirina's skin crawl and the tadpole wriggle curiously. They found another room with a more laboratory like atmosphere. Several people lay strapped and dazed to various exam tables, a large console at the apex of the circle of table.
"Don't touch it," Lae'zel ordered, "we have no time for stragglers." Eirina snorted and just looked at her companion. Like the hells she would leave people behind. Moving to the first table, she saw that their bodies had been flayed and the stitching along their skulls indicated that their brains may have been used for purposes other than creating intellect devourers.
"These ones are likely lost to us," Eirina lowered her head and said another prayer, but only so long as it took for the pounding on the glass to draw her attention. A woman was pounding on the one pod, attached to it's own alien console, next to it.
"You! Get me out of this damn thing!" Eirina moved quickly, ignoring Lae'zel's protests. Eirina looked around the edges of the pod, realizing it was more elaborate and certainly more reinforced than the one she had been in when she received her tadpole.
"I'll go look around - there must be some way to get this thing open," Eirina looked up, "any ideas?" The woman in the pod had a jagged scar across the right sid3e of her face, a face that was currently filled with fear and anxiety.
"Try that contraption next to the pod. They did something to it when they sealed me in," she pointed to her left and Eirina began to inspect it. The console seemed dormant, like a piece had been removed from it. Why did the damned mind flayers have to make everything so difficult?!Tracing it with her fingers, Eirina traced her fingers over the gap, learning the approximate size and shape of what might possibly fit in there.
"Leave her!" Lae'zel gripped Eirina's arm, pulling her back.
"Hurry! Please!" The woman cried out as she watched the two of them in front of the sealed pod, pounding on the glass in frustration.
"No," she snapped at the gith, "there is strength in numbers and if I can save her, then I will save her. If you want to go on ahead, be my guest, but I am going to do everything I can before I leave that poor woman to her fate." The conviction in Eirina's voice was enough to set Lae'zel back on her heels. The taller warrior looked hard at the cleric for a moment before giving her a curt nod and moving to look around the chamber. Eirina looked back over at the trapped woman.
"I'm going to look for the missing piece," raising a hand in a fist over her heart, Eirina gave the woman a hard stare, "I will return. You have my word." Turning, she saw that Lae'zel had discarded several items for a nearby table and was looking at a brain floating in a glowing green jar. Shrugging, she watched as the jar was added to a slowly filling bag as they shoved everything that might be of use to them into it. Eirina knew the nature of being an adventurer, you picked up everything you could until you couldn't carry anything else. She remembered once picking up a collection of daggers and being able to trade them to someone in exchange for enough rations for a week. All it cost her was room in her bag. And along her belt. Lae'zel seemed to be of the same thought process since she was also shoving items in her own bag if they even remotely looked valuable. As far as Eirina was concerned, this wasn't the home of someone that meant her well, it was more akin to an abandoned crypt, so if it wasn't nailed to the floor, it was fair game.
The next room over was yet a different type of laboratory, only this one made Eirina's skin crawl. Searching the bodies in the room, including a mind flayer that had been partially crushed by a piece of ship debris, she saw another figure in the large pod in the center of the room. Looking around, she could see hundreds of pods lining the walls, people in them, some of them making eye contact with her. She couldn't save them, she didn't have time, as the ship listed violently again. They needed to land this ship.
"How many hosts have these ghaik infected?" Lae'zel's voice cut through the screams coming from the pods above them.
"Too many," Eirina muttered in response, searching around for whatever would fit in the console in the next room.
"Move!" Lae'zel snapped at her, gripping a slate in one hand and gesturing to the door they just walked through. Eirina stopped and looked up, eyes connecting with a pair of bright red eyes. She couldn't see much of the pale face, but she did register the eyes. They looked at her desperately, the intensity so much that Eirina could feel herself starting to tear up. Lae'zel grabbed her and started pulling her towards the room with the contained woman. Eirina stopped at the entrance to the door and touched her fingers to her throat, amplifying her voice.
"We must land in order to save you," she wanted to add that she would be back for them, but she knew not to make that promise if she wasn't sure to keep it. The woman in the reinforced pod she knew she could save, but the others, she wasn't certain she could, even if she and Lae'zel were able to find a way to land this ship. She saw Lae'zel leaning over the larger console, fitting that odd looking plate she was holding earlier into it. The pod hissed open and the black haired woman fell out of it. Eirina rushed over to her and began to help her up on her feet. The circlet and hair ornaments tripped something in Eirina's memory, making her pause her actions. She was helping a Sharran, one of the followers of Selune's twin sister. The sisters were bitter rivals and Sharrans killed Selunites as a perverted right of passage. Since she was aiding this woman, she suspected that she stood a chance at survival against becoming a victim to the dark rights these believers practiced.
"I thought that damn thing was going to be my coffin, thank y-" the sentiment was cut off as Eirina and the woman's minds lurched and connected with a violent crashing of thoughts. Her gratitude is mixed with wariness, as Eirina was travelling with a gith.
"You keep dangerous company," the scowl on her face spoke volumes beyond her words.
"Dangerous company's what you need in a fight." Eirina gave her a wry smile.
"Fair point," the scowl on the Sharran's face dropped into an expression of acceptance, "looks like there's plenty of fighting ahead. Let me come with you. We can get off this ship, and watch each other's backs along the way." Eirina looked at her, wondering if the woman was going to save a dagger for her own back as was the nature of most Selunites that encountered followers of Shar. But needs must and right now, the need for allies was strong.
"Alright then," Eirina held out a hand, "Let's get going. I'm Eirina." The woman took it and gave it a firm shake.
"Shadowheart," she paused, and turned back to the pod that she had just been trapped in, "one moment." Eirina watched as Shadowheart half crawled back into the pod and reappeared with a strange looking contraption in one hand. She watched as Shadowheart tucked it into a pocket on her belt and turned back to Eirina and Lae'zel.
"What's that?" Eirina's curiosity was peaked. Strange to turn back for something so small and innocuous.
"It's nothing. Trust me." Shadowheart's tone indicated that any further questions were pointless.
"Enough of this chatter," Lae'zel's patience, what little she possessed, was now gone, "we need to get to the helm. Now." Eirina watched as the two women scowled at each other.
"She's right," Shadowheart looked like she wanted to choke on those words as she spoke them, "lead on."
The three of them, followed by the clicking feet of Us, moved north to the only other room in their path to the helm. Lightly glowing fronds draped out of a pod, with Us stopping directly beneath it.
"Recover! Heal!" It's psychic connection urging the three women to reach up and touch the fronds. The sensation of gentle moonlight floated through Eirina, the aches she had experienced from the moment she had woken until now were gone. She could still feel the worm behind her eye, twisting happily as it extended along the folds of her own brain. She shuddered at the sensation, realizing that the worm had actually moved from being latched to the flesh directly behind her eye and over to the center of her skull and the sensation was the tail flicking like a pissed off cat. She was never going to get used to that sensation.
"The helm! The helm!" Us skittered towards another door, causing it to open before any of them were ready. Unlike Eirina, both Shadowheart and Lae'zel had been taken aboard the ship with their own weapons and equipment. Eirina seemed to be the only one who had been in a vulnerable position, with only her armor on when she had been taken. There was no more time to mentally prepare as the carnage of the helm greeted them. There were bodies everywhere: mind flayers littered the deck, alongside several kidnap victims. Smashed brains painted the floor and the walls, likely from the several dead cambions in the room. A single mind flayer did battle with a well armed cambion that was shouting a battle cry in Zariel's honor. Just the sound of it made Eirina shudder. Bracing herself, she calculated the fastest route to the helm, giving her head a shake when the mind flayer's voice was heard in her head.
"Thrall! Connect the transponders," images of connected transponders transporting the ship through various planes in the multiverse. Eirina fleetingly thought that was fitting as Shadowheart blasted an imp that was attempting to crawl up Lae'zel's legs. The two of them had the hellish minions under control, as Eirina tucked her weapons away and began to sprint towards the helm.
"Friend!" Us's cry of panic caused a falter in Eirina's step. A hell beast was descending on the little brain.
"Shit." Eirina didn't realize that she had bonded with the creature. A dragon soaring past the open gap in front of the transponder steeled her resolve and she mentally thought an apology to Us. She would turn around as soon as the transponders were connected. Side stepping a second hell beast, she saw the image in her mind of Us gutting the hell beast that had cornered it.
"Good little brain," Eirina thought at it, grateful for the psychic connection so that she could multitask. Reaching the control panel, she could make neither heads nor tails of the different writing tendrils there. The connectors reminded her of the tails of displacer beasts, only these were much smaller and there were dozens of them. Gripping the closes two, Eirina pulled them together and watched the pseudo tendrils on each twin together and connect, binding them to one another. Following the images in her mind from the mind flayer, she gave the connection a hard yank, feeling the psionic pull as the ship was yanked out of the hells and into another plan. Knocked off her feet, Eirina found herself tumbling dangerously close to the opening torn in the hull of the ship. The tadpole in her head squirmed violently and the headache returned with a vengeance, causing her sight to falter. Another mind flayer was there, leaning against the edge of the ship, watching her with rapt attention. The connection of their eyes made Eirina pause her frantic scramble to not fall out of the ship. This wasn't the same mind flayer that had infected her, there was something different about this one. She could almost sense compassion coming from this one.
Eirina could feel the ship's downward angle. They were going to crash and it was going to hurt. The cambion screamed it's final breath and Eirina began to look around for her companions. They may have only traveled together for a few minutes, but they were her allies, she couldn't leave them to an uncertain fate. Not even the cleric of Shar. Before she could sight either one of them, a chunk of debris flew out and connected with her violently. Pain ripped through her as she lost her grip on the ship and she found herself several hundred feet above the ground and falling without anything to catch her. A second piece of debris flew out of the ship and connected with the side of Eirina's head, knocking whatever awareness was left out of her. Her last thought was that the moon maiden blessed her by not letting her be aware of her impending impact with the ground
