Trapped. The smell of smoke somewhere far off in the distance. Brimstone? How was that possible she was just— it didn't matter now. Hands pressed against… something. Whatever it was, it was not going to give easily. Fists banged against the obstruction, screams tore from lungs, and a panicked heart pounded in a bruised chest.
"Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! I promise I'll be good! I promise I'll fix it, I'll listen, I'll do whatever you want, please, just let me out!"
Out. Needed to get out.
Stepmother was angry.
Stepmother had found her.
Stepmother and Voidflow had locked her up for running and now she couldn't get out.
"Please!" came a ragged sob.
And then it was there. Not her stepmother, but a Mind flayer – its skin gray and face tentacled like the drawings in her father's old tomes. Something had gone horribly wrong; she had been somewhere she shouldn't. The creature opened the door to whatever chamber she was being held in, and her body froze as though she had no power over it, only able to watch in terror as its gray, long-nailed fingers held up what looked like a worm. It brought the squirming creature close to her eye and closer still, the nasty little thing screaming as it attached itself to her.
Pain blossomed through her skull. Fear and panic coursed through her as the parasite dug its way into her flesh, bone, and brain matter. She could not fight; she could not move. She was not home, but it was very much the same. She would be broken and used for something she had no say in, a shell of herself. Not even that, as she – Calithil Tinunilien – would no longer exist if she transformed.
The creature wriggled around in her head. She could feel it, wanted to scream and claw at it, but could move nary a muscle. And then all was dark.
Until it wasn't.
The horrible roars of large, unidentifiable beasts would have struck terror into Calithil's heart had she not already been terrified. What were beasts compared to a Mind flayer's parasite in her brain? Beasts, at least, were quick in their destruction.
And then the room exploded.
Fire illuminated the dark room, though smoke billowed around, obscuring much of her surroundings. A person… a woman? With green skin lay on the floor, expression pained and murderous from what she could see. The woman needed help.
And this time, when Calithil pressed her hand against the door to what she now understood to be a mind flayer's nursery pod, it swung open with ease. Smoke poured in and she held her hand to her nose and mouth, taking a staggering step free from the pod.
Free.
She was free.
If she could only get to her staff and pack, then get off this… Ship? What had the book said about the mind flayer's ship? Nautiloid. It was called a nautiloid. As soon as she could escape, she would be free. Weak and useless as she was, she would be free.
Without hesitation or warning, she jerked the green woman to her feet and pushed her toward the exit, carefully avoiding holes in the floor and any fire in their path. The woman shouted something in another language at Calithil but she paid the other woman no heed. They needed to get out and they needed to get out now. There was now a gaping hole in the wall of the room they were in and Calithil felt the force of the wind tugging her toward it. The green-skinned woman – Calithil could not discern her race – was smaller than her, almost bony beneath her impressive armor. Surely, she felt the pull of the wind as well.
All the better they escape now.
An imp flew past the hole in the ship and Calithil blinked.
Yes. Escape. Now.
Ignoring the pain in her head, she dragged her companion along by her hand – her skin leathery and battle-hardened – but the woman dug in her heels, shouting something over the roar of the wind and… was that a dragon?
"Githyanki," Calithil breathed, staring as a giant winged beast flew past the hole in the wall.
"A blessed sight to a soft, fleshy elf," the woman sneered, her features finally focusing.
"Yes, actually," Calithil replied, much to her companion's surprise. "But we really must hurry. I'm sure you do not need me to tell you how much danger we are in."
"Of course, I don't, elf," the Githyanki scoffed, hauling her along up an alcove. "My weapons may be stored in here."
'Here' was a chest, or the mind-flayer approximation of a chest. The Githyanki woman kicked it open, and to Calithil's surprise – and relief – it was filled with supplies. Her own enchanted pack and staff were near the top. With a wave of nausea, she realized this was possibly a receptacle for captives' loot. The other woman also retrieved a pack along with a large silver sword. It would behoove them to loot the rest of the chest, but the whole ship shook with what felt like another explosion and the Githyanki woman made a noise under her breath, grabbing Calithil by the hand again and dragging her from the room.
She barely gave Calithil the time to pause and study their surroundings. It was not often that one got the chance to study a nautiloid and lived to tell about it.
"I know now is not the best time," Calithil shouted above another explosion. "But may I know your name? I believe it is only fitting since we are escaping together."
"You speak too much," the woman snapped, then stumbled, grabbing her head.
A moment later, a vision exploded in front of Calithil's eyes. The wind soaring through her hair and ears, the thrill of flying, all before the ghaik appeared and she was taken up and desecrated. An all too familiar wave of shame washed over her, and Mother stood before her, screaming. Her cheek smarted and a hot dripping sensation made her want to reach up and brush it away, but she would not move in Mother's presence. She would not check to see if blood had been drawn. It was her fault. She was a stupid, useless girl. She deserved it.
A snarled gasp came from the woman next to her and Calithil was thrown to the ground. The woman – Lae'zel their mind connection had revealed to her – was on top of her, seething with anger. "What did you do?"
"Nothing," Calithil whispered. "I have done nothing to you. It must be the… the tadpoles in our minds. They've connected us somehow."
Lae'zel considered her for a moment with the air of a snake about to strike. Then she made that same harsh noise from earlier and stood, yanking Calithil to her feet.
"You know much about how the ghaik reproduce?" she asked.
Calithil nodded, assuming 'ghaik' meant 'mind flayer'. "I've read about it, mostly theory. Mind flayer's are illusive at best as subject matter."
"We must get these tadpoles extracted as soon as possible," Lae'zel said, marching along.
Calithil was inclined to agree. She didn't like that her mind was no longer her own. Sharing it with a parasitic tadpole was bad enough, but having a murderous Githyanki able to invite herself in whenever she wished? Calithil shook her head. She'd had enough of people taking what was hers. It was time she took back.
A shock of white caught her eye in the dark and gloomy shadows of the room as she and Lae'zel fought their way through the ship, but when it happened again, Calithil pushed back the whisps of hair from her eyes and the blur disappeared. Staring curiously into the gloom, she concluded that she had seen her own white hair escaping from its long braid and moved on. Her conclusion did not provide any comfort as it felt as though there were eyes on her all the while.
"How are we to get off this ship?" Calithil asked after a moment, skirting around the tables covered in dissected bodies.
"We must get to the helm," Lae'zel said simply.
And do what exactly? Calithil wanted to press the Githyanki further but the look on her face gave her cause to hold her tongue. They continued on in silence, Calithil allowing Lae'zel to lead the way through the smoke and living ship tissue.
Lae'zel proved to be a competent fighter – as expected of a Githyanki – dispatching a trio of imps with ease. Calithil only had to bash one's head in by herself before her companion decapitated it. The elven sorceress shoved down her nausea at the short battle – she had to focus on surviving. Her feelings on the matter could come later.
Survival.
Freedom.
A life where she could practice magic and make her own decisions. That was what mattered. Not the life of a few imps who wished to devour her pale flesh. Her life mattered. Her decisions mattered. Calithil mattered.
Those thoughts kept her pushing forward and allowed her to pull potions and currency off of the dead and the fallen as she and Lae'zel fought their way toward the helm of the nautiloid. The only time she paused Lae'zel's hurried pace was when they found themselves in another room filled with pods like the one they had escaped from. A… nursery Calithil supposed. A place where mind flayers grew more of their kind – taking other sentient races and changing them into their likeness and desires.
"Help!" someone screamed from one of the pods. "Get me out of here!"
Without thinking, Calithil rushed into the semicircle of pods. People were lying atop tables of some sort, arms akimbo and unresponsive. Something in the back of her mind told her to leave them be as she hurried past toward the pod. A young woman – half-human from the small points on her ears – with black hair and intricate silver armor thrashed about inside.
"What are you waiting for?" she shouted, banging on the door. "Get this blasted tube open!"
"We must hurry, elf!" Lae'zel admonished.
But Calithil could not allow this young woman to become a mind flayer. She would want someone to help her.
Calithil approached the pod, searching for a way to open the mechanism. A large control panel stood off to the side, pulsating and membranous like a brain. Disgusting. It appeared to be missing a component.
Calithil's teeth bared in frustration. Those people on the tables may know where the missing piece was, but they would likely not tell her. Mind flayers enthrall people to do the bidding they think themselves too important to carry out personally. They would be of no help.
Heart in her throat and hands tight on her staff, Calithil crept towards the prone enthralled and quickly brought the heavy metal end down on their skulls in quick succession before Lea'zel could even begin to ask what she was doing. The squelch of brain matter and crunch of bone nearly brought Calithil to her knees, but death was a better fate than slavery.
"That was cowardly," Lae'zel hissed.
Calithil ignored her, searching the people's pockets for anything that might prove helpful in her endeavor to rescue the half-human in the pod. One of them had a key, which Calithil took and rushed toward the sphincter door across the room. It opened easily when she used the key and she rushed in, stopping in horror when a woman in the pod central to the room awoke, screaming.
Rushing forward, limbs like lead and ice, Calithil watched in horror as the woman began to sprout tentacles, her body – her bones – cracking and changing into something large and grotesque. A mind flayer.
Oh gods.
"This will be our fate if we do not hurry and cleanse ourselves," Lae'zel hissed behind her.
"I am well aware," Calithil snapped and rushed to the console behind the pod, careful not to touch anything.
There was the missing peace, a rune tablet at the top of the console. Carefully, Calithil reached out and snatched it from its place then fled the room. The woman's cries – or demands – for help grew louder every second Calithil took to place the tablet in the console. Gingerly, she placed her hand on the console's fleshy surface. Pain, sharp and cutting lanced through her skull and she cried out, fighting against the parasite in her head. But seconds passed and the discomfort faded, replaced by a feeling of power. Of authority.
Calithil willed the pod to open and the door slowly unlatched, freeing the woman inside. She fell, as weak as Calithil had been when her pod had opened. Rushing forward, Calithil caught the woman in her arms, her intricate armor biting into the sorceress' hands.
"I-I thought I was done for," the woman gasped, attempting to stand on her own.
Before Calithil – or Lae'zel for that matter – could speak, their minds began to meld. Gratitude, guardedness, and a will to survive overcame Calithil. Right then. They were on the same page.
"Were you just in my head?" the woman muttered, clutching her temple.
"Yes, and I will explain as we go, but we must hurry if we are to escape this ship," Calithil said urgently.
"Right," she said, nodding.
She then turned and grabbed a pack that had been lying next to the pod and shoved something inside it that Calithil could not see. After that they set off, Calithil explaining everything she knew as rapidly as she could.
"I am Calithil, by the way," she introduced herself. "And this is Lae'zel."
"Shadowheart," the other woman supplied, eyeing their Githyanki companion suspiciously.
"It is important that we all get off this ship," Calithil said, a hint of warning in her voice. "Lae'zel knows a way to remove these parasites from our brains."
Shadowheart still appeared suspicious, but nodded, mouth tight.
"We are approaching the helm now," Lae'zel said, unperturbed by Shadowheart's mistrust of her.
As soon as they stepped into the circular room, they were greeted by the gruesome sight of a mind flayer's tentacles crushing a red-skinned tiefling warrior's skull. The creature turned on them for a moment but was set upon by a hoard of imps who began tearing the mind flayer's rapidly falling body to pieces.
Calithil wanted to be sick. The blood and viscera coating the ground was too much. Bile rose in the back of her throat, bitter and sharp. Another explosion rocked the nautiloid, knocking Calithil to her knees. Her staff went flying from her hands and her ears began to ring. Lae'zel and Shadowheart flung themselves at the mind flayer, and Calithil screamed at them to stop. It would kill them. They saw what it did to that huge Teifling. They would be turned into minced meat.
The ship pitched again and Calithil landed face-first into a pool of blood. This time she was sick, vomit spewing from her lips and onto the floor, coating her leather jerkin and trousers.
"Up you get," Shadowheart said hauling Calithil to her feet. "Can't afford this right now."
She was right and Calithil shook her head, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as Lae'zel thrust Calithil's staff into her blood and bile-coated hands. She cast mage armor, reding herself for battle, and cast a shield over Lae'zel who was charging the mind flayer again. None too quickly for the creature attempted to crush the Gith's skull like his companion had the tiefling.
"We must get to the transponder!" Lae'zel shouted above the din, thrusting her great sword at the mind flayer.
"You go," Shadowheart demanded, thrusting her chin at the writhing mass of tentacles at the front of the ship. "I'm a cleric, I can back up the Gith."
Calithil nodded and began edging her way around the battle, throwing a small spell in here and there, uttering a cantrip when needed. Her boots squelched in the blood coating the floor but she ignored it. Ignored the tremble in her hands and the shiver that ran up her spine. She hadn't even made this much of a mess when… Calithil shook her head, remembering how much her back had bled until Anastasie, her stepsister, had healed her as much as she dared.
Calithil was just grateful her mana hadn't failed her yet, as it always seemed to before.
The ship rocked once more, a red dragon settling itself on the helm, its claws digging into the ship. Calithil was sent tumbling head over foot toward the glass front and the tentacles. She nearly lost hold of her staff momentarily, but held fast, grappling with the chitin floor and squishy, membranous console. Hauling herself up by a tentacle, the sorceress carefully placed her staff into its sheath on her pack before pulling another tentacle toward the one already in her hands.
A spark of electromagnetic energy made her hair stand on end, but the ends connected just as the dragon smashed a window, sticking its head into the ship to glare balefully at Calithil. She barely had enough time to shield herself before it sent a blast of flame in her direction, knocking her back. She screamed, her head slamming into the hard chitinous floor. Her head spun, black spots burst across her vision, and the ship began to pitch and roll in the sky. Her fingers grasped at anything she could catch onto, but the blood on the floor and the sweat from her palms prevented her from gaining a tight hold.
Her life flashed before her eyes, over a century of torment and servitude fading into the warmth of her mother and father's embrace. Magic leeching from her body flashing into the swirling power of her small and chubby childhood fingers. She was going to die here. A great sorrow enveloped her, aching deep in her chest as she fought to grab hold of anything to prevent her fall as the ship rolled again.
The console rose before her and she saw Lae'zel fall through the shattered window. Calithil's arms barked in pain as she grabbed hold of the console, her fingers digging into the fleshy material. She was going to die before she even had a chance to be free.
"Gods!" she screamed, tears blinding her vision.
She refused to die now.
She refused.
Shadowheart was nowhere to be seen, even if Calithil's tears were not blinding her. Debris rained down on her from above – below? Calithil couldn't tell anymore. With each hit she took, her hold slipped. Terror spiked through her chest like ice as a large piece of the floor dislodged itself and hurtled straight toward her.
The impact knocked the breath from her lungs, her fingers finally slipping from the console and she fell. Down, down, down she hurtled toward the ground at a speed she knew would snap her spine upon impact. She cast spell after spell, extinguishing her mana, but nothing slowed her descent. A scream of rage ripped itself from her throat as she tore through the air. She would not die now.
She. Would. Not Die.
With one last spell, she sent a large gust of wind toward her falling body from below, but her mana was depleted and by the time it reached her, it was nothing more than a breeze. The ground rose before her and her eyes squeezed shut, bracing herself for the impact.
It never came.
With a jerk, her eyes flashed open to see a blue light enveloping her a few feet from the ground, preventing her from falling.
Why wasn't she dead?
The moment the thought crossed her mind, the light disappeared and she fell face-first into the sand below. With a groan, she tried to push herself upright, black dancing across her vision again. Her fingers clawed into the sand as she attempted to pull herself forward, but exhaustion was rapidly sapping the strength from her bones. A large crash sounded not too far off, and with a shudder, Calithil looked up to see the ship had finally fallen to the earth. As she attempted to sit up, something hit her head from behind and she knew no more.