Chapter Text
Nailah rubbed at her head, wondering if she should be more concerned with the knot on the side of her skull or the worm squirming in side it. Either way, she tamped down her terror, focusing instead on good ol' revenge. If- no, when- she ever got out of this thing, she'd make both the white dragonborn and the odd green woman pay for ignoring her cries for help.
The restraints, in fact, were loosening every time the ship rocked with an explosion. jostling her around in the pod more and more, until it finally opened. Her claws scrabbled against the odd, flesh-textured metal as she scrambled out. She tripped over the lip of the pod, but landed on her feet, as she should. Her tufted ears twitched, and she rotated them until she could pick up the far-off sounds of battle.
Focus , she told herself, her sharp feline eyes roaming about the room as she went through the rucksack she'd been wearing when the tentacled freaks snatched her.
Everything was accounted for– camping supplies, twenty days' worth of field rations, half a dozen backup daggers, a change of clothes, a scroll with an infernal binding rune, and three scrolls of Sending. It was all she thought to bring on what was supposed to be a simple expedition into a newly discovered layer hell.
Unfortunately, her party had appeared in the middle of a battlefield, and as they were fighting their way through, the living tentacle ship had swooped in out of nowhere and scooped her up.
Slipping two of the daggers into her belt, she surveyed the rest of the room to look for a proper exit. She came across a dead… squid-thingy and rifled through its cloak pockets just to see what she could learn. There was a shiny rock, which was always welcome, a spiny ball that looked like it would explode into shrapnel if she hit it too hard, and an oddly shaped glass vial filled with mysterious liquid.
Pocketing everything except the potion, she held it in both hands and cast her identification spell. Or, rather, she tried to. As simple as it was to cast– hardly more challenging than a cantrip– she found herself unable. She remembered the words, how it felt to form the magic into what she wanted, but some part of the actual casting was simply beyond her.
She once more became aware of the wriggling behind her eye. As she cycled through attempts to cast more spells she should know and found them similarly out of her reach, she figured that the worm was the culprit.
Now, she started to panic, trying and failing to cast anything at all, until finally, she felt her magic form into a Mage Hand.
It looked different. Or, she assumed it did, since she didn't see it at all.From what she could feel, it was also huge in comparison to what she was used to– large enough to push an entire person with ease.
But more to the point, since she wasn't separated from her magic, could she still find its source?
She pulled a bunch of hair out of its tie so her curls bounced into her vision, her natural black transitioning into bright gold at the tips. The fur of her tail (which would have been easier to check, if she'd thought to look there first) bore the same coloring.
That alone should mean that the pact was intact, but just to be sure, she focused inward on her connection to the Weave, until she could feel the words written on her soul.
Everything seemed to be there. She just had to… find it again. Fair enough. Back to business. Escape first, then freak out.
Nailah walked along the perimeter of the room, since that's where a door would logically be, until she found something… unnecessarily organic.
It opened the way she'd expected it to. At least it wasn't the first butthole she's fingered, and hopefully it wouldn't be the last.
This room was more like a lab, with what looked like an actual hole in the wall leading out. The only item of immediate importance was an intact goblin corpse on a dissection table. She gave his pockets a once-over, but either the fellow had died broke, or someone had been through already.
Hey, if she was going to start fresh, she might as well get back to her younger adventuring mindset of taking whatever useful-looking thing that isn't tied down.
She let her curiosity get the better of her as she went around all the machines, messing with whatever looked like it could function as a button, when one such thing made the floor rise up.
Help Us , a voice- or several?- suddenly echoed in her head.
It wasn't anything new– in her younger days, one of her party members was psychic– but there was a sort of directionality to the communication that she wasn't used to.
Once the rising platform stopped at the higher level, she saw what looked like someone strapped to a chair.
She swiftly went to their side, and realized immediately that there were no restraints. Then, belatedly, that this “prisoner” was missing the top of his skull.
So where had that voice–
We are here.
That… came from the exposed brain.
“Uh. Hello? Am I talking to… the brain?"
There was a feeling of the affirmative, before the apparent brain continued. We are a newborn. Born new from this husk.
“Okay… did you need me for something?”
Remove Us from this body. From this case, free Us. Please!
Nailah considered this, and ultimately decided that it asked nicely enough. She slipped her fingers into the skull bowl, making sure her claws didn't unsheathe themselves, and gently pried the brain out.
She held it in her hands for a few moments, mildly in awe at the circumstance, before it jumped out of her arms to the floor, and… grew legs?
Well that might as well happen.
We are free! Our freedom is ours. Friend.
“Uh… you're welcome. Do you have a name?”
Us. We are Us.
The brain's celebration is cut short as it seems to pick up some kind of signal.
We must go to the helm. At the helm we are needed.
“Needed for what?”
Do you not hear it? We will not survive here. We are needed to navigate - we are needed to leave this realm.
That was a wonderful idea. “Sure. Yes. Let's get ourselves to the helm.”
Us followed her down the lifting platform and to the hole in the wall.
There was probably supposed to be a hallway, but the shell had been ripped off, exposing the walkway to the open air of whatever hell they'd end up naming this place. That was a bad enough visual; the dragons flying about attacking and being attacked by gigantic tentacles was just the piss icing on top of the shit cake.
She prepared herself to run to the covered area she saw several yards away, but then a figure leapt down from above.
A greataxe was at her throat before she could blink. She followed its haft to the well-built, muscular arms that were holding it, then the bulky, glowing torso covered in burn scars. Finally, she looked at the devil's face, eyes catching on her broken horn.
Well, shit, this wasn't going to be pretty.
The she-devil's glare seemed to soften into a smile– an obvious trick– as she slightly lowered her weapon.
“Wait, I remember you!”
“Do you, now?” Nailah grabbed the axe's haft, right below the head, and yanked.
It barely budged- Nailah didn't expect it to, what with her torso being only slightly larger in circumference than the demon's thigh– but as she yanked her weapon back in surprise, Nailah used her grip to direct the axe in front of her face.
And then she cast Light.
The axe clattered to the floor as the she-devil covered her eyes from the assaulting flash, and Nailah took the opportunity to scoop Us up and rush past her, down the hallway to the next room.
A head-on fight against an Infernal that powerful would not end well, with Nailah as weakened as she was. But she wasn't above a good ol' Death of A Thousand Cuts.
She had hoped this new room would have a handful of decent hiding spots to maneuver around, but it turned out to be wide open.
Various corpses littered the floor- Infernal, humanoid, and… weird squid thingy- but she didn't bother with them as she sped up two different ladders and through yet another butthole door.
This one, at least, had more furniture and devices, including a pod with another person in it, banging on the glass and begging to be released.
“Just so you know,” Nailah commented, as she stepped over two bodies, “if I let you out I expect you to help me fight a devil.”
“I don't care! Get me out of this thing!”
“I'll see what I can do. Hey, Us? Can you do something about this?”
As Us did its weird brain… thing, Nailah found herself along for the ride. There was definitely some sort of magic aura going on, and between that and the psionics, her mind's eye began to make a pattern out of the chaos. The information was in the process of forming itself into runes when she felt a great heat at her back. She rolled out of the way as a pair of red, clawed hands took the pod by the hinge.
The she-devil roared as if she wanted the sound to reach the heavens, her heart glowing as steam vented through her shoulders. The pod gave a crackle of energy as the mechanism gave out, and the prisoner was free.
Nailah got between them and drew her daggers again. “Back off, devil!”
She complied, oddly enough, hands up in a placating gesture. “Hold on there, you've got me all wrong!”
“Do I?”
“My name's Karlach, and I'm not a devil; just a tiefling… with enhancements. That may be hard to believe, but if I wanted you dead, I would have just cut your head off while your back was turned, wouldn't I?”
Nailah belatedly noted that Karlach had her axe– still glowing– strapped to her back once more.
“Fair enough. Still, how about you take a few more steps back so I can see what she's about…” Nailah turned to the newly-freed woman, who was no longer behind her, and instead off to the side rummaging through a pack.
“Thanks for the assistance,” she said. “Glad some decent folk decided to get captured. That Dragonborn and gith -” that word was spoken with a great deal of venom- “decided I wasn't worth their time and left me to my fate.”
“Oh, same,” Nailah agreed. “I assume ‘gith’ are these skinny green things with weird noses, big ears, spots, and shiny yet weirdly revealing armor?”
Shadowheart nodded.
“They got whatever they needed off these bodies at least,” Karlach commented.
Damn, not even any loot.
“I'm Nailah,” she finally introduced herself.
“Shadowheart.”
Whatever comment Nailah was about to make was interrupted by the ship rocking again. Us's layered brain-voices echoed through her head once more, with another reminder of where they needed to be.
“Our way off this thing is at the helm. You with us, Shadowheart?”
“Of course. Karlach, I guess this is where we have to trust you not to betray us.”
“I want off this ship just as much as you.”
“Cool then.” Nailah pointed resolutely toward the next butthole. “To the helm!”
This one put them in some kind of foyer that housed an apparatus with skinny, glowing tentacles. Nailah touched it, because she couldn't help herself, and instantly the headache she'd been ignoring since she woke up vanished.
“Looks like this is a healing… thing?” Nailah rubbed at her head where a goose-egg used to be. “We should all use it before we venture upnthe Final Anus.”
Karlach snorted, but headed over to get herself freshened up.
“I suppose we were all thinking it,” Shadowheart admitted with a chuckle as she took her turn. “Only you had the courage to- Lady Shar help us, Move!”
Her tone was urgent, and Nailah turned to see two Cambions flying down the hallway toward them. Before she could think, she reached an arm out, golden energy crackling around her claws, and snapped her fingers. Luckily this cantrip had also survived the tadpole’s weakening effect, and the walls reflected the golden light of an ethereal lion head, mane aglow with holy fire, as it roared down from the roof to engulf the lead Cambion. His companion paused at the display- exactly what she had been going for in making her Sacred Flames look like that- and Nailah took the opportunity to finger the door open and burst into the room.
It was chaos. The dragonborn and gith were each facing a Cambion, while also being harried by a squad of imps on one side and hell beasts on the other, unable to break through and move forward. One of the squid guys was locked in combat with a third, larger Cambion wielding a flaming sword, but it took the time to acknowledge Nailah and speak into her brain. Good manners, these things had.
Thrall. Connect the nerves of the transponder.
“It thinks we're-”
“Thralls, yes!” The gith interrupted. “Let the ghaik believe what it wishes. Somebody needs to get to the transponder before the ship crashes!”
“ Ghaik . Is that what these things are called?” Nailah questioned, before she was shown another image.
Across the room, on the other side of the Hell Swine, was some kind of console with grabbier-looking tentacles. Instructions: pull one specific tentacle up from the base and one specific tentacle from the top, connect them, then strum them like an oversized lute string.
Well, there was only one way to get over there. Nailah started making her way forward, her Lion-shaped Sacred Flames making easy work of one imp at a time. Shadowheart was at her side doing the same, though she defaulted to the standard, less flashy version of the spell. But if it worked, it worked.
“Uh, ladies,” Karlach’s voice came from behind them,. “If you wouldn’t mind going at it a bit faster...?”
Nailah turned to find the tiefling in battle with the newcomer cambions, her axe blade locked up in both their tridents. She was overpowering them, but it didn’t look like she could keep it up indefinitely, even with Us doing what it could and slashing at their ankles.
Well, time to pull out the desperation solution.
“Shadowheart? I’m about to do something really stupid, but if it works, I can get over there in seconds.”
“What’s the plan?”
“I'm gonna run for the… transponder, was it? And hope I don't get torn to shreds on the way over.”
“Well, if I can help you make it, it won’t be stupidity, will it?” Shadowheart held out what Nailah assumed to be her holy symbol– a disc of obsidian crystal, set into a larger ring of amethyst– and began to recite a blessing: “Let Lady Shar's cloak be a cover over thee, that the slings and arrows of the enemy will lose their way.”
Nailah's being thrummed in time with Shadowheart's magic as she allowed it to take hold. Although whoever this Lady Shar was, her protective embrace was a bit too tight as it wrapped around. Overall, whatever was off about the whole setup, Nailah could tell that she had been placed under a Sanctuary.
Nailah stared at her target with an intense focus, took a deep breath, and got down on all fours. Her claws- both on her hands and feet-dug into the weird flesh of the ground.
She couldn't roar like her Leonin cousins, but the harsh, gravelly screech that ripped from her throat as she took off turned quite a few heads. With all four of her limbs in tandem, she could push herself twice as fast.
Surely that was why the first three imps she sped by didn't even try and attack her. But then neither did any of the next five. By law of averages, at least a handful of the creatures should be able to break past the discouragement and take a swipe at her as she sped by.
Maybe the spell works differently in this hell, like my Mage Hand, she wondered. Let's test that theory.
The next imp, she came dangerously close to, even giving it a shot to slash her neck open. It didn't even look her way.
Nailah grinned.
Back on all fours, she vaulted off of the dragonborn's back, landed in a roll, and slid right underneath the crossed blades of the gith and her Cambion. She used the bit of open space between them and the next group of enemies to turn a cartwheel, just for fun, then climbed up a Hellboar's snout and used its back as a platform to handspring over the rest of its cohorts. From that point, there were no obstacles between her and her goal.
She'd barely broken a sweat.
Approaching the transponder, she brought the two requisite tentacles into a handshake, but before she could activate the escape routine, a fucking dragon showed up.
Oh, she'd fought a few of those before. Bigger, in fact. But right now, she wouldn't stand a chance.
And it was preparing to fire.
She flicked the string and ducked behind the transponder moments before a burst of flame washed over it. The heat was still overwhelming, until it suddenly disappeared. Or, rather, the ship had disappeared, leaving the dragon behind in hell.
There was a lot of jostling. Force pushing her this way and that. A bit of time barely holding on to something by her claws. A weirdly intimate moment hurtling through the sky looking into a ghaik 's brilliant orange eyes. Then something hit her head and she was falling.
As she blacked out, she wondered how she was going to land on her feet, this time.