Chapter Text
Willow came to his senses rather suddenly as the entire earth -or at least the building?- quaked around him, rudely jostling him to awareness. Upon opening his eyes, he seemed to be stuck in some kind of seed-pod shaped box with a clear window near his face, giving him a window into a purple-and-red room in a strange architectural style. ‘Pod’ seemed to be the most accurate term he could fish up, so he stuck with it as he swivelled his head and craned his neck painfully to look down at his situation.
The interior of the pod was warm, damp, and lined with strange worm-y surfaces that reminded him of a cow’s tongue at larger scale, and offered little room for movement. It was rendered more uncomfortable still by the feeling of his greataxe’s handle digging in between his shoulder blades, where it was carried on his back. Though however uncomfortable it was, it was a relief that he still had it. Willow twisted his arms around until he could press his hands against the semi-translucent lid of the pod, his palms sliding against the glassy surface. Everything in his head felt fuzzy and distant, apart from the hot and vividly present worm now left writhing behind his eye. His left one, he thought. Not that he was entirely sure it mattered, since it would just go into the middle of the skull, right? Did his eyes have hollow spaces behind them? It seemed unimportant at the moment.
What he was fairly sure he did know is that he should not be in the pod. The purple thing that had looked like a beached squid put him in, and it didn’t seem like a friend. He pushed against the lid, trying his best to heave it up and off him. His crampt position made it difficult, but eventually he heard something snap and the lid -was ‘lid’ the right word? There wasn’t a word that sounded better- swung upward with the hiss of trapped air being released into the larger room.
He half-clambered half-fell out of the pod, still covered in the odd, viscous liquid that seemed to coat its interior. He shook the hair out of his eyes, trying to right himself without much success. He looked down at his slightly damp clothes, making a mental note to burn them at the first opportunity. They’d been through a lot, from the stage to the swamp. But being encased in weird squid-snot was where he drew the line. But that was also probably unimportant right now. He was very good at getting off-track. He looked around, and spotted several things that he thought might have been chests, up on ledges above the group of pods he was among. There was also an ominously bubbling and very broken cauldron of… Whatever the worm he’d had shoved in his eye was. But he decided that was probably better left alone.
He jumped up towards the ledge with the chests, and ended up smashing into the side of it full-force. He slammed his elbows into the ground there, and managed to scramble up, feeling winded and rather more pathetic than he had a moment ago.
The chest in question had a bizarre and veiny texture to it, but still had the same irresistible lure of free stuff. So regardless of the offputting appearance of the box, he opened the lid. There were a handful of coins inside, so he picked them up and pocketed them. He wasn’t sure what use the squids had for money, but he wasn’t complaining about it. Now with his pockets slightly more weighted, he jumped back down to the floor below. He stumbled on the uneven floor as he landed, his newly-gained gold immediately finding a place right back on the ground. He scooped it back up, thanking his luck once again that there was nobody else there to see him.
It was when he stood back up after landing that he realised there was a convenient ramp up to the platform he’d just fallen on his face twice to access.
Feeling rather stupid, he looked around for an exit. If he’d missed the ramp, maybe he’d missed an exit. But the only anomaly in the walls was a pink and circular puckered shape that looked remarkably similar to an arsehole. He hoped that wasn’t the door, and yet he had a sinking feeling that it was. He walked up to it cautiously, and extended a hand toward it while simultaneously hoping he wouldn’t actually have to touch it. To his immense relief and somewhat disgust, the door gaped open with a squelch, and he stepped through it before the door(?) could change its mind.
He now found himself in another hallway of similarly ominous red-and-purple and veiny-yet-spiky design. It had a split in the middle, which made up a section that looked to slot between the two halves of the hallway, and was yet completely disconnected from both somehow. It had a disturbingly spinal pillar on one edge of the platform, which ended in a circular plate surrounded by small tendrils. It looked like some kind of button, but he wasn’t sure. He prodded the platform’s surface with his foot before stepping on it, just to ensure it would hold his weight. He stepped onto it hesitantly at first, then fully in order to examine the alien device. It was then that a small voice cut through the gloom:
“Help!”
Willow stopped, unsure of what he’d heard at first. But the tiny voice whispered again through the gloom, somehow shifting in pitch multiple times throughout the singular word.
“Help!”
After a moment, he realised the voice was coming from somewhere above him. He looked up, noticing another ledge off to the side of the hallway. But this one didn’t have a ramp, and he was unsure how to access it. He eventually decided that the platform he stood on seemed to be the only access point, and pressed the button. The platform lurched, and surged upward toward the higher floor. When the elevating platform -elevator?- settled into place alongside it, he stepped off.
The ledge was fairly small, mostly consisting of more strange curving arches, and one central piece that held a chair with someone slumped over backwards in it. Was this the person who’d been calling for help?
But as he approached, he slowed with dawning horror. The entire top part of the man’s skull had been removed, showing his exposed brain. His eyes were rolled back lifelessly, and he certainly hadn’t been saying anything. The call had come from the exposed brain itself, which now seemed somewhat expectant.
“You’ve come to save us from this place. From this place you’ll free us!”
The voice was strange, drifting through higher and lower pitches throughout the sentence. Willow approached it with caution. What in the hells was this thing? It certainly wasn’t the man talking, so the brain itself must be a separate entity. Could his brain do that? Were brains a separate organism, just waiting to be free of the rest of the body? He’d occasionally suspected his skeleton’s longing for freedom on nights his joint pain was at its worst, but he’d never suspected his brain. Well, before now at least.
He walked up to it, staring at the slowly pulsating brain with a mix of revulsion and morbid interest. “So… Who am I talking to, the man or the brain? What are you?”
The brain seemed to consider his question for a moment before answering in that same disembodied voice.
“We are newborn. Born new from this husk. Free us! Please.”
Willow swallowed, then began to inspect the skull. He was no medical expert, but some parts of it seemed oddly swollen. If he was going to get it, he’d have to pry it out carefully. So he set to work, carefully easing the brain free while suppressing the urge to vomit. This seemed rather an odd thing to be doing, but the… Creature had asked him fairly politely, and he was definitely curious. Eventually he had mostly extracted it, and the brain pushed itself free, jumping into his hands. He wasn’t sure if it could see him, so he did his best to keep the fear and disgust off his face as he gently set it down. The brain then seemed to have several veins tear free, waving about like some form of antenna. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, it then had a set of four clawed legs push free of the bottom, skittering toward him like a freakish spider with half as many legs.
It poked one of its vein-antenna against his leg, and let out an approving noise.
“Our freedom is ours! Friend!”
Willow nodded hesitantly. “S- sure is, little buddy. Uh, what should I call you?”
The brain seemed to pause, as if consulting something or someone offstage.
“We are us.”
Willow nodded, not really wanting to question it more than he had to. This was fine, right? Just a guy and his funky little brain companion. Like having a dog, but slimier. He could deal with this. Not like it was the weirdest thing that’d happened today.
Before he could say anything else, the worm in his skull once more made itself known with a bizarre burst of psychic energy, gripping his head like the onset of a migraine. The little creature called ‘Us’ listened intently to the unheard voice.
“We must go to the helm! At the helm, we are needed…”
Willow felt confusion wash over him at the little creature’s statement.
“Why? What’s at the helm? Wait- Does that mean we’re on a ship?”
Us chirped out a confused noise at the question.
“Do you not hear it? We will not survive here. We are needed to leave this realm.”
That made no more sense than any of the other things the creature had said, but he wasn’t feeling lucky enough to argue with the statement. He nodded and started back toward the device that brought him up, Us trailing behind him.
He stepped back onto the… Elevator, he was going to call it. He made sure that Us was next to him before pressing the button again, but the creature seemed set on keeping one foot off the edge as they lowered. Weird, but okay. Then again everything about this was weird. The foot thing wasn’t more so than the other things.There didn’t seem to be much else of interest in the odd hallway-esque room he was in, so he continued on. The area past the large open doorway- Wait. No, not a doorway. -Big hole in the wall, was a… Balcony? Bridge? Big flat-ish red area with unfortunate texture he’d rather not devote too much thought to. He walked out onto it, looking out over the immense red hellscape visible over the edge. There were a number of floating pillars in the distance, and swarms of bizarre bat-like creatures flying around.
He saw a flash of silver out of the corner of his eye, and the figure of a green-skinned woman arced over his head in one of the cleanest forward-flips he’d seen since leaving the circus. She landed in a neat fighting stance, and… Oh. She was holding a sword up in a very hostile manner, and looked quite angry.
“Abomination,” she hissed. “This is your end!”
Oh, butter biscuits.
He opened his mouth to hopefully dissuade her from skewering him, but that same mental pulse he’d felt earlier made itself known. It made his head pound, and images flashed across his vision forcefully. A dragon’s wing, a silver sword… And a flash of his face, seen through the strange woman’s eyes. Her hand rushed up to her forehead, and she stumbled backward.
“Augh! My head! What is this?” She called out, her eyes finally focusing again.
“…Tsk’va! You are no thrall.”
She sheathed her sword, a relieved grin passing over her face. “Vlaakith blesses me this day.”
Willow’s eyes widened in panic at her statement, looking around. “Thrall? There are vampires here?”
The woman looked at him like he’d missed something obvious, her relief turning to aggravation.
“Ghaik thrall, you idiot.” She hissed, rolling her eyes at him. “Or perhaps I am cursed with a stupid companion.” Willow tried not to look offended, and simultaneously wondered what a ‘ghaik’ was. He swallowed before speaking again. “Uh… Who are you?” Great first impression he was making. That’s a totally normal way to ask somebody’s name Willow, no more normal way could exist.
She looked up at him, glaring. “I am your only hope of survival, Istik.”
Willow nodded, then continued. “O- Okay, but what’s your name? Or, what do I call you?”
She sighed. “Lae’zel. Now may we continue without more idiotic time-wasting?” Willow opened his mouth, then closed it again. He opted to nod instead, which she seemed satisfied with.
Lae’zel’s eyes locked on Us. “As for that thing… I believe it will remain tame so long as it believes we are thrall.” Us gave a friendly chirp, but no other indication that it understood what she’d said.
She looked around, Willow following her eyes. Around the bend from where they stood, there was a group of the little red bat creatures -which now appeared vaguely humanoid, if smaller and crowned by sharp horns- on the ground, taking large and messy bites out of what looked like a mangled human corpse. Willow once again suppressed the urge to vomit as one of the things looked up at them, yellow beady eyes meeting his in a dominance challenge he was certainly failing. Lae’zel growled back, drawing her sword.
“First, we exterminate the imps. We may do nothing else until we escape.”
That sounded like a better plan than Willow had, so he nodded and pulled his axe down from where it was slung across his back. The sturdy wood-and-leather grip in his hand was something to focus on, to pull his mind away from the terror of the situation. And as the first imp lunged at them, he focused on that as he swung. He only clipped its wing, but Lae’zel managed to get it through the gut. Us ran ahead, striking out at a second one with its claws.
That only left a third one, flapping at him directly with a screech. He held his breath and swung, cleaving the creature in two. Red splattered his face and hands, though he smelled it before he felt it. The pieces landed with a smack each, and Lae’zel ran up beside him.
“You prove surprisingly adequate in battle. Now, to the helm.”
Willow swallowed the bile rising in his throat and followed Lae’zel, carefully not looking at the mangled corpse he had to step over in order to do so. There were a lot of gaps in the floor, so he could easily justify looking down as they went. There was another arse-door at the end of the room, and they both headed toward it. He was once again incredibly grateful that it opened without needing to be directly touched, especially as this one had a kind of dried out red-brown residue on it. Perhaps the least horrifying thing it could have been was dried-up blood, and that was not comforting.
On the other side was a large circular room with a pillar in the middle, and two additional exits. There were two slabs in the middle of the room with unconscious people laying on them, and a large pod like the one he’d punched his way out of earlier. That seemed like the most interesting thing in the room at that moment, mostly because there was a woman in it, frantically banging on the lid. She saw Lae’zel and Willow enter, and looked over at them with wide and panicked eyes.
Her muffled voice called out “You! Get me out of this damn thing!”
Willow began to move toward her, but Lae’zel grabbed his arm to stop him.
“We have no time for stragglers,” She hissed. “We must get to the helm.”
Willow gave her a disbelieving look, feeling revolted by the notion of leaving the stranger behind. He tugged himself out of Lae’zel’s grip, and moved over to the pod. Not seeing any obvious latch, he decided he’d get her out the same way he escaped. He grabbed the edge of the lid, and pulled.
Lae’zel scoffed at him, making no move to help. “Do you intend to die for a stranger?”
Willow lost his grip, and tumbled back. But after regaining his footing, he planted a foot on the side of the pod, and hauled at the lid with all the strength he could spare. He eventually heard that same snapping sound he’d heard earlier, and the lid swung upward with a hiss. The woman tumbled out, revealing a stout frame in strange silver-and-purple armour, with a jet-black disc on her chest in place of a sigil. Her hair was of similar hue, tied up with a chainlike ornament into a bubble-ponytail. He was sure he recognised the symbol from somewhere, but it escaped him at the moment.
She looked up at him, looking as tired as he felt.
“I thought that thing was going to be my coffin. Thank you-”
She cut off, as the psychic pulse connected them again. Flashes of slashing weapons, a blackened mirror, and a menagerie of blurred faces. Her gratitude toward him was tinged with wariness, mostly directed at Lae’zel. And her thoughts finally gave him a name for the green-skinned and slit-nosed woman. Githyanki. Oh. He’d heard of those. Probably should have made the connection. So this was what they properly looked like.
“...you keep dangerous company.” The woman mumbled.
Willow had to cede her that point, so he nodded. “Dangerous company’s what you need in a fight.”
He tried to make the statement without admitting outright that he needed to keep someone who knew what she was doing, or he would likely be dead rather imminently. But from the way Lae’zel smirked at the statement, and the other lady raised an eyebrow questioningly, he suspected he may have made that point anyway.
The woman nodded hesitantly, then stood up. Lae’zel tapped her foot impatiently. Willow tried to ease the tension by bridging the gap between what the two of them wanted.
“Er- Let’s get going. I’m Willow.” The woman nodded. “Shadowheart. One moment.”
She reached back into the pod, and pulled out a metal polyhedric object with spikes on the corners, and runes he didn’t recognise carved into the faces. He was tempted to ask what it was, but he had a distinct feeling it wouldn’t matter much if they didn’t get moving now-ish. The floor kept jolting. So he suppressed the urge to ask, and instead gestured her toward one of the arse-doors.
“C’mon, it’s time to go.”
She nodded, and the two ladies, the man, and the brain-dog-thing approached the first door. Selûne’s tits, what a time to be alive.
He opened the door, and saw another pod in the middle of the room. This room didn’t seem to have an exit, but he thought he ought to check the pod anyway. Sure enough, there was another woman inside it. But she didn’t call out for help when the group approached. She was moving ever so slightly, but didn’t seem to notice the group. She certainly wouldn’t be able to run, or aid in a fight. Willow wanted to help her, but something told him this woman was beyond his ability to save. Better to leave her where she was, and hope the pod might give her some modicum of padding in case the turbulence worsened.
There was a chest on a platform at the back of the room, but Willow decided that perhaps it was better not to try Lae’zel’s patience again by stopping to loot. Instead, he mumbled a blessing for the dead under his breath, directing it at the dazed woman, and turned back toward the main room they’d come from..
They didn’t stop to look around further in the main room, and instead beelined toward the other door. The three crossed through it into a smaller room with a sharp turn, and then another door immediately after the first. Maybe more like a small hallway then. Transitionary room? Willow wasn’t rich enough(Or well-versed in ghaik enough) to know what this was called. Lae’zel stopped, putting a hand up to her ear. Willow could hear the faint sound of yelling on the other side, so he assumed that was what she was scoping out. Eventually, she spoke.
“We are nearing the helm. Once inside, do as I say.” Shadowheart snorted in response, clearly doing her best to look as contemptuous as possible.
“Who put you in charge? I’ll trust my own judgement.”
Lae’zel growled and narrowed her eyes. “Cain’yank.”
Willow sighed. This was going to be one of those team-ups, then. “Can we please wait until after we’re out of immediate danger to start fighting each other?”
Shadowheart rolled her eyes, and Lae’zel glared at him. But neither made any further commentary, and he was going to consider that a victory.
The second door looked the same as all the others on the ship, so he opened it the same way. But what waited for him on the other side was most certainly not the same. The rest of the ship had been fairly quiet as such things go, aside from the roar of the wind outside. But this room was the stage for a vicious battle between the ghaik and the demons, fighting with blade, claw, and tentacle.
As he watched, one of the smaller ghaik pinned a demon to itself with tentacles, then opened its bizarre mouth to take a bite out of the demon’s skull. The demon stopped struggling, and the ghaik was sprayed with its blood, leaving Willow with the distinct impression that he would not like to get on one’s bad side. But as soon as the first demon fell, two imps flew down from the rafters to fell the squid who’d killed their ally. Okay,
In the center of the madness, one of the ghaik with a fancier collar than usual stood, locked in combat with an enormous demon -devil?- with a flaming greatsword. The ghaik hit the demon with a blast of purple-tinged… Mist? Energy? Energy was probably a more accurate term. It would only be mist if it were special effects. That gave Willow an idea for- Argh! No! Focus, focus! You’re in immediate danger, think of cool ideas later!
The giant squid turned toward them, and without moving its mouth, Willow heard its voice in his head.
Thrall. Connect the nerves of the Transponder. We must escape. Now.
It was like the voice of Us, but more… Even. More tempered. Something with more time in existence. The tiny and childlike voice of Us then piped up again, as if to cement this idea.
“Connect the nerves! -nerves- We will connect them!”
Lae’zel hissed at the order, then urged the group forward.
“Do it. We will deal with the ghaik after we escape.”
Willow had a feeling they might not get the chance, but he didn’t want to waste more time on an argument right this second. Plenty of time for that once they were off the ship, right? Well, that was the goal, anyway.
He hefted his axe, assessing their situation. Five more imps -two near them, three over next to the exposed brain covered in tentacles that he assumed was the ‘transponder’-, Two black and spiny things that otherwise looked like pigs -one near them, the other with the second group of imps-, and the larger demonic creature with the flaming sword. That one was fighting the ghaik that’d given them orders, but there didn’t seem to be any other ones around. Well, no other live ones, anyway. That was probably not a good sign as to their odds, especially given that the command squid didn’t seem to be faring especially well in the fight either.
Lae’zel surged forward immediately, slashing one of the imps in twain. Shadowheart threw a bolt of fire at the demon-pig, which singed it significantly but didn’t kill it. Willow ran toward the second imp, and managed to land a hit to its head. It went down like a stoned bird, and he kept moving forward after seeing that Lae’zel had doubled back to cut down the pig attacking Shadowheart. Heh. So much for ‘no time for stragglers’. The pair of women were just behind him, all three trying to cover ground toward the transponder, with Us trailing behind.
But their squid friend didn’t seem to be doing so well. It had taken heavy hits during that time, and was oozing silver blood down the front of its robes. He was beginning to see the devil take devious glances toward the three survivors, and he had a feeling that the flaming blade would soon be directed at them if they didn’t act quickly.
“Shadowheart! Do you have the spell ‘command’ prepared?”
Shadowheart looked confused at his words. “Well, yes- But why?”
Willow felt a surge of hope. “Make the big guy drop his sword!”
Shadowheart blinked, then aimed the spell at the devil. As she called out, Willow dove toward the devil. The weapon hit the floor with a clang, and he reached for it before the devil could. He grabbed ahold of the blade and pulled it away, nearly dropping it as he went. Ouch, okay. Flaming sword is very hot. Made sense in hindsight. He grabbed it by the handle the second time, awkwardly stumbling away from the devil with it. He shoved it into the loop on his back that his axe-handle had previously taken up, continuing forward. The devil had tried to lunge at him, but the ghaik had lashed at it fast enough that it had returned to the fight bare-handed.
It was still very hot while it was on his back, but at least now he had his hands free to use his actual weapon. Maybe it would have made more sense to start using the sword. Well, if he knew how to use a sword, it would have made more sense. Would it even matter, with one that was actively on fire? He could just use it like a sharp club, it wouldn’t make that big a difference. Well, too late now. The second demon pig was nearly on him.
It hit him like… Well, like an angry pig. Which he should have expected. So it hurt, but he somehow managed to avoid being impaled on the tusks. Lae’zel was doing her best to defend herself from the imps, while Shadowheart ran ahead. Then an imp caught her too, and she stopped to whack at it with a mace. She didn’t seem to be managing to hit it though, so it was getting just as many swipes at her. Through a gap in the ship’s siding, he could see that they were approaching a cliff. And it was getting a little close for comfort.
He ran away from the pig, and it managed to clip him with a tusk on the way past. Ow, but probably worth it. He ran as hard as he could toward the transponder, and grabbed one of the tentacles attached to it. There was an upper part and a lower part, with no indication of what they did. But the only instruction he had was ‘connect the nerves’, so he’d just have to wing it. He grabbed one of the higher ones, then one of the lower ones, and shoved them together. The strange and hairy bits of them melded together and attached, just as the entire ship jerked violently.
Willow managed to hold onto the side of the consol as the floor did somersaults beneath him. The things were connected, but it wasn’t doing much. He just managed to haul himself up toward them and reach toward the connection, his legs waving in the air. He really hoped he wasn’t flashing anyone for a brief moment, before remembering that he was wearing breeches.
He just managed to grab back onto it before losing his grip again, and flying off the consol entirely. Maybe he should have held on with both hands, then reached for the connector when the ship went a little more solid again. Or then he wouldn’t have had the chance, and he’d just have died. Maybe he was going to die from this anyway, and his sisters would never know what happened to him. He should have just stayed in the damn circus.
He had all those thoughts and more, as he plummeted through the ship. His back hit a wall, and he turned slightly, only to find himself face to face with a ghaik. Though it was also pinned by the ship’s momentum, so maybe it wasn’t the biggest danger to him at the moment. It gave him a look that made him wonder if they were both thinking some variant of ‘Well, fuck’.
He didn’t have time to think much more than that, because a piece of rubble detached from something and hit him in the head. He processed falling out of the ship, and then blacked out. Welp. Life was overrated. Zero out of ten, do not recommend being kidnapped by bipedal squid. Goodbye cruel world.