Chapter Text
The first thing I felt was wetness. A slick sheen clung to my skin, cold and cloying, as though I’d been dreaming inside the belly of some vast beast. My eyes opened slowly, half-blinded by a crimson glow that pulsed like the inside of a living wound. The last thing I remembered—before this cage, before the dark—was a mind flayer bending over me, its tentacles curling with obscene grace. A sharp pain behind my eye, a piercing intrusion I could not resist. And then nothing.
Now the pod around me hung open, its strange membranous door peeled back like a flower’s petal. Steam hissed softly. I stumbled out, legs trembling, boots splashing in the thin pool of viscous fluid on the floor.
The chamber was vast, organic—alive. Walls that should have been stone were instead fleshy, ridged with pulsating veins, glowing faintly as if to remind me I was walking through the heart of some monstrous creature. The bard in me, that instinct to weave words, whispered a cruel rhyme: a cage of flesh, a hall of bone, the nautiloid my waking throne. I pressed my palm against my chest to steady the thudding there. I was a daughter of dwarves, bard by trade, and I was not supposed to be here.
A sound broke the silence—a voice, faint, pleading. Not a voice carried on air, but one that bloomed inside my mind. “Help… help us…” I froze. The chamber stretched into a split level ahead, and I saw a strange organic contraption pulsing with violet light. Instinct—or curiosity—led me to it. My fingers found the ridged controls, and when I pressed, the living machine shuddered, sending a platform sliding forward. It carried me upward, its movement smooth, almost reverent. What I found at the top turned my stomach.
A man lay sprawled on a grotesque chair, straps binding him in place. His chest rose and fell in shallow rhythm, but the top of his skull was gone—simply gone. His brain pulsed wetly, and from it tendrils of thought spilled into me like a whisper. “Yes!” the psionic presence chirped, the tone impossibly childish. “You’ve come to save us from this place. From this place you’ll free us! Please, before they return. They return.” My hands trembled on my lute case. The words pressed too directly into my thoughts, too innocent in tone for something so vile. I forced myself to answer. “I think you’re past the point of saving,” I said softly, though my voice quavered in the air. “Tell me what to do.” “Remove us from this body,” it begged, echoing with wet urgency. “From this case. Free us. Please!” I swallowed, leaned closer. My fingers reached toward the twitching folds of flesh. Slowly, carefully, I tried to prise the strange brain-thing from its ghastly cradle. It clung stubbornly, as though fused to the man’s dying form. I pulled once, twice, but it would not yield. Its voice keened in my skull like a child sobbing: please, please, please. At last I stepped back, wiping my shaking hands on my tunic. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and turned away.
I left the pleading voice behind, its cries still echoing in my skull long after its strange body fell out of sight. My boots squelched against the veined floor, the air humming with a strange pulse, like a heartbeat too far away to place. Somewhere in the depths of the ship, I swore I heard screams—high and distorted, like echoes through a long horn. The walls shuddered.
Through a rent in the organic plating, I caught a glimpse of the impossible: a sky of fire, rivers of molten brass. Colossal shapes moved against the horizon—horned devils, whip-wielders driving hosts of the damned. The Hells, I thought, and my mouth went dry. Somehow this nightmare craft was soaring through Avernus itself.
I hugged my lute case tighter against my back, as though the familiar weight might anchor me. That was when the air shifted. A faint scrape above, deliberate, close. Before I could look up, a shadow dropped from the higher platform.
The figure landed with the grace of a predator, blade flashing in the crimson gloom. Her skin bore a sickly yellow cast, her armor wickedly angled. She leveled her sword at me, eyes blazing with merciless intent. “Abomination,” she hissed. Her voice was steel sharpened on stone. “This is your end.” Pain spiked through my skull. My vision fractured—shards of images not my own: a dragon’s wing spanning a crimson sky, a silver sword gleaming in holy light, and then—my own face reflected in her thoughts, dwarfed and trembling. She staggered, clutching her temple. “My head… what is this… ngh.” Then her lip curled in disdain. “Tsk’va. You are no thrall. Vlaakith blesses me this day! Together we might survive.” I forced myself to keep my voice steady, though my hands itched toward the hilt of my shortsword. “What do you suggest?” She straightened, proud even in the choking shadows. “First, we exterminate the imps. Then we find the helm and take control of the ship. We will address the matter of a cure for this infection once we reach the Material Plane.” Her words were hardly comforting, but they left me little choice.
A screech split the air, and from the passage ahead came a flurry of wings. The imps burst forth—tiny fiends, leathery wings beating, eyes glowing like coals in the dark. They swooped and darted, brandishing cruel claws and barbed tails. The woman bared her teeth, raised her sword high. “Htak’a!” she roared, and leapt into the fray. I followed. My fingers slid over my lute’s strings, a discordant chord reverberating through the chamber like thunder. Magic laced the sound, and one imp shrieked, wings faltering as it crashed to the fleshy floor. The yellow-skinned warrior met another head-on, her blade a blur. She cut through the creature’s leathery wing in a single stroke, black ichor spraying. More imps shrieked, circling, their shadows jittering across the pulsing walls. My song rose, a defiant melody that belied the terror still clutching my gut. Together, blade and song struck back against the swarm. One imp shrieked as the warrior’s sword cleaved its chest, the ichor sizzling as it spattered across the living floor. Another swooped low, tail lashing. I ducked, teeth gritted, and strummed a sharp, cutting note that cracked through the air like a whip. The discordant magic flared, and the creature jerked mid-flight, wings locking as it tumbled into the pulsing wall. The ship itself seemed to shudder at the impact, veins rippling where the body dissolved. Two more imps darted in unison, aiming for the warrior’s flanks. She pivoted with a growl, blade flashing left to right in a savage arc. One fell, bisected with brutal efficiency, but the other darted past her guard, claws raking her arm. She didn’t even flinch—just snarled, teeth bared, and backhanded it with her pommel so hard its skull cracked like a dropped gourd. I felt the rhythm of the fight settling into me. Fear gave way to focus, to the steady beat of my song. I struck another resonant chord, weaving the sound into a pulse of encouragement, a rallying note that quickened her steps and steadied her aim. She glanced back once, eyes narrowed, not with distrust but recognition. The imps shrieked in anger, wings beating hard enough to stir the rancid air. One swooped at me, claws outstretched. I swung my shortsword clumsily but caught its arm, the edge biting enough to stagger it. Before it could recover, the warrior lunged from the side, her blade piercing its throat. She ripped the weapon free with a savage twist, and the imp crumpled, its body steaming on the fleshy floor. “Keep playing, bard!” she barked, already whirling to face the last pair. I obeyed, my melody shifting to a quicker rhythm, notes sharp as arrows. The final imps hesitated, unnerved by the strange harmony of steel and song. That pause was all the warrior needed. She charged, shouting another guttural war cry—and cut one down in a single sweeping blow. The last imp darted high, wings thrashing, trying to flee into the shadows of the ceiling. My fingers danced over the strings, summoning a final crashing chord. The sound reverberated like the toll of a great bell, and the creature faltered mid-flight, tumbling to the floor where the warrior’s boot came down hard, crushing its skull.
Silence fell, broken only by the wet drip of ichor and the distant groaning of the ship’s hull. My chest heaved as I lowered my lute, sweat stinging my brow. The warrior flicked her blade clean, then turned to me. Her gaze was piercing, sharp as the edge of her sword, but beneath it burned something like approval. “You fight with song,” she said, as though testing the words. “Strange. But effective.” I tightened the strap of my lute case across my shoulder and tried to still my trembling hands. “And you fight like a storm with teeth,” I replied. For the first time, her lip twitched—half sneer, half smirk. “Then perhaps we will survive this yet.”
I bent to the fallen imps first. Their bodies steamed faintly as ichor ate into the living floor, but their crude weapons were intact enough. I prised a jagged dagger from one’s claw, wiped it clean on its leathery hide, and slid it into my belt. From another I took a barbed spear—light, nasty, but serviceable.
A few paces on, sprawled across the corridor, lay the broken forms of those the imps had already slain. Their clothes were torn, eyes vacant, limbs twisted at cruel angles. Thralls? Or people like me—victims plucked from the world above? I couldn’t say. Their silence offered no answer. I forced myself to search them, fingers trembling as I tugged a pouch free here, a half-empty vial there. A scattering of coin, a few trinkets. Survival demanded it. The warrior watched me with cool indifference, but said nothing.
When I was done, we pressed onward, climbing a ribbed incline that led to a higher level of the ship. The air here seemed tighter, humming with a deeper pulse. That was when we saw her. A half-elf woman was sealed inside one of the pods, fists hammering against its slick surface. Her eyes found mine, dark and desperate. She shouted through the membrane, her voice muffled but fierce: “You! Get me out of this damn thing!” The warrior beside me sneered. “We have no time for stragglers.”
But I couldn’t just leave her. I stepped closer, palm pressed lightly against the pod’s surface. “I’ll go look around—there must be some way to get this thing open.” “Hurry! Please!” the woman cried. “Try that contraption just next to the pod—they did something to it when they sealed me in.” I turned. Sure enough, an organic console protruded from the floor beside the pod, its surface mottled and slick, ridged with veins of violet light. A socket yawned at its center—waiting for something.
Leaving the warrior’s impatient glare behind me, I slipped into the side chamber. The stench hit me first—burnt flesh, coppery blood. A corpse lay slumped against the wall, its features half-melted. Grimacing, I knelt and searched. My fingers closed around a smooth object tucked in its pocket: a rune, pulsing faintly with the same violet glow as the console.
I returned quickly, heart hammering. The half-elf’s eyes widened as she saw it in my hand. I fitted the rune into the socket. The console gave a low, shuddering hum, light spilling brighter along its veins. I laid my hand on the surface. Instantly, something writhed inside me. The parasite behind my eye squirmed like a living worm, flooding my skull with pressure. I gasped, clutching the console to steady myself. Then the pain ebbed—and something else rose to take its place.
Connection.
The console’s mind brushed against mine—alien, pliant, yielding. It was like sinking my fingers into wet clay, only the clay was alive, aware, waiting for command. Open, I willed. The thought passed through me, echoed in the biomechanical brain beneath my hand. I felt its acquiescence, its strange organic gears shifting, and then—yield. The pod split with a wet sigh. The half-elf woman staggered forward into the crimson light, breathing hard, hair plastered to her brow.
A shiver raced down my spine. I withdrew my hand slowly from the console, but the sense lingered—that it had obeyed me, and the wriggling thing in my skull was somehow sated by it. I hugged my lute case tighter and tried to keep my voice steady.
The pod hissed fully open, its membrane peeling back like a wound. The half-elf stumbled forward, knees buckling beneath her. She caught herself on trembling arms, gasping for air as though she’d been drowning.
We approached, the warrior looming tall and unsympathetic, while I crouched slightly, hand hovering near her shoulder.
“I thought that damn thing was going to be my coffin,” the woman rasped. Her voice was low, urgent, the sound of someone who had clawed her way through too many close calls. She lifted her eyes to me, relief shining there. “Thank you—” But before she could finish, my skull lurched. A pressure surged behind my eye, and suddenly her thoughts bled into mine. Gratitude, yes—but sharpened by suspicion. Not at me. At the figure beside me. A gith. You brought a gith with you. Dangerous company.
The words rose unbidden to my lips. “Dangerous company’s what you need in a fight.” She blinked, startled. Then, slowly, she nodded. “Fair point. 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.” I gave her a weary smile. “All right then. Let’s get going. I’m Bex.” “Shadowheart,” she said, pushing herself upright. “One moment,” she murmured, as if to herself. She turned back to the pod, reached inside, and drew out an object—something dark, quickly tucked into her bag before I could make out its shape. Her jaw tightened as she straightened again. “Come on,” I urged, shifting my lute case higher against my back. “Time to go.” “Finally,” the warrior woman growled, impatience etched into every word. “Let us make for the helm—we’ve wasted enough time already.” Shadowheart’s gaze flicked between us, a half-elf caught between bard and blade. At last, she inclined her head. “She’s right. Lead on.”
And so the three of us pressed deeper into the pulsing corridors of the nautiloid, the ship groaning around us like a living nightmare. The ship’s corridors twisted like arteries, every step guided by the pulse of something vast and alive beneath our feet. The warrior woman stalked ahead, her blade still wet with ichor. Shadowheart and I followed in uneasy silence, the echoes of our footfalls swallowed by the ship’s constant throbbing hum.
At last, the warrior halted, hand raised. “We are nearing the helm,” she said, her voice a low growl. Her amber eyes cut back at us like a warning. “Once inside, do as I say.” Shadowheart bristled, chin lifting. “Who put you in charge? I’ll trust my own judgment.” The warrior’s lip curled, baring sharp teeth. “Kainyank,” she spat, the word guttural with disdain. I didn’t know the term, but the venom in it needed no translation. Shadowheart’s hand twitched near her weapon, but she said nothing more. For my part, I tightened my grip on my lute case and muttered, “We’ll argue about rank later. For now—let’s just live.”
We pressed into the helm.
The chamber yawned wide, the air thick with the stink of brimstone and blood. At its heart, chaos reigned. A cambion, wings scorched and horns gleaming, clashed with a mind flayer in a storm of steel and psionics. Sparks and shadows lit the chamber as they struck at one another. Across the room, another cambion’s body convulsed—its skull cracked open, mind flayer tentacles burrowing deep. The cambion screamed once before the ghaik’s head jerked, ichor spraying as several imps descended on it, tearing it apart in a frenzy of wings and claws.
The surviving mind flayer turned its pale gaze on us. Its voice seared directly into my skull: “Thrall. Connect the nerves of the transponder. We must escape. Now.”
I staggered, clutching my temple. Its demand pulsed through me like a drumbeat. The warrior woman’s head snapped toward me. “Do it,” she hissed. “We will deal with the ghaik after we escape.”
There was no time to argue. The imps shrieked, wheeling in the air, and from the shadows lumbered something worse: a tusked creature of flame and sinew, its hide scorched black and steaming—a lesser hellsboar, eyes burning with infernal hate. It squealed, a sound like tearing metal, and charged. Shadowheart drew her weapon, her voice sharp. “Here they come!” The warrior roared and raised her blade. And I lifted my lute, letting the first notes of battle-song shiver through my fingers.
The hellsboar thundered forward, its hooves hammering the fleshy floor with every charge. Its tusks glowed white-hot, molten fire dripping from them in streams. Behind it, the imps scattered and shrieked, swarming like carrion birds eager for the kill. The warrior woman wasted no time. She leapt at the beast’s path, blade raised. With a guttural cry she slashed across its shoulder, leaving a smoking gash that barely slowed it. The boar squealed in rage and swung its tusks at her, forcing her to duck low, sparks spraying as one tusk glanced off her armor.
“Keep it busy!” Shadowheart shouted. She raised her hand, a flare of silver light blooming in her palm. The brilliance struck an imp mid-flight, searing its wings to ash. It plummeted screaming, its body scattering in a puff of smoke. I drew my lute against me, strumming hard. The sound that came was not beautiful—it was jagged, a clashing of strings that echoed like cracking whips. Magic laced through the chords, a force that rattled the very air. An imp screeched as it veered too close, wings seizing in the resonance. The warrior took advantage, lunging forward to slice it clean in half.
But the hellsboar was relentless. It lowered its head and charged again, tusks aimed straight at me. I dove sideways, the beast’s bulk shaking the chamber as it thundered past. The stench of brimstone and rot filled my lungs. My fingers shook as they scrambled over the strings—but the song rose, faster, louder. I let the rhythm drive me, weaving its beat into Shadowheart’s steps, strengthening her resolve. She moved with sudden surety, her voice ringing out in a chant. Radiant energy crackled around her blade as she plunged it into the boar’s flank. The creature bellowed in pain, kicking and thrashing, ichor spraying across the floor. The warrior seized the opening. With a savage cry, she leapt onto the beast’s back, sword plunging down between its shoulders. Black blood erupted as the blade sank deep. The boar shrieked, staggered, then collapsed under its own weight.
The imps screamed as though in mourning. They descended in a frenzy, claws raking, wings beating. One sank its talons into my arm, and I cried out, wrenching my shortsword free. I slashed wildly, cutting across its chest. Another darted at my face, but Shadowheart’s mace cracked it aside, skull shattering. The warrior vaulted from the fallen boar, her blade a whirlwind. She cut through the last pair in a storm of steel, her war cry reverberating across the helm.
The air was thick with the stench of smoke and ichor. The boar’s body smoldered, steam rising from its corpse. I staggered, panting, sweat stinging my eyes. The warrior dragged her blade free and pointed toward the far side of the chamber, where a pulsating console glowed.