Her eyes opened up to blue skies.

That rhymed, Mina thinks to herself as sense starts to come back. She can't wait to tell her friends about that line.

Her vision starts to coagulate. Clouds return in definition. Mina wonders if this was what the Spirit World looks like. Her mind wanders to what her parents would think now that she failed her Rites months away from her 25th birthday.

Is this it? Mina asks herself or any eavesdropping deity possibly listening into her thoughts. If this is the Spirit Realm, why does it look so boring-

Cold water floods above Mina's face, filling her nostrils and mouth with salty brine and pellets of sand.

"EUAGHHHH!" Mina cries out as she scrambles onto her feet, spitting the seawater, sand, and one strand of kelp out of her mouth.

Mina coughs, dusting herself fruitlessly as the wet sand and seawater had stuck to her entire body and soaked her clothes. She looks up. The nautiloid, or part of it, lies in front of her half-sunken into the water.

"Oh", Mina comments. She's alive. That's nice.

Behind her, Mina hears the sound of crackling smoke and the whistling of wind through something structural. She turns. Bodies spread across the strip of beach: travellers, fishermen, farmers, all lie dead in the sand. This was not a battlefield. This was a massacre. From the way their bodies show signs of blunt trauma, severe burns, and one single farmer snagged between a cliff while covered in egg yolk, twigs, and feathers: all fellow skydivers of the nautiloid.

She walks towards the trail down the strip of beach. How did she survive? She wonders before her foot snags on something metallic on the ground. She inhales sharply. The woman she rescued from the pod, Shadowheart, lies beneath her feet. Mina peers above Shadowheart, pouting her lips.

A pity, Mina frowned, I would have loved to know more about her.

"Back... stay..." a mumble comes out of Shadowheart's lips. Mina eyes widen in pleased excitement. Mina grabs the cleric by the shoulders and shakes her excitedly. Shadowheart's eyes jolt open like a frightened deer, her face blurring through Mina's shaking.

"UhhuaaAAAAAAOAAAA", Shadowheart comments on her predicament. Mina pauses her shaking as she stares back at Shadowheart.

"...you're alive!" Shadowheart remarks, "I'm alive! How are we not dead?"

"I don't know, maybe the tide was high", Mina replies. If the trusted adult doesn't know how they're the only two survivors, how could she?

Shadowheart sits upright as Mina lays her back on the floor. As if she suddenly remembered something, Shadowheart smooths her hand down her armour and leggings before spotting the strange prism from her possession lying patiently in the sand. Her shoulders drop dramatically as she stares into the middle distance.

Mina patiently stands with her hands clasped in front of her. Shadowheart seems to remember that she's not alone and blinks at Mina. "Oh, you're still here. Help a girl up?"

Mina does so. She heaves Shadowheart on her feet in one pull. The two surviving women stand side by side as they put their arms on their own hips, scanning the horizon.

Mina idly stirs the sand beneath her with her foot. The texture is coarse and gravelly. Large chunks that break into sediment that piles like kernels. This is river sand.

"We're somewhere along the Sword Coast", Mina observes.

"Thank the gods. How could you tell?" Shadowheart asks.

"The sand", Mina points, "It's Chionthar sand! The trees too. That's elm. That's cedar."

"You're..." Shadowheart sizes her up, "...observant."

"Oh, thanks!" Mina smiles, "Yeah, I travel a lot."

"There's a trail over there", Shadowheart's gaze follows down the beach, "There'll be civilization. If we're lucky, maybe even a healer who could get these worms out of our heads."

"Alright", Mina picks up her maul, Betty Girl, patiently waiting in the sand, "Let's go!"

"Wait, before we go", Shadowheart looks at Mina, "I wanted to say thank you. For rescuing me from the pod, I mean. You could have so easily walked by."

Mina stands still. Then slowly, a bashful grin emerges.

"Yeah, don't mention it", Mina whispers, spinning Betty Girl in her hands, "Shall we?"

The trail goes up the hill where the crashed nautiloid ship lay burning. It seems like the only way through.

"-so I thought I'd come home early to surprise them and-" Mina stops in her tracks as Shadowheart slows down behind her.

There's an elven man, pale like freeze-dried coconut meat, standing on the beach, with hair styled to resemble a dollop of Chantilly cream. Mina misses Chantilly cream. He seems preoccupied with looking at something out of Mina's sight.

Mina looks at Shadowheart. The cleric shrugs back. Ever the wise decision maker, Mina approaches the frosty elf.

The elf, due to Mina's bulk, twitches his ear at her direction.

"Hurry", he points urgently, "I got one of those brain things cornered. You can kill it, can't you? Just like you killed the others?"

"Sure!" Mina smiles as she marches over down the path, peering over the bushes. There's nothing but a wild boar. A piggly wiggly feasting on a rotting apple. "Where is it?"

"Right..." Mina feels the man whisper behind her neck as a blade appears below her throat, "Here."

"Hey!" Shadowheart surges forwards.

"Ah, ah, ah," the pale elf tsk-tsked at Shadowheart, who glances down at the man's tiptoes as he reaches up to Mina, "You, keep your distance. We don't want things to be messy."

Mina feels a tug on her back, then another. She does not move but she could feel that the elf wanted to do a sort of maneuver that seems to be failing.

"Now", the pale elf whispers, "You were on the-"

Mina jerks her head sideways, right onto something rigid and bumpy. She hears a pained grunt for the pale elf. She pulls herself away from the man as she turns around.

"Damn you!" The pale elf cried as he covers his nose as blood drips onto the sand. Shadowheart flanks by the elf's side, her mace at the ready.

The flamboyant snow cone glares at Mina, "Gods, you broke my nose!"

"WELL, YOU PULLED A KNIFE ON ME!" Mina yells back with her fists up.

The smug vanilla gelato opens his mouth to retort before a rush of psionic thoughts flood into both of their minds: the tadpoles in their brains deciding to gossip about the two meat puppets fighting over nothing. Visions course through Mina's mind as she sees the alleys shrouded in darkness. Shadows sliding down brick and mortar. Fear. Hiding. Clouds of malaise fill Mina's mind before dissipating as the tadpoles break their link.

"Wha...what was that?" the pale grandmother-looking elf asks, "What's going on?"

"It's the worm thing!" Mina points to her forehead, "It connects people."

"Tadpole!" Shadowheart corrects.

The man lowers his dagger. His eyes drop to ground pensively, then back up at Mina. He too seems to have felt some connection with Mina and her intent, or lack of. "You're... not one of them, then. They took you, just like they took me."

Mina shrugs, lowering her hands, "Yeah."

The man chuckles, "And to think I was going to decorate the ground with your innards. Apologies."

"That's alright!" Mina smiles as she wipes her hands on her clothes, "I'm Mina Minos."

"My name is Astarion. I was in Baldur's Gate when those beasts snatched me."

"Hey me too! I was in Baldur's Gate", Mina glances at Shadowheart with an inviting look. Shadowheart does not acknowledge it.

"Is that so?" Astarion smirks, flicking his hand, "Clearly, we move in different circles."

We do? Mina thinks to herself as she runs through the catalogue of who she knows in the noble circles. Is there an Astarion? Mina can't seem to know him from anywhere. Maybe he's from East Baldur's Gate.

"That's nice!" Mina smiles back, choosing not to comment on his weathered raiment and amateurly stitched doublet.

"So... these worms. Do you know anything about them?"

"I know they shouldn't be in there."

Astarion sighs, "Of that we can be certain. I need to find an expert. Someone who can figure out how to control these worms..."

Shadowheart crosses her arms, "Control? We need to get rid of them. As soon as possible."

"Well yes, of course", Astarion rolls his eyes, "But first things first."

Mina stares at the blood still dripping off Astarion's nose. She opens her mouth, then closes it. She looks at Shadowheart, who raises an eyebrow at her.

"We were planning to set up camp over by the river", Mina decides to say, "It's over by the bank, it's closed off and stuff. You could head over there and…"

Mina waves her finger at her nose. Astarion catches that his vanity is currently compromised.

"Ah! A camp. I suppose sticking with the herd isn't such a bad idea. I shall head there now. My looks are at risk. You know how important that is to someone such as myself."

Mina watches as the man jogs off down the hills, blotting his doublet with his hand as he disappears into the horizon.

Mina looks at Shadowheart, "He's weird. He doesn't feel like a noble."

Shadowheart nods, "I don't trust him. Was showing him our camp location such a good idea?"

"He put the knife away, though", Mina shrugs, "We all got the worm. Might as well figure it out together!"

Shadowheart sighs, "Tadpole."

The road coils upward, threading into the nautiloid ship. In the ruined chamber lies the corpses of more victims of the kidnapping and intellect devourers squished from the fall. In the center of the chamber is a crowd of people: a large collection of fishermen huddled over somebody.

"More survivors", Mina stands up straight, "We should-"

"Hold on", Shadowheart pauses, pointing at the crowd, "Their eyes."

Mina looks. The fishermen's eyes are glazed over, one herd clawing over a pile of debris in alarming synchronization while one herd slowly trudges around the corner. Mina's eyes wander downward as she spots that at the bottom of the debris pile lies a mind flayer, still alive, barely holding itself upright with one shoulder as alien goo flows out of its torso pierced by nautiloid rebar.

From around the corner comes a voice. A very familiar voice.

"BACK, YOU FIENDS! I HAVE A LUTE AND I'M NOT AFRAID TO USE IT", a husky voice shouted out, "RRRRRUFF RUFF RRRRARARAR! AH DAMNIT!"

"Is that... hey!" Mina yells as she charges towards the crowd funnelling into the corner.

"Wha-where are you going?" Shadowheart yells as she follows Mina around the hypnotized crowd.

"IT'S A FRIEND!" Mina yells back as she turns the corner, sliding to a stop as she sees the victim of the enthralled crowd: a high elf with long carrot-coloured hair below a big floppy green hat.

"Hestia Balfour!" Mina taps Betty Girl on the ground to get the elf's attention, her wide piercing grey eyes stare back at Mina.

"MINA MINOS! THANK THE GODS", Hestia cries out, pointing her lute at Mina, "HELP ME OUT HERE!"

Mina turns to Shadowheart, who is now occupied with the crowd who has turned against her. The crowd that was following Hestia slowly turns their heads towards Mina.

"She...", one of the fishermen sluggishly say, "wanted to kill my daughter. My daughter is in there."

The entire crowd points at the mindflayer on the ground.

"And you... you're one of them!" The fisherman snarls as he bolts towards Mina at breakneck speed.

Mina barely had time to react as she raises Betty Girl upwards, punting the farmer in the face with her maul's handle. The man's body slides across the floor and slumps over a ledge. Another one jumps at her, clawing at her face with his greasy fingers.

"Ow!" Mina winces as the fingers smack her in the face, more offended than hurt. Mina swings back, landing Betty Girl directly into the fisherman's torso. The man, eyes wide, folds into his collapsed ribcage, as if he was amazed that his body could fold like a book before the light leaves his eyes.

Before Mina could look back up, she finds her arms bound as the swarm of thralls crawl onto her like spiders, locking her joints and prying Betty Girl out of her fingers.

Mina roars, kicking a fisherman in the face as she struggles against them.

"A little help?" Shadowheart asks as she backs away slowly while casting Fire Bolt, lobbing little balls of fire at the fishermen as she keeps moving.

"Hessie!" Mina cries out, clearly surprised by her predicament that she could get incapacitated this quickly.

"Uhh-uhhhh, DAMNIT! AHHHHHHHHHH!" Hestia screams as she charges towards Mina. Then miraculously, Hestia springs from the ground, her body soaring upside down, her eyes closed, and her mouth screaming. She plucks her lute, releasing a wave of thunder rippling through the air, sending Mina and the fishermen flying through the chamber.

Mina rolls through the chamber, bowling through the fishermen swarming Shadowheart, before she stumbles up and runs to collect Betty Girl who is lodged between the cracks in the ground.

"ARE YOU OKAY?!" Hestia shouts from across the chamber.

"Yeah!" Mina pops Betty Girl out. She takes a breath to look around her. All the fishermen have been either defeated by the thunder wave or have burnt to death by Shadowheart's Fire Bolt. The three women stand gasping for breath as they gather themselves from the battle.

Shadowheart looks up at Hestia, "Was that you barking?"

"No", the elven bard lies before looking at Mina, "Oh, dingus, am I glad to see you."

Mina grins, "Oh yeah."

"I gotta lay down for a bit", Hestia heaves with her hands on her knees, "You guys can go deal with him, I gotta- yep, ohh my knees..."

Hestia slowly collapses on the floor, breathing heavily as she clutches her lute.

The two flank either side of the dying illithid, staring down as it glares back with beady, indignant eyes.

"Is he the one who...?" Mina asks.

Shadowheart squints at the mindflayer, "No, it's not the one."

Mina notices a droning noise increase in her head. What she thought was just whiplash from falling to her presumed death was coming directly from the illithid staring at her. The noise gets louder, intenser, sweeter. It feels almost like crooning, telling Mina that everything will be alright, all things deserve to be loved, as long as she serves… it.

Shadowheart double overs behind her, clutching her head as her mind struggles against the urge. Mina's eyes roll over as her spine straightening backward, her mind filled with thoughts of compassion, mercy, and servitude.

Mina hears it whisper in her mind. It sounded like her mother's quiet but firm voice.

Obey me, It said. Serve me. Love me.

Then, for a brief moment, its thoughts drift elsewhere, momentarily distracted by something unseen. Something in Shadowheart's direction. The tadpole in Mina's brain pushes back from the illithid's thoughts. Then gently, its thoughts drift away into the sea as Mina's mind clears up like a popped back. The mindflayer lies back on the ground, exhausted, defeated, its eyes radiating malice before glazing over.

With a quick grunt, Mina slams her foot down into the illithid's neck, shattering it instantly from the heel of her boot.

Shadowheart pulls herself on her feet, catching her breath as she stumbles her way forward. "Monster. Death was too good for it."

"The voice in my head", Mina turned to Shadowheart, "The mindflayer. It sounded like my mum!"

Shadowheart raised an eyebrow, "I heard a male voice."

"HELLO?!" a voice rings out from outside the nautiloid ship, "I AM IN NEED OF A LITTLE ASSISTANCE HERE!"

It sounds like a human. Mina looks eagerly at Shadowheart, who is already rolling her eyes.

"Sure", Shadowheart sighs, "Are you gonna wake your friend up?"

"FIVE MORE MINUTES", Hestia calls back.

So many friends in one day, Mina smiles to herself, this day could only get better.