It was cold inside the pod.
In between states of lucidity, Mina could hear the slithering of tentacles, the flapping of wings, and the chittering of… imps? The worm that had crawled inside her brain squeals as if answering her thoughts, rattling her skull.
Then, it was hot inside the pod.
A hiss settles outside. Mina could feel the breath of wind on her face as she wakes up. Her pod had opened on its own, surrounded by wreckage.
The neighbouring pod had been broken out of. Somebody must have woken up alongside her.
Mina stumbles, all six foot two of her, around the burning nautiloid. There was only one thought crosses her mind:
Now where is Betty Girl?
Mina turns around. The maul lies dormant within the pod, as if waiting for her to notice.
Classic Betty Girl.
Collecting her companionable maul, Mina paces to the only exit of the room towards the door. The sphincter, as it resembles, opens up, revealing a vast chamber of alien architecture. Organic piping. Buttressed vaulting. Walls that shine like cleansed pig intestines. A cathedral of biotechnology.
“Woah”, was all Mina could muster.
Across from her, Mina could see a faint glimpse of light. Real sunlight. As she gets closer, she could smell the growing stink of sulphur, hear the whistling of wind, and see the flapping of colossal tentacles swaying through the clouds.
“Over here!” Mina hears a voice say. It seems to come both from above and inside her. Mina walks towards the source and finds herself standing on a platform with a strange apparatus that resembles a sunflower and an anemone.
I wonder how this thing works, she thinks to herself. The apparatus answers her thought. The ground beneath Mina’s feet shifts, and the noble barbarian is slowly carried upwards.
“Hello!” The voice in and outside her head whispers excitedly, “We’re here! Help us! Free us!”
Mina sucks her teeth. Who is we? Who is Us? The floor beneath her comes to a stop, bringing Mina face to face with an elf with a bad haircut, the haircut being his entire top dome of his skull surgically removed. His brain is exposed, pulsing and twitching excitedly.
“You’ve found us!” The voice reverberates in her mind, “You’ve come to save us from this place! From this place you’ll free us!"
Mina peers over the platform. The elf reclines on his bizarre bed, his mouth agape, tears, or some sort of brain fluid, coming out of his eyes. He’s either dead or astonished by Mina’s presence. Mina doesn’t like either option.
“Please, before they return… they return”, the voice whispers.
“Uhhh…wh-” Mina studies the scene before her, “Hello? Who am I talking to?”
“A newborn. Born new from this husk.”
“Oh”, Mina stares at the newborn brain jiggling the body, “Okay.”
“Uh-uhh-huhh”, interjects the deceased elf, who was eager to give his two cents as the brain wobbles in his dome.
“Mmm. Can I help you?” Mina winces.
“Remove Us from this body - from this body, remove Us. Please!”
The brain, though without eyes, was staring up at her like a wounded puppy. How could she say no to a face like that? Mina gingerly wraps her hand around the elf's exposed skull and inhales. Then, with a tiny bit of force, Mina feels her hand sink it as the bone cracks just enough for her to squish her fingers into the seams.
With a quick pull, Mina finds herself holding the brain in her hands. It wriggles and shakes in relief before bouncing off of her hands like a wet fish.
The brain lands with a wet plop on the floor. With a squelch and shake, it grows four claw-like legs and wiggles like a puppy shaking off water.
Mina stares at it. It stares back, presumably. Hard to tell without any eyes on it.
"Helloo," she raises her eyebrows.
“Thank you, friend!” The voice in her head exclaims, overlapping her own thoughts.
“...yeah no problem”, Mina musters up, “What do I call you?”
“Us”, the brain whispers, “We are Us. To the helm we must go! We must go to the helm!”
Mina had seen weirder days.
Heat billows behind her as Mina runs out with her new brain-friends onto the platform in the open air. Mina takes in the view, jagged mountains whipping across her as wind blows into her face. Swarms of red dragons flying past her vision weaving in and out of the musty, sulphuric haze as they dodge the barrage of purple beams of light coming their way. Mina was too occupied with her tapestry of Hell to notice the strange warrior front flipping into her direct view.
The warrior scowls at Mina, who stood understandably flabbergasted, as she pulled out her steel greatsword.
“Abomination!” The green woman greets, “This is your end!”
Us recoils in alarm. Its little paws skitter backwards as its hind raises upwards.
Suddenly, Mina’s head throbs. The worm in her head squirms. Visions rush past. A dragon’s wing. A silver sword. A flash of Mina’s own face from the eyes of the warrior.
Don’t look too shabby, Mina thought. Her pale white face tattoo of Yggdrasil still painted on her forehead down to her neck. Peach rose curls of hair still blowing in the wind. Eyes. One blue. One green. Everything seems to still be in order.
“Ugh, my head”, the warrior groans, “What have you done to me? Nghhh-”
The green woman stares up at Mina, blinking blankly before sheathing her greatsword, “Tsk’va. You are no thrall – Vlaakith blesses me this day! Together we might survive.”
“I don’t think I look like a thrall-”
“We carry mind flayer parasites. You will accompany me until we are _cleansed_, in days we will be _ghaik_!”
“But I’m already ga-”
The sound of chewing. Flesh tore in morsels, squeaking between jagged teeth. Mina notices the imps gnawing on the body of a thrall. The green warrior notices too.
“First, we exterminate the imps. Then we find the helm and take control of the ship.”
“To the helm we go! We are going to the helm! Friend!” Us adds.
The green woman scowls at the intellect devourer, then turns her head to the imps, “...first, we reach the Material Plane.”
The imps turn towards them and squeals defiantly. The warrior pulls out her greatsword, “HTAK’A!”
Mina assumes it means some sort of war cry so she pulls out Betty Girl as well. She inhales and charges into the chamber.
The imp barrels towards Mina. Mina barrels towards the imp. Mina swings wide. Betty Girl ripples through the air towards the imp’s torso. The imp flies out a hair’s length away from Betty Girl’s trajectory. The creature grins, baring its jagged, bloody teeth at Mina. Mina obliges. She thrusts Betty Girl forward. The imp’s yellow eyes widen as the steel plate of a maul crushes through its mouth, sending teeth, blood, and gum out of the back of its neck. The body splatters to the floor as the remaining half of the former imp’s skull rolls down the steps. The imp’s wing flutters limply before going still.
Mina exhales. She turns to the green woman, who is already wiping the blood off of her sword as the imp who attacked her lies with a clean sword wound through its heart.
“You prove surprisingly well in battle”, the woman says.
“Oh, thanks!” Mina smiles.
“...onto the helm”, the warrior decides to say.
“The helm!” Us chimes in helpfully.
They enter a chamber through a system of resin webbing, melted and cooled. Perfect for climbing onto. The chamber is large and vaulted like the others, decorated with mindflayer pods evenly around the side. Mina walks past a circle of bodies reclined on platform. She looks at one of them. The man lying there is breathing, alive, but nobody is home.
“Illithid writings, do not touch anything!” The green woman orders.
Mina nods silently.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Mina hears the muffled sounds coming from one of the mindflayer pods. Mina sees someone in there, awake, eyes wide in alarm and fear.
It’s another woman. Is it all women in on this ship? Mina wonders.
“Hey! Get me out of this pod! Hurry!” The woman demands while banging on the translucent canopy of the pod.
“We have no time for stragglers”, the green woman rebukes. Mina was tired of not knowing this woman’s name. She’ll call her Froggy for now.
Mina stares up at the wide eyes of black haired woman in the pod’s. Pleading, or threatening? True, there was no time to help every straggler, but straggler singular?
Perhaps there’s a quick way through this. Mina looks around the pod for some kind of mechanism, some kind of button that could open the pod.
A lid is technically a button. In some countries. Maybe.
Mina rummages underneath the pod to find some sort of anchor point for her fingers. She finds them. She grunts, straining the muscles on her back and legs to pry the lid open. It doesn’t budge.
“Have you had enough of your tantrum? We need to go!” Froggy yells.
Not quite. Mina tries again. She gnashes her teeth, squatting all the way down. With a quick inhale and push, the canopy flings open. Steam bursts from the machine. The woman in the pod stumbles onto the ground.
She’s really pretty. Mina stares at the woman with black hair in bangs and torso decked out in ornate chainmail armour.
Mina likes bangs, she thinks in third person for some reason.
“Hi! Sorry, hi. I’m Mina”, Mina extends her hand, then pulls it back uncertainly, then shuffles in place.
The woman blinks up at her while clutching her head, “…Shadowheart. I thought that damn thing was going to be my coffin. Thank you-”
The worm inside Mina’s head lurches as it recognizes its worm cousin inside Shadowheart. Mina could feel Shadowheart’s thoughts. Her gratitude is mixed with wariness, she is not a big admirer of the githyanki, it seems.
Mina assumes Froggy sensed it too, since her regular scowl has deepened further. Shadowheart scowled right back.
“Some company you keep”, Shadowheart observes.
“Oh! It’s okay! This is uh-” Mina gestures to Froggy. She couldn’t introduce this warrior as Froggy. Pivoting it is: “Did you feel that just now? We were in each other’s heads.”
“I did, it must be because of those damn tadpoles…” Shadowheart looks off into the corner, then back at Mina, “Let me come with you. We can get off this ship-”
“Alright!” Mina hops and points, “We’re going to the helm!”
“The helm!” Us adds, “To the Helm we must go!”
“...one moment”, Shadowheart says as she turns to grab a mysterious spiky artifact inside the pod and puts it into her pouch.
“Finally”, Froggy uncrosses her arms that Mina didn’t notice were already crossed this whole time, “Let us make for the helm. We’ve wasted enough time already.”
“She’s right”, Shadowheart raises an eyebrow, “Lead on.”
The group moves closer towards the rumbling and noise. Hallway after hallway. Sphincter after sphincter.
“We’re nearing the helm”, Froggy notes, “Once inside, do as I say.”
“Alr-” Mina starts.
“Do as you say?” Shadowheart frowns. Mina was going to do as Froggy says but she guesses not anymore.
The raven-haired cleric continues, “Once inside, I’ll trust my own judgement.”
“Kainyank”, Froggy mutters.
The final sphincter swirls open, revealing a mind flayer grabbing onto the horn of a cambion and eating into its cranium with its beak and immediately getting ripped to shreds by three flying imps. Neat. Mina thinks to herself.
The second mind flayer blasts the cambion duelling it to the ground before sensing the group’s presence. It turns towards Mina.
_Thrall_, its voice commands in her mind, _Connect the nerves of the transponder. We must escape. Now._
It’s calling me thrall, Mina wonders, what the hell is a thrall?
“Do it”, Froggy whispers, “We will deal with the ghaik after we escape.”
Mina is not one to assume a mind flayer’s sexuality but she nods. From the corner comes a hellsboar: big, scaly, and charging straight towards the group with steam blowing out of its nostrils.
“I’ll distract the fiends!” Mina says to her general group, “Shadowheart, you go to the front!”
Mina charges towards the hellsboar. The hellsboar rears its feet upwards reaching Mina’s height. Mina leaps forward, legs first, crashing straight into boar’s torso, leaving the two of them rolling down the chamber.
“Chk! You call that a DISTRACTION?” Froggy remarks, yet she joins into the dogpile, jumping straight towards the pit, greatsword raised high.
“Why me- FINE!” Shadowheart yells back as she charges straight for the transponder.
The battle rages on. The cambion, now back on his feet, swings his flaming sword at the mind flayer, who stuns it with a psychic blast. Mina is now on the hellsboar’s back gripping its chin upwards while Froggy tries to aim at its heart while Mina holds it steady. Shadowheart weaves through the scene, dodging arrows shot by the imps and the hellsboars barreling after her.
Shadowheart leaps through the fire cutting through the ship and finds herself standing before a bizarre control room, leathery and sinewy like bat’s wings. In front of her is this bizarre tentacle-like bioluminescent altar: the transponder.
“I’M AT THE THING”, Shadowheart yells back at the two girls wrestling the hellsboar while Us runs around scratching imps. Suddenly, the ship rumbles. A dragon’s roar tears through the clouds as a flash of red scales whips past the ship’s canopy.
“TSK’VA!” Froggy replies, “Hurry, before they strike!”
With a huff, Shadowheart grabs a tentacle from the transponder. It writhes in her hand, as if reaching for the other tentacles. She attaches the tentacle to another, its tendrils slither up towards each other like worms, then bonds tautly.
“DID YOU GET IT?” Mina shouts out.
“I don’t know, it-” the words stop in Shadowheart’s mouth as she looks up and sees a red dragon staring into her soul. The dragon bares its teeth at her before leaning back, smoke building in its mouth. Shadowheart assumes it’s time to get out of the way. She falls onto her back as heat blasts through the window, singeing the transponder and the floor of the control room.
Mina’s eyes widen as she drops the now annihilated hellsboar in her hands, wide eyes peering into the flames where Shadowheart once was.
She sees Shadowheart getting back up from the ground. Unscathed. The tentacles of the transponder intact.
However, Mina could see that the dragon was about to blow again. Smoke builds in its mouth, its posture leans back.
Then suddenly, everything goes purple. The outside had become a strange, astral vortex of purple, violent swirls. It would have been remarkable if not for the ship tilting to its side. Gravity slides to the back. Every single inhabitant of the room finds themselves slammed straight on the back wall of the helm. Mina grunts in pain as her body is pinned to the wall, which is now the floor.
Gravity tilts to the front. Mina somersaults towards the transponder at breakneck speed. She had never felt so light before. She snatches the rim of the transponder, staring down at the debris falling through the window. She pulls herself up, grabbing onto the tentacle taut and bouncy in her hands.
The vortex in the window clears out into clouds. Real clouds. Gray and blue in the night sky. Wind screaming by.
Mina was too busy admiring the view that she didn’t notice the mind flayer crashing towards her. She tumbles onto the rim of the canopy, rubbing her head before opening her eyes to see a full frontal view of the mind flayer sitting next to her, its arms crossed and eyes full of disapproval.
If it weren’t for her current situation, Mina would have found the scene pretty funny-
Then everything went black.
