Chapter Text
Vera woke with a gasp, sitting bolt upright. She immediately regretted it as pain made itself known all over her body.
She was covered in countless bruises, burns, and cuts all over from being attacked by imps, illithid thralls, and a fire-breathing dragon. The eye pain was the worst, though, a dull, burning ache. Beneath the pain, she could feel the unsettling sensation of the tadpole wriggling about, nibbling away at her brain. It made her a bit nauseous.
She was on a riverbank, although she had no idea which river, sitting in a damp mess of muddy sand. Small fires smoldered around her where pieces of the Nautiloid had broken off and fallen. The enormous flaming wreckage of the ship itself engulfed the entire landscape behind her. Smoke billowed upwards in a thick haze. The sky was bright blue, so she was definitely out of Avernus, thank the gods. Judging by the position of the sun in the sky, it was almost noon.
“Shit!” Vera frantically rose to her feet, ignoring the pained protests of her limbs. It had been dark when she’d fallen from the Nautiloid. She must’ve been lying here for hours, an easy target for any thief passing by.
A quick check confirmed that she still had all of her valuables: her earrings, the rings on her fingers, the pearl pendant that was carefully hidden under her shirt, and the handful of gold in her pockets. She breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that she hadn’t bothered taking much coin with her when she left home yesterday. She'd only taken enough to pass the time while she waited for Dumor’s ship to arrive in Baldur’s Gate.
And then she’d been abducted by mindflayers.
How long had she actually been on the Nautiloid? Had she really left home yesterday, or… Oh gods, everyone back home must be worried about her. Guilt curled in her stomach. She could have died on that ship and no one who cared about her would have any idea what happened to her.
That cheery thought sent her straight from guilt to fear. Panic began clawing its way up her throat, and she swallowed thickly, trying to tamp it down.
She needed to get home, right now. Then she and Dumor could figure out this whole tadpole thing together.
Vera promptly set to work drawing a teleportation circle on the ground. Thank the gods she’d landed on a riverbank; she didn’t have anything to draw a magic circle with, but the wet sand made a good enough canvas.
She was very practiced at making portals, and the circle was done in moments. She knelt beside it and placed her hands on it, picturing home clearly in her mind, and channeled magic into the circle.
Nothing happened.
She furrowed her brow in confusion, and then a sharp pain burst behind her eye. She cried out, and was overcome by a wave of dizziness. It took several moments to pass, and left a slight ringing in her ears when it did.
What the fuck?
Vera looked over the circle again, double-checking that she’d drawn it correctly. Everything looked right. Cautiously, she tried again.
The dizziness and pain were stronger this time, overwhelming her. By the time it faded, she was shaking and panting for breath.
The tadpole wriggled uncomfortably in her head, and she pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, breathing heavily. Tears welled up, but she hurriedly wiped them away. Throwing a tantrum wasn’t going to solve anything.
She had no way home. She couldn’t make a portal, and she couldn’t summon her wings (she’d already tried back on the Nautiloid). She was stuck out here. Wherever “here” was.
“Karshoj!” she cursed, running a hand down her face.
Right. She was alone, so she needed to figure this tadpole thing out by herself. But first, she needed food, and probably healing, and she wouldn’t get either sitting here. There were probably some settlements along this river. Time to start walking.
...
The beach was littered with bodies and blood—the corpses of fisherman that had been working on the riverbank when the Nautiloid had come crashing down upon them. As Vera knelt to search yet another body—an older man with a graying beard and a bald spot—a pang of guilt ran through her.
She shouldn’t feel responsible for this. She had no idea how to fly a giant squid ship, even if there hadn’t been an angry dragon breathing fire in her face and turning the controls to ash. She’d done the best she could. She shouldn’t blame herself. She shouldn’t.
She shouldn’t.
“Are you going to search every body we come across?” Shadowheart asked. She was standing a few feet away, wrinkling her nose at the unpleasant smells of burning flesh and fish slowly spoiling in the sun. “It’s a waste of time. We have days until we turn into mindflayers, at most.”
“We’ll starve first if we don’t get some supplies,” Vera said. The man had a walking stick beside him, which she picked up and tested in her hands. It seemed sturdy enough, so she used it to help her stand. It bore her weight well; hopefully it would help her stay upright during any future bouts of dizziness.
“You’re right that this may be a waste of time, though,” she conceded. “I don’t think these fishermen had much on them. We’ll have to move on, and hope that I crashed the ship into a noble’s carriage that we can loot.” She gave a wry smile that the cleric didn’t notice, as she was unhappily watching the Nautiloid wreckage.
“We’ll have to go that way,” Shadowheart grimaced. “There’s no other way off of this beach. Unless you’ve got a way to get into that locked door in the cliff face.”
Vera didn’t. The Nautiloid it was.
...
If the riverbank smelled bad, the Nautiloid wreckage reeked. The odors of corpses and rotting fish persisted from the bank, but they were now combined with the smell of the ship itself, which was made out of some sort of slimy, spongy, flesh-like material. It smelled horrible when it burned, and all of it was burning. Small fires dotted the wreckage, creating a thick haze of smoke that was nearly impossible to see through.
That was probably why they didn’t notice the intellect devourers.
One of the creatures came lunging out of the smoke, its claws reaching out to tear Vera’s torso to shreds. Instinctively, her hands went to her sides, reaching for her swords, but they closed around empty air. She cursed and twisted out of the way instead, grunting as the intellect devourer’s claws grazed her arm. Why, of all the possible times, did she have to get abducted by aliens when she wasn’t carrying her armor and weapons?
She swung her walking stick towards the creature as it landed, channeling a burst of thunder through the wood. The devourer’s legs flew out from under it and it collapsed to the ground, dazed. Shadowheart brought her mace down onto it, crushing it into goo. She grimaced at the blood and bits of brain now coating her weapon and gently shook it, trying to dislodge some of the gore. “Disgusting,” she muttered.
“I hope that wasn’t Us,” Vera said. “I rather liked that little guy.”
“A githyanki and an intellect devourer,” Shadowheart scoffed. “Your taste in allies is questionable. Perhaps you should start making more trustworthy friends.”
“What, like a cleric who won’t tell me her deity?” Vera teased, raising an eyebrow.
Shadowheart had swiftly shut down Vera’s attempts at casual conversation, and had been especially cagey when Vera had asked about her religion.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Vera had told her. “It’s not like I’m going to force you.”
The cleric had immediately relaxed at that, which only made Vera even more wary. Everyone was certainly entitled to their secrets (hells, Vera was keeping more than a few herself), but in her experience, nothing good ever came from a cleric who hid their allegiance.
Shadowheart opened her mouth, presumably to say something sarcastic and scathing, but she was interrupted by a high-pitched trilling sound. They turned towards it, and through the smoke caught glimpses of three more intellect devourers rushing towards them.
Vera stepped forward, outstretching her hands. The first intellect devourer had died easily, a simple fireball should be more than enough to handle these three. “Valignat!” she shouted.
Nothing happened. The attempted spell pulled energy out of her but, horrifically, she felt it fizzle and die as the phrase left her lips.
A sharp pain burst behind her right eye and another wave of dizziness washed over her. She swayed and fell to one knee, crying out in pain. Her vision swam and her ears rang. A metallic taste flooded her mouth, and it felt like her nose was running. She lifted a hand to her face, and it came away streaked in blood.
Shadowheart grabbed Vera’s shoulder and pulled her backwards just as one of the intellect devourers attacked, its claws barely a hair’s breadth from where she had fallen.
“Incende!” A radiant golden light burst from the cleric's outstretched hand and the intellect devourer crumbled to ash. The hand on Vera’s shoulder glowed blue as Shadowheart muttered a healing spell.
The healing washed over Vera, closing the scratches on her arm and making the dizziness fade. Her eye still throbbed, but her vision and hearing had cleared, and she could mostly think.
Her wings wouldn't appear, the teleportation circle hadn’t worked, and the fireball hadn’t worked. So she couldn’t do magic? But the thunder spell had worked perfectly fine. Sure, it had been a simpler spell, but—
The intellect devourers reached them. Shadowheart rushed to meet them, swinging her mace in a wide arc, catching one of the creatures and knocking it on its side.
The other lunged at Vera. She grabbed it in midair, grimacing as her fingers sunk into the slimy brain-flesh, and sent a jolt of lightning running through it before she remembered that casting spells probably wasn't a good idea. The creature spasmed in her grasp, its flesh turning gray and black as it burned, before it went limp. She dropped it to the ground and it lay there, smoking and twitching.
Vera felt rather twitchy herself; twitchy and tired, like when she was a kid and had tried casting something too hard for her to handle.
From casting shocking grasp?
It was a simple spell, practically instinctive. She’d helped her seven-year-old nephew with it when he first started showing signs of sorcery. Because it was an easy spell for teaching children.
Anger rose up in her. She was a fully-fledged godsdamned sorcerer! She was made of magic, it composed her very being! She shouldn’t be winded after a fucking cantrip!
Her magic. Her magic. Those godsdamned mindflayer bastards stole her fucking magic! Infecting her wasn't bad enough?
She was going to burn this ship to cinders. She was going to claw the tadpole out of her skull with her bare hands and squash it underfoot. She was going to rip the next mindflayer she saw apart and stuff its corpse and—
“Are you alright?” Shadowheart asked, standing over the bludgeoned remains of the last intellect devourer.
There was something wary in her tone, and Vera followed her gaze to find thin threads of lightning dancing up and down her arms. She shook herself, banishing the sparks, and took a deep breath, trying to make the anger follow suit.
“I’m fine,” she said, giving what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “It’s just been a long day.”
“You collapsed,” the cleric said, stubbornly refusing to be reassured.
“It’s nothing, really,” Vera said. “Probably just… lingering effects from falling a few hundred feet out of the sky.”
Shadowheart frowned, unconvinced, and raised a hand towards her. It glowed a calming blue, and Vera felt the magic probing her body, searching for injuries or illness. After a few moments the glow faded and Shadowheart lowered her hand. Vera felt, disappointingly, the same.
“I don’t sense anything,” Shadowheart said slowly, still watching Vera intently.
"Told you." Vera shrugged, pretending to be unbothered. “Come on, let’s get out of here before the smell of burnt brain seeps into my clothes.”
She felt the cleric's suspicious gaze lingering on her as she marched out of the ship, but resolutely ignored it.