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Chapter Text

Gravel dug into the gashes on Vi’s knees as she was hurled atop one of the turrets overseeing Stillwater prison. One of her captors – a particularly virulent guard of equally grotesque countenance – cradled an open wound of her doing on his temple. As her limp body was unceremoniously tossed to the ground, she overheard his so-called colleagues mocking him, the topic of discourse switching rapidly once an open flask was passed around: low whispers of what they would tell Sheriff Marcus once he discovered her remains.

“She escaped her cell, maimed Joss on her way up here then jumped off into the rocks before we could stop her…seems plausible.”

Even their subdued murmurs pounded against her skull. She shook her head as though attempting to rid it of erroneous embellishments, tendrils of thought reaching desperately for what splinters of memory remained amidst the muddle of her bruised brain: here or there, a child with blue hair, weeping; occasionally, the fuzzy image of a broad, bearded man, his rough hands cupping her face.

She shook her head again, a few droplets of blood staining the gravel – hardly a promising sign. 516 – that would be her – would soon enough be nothing more than a few crushed bones at the bottom of Stillwater hold unless her blood flow was stemmed.

Joss – the man she supposedly throttled – turned to her with a look of pure contempt.

“I’d like to crack her skull a few more times before she goes, just for the trouble.”

The most decorated of the squadron – truculent Lead Enforcer Tarleton – shot him a look, reminding him (with a serrated tone of admonishment) of the injury such prior exertions earned him:

“She’s like a wild beast; gotta treat her like one.”

“More like put her down like one.”

A roar of minacious laughter.

Suddenly, they were grappling with her again. She hissed at them through clenched teeth, lashing out as they hauled her closer and closer to the edge – to her doom.

Just before they hurled her to her untimely demise, a silhouette skyward caught in her peripheral.

Matter of fact, the whole weather seems changed: grey clouds have deepened into an opaque black…

Only when multiple begrimed tentacles slash the sky open did she realize that the blackened wisps were in fact smoke.

Alarm bells chimed from Piltover before the Enforcers even recognized that they were in danger; once fight-or-flight caught up to them, they released her instantly, sending her plummeting toward the rocks below. Over the course of her fall, she glimpsed what appeared to be a humongous shell attached to the horrific tentacles, as though they were guiding it.

Her last sight before she lost consciousness was that of the turret she was just moments ago perched upon being smashed to smithereens by only one of those repulsive arms.

Her last sensation: an invisible force stopping her right before her scalp was pierced through by a spike.

When her lids finally parted again, she initially thought she was inside herself. Everything around her resembled one gigantic organ, even the walls and floor pulsating as though they were flesh – even the texture matched. Even the glass of the pod that was enclosed in seemed to ripple as if it were a living creature. She tried to struggle but found herself completely paralyzed from the neck down, only able to identify from the corners of her blurred vision the inert forms of her now satisfyingly captured captors.

In the center of the room, she spotted cistern full of a thin, ill colored fluid. Then, craning her neck to the left (despite the shooting pain such an action sent to her head), she glimpsed a woman of apparently reptilian countenance. Perhaps a Vastaya of some form though she couldn't recall a Vastaya in the prison.  She was having a hard enough time remembering her name.

Of all of them – trapped and arrested – she seemed the least content to be there. Lapsing in and out of consciousness, Vi watched the stranger writhe, squirm and wriggle with teeth gritted at nothing in particular (probably just at the injustice of the situation), wishing her dizzied form could muster half the vicious determination of her lime-skinned companion. She observed the women spasming with one last spurt of rebellion before her eyes began to roll, eyelids fluttering closed as a combination of blood loss and cranial damage rained down on her all at once…

Perhaps she awakened again because she sensed danger; perhaps she just got lucky. Either way, the next observation Vi made when she came to was that of a three-fingered hand plunging into the cistern.

The intruder seemed a perfect groom to its ship it occupied – meaning it too retained the semblance of some Bilgewater sea monster resplendently dressed in a long purple robe with an elaborate collar. Vi’s reptilian companion likely wielded a phobia for the creature: her head shook rapidly as the repulsive beast approached, eyes that were defiant moments ago now wide with petrification. For a second, she was engulfed by the silhouette completely. A few grunts of pain. Then, the creature moved away from the now unconscious women, retrieving something from the cistern once more before honing its attention on Vi. 

Instinct kicked in. Waking her neck and facial muscles, Vi recoiled, only to have her chin snatched so that she was forced to inhale fully the creature’s acrid stench. A little translucent tadpole lumbered along its free hand until it hung off the tip of its finger, dangling perilously near to her right eye. 

Then (to her horror), the worm sprouted tentacles from its mouth before plunging into her ocular surface. She groaned with pain as it wormed along her arteries, entering into her already throbbing brain.

“Fffuuuck offff…” she slurred in a last-ditch effort at retaliation before there was a sharp pinch right at the back of her head; darkness flooding her vision once again.

In her nightmares: a mud-splotched face streaked with tears clasped between her fingers.

“Because you’re a jinx! Mylo was right!”

“No, no…Violet, please!”

It was the trembling ship combined with a flurry of heat across her skin that jolted her awake. It seemed this organic room changed everytime she fell asleep: the entire left wall was missing.

While her balance acclimatized to the now lurching surroundings, her reptilian companion burst through the flames. Her green, slender hand slammed against the glass, the crackle of the flames alongside the cacophony of destruction near drowning out her shout:

“Can you move, istik?!”

Vi parted her lips to speak only to find herself mute. From outside the pod, she heard the reptilian escapee curse cryptically under her breath before dashing back toward the inferno, vanishing through the blaze.

It occurred to Vi that she would be incinerated by those same flames if she remained in this pod any longer. Mustering what little strength still pulsed through her weary frame, she backed herself as far back into the pod as possible then flung herself forward, her body weight causing the crack to ricochet until the entire shell was shattered, herself tumbling out.

The momentum sent her stumbling into the brittle cistern, glass and fluid accompanying what was already on the fleshy floor. With a grunt, she rubbed her temple; dizziness scrambled reason. It only occurred to her as she stumbled to her feet that she was still bound, her fractured arms a concerning black shade. She marveled at how she couldn’t feel an ounce of pain – probably on account of the heavy doses of adrenaline pounding through her bloodstream.

Up ahead, she vaguely spied a swirl of flesh that seemed to resemble a door. With a grunt, she foundered towards her exit – only for a swarm of blue tendrils to sweep her off her feet.

She wrangled against them until a surge of electricity shocked her into submission. A queer healing energy flowed through her veins; her once blackened arms began to return to their ordinary pigment. The headache caused by the concussion subsided somewhat. Restored, the tendrils turned translucent, setting her down gently. She stared dumbstruck at them for a moment, then proceeded in her somnambulant state back towards the orifice.

The swirling hatch parted to reveal another organic room behind. This room was different – larger, composed of multiple layers on which she could ascend or descend. The possibility overwhelmed her.

To prevent sensory overload, she concentrated her wavering attention on smaller stimuli: namely, a second cluster of the blue tendrils that aided her previously and the little silhouette that scuttled around on the edges of her peripheral, in the shadows. She yelped as the latter suddenly veered into her path, realizing with a start that it was (amazingly) a sentient brain traversing on four spindly legs. Ostensibly, it was disinterested in her, for the organ scurried by without so much as a pause of acknowledgement.

Henceforth, she enhanced her attention on the other set of blue tendrils. Again, a surge. This time, a clearer head – her headache dissipated completely. Furthermore, when she landed, her legs felt considerably steadier. Though her environment was turbulent, her goal was clearer: find more blue tendrils as she continued to progress through the fleshy landscape. Heart hefty with determination, she trudged through the next available threshold.

She found herself outside – instantly floored by the sight of two ginormous levitating dinosaurs swooping through the smoky sky. She’d heard stories of these mythical creatures in Zaun: dragons; massive fire-breathing beasts with a pugnacious appetite to match. Glancing upward, she denoted two individuals whose appearances were akin to that of her lizard friend from earlier. Their throats were wrenched with war cries as they rained hellfire upon a blazing massacre below. She watched on encapsulated as the creatures dove down into the billows of smoke, dipping in and out between the raging pools of fire.

So transfixed was she that she almost didn’t dodge in time the flailing baton that hurtled towards her.

“Need to go back to your cage, 516…”

Her eyes flitted towards the source of the familiar sinister tone…then widened with an emotion somewhere between raw fear and pity. Her captor – just hours ago a poised (if mildly injured) Stillwater guard – now looked upon with irises as vacant as she imagined hers must have been. Miraculously, the ugly man looked the worst she’d ever seen him: bruised, one side of his face clotted with dried blood, uniform torn in multiple different places…and an immense intent to kill written in his complexion.

She raised her hands apprehensively. “Easy…”

The next line he snarled like an animal, eyes bloodshot:

“Need to go back to your cage, 516…”

Needless to say, he did not heed her. With a gut-wrenching cry, he lurched toward forward, baton skimming her temple as she stepped out of the way just in the nick of time. There was no remorse evinced in his body language – and consequently no reason for her to hold back. Wincing as he thwacked her side, only half-hearing his mocking undertones as she pummeled him into the ground, his blood soon absorbed into the fleshy aircraft the world blurring around her as she used the bindings as her weapons.

Evidently, some of his insults hit home, because when she rose victorious from his mutilated frame, she clutched her chest despite there being no wound there. Half-delirious with recent death, she rifled through his shredded Enforcers uniform; her search was rewarded with the key to her cuffs – the dull clunk of her anchoring bindings onto the mushy floor was muffled by her sigh of relief.

She assessed the room briefly before an unsettling squelching sound drew her pupils back to the corpse. With a short cry, she recoiled as a lithe tadpole (much like the one burrowed inside her own brain) weaseled its way out of his ear, flopped onto the floor then slugged away.

She took another step back when the larva was mercilessly smushed under an armored foot.

Upon looking up, she was stunned to find herself face-to-face with her fellow reptilian captor from earlier. The green-skinned woman nodded at her eminently.

“So, you can move, kainyack,” she observed with a sibilant tongue. “Good…perchance now we have higher chance of surviving this wreck-“

She was interrupted by a simultaneous wincing at a sting in both of their skulls. Memories neither had ever known before flashed before their eyes, zapped through their conscious. For Vi, she witnessed rigorous training, several more reptilian folks as well as excessive blood shedding in the name of devotion to an unseen yet ostensibly omnipresent ‘Queen’ of some sort – whoever this woman was, she was not from Runeterra. Likewise, the escapist witnessed in summation the entire duration of Vi’s turbulent sentence in Stillwater: ceaseless beatings, abysmal conditions, and a perpetual yearning for something (or someone) the stranger couldn’t quite identify.

The pair came to, eyeing each other with a newfound understanding.

“So, you are a convict,” remarked the lizard women astutely, chin jutting out with slight disdain. “I am a warrior. You shall call me Lae’zel of crèche Kal’ir. What should I call you?”

“51-“ Vi checked herself. “I mean, Vi…I’m Vi.”

“A simple name for a simpleton, I see. Wherefore are your origins?”

“R-Runneterra,” Vi stammered, rubbing her forearm soothingly. “Z-Zaun? You might’ve heard of it.”

“Never, but ‘tis no matter.” Lae’zel studied her briefly. “I shall not enquire as to the nature of your crime, ‘Vi’ – not because I believe you innocent, but because circumstance demands an allegiance, and you seem the most capable of all the hooligans I’ve encountered, if only because you are the only individual who has managed to escape thus far.”

Vi nodded along dumbly – at least she could count on Lae’zel to be honest (if to a terse degree).

“My kind are known as githyanki. Yours are...?”

“Zaunite.”

“Optimal. Are you aware of the nature of the tadpoles that presently infect our brains?”

Vi shook her head.

Lae’zel cursed – a peculiar, brusque sound that sounded like: “Chk! We have much to cover in too little time. Come, with me.” She trooped ahead, gesturing for Vi to follow. “My people possess a cure for our ailment. Wing me, and I will ensure you reap the rewards.”

Together, they scrambled through the multiple layers of the giant organ, Lae’zel surging ahead while Vi straggled behind her taking advantage of the blue tendrils as she found them. She looked about dazedly as Lae’zel described the intricacies of what she called a ‘Nautiloid’ – explaining that they must find the central console, that the tadpoles would turn them into ‘gaik,’ whatever that meant.

“Our kidnappers are known as ‘Illithid,’” she went on when Vi was paying closer attention. “If we are not cured, we shall soon walk among them.”

“Oh, shit!” Vi exclaimed. “You mean we’ll actually turn into one of those things?!”

“Affirmative. But fear not.” She grunted as they leapt over a gory obstruction. “Should you remain loyal to me, I will ensure that we are both freed from our imminent fate.”

Vi groaned as she gingerly stepped over a corpse Lae’zel had merely walked over. “Not like I have much a choice, huh?”

“Also, affirmative – skrah!”

Her expostulation came at the intrusive arrival of a small flying creature which Vi swiftly ascertained (through Lae’zel’s sharp battle cries) was an imp. Other enemies soon swarmed – fellow humans wearing the selfsame weary look that her least favorite guard had donned just before his demise – ‘thrall’ Lae’zel called them. With a sigh, Vi bore her bloodied fists.

She threw a punch at the first rapid imp to head her way, knocking the salivating critter so far backward that Lae’zel was able to cleanly slice off its head.

The two paused; a nod of respect.

Surprisingly, the fellow fighters worked rather well together: while Vi’s punches stunned the opposition, Lae’zel was able to pierce their thick skin with her blade – indeed, the githyanki moved with mastery Vi couldn’t help but briefly admire, while Vi demonstrated tact in an otherwise base form of combat that sparked impress in Lae’zel. By the time they’d cleared the lot, their skin was speckled all over with blood that didn’t belong originally to them.

“You fight well,” Lae’zel commented, holstering her blade. “But if you insist on such a basic form of combat, at least make an effort to perfect your craft.”

With that backhanded compliment, Lae’zel procured (from the arsenal strapped to her illustrious armour) a pair of glinting metallic gauntlets which she then proffered to Vi.

“Don these,” she commanded as Vi received them. “They may weigh you down, but I can see that you do not care for such drawbacks.”

“Gee, thanks…” Vi huffed, tightening the straps until they fit her fists snugly.

“Indeed, you ought to be grateful; they are procured of our finest githyanki steel.”

Sighing, Vi straightened up: “What’s your plan?”

“We are near the bridge of this ship.” Lae’zel pointed southward to the centre of the pandemonium. “Once there, we should find a console with which we can ground ourselves. Thereafter, we can determine our coordinates and seek out a creche.”

“And I should trust you because..?” Arguably foolish to voice such suspicions in these circumstances, but as Vander used to say: “Only suckers go through the front door.”

The minute stump that one could barely call Lae’zel’s nose flared with offence. “Whether you travel with me or not is of no significance to me, istik. I offer a cure in exchange for your allegiance because you have proven yourself useful so far. Hinder me, and I shall have no choice but to abandon you.” She levelled Vi with a presumptuous glare. “So, I ask once more: will you join me?”

Vi balanced out her options: she could either face the trials ahead with no navigation whatsoever or subject herself to the reticent aid of a nonetheless intelligent ‘githyanki’ – the more sensible option could not be more obvious.

“Fine,” Vi acquiesced. “But only because…well, I mean…look around.”

“Precisely.”

They approached the bridge between the main body of the ship and the central console with caution: it was the epitome of chaos; what Vi now recognized as githyanki were flying around on their glorious dragons, ravaging an absolute onslaught on the ship. Additionally, it seemed some denizens of the area had joined the fray.

“Skrah!” Lae’zel cursed upon examining the situation that confronted them. “The citizens of this realm will only hinder us further. We must be quick.” She turned to Vi sharply. “Are you sane enough to follow simple instruction?”

Ouch. “Uh-huh.”

“Across that bridge is the control center. If we are to live to see another day, we must infiltrate it, lest we wish to be trapped in the Hells for the foreseeable future.”

“I’m sorry, the where now?”

“Focus, istik!” Lae’zel snapped her fingers impatiently. “We haven’t the time for incompetence. Heed me well: should I fall before we both reach our destination, I need you to take that large tentacle you see up ahead and connect it to the ship’s center. This you must do if we are to survive. Understood?”

“Y-yeah, but-“

“Enough chatter.” Brusquely, she grabbed Vi’s wrist, practically hauling her towards the clamor. “Avoid engaging in combat if you can. We haven’t much time.”

Henceforth, they sprinted across the bridge, blades and claws alike skimming their heads, the heat intensifying as the dragons breathed more and more fire into the blazing chamber. Such temperatures would scald Vi had adrenaline not numbed to the extremities – patches of her skin scalded over, nonetheless.

After great struggle, Vi flunked against the control panel – then gazed about in terror when she realized her ally was no longer beside her. She swiveled on her heel…to discover Lae’zel locked in battle with a scorched, mythical devil.

“Activate the console!” she screamed raspingly. “Do not linger for my sake!”

Perhaps out of obligation (or perhaps because she now feels loyal to the gith), Vi obeyed immediately.

The moment there was a connection, the giant hulk of a rearing dragon’s head tore into the chamber as the world around her stalled, gracing Vi with a fleeting moment to appreciate the parlously elegant creature that just tore through one side of the battleship:

Truly, this dragon lived up to legend in both aura and magnitude, the head alone twenty times the size of her yet she’d seen bigger take to the skies in the last few minutes. Its scales (she realised with fearful reverence) were not strictly red, but a kaleidoscope of shades based on that hue. Glancing up in slow motion, she spied another gith astride the breadth of the beast’s back, screeches mostly unintelligible except for one word:

“Igniz!”

As if a puppeteer to its master, the already massive pupils of the beast dilated, cueing the release of a flame supposedly fueled by power of a jet engine – pitching the Nautiloid on its side.

A flash as they careered onto a new plane.

Instinct kicked in the instant sounds of demolition reached Vi’s ears.

Feet dangling mid-air, Vi clung to the console for dear life. With quivering hands, she pulled herself up and just about attached the two nodes.

In succession: a flash; a lurch as the ship collides with a sweeping coast, the momentum sending Vi flying off the ship. As she falls off, a chunk of rubble thwacks the back of her skull, knocking her semi-conscious.

The last sentence she heard before unresponsiveness gripped her once more was in Vander’s distant rusty timbre:

“You’re not done yet, kiddo. There’s still work to do…”

The first sensation she experienced upon waking up was the itch of sand under her fingernails. Spluttering, she rolled over onto her front, coughing up grit and blood. Surrounding her was many pieces of scattered Nautiloid debris shimmering from the light of reflected stars.

Shielding her eyes with her hands, she gazed skyward…up at an alien moon with multiple fragments trailing. It would seem that – just as Lae’zel was not of her world – this world was not hers either.

She recalled Vander’s tender words before she lost consciousness – whether she’d imagined this message or not was irrelecant. Perhaps as a means of self-soothing, she thumbed the tag on her vest that read 516…

No, that was not her. If she was to face whatever happened now, she would do so not as a prisoner of Stillwater, but as the fearless warrior Vander raised her to be.

She would not go forth as Prisoner 516.

She would do this as she had done with Lae’zel.

She was Vi of Zaun: Vander’s prodigy, Powder’s sister, once unjustly imprisoned but free at last.

And she had no idea where she was.

Chapter Text

For the first half hour upon crash landing in remote territory, Vi surveyed her surroundings, bumbling about amongst fleshy chunks of the Nautiloid ship littered amidst burning debris. One of the ginormous tentacles acted as a fine macabre archway as she sallied across the sandbank, determining no way to find her footing if she simply haplessly meandered about in one place. Plus, it wasn’t as though there were any other routes available: the entire beach was squashed against a rocky cliff-face too perilous to climb thanks to the debris.  

There were bodies everywhere – the first of which she encountered being engorged by another of those four-legged brains she’d encountered on the ship (though this one did not frighten her half as much). With each corpse she passed, Vi denoted their general appearance: traditional, sophisticated yet not without pragmatism, certainly not of Runeterra but not of a realm she was familiar with either – much like the moon, a mere wisp in the sky dissipating into the horizon as the sun rose higher into the sky…  

Also, no Lae’zel. Concerning.  

Traipsing further along the shorefront, she happened upon a wrecked dock decimated by the falling debris – beside, a man of dwarfish height laying face down in the water. Both the pack bobbing over his shoulder and his fishing pole were undisturbed. Astutely, she chose to rummage through the deceased’s belongings, procuring only some bread, cheese and dried meat that she nevertheless guzzled with furious starvation.  

“Easy, kiddo.” A steadying hand on her shoulder. “Eat that fast and you’ll just chuck it all back up again.”  

The memory caused her to freeze mid-chew. With an effort, she slowed her digestion.  

As she lumbered further along the beach, she marked several dirt pathways leading inland plus the eviscerated remains of her least favorite prison guard: Joss. She knelt down to examine the corpse: armour broken, skin gashed open in multiple spots, a pool of dried blood seeped into the sand below. With a grunt, she yanked his now obsolete utility belt out from under his limp frame, checking the baton clasped to it was intact before unclipping it for herself. Satisfied at feeling a little less defenseless, she rose to her feet.  

As she towered above his near unrecognizable features, abuses that once poured forth relentlessly from his now lacerated mouth flooded her memory – profanity and heinous slurs rained down upon her as she lay, bleeding, battered, sometimes vomiting on the floor from his beating. In a petulantly vengeful impulse, she kicked his spindly corpse, the force causing his jaw to go slack…revealing four miniature tentacles within.  

She recoiled, cringing as the gangly protrusions wiggled grossly at her. Judging by the octopus countenance of her previous captors, this man had clearly died between his metamorphosis from human to Illithid – just like Lae’zel had mentioned.  

Fuck, where was Lae’zel? Stultifying as the gith’s company had been, the woman clearly knew far more about this land (and their looming doom) than Vi could ever hope to grasp. There was no doubt in her mind: finding this githyanki was crucial to her survival.  

Over the top of the Nautiloid, she spied what seemed to be an aged edifice of some kind (detailed features were impossible to distinguish from such a distance). More bodies, all motionless – no, wait! That one moved, its chest tenuously rising and falling…   

Upon closer investigation, Vi determined that the body was female, protected by a shirt of chain and light plated armour. A long braided ponytail curling at her side in the manner of her fingers around the polyhedral artefact in her left hand. Vi’s gaze lingered on the peculiar object for a moment before she decided to let it alone – best not tamper with that she did not know. What she did know was people, hence why she shook her fellow survivor’s shoulders with such urgency.  

No sooner had the women jerked upright was Vi’s mind once again seized by that wretchedly potent sting. Memories flashed behind her eyes: this lady accompanied by four other people in similar armour sneaking about under the cover of darkness. Suspicious, but nothing to be gleaned from as of yet.  

At the same time, the survivor came to, staring at Vi as though she were trying on a new pair of glasses that had been incorrectly prescribed.  

“You were on the Nautiloid…” the stranger observed with a tone somewhere between milk and curdled butter. “I saw you, with that gith. She was in combat with the one-horned demon who freed me from my pod – the same sort you were trapped in, I take it?”  

Vi blinked in consternation at all the information thrown at her at once. Of all this survivor had told her in the last three sentences, the mention of the demon stuck out. Vi hadn’t been able to get a good look at the opponent at the time; now (if she were to believe this stranger), it seemed she might be ally all along.  

“Yeah…” Vi replied dumbly, more complex social skills lagged by nearly a decade in prison.  

The stranger eyed her prison tag regrettably.  

“Do you have a name you can remember? I’d hate to have to call you something as dehumanizing as ‘516.’”  

At that, Vi straightened. “I’m Vi.”  

“Shadowheart. A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Come, let’s get this off you.” She reached for the prison tag. “It’s hardly fitting, is it?”  

Before Vi could even flinch, Shadowheart had plucked the tag off her vest.  

“There,” she sighed, dusting off Vi’s shoulder. “That’s better.” The pads of her fingers fondled the tag pensively for a moment before she crushed the paper in her palm. “I’m sorry those four walls were cruel to you, Vi.”  

“It’s…” Vi stalled, gaze fixed on the sand in bemusement. “Huh.”  

“What?”  

“Nothing, just…that’s the kindest thing I’ve heard in forever.”  

Shadowheart cocked her head inquisitively. “Kind?”  

“Yeah…” At last, Vi met those hypnotic grey eyes. “Kind.”  

It only now occurred to her that Shadowheart was incredibly conventionally attractive; the light scar across her cheek and nose only added to her allure, as did her softly pointed ears. a silence protracted.  

“You’re not of this realm, are you?” Shadowheart enquired at length.  

“No; I’m from Zaun – you probably haven’t heard of it.”  Rubbing her fingers through her pink hair.  

“Only bits and pieces from the planar map in the Mother Superiors chambers. Runeterra, is that right? Piltover’s twin city?”  

“Yeah!” Vi perked up at Shadowheart’s geographical knowledge. She gestured around them. “Know where we are?”  

“Haven’t the foggiest, I’m afraid.   Along the Sword Coast would be my guess. I can say in absolute certainty we are on the realm of Toril on the continent of Fae’run.” Shadowheart smiled apologetically. “Can’t remember a thing since that wretched ship went sideways.”  

“Oh, yeah…” Vi raised her hand in discretion. “That’s my bad.”  

“Apology accepted, if only because you managed to cull some of those horrid Mindflayers as collateral damage.” They took a moment to bask in the enfeebled humour of their compromising situation before Shadowheart donned a more pragmatic tone. “Where were you headed before you came upon me?”  

“I’m looking for my friend-” Not really the most accurate term to use in this situation but what alternative was there? “-the one your ‘friend’ threw an axe at on the bridge.”  

“The githyanki…” Prejudice flickered through Shadowheart’s features. “Be wary, foreigner, I speak as someone who knows more of her kind than you do: do not be so fast to call a gith a friend.”  

Vi scoffed – disdain for others was not a trait she would tolerate, no matter how pretty the offender was (wait, what?). “Yeah, well…without that ‘gith,’ I’d already be dead, so…”  

“Feel free to pass your own judgements,” Shadowheart said conciliatorily, “but remember that you know little of this land and its customs. We may need each other, but I am of the distinct impression that you need me more than I you.” Her posture relaxed somewhat (though the artefact was still clutched in her hand). “Given your memories, I understand your mistrust, but this is no prison cell – not like the one you’re familiar with, anyhow. Besides, it would be wiser for both of us to recognize that we cannot survive this alone. So, what say you?” She extended her free hand. “Will you travel with me?”  

As she grasped Shadowheart’s hand, Vi rolled her eyes. “Again, not like I have a fucking choice.”  

“That’s the spirit,” Shadowheart chuckled mirthlessly before the stone face returned. Following Vi’s wandering gaze, she turned on her heel. “First order of business: food, water, shelter and an experienced healer. The former we might be able to loot from that temple alongside some coin if we’re lucky.” She squinted at the structure. “Mmm…I’m not familiar with the architecture. Come.” She gestured ahead of them. “I need to get closer.”  

The surreptitiousness with which she then pocketed her artifact did not go unmarked.  

Henceforth, the pair set off along the beaten path; serendipitously, there was much more to be said for the verdant grasslands that proceeded them than for the rife chaos of the beach. Silence suited them for a while, but awkwardness set in sooner rather than later – the need for chatter was potent.  

“So…” Shadowheart said mid-strike. “What’s Zaun like?”  

Vi huffed: “Shit, I don’t know. Haven’t been back since I was arrested.”  

“And that was…how long ago exactly?” Shadowheart queried with a tilted head – adding conciliatorily: “If you don’t mind me asking.”  

“Eight years ago, give or take?”  

“My word!” Shadowheart exclaimed. “What did you do?”  

“Nothing, ‘less you count a few petty crimes as worth the daily beatings.”  

“Not particularly, no.”  

“Then I didn’t do anything,” Vi grumbled, speeding up a little. “Being poor.”  

Shadowheart matched her pace. “I fear I’ve already offended you.”  

Vi scoffed: “No.”  

“Then why are you wearing the face of someone who could rip the horns off a demon at the slightest provocation?”  

“This is my normal face.”  

Turning the notion over, Shadowheart chuckled to herself: “I can see that.”  

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”  

“Only that you look…” Her gaze assessed Vi’s sinewed figure. “Capable.”  

“…yeah, well,” Vi grunted as she hopped over some chipped ruin, “not much else to do inside a stone box.” She gestured irritably to the ancient building in front of them. “This close enough for you?”  

Shadowheart stepped before her, squinting at the structure of the edifice. “Mm, looks to be a temple of some kind, though of what religious sect I couldn’t tell you – it’s always hard to tell with these things.”  

“Why does it matter?” Vi interrogated with agitation.  

Ignoring her blunt address, Shadowheart hummed: “Because it will affect what we might find inside.” She narrowed her eyes further. “I’d have to take a look at the refractory, or else more of the structure in general if I’m to-“  

She was cut off by a collection of gruff hollers, shouts almost unintelligible except for the brief mention of ‘survivors;’ the implication of rescue caused Vi to perk up significantly, shaking Shadowheart by the arm with suppressed excitement. Maybe some villagers, or people from a larger town had come to find survivors.  Food, Shelter and a Healer, just like her companion has asked for.  

“Hey!” Vi called out, rushing towards the voices with her arms flailing. “Over he-!”  

She tensed as Shadowheart’s hand clamped over her mouth, and subsequently pushed her away.  “What’s your problem?  They…”  

“Quiet yourself,” growled the smaller women, closing the distance between herself and Vi again in a breath. “I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but here almost no one is who they claim to be. These ‘rescuers’ are just as likely to be our saviors as our downfall. Come.”  

Suckers come through the front door...  Vi literally wanted to kick herself.  

Hooking her arm around Vi’s counterpart, she dragged them both into a wayside cluster of bushes. For a few seconds, the pair crouched in silent anticipation as footsteps thundered with increasing volume along the laden path. Then, a burst through the undergrowth, revealing a band of small people in armor, a little bigger than a Yordle and far stronger looking.  Their sloped faces were barely concealed behind hoods and helmets, while their sinew and bulky shoulders was encased in all manner of armor ranging from linked chain to cured leather.  Sharp pointed teeth were evident inside the wide mouths, and their long-pointed ears listened for everything.  Beady eyes shifted in all directions as the trampled down the beach.   

“Blast!” Shadowheart shout-whispered. “As I suspected: Goblins, and far too many for a fair fight at that. Quick, we best make ourselves scarce.”  

For her part, Vi figured it more sensible to trust Shadowheart’s judgement on this occasion (what with her far more extensive knowledge of the culture and all). The Enforcers baton could do some damage to these little monsters, but getting swarmed wasn’t something she wanted.  

Skirting alongside the ruin, they came open a large wooden door that Vi promptly barged through, yanking Shadowheart inside with her before slamming it shut then sliding the latch across the frame, obscuring all light until they were in pitch black.  

Dependent primarily on their sense of hearing now, the couple pressed their ears against the door as the shouts increased in volume. One stood out amongst them all: a truculent masculine timbre issuing commands such as ‘check the ship for survivors’ or more o’ them blasted Mindflayers’ or ‘You! Check that door!’   

Oh, shit.  

In unison, the women abruptly backed up as the frame began to rattle and shake from the audible force of being rammed against. The effort persisted for some time until they tired, one with a higher-pitched voice alerting the leader of their exhaustion.   

“Oy, True Soul, this door ain’t budgin’.”  Followed by a female version of the former.  “Ooh!  Ooh!  Boss Ragzlin!  We could get the Ogre, wants me ta get Buthir?  She’d make splinters o’tha door.”  

“Useless oafs, the lot of ya!” came the domineering rejoinder. “Go on, go check the cliff face instead then! Make yerselfs useful!”  

More pressing matters came to the forefront as the band wandered away.  

“Shadowheart, I can’t see a fucking thing. How the hell are we supposed to get out of here?”  

“Patience isn’t your cardinal virtue, is it?” snided the latter, grabbing for a chunk of rubble then igniting the stone piece with a whispered incantation.  “It’s Ok, I can see fine enough to...”  

In just that short time, a new problem had arisen, for upon the area being illuminated Shadowheart found herself face-to-face with her companion grappling at knife-point with a pale-skinned man of (admittedly) handsome countenance.  

“Pity about the lack of night vision, darling,” he purred nonchalantly, stance casual as though Vi’s death did not hinge on the slightest twist of wrist. He leaned down to snarl in her ear: “Now be still, unless you want me slit that lovely neck of yours…”  

“Let her go,” Shadowheart snapped, shifting into battle position.  

“Ah-ah!” His blade tightened against Vi’s throat; she froze. “Not another step, not unless you want things to get messy.”  

“Hurt her, and I’ll show you how messy this can get,” Shadowheart enjoined, the light dimming momentarily as a golden swirl encompassed her hand.  

Vi’s eyes widened in astonishment.  

“Holy shit…” she breathed.    

“Quiet, you!” the rogue insisted, glinting canines hovering dangerously close to her neck. “Don’t play coy with me. I saw you wandering around like a headless chicken on that Mindflayer ship. Now, I want to know what’s going on, who you are and what that blasted worm is doing in my head-ahh!”  

There it was again: that singeing throb in the back of their skulls, giving Vi just enough of a jolt to weave out of his grasp while he’s still blindsided. More images: this pallid man wandering darkened streets, pausing only to pickpocket or else flirt unabashedly with individuals whose skulls were too thick to realize he’d spat the same lines at least a dozen times prior.  

The sensation subsided; Vi opened her eyes slowly.  

“You’re a thief,” she observed cynically.  

“And you a convict,” he growled back at her, smirking with malice. “Tell me, do you have a name, or shall I call you 516?”  

“Pilty Fuck, grab that knife again...” Vi snarled, she wanted to see him bleed.  “Let's see how that goes...”  

She would’ve bashed his gorgeous features in then and there had Shadowheart not stopped her with a halting hand.   

“Enough, both of you!” she chastised, tactfully lodging herself between them. “You’re behaving like children! In case you haven’t noticed, there is a rogues gallery of goblins outside who want nothing more than our heads on pikes, so what say you that we cease this petulance and actually assist each other?”  

The bickering pair acquiesced – Vi with an apathetic shrug; Astarion with the following blasé statement:  

“Whatever you see fit, madame,” he purred with a mocking bow. “Let’s get frivolities out of the way, shall we?” He straightened himself piously. “My name’s Astarion Ancinin, a renowned Magistrate of Baldur’s Gate – at least until that damned Illithid Spelljammer showed up.”  

“Yes, I think we’re all well aware of the events that brought us here, Astarion,” Shadowheart muttered impatiently, though rolled her eyes at the reference of a Spelljammer.  The arrogance!  

As she spoke, Vi’s gaze hovered over her. “You did magic…”  

“I beg your pardon?” Shadowheart blinked with perplexion.  

“The-that thing with your hands.” Vi gestured clumsily. “How’d you do that? Are you Magicborne?”  

For the first time since the initial confrontation, Astarion and Shadowheart exchanged a (worried) look.  

“Cantrips are quite common to the fey blooded, darling,” he replied dismissively, tutting to himself. “Anyhow, what does it matter? Look at the state of you! I took you for a thrall the first time I saw you on that ship; your mind may be free to roam but your appearance isn’t much better off…”  

Vi looked down at her blood caked and tattered attire, her mind rewinding back to those zombiac individuals that attacked her and Lae’zel some hours prior.  There were Stillwater prisoners among those stolen from Runeterra.   

Shit, where’s Lae’zel? 

“Really?” Shadowheart grunted, unimpressed. “We’ve all been thrown a thousand feet from a Mindflayer ship, but your concern lies with her apparel?”  

“Listen, sweetheart, if you’re going to die in this booby-trapped nightmare of a temple, we might as well look presentable.  I have standards after all.”  

“You're lucky my companion called you a thief or else I would’ve sliced your tongue for that endearment, Magistrate” Shadowheart muttered contemptuously. She narrowed her eyes at him. “I suppose you can pick locks, then.”  

“What is a thief that cannot get into places they shouldn’t?”  

“Stop speaking in riddles,” Vi spat through gritted teeth.  

“I concur with Vi,” Shadowheart corroborated, addressing her teammate. “It is annoying.”  

“Ah, so our candy haired friend does have a name! I suppose you have one too, dear?”  

“You may call me Shadowheart, if it will stop the use of pet names,” Shadowheart snapped before homing in on her compatriot. “Vi, what else did you see?”  

The Zaunite hunted her memory. “He…he can ambush people. I saw it.”  

“Useful,” Shadowheart remarked, procuring another bright orb of warning with her palms (denoting how Vi stared in wonderment). “Provide more proof of your usefulness, elf, or I’ll have you disintegrated for daring to lay a hand on my friend.”  

Face run amuck with mischief, Astarion raised his hands in false surrender. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you, little Miss Acolyte – not unless you don’t want to find the treasure that is most likely hidden amidst these traps.”  

“What treasure?” Shadowheart interrogated.  

She marked how Vi gawked at the intensifying glow.  

“Who knows, darling?” Astarion shrugged equivocally. “But what I do know is that a temple this heavily guarded is never without its riches. Oh,” he appended with an impish smile, “and, of course, without me, you won’t survive the others.”  

“Others?” The orb dissipated somewhat (Vi gasped). “What others?”  

Just then, the trio were alerted by a nearby ruckus – forcing Shadowheart to ensconce her concern over Vi’s magical naivety until later.  

Chapter Text

“There's a group ransacking the western side of the ruins, a group who aren’t interested in being congenial,” Astarion stated while licking his fangs. “We’re better off remaining here for as long as we can; if we’re lucky, the raiders will save us the hassle of killing them by tripping these traps before we’re in any real danger.”  

“Trapped between a rock and a hard place,” Shadowheart sighed. “I suppose it’s our only option…”  

Vi kept her ear pressed against the cool surface of the temple door, the other detecting the grating bickering between her two new companions: it seemed that (despite Shadowheart’s extensive efforts to remain cordial) Astarion was keen to disagree with her on every point. She suppressed an eyeroll upon sensing dubious activity outside.  

“Hey, guys…” she hollered quietly, backing away from the door. “You might wanna-“  

Suddenly, the door rattled with an almighty quaver as something immense rams into the door. Astarion cursed under his breath:  

“Damnit! If I had half my tools on me, I could’ve prevented this by disarming them by now!”  

“Fuck disarming them!” Vi retorted in exasperation. “We just gotta sneak past. Now, are you two gonna get my blind-ass through this, or am I gonna have to listen to you bitch and whine for another hour?”  

Astarion and Shadowheart exchanged a look, grabbing Vi by both arms as the former ushered them to another door on the opposite end of the room. With lightning-fast precision, he sets to work on the lock, encouraged hastily by the ever-growing urgency of the increasingly unhinged entrance.  

“Hurry it along, would you?!” Shadowheart spat under her breath, eyes watching Vi equip her gauntlets should the worst-case scenario arise.   

“Don’t rush me!” The lock popped. “Aha!”  

The trio slid through, the rogue holding back to lock the door behind them. Mere seconds later, the old stone walls erupted in tremulous shockwaves from a nearby explosion, muffled screams of anguished terror following thereafter.  

They barely had time to re-evaluate their surroundings before a slew of small figures armed with crossbows flooded into the room, weapons trained on their heads. The ugliest of the bunch stepped forward.  

“Oi!” he barked, shaking a spiked club at them. “Quit trespassing on Gimblebock’s salvage or we’ll chop the heads clean off the lot o’ ya!”  The small statured man  

Before Vi could mortify herself by exemplifying an utterly frivolous of her lack of familiarity with the area, Shadowheart mouthed a steady ‘don’t you dare.’  

Whilst Vi weighed the odds, yet another gnome hobbled over followed by a meeker looking half elf.  

“Blasted goblins…” the being mutters. “Drivin’ us into the ruins. If we we don’t get past that hobgoblin and her nasty crew, them lot won’t be the only ones off their ‘eads!”  

“Patience, Warryn,” advised Gimblebock, appending with a minacious grin: “Let’s just ‘ave some fun with these wayfarers until the goblins fuck off.” The raid leader chuckled. “What d’ye think, Tannen?”  

The half elf nodded. “Can’t think of a better way to pass the time. Diggers and trap sponges are always useful.”  

Just when the situation couldn’t get any worse, Astarion rushed forward bawling in crocodile tears.  

“Oh, praise the gods, for they have brought me salvations!” he cried (in the most inconceivably Piltovian timbre Vi had ever heard outside of the city itself). “Heed me, friends! These naughty, naughty peasants have kidnapped me against my will! I was only trying to return to Baldur’s Gate from Waukeen’s Rest! Serves me right for straying too far from the Flaming Fist mercenaries, I suppose!” He huffed to himself as though disappointed in his mere existence. “If you would be so kind,” he implored with pleading hands, “as to return me to my escorts near the recent wreckage? I witnessed the crash all the way from the foothills, felt it my duty as Magistrate to oversee any damages.”  

While the raiders discussed his plight amongst themselves, Astarion caught sight of Vi glowering irreverently at him; to her infuriation, he only winked in response.  

“Come with us to our camp,” Gimblebock commanded Astarion. “There’s food and respite aplenty there, if you’ve got the coin.”  

“Marvelous!” He clapped his hands together enthusiastically. “And don’t worry; rest assured, there will be a generous payment from yours truly awaiting you at Waukeen’s Rest.”  

“Grand,” Gimblebock grunted before pointing at Vi and Shadowheart. “The rest o’ you, put them to work! Ain’t no use havin’ prisoners if we can’t use ‘em.  Haseid, you're in charge.” A hard-bitten human stepped forward, glowering at the pair, a nasty little grin plastered across his scarred face.  

Five minutes later, Vi and Shadowheart found themselves trudging along in chains, a dozen crossbows simultaneously pinned to each of them. Vi was the least pleased with this outcome, scowling at everyone. Shadowheart watched her face wearily, marking the lift of Vi’s brow when there happened to be a break in the congregation; she leaned in hurriedly.  

“I know what you’re thinking,” she whispered in Vi’s ear, “but don’t. There are two mages in this group and enough goblins out there to make enough of a mess between us. If you are wise, you will bide your time by waiting for my signal. Do you trust me?”  

Vi glared at her belligerently.  

“I take that as a no. However, allegiance or not, you’ll sooner be shot dead by one of those crossbows than move. Haven’t much of a choice, have you?”  

Vi did not reply but expressed in a subtle twitch of her eyes a resignation to Shadowheart’s plan.  

Just then, Haseid (the blithering idiot appointed to guard them) cut through their contrivance.  

“Locked door here, lads! Mari!” he barked at the single disheveled human amongst the batch. “Get this open, would ya? And don’t muck it up like last time!”  

Mari set to work on the giant lock with shaky hands, the remainder of the raiders scouring the current area for any missed treasure.  

Meanwhile in the Chapel, the raid leaders were attempting to herd Astarion back to their camp, with about as much as they would have attempting to herd a Baldurian street cat. They had doused the torches and braziers they lit as a measure against the Goblins, had they gotten into the ancient temple.  The Gnome now wished he had not done so; it was pitch dark in here, to which he had to rely on his own natural dark vision just as Tannan did, though it didn't stop him from slyly trying to squeeze every last drop of coin out of him.  

“-of course, then you’ll have to pay us for the trouble of feedin’ ya,” Gimblebock stated plainly, donning the most professional tone he could muster to pretend sophistication. Tannen, who usually would have responded in the positive, was painfully quiet.  

“Of course, of course!” Astarion waved a hand dismissively. “Though I must say, I’m not sure that will be necessary.” His own fingertips caressed his lips as he deliberately strayed behind. “Your wonderfully quiet friend, Tannan, was quite enough to put some colour back into my cheeks…”  

“What are you on about?” turning to the Baldurian Magistrate.  

Gimblebock barely had time to draw his sword in recognition before a pair of teeth pierced the side of his neck, slurping his life’s blood because for Astarion, there’s always room for one more…  

Pop!  

Back in the Refectory, the unlocked double door swung open, revealing a room illuminated purely by natural light.  Haseid pushed Mari aside to peer into the chamber. After a moment’s perusal, he beckoned Vi and Shadowheart over.  

“Send them in first,” he commanded. “No losses if our prisoners set off the traps.”  

Under threat of crossbows, the duo reticently skulked into the chamber. In passing, Vi’s eyes scanned over one of the raider’s attire: a modish red leather getup.  

“Nice outfit,” she remarked with a smirk.  

The standout feature was the eroded statue at the far end of the room, with and overgrown grass courtyard surrounded by tombs and urns with a door on the left side. Hanging braziers would light the entire crypt if they could be done so. The part of the right wall had collapsed and been destroyed, which led to a cave that brightened the further it curved. If one listened carefully, the soft echo of trickling water could be detected, the other predominant standout being the skeletons laying around, presumably where they died. Axes, swords, and spears protruded from rotted bodies. The sarcophagus’s had been broken and looted, and all of the chests – once probably stuffed to the brim with gold as well as other treasures – were open and empty, only a few gold pieces scattered near. All the traps had been sprung.  

To everyone’s consternation, Vi burst out laughing.  

“You stupid fuckers!” she wheezed. “You’re at least a decade too late. I bet your ancestors were rich, though.”  

Enraged, Hasien stormed in to see if he could falsify her mockery, himself and his group too engrossed in their own greed to notice a straggler being snatched into the shadows.  

As they blundered along (the gnomes absolutely pillaging the empty vault), a faint glimmer flashed out of the corner of Vi’s eye. Looking down, she discerned a necklace retaining a skull-shaped pendant which whispered earnestly for her attention.  

The moment her fingertips brushed against the cool silver, the regular world vanished.  

“Thou art from Osha Va’Zaun and favored of Jan’aharem…” A croaky even toned voice bounces around her skull. “I was rather fond of the Guardian. Wilst thou answer my question?”  

Dumbstruck, she nodded, hearing words once spoken by Benzo to her, Mylo and Claggor as he taught the history of Zaun, or attempted to in any case, echoed back at her in a ruined temple on a different realm from her own.  

“Is one life worth more than another?”  

Her response as quick as instinct: “No. Everyone deserves a chance to live, no matter how shitty they their life is. Duh.”  

“I am satisfied...” croaks the hoarse masculine voice after a beat. “Fate moves forward still.”  

When the real world returned to her, Vi was faced with Shadowheart staring at her with furrowed brows. Before she could explain herself, a raider yanked her roughly by the shoulder - the nasty piece of work, Haseid, bearing yellowed teeth that spat curses at her.  

“Oi, no hoarding loot! Hand it over!”  

“Come get it yourself,” she snapped, holding the necklace behind her back as Shadowheart pondered whether this brawler she’d ubiquitously taken under her wing had a death wish.  

It wasn’t looking good for Vi. Fortunately, a naïve gnome chose that exact moment to stupidly press a protruding button on the wall, with an innocuous query of: “I think I found the door latch?”    

His answer came in the radiant form of a bright burst of light from the eroded statue that violently revived all the skeletons littered around them. As each one shuddered to life, clawed fingers reached for weapons either protruding from or scattered about them.  

Amid all the rising chaos, Vi and Shadowheart exchanged a look; the latter threw a punch at her captor’s face, the gaunt Haseid taking the full fist to his face with a satisfying crunch from the nose.  The sound echoed and mixed with the clanking and clattering of mail and bone as the skeletons stood and advanced on both the party and raiders alike.   

While the raiders were stunned by Vi’s sudden act of retaliation at an inopportune time, Shadowheart took the opportunity to cast the fire incantation Vi had heard earlier on the Nautiloid:  

“Igniz!”  

On cue, one of the skeletons explodes into flames. Struck with terror at being so close to the implosion, the thief Mari rushed to the exit – only to be rapidly swarmed by skeletons and ripped to shreds.  

Too pumped full of adrenaline to pay attention to the harrowing death, Shadowheart attempted the convocation for Turn Undead; a flurry of fired crossbow bolts threw her off focus. Finding cover, she was at least able to recover an ancient mace long discarded by an owner whose bones were (unfortunately) too decayed to be revived.  

Elsewhere, Vi wrangled with Haseid, dodging his sword attacks adeptly before finally determining an opening. His unprotected ribs took the brunt of several blows as he opened himself to the assault with each wild swing, his blood-curdling screams resounding throughout the chamber as the Gith gauntlets struck him – once, twice, thrice – veins popping out of his head as the sharpened edges dug into his flesh (thank you, Lae’zel). He doubled his attack, frenzied as if he had gone into some form of blood rage.  He shoulder-checked Vi, pushing her off balance before slashing again with his sword.  Vi countered the barrage with a solid left hook to the ear, serrated edge ripping off the lobe.  

Her brutality gave Shadowheart just enough of a distraction to complete her incantation, a few of the skeletons turning on the raiders but not enough. A flurry of ice knives and fire balls casted by wizard raiders broke her focus, quite literally backing her into a corner.  

Over one of Haseid’s shoulders, Vi noticed this, and rushed to Shadowheart’s aid only to be blocked by a wall of skeletons and raiders alike. All hope seemed lost…until-  

An almighty war cry resounded, followed by several aflame streaks supposedly led by the barbarian who just barged into the room from the destroyed wall, Great axe swinging.  

Vi’s jaw dropped in recognition of the one-horned demon from the Nautiloid  

Introduction was delayed by Haseid’s bloodied hand grasping at her ankle, whereupon she unceremoniously stomped his brains out, ending him once and for all. Those that remained were quickly defeated by the ladies, Astarion (whenever he snuck back in), and a haughty wizard who had just joined the fray with an outfit unsuited for the occasion, casting spells here, there, and everywhere.  

In the gory aftermath, that same composed wizard in question waved his hand in nervous greeting. “Ah…hello.”  

The bloodied trio stared at him blankly.  

“Never fear; I can tell by your confounded expressions that introductions are in order,” discerned the mage. “Greetings! I am Gale of Waterdeep; and this lovely lady beside me-“ He gestured to the demon woman with a flourish, “-is my loyal savior, Karlach.”  

The wild barbarian in question was practically shaking with post-battle adrenaline. “Phew, that was fun...really fun.” In a moment of dazed clarity, she surveyed the newcomers. “Alright, Gale, who’s this lot?” With a bark of laughter, she pointed at Astarion’s mouth. “Someone got you good, mate; yer lips are bleeding.”  

He thanked her sheepishly then hastily wiped away the crimson stains.  

Meanwhile, Vi was suddenly stung by two sets of memories: one, a glimpse of her past self on the Nautiloid wrangling Thralls, likely caught in passing; two, vague memories of a bland, lonely life in a high tower spiced up only by the shrewd company of a winged cat.  

When the sensation subsided, the group all stared portentously at each other.  

“Looks our tadpoles just made acquaintances,” Gale denoted. “Why don’t we follow suit? What shall I call each of you?”  

“Vi…” she replied grumpily, their introductions fading into the background as she looted the modish raider. While donning ruby red leather complete with a fashionable vest, she clipped the amulet acquired earlier to her chest, patting it safely. Vi, tired of her prison garb strips the dead raiders whose outfit she liked and changes.   

By the time she was all geared up, introductions had been completed. Ostensibly taking leadership of the unseemly bunch, Shadowheart commanded them to the surface. Vi trailed behind them blearily - having (in less than twenty-four hours, no less) woken up in an squid-faced asshole’s ship, fought for her life while escaping the Nautiloid to a completely alien realm, fighting with and against people who lived on said realm, and now making eye contact with a nodding mummy in passing. Did no one else see him?    

Gods, she must be tired…  

Some time elapsed before they finally breached the surface…only to be met with a new (though for Vi, not entirely unwelcome) problem.  

Specifically: Lae’zel, being verbally assaulted in a suspended cage by a pair of Tieflings.  

Chapter Text

Picture the scene:   

A band of approximately five misfits – all in various states of disrepair – staring vacantly at two bickering Tieflings in a secluded gully in the middle of the forest.  Suspended above them was an exceedingly annoyed Githyanke trapped in a hanging boar’s cage. If it weren't for the pair of angry looking red skinned devils, Vi would be laughing – even their tails swished like cats when they were angry.    

Oh crap, Karlach is one of their kind,  it dawned on her, except her companion was far larger in stature than the pair in the gully.  

“We can’t let her go!” shouted the male with red skin and swept back horns. “Not after what those nasty gith did to poor Zorru.”  

“Poor bastard,” muses the female, who’s horns curled forward like a rams. “Never been the same since he watched them all die.”  

“Did he?” Lae’zel hissed from above, sneering. “Or did he retreat with his tail between his legs? That is the only palpable explanation for how he survived my kin.”  

“Gith trash!” Outraged, the girl lifted her longbow when-  

“Nymessa, don’t!” The male Tiefling put his hand upon the weapon. His voice donned the tone of a disapproving parent: “We don’t shoot people in cages!  We can just leave her to the Gobbos.”  

“Maybe we should start…” Nymessa muttered under her breath, glaring at Lae’zel.  

“Fitting end,” Shadowheart agreed – earning a dirty look from Vi which she quickly rebutted: “Don’t regard me so. Let’s not sugarcoat sour fruits: you’ve been had, foreigner,” the Acolyte stated, looking at her pityingly. “You’ve spent all this time searching for your precious gith when she left you behind without a thought. Stop wasting time on those who’ll only sabotage you.”  

Vi opened her mouth to retort only for Karlach to shush her. “Githyanki or not, no one deserves to die in a cage. Wait here. I’ll see what this lot are about.”   

It was almost comical, the sight of the massive Tiefling approaching two smaller of her kin.  

Wait there with a pale man, an awkward wizard and a racist priss? Vi could conceive of nothing worse. Against Karlach’s wishes, she trailed after her.  The Barbarian didn’t have time to send Vi back to the group before the pair spotted her, longbows honed on her horned head.  

“Who are you?” demanded Damays. “Stop looking at our trap! This is our gith; we caught it first!”  

“Careful, Damays,” murmured Nymessa,  “She might be with the goblins.”  

Karlach guffawed a thick hearty laugh “Think I’m a bit big to be a gobby, mate; that’s an odd claim, yeah? Gonna mount her head on a plaque for your wall.”  

From the cage, Lae’zel’s lilt seared through Vi’s head:  

“Dispose of them in whatever way you can. We are running out of time.”   

By now, the Tieflings had overcome their initial shock, Damays eyeing Karlach with suspicion. “You're not from the grove, who are you, then?”  

“Matter of fact, me and my mate here just escaped a pack o’ gobbos,” Karlach mollified. “We’ve got some other friends waitin’ on us just up the way – all wounded, all very hungry. Don’t suppose you two know if there’s a healer nearby?”  

“Tell them about the Emerald Grove, Damays!” Nymessa urged, shaking her companion by the arm. “They could use a real fighter!”  

He shrugged her off with a belligerent huff, pointing southward. “There’s a druid settlement just up there. Plenty of healers. Look for a big rock in the middle of the path, it’s splits behind it.”  

“Cheers, mate.” Karlach nodded before regarding Lae’zel. “Who’s your friend?”  

At the mention of Lae’zel, the Tieflings turned defensive, resulting in an awkward silence punctuated by the presence of weapons.   

“…you know,” Vi piped up, sidling beside Karlach, “there’s a couple of goblins breaking into some ruins by the beach. Lots of treasure. Not a lot of traps…and plenty of bait for any that still work. Easy pickings for two looters who know how to handle themselves.”  

“Nice try, stranger,” Nymessa snapped. “But we’ve no need for treasure, not when we’ve still got a gith to deal with.”  

“So you can risk getting hunted down by everyone and their grandfather?” Vi asked with a raised brow. She waved her hand in Lae’zel’s direction. “You know everyone’s gonna be after her, right? Goblins. Drool,” (An erroneous attempt at the word ‘Drow’) “Everyone. Only a few goblins down there, on the other hand, and a shit ton more loot.” She smirked at the bemused pair. “Hell, I’m not even a genius, and I still know which is the better – I mean, what thick-skinned idiot doesn’t go after free treasure?”  

The Tieflings exchanged a look…then acquiesced with mumbled farewells, skulking off into the forested area.   

The moment they were out of earshot, Karlach burst into laughter.  

“What?” Vi snapped, squirming in inexplicable embarrassment.   

“’Drool?!’ ” Karlach wheezed with her hands on her knees. “Did you mean ‘Drow ?’ Hells, you really are fresh meat!” She clapped a mortified Vi on the shoulder in reassurance. “Hey, hey, it’s alright. Happens to the best of us. Just stick with Mama K, I’ll look after you.”  The barbarian nudged her, nearly pushing Vi over. She had to admit, Karlach’s humor was contagious – the corners of her mouth quirked upward.   

“Much as I would like to appreciate the humor of the moment, I’m still rather trapped,” Lae’zel deadpanned impatiently from above them.   

“ Oh, hells , hang on, love!” Karlach hollered up to her. “We’ll get you down in a minute!”  

They approached a collection of levers that seemed linked to the trap, Vi tilting her head.   

“Damn, I wish my sister was here,” she found herself reminiscing aloud before she could stop herself and shook off an image of Powder looking over the mechanism, rubbing her chin thoughtfully as Mylo and Claggor lounged nearby. “She always knew how to solve shit like this.”   

“Innit?” Karlach grunted in concordance. “Tell you what, I’ll go get Gale. Might be a master of magic, but he’s our next best bet.”  

Cue, five minutes later, the unseemly band contemplating the trap. To their surprise, it happened that Astarion was actually the one better suited to examining the situation (according to Gale, he was ‘familiar with the magical arts, not the mechanical ones!’) – a fact that (in hindsight) shouldn’t have been surprising given his talent with a lockpick.  Karlach, slightly annoyed, murmured that the pale elf could have mentioned he was a rogue.   

“ Et…voila!” he chortled with a flourish as the bottom of the cage gave way, sending Lae’zel plummeting to the ground; remarkably, she landed on her feet.   

“So, we’ve gone from being attacked by gith, to saving one,” Shadowheart mused ambivalently. “Is it just me, Astarion, or does that sound ridiculous?”  

“Oh, no…the mommies are fighting again…” he groaned, consequently moving away from the bickering pair.  

Meanwhile, Vi (by now growing intolerant of Shadowheart’s perpetual prejudice) abruptly grabbed her by the collar of her armor, the metal biting into the palm of her hand – she ignored the sting.  

“Listen here, priss ,” she spat through gritted teeth, eyes alight with suppressed rage. “I don’t really care whether she’s gith, Drow or fucking Astarion- “  

“Ouch!”  

Vi ignored him. “All I know is that bitch is the only reason I’m still alive; and back home, we have a saying: Fairplay; if you give me something, I give something back.” Shadowheart startled with a flush as she felt her feet leave the floor. “Now, you can either wipe that goddamn goup off your face before I do it for you and put up with the only other person around here who seems to know what the fuck is going on, or I can kick your ass back to the beach I found you on, got it?”   

“You’ve got some muscle on you, I’ll give you that,” Shadowheart commented (eyes skimming lecherously along Vi’s rippling sinews). “Fine. You can keep the gith.”    

Still glaring, Vi dropped her reticently. This seemed to disappoint Astarion, who rolled his eyes at the banal ending of altercation with a morose sigh. Gale likewise relaxed, noticing the cleric had a spell prepared and rescinded the magical attack.    

“I’m not some pet, kainyak ,” came Lae’zel’s startling rejoinder from behind them, causing Vi to release Shadowheart entirely, the acolyte stumbling back. “Vi, I must speak with you privately.”  

Shadowheart’s warning look as the pair temporarily sequestered themselves did not go amiss…nor did the apparent gossip underway between Astarion and Gale; they seemed to be hazarding guesses about Vi’s relation to the githyanki…in which case Karlach filled them in.   

“I bring promising news, istik ,” Lae’zel murmured in a low tone. “The Grove we now approach contains information on a creche of my own people.”  

“Oh, great,” Vi sighed with relief.   

“Yes, well, ostensibly so,” Lae’zel sighed, ready to tell the rest of the news. “The journey to a cure in question will be a long one – I am not certain that we will survive the trip.”  

“What? Why? How long does this normally take?” Vi asked, blinking in confusion.   

“Theoretically speaking, by now, we should be on the verge of madness.”  

Oh.  

“Then why?”  

“Vlaakith knows, but it is no matter.” She grabbed Vi’s forearm ardently (an electric spark shot up the nerve endings). “For now, we must count our blessings, thank our lucky stars for our preserved sanity, and move forward.”  

Just then, several screams cut through the air up ahead, in the direction where the Tieflings had motioned for them to go for healers.  The group, now with Lae’zel joined, rushed towards the shouting had come from, with Vi putting the gith Gauntlets on.  

Up ahead, behind a giant boulder partially secluding a pathway there was a great fiasco going down: four people huddled around some sort of wine and stone covered gate, banging against the woodwork as near unintelligible discourse is exchanged between them and the fretting Tieflings above.   

“Open the bloody gate!” the human screamed up at the Tieflings. “The Gobos are right on us!”  

A young woman rushed to the edge, followed by a middle-ages tiefling.  “Aradin, where’s the rest of your people?” he shouted down. “And where’s the druid?!”  

“ Open the bloody gate !” The man’s panicked voice hit the party as they got closer.  

It looked as though said tieflings were about to open the gate when a soaring arrow struck the gatekeeper down. Cue a slurry of goblins accompanied by what Vi could only describe as werewolf-esque creatures that Benzo used to scare her with stories about. Goblins began firing arrows through the trees towards the very grove her crew needed access to.  

There was no other choice but to join the fray.   

With an almighty war cry, Vi charged straight for what looked like the storybook pictures of a Buughee , seven feet of all muscle and fur monster that would steal trencher children from the beds and drag them to the sumps.  The buughee turned with a great axe, screaming “Who’re these fookers ‘den? ” and slashed it towards Vi’s head. She angled away, and with a left hook, pounded the body of the creature where the liver would be on a human. Luckily for her, the organs were in the same location, but her punch went wide with a solid punch to the abdomen. She squared off against her opponent and continued the fight.  

Karlach rushed into the fray pulling her battle axe from its place on her back, heading towards a pack of three goblin warriors, who likewise screamed “ FOR THE ABSOLUTE !” and began hacking at the barbarian.    

Meanwhile, Gale hollered ‘tormentum!’ , releasing streaks of blood red projectiles from his fingers, one per digit hitting several of the combatants and giving some breathing room to those who had just been pleading entry.    

Astarion took the chance to shove his dagger deep into one of the goblin bowers backs, and taking up the ranged instrument and expertly put arrows in those on the fringe, firing from cover – that is, until the bow snapped in two. Of course it broke!, he thought as he went in search of another victim.  

Shadowheart muttered “te curo”, healing one of the people they had just rescued from a fetid bite on his leg after dispatching the worg that had inflicted it. A large brown bear lumbered into the fray and began tearing into the other worg that had stalked the Acolyte.  

Between her unruly party, the Tiefling archers and mercenaries, and one bear, the Invaders were (needless to say) quickly defeated.   

Apparently, the day was not done with surprises, because the bear that had fought with them abruptly morphed into a short-haired woman.  

“Greetings, traveler,” said the shapeshifter to a dumbstruck Vi. “I am Apikusis of the grove. Wherefore is Master Halsin?”    

For her part, Vi was just bewildered to be staring at a woman who was moments ago a bear.  

“We know not of this Halsin,” Shadowheart cut in on Vi’s behalf before she could further embarrass herself. “We have just arrived here, sent to search for your archdruid and his apprentice, who we’re told might-“   

Apikusis’ face scrunched up in frustration, stomping over to the leading human and wrinkled tiefling with a demand for a report on the state of affairs. Eavesdropping from the sidelines, the party learned that the group were ambushed by goblin bandits, who ostensibly killed most of Halsin’s comrades before kidnapping himself and those who remained.   

“Shame on you!” admonished the middle-aged tiefling. “How dare you leave behind your own kind, nothing to say of the druid! How stupid can you be?!”  

“Oh, I bet you’d know all about leaving people behind, wouldn’t you, Zevlor?” muttered the human under his breath. “Bet the Hell Riders have lovely things to say about you, yeah?”  

This only earned him (what Vi and Astarion deemed) a rather amusing punch to the face.  

“You two do understand that we are in serious danger?!” Apikusis yelped wearily. “Why, if Kagha had her way, you’d have been tossed into the wilds long before now, and most of the refuges are too weak to raise a fist, let alone wield a sword.”  

“Refuge or not, we’re in need of a healer,” Shadowheart interjected, stepping forward. “Are there any beside Halsin who can aid us?”   

Apikusis narrowed her eyes. “We can help you, but Nettie only sees two at a time. She’s Master Halsin’s apprentice, and already struggling under the weight of refuge sickness against Kagha’s wishes.”  

“We won’t be a burden to you,” Shadowheart assured him. She gestured to Karlach. “My companion here and I were going to seek shelter and supplies anyhow – if that suits you, Karlach?”  

“Suits me just fine,” Karlach shrugged. “I hear there’s a tiefling mechanic from Eltural around that I need to see, anyway.”  

Gale cleared his throat, placing a tentative hand on Vi’s shoulder: “If my friend here doesn’t mind, I am rather keen to join her in our search for a cure.”  

“Not possible. She’s with me,” Lae’zel cut in, gaze turning on Vi possessively. “Come, kainyak. Pointless to waste time on local cures when there is already a more secure option available. We will find this Zorru.”  

“Don’t be such a stick-up-your-arse. I wanna look around,” Vi denied, eyes already veering around the surrounding area.   

“Chk!”  

“Settle yourself, my verdant friend!” Astarion chortled in reassurance. “I’ll join you. You’re right: better to stick to what we know will work than waste time on what only might.”  

“At last, some sense. Come along, then, istik. ”  

Thus, the group split up.  

What could go wrong?  

Chapter Text

Vi wished she was disciplined enough to pay attention to Gale’s pontifications regarding goblin history as Apiskus led them through the upper part of the hollow. Instead, her attention was captured by Eltural’s refuges. Watching their interactions with the druids, she couldn’t help the scowl of disdain that graced her lips, when she saw hapless Tieflings being called names like ‘hell spawn’ or ‘parasite’ with the same virility Sheriff Marcus used to call her ‘trencher trash.’ 

Janna, that all felt such a long time ago now.  

From what she could tell, the tieflings were being segregated into a small hollow area, purposefully far away from everyone else while the druids Grove was lush with greenery and brilliant sunlight.  In the center was a megalith structure surrounding a pool of water.  Out of the center of the pool was a tall pedestal where something important must have been at one time. – abominable discrimination, even by the standards she was more familiar with. 

“These people need help, and fast.” 

She was startled at Gale’s whispered remark, having presumed he wasn’t paying attention. 

“No shit,” she rebounded curtly. “What are these teeth-lings, anyway?” she asked (with all her current knowledge surmounting to the fact they looked like devils and that Karlach was one of them). 

“’Tiefling,’” he corrected politely. “And if my knowledge rings true, it seems this particular batch was driven out of Eltural after the city was dragged into Avernus by Zariel – are you familiar with Zariel?” 

“Hell, no.”  

“An archdevil, a fallen angel, if you will. Anyway, what does it matter? The point is, even when they returned to Fae’run, the city insisted on seeing these lonely refuges as nothing more than mere demons and devils. You see, Vi,” Gale sighed morosely, “Tieflings already have a misguided reputation as strictly infernal creatures, even if that couldn’t be further from the truth.”  

Vi had nothing to say in response to this except for an amiable scoff. 

“Oh, what?” Gales asked with a tilted head of skepticism. “Don’t tell me you agree with them?” 

“No, I don’t.” Vi shook her head, smiling. “I just figured you for a Piltie, that’s all.” 

“Judging by your tone, that must be a derogatory term in your region.” He smiled cheekily. “Not to worry. I won’t take offense.” 

Vi was about to reply when she experienced a shift and then a light tug on her back pocket. Turning around, she saw a tiefling girl scuttle off to a long-haired boy, who swiftly sequestered the goods behind his merchandise cart, near the edge of the walkway edge overlooking a waterfall leading to a brightly lit cavern. 

Vi felt a smile tug at her lips: she remembered performing pickpockets like that; Mylo, enthusiastically rushing over with a nifty little trinket in his palm, handing the goods off to Claggor as Powder sloshed and splashed in a puddle nearby to create a diversion. 

The kids could keep the gold – they probably needed it. The bag, though…well, Vi had never owned nice things; she rather liked that bag. 

Abandoning her tour guide, she approached the pair. Indeed, she hadn’t been over there for but a moment before the boy started extorting her, offering so-called ‘magic’ rings of invisibility or infinite wishes. 

“Outlander!” Apikusis hollered impatiently. “We’ve no time for dawdling! Come!” 

“Gimme a sec,” Vi replied dismissively. “I just wanna see their wares.” 

Impatient, Apikusis shot a look at Gale, who merely shrugged, smiling at Vi’s hidden compassion as they sallied away. 

By the time he’d departed, the long-haired boy had switched sales tactics. 

“Hey, you wanna see a trick?” he chortled, hand dipping behind his back before reappearing with a ring between his fingers.  

“Not bad.” Vi humoured him, procuring (without the slightest trace of effort) a rusty coin of her own. “For a beginner.” 

“Weeping, bleeding hells!” the boy exclaimed, evidently impressed with a slight quirk of a grin. 

Beside the seller, the little girl (who Vi inferred must be this boy’s sister by dynamic alone) chortled gleefully, only to be quickly silenced by an accosting nudge from her brother. She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms, trying ever so hard to look tough. 

“Okay, so you ain’t no sucker when it comes to scams,” the boy acquiesced, regarding Vi with a sense of respect previously absent. “But that also means you’ve got a keen eye for goodies. What do you want?” He spread his hands across his wares,  

“I was looking for a bag,” Vi said, casting a firm glance in his sister’s direction. “I seem to have lost mine somewhere, you know?   I can always get money, but a good, solid bag? I hear that’s hard to come by in these parts – same back where I’m from, too.” 

Breaking a sweat, the young girl hastily reaches into the cart before her brother can do or say anything, tossing Vi’s back with a rushed excuse: 

“H-here you go! You can take this one for free!” with a wide toothy grin – a nervous one, but a grin nonetheless. 

Vi caught the bag, addressing the boy again, leaning in so the girl couldn’t hear: “Your sister needs to work on her pickpocketing.” She raised a teasing eyebrow. “Maybe next time don’t pick a fellow thief as your target, huh?” 

The boy laughed: “Noted: you’re no sucker…that being said, if you could make room for the other suckers, that would be great.” 

Nodding gleefully along with his joke, Vi emptied out the bag of the few coins she had and offered them to him. Eyes glinting in appreciation, the boy nodded and picked out a heavy, chunky ring, which he then tossed to her.   

“Lucky ring. No joke.” 

“Thanks,” she murmured at the sentiment, shoving the ring on her thumb. “I need all the luck I can get.” 

Chuckling, she waved them off, rejoining an increasingly antsy Apikusis and a not-so-tetchy Gale who was smiling as though he’d just opened a present on Christmas morning.  

“You’ve quite the rapport with the impoverished,” he remarked genially. “I take it you act from experience?” 

“You could say that, yeah…” Vi trailed off wistfully. “You could definitely say that…” 

No rest for the wicked that day, it seemed, for no sooner had Vi returned from one diversion were they confronted with another: a group of agitated druids and tieflings (conceivably blocking an entrance to a clearing), arguing over the fate of some young girl. For the third time that day, Vi watched someone transform into a bear, and for the third time that day, the opposing force quailed in response, the supposed parents of the captured girl slinking away with their heads hung low; an ember of empathy and injustice sparked in Vi’s heart.   

“Move along, Apikusis,” urged one of the guarding druids (an antlered woman with a set face). “And for the love of Silvanus, stop picking up strays. We’ve got enough foreign mouths to feed as is.” 

Vi shot a scowl back at the scathing remark. “Maybe stop imprisoning kids, then?” 

“Mind your manners, outsider,” Apikusis warned with a low hiss. “One wrong move against me or my kin, and I’ll set the entire family upon you, understood?” 

“Hey, listen, lady-“ Vi raised her palms in mock surrender, “-I’m new here; I don’t care whether you live or die – I just need a healer. So why don’t you quit wasting your own time, point us the right way and fuck off?” Clenched fists flashed minaciously.  

The druid huffed indignantly: “Fine. Have it your way.” She pointed belligerently. “You’ll find Nettie just through that stone door. Go on, find your own way. See how you fare without me.” With that, she stalked, taking a wood lift to some sort of upper level, disturbing a large brown bear who was trying to nap in the sun.  

“Well, that could’ve gone awry…” Gale remarked, then grimaced at Vi’s apathy toward the near confrontation. “Are you not the least bit concerned that we were just threatened by those agreeing to shelter us?” 

Vi stalked ahead, unbothered. “Back home, we had Enforcers who promised us the same thing - nearly caught my sister, once. These guys don’t seem too different.” 

“Much as I’m inclined to agree…” Gale continued gently, “Provoking this large a number of druids is a foolish gambit. Even with my comparatively more advanced skills, they are far greater in number than us, and ten times more prepared.” 

“We handled the guys at the ruins,” Vi dismissed nonchalantly. 

Miffed, Gale grabbed her by the arm. “Those were cheap labourers and swords-for-hire with simple conjurers for support at best; these are druids with a leader of notable acclaim who’ve been versed in magic since birth. I realize there are many paths to solving one problem, but this?” He held up her fist speckled with dried blood. “This is not one of them, not unless you want to create more.” 

Vi shuddered at a sudden sense of déjà vu. 

Noticing her tremor, Gale softened a little. “Now, if you can keep your outrage in check, we ought to find this Nettie character. If she’s as skilled as any druid in matters of healing, it is imperative that we find her.” 

“Bears, magic…” Vi mumbled under her breath, rubbing her temple. “Starting to wonder if the Enforcers just sedated me again…” 

Concerned by the remark, Gale rubbed her shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, I’m more than happy to educate you on matters of Fae’run once we’ve stopped to rest – a necessary repose, if we’re to keep our minds agile.”  

Grateful, Vi nodded, and together they walked up the short steps to the giant stone door, round and immensely heavy. It rolled open at their approach. 

The reception there was not much better: both a bear and a wolf eyed the pair as cautiously as the humans and elves until Gale mentioned their need for a healer, whereupon a dark-skinned human named Rash ushered them into a separate room towards the back, away from any commotion. A woman glared at them as they passed, probably Gales age with an impressive staff and a cruel look – the HBIC, potentially, Vi denoted.  

Inside, various potions and herbs littered stone tables, as well as a short, muscular druid fawning over an injured bird. She was tanned with close cut hair just at the lower part of the ear, with druidic tattoos etching her face. The Dwarf murmured softly to the creature, coaxing it to flap it’s wing, advising in a whisper that the bird not fly for a while before facing the pair with obvious apprehension.   

“And what can I do for you both?” 

“Tadpole,” Vi cut in before Gale could speak, pointing to her skull. “Here.” 

Gale chuckled under his breath: “Where the cobra’s tongue swirls, the viper’s may only hiss.” 

Vi shot him a half-amused, half-offended look before Nettie shepherded them into a separate area (‘a serious condition,’ according to her – how reassuring) filled to the brim with stone beds, workbenches and potions much like the other.  

On one of the tables, a lifeless man of pale blue complexion catches Vi’s eye; her pupils flash with weariness; by the looks of his wounds, he had been beaten, burned and maybe mauled by a bear. 

“What happened to this guy?” 

Nettie glanced at her cautiously. “That drow attacked meself and Master Halsin out in the woods, along with a troop of goblins. That bloody thing crawled out of his head after Master Halsin cracked his skull open.” 

Vi followed her finger to the jarred tadpole on a nearby table – nearly twice the size of hers. She shuddered: was that the size of hers now? No wonder her headaches had grown more persistent. She shuddered at the thought of it growing, maybe eating her brain.   

“Strangest thing, though,” Nettie went on to herself. “Bastard called himself a True Soul and retained psionic powers that should only be accessible to Illithid.” She turned to them curiously, going through a chest next to the stone desk. “I don’t suppose either of you have been experiencing similar symptoms?” 

“As it happens, my friend and I were able to identify each other by thought,” Gale remarked.  

To their caution, Nettie’s eyes darted around before she squeezed them shit. Turning around, she procured a spiked branch from chest which she then held close to her chest. Her face twisted…then settled; she ensconced the branch decisively. 

“I thought so, and yet here you are; still alive, with no tentacles. It’s odd, ceremorphosis should’ve taken you and this Drow long before now.” She shook her head lowly. “By Silvanus…if only Master Halsin were here.” 

“Where’d he go?” Vi asked, catching onto the significance of this name.  

“Searching for answers in a temple just west of here, like you, I think.” She gestured to the pair. “Least until the damn goblins took ‘im. Shame…” She smiled kindly. “Were he here, he’d have your tadpole out like that.” She snapped her fingers, then reached behind her for a tree branch. “For now…” 

“So we find this Halsin, we get rid of our tadpoles?” Vi deduced. “Sounds like a deal to me.” 

Nettie’s eyes widened. “Would you? We’d be indebted to you, outlander. Kagha’s regime is nothing if not a harsh one.” 

Nearby shouting briefly distracted them; Vi took Nettie by the arm.  

“Tell me where Halsin is, and I’ll find him and bring him back to you,” Vi vowed. “I promise.” 

“Good luck,” Nettie deadpanned, yanking her arm away (Vi underestimated the strength behind her grip). “He’s been imprisoned by a goblin camp just west of here. Even if you can penetrate the fortress, it’ll be one hell of an endeavour to get him out of there.” Abruptly, she shoved a Stoppard bottle into Vi’s hand. “Here. If you start to feel any symptoms akin to ceremorphosis, take this. It won’t cure you, but it will save you from a greater agony.” 

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Gale remarked softly. 

“It won’t,” Vi snapped, straightening up. “We’re gonna find Master Halsin, and we’re gonna bring him back so he can cure us. No one’s going to die.” 

“Such words of steel…” The apprentice sighed in admiration. “Let’s hope your will can match up to it.”  

“…pardon my asking,” Gale cut in hesitantly, “but had we not answered so, would you have poisoned us?” 

Instantly, Nettie sagged; Vi looked to him in consternation.  

“That is poisoned, yes?” He pointed to the spiked branch. “I know a toxic scent from a mile away. 

The druid did not confirm…nor did she deny. Vi’s jaw set; Nettie caved. 

“You don’t understand…I was afraid,” she murmured, eyes wide with an emotion Vi knew all too well: fear. “Fine, I’ll be straight with you since you were straight with me: the branch is coated with the same poison I gave you…Wayvern,” she said, sitting down and picking up the tadpole jar which hisses in rage. “Silvanis protect me, I’m terrified. If even one mindflayer comes into the grove, we are all dead.  Tieflings, Druids. All of us. Dead.” She looked up at the pair dolefully  

“Master believes there are hundreds out there – an army, supposedly, only no one’s changing; they’re thriving just like you and heading towards the old Selunite temple. Master Halsin leaned that a group of adventurers were heading up there on their own to find some relic.” She wiped her forehead of sweat.“He joined them, giddy as a schoolboy from Waterdeep that he’d get his answers...” she sighed: “I sent birds to look for him, but the bastards keep shooting them down…” 

“Why didn’t you, then?” Vi said suddenly, arms folded in disappointment. “Kill us?” 

Terse and to the point, Gale noted internally; that seemed to be Vi to a T: admirable but often not advisable.   

Nettie smirked. “You didn't lie to me.” 

“Kagha, stop this at once!!”  

Again, the commotion nearby distracts them; this time, a child’s scream. Exchanging looks, the trio rush out into a heated argument between Rath, the druid from before, a wood elf, most likely Kagha…and a small tiefling girl, around Pow- 

Oh, Janna.  

That girl looks just like Powder.  Her little face, uneven haircut and tiny braids.. 

No…Powder isn't here...  

Vi shook herself free of the illusion, finding herself back in the presence where her instinct was alerted to the slithering of a venomous snake at the child’s feet/ 

“You can’t do this to a child!” Rath shouts desperately, a hand on the blade at his hip – a throwing knife, if Benzo had taught Vi anything about weapons. 

“If by child, you mean the leeching parasite that eats our food, drinks our water then steals our most holy idol in thanks, then I shall do whatever I please,” hissed Kagha, leering over the child with marked contempt. Her face seemed just as cruel: sharp, framed by hair regimentally groomed and wearing an expression laced with the same prejudice Vi had been exposed to all day. 

“I’m sorry!” Arabella cried tearfully. “I’m sor-!” 

“Silence, child, lest Teela silence you first!” 

On cue (and after a few utterings in a tongue Vi couldn’t decipher), the viper bore it’s fangs; Arabella squealed and squirmed. 

That little sob did it; Vi had heard enough – these judicial practices were a little too similar to that of Enforcers to her liking. Steeling herself, she stepped between the child and the half-elf. 

“Kids do dumb shit all the time,” she said (casting Arabella a reassuring glance). “What’d she even steal?” 

She sensed a guard try to apprehend her, sensed Nettie standing in his way with a determined glower, as Kagha replied: 

“The Idol of Silvanus, a key component for completing the ri-“ 

“But you got it back, right?” Vi interjected logically (simultaneously sweeping Arabella out of the viper’s reach). “So what’s the big deal?” 

“That is our most valuable idol-!” 

“She already apologised,” Gale enjoined sharply (much to Vi’s chagrin). “She obviously knows what she did was wrong and is more than happy to amend her transgression. What more do you want?” 

Kagha sputtered, mildly intimidated by the growing crowd of defendants, especially the wizard: “Well, I-she’s a theif!” 

“Did you even ask her why she stole it?” Vi deadpanned.  

Suddenly, a truculent guard’s face obscured her vision.  

“Doesn’t matter, interloper,” he spat (some of his spittle landing on her cheek – gross). “She stole it. She should lose a hand, minimum!” 

Vi said nothing, only pouted at him sympathetically, then gave one of his ear a small tweak. 

“Nice ears, short tips.” 

Sensing an escalation that would not be lucrative to their cause, Gale flanked Vi right arm before it could throw a punch.  

“To reject the helpless is to reject Silvanus himself,” he recited, staring Kagha right in the eye. “There's no one more helpless than a frightened child. Now, I may be no druid, but I don’t think the Tree Father would think too favourably of you harming this child. Agreed?” 

Vi’s gaze perused Gale in a new light; clearly, the wizard retained more backbone than she originally gave him credit for. 

At her wit’s end, Kagha huffed under her breath: “I’ve no time for this ludicrousy. You want the child so badly? Take her. Svhsvh, Teela, to me!” 

With that, the snake relented at last. 

“Not to worry, Mistress Kagha,” said Gale (resuming his usual amicable timbre with remarkable speed). “My friend and I shall escort this lovely dame back to her parents to ensure she engages in no more mischief.” 

Vi shot him a look; Gale only nodded. 

Understanding, Vi quickly snatched up the little girl’s hand, half-herding and half-dragging away from the dangerous druids as quickly as possible, Gale following suit a few moments later after speaking with Kagha.  

The child did not let go even as the druids guarding the grove shot them nasty looks. Vi felt a strange pang in her heart; the way this child’s fingers curled around her forearm was not dissimilar to how Powder’s fingernails used to dig into her wrist whenever she was afraid – whether that be in the Lanes, along the Promenade, or on the bridge… 

Reality washed over her when Arabella abruptly let go, racing into her parent’s arms and Vi had to stay behind, lest anyone catch sight of the tears that had sprung to her eyes. 

“You’re lucky we got there in time,” Gale said, walking up behind them. “Two seconds more, and that viper’s teeth would’ve spelt your daughter’s untimely end.” 

“Oh, that wretched snake!” the mother hissed (though it was unclear whether she was talking about Kagha, or Teela, or both), stamping her foot. “Thank you. We owe you – both of you.” 

Vi smiled weakly upon her approach, receiving the remainder of the thanks in a half-bleary state before her and Gale wandered away to repose on nearby stools. 

“This place is falling to shambles without their archdruid,” Gale commented grimly. “And if Kagha’s infuriation over that missing idol is any indication, these tieflings won’t be welcome for long, not once that ritual cuts off the Grove to the world and any outsiders within it.” 

“We better find the bastard, then,” Vi concurred, composing herself at last. 

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 6: 

In the meantime, an unlikely duo of a githyanki and still undiscovered vampire slunk through the Upper Hollow…attracting (Astarion noticed) their fair share of unashamed stares from intrigued tiefling children and adults alike.  

“All this time in your dour company and people will start to talk, Lae’zel,” he half-joked, half-flirted. “I realize your people are hardly known for their…erm…hospitality, but can you at least give us a smile, darling? I’d dread for my fellow Magistrate’s in Baldur’s Gate to think I’m keeping malevolent company.” 

Ostensibly, she did not seem to be listening to him, instead far too engrossed with overseeing the Grove’s practices with an upturned nose (or maybe that was just her nose). 

“Abysmal,” she remarked bitterly a beat or so after he’d spoken. “The druids speak true; housing these teeth-lings will bleed them dry of resource. If only the refugees could fight, they might prove themselves, but alas. Chk! A Gith creche would never allow itself to enter such a state.” 

The comparative irrelevance of her statement when put against his prior speech sent Astarion spiraling. He buckled over hands on his knees, wheezing unabashedly in front of what seemed to resemble a haphazardly constructed training ground. Irate, Lae’zel halted in her tracks.  

“I fail to see why my observations should prompt such a display of ludicrous frivolity from you.” 

Her disgruntled expression (doubled in intensity simply by being pasted on a permanently disgruntled face) only served to set him off, heaving under her pugnacious gaze until the laughter had subsided enough for him to wipe the tears from his eyes.  

“By the hells…the look on your face…no one’s ever laughed at you before, have they?” 

Lae’zel bristled: “I shall have you know that many githyanki consider me incredibly humorous.” 

“Oh, I’m sure…” Astarion purred snidely, eyes drifting with intrigue towards an ongoing training session. Mind sparking with mischief, he nudged Lae’zel playfully. “Humour me some more, why don’t you?” He pointed to the cluster of tiefling children. “Look over there; tell me what you see.” 

Much to his chagrin, her nose once again wrinkled in disdain. 

“Flailing tiefling offspring, born only to die,” she recorded brusquely. 

Astarion fought back his chuckle: “Well, yes, darling, that’s all very well, but why are they flailing?” 

Bemused, she studied them closer, squinting at what she might’ve missed. Repressing her fulminations was most arduous: these children were not being taught to attack – let alone to kill – and what defense they were learning was sloppy and unpracticed. She could see it plain as day: their little flinches, their whines of defeat, eyes downcast in dejection. 

“They’re just as terrified as you are…” Astarion whispered into her ear, eliciting a jump.   

“Ts’vah!” Lae’zel exclaimed, hand instinctively landing on the hilt of her sword. “I should have you run through for such blasphemy.” 

“Ah, but you didn’t deny it!” he chortled smugly. “Let me guess: this is your, what, third, maybe fourth outing from your Creche? You felt invincible, spurred on by missions past where you effortlessly cut down all the enemies in your path.” He recited her plight through a series of flamboyant gestures and inflections. “You’re confident in your abilities…until it all goes to shit: a mindflayer unceremoniously snatches you up, infects you, then crashes, leaving you to fend for your own survival. The very nightmare instilled in gith from infancy has befallen you, you’re cut off from your own kind, and to make matters worse, your only company is a rag-tag band of motley strays and layabouts just that you herd around out of pity for their desperation for a cure.” 

“Pity is a child’s folly,” was all Lae’zel could say in response before the ineptitude of the tiefling children finally got to her. Huffing through her nose, she marched over to them with her sword raised. “Chk! Enough of this lolloping. I will show you how to truly survive. First lesson: twisting.” 

Astarion watched her storm off with a regaled scoff, determined to perform his own exploration in her absence. In particular, a handful of sturdy chests clumped together outside some prison cells; he did not expect to find company there.  

“Better piss off ‘less yer ‘ere to let me out, mate.” 

For the second time, amusement flooded him – not because of the statement itself, but because the goblins haircut almost exactly matched that of his fiery pink-haired companion.  

“That’s a possibility.” He reclined nonchalantly against the cage, eyes briefly scanning the lock. “If you tell me what you know.” 

He watched her mouth twist foully, when a burning surge lapped over his brain, the tadpole squirming in response. When he opened his eyes, a strange, red brand marked her features. Power coursed through him:  

Authority.  

Her expression did a full 180. “Absolute preserve me!” she cheered jubilantly. “Yer a True Soul, ain’t cha? You ‘ere to free me, eh?” 

Intrigued, he indulged her: “If you’re such a devout follower, tell me, who is this Absolute? Do not disappoint me with your answer.” 

“You got the spite of Minthara on your, you ‘ave,” the goblin snickered. “Bet you’re one o’ hers from up the temple. You ‘ere to test me, eh?” 

“I’m getting bored…” Astarion taunted in a singsong voice. He pulled a chair from the side of the holding area and sat, as if conducting an audition.  

The goblin hopped up and down in excitement. “The Absolute is gold from the sky, she is. The blessin’ in the storm and the storm itself. We’re burning Her name across the face of the world, we are!” 

Astarion humoured her with a clap of his hands. “What admirable devotion! Do go on.” 

“The Absolute is me armour.” She thumped her chest. “Shoot me with a crossbow, it just bounces off my skin. There’s dozens o’ us at the temple, all protected by Her grace, like. We’re gon’ rule this world, and any world we find after. We’re gon’ take whatever we want and leave the rest to rot.” 

“Inspiring,” he purred, rising to his feet. “Well, it was lovely talking to you, my fellow ‘Absolutist.’ Don’t mention we spoke, and I’ll have you out in no time!” He cackled jubilantly at his own lie. 

As he walked out, a pair of tieflings stormed past him – one pleading, begging, imploring his sister not to shoot the goblin, the other baring a crossbow and her teeth.  

He paused mid-step to tweak the reticle of the weapon.  

“There,” he said, patting her on the back as he passed. “Now you won’t miss.” 

Apparently, those weren’t the only tieflings in distress that day: Lae’zel had ostensibly been busy, for she had now chased the terrified male teifling that had just raced past him behind a section of crates and barrels. Astarion propped himself on one of them, admiring the sight of the quailing tiefling kneeling in front of the enraged gith.  

“Lower,” she hissed, casting a fiery warning look in Astarion’s direction.  

“Oh, please, do carry on,” he encouraged. “I’m quite enjoying the show.” 

Mollified, the gith turned her attention to her captor. “You saw gith west of here. Where?” 

“B-by the Mountain Pass?” stammered the tiefling, eyes panickedly flitting to Astarion. “Pl-please…she’ll just kill me like the rest of them…” 

“Oh, I damn well hope so,” Astarion chortled to the tiefling’s horror, examining his nails. “Today’s been awfully bland; your bloodstains will add a bit of colour to an otherwise dreary morning.” 

This elicited a chirp of approval from the gith, whereupon she pressed the tip of her blade to the tiefling’s throat. “Heed that, istik. Common courtesy will not help you.” 

“So that’s it, then?” he whimpered, voice laced with only half-concealed contempt. “Gonna jam your blade through my belly, too, straight to the other side like you did with Yul?” 

“No twisting?” came the mocking reproach. “Kin must’ve been in a hurry.”  

What delicious cold-bloodedness, Astarion thought delightedly. Why haven’t I ever thought of that? 

Her grip tightened on the hilt of her sword. “What dire task could warrant such sloppy slaughter, I ponder?” 

“They-they were looking for a weapon!” the tiefling stammered. “S-Said they needed to make sure it didn’t fail into the hands of the Absolute cultists, said a thief must’ve taken it aboard the mindflayer ship.” 

Alarm bells went off in Astarion’s head. 

“The map. Show me,” Lae’zel demanded, snatching the parchment from him. 

While she marked the location, Astarion feigned disinterest by peering around, scanning for signs of their other companions before turning his attention back to the current entertainment. 

“Up.” Lae’zel yanked the tiefling to his feet. “You may keep your innards.” 

“Awww, you’re not going to eviscerate him?” Astarion whinged. “I was hoping for a show.” 

“If this istik does not get out of my sight immediately, perhaps I shall indulge you,” she said, once again reaching for her sword. 

With a yelp, Zorru scampered away…leaving behind a well-crafted longbow. Grinning from ear to ear, Astarion tested the string with two fingers: sturdy, flexible, practically brand new. Giddy as a child, he slung his new toy over his shoulder as Lae’zel approached.  

“The teeth-ling was clear: if there is a creche nearby that must be our objective; purification cannot wait!” she insisted with zealousy. 

“It’s ‘tiefling,’ darling,” Astarion corrected covertly. “And what does this ‘purification’ entail, exactly?” 

“A gustil will lead us to a zaith’isk, where purification must take place. By covenant, I can say no more.” Once again, she stalked ahead. “Now, come. Ceremorphosis draws near.” 

********

In all of her years, Shadowheart had never seen anything quite so unbelievable as the sheer lack of supplies in this grove. Despite blatantly being the luckier race in this situation, the druids were regimentedly stingy with their provisions, allowing the tieflings only sparse rations. At least their kin look out for each other, an elderly women named Okta handing out sludgy bowls of gruel to anything tiefling that called – she’d even offered the pair a bowl just for helping at the gate, an unusual act of solidarity by Shadowheart’s estimation. 

Karlach seemed just as bewildered by the grove’s predicament, stating that the gruel must be kept consistent by some old trick of her mother’s: adding water to the bowl so that there appears more than there actually is. This sent her off on a tangent about her own parents that Shadowheart harkened to vacantly, presently much too preoccupied with her own discreet, sacred mission to really pay attention; how would she get the artefact to the city once she got this damned tadpole out of her head? How should she thank Karlach properly for ensuring that she wasn’t reduced to an Illithid zombie back on the nautiloid - for allowing her to proceed with her mission in the first place, no less?  

All these reflective musings came up empty as Karlach gibbered on, now expressing excitement over the potential parents she might reunite with upon returning to the city, before veering off into blundered contemplation about what to do for dinner. Hunt a rabbit or a boar, maybe? 

“Oh, but look at me, just jabbering away…haven’t given you a proper breath to get a word in edgewise.”  

Shadowheart smiled kindly. “I wouldn’t fret: I’m afraid I’ve very little to offer.” Suddenly, she halted in her tracks. “Karlach, before we go on: I’ve been meaning to thank you, for saving me back on the nautiloid. It would’ve been all too easy for you to walk right past my pod…but you didn’t. I’m grateful.” 

Karlach beamed, nudged Shadowheart on the shoulder. “Eh, don’t mention it. Wouldn’t have been right to abandon you, anyway, not after what I went through to get the fuck away from Zariel.” She sighed solemnly: “Gods, what I wouldn’t have done for a helping hand back then…” 

“Zariel?” Shadowheart repeated in consternation. “As in the archdevil, proponent of the Blood War herself?” 

“At ease, soldier,” Karlach mollified. “I was rebelling when we met, not serving. Check my wriggler if you don’t believe me. Would’ve done anything to get out sooner, but-“ 

“Never mind that,” Shadowheart said, suddenly worried. “Were you followed?” 

To her frustration, Karlach only shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, bring it on. I’d rather send those fuckers weeping back to Zariel then go back…” Abruptly, her demeanor shifted to something terrible: jaw clenching, eyes flaring, flames rising to an almost dangerous degree. “ I’m never going back… ” 

No sooner could Shadowheart express concern did Karlach reverted to her usual optimistic self again, nudging Shadowheart playfully. 

“Check this out,” she whispered, then, without warning, whirled around on a small group of children with a mighty roar. 

The titular cluster squealed with glee, attracting the soon rapt attention of a few adults as Karlach knelt down before them, enquiring: “So, what brings you little hellions here?” 

Shadowheart watched warmly as a boy with a mop of curly hair approached Karlach, recounting the tale of how she’d fought side by side with the Adventurers from Baldur’s Gate when Elturel was sent back to Fae’run. He and his twin sister performed a rather stirring emulation of the events, the poor girl being struck down by an imaginary great ax before she could even get an imaginary blow in as her treacherous brother struck her down. Karlach was altogether entirely regaled by the rendition, checking in on the girl, who fulminated that she was dead and therefore could not speak, tongue lolling comically out her mouth as he body spasmed with a false death grip. 

“Good thing we were there when the monsters attacked!” the boy exclaimed giddily, “else we would’ve missed the coolest tiefling in like…forever!” The girl, suddenly alive again, raised up to her elbow. “We might still be there if you hadn't helped us.” 

The barbarians grin was wide and infectious. “If I hadn’t, I’d have missed the greatest death performance in... well... FOREVER!” which elicited the children to continue their impromptu pantomime of the Battle of Eltural. 

Karlach chuckled and shook her head, turning her attention (as well Shadowheart) to the youthful, beaming tiefling couple approaching them. Shadowheart took the liberty of extending her hand in greeting. 

“Sorry about the kids,” conciliated the man, smiling amiably. “They get so invigorated when there’s a legend in town; you should’ve seen how they reacted to the Blade of Frontiers!” He shook his head reminiscently.   Shadowheart noticed the slight wince from her companion whence the folk hero’s name was mentioned.  Something to ask of later.  

Karlach chuckled in concordance: “There quite a few of you, then? Don’t suppose an infernal smith would be among you, hey?” 

“You’re in luck: Dammon’s just set up shop.” He pointed to a tent on the other side of the grove. “If an infernal mechanic is what you’re looking for, he might just have what you need.” 

“Cheers, mate!” Karlach waved them away, Shadowheart following her after a courteous nod of farewell. 

Before they’d even reached the smith, he turned to them with a broad smile. 

“The stink of Avernus, as I suspected,” he said, facing them. “I don’t suppose one of you possesses Infernal machinery, do you?  Perhaps even a soul coin?” 

“You got that right,” Karlach said, greeting him with a wave. “Alright, mate. Don’t suppose you could help this bleeding heart cool down a bit?” 

“Karlach, I’m going to let you get on with your personal affairs,” Shadowheart interjected. “I just spied Lae’zel and Astarion chasing a tiefling, and now I don’t trust anyone to get anything done. I’ll try to find some food before sundown.” 

Karlach shot her a thumbs up before returning to Dammon, who had his ear pressed to her heart with a potent frown.  

“That’s one hell of a contraption you’ve got in there,” he murmured, jerking back so as not to melt his ear. “Whatever that thing is, it’s not supposed to operate outside Avernus.” 

“You’re telling me,” Karlach panted. “I’m burning up here.  Might be the company as well.” 

Dammon nodded sympathetically, missing the flirt. “Never fear.” He turned to his anvil where he started hammering. “I might have something that can help.” 

She watched as he worked then lit up when he turned back presenting a large metal plate, which she promptly inserted herself for fear scorching his palms. 

“Ahhh, that feels miles better,” she groaned in relief, engine already cooling somewhat. “Cheers, mate!” 

Dammon nodded. “Pleasure. I’m afraid I can’t do much more for now, but if you bring some infernal iron to Baldur’s Gate, I might have come up with something more permanent by then.” His expression grew hesitant. “That being said, the engine’s still unstable. Try not to get it too hot while you’re not in Avernus. No trouble is advisable, understood?” 

“No promises,” Karlach quipped, waving farewell as she headed out to find her other companions. 

********

At the break of sunset, the group reconvened at a camp spot tactfully chosen by Shadowheart: a wide clearing located just outside of the Emerald Grove paralleled by a winding river for a constant supply of fresh water.  

“…then finding Halsin should be our optimal mission,” concluded Gale - after a lengthy discussion regarding the many possible cures discovered that day.  

Lae’zel clicked her teeth in dissent: “Chk! A fine distraction this useless goose chase may be, but anyone with their senses intact ought to know that the only cure lies with my kin.” 

“A viable option to consider, should this one fail,” Gale placated. 

“Or the githyanki proves hostile to newcomers – another likely outcome,” Shadowheart added, obvious malice directed at Lae’zel. 

Gale watched them fall into discourse (with Vi too occupied minding the gruel they’d set over the fire to be of any use diffusing the conflict) with relative apathetic fatigue, instead tapping Astarion on the shoulder (and noting how the vampire flinched when he did so). 

“My slippery-fingered friend, could you borrow you for a moment?” he queried, eyes friendly but portentous.  

“With an incidental innuendo like that, I suppose you can!” chortled the vampire, gently guiding them aside. “What can do you for, darling?” 

Ignoring the attempt at flirtation, Gale proceeded: “It might have come to your attention that I am a man of considerable moral integrity-“ 

“Boring.” 

Gale shook this off. “-and thus lack the skills that you possess that may grant our motley band information that could prove useful.” 

“Oh?” Astarion raised a brow. “Go on.” 

“I want you to make a point of searching that grove when you can,” Gale suggested. “That vile druid who tried to kill Arabella is no druid at all, by my estimation. Someone so willing to go against their own teaching such as often wields more than meets the eye.” 

“Are you asking me to dig up dirt?” Astarion asked. “Because I’m fine with that.” 

“Can I count you?” 

“My dear…” Astarion bowed servilely. “Consider it well and truly done.” 

That settled, it was most fitting timing that Vi should alert them to the readied porridge, which they ate in rigid silence – not out of rudeness, but rather fatigue disabling of ample socialization. 

 *******

Later that night, Vi decided she should never be put in charge of cooking again. Chucking the entire contents of her stomach until she felt as hollow as her skull soon would be, it was only when she wiped the sweat from her brow that it occurred to her what was really happening: 

Ceremorphosis. 

Tears pricked at her eyes. Already? She thought she’d have more time. She thought… 

She thought she would get to see Powder again.  If she was still alive. 

Rivers formed on her cheeks. Reason battled sentimentality. Determination be damned, she wouldn’t let these strangers die to her in vain. Mesmerizing each individual detail of Powder’s face behind her eyes, it was with shaking fingers that she cocked the Wyvern poison open- 

-only to feel a knife at her neck. 

“Hush, istik,” purred Lae’zel with uncharacteristic tenderness, scaled hand rubbing her bare back. “Stow that futile healing potion, and I swear, you will not die in pain.” 

“Not a healing potion…” Vi croaked, coughing up more vomit that was only really bile now. “It’s p-poison.” Her chaffed lips quivered. “If I’m going to die today, I’m going out my own way.” 

“An agreeable sentiment,” Lae’zel said, pressing the blade to her own neck – only for a full body convulsion to grab her and push her over.  

No sooner could Vi rush to her aid was she gripped with the same ailment, body racked with shivers as her vision blurred with tears, before her head hit the ground with the dull thud of unconsciousness. 

*******

Whatever had she put in that gruel? Judging by the whirlwind of rocks swirling around her, most probably some sort of magic mushrooms Gale would’ve told her about Either that, or the giant skull and extended stone hand before her were an indication of some kind of near-death experience. Lights darting around the figure in questions, hitting it only to reform then explode in a gorgeous kaleidoscope that nearly blinded her each time they landed.  

So delirious was she that she didn’t even notice the heavily armoured, golden figure before her, until she sat to register a broad and hardened frame before her that looked vaguely familiar… 

“Almost started changin’ there, kiddo,” came the familiar voice accompanied by an even more familiar face. “But don’t worry, I stopped that critter before it could eat yer brains out.” Vander’s booming chuckle reverberated through the entire supposedly astral plane.   

With a gasp, Vi startled, scrabbling several paces before a reassuring hand stalled her by the shoulder.  

“Easy, kiddo, you’re alright,” came that iconically gruff drawl – the one that made her eyes sting with fresh tears in remembrance. “You’re not changin’ into any tentacled beast today.” An intimately rough palm squeezed her shoulder. “You’ve still got work to do.”  

Chapter Text

Vi stared blankly at the giant figure in front of her. Those Enforcers must’ve really bashed her in if this was what she was imagining in her sleep; the tadpole squirming around in her brain probably wasn’t making things any better, either.

“This is trippy as hell…” she murmured, glowering suspiciously at the ethereal stranger. “Vander’s deadm, so you must be one convincing imaginary friend.”

But as the dream visitor chuckled – using a laugh she was oh-so-intimately familiar with – it was so hard, so hard not to deny anything related to logic in favour of pummeled into his arms, fists denting the armour plates with her grip. She steeled herself, though, prepared herself to endure whatever answer was to come.

“Imaginary is only half right,” chuckled the imposter, using that same gruff. “I simply donned a form you would be most comfortable with. This one popped into your thoughts quite a lot while that parasite was squirmin’ around.”

Not Vander, then. That settled it. Refusing the hand offered her, she glared at the intruder more intently.

“So if I’d been thinking of Benzo, you would’ve shifted into him instead?”

The stranger chuckled but she knew better now: “Maybe, yeah, maybe…”

After a few beats of her squinting at the clone to no reply, she filled the silence herself: “What do we have to do?”

The previously calm expression of the dream visitor turns grave. “First things first to let that tadpole into your head.” As he spoke, he guided her to the kaleidoscope she’d spotted, lights flashing with what she now recognized as prophetic snapshots of some upcoming battle. “Now that’s the Illithid’s gotten into your head, Runneterra is well and truly on their radar. Yours weren’t the first little abduction they’ve tried; attempts have been made in Noxus, but you know how those warlords are: they kept it under wraps, to avoid weakness.”

“I’m not eating one of those tadpole fuckers,” Vi rebounded (seemingly fixating only on that part). “I don’t know anything about those wrigglers except that everyone’s telling me they’ll turn me into a squid. I’d rather get back home before I see that happen.”

The dream visitor shook their head in disappointment. “You’re not hearing me-“ Déjà vu struck her. “Embracing the tadpole is the only way you’ll get through any o’ this. The dangers ahead will squash like bugs if you don’t become more powerful.”

She stepped back, disgruntled and truculently suspicious. “Who the hell are you, anyway? Because I sure as hell know my Vander would never ask me to do this.”

“You needn’t know much,” said the stranger in an oddly formal tone. “Just that I was a traveller like you, once, and that, like you, I’d do anything to be free of that worm.” Perhaps sensing her disquiet, he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Trust me, kiddo: long as I’m here, you won’t wind up with tentacles for a mouth.”

Vi shrugged off the manipulation, other questions dancing on her tongue, but before she could ask, an expression of worry passed over the vision’s face.

“I have to go now,” he said abruptly, shoving away from the increasingly voracious lights with a sudden pulse of energy. “Embrace the tadpole. I’ll keep you safe until then.”

************

Evidently, she was not the only one plagued by nighttime visitor: upon waking, she discerned through a bleary haze how Lae’zel was shredding her sword against a rock as if though had offended her somehow. Shortly after, across the campfire, Shadowheart shot bolt upright, panting headily as Vi regarded her with a coquettish smirk.

“How was the dream date?”

The acolyte shot her a scowl. “You underwent one of your own, I take it?”

“Bah!” Lae’zel expostulated suddenly. “’Tis nothing but delusion forged by the parasite to detract us from the creche.” Her hands slashed the air with ardent fanaticism. “Mark me, the only cure worth pursuing is the zaithisk. Any other distrations and we are bound to perish.”

“Well, aren’t you just a little ray of sunshine?” Vi retorted sarcastically, eyes drawn to an undergoing contrivement between Gale and Astarion a little ways away. “One sec, I’m gonna see what the guys think.”

As she approached, she discerned that the boys seemed to be convening over some ancient papers and old scrolls – one in particular seeming to have gained the wizard’s rapt attention. Upon arrival, Astarion greeted her with one of his signature blood-boiling smirks.

“Ahhh, Violet, my flower! Good morning! Sleep well?”

“Call me that again and I’ll punch off the tips of your ears,” she clapped back, in no mood for his shenanigans. “And you know damn well I didn’t.”

He guffawed at how easy it was to rouse her. “Oh, you’re too much fun! I take it you are made grouchy by an unwanted visitor in the subconscious region?” His gaze flits to Gale as if in afterthought. “It seems we all were.”

In no mood to deal with Astarion’s bullshitting, Vi decided to have a gander at the area surrounding the grove – only to come upon Kalarch wearing a look of somber contemplation. She joined her.

Looking down at the source of Karlach’s melancholy, Vi found herself even more perplexed; from the looks of things, a circlet of druids donning and fur coats were performing some ritualistic hand waving around a stone statue. Every so often, a chant would be muttered, eliciting a pulse of green energy that floated thickly into the air. Eyes downcast, Karlach shook her head.

“Poor buggers,” she mused. “The second that rite’s complete, they’re all going to be forced out, and it’ll be Elturel all over again.”

“At least someone’s settingth things straight.”

The ladies jumped at the assent of the young tattooed lady that approached. With the eye not covered by a patch, the purple tiefling gazed upon them in obstinate defiance.

“Nice to finally put faces to names,” she grumbled upon striding up to them. “Name’s Mol. My kids say you’ve been busy since you got here – didn’t even give Silfy a scare, and she spooks quicker than a gnoll in heat. Thanks for cheering ‘em up by the way,” she addressed Karlach frankly. “My kids love a good story when things get rough, even if it’s about the Blood War. That gith of yours taught them a thing or two, too. She’s the only teacher we’ve had that’s worth a shit – weren’t scared not to treat them like babies. Respect.”

“You come from down there?” Karlach pointed as Vi looked on in astoundment. “What’s the status quo?”

“Same as ever,” Mol mumbled. “Druids telling us ‘hellspawn’ to leave. Zevlor seems to be with ‘em; all too keen to send us packing, I say?” She tutted in dismay. “Used to be a hero; now he cowers like a squid.”

“Hey,” Vi piped up suddenly. “Be nice. Guy like that’s just trying to look out for you.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that since you were so good with Mattis,” Mol retorted curtly, jabbing her finger in Vi’s direction. “But if you really want to help, try stealing that precious idle they’re all chanting at. Arabella may not have got off easy, but if we’ve got her saviour on our side, we’re been to come out clean.”

“Hang on,” Karlach interposed, gesturing to the idle guarded by a multiple of power-hungry druids. “You told that little girl to steal that?”

“Nah, she did it by herself. Part of the revolution, I say.”

“You better be caeful with a kid who looks up to you like that,” Vi jumped in viscerally. “If those kids look up to you like you say they do, they’ll do anything you ask. You say run, they run.” Her voice rose with emotion. “You say swim, they dive in; you say light fire…they show up with oil. They’ll do it for sure, but you need to know that if they fuck up, it’s on you.”

“Whatever.” Mol rolled her eyes. “Look, if you want to help me, you can find us in our secret den. Tell Donni you want to see the ‘Dragon’s Lair’ – and you better be back with that idle, or I’ll give you to the count of ten to go out.” With one last stuck-out tongue of defiance, the girl stalked off, muttering something under her breath about how ‘Mattis said she was so nice.’

Once the child was out of earshot, Karlach looked to Vi with concern. “You got well het up there, mate. You alright?”

“Yeah.” Vi brushed herself down. “She just reminds me of someone, that’s all…”

“Aye, you were reciting those words like they were a godsdamned prayer,” Karlach exclaimed, rough palm clasping onto Vi’s shoulder. “You sure you’re alright?”

Vi bit back a heated retort. Today was not for crying. No crying today.

“It’s fine.” She corrected herself: “I’m fine.”

An almost-too-tight squeeze. “I’m here if you ever need to talk, mate.”

“We should check up on the others,” Vi dismissed, shrugging Kalarch off as they walked over to the clearly debating group.

The group were indeed gathered around the campfire discussing next steps, Gale pointing at one of the key sheets of paper he’d been perusing with Astarion.

“…so if we can discover whatever’s near that tree this letter mentioned, we might be able to save these Tieflings and rescue the druid Halsin with one stone.”

“I concur,” Shadowheart agreed. “Rescuing Halsin seems the best course of action, besides the gith creche – though I trust that particular cure about as much as I trust hers truly over there.”

The gith hissed with malcontent.

“It’s settled then.” Gale wrapped the scroll up then slotted it into his pack. “I shall recruit the assistance of the Druids who are sympathetic to our cause to accompany me and investigate this Kagha business while you lot make your way over to the goblin camp.”

Plan decided, they were just about to depart when Lae’zel yanked Vi aside by the arm.

“You are wasting your time, istik,” she admonished with a serrated tongue. “Rescuing Halsin will prove a fool’s gambit when ceremorphosis. Come, you are a proficient warrior. Now, we have attained the coordinates, the creche must be our objective!”

“We can check in on them along the way,” Vi elucidated calmly. “But as long as those worms are still wriggling around, it can’t hurt to explore every option.”

The githyanki’s expression pinches with rage: “You are dooming yourself, kainyank! Has the tadpole truly delved so deep into your brain as to addle all your sensibilities?!”

Anger rising to the occasion, Vi seized the gith by the arm. “Hey, don’t take that tone with me! Those people down there need our help just as much as we do! If I was back home right now, I know I would be doing all I can to help them!” Her gaze flickered over a group of frolicking children…she could’ve sworn she spotted a flash of blue hair… “Look, I’m going. Are you with me or not?”

The deliberated before releasing her signature chk! “It seems our sentiments are much the same: like you, I shall pursue my endeavours to survive whether you like them or not. A pity.” Her eyes glazed up and down Vi’s form. “You had proven yourself a fine warrior. Moreover, your pragmatism intrigued me. I had intended to repay your services to myself in kind, but unfortunately, it would seem your soft heart quells my generosity.”

“You wannna thank me so bad? Come find me after,” Vi retorted without a dent in her resolve. “At least if this…zaithisk thingy doesn’t work out, you can fall back on a friend.”

“How dare you doubt my kin,” Lae’zel hissed in one final voiced denial, before snapping on her heel and storming away, leaving the remainder of the party to their fates – much to Shadowheart’s assenting chagrin.