Chapter Text
"Vlaakith blesses me this day. Together, we might survive."
A sharp breath passes Candy's trembling lips as she only offers a short inhale as acknowledgement. Her attention is elsewhere, still reeling from whatever that was, and did this woman just call her an abomination? Tears are blurring her vision as she looks to the blood staining her palms and dripping up her wrists to the cuffs of this unfamiliar shirt.
"There was a brain-" she starts, but she loses her words as a dragon swoops through the air beside them, the beat of its wings sending the fire and ash swirling around her, and she jerks her body to the side to avoid it. The ground she stands on quakes as the ship turns through the sky, and her feet barely feel rooted to the ground. She sniffs before looking back at the armour-clad person in front of her.
Why is she yellow?
"There was this man and his brain was talking to me," she tries again, breath shuddering as she fights to regulate herself. "And I tried to help it- the brain, not the- I should have helped the man, right? But the brain was talking to me, and I tried to pull it out and it- it squished-"
"Chk." Her tongue clicks with disdain as she interrupts Candy's rambling words. "We have survived so far, istik-"
"Candy," she corrects, but the scowl deepens on the yellow woman's face and Candy's mouth shuts quickly.
"I am Lae'zel of Creche K'liir, and I am your only chance of survival, istik. We carry the mind flayer parasites. Unless we escape - unless we are cleansed - our bodies and minds will be tainted and twisted. Within days we will be ghaik. Mind flayers.
"Imps block the path ahead. You will assist me in destroying them - we must reach the helm before we transform. I presume you know how to wield a dagger."
Lae'zel gestures to a small blade tucked into Candy's waistband, one that doesn't belong to her but she assumes came from the same place these unfamiliar clothes came from. They're scratchy and too much, and the sleeves are already blackened by ash and drying blood. She pushes them up in an attempt to ease the discomfort, but they slip straight back down.
"I can use a knife. I've- I can fight. I once-"
"Silence. You will show me your skills in battle. We have no time to speak idly."
"Yes, istik," Candy nods quickly, trying to repeat the name Lae'zel had given her.
The mimicry of Lae'zel's words make the woman bristle, and she grits her teeth. "And you will keep my language from your tongue, or I will cut it out myself."
---
It isn't real.
That's what she tells herself as she holds the crossbow out in front of her with one eye closed to peer down the sights. It can't be real. You don't just wake up on a burning ship made of (what she thinks is) living flesh.
Maybe it's a dream. Maybe it's a really f*cked up psychotic episode. She doesn't know, but it isn't real.
She didn't just kill winged imps while a yellow woman - githyanki, she'd been told - commanded her every move with a ruthless efficiency, and she definitely didn't just desecrate corpses to find ill-fitting leather armour and slightly sharper weapons.
"Lae'zel," she starts, too quiet beneath the roar of wind and beast, and she raises her voice. "I don't- I don't know where I am or how I got here."
"Then perhaps you will be unburdened by thought, and I will be unburdened by a your attempts to talk about yourself," Lae'zel dismisses, her tone biting as she stalks between the bodies, turning an imp onto its back with the toe of her boot. "We need to keep moving. This way."
Maybe she's in her book. Not literally, but it wouldn't be unlike her mind to drift into whatever pages have recently taken her fancy.
What was she reading before this?
She follows the githyanki as she lets her mind wander, trying to muddle through her memories of where she was before this and-
"Lae'zel-"
"Tsk'va. What now?"
"Did a worm eat my eye?" She closes first one eye and then the other, testing her vision with a small sniff.
"The parasite did not eat your eye."
She has fleeting thoughts of a maggot, sharp teeth and claws, so not a maggot. The lingering visual of something so hideous tearing its way through her eye has a visceral effect on her, making her shudder and gag as she slows to a stop, testing her vision again but this time with hands over each eye.
"Come on," Lae'zel snaps. Her frustration is palpable and Candy drops her hands before starting to follow her once more.
"So, this parasite is... the thing with the teeth? It's in me? Why is it in me? I don't- I don't want it in me."
"No. I do not wish to be infected either. Every minute that passes ticks closer to our transformation, which is why we must escape. We shall be cleansed and I shall return to fight without you. I will not be ghaik."
The fleshy door they pass through offers them respite from the gaping wounds that decorate the ship's exterior, and Candy feels a fleeting relief as it becomes a barrier to the cacophony of war beyond.
"Ghaik means 'mind flayer', right?" She asks, hand coming to rub at her nose with the only clean patch of skin near her thumb. "What does istik mean? You... you kept calling me that. I thought maybe-"
"You are correct about one thing. To be ghaik is to become a mind flayer, a fate we are blessed to have yet so far avoided."
"And istik?" Candy prompts.
"You are istik. You are not Gith."
Though Lae'zel's answers are short and bitten out as though filled with disdain at the thought of having to talk to Candy, she humours her questions for now as she assess the room they find themselves in. Bodies lay almost lifeless on slabs before them, a console marked by unfamiliar insignias and buttons large enough that Candy thinks she could splay her fingers and still not cover it entirely.
"We are close to the helm-" she begins, but her words fail her as she realises Candy's impulse. Her hand flies out to latch onto a thin wrist with a grip so tight it threatens to snap the bone beneath the pale flesh. "Do not touch the controls, or your escape from this place will be your end, not your liberation."
Candy tries to snatch her hand away, but Lae'zel has a firm hold on her as she points to the three sigils above the buttons.
"Unleash, Aggression, Annihilate," she translates. "I do not care to find out what each of those commands will do and neither should you. I am going to let go of you now and we will continue. Do not touch them."
The smaller girl nods quickly, silent in her show of obedience as Lae'zel slowly releases her wrist without breaking eye contact, and it's only in that quiet that they hear it: the sudden thud muffled by glass.
"You! Get me out of this damn thing!"
The gith is turning on her heel, sword balanced in a practiced grip as she eyes the pod that the voice came from. But before she can react, her attention snaps to the right of her as a purple lightning sparks across the heads of the two bodies, making them convulse before they fall limp over the edges of the slabs. Dead.
"Annihilate kills them," Candy says in a small voice as seething eyes turn on her, her hand still resting on the button that Lae'zel had translated for her. "I guess luckily it wasn't a command for them to annihilate us."
