Fandom Baldur's Gate 3: Betwixt Faith and Flowers [Closed]

[Lucyfer]

Awakening was agony.

A headache pounded against the skull of the aasimar as she opened blood-red eyes onto a room that seemed like a laboratory. It was hot – terribly hot – and she saw shadows dance just out of the corner of her eye and suspected fire. A twist of her right wrist revealed it was bound, but the left was not. Luck, it seemed, had come through for her.

The red-headed woman shifted a bit, ignoring the strange red column that was in front of her, ignoring the fall of a black feather in her hair that would need to be purged, and turned her left hand to the task of getting the right out, as she determined her legs were also bound at the ankles. She saw a scalpel near, which blessedly hadn’t been knocked off the table that stood near the chitinous slab she found herself in.

It cut through the tendon-esque bond that held her arm, and then the ones at her ankles. She slid down the slanted slab, and her eyes took in the floor, which resembled flesh drawn tight over bulging veins, the grotesque pinkish hue not helping the imagery at all. ‘Where in the Hells am I?’ No memory came to answer.

No memory of the past night, or the day before, or…anything.

As the woman straightened up, what warmth and relief she’d briefly felt at escaping the bindings fled in the stark realization that she remembered very little about herself. “Amaranth….” The word was grounding, creating – something she knew, intuitively, had power. Words, sounds, all of that were tied into creation. She may not yet be able to speak her memories back into her mind, but she remembered her name.

She remembered, quite well, she used the power of sound, and she could remember a few locales – Elfsong, The Blushing Mermaid, Wyrm’s Rock – in Baldur’s Gate. She was either from there, or she visited often, but she didn’t have time to try and fit those disorganized thoughts into a coherent pattern.

She was in danger.

Something had strapped her down in here. ‘Someone….’ Her mind roared with the sensation of betrayal, as true – truer, somehow – than her own name. Well, when she figured it out, she’d make sure their end was agony. An image of torture racks flitted through her mind, warmth, familiarity, and a smile trickled onto her lips as she straightened up, and looked around at the horrors before her.

Others remained bound on slabs.

A mind flayer –

‘What.’

– was splayed out on the ground, not dead, but stunned. Amaranth didn’t have time to wait for it to regroup, as she stepped over to the body, put a foot to its neck, and jammed the scalpel through its eye, and quickly hacked it through the exposed brain matter as it cried out, psionic cries echoing and causing more pain in her head, but not for long enough to make a difference.

It was dead, and she could consider what to do. ‘That way is no good.’ Fire devoured one entryway, the scent of burnt flesh encasing the room from there. ‘I should know this, I should know this….’ There was that ringing familiarity that she should know why it smelled like rotten flesh, when this was obviously a room, and not….

Hells, could it be a living creature she was in?

“Ugh.” She got up, silver blood dripping from her hand as she approached the console that was at the head of all those tied down.

Illithid script was written upon more chitinous slabs that lingered over the controls, which appeared to be in a mess of veins and muscles, waiting for a command at just a touch. ‘Aggression. Purge. Unleash. I can…read it?’ She stared at the slabs with slow realization that somehow, she knew this script. She couldn’t remember learning it.

Then again, she couldn’t remember learning anything.

Amaranth swallowed back that sensation, and looked to the central red column, noticing then the way it wove nerves up the chairs into the bindings. That’s how the commands were given to those on the slab.

There was no certainty as to whether or not the people laying out would be any use. They seemed dazed by what happened to them, but Amaranth pressed unleash, and nearly buckled onto the button.

It wasn’t her hand that gave the command. As soon as her hand touched it, a psionic message shot right into her head, seeming to seek familiarity, and it found it.

Amaranth didn’t know how, she didn’t know why, but for a moment, all pain stilled, awaiting confirmation that this was what she wanted to do.

She willed the answer forward – yes – and the shackles unleashed each prisoner.

And they slid to the ground.

“Hey! Get up!” Amaranth walked around to the closest one and grasped his shoulders to shake him. His head lolled as he was moved about, and he offered no response, not even to the slap she gave him when her patience wore thin.

Nothing.

“Focáil!” the aasimar cursed, getting back to her feet to consider the other, former, prisoners.

Useless – but she didn’t want to go about this alone with a scalpel and what remained of her wits, which were fraying further down to her nerves, spiking panic as she found herself all but frozen to the spot she stood, desperately seeking anything – in mind or in reality – to give her a handle on what was going on.

There were pods, and her eyes skimmed over them without much hope. Those with occupants seemed to be in a similar state, whether it was the pod that did it, or the jarring crash that seemed to have set this thing on fire that concussed the occupants.

Perhaps she was too hasty in killing the mind flayer. ‘Just one, I just need one person….’

~***~

It was just his luck! The first time Gale Dekarios decided to leave his depression den in Waterdeep to try and get access to Sorcerous Sundries in Baldur’s Gate, he gets picked up by a nautiloid! Not exactly what the aspiring wizard was hoping to come across, no matter how fascinating the subject of illithid designs were – at a distance. This was, decidedly, not a distance, and he was even closer to their biological habits than he desired when a tadpole was plucked from a pool in the center of the room, and stuck into his eye.

He was hardly the only one moaning and wriggling about, trying to escape the pod that held him fast. He saw a gith woman there, a tiefling, and a woman with vitiligo all receive a tadpole after him, before the ship seemed to come under attack. He heard the shriek of a dragon, a sound he really hadn’t wanted to hear again in his life, and the nautiloid rocked dangerously, before the disorienting feeling of being displaced made his stomach churn, and he hit his forehead against the pod’s strange, quick-hardening mucus window.

Gale really didn’t want to think long on that mucus part, and thankfully, thinking of anything for longer than a second was not permitted! The dragons and the crashing about kept any thoughts of the fascination of the nautiloid’s biology to an extreme minimum.

A hole was torn in the room he happened to occupy as the nautiloid ran afoul of some cold cliffs. Gale could see the wintery gales outside, buffering the ship. He could see red dragons, and more githyanki outside. ‘Well, this would be a better death than becoming a mind flayer.’ Although as it crossed his mind, he realized it would not be a good death for anything else around him.

‘No, no, I can’t die here!’ He struggled against the pod, much as the githyanki woman did. Were they there for her? He tried to call out, uncertain he’d get any aid, but a jarring of the nautiloid caused his jaw to snap shut and he bit his tongue.

Pain that really should be ignored in such dire circumstances, but he was still human, and it silenced him for that necessary moment.

The red dragon blew fire into the room, boiling the tadpole pool. The flames warmed his pod, before everything was displaced. That jarring displacement, along with the fire, was enough for Gale to lose himself to the black unconsciousness, if only for a moment.

Well, perhaps more than a moment.

Fire was still around when he woke, the wretched smell of burning flesh permeating the pod. The githyanki woman and tiefling were no longer there, but others were still either in their pods, or upon the floor, if their pods had released. The mind flayer that had been distributing tadpoles like sweet rolls was burnt to a crisp, dead upon the ground. The pods, it seemed, protected most of their hosts from the same fate.

Outside, it still looked fiery.

Gale couldn’t discern if that was the damage to the ship, or the plane of existence outside the ship.

What he could determine was that he needed to get out of his pod. He tried banging on it, but it didn’t budge. Not a surprise – he was never a man of great strength, and so after that brief lapse in judgment where he imagined an adrenaline-fueled power, he took a breath, and murmured the words to bring forth a better tool for the job.

A spectral, purple hand appeared outside of the pod. Pure Weave.

It made his heart soar, as much as it made it ache.

He attempted to manipulate the hand to find a latch, or some other means of opening the pod, but his groping brought nothing more than the phantom sensation of the pod being a bit more…slick than he wanted to think about. Well, that, and there was an area that his fingers could reach between and attempt to pry, but the spectral hand had less strength than Gale himself. So, the Wizard of Waterdeep tried to shake off that feeling of slickness as he decided on another tactic, and had the purple hand hover over to someone who seemed to be waking.

The mage hand would wave at her as she roused, and then make a ‘follow’ gesture, to try and get her to go to where Gale remained locked in his pod.

Though, his pod would reveal some weakness in the structure from the flames. It could be pried open, or, it could be punctured through the transparent conjunctiva that shielded its occupant, but moved aside at the command of a mind flayer.

He’d speak, though he was unsure how well his voice traveled outside of the pod, “Hello! I would be ever so appreciative if you could help me get out of this pod!” He considered possibly using fire against it, but the dragon’s flame didn’t seem to dissolve the pod around him, so that didn’t seem the best idea. Perhaps he could concoct a ritual to step through dimensions and get himself clear, but his mind was a bit fried at the moment to think of one. “It’s not exactly my preferred coffin, that’s a bit more, well, wooden.” A little joke. Probably not appropriate, but maybe it would help the stranger think kindly of him.

 

[fruit soup]

Shadowheart woke to an immense heat surrounding her, and the throbbing pain that filled her skull soon after. The cause was clear: that damned tadpole that the Mind Flayer had forced through her eye socket. She’d been on her way back to Baldur’s Gate from her mission when she was abducted, and the rest of what happened she’d only caught in glimpses. The roaring of dragons outside the nautiloid, the feeling of displacement rendering her unconscious, then the jolting of the nautiloid slamming into cliffside and the dragons’ continued ferocity. Being displaced a second time isn’t what knocked the cleric out once more, however. It was a rather abrupt slam into a cliffside that sent her head back, slamming it into the back of her pod.

And then she woke up to that heat. It was nearly unbearable, especially with the pain induced by a second tenant in her head. Yet she pushed through it, shaking her head back and forth a few times to force herself through the vertigo. Slowly, Shadowheart came to her senses. Taking in a deep breath, she looked around, trying to see all that she could from her pod to assess her situation. Laying before her pod were a circle of slabs, on top of each slab was a person, unconscious and bound by the fleshy tendrils of the nautiloid.

Shadowheart shuddered in disgust as she noticed just how biological the ship was. Taught skin pulled over flesh and bone and sinew to form the walls around her. Against her better judgment, she reached out to feel the texture of her pod and her lips immediately pulled down in revolt at the feeling of mucus.

She needed to get out of here.

She began looking for a lock, a hinge, anything to get out. Perhaps she could bash her way out?

Shadowheart reached for the handle of her mace behind her but to no avail. She cursed the Illithids’ foresightedness. Then panic filled her. If the mind flayers took her mace, then what if they took it?

Shadowheart’s hand shot to her side pocket, feeling for the familiar spiked form of the artifact. It was not there, she quickly began patting herself down out of panic, feeling for the artifact even where she didn’t have pockets.

‘Where is it?!’

She felt a subtle clanging against her foot as she shuffled around in her pod. She looked down and instant relief flooded through her. It had simply fallen out of her pocket. With that taken care of, Shadowheart began looking once more for a way to escape.

Looking outside her pod again, a slight shuffling of vibrant red caught her eye–someone was moving about the room. She squinted through the tint of her pod’s pane and tried to make out some details, and she noticed the vibrant hue was coming from hair. This was a woman! A regular woman! She was shaking the shoulders of the others on the slabs before them to see if they were awake, or more likely, if they were even alive. She was looking for survivors.

Shadowheart sprung to life at the opportunity. She began pounding on the pod’s window, fists balled, mucus be damned, praying to Shar above that the woman would look her way.

“Hey! Let me out! Please, help me!” Desperation quickly settled itself in her tone.

She continued to pound on the window, slamming her fists even harder as the red-haired woman began to look her way. “Please! Let me out of this damned thing!” She begged.

⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅
​

Calanthe woke to the putrid smell of burning flesh and an odd, blue light waving itself above her. She blinked hard once, twice, then thrice as her eyes adjusted. Then her brows pulled together.

A mage hand? She’d thought to herself. She propped herself up with her hands and instantly gagged a little at the sudden vertigo accompanied by the assaulting smell that woke her, the smoke that followed it, and the realization that the floor she was on was made of skin. Her hand shot to her mouth instantly as she tried to recollect herself. After a moment, she looked back at the mage hand as she tried to remember what had lead her up to this point.

She could remember all the way up until she reached the north entry of Baldur’s Gate. She remembered seeing the city, smelling the salty air of the sea, and then the sudden dark flash, like lightning. But rather, a displacement portal. The next thing she remembered was being displaced from where she was into the Illithid pod, and the sudden appearance of others next to her. A wizard, an elf, and other Baldurians. She remembered the mind flayer, and then the tadpole. She remembered how painfully it slipped between her eye and her eyesocket and wedged itself into her brain. Her head throbbed as if reacting to the memory and the rage that filled her body at the implications it meant for her.

Then nothing except flashes of fragmented moments of consciousness. Red dragons, their heat, and their fire that was now burning the nautiloid around her. She remembered the cragged canyon they crashed through, and then nothing but pure heat. That heat meant only one thing. They were in the Hells.

She felt a wave of urgency crash through her as she realized she needed to get out of here. She stood up, now totally focused on the mage hand and its waving and she thanked everything that she had fallen out of her pod in their crashing through the cosmos. Some around her had not been so lucky. She watched it sign to her to follow and Calanthe did so. She figured the hand had to have belonged to a caster. From what she could recall Illithids specialized in psionics, not conjuration. Perhaps it was someone who could help her. She was willing to accept any sort of help if it meant getting back to Faerun.

As she approached the pod, she heard a man’s voice call out to her, asking for help. For a fraction of a second, Calanthe was taken aback at his embellished tone. It felt out of place for the situation. She focused more on the occupant in the pod, her expression pulling together in concentration as she tried to get a better look at him. A human! Calanthe thanked the gods until she heard his meager attempt at a joke. She cocked her brow in question, pursing her lips. She turned her attention back to his pod.

“I’ll get you out. Just–hang on for a moment,” she said, looking for a weakness. The pod’s structure was damaged by the dragon’s fire, and it looked like she might just be able to get a grip underneath the lip of the pod’s door, “I’m going to try to pry it open.”

Calanthe quickly prepared herself, twisting her body back and forth to stretch her sides while she stretched each arm, hopping quickly thrice between feet as if to jumpstart her preparedness. Then, she wrapped her fingers under the lip of the pod door and spread her feet, shifting her center of gravity to plant herself. With a deep breath, she pulled hard at the door, groaning in effort until it almost felt like a switch had flipped, and the door suddenly released with a quick puff of a breaking air seal, then clattered to the floor, sending Calanthe back a few paces with it.

Taking a few breaths, Calanthe adjusted herself and stood straight once more, taking a good look at the stranger. She noted the deep purple robes, the quarterstaff, and then a small glint at his ear caught her eye. She knew the symbol of his earring immediately.

“You’re a mage, aren’t you?” She asked, “I think we’re in Avernus. Definitely the Hells.”

 

[Lucyfer]

There was a sound coming from somewhere in the room. Amaranth hadn’t placed what it was before her gaze settled on the movement coming from one of the pods. She approached the woman in the pod, her pleas not at all falling on deaf ears, though Amaranth wasn’t sure how to open the pod, until she noticed a terribly biological system right besides it. She had willed the release of the prisoners on the slabs with the other, could she do the same with this one?

“A moment,” Amaranth said, holding up a finger in case her voice didn’t make it through easily. She stepped over to the device.

There were no slabs to read. Even so, she still tried to hover her hand over it, but there was no pull at her mind. It was dormant without the instructing slab, and looking at the pod once again, Amaranth wasn’t sure she’d find another way to open it.

‘Hells.’

Why couldn’t it be easy?

She moved to step in front of the pod, so her lips could be read along with her words, “There’s an empty slot here to the device that will open the pods,” Amaranth didn’t want to yell, but she still spoke louder than usual, not sure how easily she could be heard through the pod. The ship shuddered around them, reminding them of how little time they had. “I am going to look for the mechanism. If I cannot find it, I’ll try to replace it with one in another device,” she pointed in the direction of the device, though that wouldn’t be the way she headed.

She didn’t know how difficult a prospect that was, and if something was removed from the first, that meant it had to be somewhere, and hopefully somewhere not too far.

She did find a chest in the room, alongside trinkets of gold and jewelry, likely pilfered from the poor folks on the slabs. Perhaps from her, though nothing called to her memory. The chest, though, was locked, which only earned a scowl from her. Amaranth had a feeling she could unlock it, but she didn’t have the tools needed to do such a thing. Would this chest have the item they needed?

She checked the mind flayer for a key, but found none.

That meant nothing in this room, but there were others, if the sphincters were anything to go by. Not a pleasant thought by any means, and she didn’t know how the biology of this ship worked. Would she be able to return to this room, or would she go down a fluid-lined tube? ‘Just look before you leap.’

Amaranth picked one at random, and jolted back immediately. It wasn’t a tube that ran down, she was simply not expecting to be greeted by a walking brain. “Beautiful~,” the brain commented as it went by, voice ringing in her head.

“Wait—” she called after it, and despite her initial revulsion, she knelt down and extended a hand, to make it clear she was speaking to it, “I need help.”

“Help, yes. In the helm.”

Amaranth disregarded this, “No, there’s another in these pods I need to get out, but the….” Did she call it a machine? The image was conjured up in her head, and it seemed the brain she was trying to speak to, must have seen it through that psionic connection.

“The console. I know where it is. Two is better. Two to the helm!”

The brain scrambled back into the room it came from, and Amaranth rose to her feet, a bit shaken to have felt the presence in her head, but trying to push by that as she followed after it, and saw another woman in a pod, though this one was centralized.

She seemed a bit dazed, but not entirely lost. She reached out a hand and placed it on the window of the pod. Amaranth only nodded, as she was led up to another console.

“This one stole the key! Naughty.”

So it was locked away. Mind flayers weren’t all that different from others, then. Amaranth saw the key clutched in a hand, and she took hold of it, before glancing at the other pod, and then the console that wasn’t far from where this one fell. This would release the other person, too, right? Amaranth moved towards the console and her eyes went over the slab.

Perfect?

She put her hand to the console, and willed it to follow the command – only to hear a sudden scream from the pod, and then a rather grotesque crunching, and wet slapping sounds, as she wrenched her hand away and all but ran back to the pod.

Within was a mind flayer.

In an instant.

‘Is that…normal?’

Amaranth felt her heart sink into her stomach with the thought.

Would she do that to the other in the pod? Perhaps not. It would depend on what the rune said, right?

“Gorgeous! Perfect!”

The brain cooed out, and Amaranth chose to stomp her foot through it before shaking off the brain matter and returning to the chitinous chest in the room with the woman in the pod and opening it.

Inside was the slab.

Open.

Amaranth swallowed down her fear that could have a separate meaning, and went back calmly to the pod, and the console. “Sorry that took a bit,” she opted not to warn the woman of what could happen as she settled the slab with the writing into it she really had no idea why she understood, and then shut her eyes to focus on the command.

And possibly overriding it if she got any hint it wouldn’t do what she wanted it to do.

Thankfully, the universe conspired with her for once: the ‘one person’ she had begged for wouldn’t be turned into a mind flayer, but instead, the pod would release with a hiss, and open itself up to allow the woman within the freedom she had prayed for.

Amaranth would be able to step away from the console with visible relief painted across her face as she saw the half-elf alive on the other side.

~***~

Gale was immensely relieved when the woman approached at the behest of the mage hand and agreed to help him out. He sighed into the humid air of his pod, and tried not to let his anxiety get the better of him as she worked. He bit the inside of his cheek in rotation with biting his tongue, and his bottom lip, to keep from making suggestions about a situation he knew little about. It wasn't as if he had mage eye, after all. He didn't know how things looked or worked.

So all he could really offer was encouragement. “I'm sure you're almost there,” he thought he heard something give, and he was right – but still taken by surprise when the pod opened rather suddenly, spilling the hapless wizard onto the warm ground.

Living tissue warm.

He couldn't help but he as fascinated as he was disgusted by it, one moment spreading his fingers over it and wondering if he could feel a pulse, and the next lifting them and brushing them down his robes to clean them.

His attention was caught by his savior speaking, making a rather obvious comment, though phrased as a question. He saw her gaze briefly linger at his ear, and he pulled himself to his feet, “Yes, a wizard,” he agreed, “if that mage hand wasn't enough to convince you, I'm sure I could conjure wonders for your eyes, though perhaps after we've settled the matter of liberating ourselves from our current quandary, mm? Not that I’m sure Avernus is preferable to our current location on this ship, but I suppose it offers us a mite bit more freedom to get off and descend to the hells – unless we can conjure another option and fly this ship elsewhere!” Ever hopeful was Gale – he had to be. He’d faced plenty of horrors, mostly from his own poor, bad decisions, and he’d found ways to pull himself out of them.

Whether it was down to Avernus, or finding a way to use this ship, he would get out of this, too.

He doubted that was going to spark any argument, so he added, “Oh! I am Gale of Waterdeep,” not the best time for introductions, but, “and before you think me entirely lacking in decorum – thank you,” the emphasis shown through in the obvious relief, and the warmth that illuminated his brown eyes.

For all his grandiose talk and boasting, he was painfully aware of their predicament, and quite relieved to be free, as he reached back for his staff – something the illithids must have thought to be a walking stick, as they left it with him. “I am a bit wearied, but I have fortitude enough to help us push our way to freedom, and I will do all that I can to protect your life, for saving mine.”

He did not know if the woman before him could cast spells, but if not, she was certainly at a disadvantage without a weapon. He could help mitigate some of those troubles with his spells, even if he was not as powerful as he once was. “I will follow your lead.”

He didn’t know if she had any better bearings than he did about this place, but he owed her much already – best not to start things out by giving direction when he had nothing to back it up with beyond a hunch or suspicion.