Chapter Text
Nora Royce
The smell of iron is what hits her first. Like old blood and older blades. Like dead templar and ice spikes through the throat.
Nora coughs, the breaths coming out cold in the air. She tries to reach up and touch her throat, certain she’ll find frost and blood there, but her arms are too heavy.
“What?” she hisses, eyes opening slowly. Her whole body feels weighed down. How long was she asleep?
How long was she dead may be a better question. The last thing she remembers is Solas. Always Solas. That stupid fool.
Nora’s vision is unfocused for the first few blinks, then she realizes there is a strange yellowed pane of…glass? In front of her? And beyond it lies a warped darkened room.
The strange box she is in, combined with the viewing glass, really reminds her of the opening scene of Fallout 4. That’s not a good thing. That’s not a good thing at all.
She shuts her eyes tightly, breathing. Her mind is clear, but her arms still won’t move. Is she drugged?
Is it magic?
She tries to twitch her fingers, to call upon the Mark’s power, but her body won’t respond the way she wants. She doesn’t feel drugged, at least not in a way that would confuse her mind, but besides the phantom cold the only thing she can feel below the neck is pins and needles.
She grits her teeth and forces her mana to move where her limbs won’t—it’s painful to try and cast this way but she’d rather be in pain than trapped in what she really hopes isn’t a cryopod. If the Inquisition put her dead body on ice and enough time has passed that Thedas has developed some sort of cryostasis, she’ll scream. She’ll really scream.
She pushes mana out and down into her hand, where the mark is strangely silent.
She was used to its hum of power, the thin tendrils that attached it to the Breach and Thorn. Spitting mana from the Fade and consuming her flesh.
The hum is gone. Its absence is disconcerting.
Then, in a jolt as wisps of her mana finally graze the spiraling anchor, it hums to life again. It sounds…different? But still. It’s working. That’s what matters.
With a grunt, Nora sends a pulse of sickly green magic over her body, searching for the possible source of whatever is keeping her stationary. Waves rush from her toes and up to her neck, and finally, when it rolls over her brain she can finally feel her limbs again.
She also falls forward into the yellow glass, legs weak, but at least she can move!
Now she just needs to get out of this strange, fleshy tank and find Thorn. They must be around here somewhere.
She pushes up against the front of the pod she’s in and shivers in disgust at how wet it is. A clammy, slick sort of wetness that brings to mind the insides of a gut wound. There’s very little give to whatever material it’s made out of, despite this, and she’s forced to pulse her magic again to give her desperate struggle enough force.
The lid to the pod heaves open slowly, detaching from the clamps that held it shut with a wet tearing noise. The scent of copper and rusted iron only gets stronger, causing her to gag as she stumbles out of her broken cage and onto soft ground. Her boots sink a little into the floor.
She swings her head around, trying to catch a glimpse of anything familiar, but all she can see in the dim light is dark red, pulsing walls, and more of the weirdly organic cryopods. She’s confirmed she’s probably not in Fallout, but that’s no longer a relief.
She has to find Thorn. Immediately.
She walks to the pod to her right, scanning its empty interior. The next four are the same.
“Nora!” comes muffled behind her, and she turns around so fast her head spins, spotting a yellow tinted Thorn through the glass of a pod.
Relief pours through Nora as she sprints to the pod, boots squeaking against the fleshy floor as her eyes stay on Thorn.
“I’m getting you out!” Nora says, pressing both palms flat on the glass and burning through the strange magical resistance keeping it closed, green sparks bursting from her left hand at the speed of it.
Now she just needs to pry the thing open.
“f*ck. sh*t. f*ck.” Thorn’s contribution to the situation is, as always, immaculate.
“Balls. Ass. Bigger balls,” Nora replies as she wedges her fingers between the pod’s door and the pod, mana strengthening her muscles as she wrenches the thing open. It’s somehow even less elegant than her own escape, but elegance is for chumps.
“You’re so strong,” Thorn says limply once Nora can see their face clearly again. They have blood splattered over their chestplate where Nora knows Solas ran them through, but no wound that she can see through the hole his magic made. “Have you been doing pushups?”
“So many pushups.” Nora reaches high and touches her left palm Thorn’s forehead.
A pulse of green magic, and suddenly Nora has an armful of heavy, pointy Thorn. Ow.
“Gods, how much do you weigh?” Nora hisses, trying not to fall over and awkwardly twisting her arms around her friend to keep them from falling on their face.
“Not all of us—” here Thorn grunts, adjusting their legs to try and stand on their own, “can be built like an elf.”
“I’m not angular enough to be an elf.”
Thorn gains their bearings with little elegance, slumping into a standing position even as their hands immediately go to their body, checking that their weapons are still in place.
“Do you know where we are?” Nora asks. She realizes that she should probably check if her own weapons are in place, since this is the kind of situation that always ends in murder for the two of them.
Honestly? Few situations ever end in anything but bloodshed, now that she thinks about it. Her life is defined by extreme violence.
“Not in Kansas anymore, that’s for sure. I know I’m not the lore geek of the group, but I’m pretty sure this place isn’t Thedosian in design,” Thorn grunts, pulling a few knives out to check their edges before returning them to their hidden holsters. No warhammer.
No staff for Nora, either.
“No. It’s much too…wet,” Nora agrees, wrinkling her nose.
Weapons accounted for, Thorn stretches with an audible pop and visibly takes in the rest of the room they’ve found themselves in, a furrow on their brow. Nora can tell that they’re worried, but there’s also something else there—a confusion that seems a little more pointed than just an unfamiliarity with their surroundings.
“If we died again, why didn’t we get returned back to the start of the Breach?” Thorn asks quietly, running their hands down the edge of the pod’s door and examining the residue it leaves behind on their fingers.
Nora shrugs, anxiously tugging at the material of her sleeves to poke at where the mark is. It feels different, and is much dimmer than she’s used to. In fact, now that she’s had some time to actually pay attention to it, the connection she’s gotten used to feeling from it to the Fade is almost withered down to nothing.
“Do you—do you think it’s because we were f*cking with the connection between the Marks?”
Despite what they had promised, there had been times when pulling on the connection between the Marks and the Fade was their only good option available, despite the side effects and the possibility of destabilizing the veil even more than it already was. And they had never messed with the Marks to that extent in their first life.
Thorn frowns and then cracks their neck, eyes peering into the corners of the room like answers can be found in the gross fleshiness of the walls.
“Maybe. We know the Fade messes with time and space already. And we never were able to figure out how we got to Thedas in the first place, or why we went back in time when we died. It’s possible this time the deeper connection with the marks punched a hole to somewhere else, not just sometime else. More importantly, for the moment, we need to get moving.”
“Huh?”
A hand yanks Nora a few feet to the left as the room they’re in shudders and exhales, a distant noise booming as the scent of burning flesh and sulfur makes itself known. The ground underneath them ripples, forcing Nora to cling to Thorn’s hand as her gut tries to escape her body, the sense of freefall sudden enough to be disorientating.
“What was that?” she gasps, choking.
“Based on personal experience, an explosion of some kind. Come on, we need to figure out where we are and how to get out, before they get any closer.”
Nora can’t argue with that.
They move through the room, headed towards what seems to be a fleshy exit at the end of the rows of pods. Nora’s eyes flick to each one they pass, not finding any other souls trapped in them. It seems a waste to have twenty pods and use only two of them.
They reach the door.
“Doors shaped like assholes. This is already an improvement from Haven’s chantry,” Thorn mutters to themself as Nora taps the fleshy sphincter with two fingers, nose wrinkled.
There's a strange…tugging in her head that sends all of her hairs on end. It’s there and gone in seconds, and the door opens.
“That felt weird.”
“Weird?” Thorn asks as they both stare down the darkened corridor the exit revealed. The tissue of the walls is spasming in tandem with distant booms and explosions.
“It didn’t feel like magic. It felt like something in my head sensed something in the door.” Nora walks forward, Thorn close behind. With a flick of the wrist Nora calls a fireball to her hand to brighten their surroundings. And to use if they encounter whatever put them in those pods.
“That’s disconcerting.”
“This whole day has been disconcerting, and that includes Solas—” Nora has to cut herself off, a raw hurt and anger rising in her throat and making her fireball a little too big. The heat in her left palm is hot like a brand before she strengthens the barrier around it.
“Later. We’ll sh*t talk later,” Thorn says darkly.
Nora walks, steps quiet and tapping the squishy ground. She extends her senses outward as they turn the corner of the corridor, trying to feel what magical energy may be nearby.
It’s hard. Harder than it’s ever been, even compared to the first time she woke up in Haven’s dungeon. The Mark was likely amplifying her sensitivity to mana, a direct connection to the Fade will do that to a person.
There’s a great darkness surrounding them. Not the ship itself, but permeating the air. Thick and hot like steam when she lets herself feel it, breathes it into her lungs.
That can’t be good.
Nora peers down the hallway and sees that another assdoor is at the end of this corridor. How nice.
“Do you want to try and open this one? For science?” Nora asks Thorn, looking back at them. Firelight dances over their pale face, blue eyes shining green when they mix with the oranges and yellows.
“You just don’t want to touch the thing,” Thorn says dryly.
“A lie by omission is only a lie if the intentions are revealed,” Nora replies in as dignified a way she can.
“And they have been. But that’s fine, I’ll touch the asshole for you, dear Nora. We can’t have the Herald sullying those holy hands—” Thorn says as they step ahead of Nora and reach the door first.
“What a good enforcer you are,” Nora says sarcastically, but speeds up to keep an eye on Thorn as they lay a single finger on it.
Something happens, Nora can almost hear the hum of it, reverberating under Thorn’s skin and bouncing off of the door. It’s like it’s in a frequency Nora isn’t familiar with, just higher than she’s able to hear.
It’s deeply annoying. Nora despises not understanding things.
Whatever it is, the door opens. The room also takes that moment to list sideways, a faint noise in the distance heralding yet another explosion.
“I’m starting to think we’re not in a building so much as a ship of some kind,” Thorn grunts, bracing themselves on the open flesh of the door. “Or it’s been built on stilts.”
Nora hopes it’s not the second thing, since that means there’s a good chance that they’re about to collapse. That said, being on a sinking ship isn’t much better.
“Let’s hurry up,” Nora hisses, stumbling through the door and into—surprise, surprise, another flesh room.
It’s at least slightly different than the one they just left, wider, and more well lit. The lighting only makes the strange architecture worse, however, and it’s almost as if staring at the way the walls twist and the floor heave is making her motion sick. There’s no pods here, but they’ve been replaced by long black tables shaped in weird organic lines and even stranger glowing jars full of moving…things.
Oh, and part of the room is on fire. That’s lovely.
“You hear that?” Thorn hisses, snapping a hand out to stop Nora from wandering further into the room.
“Hear what?” Nora asks, quietly, eyes flickering around. There’s a lot of noise to filter through, from the explosions that are getting closer together in frequency to what Nora has been pretending isn’t the sound of a heartbeat that’s echoing around them.
But if she pushes that all aside—
“—help Us.”
She twitches, instinctually stepping forward, ignoring Thorn’s restraining hand. Someone else must have gotten out of a pod. She can’t just leave them here. The flame in her hand flickers and dies.
“Nora,” Thorn says sharply, and Nora stills herself.
“Help Us!” a voice murmurs. Multiple voices, maybe. A choir of them disjointed as they repeat their plea over and over again. The wiggle from earlier twitches in Nora’s head, and she feels like she’s been doused in a bucket of cold water.
“Help Us! Please… We’re so alone, so cold!” The voice continues. The voice continues in Nora’s mind.
“Jesus f*cking christ,” Nora hisses, taking a step closer to Thorn and looking around. “Something is in our heads, and that something can— control us? Encourage us?”
The voice continues its pleas as Thorn responds. “Be careful. I don’t think even you can protect against an attack in your mind.”
Protections against telepathy haven’t ever been a necessity, no. Besides demons like Envy who can take on memories and identities, or protecting dreams against demons (or prideful elves), Thedas doesn’t have much in the realm of mental magics.
Nora lets Thorn edge further into the room first, hands clenched around the emptiness where her staff normally would be, and tries to prod at the foreign intrusion in her mind. It doesn’t feel like magic. Just like touching the assdoor didn’t feel like magic. She feels her lips twitch into a frown and tries to keep her breathing steady, the rising frustration of all these weird mysteries boiling just under her skin.
In the center of the room is a strange sculpture—device?
Whatever it is lights up at their approach, a whirring noise like a really fleshy computer starting up with it.
“Huh.” Thorn stares at it with an odd look on their face.
“What?” Nora hisses, still poking at the presence in her mind like a sore tooth.
“Nothing, maybe. I just don’t know how I didn’t recognise that this whole place is biomechanical. That ship idea is getting even more likely.”
Nora hopes not, because if they’ve been moving this whole time it’s going to be a pain to try and track down where they arrived exactly, and trace a way back. If they decide to go back. She’s tired and heartsick enough now that she’s not sure even she can successfully convince Thorn that’s a good idea.
She’s tired enough in fact that it takes her a moment to register that Thorn is going over to touch the strange device. She jerks forward as the device lights up even more.
“Thorn!”
“Better I lose the hand than the one who uses them to heal,” Thorn shrugs back, eyes not on the device but above, where the vague sense of the cries for help are coming from. As much as a mental plea can come from any physical direction.
“Besides, I’m pretty sure based on the flooring here this is some kind of elevator. I just need to figure out…”
The ground shakes.
They both curse, and Thorn stumbles forward, hands landing directly onto the strange tendriled device to steady themself. Great. Even gravity is working against them!
The floor beneath them starts moving, which immediately proves Nora’s point.
“Just like I thought. An elevator,” Thorn says, straightening and making an attempt to look more casual, as if they intended to do that. “You should get some magic ready in case whatever is up there wants to eat us.”
Nora takes a break at trying to scan whatever is in her head to let fire lick her fingers. The presence is evading her hearing, like a song that switches its cords in uneven ways so she doesn’t expect what it does next. It must be a physical thing in her, not just a kind of curse placed with magic. That would’ve been far easier to locate.
“What, is it going to eat our brains? I’m seeing far too much brain imagery in this room—”
The elevator reaches the top and they get to see a body on the platform, notably, with the top of its skull cut off to show its brain.
They both stand very still for a moment. The voice in Nora’s head has only grown louder.
“I take what I just said back. I take everything I have ever said back,” Nora says weakly.
“sh*t. f*ck. f*cking hell I hope that’s not what I think it—”
“You’ve come! You’ve come to save Us!” the voice says, the loudest it’s been until now.
Now that they’re closer, it’s easier for Nora to tell where the sound is, for lack of a better word, coming from. It’s for sure not coming from the twitching body, who, despite having an open mouth, is very much not speaking with it.
Instead, the mental sound seems to be coming from the brain .
Thorn steps closer, hand flicking so that two knives nestle within their palm, and angles themself so that they’re facing the thing head-on. The disgust plastered on their face only grows as the brain quivers in anticipation at their approach.
“Flesh ship, brains in jars, a walking brain stuck in a skull—I am going to spontaneously develop blood magic and use it on whoever the f*ck decided it was a good idea to drop us into a Nautiloid.”
Nora has no clue what that means but letting Thorn get this agitated is never a good idea.
“Free Us!” the voice continues droning on.
Thorn raises a hand with one of the daggers. Nora has a moment of hesitation, but at the end of the day, letting Thorn sate their bloodlust should only be done after they decide on the consequences. Otherwise that’s how you get Haven as a fresh ghost town that’s actually haunted.
“Thorn, wait.” Nora moves quickly, getting close enough to lay a hand on their friend’s forearm. Not stop them. Just attempt to ground them. “What’s a Nautiloid, and why are we murdering this sentient brain?”
There’s a palpable sense of frustration from Thorn. Not at Nora, she doesn’t think, but at the situation.
“It’s a D&D thing, a ship piloted by psionic power—it’s like a type of telepathy or mental magic or whatever. The beings who use it are bad news, the sort of ‘world eater’ bad news. Corypheus has nothing on a mind flayer with an appetite.”
Now there’s more words Nora doesn’t know involved.
“This thing is a mind flayer?”
Thorn shakes their head violently, pulling back slightly so that they’re a little further from the brain. Nora doesn’t think it can hear exactly, but Thorn’s voice quiets anyways.
“No, if it’s what I think it is, it's one of their servants. Look I don’t want to get into D&D’s whole weird alignment thing, but when that thing hatches, it’s going to have a nice big ‘I’m evil’ tag to it.”
Nora looks back down at the twitching brain, eyeing the way the body it’s still housed within looks.
Dead, clearly. Thorn said the brain servant would be hatching, so the body is likely nothing but a proverbial egg at this point.
The creature is still whispering about how desperately it wants to live. It hasn’t even been born yet. Is this mental manipulation?
Nora scans her mind again for that strange twitching, but the answer is unclear. As far as she can tell she’s just feeling empathetic. And acting on instinct. Both could, in theory, be manipulated.
“You have that look on your face. Stop it, Nora, this thing is evil with a capital “E”. You can’t save it,” Thorn says.
“Things aren’t born evil. Evil is a moral judgment about creatures that are either incapable of higher thought or are more complicated than broad moral—”
Thorn throws their arms up in exasperation, cutting Nora off. “I’m not saying that I think it should be that way! That’s just D&D lore! What I’m saying is this thing is probably going to want to kill us the second it gets out.”
“You are here! We are saved!” The little mind flayer cheers in Nora’s mind, brushing her and recognizing her presence. “Free us. Free us from this body so that we may help!”
“If it tries to eat me, stab it,” Nora says firmly, causing Thorn to immediately begin to disagree, but Nora is already adjusting her gloves and preparing for a very uncomfortable next few minutes.
“What? No! Do not put your hands in that skull!” Thorn is disagreeing very loudly. Nora hopes there aren't more, bigger, brain creatures around that may see them as threats.
“You’re just jealous that I get to put my hands in someone’s innards this time instead of you,” Nora grumbles, grimacing deeply as she eyes the skull and brain. She doesn’t want to damage it, so perhaps a barrier spell around the creature? To make it more resistant to damage as she wiggles it out.
“I’m not jealous, you little maniac, I have no idea why people think I’m the reckless one!”
Nora casts a barrier spell around the brain, then wiggles her fingers between the soft grey matter and the porous bone of the skull. This is probably the second most disgusting thing she’s done in her life, and she’s had to wade through a corpse-infested swamp while the corpses made grabs at her ankles.
“I’m getting you out little buddy, this is just going to be a bit disorienting, if you can be oriented at all,” Nora says through her strain, trying to wiggle the brain out of the skull.
“Freedom!” the brain cheers again.
“Jesus f*cking Christ and all his disciples, f*cking—fine, ok, I guess we’re doing this. You better f*cking hope this is someone’s homebrew world or something and alignment doesn’t actually matter,” Thorn snips, moving forward to help her brace herself in her attempt to free the thing.
The sensation would probably be worse for someone not used to inadvisable experiments on organic materials, but it’s still particularly bad even for Nora. It’s like sticking her hands in the flesh of a pumpkin that’s body warm.
She has half a hand and a couple more fingers digging into the skull cavity when another noise alerts them both to something on the lower floor of the room, the strange whirring noise of the elevator moving accompanied by a startled curse.
Their heads both jerk towards the sound, no doubt looking like deer in headlights as somebody goes stumbling off the elevator only to freeze in shock when they see the gruesome tableau in front of them. This is probably if not the worst thing she’s ever been caught doing, then up in the top three at least.
Exposure to Bull and other Qunari has desensitized her to large men with horns, but even she’s not quite sure what to make of the man that stands there. For one, he looks more like a dragon man than a human, and for another he is covered in blood.
If nothing else, at least Nora is charismatic.
“Ser, you’re not one of those evil-doers who put us in those pods, are you?” Nora asks with a convincing face of fear. It’s probably ruined by her hands in a skull, but Nora has to try.
Thorn snorts. How unhelpful.
“I— no?” the tall dragon man says, looking between Nora, Thorn and the skull. “Do you need…help?”
No way.
“No way,” Thorn whispers, and they look far too amused at the corner of Nora’s eye.
“No, I think I—” Here Nora grunts, having tugged something loose in her efforts, hoping it's the brainstem and not something like the ocular nerve. “I think we’ve about got it!”
They’ve got something at least. Nora heaves again and feels the brain matter slip between her fingers. She has one heartstopping moment where she thinks she’s dropped the brain, before its jerking motions register as purposeful and she steps back to give it room.
“You have freed Us!” the brain cries happily, as its flesh shudders and then explodes into tendrils. Nora winces and jerks back, but the tentacles don’t attack—in fact, she can’t describe them as anything but joyful wagging.
The brain now has four stubby legs it’s practically vibrating on. It has no eyes or mouths, which she supposes makes sense considering the whole telepathy thing, but now she’s wondering how it eats. It is the most disturbing dog she has ever seen.
“Uh,” the talking dragon says, still staring at them, this time with an accompanied wide-eyed look towards the brain puppy.
“Not the bloodiest birth I’ve ever been witness to,” Thorn says, shaking their hands off. Despite their wry tone, Nora notices they’re paying the brain puppy and the dragon man a lot of attention.
It’s not that she’s not wary herself, but honestly, between a hyperactive brain dog thing and a man who is still standing around like a confused lizard Bambi, she’s pretty sure they’re safe.
“You have saved Us, friends! We must go to the helm now. At the helm we are needed,” the brain puppy says.
“The helm?” Thorn asks. “What’s at the helm?”
The brain pauses, tilting itself and listening to something.
“Do you not hear it? We will not survive here. We are needed to navigate— we are needed to leave this realm.”
Nora looks out at the side of the cavernous room covered in fire, notes how most of it isn’t actually on fire, but the landscape beyond it is.
Oh. Oh no.
“Thorn. Thorn I think we’re in hell,” Nora says, not turning from the fast-moving, red-tinted outside world.
“One of them, probably,” Thorn says blandly, then they turn to the confused lizard man. “Dragonborn, do you know where we are?”
Dragonborn? What is this, Skyrim? Is the lizard man going to start shouting Thu'um?
“Oh. No,” the Dragonborn replies, shifting awkwardly. “I just woke up and then someone shoved a worm in my eye.”
Nora pauses.
Thorn curses so hard that she’s pretty sure the next explosion is from them and not the ship itself.
They push past Nora, tension in every line of their body, and she’s worried for a moment that she’s going to have to stop a murder for the second time today. But Thorn freezes a couple feet from the Dragonborn and shudders hard, the way they do sometimes when they’re caught off guard by a bad taste.
“Thorn?” Nora asks, quietly.
The Dragonborn winces, bringing a hand up to push at the scaled bridge of his nose.
“Thorn?” She asks again, more emphatically.
She steps forward to lay a worried hand on Thorn’s arm and falls head first into the most disorientating migraine she’s ever experienced.
Visions swirl through her mind's eye, vivid as though they’re happening before her. In one moment her arms are deep within the chest of an unknown person, blood staining her teeth. In the next she sees Solas, sorrowful and resolved as he cradles her head. Then she sees it from another angle, ice sticking from her chest and a vision of her, the real her, a few feet away.
That rotten sense of desperation and hurt consumes Nora for a moment. She chokes on it and somehow it hurts ten times worse the second time. Her failures and her stupidity and her anger.
More visions come, more blurred and recent. Of worms to the brain and of milky yellow pools of tadpoles. Of corridors and a deep emptiness where something should be and isn’t. Flashes of violence. Flashes of fear.
Her head feels as though it’s going to split open, the pressure so intense and something in her head wiggling.
Then it’s gone, all at once.
“What?” Nora chokes out, realizing she’s leaned against Thorn’s back. Something is in her head. Something that never should have been there. The same thing she saw wriggling into the Dragonborn’s eye. She clutches her forehead, wide eyed, almost manic at the idea of it.
“sh*tf*ckinghell—” Thorn’s words slur together, but the meaning behind them needs no translation. sh*t f*cking hell indeed.
“That’s some psionic BULLsh*t,” Thorn yells the last bit with enough anger to shake Nora from her lean.
“Psionic what?” The Dragonborn asks, squinting at them and still rubbing at his face.
“Bullsh*t.”
“No, I mean—what does psionic mean?”
A question Nora would like the answer to too. Thorn glares at the man distrustfully.
“They’re rare but not that rare—you know what, nevermind. The mental magics that just f*cking mindlinked us.”
The brain wiggles behind them. It’s stubby legs tap dance like a dog that’s trying to resist running out the door.
“Not magic! You’ve been blessed with beautiful togetherness.”
Thorn glares at the brain. Nora is pretty sure if she doesn’t get the situation under control soon, it won’t matter how much she tries to calm them, someone’s head will be rolling. She rubs her hands down her arms in an attempt to brush off the invading sense of another mind next to hers and steps forward.
“I’m sure we can figure it all out once we’re not in hell.” She turns to the Dragonborn. “Since it looks like you’re in the same boat as us, why don’t we team up? My name is Nora, and my angry friend here is Thorn.”
The Dragonborn finally drops his hands and stares at her.
“Oh. Hi. I guess it’s good to meet you?”
“Do you have a name, or are you going for the mysterious backstory trope?” Thorn cuts in, clicking their tongue.
“I uh. I don’t remember much from before waking up here. So. Maybe?”
The Dragonborn looks almost embarrassed. And Nora thought she was having a bad day, waking up after dying from the betrayal of someone she’d tried so hard to get close to. She can’t imagine waking up in the hellscape that is this flesh ship and that being your only memories. No wonder the man didn’t seem fussed about them sticking their hands in someone’s skull.
“Of f*cking course. Well, f*cking—pick one I guess. Not like a born-name is more valid than the one you choose,” Thorn mutters, mouth twitching a little with what Nora knows to be remembered spite. “And what about you, little brain eater?”
“We are Us,” the brain puppy says, voice overlaid like a thousand droning chants.
Us, the brain puppy with a thousand voices. An amnesiac dragonborn with questionable remembered morality. Two, doubly out of place humans. What a team they make.
“Do I have to pick a name right now?” Dragonborn says almost nervously. It’s adorable. Nora wonders immediately why she envisioned having her hands in someone’s chest when she linked with this man’s mind.
“If you don’t have any ideas right now, we could just give you a nickname?” Nora says. “It wouldn’t have to be permanent.”
The dragonborn thinks on it for a moment, and the ship violently shakes again from some unseen damage.
“Yes. Yes that sounds fine,” Dragonborn says, then looks between all three of them, including the damn brain dog. “What will you call me?”
“I played—uh, knew a dragonborn named Frostfang,” Thorn says, stumbling midway through but attempting to stick the landing.
“Played?” the dragonborn asks. “Like scammed?”
He doesn’t look bothered by this, only intrigued. How disconcerting.
“Something like that. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not sure that really fits you. He was a lot more…angsty. How about Snowflake,” Thorn says, voice almost steady enough to hide the laugh they’re suppressing.
Nora has no clue if that’s supposed to be a veiled reference only her and Thorn would even get, or if they’re just stuck on the winter theme, but either way—
“That’s both adorable and perfect. Let’s go Snowy, we have a helm to reach I suppose,” Nora says. In life you learn to accept things like f*ck off huge dragon men with red eyes and white scales named “Snowflake”. Sometimes that’s just how things go.
“To the helm!” Us agrees, scurrying off towards the elevator.
“To the helm,” Thorn agrees, sardonically.
~—0—~
Thorn Brault
Thorn is trying to not freak out.
They know they’re maybe not doing a great job of that, based on Nora’s reactions, but they’re pretty sure they could be freaking out worse than they are and it would be warranted.
As the only one of their small, oddball group that actually knows what it means to have a f*cking mind flayer tadpole in your brain, they’re trying to keep it together. They don’t particularly want to worry Nora if they’re just fated to die a horrible, tentacled death in the next couple hours, but part of them is also just in denial.
Somehow despite waking up in a previously fictional world twice before hasn’t prepared them to waking in a completely different fictional world.
They’re not even sure which D&D world this is supposed to be, not even getting into what the different editions would mean. What cosmology are they using at the moment? At least one of the models that has the Nine Hells, they suppose, considering the outside.
Which really brings up the question:
Why the f*ck is a mind flayer ship in the middle of the Nine Hells?
Another explosion rips through the Nautiloid, shuddering under their feet and forcing them to brace against the outside wall. They’re several hundred feet up, it looks like, and nausea roils in their guts at both the height and the dizzying speed they’re going at. The heat doesn’t help.
“Where to now?” Nora is asking the intellect devourer, somehow not getting immediately munched on in the process. Probably the thing sees them as a fellow illithid, which they are now, Thorn supposes.
They try not to gag.
“This way!” Us says, scurrying towards the gaping hole in the wall that leads to certain doom. Of course.
Thorn follows, if only to keep Nora from collecting another random misfit. The group doesn’t even get halfway across the exposed hall before yet another interruption shows up.
A woman falls from the f*cking sky and lands gracefully—and menacingly—before Us and Nora. Her sword is held in a ready position pointed at Nora, and her blood splattered armor shines like starlight against the hellish background.
Thorn is pulling out their knives in seconds, ready to walk forward and handle the newcomer. Actually, is that a Gith? Either Githyanki or Githzerai. Great. They get wormed and now they get to meet the mind flayer’s greatest enemies. Space orcs.
“Abominations. This is your end,” the Gith woman declares, strange frog-like eyes flicking to each of them.
Thorn is not surprised that the Gith is immediately hostile, but they really don’t have time for this. And unlike Snowflake and the brain dog, this one at least Nora can’t complain isn’t being aggressive.
“Back up, or we’ll be seeing if all that armor can survive a fall of this height,” they snap, stepping in front of the others to push the sword away.
As soon as they get in range for some fun acrobatic checks, their pounding migraine returns with a vengeance. They can practically feel the worm writhing, now that they know it’s there, and they gag and pull back even as the vision hits.
The fear hits first. A fear that Thorn can feel echoed back—here is someone who knows the visceral end to all hosts of illithid spawn. Not just the bodily evisceration of flesh and bone, turned into pupae for a monstrous butterfly, but the full cessation of personhood. A soul, destroyed, just like that.
They see marching feet, the dark shine of armor being fitted to a still-growing body, the exertion behind every swing of the sword. The sense of duty and pride. It all mixes with the fear and desperation, until Thorn isn’t sure where they start and where the Gith begins.
They’re stuck in that feedback loop. Thorn can’t even stop the memories from flowing the other way—of the bite of ice in their veins and the all-consuming hate that is only overshadowed by the sharp sting of wry satisfaction. They hope to any of the gods listening that Nora can’t see their mind at the moment, and the way they’ve been bubbling with good ol’ fashioned ‘I told you so’.
“Tsk'va!” the Gith hisses, reeling back.
“Great, she has a worm too,” Nora says behind Thorn.
“Great?” the Gith says, clutching her head and still recovering from the psychic connection. Three people with the ability to peer into Thorn’s mind is three too many. “There is nothing great about what we have been afflicted with. But you three are not thralls to its influence. Together we may survive this day yet.”
Thorn resents having thought that they would avoid catching another misfit. Nora must be cursed and have cursed Thorn by proximity.
“Excuse me,” Snowflake says behind Thorn, stepping forward and looking at the Gith. “What are you?”
“Snowy, you can’t just ask people what they are.” Nora is always too committed to what’s socially acceptable.
“I am Lae'zel of crèche K'liir, and I am your only chance of survival,” the Gith, Lae’zel responds, jutting her chin high. “You istik have likely not seen one of my kind before. I am a Githyanki.”
Snowflake nods very seriously at her words. Thorn wonders how much the worm has eaten of his brain to make him forget so much, or if he just got knocked too hard before they shoved him into a pod.
Inhuman screeches sound to their far right, down the path and back into the ship. Thorn squints and spots deep red imps. Great.
“We must move,” Lae’zel declares, turning to face the path. “Creatures of Avernus lie between us and our escape. We will dispatch them, and then take control of the helm.”
Thorn doesn’t take orders, but at least these are ones they can fully get behind. And probably would have issued themself if they were a little less disoriented.
“Yes! Yes, we are needed at the helm,” Us declares cheerfully, running forward towards the imps.
“Us! No, bad brain, no running into the crowd of evil demon creatures,” Nora hisses, jogging after it.
“Vlaakith guide me,” Lae’zel grumbles, following, and Thorn has to agree with the sentiment. Not that they want to be guided by a space lich queen, but the thought still stands.
“They’re resistant to fire!” Thorn yells to Nora, dashing forward to slide under the hovering body of one of the imps and sever one of its wings.
They have a faint thought on the incomprehensible morality scale Nora lives under, where illithid brain monsters warrant more sympathy than the just-as-evil fiends. They suppose the denizens of the Nine Hells are working at a deficit, since they look like stereotypical evil creatures in general.
Thorn on the other hand would rather have to deal with a devil than a mind flayer. At least devils can be bargained with.
Killing them is just as fine though.
“Got it!” Nora yells back, a flash of cold misting through the room as she supercools the air around them. The ice won't last long in the heat of the Nine Hells, but it lasts long enough to pierce through the other wing and shatter it.
Us scurries past, heading towards the imp in the back with the crossbow, and immediately showcases why Thorn was worried about it by clawing into it with a total lack of hesitation from a newborn thrust into its first battle.
Thorn’s eyes flick to the side to track the rest of the party and is somehow not surprised when Snowflake is showing the same lack of hesitancy. Also their fanged friend is a magic user, which is just great. His control needs some work though, as the arc of electricity he releases from his hands goes wide and barely singes the skin of the closest imp. Thorn leaves the magic geekery to Nora, but their dusty Dungeon Master’s brain quietly notes the most likely used spell and moves on.
They duck under the swipe of enraged imp scimitars and sink their knife into the back of the one Snowflake distracted with a grin. They have no clue what level they would be considered in this world, but since they appeared to have woken up in the same body they died in, it would have to be pretty high.
The imps really didn’t stand a chance.
Lae’zel’s sword cleaves through the last one and ends its yells of pain quite decisively. Thorn can tell she’s been trained, which they would have assumed anyways based on her gear, but it’s good to see that whatever martial training soldiers get around here isn’t too different from what Thorn knows.
“Huh.”
Thorn pushes the hair out of their eyes and glances over to Snowflake who is staring at his crackling hand with a bemused expression.
Oh joy. The amnesiac mage doesn’t know he can do magic.
“Anyone injured?” Nora asks, peering at each of them with a critical eye. No healing potions on hand means she has the dubious honor of fixing booboos.
“Not me, those things were weak as sh*t,” Thorn says, flicking blood from their knife.
“Not a scratch on any of you,” Lae’zel declares, surprised. “You are more capable than I had thought.”
“Some of us,” Snowflake says, looking up from his hands with a frown. “Is magic supposed to do that? Spray everywhere?”
That’s what she sai—
“It’s probably due to your brain damage,” Nora says immediately, and somehow lacking more tact than Thorn’s mental joke. “You’ve forgotten many things, including how to control the flow of your mana. We can work on it after we escape from here.”
If they don’t sprout tentacles in the meantime. Thorn tries to remember the first signs of the transformation, eyeing Snowflake. Confusion was probably one of them.
They’ll have to kill him once he starts looking too sick. Hopefully when Nora isn’t looking with those big sad eyes. There aren’t many cures for what they’ve got shoved in their heads, and there is no returning to what they were after they become a mind flayer.
Thorn flicks their knife again. They’ll try to make it quick. The man has been funny to be around.
“I probably do have brain damage,” Snowflake says slowly, not looking overly perturbed at the revelation.
“We’ve all got brain damage here,” Thorn says, throwing an arm around his shoulder, and throwing a thumb over their own towards the brain dog. “Especially that one.”
“I am not damaged, I am connected now!” Us says cheerfully where it stands over the bloodied body of an imp.
“No, you’re the most perfect brain there ever was,” Nora says in a baby voice, stepping over to pet the thing. It starts shuddering like it’s trying to purr. Thorn is both disgusted and intrigued.
They’re pretty sure that thing isn’t acting the way an intellect devourer should be. Even discounting that it sees them as one of the hive right now, mind flayers don’t create life that’s particularly cuddly. That does bring more evidence to that fact that this might be someone’s homebrew world, since a cuddly illithid is just the sort of thing a sick f*ck would dream up.
(Thorn is the sick f*ck here, they know. They’ve done way worse in their own games.)
…Actually, now that Thorn thinks about it, Us obviously still has its connection to the ship, but it also has a connection to the rest of them too. And they don’t seem to have a connection to the ship, at least not in the same way. They can interact with the ship, but they’re not getting the same orders that it is to head to the helm. Either something is different about their psionic connection or it’s weaker somehow.
When they have a moment they’re going to have to sit down and work this all out as if they’re a DM again, because something about this whole situation smells too much like a first session plot hook for Thorn to overlook it.
“Let us get moving,” Lae’zel says, practically vibrating with impatience.
Thorn looks up from where they were idly looting the dead imp bodies and clicks their tongue. No appreciation for the age-honored traditions of stealing from the dead. They suppose they understand the hurry though, as much as their inner loot goblin sings at finding new things to collect.
The imps have gold coins, for some reason. Is it currency used in the Hells, or do they for some reason have a fascination with mortal coinage? Thorn slips it into their pockets either way.
“Gods, we’re going to have to climb to get to the helm, aren’t we?” Nora says, walking towards the gaping maw of smoke on the other side of the room. There does seem to be fleshy tendons the size of rope they’ll have to climb to get to the next room.
“This isn’t as bad as those walls the Stone Bear clan had us climbing,” Thorn says, standing from their crouch and heading over. The humanoid tagalongs follow, and Us seems to already be scrambling up the tendons with their strangely tactile paws. Eugh.
“The ice walls were less wet, and I got to drink so much mead afterwards. This is worse,” Nora grumbles, following her new pet with far more grace.
What follows are ten long minutes of climbing up onto higher and higher platforms as the ship shakes and creaks like it’s going to fall apart with them still in it. It is worse than most of Thorn’s previous climbing experiences, but they were trying to be the optimistic one for once.
They make it to another assdoor, one Nora taps open with a grimace, muttering about unwelcome passengers and massaging her forehead.
The door reveals a wide room, one with a center console of more alien bio-machinery, surrounded by various pods and a few operating tables.
Operating tables with still breathing humans on them. Great.
A quick glance over them gives Thorn a pretty good idea that although they’re breathing, they’re not all there. The eyes are open but no one is home, as it were. Drugs, or more psionic bullsh*t. The biomechanics are of more interest to them, but even that has to be put aside as a banging noise starts up at their approach.
“Get me out of here!” a voice yells, muffled by the membrane of one of the illithid pods lining the room.
Nora is already rushing forward, and Thorn curses.
They’ve gotten used to gathering companions with a little bit more preparation, time between to actually internalize the new additions and fit them into their mental map of the situation. That was the one thing Dragon Age had going for it over other RPGs.
There’s no time to think here.
Thorn rushes after Nora and distantly registers Lae’zel’s curses behind them. They have sympathy for the woman, but they’re more concerned with making sure Nora doesn’t end up falling into a trap.
“We’re here! I’ll get you out, just promise not to murder anyone,” Nora says quickly, already eyeing the pod and lifting her hands to do whatever it is she did to open Thorn’s earlier.
“What?” the woman inside the pod says incredulously. “Yes, just get me out of here!”
Nora’s fingers shove between the glass and the pod’s dark body, and Thorn notes that her gloves are still bloodstained from earlier.
With a grunt and some kind of magical energy that sparks from her anchored palm, Nora lifts the yellow pane up and out of the way so another companion can join their group.
Thorn is going to need a long week alone to internalize everything happening, they can say that much.
“There we go!” Nora says triumphantly, before having the elf fall into her arms, much like Thorn did. It’s interesting to watch moments of your life play out at other angles. Not fun, just interesting.
“Darkness preserve me,” the elf hisses.
Oh great. Someone chose the angsty backstory, Thorn can already tell. Well they might as well let a disciple of the goddess of darkness in, considering they already have a literal brain on legs in the party.
“Must we?” Lae’zel asks, hand flexing on her sword. “Detours only distract us from our goal.”
Thorn smells upcoming banter and slides away to poke at the dazed bodies in the center of the room. Not to wake them or anything, but they might have useful things in their pockets.
“—dangerous company,” the voice of the elf whispers through Thorn’s consciousness, but they ignore it. If Nora wants to keep saving people she can deal with mediating between them.
“Here, take this,” they say to Snowflake, who is watching the hissed argument with a wondering air.
“Take—oh, thanks?” He looks down at the pastry in his hands with just as much confusion.
“They must have been taken mid-breakfast,” Thorn explains, gesturing over to one of the bodies. “If you don’t remember anything from before waking here, you probably don’t know when your last meal was. Better fuel up now.”
Thorn at least is pretty sure that whatever healed them from Solas’ attack didn’t empty their stomach at the same time, so they’re good for another few hours. The others they’re not so sure about. If they do get to the helm and are able to land the ship they’re still going to have to deal with surviving wherever they end up. No guarantee of an easy meal there.
Snowflake goes about eating the pastry with the delicacy of someone more used to eating meat right off the bone. Charming. Thorn turns to eye the rest of the room.
There’s one door that they can see another intellect devourer scurrying through, and another that’s sealed shut. Maybe it leads to the illithid version of a janitorial closet, but based on the tech that surrounds it Thorn wouldn’t bet on it. A lot of the throbbing tendrils that connect the biomechanical devices lead towards it, which means if nothing else it has to open in the direction of whatever powers the ship.
Or where the devices get their instructions from.
“—and that’s final,” Nora snaps, bringing them back to reality.
Thorn turns to look at the three—three and half if you count Snowflake’s distracted witnessing—and shrugs at the annoyed look Nora sends them. She’s had to deal with Cullen and Cassandra in a snit, an awkward jock and a goth aren’t something she needs Thorn’s help with.
“Are those four salvageable?” Nora asks Thorn in her Inquisitor voice instead of bringing them into the chastising, and Thorn rolls their eyes.
“They’re half-dead from the looks of it. We’d be more merciful by slitting their throats than trying to wake them.”
Nora frowns, because of course she does. Always more concerned with others than their more immediate, deadly problems. They’ve got worms in their brains, literal ones rather than the usual metaphorical. A couple dead townies rank low on Thorn’s personal priorities.
“Fine. Do that, I’ll try and figure out how to open that door, unless you want to switch,” Nora says.
Play throat cutter or learn more about the alien brain technology. It’s a hard choice.
Thorn doesn’t answer and simply steps forward to quickly cut through sinew and bone. The bodies don’t even react, outside of a few faint death gurgles. Thorn wipes their bloody knife on the edge of one of the bodies’ coat and moves on. It’s almost as quick as opening the door turns out to be.
“—that doesn’t explain how you’re doing that at all,” the elf says as Nora, who seems to be sending pulses of green sparks into the door. It’s a consistent pattern. Zap , pause, zap .
“The psionic energy is weird and doesn’t work at the same frequency as magic, or at least conventional magic,” Nora explains, probably dumbing down from whatever she said previously. “If I match the way my mana disseminates to the way the psionic energy in the door expects, it will—”
The door opens suddenly.
“Well. It’ll do that. It’s so gratifying when I’m right,” Nora says with a self satisfied look on her face. Thorn tries to ignore the immediate fondness the sight inspires. No time for squishy feelings right now.
“It’s best to ignore the explanations and enjoy the results sometimes,” Thorn says dryly as they flip their knife, walking towards the others.
They do their best to understand the theoretical bits Nora is always on about, but it’s always more fun to watch things happen than to talk about how they happen.
“We will enter the helm soon. We will enter the helm!” Us prances through the door before the rest of them, practically bouncing off of the fleshy surface of the floor.
“Is everyone ready for a fight?” Thorn asks, scanning their mismatched crew.
Their mages have no staves, the githyanki fighter has her sword, Thorn is missing their hammer but has a few daggers. The elf has a mace and shield, but without seeing her use it there’s no surety that she can use it well. And of course, they have a bloodthirsty intellect devourer who hasn’t killed them yet.
Well. Thorn and Nora are strong enough to carry the rest. If they can’t, then Thorn will just bodily pick Nora up and get them out of dodge. Thorn isn’t dying for stupid companions anymore. Been there, done that, then did it again. They’re all self sacrificed out for this lifetime, thank you very much.
There’s various murmurs of assent from the peanut gallery, and Thorn looks over at Nora.
“Well?” they ask.
It’s strange, Thorn’s been playing the part of follower so long that it feels easier to let Nora make superficial choices like this. Are they ready to go? Let the darling Herald decide.
“I sense what’s probably a lot of hellspawn nearby. Everyone be on guard, and don’t die. My barriers will do their best to keep you alive, but half the battle is on you,” Nora says, eyes meeting each of them individually. You can take the commander away from her army, but that doesn’t take the commander out of her.
Thorn hopes they both don’t turn into illithids soon. They’re almost excited to see her let the mantle fall from her shoulders and be normal again. It feels like a thousand years ago their lives were normal, safe, and boring.
What Thorn wouldn’t give for boring. They’ve always been a f*cked up asshole, but the past four years have been a whole new level of f*cked up assholery. They’re going to get a cottage in the woods in this lifetime, brainworms be damned.
They enter into the next room and Thorn amends that thought. They’re going to steal the winged devil’s flaming sword and then abscond into the middle of nowhere, brainworms be damned.
But first to deal with the illithid in the room.
“Thrall,” the mind flayer commands. “Connect the nerves of the transponder. We must escape this realm.”
It helpfully points towards a central console that looks more like an altar to inadvisable tentacle recreation than something Thorn recognises as a pilot seat. Hopefully their new stowaways come with instruction manuals on how to use it.
“So be it. We will deal with the ghaik when we are off this ship,” Lae’zel hisses, moving forward.
Thorn flicks their daggers down into their palms again and licks at the back of their teeth. There’s more imps in the way, and a few other hellbeasts besides, but it’s the devils that catch their attention. They don’t look quite impressive enough to be high up on the hellish ladder, and Thorn is pretty sure they could take them.
Us is already scurrying forward, following the orders of the mind flayer with no regard to the dangers between it and the console. Thorn suppose they should make sure the way is clear before they start getting sticky fingers, if only so Nora’s new pet doesn’t bite it on their watch. It better wait to die when Thorn’s back is turned and they have absolutely no responsibility for it.
“Nerves! Connect the nerves! We will connect them,” the thing echoes as it goes by.
Thorn rolls their eyes.
And then stabs an imp in the eye.
A barrier suddenly slides over Thorn’s skin, all too familiar for it to be anything but Nora’s.
“Split these intruders open! Avernus is ours!” The devil that Thorn is going to rob shouts at the front of the room, closer to the transponder.
Us runs between the legs of another imp, edging closer and closer to the fight between the devil and illithid. That won’t end well, and provides a convenient excuse to stab both of the creatures.
Thorn starts walking, close behind Us as they throat slash the next imp in their way, the one Us ran through the legs of.
“Follow Thorn!” Thorn hears Nora order behind them, and the air in the room chills suddenly, causing a few of the imps to slow their attempts to fly closer to them.
Thorn’s breaths mist in front of them as they twist out of the way of a charging hellboar, not breaking stride. The stragglers Nora and her tagalongs can handle, Thorn is just cleaving the way.
A bolt of bright flame soars past Thorn, slamming into an imp about to pounce on Us and burning it from the inside out. The cracking of bone and its screams only add to the ambiance. Was that a holy bolt? Is the elf a cleric?
Thorn gets closer and closer to the fight between the illithid and the devil. The mind flayer sends a brain blast into the devil’s face as it dodges a flaming sweep of the devil’s sword.
Pure avarice fills Thorn’s brain. They’re going to kill so many things with that sword. It’s no enchanted warhammer, but they suppose their luck isn’t good enough for that. Either way, it will burn many a thing to nothing more than ash, and Thorn is looking forward to it.
They bare their teeth and shoulder forward, eyeing where to sink their knife in first. The fiend is wearing so little armor, there’s so many options to choose from. That said, Thorn isn’t going to take armor as the beginning and end of what makes up armor class. There’s a chance their knives won’t do enough damage to get through the thick hide.
In that case…
They score a line of blood down their palm and flip the knife edge so a drop lands at the feet of the fiend. The familiar pressure of their Ring of Pain blares across their senses, causing their heart to speed up in anticipation. They weren’t even sure if that would work, but although weakened, it still flickers into existence.
The fiend seems to not be able to see the red glow of its doom, but that’s ok. Thorn can taste it well enough.
They lick the blood off their palm and dive into the fight.
~—0—~
“Snowflake”
It’s been a fairly bad day for him, though he’s not too sure if he could properly rank it out of all the bad days he’s had. He can only remember today.
Maybe this is a good day, and everything is downhill from here.
A flaming arrow is sent flying past his face, and he wonders if he’s ever jerked out of the way of an arrow before. The heat is burning for a second and then gone, the arrow thunking into the wall feet behind him.
He turns quickly, focusing in on the creature that tried to nail him in the nose. Studies the delicate, leathery wings and ponders snapping them under his fingers.
He raises a hand, palm flat and gathering mana to it as he walks along with the rest of the group, eyes unstraying and unblinking from his target.
He doesn’t remember the name of the spell that forms, doesn’t understand the words he mumbles under his breath as three red missiles of energy burst from his fingers, slamming into the creature’s wings and breaking them in the force, the last missile smacking into its nose.
He wishes he could’ve done that with his hands, then wonders why he wants that. The imp is dead, and the others are safe. That should be satisfying in itself, shouldn’t it be?
Maybe he’s just missing physical feedback. When everything you know is as ephemeral as mist, the sensation of your hands on something can be a relief. He turns to the next creature and catches from the corner of his eye Thorn’s own stalking.
They’re facing the large winged creature, a grin of fierce joy on their face. He reaches up to prod his own face and finds it also twisted into a smile. Maybe that’s just how it goes when fighting.
“Thorn! What are you doing?!” Nora yells, ducking under an arrow and waving a wall of ice into being to spear into one of the four-legged creatures.
Thorn doesn’t answer. They just rush forward, knife aimed for the joint between shoulder and arm. He has a visceral flash of cracking bone and soft marrow, sliding into his brain, before it clears and he’s left blinking spots out of his eyes. He looks down and notices he’s torn off one of the dead creature’s wings.
He lets it go and casts a glance around for a living one.
“Gar—Intruders! I will enjoy feasting on your innards,” a voice screams through the room.
His attention is arrested again by the sight of Thorn facing off against their enemy. Another line of red cuts across its chest, and Thorn themself is now skidding away, having been blasted back by a forceful swing of the flaming sword.
The tentacled creature it was fighting takes the opportunity to do something, something that feels vaguely similar to the feeling he remembers from when he was forced to keep his eyes open during the worm insertion.
He supposes that must be the psionics the group has been talking about this whole time. It seems convenient, if a bit cheap.
“Hah, amateur,” Thorn grunts, wiping a trickle of blood from their nose. “You have no finesse to your hits, I’d think you picked up a club instead of a sword.”
The creature yells in rage and breaks away from the other creature with the tentacles, charging forward towards Thorn, who only grins and dodges out of the way, stabbing their knife down into the soft meat of its thigh as it goes by.
His mouth waters, and he wistfully looks down at his empty pockets. He’s already eaten all of the pastry Thorn gave him earlier.
“That mind devourer is still headed for the helm!” Shadowheart says, blocking an arrow with her shield. It bounces off of it with a clank!
He looks to the front where Us is still running ahead, past Thorn’s fight and almost to the strange device the tentacled creature wanted them to do something with. Connect the transponder. How is he meant to know what a transponder is?
Maybe this is another one of the things he forgot. He has a lot of catching up to do.
“Snow, on your left!” Nora says, and he jumps to the right, looking at the short woman. He keeps forgetting that that’s his name, or at least the temporary one. Snowflake, Snowy, Snow. Does every name come in threes?
“Focus big guy, you were about to take an arrow to the shoulder,” Nora says, dark eyes flicking between Thorn’s fight and Snow’s face.
“Sorry.”
Thorn shouts loudly, and when Snow looks he sees that they’ve stabbed the red creature down to the hilt of their knife in the chest.
“What are they doing?!” Lae’zel hisses. “We have other priorities!”
“Probably getting a weapon upgrade,” Nora says with a sigh, and then she’s marching forward again. Snow hurries to follow. “Whatever, let's just land this ship.”
There’s a roar of something outside the flaming front of the ship. A dragon. That Snow knows even with his memory loss.
The next few moments are a blur of movement and defined by blood pumping through his limbs. Snow feels unbearably alive as he ducks his head to avoid a ball of flame. He can barely keep track of the others as the ship rocks again, this time with a worrying whine in his head as he feels some sort of pressure mount.
The brain ducks under the claw of the dragon and hops up to the console, its own tendrils wrapping around the thicker ones of the machine and doing—something. He has to brace himself against a nearby dead body as the whole room tilts.
“Hold on!” Nora’s voice pierces through the fog. “We’re going down!”
Snow is pretty sure they’re going more than just down.
There’s a brief flash of pain, as if someone’s stabbed him in the head (again, a voice says quietly) and then blackness.
