Corposant

By the time they burst through the door it was lying motionless on the floor. It’s psychic imprint was just empty noise like rushing water. They walked up to the first set of columns and tried to see if it was breathing. They couldn’t tell.

They wanted to get closer. It was alive but they didn’t know how badly it was hurt. On the other hand, if it woke up, well. It had a body count.

The noise in it’s head peaked and crested, and dropped it back into consciousness. It’s head was silent again, until the pain faded into it’s entire body. Breathing hurt it. It groaned.

I might be able to help but I need to look at you.

It ignored them.

I need to know you won’t hurt me.

It didn’t trust them. It thought, no it knew, viscerally, that they would hurt it and was determined to hit first. Thank you, Maziah.

They tried to feel what it felt, see if they could discern where it was hurt and how badly and they realized something.

They took a chance and stepped past the metal columns. They felt a jolt inside it’s mind, trying to force it’s legs under it but it’s knee screamed in pain. It tried moving it’s arms but…

They kneeled down beside it and looked it over. It’s wrist was skinned through to the tendon, the shoulder was out of the socket, the other wrist had an extra bend where there wasn’t one before, it’s head and knee were swelling and fresh red bruises were blooming everywhere.

Why did you do this?

A thought almost passed it’s mind but it aborted it, staying carefully blank.

They let out a rattling sigh.

What the hell. No. She was not going to drink that. Smelling it turned her stomach; it wasn’t going into her mouth. What the fuck-

How do you not know what this is?

What?

It had called it’s friends and their servants had successfully gotten her onto a stretcher, down the hall, and into a room with long metal tables. They’d all left after that, leaving it alone to gather supplies and offer something to drink that she was pretty sure was poison.

On the surface it’s a popular-. Nevermind. Just choke it down. I’ll pour into the back of your mouth; just swallow.

What the fuck-

I am trying to be nice.

No!!!

It stared at her a long moment before quickly leaning back and throwing the liquid into… what was probably it’s mouth… Before doubling over onto the table next to her and slamming it’s fist down on it a few times. It laid there shaking for a few moments before tentatively standing back up. It kept itself propped up against the table.

See? Poison.

You’re already trying to kill yourself why do you care?

They stared at each other for a long moment.

She wasn’t trying to die. Probably. Now that she thought about it she didn’t particularly care.

So why do you care if it’s poison?

Maybe it was slow painful poison. Their kind liked slow, painful things.

I have never hurt you.

Yet.

FINE. Fine. You are correct. This will hurt. Significantly.

It leaned over and grabbed her arm with both hands and started yanking on it. She screamed. She couldn’t help but scream. And it just kept going and going and doing whatever the fuck it was doing and her other arm didn’t work and she tried kicking with the one leg that did but her hip locked and that hurt too and it did not stop and she just wanted to kill it but she couldn’t even move her other arm

That’s exactly why I did this one first.

It coughed a little and rested for a moment. Her arm hurt like it had broken it all over again.

Again, do you want some of this? It will dull the pain.

Fuck. Fuck it. Fine.

Tip your chin up. Move your tongue. You don’t want to taste it. I’m going to pour a little and you need to swallow right away. Ready?

It burned all the way down to her stomach.

It pulled back and leaned on one arm again.

What now?

We wait for it to absorb into- it turned away suddenly and convulsed. She heard the contents of it’s stomach hit the ground.

Fucking lying-

My stomach and brain are different from yours.

Bullshit.

Wait, just wait.

For what?

Iit turned and puked again, then dropped to it’s knees holding on to the table with it’s hands. It will dull the pain but it needs time. It won’t be too long. You shouldn’t vomit laying back like that anyway. You’ll breathe it back in.

She looked down at her arm. It was wrapped in cloth. There was something hard wrapped in with it, holding her arm out straight. It still hurt. What the hell?

It would heal anyway, I just did my best to make sure it will heal similar to how to was before. Don’t mess with it. It pulled itself up on the table next to her and laid back with one arm over it’s face.

Why was it doing this?

It’s my function. Fortunately I’ve done that many times before. It’s a common injury.

What? What was it’s function? Keeping her alive so they could keep torturing her?

Something like that.

She tentatively tried to pull up a little lightning but the shock ran right up her broken arm and made her cry out a little. Her other arm was still useless.

I told you not to mess with it.

Fuck you.

Or don’t listen to me. I suppose I can’t stop you. It didn’t say anything else for at least a few minutes, but finally it asked are you hungry?

What

You’re always a little hungry aren’t you? You don’t eat well. It pulled itself up and swung it’s legs around. I’ll be right back. It paused, and somehow managing to telepathically impart sarcasm, added, Don’t go anywhere.

It came back about a minute later with a small cloth sack. It pulled out some small chunks of… something… out and offered them to her.

And this was…?

Dried cave fish.

It pushed some towards her mouth and she reluctantly took a bite. It was mostly salty and chewy, but also a little bit savory. It was, technically speaking real food though. It gave her some more.

It’s the protein in the processed food you’ve been offered.

She got through maybe half the small bag before it set the bag aside. That’s the best I’ve ever seen you eat. How does your arm feel?

It still hurt, but was oddly more distant.

Good. We’ll do the other arm then.

She wasn’t really ready, but she wasn’t going to be, and she did want her arm back.

It leaned on her collarbone and started moving her arm in circles. It hurt, but at the same time it hurt far away.

She woke up on the floor of a different box. Her left arm still hurt, but it was usable. She tried to draw up some lightning again but it just jolted through the right one painfully without forming into anything useful.

This box was small. Far too small. The other one had been too small too, the empty weight of rock bearing down a comparatively tiny pocket of air. This one was a fraction of the size. It was big enough to walk in, if you counted two or three steps as walking. It had bars too, but only one set.

It looked out into a long hall of cells on either side. There was a grating, dragging sound approaching around the far right corner. The stitched together mess appeared finally, and slowly dragged it’s way past. It paused as it went by, for just a moment, looked her up and down with an uncharacteristic sharpness.

It must have told it’s master, because a few minutes later, the latter appeared. It looked her over as well.

You should rest the knee longer

It suddenly jumped forward and threw a hand out between the bars to grab at them. Something about it’s magic had been disrupted though, and the pain almost blacked out it’s vision. They grabbed it by the front of it’s shirt before it could topple backwards and slid down with it into a pile on the floor. It’s eyes half opened and it stared back at them hatefully with it’s cheek pressed into one of the bars.

The bizarre thing was that it almost wasn’t even psychically resilient; it was just psychically intangible. Grasping at it’s thoughts was like grasping at air. They could tell what it was thinking easily enough it was just impossible to insert a command or dig for information. The thoughts were fast too. There was almost never any time between a thought and an action.

Just as impulsively, it slapped it’s good hand against their shoulder. The malice was there, but it was just so physically weak. They couldn’t help but laugh. They knew they shouldn’t; this specimen was genuinely dangerous. It was just so full of deep animosity, and yet completely incapable of doing anything about it.

It was laughing. At first she wasn’t sure what that sound was, but it was definitely laughing. She was going to kill it. She didn’t know how yet, but she would figure it out.

It didn’t take long for the other one to come back. She “heard” the piercing squeal before it even rounded the corner. Somehow the even smaller cell managed to make everything worse. At least in the other one she could try to run for the back. Not that it had ever mattered.

The passage of time was oddly quick. When it stopped and the room swam back into view she was laying against the bars in the front of the cell. There were figures standing on the other side, just within reach. She could finally reach out and touch them but the energy wouldn’t flow anymore. Not without hurting and maybe not at all.

It was obviously too early. Anyone in their right mind knew that. The knee wasn’t healed yet, let alone the arm. When they realized Maziah had returned for it they tried to put a stop to it but they wouldn’t hear differently.

Their thrall stepped out of the cell and moved between them. It was a surface fae about the same height as Xotchtil, and uncomfortably close. It had a long metal rod it set casually over it’s shoulder. Xotchtil backed away a step.

They tried talking sense into Maziah, We both know you haven’t gotten anything in months, and you probably won’t at all.

They took it as an insult, This creature is my responsibility. I will do whatever I want with it.

Maziah continued speaking, but Xotchtil had stopped listening. Their thrall’s weapon had numerous chips and slight bends. It looked like a discarded chunk of metal, and they hadn’t understood it to have any kind of magical significance. Now, though, it was faintly glowing at the tip with a small blue aura. I think we should-

YOU DON’T THINK, that’s the entire-

Their thrall jolted suddenly, it’s whole body arching painfully as a bolt of lightning exited it and grounded itself into the bars of the cell next to it. It collapsed to the ground and opened it’s mouth in a silent scream.

Xotchtil jumped back and Maziah did the same. It wouldn’t have mattered; the specimen wouldn’t be doing it again. It was laying on the floor completely limp, one arm extended out into the hall. They could feel the discordant, rattling ache of the other arm, the broken one, under the empty noise of it’s lost consciousness.

Maziah’s thrall gasped for breath again. Xotchtil was amazed it was still alive. It was lucky the specimen’s arm and magic were broken.

You need to fix this said Maziah

What

Isn’t that what you’re good for? You fix this kind of thing.

Fix what? Your error?

Your error. You moved it out of containment.

They managed to push down an entire list of objections and defense of their expert judgement in favor of a better idea. I want payment.

What kind of payment?

I want this specimen. You’re right that it’s been your responsibility. Make it mine.

What do you want with it?

Why do you care?

There was a long pause.

Maziah threw their hands up in disgust, Agreed.

They would have to be careful not to let it touch them when they returned, but the specimen was safe enough where it was. They took the thrall back to the laboratory.

It’s injuries were remarkably mild, which Xotchtil attributed to the specimen being weakened. Mostly there were just burns branching out in fractals where the electricity had passed through. The left calf was burned where the electricity went in, the right hip was burned where it went out, and it’s hands were burned where it had been holding it’s improvised weapon.

They weren’t sure if anything else was wrong with it, and they told Maziah as much, but it had a heartbeat, and all of it’s limbs seemed to work well enough. Considering past victims, these were blessings.

They applied salve and bandages to the burns, and recommended Maziah be careful with it for a few weeks.

The specimen was sitting up when Xotchtil got back to it. It’s head and arm were aching, poorly channeled magic still resonating.

You need to stop doing this.

“You need to leave me alone.”

You’re only hurting yourself.

“We’ve already had this talk.”

Precisely.

It’s thoughts peaked with irritation,“Don’t you have someone else to bother?”

Yes, actually. But I keep having to have this conversation instead.

They really didn’t have time for a side project like this. Their predecessor had not handled anything, as far as they could tell. The original colony records they’d inherited listed the population at three times its actual size, which had made the projected nutritional and labor requirements absurd, and the facilities unmanageably huge. A full third of the holding cells stood empty at any one time. They’d spent their first year recalculating everything. Things were still breaking constantly, and there were always accidents happening or getting ready to.

They tried resonance stones. Maziah never would’ve allowed a calming one when it was their responsibility. It would’ve interfered with the cumulative effect of the interrogations. Xotchtil had abided by this rule at the time. No reason to give them another excuse for why they had failed to obtain any information.

It turned out it didn’t matter anyway. They left the calming stone in the customary position near the cell while it was sleeping. They generally worked best if the subject didn’t notice the initiation of effect. Later that day they felt a strong sense of irritation all the way from the other side of the facility, and returned to find the stone had been thrown all the way to the end of the hall. Placing it out of reach did nothing but prolong the irritation.

They knew how to handle obstinance. It was a matter of pitting your own unrelenting will against the will of a subject. Rewards and consequences had to be carried out with a implacable consistency.

This was not obstinance. This was chaos, like a swirling storm.

It kept trying to generate lightning, no matter how much it hurt. If it failed it would pace, scream, and occasionally punch the wall. It usually failed. Then it would get still and quiet for a long time, it’s head filled with static. It didn’t make the noises it used to anymore, the ones that sounded different when they listened with its ears. Screaming sounded the same regardless.

So far the splint had held through any abuse but the arm would hurt afterwards. They dreaded having to remove the specimen from it’s cell to re-wrap it. How would they prevent it from attacking them while it worked? Pain wasn’t enough to stop it. The limb just not working properly wasn’t even enough to stop it. It was also likely they wouldn’t even see an attack coming.

The last time they worked on it was a stroke of luck. Both arms had been disabled. At this point the dislocation was tender but for the most part healed. That was the arm it had used to almost kill Maziah’s thrall.

They were going to have to wait and see if it was even necessary. They didn’t like that.

She noticed it had started hanging around, but in a different way than before. There wasn’t anywhere good to sit in the narrow hall so it would sit with it’s back against the cell opposite. She wasn’t used to seeing one of them in such an undignified position.

It mostly read. Before it would sit quietly, sometimes reading or writing, but often doing neither. She had gotten the impression it was listening to her. Now it was mostly reading, but it was also around a lot more. It mostly kept it’s legs tucked up under it or to it’s chest: well out of reach. If it felt the need to stretch them it either got up or laid out straight along the opposite side of the hall.

“What are you reading?” she finally asked one day.

It looked up at her and blinked, staring for a moment before saying anything.

A history of surface dweller’s views on and relationships with dragons.

It continued to stare. Their alien faces could be difficult to interpret but she was fairly certain she was looking at very slight surprise. Something about the way the tentacles froze in the slightest of a curl.

“Ok. Um. You find dragons interesting?”

Not in particular. There’s just many books on the topic in the library here.

“Oh.” There was a long empty silence. “So what are the surface dweller’s views on dragons?”

Limited.

She waited for it to elaborate. It didn’t. It did watch her watching it for a long moment.

Can you read?

“Um. I guess?”

It closed the book and pushed it across the floor to her, careful to never come within reach. Can you read this?

She opened it to a random page near the beginning. It was geographic information on where different types of dragons could be found.

“Yeah, actually. Why?”

You can keep it if you like. I have others as well, and on other topics.

It went three days without hurting itself, excepting a few incidences of trying to draw up lightning.

It kept dreaming of the vivisection, returning to it over and over with an unrelenting obsession. Maziah had used the memory often, both as a threat and as a means to scatter and shatter its psyche. Normally a subject would forget. Normally they could make it forget. Sometimes they could even prevent subjects from forming that memory at all. Xotchtil and Maziah occupied two necessary but opposing functions. Maziah broke things to see what would fall out. Xotchtil stitched things back together so they could be of use.

It was difficult to tell if its graphic recall, or its psionic intangibility, were due to Maziah’s efforts, or if it was an innate quality. It wouldn’t be unheard of for interrogation to drive a creature uselessly mad. At that point they were really only good for food, and even that was a stretch.

This seemed different though. It was still conscious, and its thoughts still related to each other, they were just quick and difficult to grab. You could catch what it was thinking about in the moment but commands slipped right through. That also meant you couldn’t force it to recall anything.

Its dreams jumped between two things; the vivisection, and what they had thought was a loosely connected thought. As time went on, they realized it was more likely a memory. The bright overhead lights of the laboratory would shift into a glaring sun beating down on the cracked earth of a desert. The panic, helplessness, and sawing, tearing pain remained. It would thrash wildly both in the dream and in its bed, and wake up cold from the sweat that had soaked it and everything it touched.

They asked about the desert one day in passing. Even the image flashing through its mind caused a deep surge of panic and it began to pace in that compulsive way it did, counting its steps. Maziah’s notes were no more help. There was no more to the memory than that. Only air, light, desert, pain, and fear.

It didn’t take long to finish Varieties of Northern Dragons. It wasn’t long and there wasn’t much else to do. She flipped back through it a few times. “Blue dragons are infamous for their electrical breath weapon and ability to induce hallucinations.” She’d had enough hallucinations of late.

She could feel an odd pressure in the back of her head at times. It wasn’t unpleasant so much as it was just there. She was fairly certain the tentacled thing was causing it but she didn’t know what it was doing or why. It didn’t feel like when they tried to manipulate her mind.

She’d gotten used to them trying to dig around in her brain. When they were trying to dig in her memory she would do whatever she could to stay focused on what was around her. It could be anything from counting the cracks in the floor to how many times she’d gotten kicked in the head. The trick to not letting them tell you what to do was to do whatever came to mind as soon as it did. Contemplating gave them time to try to react or counter. She’d learned to take every shot she got.

They were busy mixing feed one day when it became frustrated again. They turned their attention to it in time to feel it slam the splinted arm into the ground. This in itself wasn’t unusual but it pulled it back up into the air and did it again, and again.

They were farther away, but their thrall was big and slow. They got there first and had to watch helplessly for a minute while it shuffled its way down the long thin halls.

And of course by the time reinforcement arrived it had stopped. It lay on the floor taking jerking breaths and making short, sharp noises the way that sort of thing did when distressed. The arm still hurt but the pain was actually fading, being replaced by a tingling. They didn’t like that. It should hurt.

They knelt down and tried to get a look at the fingers from outside the cell but couldn’t see them the way it was curled. Looking through it’s own eyes wasn’t any help either, it’s head was tucked and it’s eyes squeezed shut.

I need to look at your hands.

All this managed to elicit was a feeling of obstinance. That was fine, the obstinance was familiar and, in this situation, somewhat comforting.

If you lose that arm, you might lose your magic for good this time. I think you know that.

Lair.

You know I’m not.

LIARLIARLIARLIARLIAR-

This was meaningless; it couldn’t electrocute them anyway. As they stepped into the cell it tried but all it managed was a faint stabbing sensation under the numbness.

They sat down on the floor next to it and pulled the good hand over to where they could compare the two. It tried to hit them with it and missed badly, then put the hand behind it’s back.

You can’t be serious.

It recognized their laughter, and threatened violence.

Well go on then.

It stared hatefully.

In the meantime I can already tell this hand isn’t supposed to look like it does. I’m going to need to rewrap it. Come on.

More obstinance. Again, fine.

Your legs and other arm work wonderfully, which, by the way, you’re welcome for. Put them under you and get up.

It did pull itself to a sitting position, but it was more to posture than an attempt to follow instructions. It didn’t move further. They shook their head and just started unwrapping the splint. The flesh was swollen from the fingertips to a little above the elbow. The pressure had printed the texture of the fabric and board into the skin. The limb prickled as they removed but normal sensation didn’t return immediately.

How was the book?

It shrugged neutrally.

Did you learn anything interesting?

“Dragons seem dangerous.”

They laughed. Correct.

"You said you have a lot of books on them?

…yes. Whoever lived here before me must have had a special interest.

“Who was here before?”

I didn’t know them. I came from somewhere else.

“Where are you from?”

Is that all you learned from the book?

“I guess I don’t have a special interest.”

I’ll pick out something else.

They gently tapped their fingers on the palms of its injured hand. No sensation. That’s not good.

It rolled its eyes.

I’m serious. I’ve seen this before. It swells so bad the tissue dies and I’ll have to remove it before the rot spreads to the rest of you.

A picture passed through its mind. A black spider web over glaring light. They barely felt the surge of panic inside it before it had a hold of one of their tentacles and had sunk its teeth in.

They screamed until they couldn’t anymore.

When they stopped, the world was hazy. One of their short tentacles was on the floor, their face was dripping thick black blood. They grabbed a fistful of their sleeve and held on as tight as possible. It hurt, but they needed to stop the bleeding.

Something smelled sweet and savory, almost like… It’s head was on the floor, motionless. Shit.

They crawled over and inspected its scalp. No blood. No cuts even. Where was it coming from? The ear. There was a trail of clear fluid draining from the ear. They reached out a tentacle to taste it.

Its brain was draining out of its ear.

She dreamt of being on the table again. It cut her open again, but this time one of her arms. The skin jumped open where it cut like an overstuffed toy, the meat spilling out. And it just kept cutting deeper and deeper, and more and more of her flesh spilled out. When it finally stopped it seemed like she was inside-out. Her head was swimming with pain.

Sometimes it said, inside her head I forget how dangerous you are.

It sat down on the next table over and stared at her. One of the tentacles was missing from its face. The stub was wrapped in thin strips of fabric and spotted with something black that was probably blood.

I’m sure you’re very proud of yourself.

Her eyes squeezed back shut against the headache. She was, actually.

It actually laughed at that too.

“Why are you doing this?”

Would you believe boredom?

Yes actually.

Well. Not like that. Don’t misunderstand, it’s interesting.

It pushed itself off the table and tapped its fingers against her palm. She felt the faintest tapping sensation.

Feel that. Because you can. I’m shocked that it worked, but ecstatic that it did. Perhaps not as much as you given it’s your arm and all. There was a long pause. There is a good chance you’ll die anyway.

Die?

The fluid around your brain is leaking out of your ear. Either it heals or…it doesn’t.

She wasn’t quite sure what it wanted her to do with that information.

It shrugged. There’s nothing you can do. It happened when you bit me and made me yell.

Her head was still throbbing.

Yes, that’s what’s causing the headache. Here. Drink some water. It might help. It reached behind itself for a bottle, uncorked it, and tipped some into her mouth. Do you think you can walk?

She thought about telling it no out of spite. In the end though, she wanted to get off that table and out of that room.

You don’t make the noises anymore.

“The… what?”

They struggled to describe it. The noises? There were words sometimes. I don’t understand them. They don’t make sense to me but your ears hear some sort of pattern?

It blinked at them. None of this brought up any association in its mind.

One time you were talking about the passage of time?

This made a connection, and it suddenly laughed,“Singing. You’re talking about singing.”

That’s what that is???

It was still laughing in disbelief,"What do you mean that’s what that is??? It’s singing. "

They knew what singing was! They just hadn’t realized that’s what those sounds were. It didn’t really come up often. They folded their arms and huffed slightly, you still haven’t told me why you stopped.

At that, it did stop laughing, and its face turned sour,“I haven’t been in the mood.”

But you haven’t been feeling well and you seem to feel better when you do it. Doesn’t that make this the right mood?

“No.”

The notes said there was scarring on its back. No additional details or description, just,”scarring.” It’s not like they could be upset by the short description. Their colleague likely would have elaborated if they had lived. They themselves hadn’t realized the extent of it until they noticed it on both shoulders and the tops of its hips as its clothing shifted. What small glimpses they had seen were deep and not well-healed. They were becoming increasingly curious about what could possibly be in between.

It brought her another book called Tempo and improvisation . It was an instruction manual on various types of music. She supposed she appreciated the sentiment.

“Where did you come from?”

Its tendrils made that slight frozen curl again. What?

"You said you originally came from somewhere else. Where was it?

…another city. I wasn’t there long. We were overrun by dwarves shortly after I was born.

“Oh. Sorry?”

I don’t remember much about it. I’m much safer here anyway. There’s only around a thousand of us but we’re growing and instead of a-

It trailed off mid… sentence? …thought?? At first she thought it lost its train of thought, but this was different. Its tendrils curled up against its face completely, not in the occasional slight way she was used to. And its entire body froze mid motion; its left arm was frozen mid-gesture. Its pupils had enlarged so much they almost became round. When she looked closer at the outstretched fingers of the left hand, she could see a slight tremor. It stayed that way for over a minute.

Was it sick or hurt? Maybe it would die and that would be good right? Except what would happen after that? She’d be trapped in this cell, or worse, another of its kind would come back. There might even be something worse than that. She hated this thing but had a simultaneous stronger hatred for every damn thing else.

It still wasn’t moving.

Fuck.

Its impulsiveness continually surprised them. They were having a normal, if slightly banal conversation about a book, when it suddenly started banging on the bars of its cell and screaming.

“WHAT IS GOING ON!?”

I’m trying to give you a gift! There’s no need to yell.

The subject stepped back suddenly, surprised. That was new. It was always apprehensive around them, but usually in an aggressive and impulsive way. The way it was staring now was uncharacteristically cautious.

“What just happened?”

…I gave you a gift?

“No, after that. Why did you freeze like that?”

An image flashed across the subject’s mind, of themselves, standing tensley, in an odd pose. It wasn’t fabricating; it was genuinely reporting a stimulus it felt it had experienced. Why would it be hallucinating now? It was strange they had gotten this far without, but it would also be strange for it to start now that the interrogation was over. Maybe this was just the first time they were seeing it personally.

It would normally be an easy thing to refocus a thrall on reality. They had no idea how to handle it in this instance, however. Resonance stones were no good, especially on this subject. They could give it substances that would calm it or make it sleep but the hallucinations would just start again when it woke up.

In the meantime, they settled for strategically withdrawing. Hopefully it would be scattered enough not to remember this.

I’ll come back later with your food.

I know I’m listening to this second-hand through your ears, but I don’t think you’re doing that right.

“I’m following the score well enough. I think it’s just bad music.”

That managed to get a laugh out of it. Well. What she was pretty sure was a laugh.

“It’s also possible that this sounds better when an actual orc is singing it.”

My apologies, this does seem to be the extent of my music selection. It paused thoughtfully, It also doesn’t elicit the same feeling as the other music did. I don’t know if that’s a cause or an effect.

It took her a moment, but that statement actually got her to laugh,”What you meant to say was, my heart’s not in it.”

Yes, primitive cultures tend to attribute emotions to the heart despite that not being where they originate.

 She paused for a moment, then pressed herself as close to it as she could despite the bars of her cell,”Are you sure? You tell me you know what I’m hearing through my ears. I assume you can feel what I feel too?”

Obviously.

“Then you know I can feel your heart beating. I can feel what it does when you’re scared. I can feel what it does when you’re complacent. I even know what it does when you’re interested in something. They’re all different. How do you know that’s not where it starts and your head isn’t just making up a story to match?”

The tentacles on its face stiffened slightly again. You may have noticed I’m somewhat smarter than you. You can’t possibly understand the related research.

It was her turn to laugh again, and probably the most genuinely she had in a long time,”If you say so.”

They were inspecting and rewrapping the arm they had to cut open. They knew how to stitch skin closed but that was so far out of the question here. Stitching it closed would just bring back the original problem. That left them with dressing and redressing a massive open wound.

I have to remove the bandage and you’re not going to like it.

Its thoughts stirred apprehensively.

Bad things grow in old bandages. It’s like old food. I need to rip the rotting bandages out. But you’re going to feel it. I’m also going to rinse it; that may also be uncomfortable.

Its thoughts turned even more hateful and obstinate.

I’m doing it either way. I just want you to know why. I hope that makes this hurt less.

They ripped the dressing off and jumped back. They pulled what was left of their facial appendages as close as they could.

It. Screamed.

It probably would have attacked them more if it hadn’t been… moving to grab the injury with its free hand.

nononononono DON’T. TOUCH. THAT.

They grabbed its free hand and it wrestled with them briefly. They continued holding their face out of reach at arm’s length while wrestling for control of the hand.

LET ME RINSE AND REWRAP IT.

It kept trying to work its fingers free. YOU CAN HOLD IT AS TIGHT AS YOU WANT JUST LET ME REWRAP IT.

It finally slowed to a stop and stared hatefully like it usually did. They kept a hold of its hand while the open wound oozed a clear pinkish combination of blood and watery fluid onto the stone floor. They patted around to the other side for the bottle of water while maintaining eye contact. They found it, uncorked it with one of their tentacles, and started moving to rinse the wound. It jerked the wounded arm back.

They took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Yes. This is going to sting slightly. It is going to hurt very mildly and briefly.

And? The specimen did the thing they least expected.

It set its palm on the floor and braced itself. It pushed its hand against the ground to hold itself still and shut its eyes.

They didn’t waste the opportunity. They poured the whole bottle of water on the wound.

It did sting. The specimen held still.

Can I wrap it?

It nodded quickly, eyes still closed.

They finished re-dressing the wound.

The smell of neurological fluid had long since passed and it didn’t seem warm and didn’t have any sweating or chills. Looking into its eyes its pupils were both the right size and shape and moved together. It’s thoughts and speech were as clear as ever. It was hard to get it to follow instructions to move the rest of its neck and facial muscles. It would have to be asked several times to complete any given task, and had a tendency to question most things.

Explaining why they did this or that certainly wasn’t hard, but it also was something they weren’t used to having to do. Everything they did with this subject took about two to three times as long as any other, not that they minded. It broke up the monotony, and while they weren’t going to admit it, it wasn’t like there were any other illithids lining up to talk to them. Everyone else was either out building up the colony or on trips to the surface to obtain more food and labor. While necessary, their function was fairly solitary most of the time.

To feel the shape of its skull and whether or not it had any remaining pain they had to feel through its hair. Enforcing hygiene had been the least of anyone’s concerns regarding this subject and the hair had gotten quite long, at least a few inches all around. They noted with some amusement that it pushed back slightly into their hand, not in an aggressive way, but because it liked the feeling and was pushing towards it. This was not a behavior they typically associated with humanoids, but they supposed it was an overall very mammalian behavior. Also amusing was that it didn’t seem to realize it was doing so, its thoughts being stuck in past events of varying content.

Your hair is well overdue for a trim.

Its eyes snapped up to focus on their face,“no, it’s not.”

It doesn’t take long and won’t even hurt. It’s just to help you stay clean.

“You’re not cutting my hair. I’m serious. Don’t even try” it glared menacingly and folded its arms.

They pulled their hand away. Well, I’m not going to be bothered with keeping all of that clean.

“Then don’t.” It glared for a few more seconds, then stared off into space again, lost in its thoughts again. It dropped its arms and its tunic shifted revealing some of the scarring on its shoulder. Most of the edges were clean and straight, like they’d been cut with some kind of blade.

Their curiosity got the best of them and they gingerly reached a hand forward and slipped their first two fingers under the collar to lift it away from the skin. As they leaned over it to look, they curled the tentacles on their face as far back as they could, even pulling the long ones almost up over their shoulders. They got a glimpse of deeper, wider scars. These ones did not have clean edges. There were massive, irregular chunks of flesh missing between the shoulder blades.

The subject shifted under them and they immediately pulled back only to find it had grabbed fistfuls of their tunic.

I just wanted to look at the scarring on your back. I’m done.

The subject’s heart jolted in its chest and that image, the sun searing down through the black spiderweb, jumped back into its mind. Pain jolted through its entire torso, and its fists tightened. It was at this moment that they realized that not only had it grabbed them tightly and firmly, but its left hand had grabbed the front of its robes near their right shoulder, and its right was under their left armpit. It wouldn’t have surprised them if it encircled their heart purely on instinct, considering the one thing occupying its barely-present consciousness at that time was their own increasing heart rate.

They breathed as slowly, and as quietly as they could manage to try and slow their heart back down. They also kept their face tentacles pulled back, despite having a second one bitten off being the least of their worries at the moment.

They took a moment to consider those other possibilities. The obvious one was the subject killing them, in exactly the same manner it had killed two other illithid already. They also didn’t want to kill the subject after all this time and effort, and weren’t sure how they would accomplish that right now anyway.

They started to chastise themself for forgetting the danger again, but were finally forced to admit that they knew. They always knew, and it wasn’t even that they didn’t care. Regularly almost dying was one of the few things left that they actually enjoyed.

The subject still had a firm grip on them. Its entire body was rigid, in fact. The only difference was that it had dropped its head forward so that it’s forehead was pushed against their collarbone. It wasn’t thinking about much of anything but the pain was still present. Now that it had their full attention, they were able to notice the phantom sensation from both injuries separately. They could feel the memory of its sternum being cracked but also the memory of flesh being alternately sawed and crudely ripped out of its back. They remembered inflicting the first pain, but there had been a purpose and they had done it as efficiently as possible. The second sensation was clumsy and drawn-out, to the point that they almost wondered if it had been done blind.

It was still frozen stiff with remembered pain. It hadn’t occurred to it to kill them just yet. They knew from past experience that the moment the thought arose, it would act. The realization of their own indifference had clarified some things.

They sat, breathing intentionally slow and long for what felt like an eternity. Finally, they found the courage to speak their mind, Well. If you’re going to do it, do it.

Its eyes snapped upward with a surge of panic that was somehow both simultaneously restrained AND frenzied by its confusion.

We’re both sitting here panicking and suffering for it. If you’re going to kill me just DO IT.

It’s mind blanked into raw, SPINNING emptiness for what felt like another entire eternity.

…then it let go.

She read through the spines of the books in the study. It did, in fact, contain numerous books on the topic of dragons. There were also books on goblins, surface cultures, history, and even trade routes. She came across a book on gardening named “halfling horticulture.”

The creature came over and pulled it out of her hands. This one has been indispensable. It has excellent advice concerning humidity and substrate composition when growing fungi. I was able to advise the farming collective and they increased their crop yield by one-and-a-half, and in return they’ve been able to provide me with a fabulous staple crop of mushrooms. It carefully reshelved the book.

She pulled out one on insects,“please tell me you’re not feeding these to people.”

That book has mostly been helpful in the management of lice infestations. On that topic, it would still be best to shorten your hair.

She glared at it hatefully and shoved the book back into place.

The next shelf consisted of books in a language she did not recognize.

These are just records for the 500  hundred of us in this colony and our livestock and labor.

She thought for a second,“…so there’s another one of you somewhere taking care of the other half? I don’t know if I can handle there being two of you.”

No, 500 is the population of the colony.

“You told me it was one thousand”

You’re mistaken. I may have been telling you the number of thralls in total.

She didn’t see a need to continue arguing with it.

She wandered the rooms, looking in cells and behind doors at pitiful things locked away into tiny spaces. She wondered where the keys to their locks were, or how many copies even existed. Then she found her own, old room. She had spent so long in tiny spaces, in tiny TINY bubbles of air along thin strings of airflow. In that context, this space struck her. It was not huge on it’s own, but in another way, in a comparable way, it was MASSIVE. Why had they made space for this room? All of the other, little, rooms had one set of metal bars to restrain them. Why did this one have two? What were they keeping here?

Her curiosity got the better of her, and she opened a door. The smell was what hit her first. That was her second clue that she should have left well enough alone, after the pitch black of it. She pulled a torch from the hall outside and instantly regretted everything. There were two corpses. She should have been delighted to see them, considering how she knew them.

One was deep green and almost twice as tall as her. It wore long robes that splayed out over its corpse like still, empty water. It had four tentacles that fell from where its mouth should be and two that fell long and wide and wiggled away from its face along the floor lifelessly. It had squealed in her brain before but today it did nothing. The other one was there too, the one she was unsure of and had never been strong enough to fight off, although she wasn’t entirely sure considering it’s head was no longer intact. It didn’t matter anymore, but she still heard the questions, faint and distant, and they still gave her that deep, inner twisting sensation. “Where did you come from? Why are you here?” Those questions still rose, but now they rippled into the void. There they had their own, sometimes worse, sometimes better entropy. She had never been strong enough to fight it off, and now it did not matter.

Finally, she raised her head and the torch she stole from the hall to look around at the walls. They were covered in sloppy, frenzied writing in numerous languages, all in the same thick, black dripping substance that looked to have been finger painted onto the wall. The parts she could read said:

DRAONY EALY EATDS ONLY EATDRG ONASN TDRAONLY EATDRAGO OEATD OY EATDRAG OEATEAONS ONLY EATDRONLY ONS ONLY AGS ONLY EATDNNLRARAGNS NDRAOONATDRAGNGOATDRAONS O TAGOON EARANATDRAGONS ONATDRAGOSATDRAS OY TDGORAGOY EATDGONS Y EATDRNS OLY EATDRANS ONLY EAONS ONEAT

“I’ve seen that!”

It had been pulling books haphazardly out of the shelves for HOURS . It was emotionally elevated, but positively for the moment. Where before the heights of its emotions were terrifying, for the moment they were FASCINATING. They cautiously crept over to look at what it was excitedly pointing at.

There was an illustration painted in sharp ink strokes of a temple overlooking a market. The book’s depiction was sharp and precise over the architecture of the temple, and became frantic and imprecise over the moving bodies of the market below. A matching image of its own memory flashed in its mind, matching the columns and the slope of the temple roof. The market was ALIVE with what they now knew was music and vibrant TASTES and COLORS and SOUNDS (other than music! …sometimes voices themselves were interesting or nice?) and TOUCHES that were soft or sometimes not soft but interesting to the fingers or shoulders or even the face 

They saw a glimpse of that web across its vision, the same one that used to make it panic. Instead of black it was BRIGHT and SILVER and the movement it made was ALIVE and the way it VIBRATED and SHOOK said to the subject’s mind that it was DANCING. They caught the memory and gently induced it again curiously because this version was beautiful and glad and alive.

INSTANTLY, every elevated, high, happy emotion crashed and twisted sideways into the equally high but far more terrifying feelings of fear and panic. It refused to acknowledge the memory of anything to do with that web, silver or no. It SCREAMED at them with all of its verbal and psionic existence. Its thoughts returned to the air and the light and the desert and the sawing and the tearing off of-

-its wings. It’s delicate, fundamentally elemental, no-longer silver wings. What did they call a humanoid air elemental?

They saw the room light up with glowing orbs on the tip of every unlit torch, on the tips on either side of the backs of chairs, and on the tips of the equipment scattered about the room. Even the tip of their ink pen sitting up in its well had a small, faint blue halo.

At the same time they felt an odd lifting sensation, like climbing maybe? but fast. They could feel the air rushing. They rolled up off the surface of a pond and over a lip of rock then splashed over something with a prickly texture. As they fell down into it they realized they were rushing past leafy branches. Those tiny pinpricks were… trees …and that pond behind them was an ocean.

They felt an odd gnawing pull in their chest like their body was being stretched apart just trying to understand the size.

The prickle wasn’t just in their memory. It was pulling energy out of the air. They weren’t sure if it was about to try to kill them because it was angry or because it had just forgotten how small it was supposed to be.

So they ran. They ran. THEY RAN.

They locked themselves in the feed room and pinned themselves between a cistern and a wall. They curled up their hidden corner in a locked room and listened to it SCREAM audibly and psionically for what felt like HOURS.

“Surface fae.”

They tried to think of a better label and the thought kept sliding. It wasn’t a creature. Creatures had sizes. You could say a creature was large, the way you could say a mountain was tall, and it would be a strange thing to say but it would parse. This didn’t. They kept reaching for a comparison and coming back with nothing…

…and someone had been poking at it for several months now because it was “interesting.”

They made themselves small. They made themselves quiet. They hoped it could not find them. They hid behind a cistern in the feed room behind a locked door.

Is it better or worse to be small in a storm?

She was exhausted when she finally broke open the right door and found it cowering. She barely remembered why she had been angry before, but knew that she had questions.

“…what was in the big cage before me?”

The thing had been stuck, pinned quivering up in a corner. Her words took a moment to register, then it tensed like it always did. The tentacles of its face curled tight the same as every time she asked such questions. After a long pause it fell forward, limbs limp. It collapsed out of the corner of the room between the wall and the tub of… something. It collapsed limply out of the corner like one of the chunks of raw meat it had been responsible for processing. The tentacles on its face curled and uncurled rapidly loose and tight. The muscles of the rest of its body did the same. It twitched there, loose and tight then loose and tight then loose and tight. She grabbed it by its face and refused to let go.

“TELL ME ABOUT THE FUCKING DRAGON!”

Its whole body tensed entirely and stayed there. …like when she let the lightning flow, but she wasn’t doing it. She SWORE she wasn’t! But it’s back arched like she had. Then it began jerking completely forward and backward with its whole body thrashing wildly and acid poured out in bubbling foam from …its mouth? Her hand burned and she jerked it away.

It stopped for a second. Its eyelids opened and the pupils focused on her by coalescing from roundness into their odd, irregular shapes. The acid kept dripping from its mouth.

She didn’t let up,“…tell me about the dragon.”

Its irregular pupils became circular again a second before it convulsed again. The acid from its face and mouth pooled in the hole it had worn in the floor.

There was only one train of thought left that made sense enough to communicate. Everything was gradients of thought and emotion fading in and out like an endlessly billowing psychic fog. That was funny and honestly actually HILARIOUS because the subject was fundamentally air itself, right? That meant it would understand, though, perhaps. That would be good. Hopefully that would be good. They communicated their thoughts to the air.

It will come to eat me while they eat you, then it will eat them too. In the end all are consumed.

“If you’re with me will they let me go?” she asked.

It drooled uselessly onto the floor for some time before listlessly thinking AT her . It was a listless, confused burst of raw emotion that she could only interpret as “I don’t know.”

“Let me try to save us! Just tell me which way to run.”

Its acidic drool continued boring a hole into the floor.

She violently shook it by the shoulders,“WHICH. WAY. DO. WE. RUN.”

…away.

She grabbed it by the tentacles on its face. It burned her hand and she didn’t care. She gripped tight and thrashed its head side-to-side. “WHICH. WAY. DO. WE. RUN???”

Its pupils finally coalesced again into their odd squiggle shape and met hers, west, past the farms.

She saw an image in her mind of cavern footpaths through mushroom farm fields.

“Alright. We’re going”

She stood, then dragged it up with her and slung its arm over her shoulders. She pushed them both up with her legs and marched towards what she’d always known was the exit but hadn’t dared approach until now. Its legs alternately moved and dragged beside her.

They faintly recalled being physically dragged. They recalled having to coordinate combatants when the dwarves intruded. The subject had their arm over its shoulders like an incapacitated combatant. It dragged them and their legs were sometimes able to cooperate. They vaguely remembered something was trying to hurt them, but this time it wasn’t dwarves. They vaguely remembered telling the subject to head west. They remembered what the path through the mushroom farms looked like. They faintly recalled being physically dragged.

She distinctly remembered pulling it into the first empty cavern beyond the farms. She remembered because that was when it started to wake up. The other things had barraged her on the journey. There was a constant question of “who are you, what are you doing, what are you doing, WHAT ARE YOU DOING.”

She answered every time “mind your own business, mind your own business, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.” Its own brain lacked the consciousness to fully engage and she did her best to do so on its behalf. LEAVEUSALONELEAVEUSALONELEAVEUSALONE .

With every mental intrusion she pushed off from one leg and set the other forward. She used them pushing in to judge the passage of time she needed to continue each step forward.

She prayed that if she moved fast enough with it that the rest of them would allow them passage.

When she made it to the first empty cavern beyond the farms and it began to wake up, she felt it start asking what was happening. She kept it over her shoulders and kept pushing forward as far as she could go.

There is a city on the other side, it finally said.

“A city?”

Eryndlyn. The drow live there.

“What are the Drow?”

They’re more like you than me.

There was a long pause while she waited for more information, but it never came.

“So I should keep going west?”

It didn’t answer.

She kept dragging it west, or, what the pictures it put in her head told her was west. She didn’t have any better ideas.

After the second cavern, it got dark. She could see a little in the low light, but not like it could. Not down here with the rocks pressing down on stale, unmoving air. She would have to shake it awake every once in a while to see the path ahead. This was not an impossible task. For the most part she would drop low and drag it along. She just needed to shake it awake to see the next cavern’s exit and in the meantime she could feel along the cavern floor. Between being able to see she would feel with her hands and blindly drag it across the expanse. For the longest time, it was too helpless to do anything else.

She felt an odd pressure in her mind as it woke up. A mix between the sensations of mental confusion, physical pain, and an audible ringing sound. When it finally started talking to her again there was an odd blurriness to its words. It always thought AT her in words but the words also typically had feelings behind them. Now those feelings were confused and ambivalent. She kept dragging it forward physically and mentally. Outside of her direction it would push more and more ahead with both vision and memory beyond what it was asked.

They were resting at the side of a deep chasm. That was the part she could physically feel AND control. She could feel beyond herself the air swirling and swirling and SWIRLING down a deep tear in the rock filled with air that only went farther down and down and down into cold, dead rock. The airflow called to her in its way, but as it gave way to rock she felt the pull of the remaining air less and less. So instead she laid there beside the thing while it woke up.

Eryndlyn is west…

“ So you’ve told me ,” she replied. They laid on the side of the open chasm together, and she embraced every inch of open, swirling, air that it provided while remaining wary of where it sunk into the dead earth.

They woke up on the side of a cliff. When they felt into the elemental’s mind they could feel the air swirl down and down and down beyond its perception. All it knew was that eventually the rock consumed the air. Their brain was confused and fogged, but they understood that air and air and air, then EARTH was not a good formula for physical safety. They suggested moving forward despite its objections, and eventually succeeded.

The rock pressed and pressed and PRESSED down and forever. It got so deep and so bad and so TIGHT that she could only crawl. She thought that she would die. She wanted to go back to that restrictive cell where she could only pace a few steps. She couldn’t breathe here. She breathed the same air over and over and with every breath the rock compressed her chest by being so close.

It was fighting for sanity in the narrow caverns. There was enough space to move but sometimes the tunnel would touch your shoulders on one side or the other. Sometimes you would have to hunch and tuck your chin or slouch. Previously they had understood this reflex as nothing more than a trapped animal that they couldn’t soothe in their usual manner. Now they saw it for what it was, a cteature of the air literally being ‘out of its element’ and crushed by the surrounding rock.

They were having difficulties of their own as their march pushed onward. The two of them stopped in a narrow cavern with a small pool. It immediately moved to satiate its thirst by scooping water with its hands into its mouth from the shallow pool. In turn, they splashed the water on their skin to moisten it. They would need to immerse themself at some point, but that was not a pressing issue.

What was pressing was their hunger. Their last few months in the dragon’s city were a blur. They couldn’t remember when they’d last ate, but it was starting to feel like it had been a long time.

Did it think she couldn’t sense it’s hunger?

They knew it knew, they just didn’t care. With every step they cared less and less.

They reached for its head and within the same instant it grabbed them by  their face. It knotted its hand in the tendrils of their face and when they burned its hand it screamed at them with every bit of its both physical and metaphysical existence.

Then it paused and offered a rare salient thought,“Not…..yet.”

…only one of us can live through this journey and I am the one that can see.

“You can live a little longer.”

I need to eat and you won’t live without me anyway.

“I’m still able to kill you.”

Excuse me?

“I can still take you with me …for now.”

They felt the raw hopelessness in that statement and finally understood.

It waited, uncharacteristically patiently, for them to walk ahead.

They did.

She heard a scraping sound up ahead and stopped. In front of her, it had stopped too. It was listening? …or maybe feeling ahead mentally like it could. 

“What is that?”

She felt it turn toward her in the dark and brought her hands up defensively.

I don’t know. These caverns are supposed to be empty.

It was silent for a long time. The empty earth continued pressing down and in.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t think like you or I, or at least, I can’t feel it thinking. Probably not dwarves then, which would’ve been my first guess. We’ll have to look to find out.

It. It would have to look. She couldn’t see well, remember?

It released one of its long, rattling sighs.

They edged forward to peer into the cavern ahead. The elemental could feel the air moving, which meant two things; the area was open enough for air to move, and something was moving the air.

They didn’t see anything at first. It was just an empty cavern. The next thing they noticed was what felt like a carpet. There was a soft, almost furry coating to the ground. They jumped back and steadied themselves with a hand on the wall, but the fur was on the wall too and they yanked their hand back.

Then they saw movement in the dark, far on the edge of the cavern. It was humanoid in that it had arms and legs but that was the extent of the similarity. It’s head appeared to be some odd, twisted shape, like a fungus.

They stumbled backward into the tunnel and tripped over the elemental who began physically struggling and drawing energy from the environment, but they were lucky there was so little air for it to pull from. They supposed they could have eaten it, but given the current obstacle, were grateful they hadn’t.

QUIET THEY’LL HEAR US.

It froze, pinned between their back and the rock, gripping their tunic tightly in one hand and their wrist in the other.

Let me go! We need to get farther back!

It finally understood their panic and let go. They both stumbled back around the corner as quietly as possible. The fungus thing’s footsteps were heavy, but muffled by the soft groundcover. They let the sylph see what they had and it panicked, wanting to run further down the tunnel.

NO! Stay here, just stay quiet. I don’t think it can go past the edge of the mycelium. Or, even if it can, I don’t think it will want to.

It was wary, but did as it was told, for the moment.

Alright. They took stock of their options. Myconids are often peaceful, depending on the species.

It opened its mouth to speak, but thought better, and shut it. The elemental carefully, experimentally, thought “at” them. It wanted to know what species this was and if they were peaceful.

I have no idea.

It glared at them disbelievingly. Well, it tried. It glared at the wall next to their head.

They don’t make great thralls, obviously, and we generally prefer to grow mushrooms that can’t hit us!

Their species did seem at a loss the moment something could fight back.

I’ve never fought fair in my life and I’m not starting now.

They peeked around the corner and received a completely non-magical jolt or energy from the sight of it looming RIGHT. THERE. at the edge of the mycelium… staring? Could Myconoids stare??? (They couldn’t see any eyes) down the otherwise empty tunnel. They ducked back and flattened against the rock.

They shouldn’t be this far south, and I think that answers the question.

The elemental would assume that meant they were aggressive.

Correct.

It wanted to know what the plan was.

We fight our way through. Preferably before more of them get here.

It suspected that it would be doing most of “their” collective fighting.

… also correct.

“How-” she whispered, but cut herself off. How far/long would she need to fight?

I have no idea; they’re not supposed to be here in the first place.

That was a very helpful and informative sentiment.

OK. …look. …on the other hand, they’re not even supposed to be here, and Eryndlyn isn’t far. Myconids are not typically aggressive, but the Drow …are. They would defend their borders against this kind of thing.

So they could possibly back out and go around?

Do you want to risk running into my former compatriots if they’ve followed us?  It huffed angrily, but also… to steel itself.

She stared hatefully at it, only half because it was right.

“I-” she stopped herself again. She would need more open air to really work. It was ever so slightly bigger than her physically, so it should shove the fungus-thing out into the larger cavern, then she would be able to fight the fungus-thing.

She hated feeling the uncertainty and terror under its agreement.

They did as they were asked. They ran and they used all of their minuscule muscle to shove the thing into the central cavern and then just kept running. They ran past and ran and ran and ran and tripped over the last little bit and skidded to a stop on bare rock again. They looked back to watch everything unfold.

It fought the Myconid. Technically, it even won, just not how it expected.

The Myconid exploded. It blew apart into what looked like a million tiny spores and the elemental was right there sharing its air and incapable of anything else but breathing them in.

The last thing it did before losing consciousness was to try and fail to look for them with its meager sight. Its last thought before black closed in on its vision was, Well, you were right. You get to live.

Their memories of the next part were of poor quality. There were a couple possible reasons. First of all, they were extremely hungry. That problem seemed to have resolved itself very quickly. It wasn’t a high quality meal. They honestly weren’t even sure what it was just that most of it’s intellect consisted of the muscle memory needed for manual labor. That could have been a lot of different things, in retrospect. It probably wasn’t a drow since they rarely did their own manual labor if they could help it, but they still couldn’t be sure.

The second problem was that after the hunger resolved, they seemed to have gotten hit on the head, and hard. They didn’t lose consciousness, or they were fairly certain, anyway. They remembered trying to crawl back into the cave with the myconid and…

They did remember watching it lose consciousness. It fell limp like a sack of grain that had been dropped.

She tried to pick her head up and open her eyes but couldn’t. They were too heavy.

I know. It’s the poison. It’ll wear off.

Something was pulling her up from under her arms. It was clumsy, awkward. Her head lolled back and a hand caught it and clumsily shifted it and set it down.

It’s been over a day. You need water. Can you swallow?

Her eyes managed to flicker open. She saw mottled blue skin in long ropes. Her ear was pressed into it’s shoulder, her forehead into the side of it’s neck. Oh, for fu-

She lost consciousness again.

Somehow they’d expected that. It would need to drink at some point but they had more time for the poison to wear off. The priestess, Rhea, had undone some of it. They might be able to get her to do more.

Even a little sylph was heavy as dead weight, not that strength was their best quality to begin with. They tried to shift back out from under it but changed their mind and flopped back against the corner of the wall they were sitting against. They were just so tired. The sylph was poisoned, but they were just exhausted. They were sitting here worrying about it drinking when they had no idea where they were going to find a pool to sleep in. They’d just have to rest here for a second until-

-the sun beat down on cracked earth. The air rippled as it rose off the ground but that was the most it could do under the heat. She was face down in the dirt, the skin of their back being ripped off in quick sharp movements like working sinew off of bone—exactly like that, actually. Her hands were behind their back but not tied. Their hands were wrestling with a knife.

We’re dreaming. They hadn’t dreamt like this since before the dragon. It’s words bubbled up in their thoughts. At the time it was a reassurance. No control by the collective. But this time they could feel the reflection underneath the words.

dragons don’t dream

qɹɐɓouƨ oulʎ ǝɐʇ

She felt the weight of them on her back. Her hands weren’t moving. Her hands couldn’t move. Their skin prickled with static. They jerked awake but she only made it halfway back to consciousness..

Nonono you’re ok.

get off me

I’m not–! You’re on ME.

She was managing to summon a little energy, but her hands were stuck at her sides. She could feel it’s weight bearing down on her. get off. GET OFF.

They managed to worm their way out from under her. They kept a hand under her head to keep it from hitting the wall. Trying to protect her head landed their shoulder roughly on the floor. She jolted almost back into full consciousness.

She could feel a hand threaded into her hair in a way that was comforting except it she knew that it wasn’t. He’d drugged her. He’d drugged her and pinned her down under the sun to make rain. The blue of it’s face swam into focus instead and that thread of thought fled. Their own consciousness settled in enough for them to think more clearly. They carefully started picking their thoughts apart from it’s, like untangling threads.

Their skin stopped prickling as the energy dissipated. It’s head dropped heavily onto their hand. It ineffectually sulked while grudgingly savoring the sensation of being held.

I’ll kill you, it petulantly brooded.

I know. In the meantime can I get you to drink some water?

The dryness in her mouth gave her the willpower to push her head forward to meet the bottle of water. In the same moment it chastised her hasty gulp (SLOWLY!) she choked and sputtered on it. She fell back and began wheezing and it grabbed her by the collar and shoved her forward.

If you’re going to continue needing this much support to not kill yourself, you could at least stop trying to kill me.

“Where are we?”

…Eryndlyn.

“We made it?”

Correct.

She looked around at the bare stone surroundings and the solid wooden door. There was a bucket in one corner and a torch on one wall. They were sitting on a pile of ratty blankets. Those seemed to be the only significant furnishings. Oh, wait, no. If she craned her head backward there were chains hanging from the wall behind them.

“Not much nicer than where we were.”

Well now we’re both in a cell so arguably worse.

“How did that happen? I thought you were going to beg for mercy or something.”

The drow are not typically merciful.

This seemed like it might have been a bad plan.

Well you didn’t seem to have a better one.

Their eyes fluttered open to the sight of her half open mouth lazily shoved up against their tangled mass of tendrils. They saw teeth and jolted fully awake. Their back pushed into the wall as they shoved it in the other direction. It jolted awake itself, rolled onto the stone, and jumped up onto it’s hands and knees, snarling.

“Go sleep on the fucking floor then.”

They stared, indignantly at it for a long moment.

If you think I’m going to go lay on that cold rock save us both the trouble and just kill me now.

They rolled towards the wall and tucked their face safely sideways and down into their chest.

She was on her back under the sun this time. She should have known. He had insects in his study pinned just like this. Channeling enough energy to cover the sun with rainclouds pushed her frail corporeal manifestation to it’s limits. Instead the sky turned black behind the sun and they walked into view. Blue tint, large wide set eyes. It had thrown it’s two longer tentacles over it’s shoulder to pin her down while it’s friend leaned on the bone saw. Everything is fine. You’re at home, in your bed! You’re resting. Everything is FINE.

FUCK THAT WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK–

It huffed in annoyance. Just do your best to relax. Trust me, you won’t remember this. It shifted it’s weight over her shoulders for leverage and shoved her back down.

Her eyes snapped open and she rolled on top of it, her left hand burning as she tangled it in it’s face. It’s eyes snapped open then fell back to half shut when she picked it’s head up and slammed it into the floor.

It had to remember that NOW? Not even maybe a day ago when it was still paralyzed?

I DIDN’T KNOW. I ACTUALLY DIDN’T KNOW.

They locked their arms straight against it so it didn’t have leverage to keep slamming their head against the floor. It’s right hand clawed into their ribs where their shirt had ridden up on their left. They felt the prickle of electricity.

They remembered that day in the lab, the day they just let it out and left it out. They remembered not caring what happened next. To a certain extent, they still didn’t. Honestly they were surprised it hadn’t. They had genuinely failed to live up to that promise.

…I–I’m sorry. I–

It was the confusion that stopped it, more than anything else.

_{–I actually thought you wouldn’t remember.}

It screamed and punched and clawed at their face with both hands until it’s voice went raw. They threw their hands up to deflect as much as they could. Somehow it felt like both hours and yet just seconds before it all but collapsed on top of them. It sobbed and punched them in the shoulder one last time.

_{It’s never happned before. Sometimes they wake up but they never remember.}

They sat along the opposite wall until it managed to cry itself back to sleep.

She… condensed, somehow, almost like a water spirit. She was the sky and yet somehow she pulled together into one droplet and fell out of herself. As she streamed down towards the ocean waves, twin tails of her droplet whipped up towards the roiling clouds. They looked up (she shouldn’t be able to see) and instead of trailing off the tails of matter pulled on her and they had …..toes? Her newly formed hair whipped over her face as she crashed into the waves. As she sank down away from the surface …the sun came out? That never happ–

–she started choking on the water. No, not on the water. They were being strangled. They clawed at the hands around their throat as she shoved herself back up towards the light. They got their feet under them on the bottom of the pool and their fingers found the edge. As she broke out of the surface of the water under the heat of the incubation lamp they took a blow to their face. When their hands reflexively flew up to protect her face the thing around their neck unlooped itself. The attending illithid threw Xotchtil’s’ tentacles off to the side of them with a splash. Xotchtil shoved them away and the illithid answered with another slap to the face.

The illithid standing over them looked disgusted Are you serious? Are you actually serious. I’ve literally never seen anything that stupid.

Sitting halfway out of their incubation tank, Xotchtil was frozen in shock.

It’s actually a good thing we didn’t have time to let you finish incubating. You were literally choking yourself to death ON YOUR OWN TENTACLES. Decades I’ve been doing this and I have never, EVER, seen someone THAT stupid.

They stayed frozen.

Ulitharid my ass.

Their eyes opened to find it already staring them down from across the cell.

“Not much has changed.” It rolled back towards the wall.

It was a bad idea not to give it space, but the stone was hard and cold and they were just going to use the end, near it’s feet. Just to sit on. Just to get off the stone. It sighed loudly before pulling it’s legs around and throwing them over their lap.

A servant came to refill the bottle of water then moved through the other cells doing the same, and tidying the ones that were empty. Xotchtil briefly considered using it to unlock the door but through its eyes the guard seemed too watchful. They certainly wouldn’t get far–the guard was not manipulable. They did catch a flash of memory from the servant:

He broke the seal of the wine in front of his matron, poured it out into a glass and drank a small sip before offering her the cup. She swirled it in the glass under her nose, drank some, then offered the bottle and another glass to her guest.

The younger Drow Lady asked,“And where is this famous son of yours Matron?”

His matron nodded to him,“go and find where Castre has wandered off to.”

Before he could approach the doors, they flew open. ‘Castre’ swept into the room dragging her brother behind her,“Tazennin Blundyth has graced us all with his presence Ladies!”

‘Tazennin’ was dressed casually in a silk robe that wasn’t fully fastened and half of his dozen or so braids were undone. He was clutching the robe closed and his eyes were narrow with apprehension.

“Mother! What’s got you awake at this late hour?”

Matron Blundyth did, in fact, look tired. Perhaps she had even dozed off in the past few seconds. She sat up and gestured to the lady beside her,“This is Lady–sorry–Matron Malthra. You’ve heard about the unfortunate situation with her mother?”

Tazennin’s narrow eyes flew wide and he froze. His head barely perceptibly tilted in deference,“…Matron.”

Matron Selca gestured to a chair on the end of the table closest to her and her guest,“…sit.”

Tazennin carefully passed between his mother and… Rhea …who had been facing the wall behind and off to the side of her mother and carefully avoiding eye contact. Noime was in the opposite corner, trying and failing to look more interested in her book than the conversation. Tazennin settled into the chair, still holding his robe closed. His mother offered him the bottle of wine and a glass. He took it and poured some, nodding and weakly smiling, but didn’t drink.

“Don’t be a drone about it we’ve all drank from the same bottle already.”

He did as he was told. The young matron eyed him appraisingly and even lifted the sleeve of his robe a little. The servant boy thought he even saw his lips pale slightly.

“You weren’t kidding. I think I will have him. How much?”

Selca glanced around with an unusual sharpness then quickly gestured at her daughters and the servant boy"–you four! Out."

Xotchtil gathered a vague sense of familiarity (all of this was normal) out of the servant boy before he wandered too far away.

Facedown in the desert again.

No we’re still in the cell together you’re dreaming but–

–but she couldn’t accept that either. A piece of sinew snapped free from her back and her hand slapped it into the dirt. The chunk of translucent wing oozed black from it’s veins.

Xotchtil was awake this time, but it wasn’t doing any more good than it ever had. They couldn’t ground her out into the present but even if they’d had substances or resonance stones they wouldn’t have worked either. And they’d never been able to send her into a fantasy, which had been their go-to for decades. They didn’t move and risk waking her because that seemed like a great way to get electrocuted. She moaned and twitched on the pile of blankets, facedown as in her dream, one leg still thrown over their lap.

Just look up, they pleaded, at the sky, or the clouds! That’s where you belong, right? What’s it like to be a Cloud?

Annoyance from her. She wasn’t a cloud, clouds are made of water. Annoyance was at least a small break from the suffering.

Then what are you?

The southern wind; hot, humid, and full of static. The summer thunderstorm (not the cloud! the storm). He–humans–had a name for the southern wind, but she could never remember what it was. Earth called her the sound of racing through a canyon and water and fire had similarly sensible names. Other winds called her various things as their pockets of heat and cold whipped and scraped against each other.

Ah. Of course. And what do you like to rain–sorry. What do you like to strike with that lightning little thunderstorm?

“I don’t like to do anything” her dry throat croaked,“I just do.”

They looked over to see her eyes half open.

I hate to be the one to tell you, but that body you’re in likes and dislikes a great many things.

She sighed deeply,“It’s exhausting.”

Every once in a while Xotchtil was able to catch a thought from the guard, but they were very few and far between.

“Honestly, Rhea, we’re all just glad you didn’t eat them. We probably wouldn’t all fit in this room if you’d gotten any bigger.” As she spoke, Castre jammed a pinky into the ceremonial wine font and slurped it off loudly. Noime visibly fought the urge to strangle Castre. Matron Selca Blundyth failed to notice most or all of the interaction.

Again, a distinct sensation of familiarity.

At some point Xotchtil awoke laying on their side and found her face smashed into their mass of tentacles like a pillow. It occurred to them again that her face was too close for comfort, but her sleep was dreamless, for once. They didn’t move.

Rhea stopped by to see them a second time. She was as impossible to read as the first time they’d met. It didn’t seem to be psionic in nature, so they suspected it was training of some kind. They remembered hearing the drow worshipped some deity that valued force of will, so it wouldn’t be surprising. Xotchtil suspected she’d been the one to capture them outside the cavern, but there wasn’t any way to be sure, between the poison, the hunger, and what was probably several blows to the head.

“What were you doing in myconid territory?”

Passing through.

Rhea almost laughed,“What’re you a perfume merchant? Illithids don’t just ‘pass through.’ Try again.”

Almost dying? I’m not sure what you want to hear.

“The truth would be nice.”

The truth was complicated. Well, the consequences were complicated. “We were running” sounded weak. “We had nowhere else to go” sounded like begging. They were desperately searching for something close enough to the truth to be believable that didn’t sound… well. desperate! It was a little hard to do that from inside of a cell. They looked down at the sylph, leaning on their shoulder, but facing opposite, back towards the wall. They supposed they hadn’t given her enough credit.

I didn’t know it was myconid territory.

“They’ve been there for years. Where have you been?”

Illithid communities can be… insular.

“I just don’t get it. Ch’chitl is the only illithid territory near here but that’s in completely the wrong direction. It’s not even weird that you would pass through coming from that direction. Eryndlyn could’ve been quite comfortable for you if you were honest about it.”

Would you believe we got lost?

“That’s the other thing. What was so important about her that you tried to go back? I didn’t think illithids were sentimental.”

The sylph snorted. They were glad she was facing the wall.

They went with the truth, although it was nonsensical even to them …I don’t know.

Rhea’s expression barely changed, but there was a tiny shift around her eyes. Incredulity? “You don’t know.”

It must have made sense at the time.

Her expression was very readable now. She was completely dumbfounded, as if they’d somehow managed to say something even more nonsensical.

I don’t remember much… but now that they thought about it, they did remember the smell of burning pitch.

…you were going to burn them.

“Of course we were going to burn them; it’s the only thing that keeps them back.”

The poison was also likely a factor.

Well, that and the horrifying monstrosity feeding on their psyche for the better part of a decade.

Although she caught more than I did. Are you able to heal her any more?

“She seems to be breathing well enough.”

I’ll also need to eat at some point myself. I can’t eat the same things she does.

“Oh I’m very aware of that. That’s why I left her in here with you.”

Rhea glanced at her but the sylph dismissed this easily; she almost wished Xotchtil would try again. It was a struggle to not say anything inflammatory back. Maybe they shouldn’t have bothered translating what Rhea said for her, but they’d worried she’d act worse. Either way, this was not the time to get dragged into another petty argument. They tried something different.

Your sister asked the guard outside when and how long you’d be down here.

Rhea straightened almost imperceptibly,“…and what did he say?”

The truth. He didn’t know.

Rhea eyed them thoughtfully. They had never needed to understand body language or facial expressions enough to know if the lie had landed just now.

There was a crashing sound above them, then yelling. Now they could tell with almost certainty that she hadn’t expected that. She glanced back at them quickly.

“We’ll finish this later.”

And she was gone.

Things were moving upstairs. They could hear and feel things physically, such as running, yelling, and impacts, but the psychic imprint of the moment was much more unsettling. Fear, panic even, permeated the space above them, but it was deeper than that. Previously they had perceived a vague sense of everyday resignation to uneasiness from the servants and guards, and even a slight tension in Rhea’s posture. It was like everyone had been on edge for months or years, maybe more, long before they arrived. It was kindling being added to a pile piece by piece. Sure, it spilled off the edges sometimes, but the systems under it were so stable that it wasn’t hard to just scoop everything together and pile it back on. Then there was a spark.

Was it their arrival? Unlikely. Rhea would have stayed or at the very least come back quickly to… well probably just kill them. The guards didn’t seem focused on that either. No, this wasn’t a surprise to them, and neither Xotchtil nor their little sylph had much to do with that. They were talking between themselves in low whispers. They were psychically resilient enough that they only caught flashes, more sensory information and emotion than higher level thought. Their ears weren’t good enough to–oh. Well obviously.

She could see its unease in its posture but was surprised by the amount that its emotions and even some of its thoughts bled off into her. She wondered if this was a general problem for it lately or if it was just her that could feel them. She remembered how its blurry thoughts bled out freely into the caverns. She felt its attention snap to her.

Can you hear what they’re saying?

“Not–” not through the door, no. The bars in the window maybe if she was a head taller or so. And that didn’t mean she’d understand it.

I should be able to understand them but I need to borrow your ears.

It went to the corner and almost touched the bucket with its hand but recoiled. It kicked it over, then upside down, its contents sloshing onto the corner of the wall. It pushed it to the base of the door with the tread of its worn work boot. She shrugged and hopped on top of it.

It took her a second to get used to knowingly letting it into her mind that deeply. She tried to listen and repeat back to it what she heard but it was gibberish and she couldn’t even tell which syllables were distinct from each other let alone make out any real words. She also suspected it didn’t like being that transparent to her moment-to-moment in return. It seemed to have to stop trying to figure things out before letting her know or she would miss or listen for the wrong things and not be able to listen continuously. Eventually something seemed to pop into place and their awarenesses… fell together somehow.

She felt a sudden jolt of intense fascination. They hadn’t realized she wasn’t just listening with her ears; her awareness of the air meant she was feeling it vibrate too! She hadn’t realized this was unusual. There was another intense but overall positive emotion under that one, but she struggled to place it and this wasn’t the time to dwell anyway.

The two guards were mostly debating whether or not to go upstairs, whether one or both of them should, and what they expected to find or be able to do anything about. One of the most pressing questions seemed to be ‘which house is it’ likely in the sense of who the attackers were. One left and returned to confirm there was definitely an attack happening, but they still weren’t able to identify the aggressors.

If you let us out, we’ll help. suggested Xotchtil. They knew almost immediately that this was out of the question. They tried once more just to see, but one of the guards came down to slam his fist into the door, hard. It actually knocked the sylph back a little, not enough that she fell over, but she had to step down to catch herself. The drow wandered off muttering about creepy telepaths. They probably could’ve forcibly compelled one of them, but not both. If these were another type of creature, one known for an excess of prosocial behavior, they might beg them not to leave them locked down here to starve, but that seemed useless here. And that was actually exactly what they did a few moments later. They left the door locked and… left.

“More great work from the genius who almost choked themselves to death once.”

This is why I don’t let you listen to my thoughts.

“Wish I had that option.”

Also I’m not done yet.

They reached out and sent out a vague but generalized suggestion of safe sanctuary, in the same way they’d felt distress from above. It’s quiet down here they said. No one is fighting. You could hide here until it’s over.

“Except the part where we starve to death.”

I’m not talking to you.

“Yes you are.”

No, I’m announcing it, to everyone. I’m trying to get someone to come back down here. Shut up and let me concentrate. I think I’ve got something.

It was small in stature and low to the ground, which was probably what made a safe hiding spot so appealing to it. It actually struggled with the stairs somewhat, but not by a lot. It had a fair amount of difficulty finding the keys at all, and when it did, they were on a hook out of reach. They kept having to shush the sylph both for their own focus, and to not startle their temporary thrall. With more than a little coaxing they were able to convince it to stand on a crate and reach the keys. From there it was relatively simple to get it to the door and unlock it, which was fortunate because they really were starting to get hungry. The door swung open and–

–damnit.

“What? Oh. Huh.”

It wasn’t a toddler but it was definitely preadolescent. Not a meal by any means. Not even a snack, really. It didn’t even have the decency of being an academic prodigy or anything. From a brief review of its long term memory they were fairly certain it was the child of one of the household servants, so there wasn’t any bargaining value.

Go hide in one of the cells but don’t lock yourself in. Come out when it’s quiet.

They moved for the stairs and the sylph followed, up past what appeared to be storage areas and a kitchen. When they reached the top of the stairs they stepped into utter chaos. Furniture had been overturned into makeshift barricades or smashed apart entirely, the air thick with dust and the metallic scent of blood. A pair of drow lay motionless where they’d fallen, while another crawled weakly toward a wall, leaving a dark smear behind. Across the room Rhea was still standing. One opponent pressed her from the front with quick, disciplined strikes while another circled to her flank, forcing her to yield ground a step at a time despite the pile of bodies she’d already made around her.

She was handling herself well, although it was taking her some effort. Her strikes were still precise, each parry and counter chosen to keep either attacker from gaining a clean opening. Neither had managed to land a decisive blow, yet neither could afford to ignore the other long enough to finish the fight. She wasn’t losing, but she wasn’t going to keep winning forever either.

She saw Xotchtil at the top of the stairs and hesitated for a split second, long enough for the drow flanking her to cut her on the upper arm. She immediately became more aggressive, pressing for openings she would have ignored a moment earlier. Her breathing had picked up and the strain was beginning to show. She wasn’t showing it in her face, but their presence had added an urgency to her movements that wasn’t benefiting her, and now that she wasn’t focusing on keeping them out, they could feel her unease.

Rhea’s two opponents hadn’t acknowledged their presence, but they were aware of them. No one in the fight was able to focus on actively keeping them out of their mind, but most of the information was instinctual senses and movement. Everyone noticed them, but no one except Rhea had time to identify them. This was just as well because Xotchtil was still hungry. They approached the drow closest to them, and by the time he looked back, it was too late.

What Xotchtil lacked in physical strength and size they were able to make up for in surprise and psionics. The few seconds the drow was psychically immobilized were enough to pull it off balance and to the floor and once their tentacles started breaking skin it had nowhere near the mental resiliency it needed to resist. IIt started screaming; they had neither the time nor the patience to construct a fantasy to placate it. They found the fissures of its skull and broke them open between the pressure at the tips of their tentacles and the floor.

Well. The sylph knew it didn’t eat plants, but at least now it wouldn’t be sniffing at her head every time she walked by.

Rhea was able to finish off the other combatant, although it seemed to take her slightly longer due to her unwillingness to put her back to them. She watched Xotchtil bearing down on the drow’s head with a detached interest. She kept her sword at the ready and her hand on the handle of the snake whip at her side, but otherwise stood her ground. She waited for them to finish, and as they pulled their tentacles out from under its scalp and rose from the floor, she put the tip of her sword up to the two of them.

“I’d ask how you got out, but I don’t actually care. I do need to know if you’re going to fight with me or against me.” Her breathing hadn’t slowed yet, but her mind was fully closed to them again.

All I need is sanctuary, for both of us.

“Sanctuary?” Her eyes narrowed, then darted off to the side in thought. “I have questions, but none that change the immediate answer. You have it, let’s go.” She gestured to the next room, but didn’t move ahead of them.

Xotchtil bent down to pick up the sword of the drow they’d fed on. The sylph snorted.

“Put that down before you hurt yourself,” but she could sense a vague sensation of …familiarity? No, muscle memory.

It’ll only last a day or so. I won’t be as good with it as the original owner, but hopefully it’ll be enough.

She shook her head then turned away, distracted again. Xotchtil made the mistake of turning to Rhea.

What now?

“I need to find my brother but he’s probably on the other side of the manor. It’s through–”

As she was pointing the sylph had already taken off running.

What’s over there!? but really the answer should have been obvious.

“There’s a courtyard on the way through to where I’m going but it’s full of attackers! I was planning on going around it.”

When they reached out to beg the elemental to slow down all they got back was a frenzied ecstasy.

You won’t need to.

They barely managed to catch her

She was so overwhelmed by the sensation of fresh air on her skin that she almost blindly wandered into the chaos. Xotchtil had to grab her by the arm and pull her back, and she obstinately tried to wiggle out of their grasp. They had to press the image of flashing steel into her mind before she finally, begrudgingly, cooperated. They pulled her back behind the doorjamb and fortunately hadn’t attracted any real attention.

I’m not going to stop you. Just…wait.

She was vibrating with barely contained excitement, but to her credit she did listen. She didn’t even want to hurt anyone in particular, but she hadn’t felt this much air in a long, long time. ‘I don’t like to do anything–I just do.’ She didn’t want to murder everyone in the courtyard with an electrical discharge, but it was going to happen.

Rhea brought up the rear, at least appearing to have calmed herself. She did seem unimpressed with their martial talents so far, but in her defense, she was right. Fortunately, direct combat wasn’t their plan anyway.

I think the whole courtyard is going to be affected. You should get your people out.

Rhea considered that advice. “I doubt I could make myself heard, and if I did, everyone would know, not just my people. Can you figure out which ones are ours and tell them to get out with your…?” she gestured vaguely at their face.

Again, few combatants in the courtyard had the presence of mind to keep them out, and it was relatively easy to determine sides on cursory examination. The sensation of defending one’s home was rather distinct from attacking someone else’s. They remembered the dwarves. Their home was already under siege when they were unceremoniously dragged up into the world.

The problem is getting them to obey. They don’t know me. Many of them won’t even like the feel of me.

They were arguably better than average at compelling one creature at a time. Many at a time was both difficult and carried a risk of catastrophic failure if the crowd dynamic shifted.

“Can you use my voice?”

That’s not how– but this wasn’t the time for that conversation. –I’ll try.

The first few recoiled, as expected. Not from the command itself, but from the sensation of something unfamiliar pressing against the edges of their thoughts. It took a few tries to capture Rhea’s cadence and, more importantly, her presence in a way that would overpower that. It would have been easier if she’d allowed more access to her own mind, but again, not the time.

They managed to create something resembling a tactical retreat at first. One guard dragged another back. A group backed toward an exit while looking over their shoulders. A wounded defender got pulled rather than abandoned.

Meanwhile, their sylph had slipped around just inside the courtyard and was tearing the air apart from the ground to the impossibly high ceiling of the cavern. It was almost like it was tearing apart two halves of a layered fabric…almost. It had braced itself in a stable pocket of air and gripped one half of the air in one hand and one half of the air in the other, steadily ripping them away from each other.

Not even the air–the energy inside the air. It was like a bit of stretchy sinew. The little elemental pulled and pulled on two intertwined bits of the universe, feeling the individual strands trying to snap back together. That was the intention. It was going to hold them apart for just a second, then let them snap back on anyone left in the cavern.

They watched the unlit torches, wall spikes, and the tips of banner posts begin to glow with the tension their little elemental was creating. It was odd getting to observe its elemental force without being the target for once.

The allies that had enough will to resist their influence began to feel the change in the air and started retreating, but so did the aggressors. The situation had shifted beyond strategic withdrawal. Xotchtil gave up on the careful retreat command and just started telling Rhea’s people to run.

A tipping point was reached. It was a combination of factors. It was the amount of allies that had gotten clear, plus how severe the situation was, plus how long their little sylph could hold the air apart, plus something in Rhea’s gut?

It’s time. Let go.

They thought they’d be clear of the blast, and the truth of it was that they were. They were clear of the main effect …and yet, there was no sense that was left undisturbed even being on the periphery. For what felt like several seconds, the world went white and the sound was so overwhelming it almost sounded like silence at first. They were actually worried they’d been permanently deafened until the screams managed to fade in around the ringing sound.

They hadn’t expected the scent of burning overwhelming their smell, or the tingling and tension that ripped through every muscle in their body. They didn’t expect the tang of metal at the tip of every tentacle as they tensed so hard to their face they screamed in pain. They didn’t expect to feel their own fingernails dig into their palms and the pain that had ripped through their arching back. It took every bit of willpower and physical strength they had just to stay standing.

The sylph was dazed, but it appeared to be more from the effort than the backlash, which they supposed made sense. This was literally her element. They glanced over toward Rhea, who did appear to be in significant discomfort. Compared to their shock, however, the resolve that remained on her face was startling.

The overall effect seemed to have netted positive, but not by much. By the psychic impressions of who made it out, a good measure of Rhea’s had escaped compared to the enemy. Still, it wasn’t a complete division; the electrical storm hadn’t been particularly selective about who in the area was hit. Those that did escape or survive had artifacts to their hearing and vision and numbness and pain throughout their bodies. They had managed to change the pure numbers in Rhea’s favor, but the combat that continued had become significantly more chaotic.

Rhea took the opportunity to break off along the border of the slightly emptier courtyard. They heard some kind of horn and drum combo in the distance. Again, the sylph moved for the open air, and Xotchtil nearly had to restrain her. Neither of them had Rhea’s agility or any other skill that would have gotten them across or around the border of the courtyard safely. They managed to pull her into a side room. She was tired, but not depleted.

Xotchtil was able to make do with a combination of the skill they’d absorbed and clumsily stunning the opponents psychically. The few moments each spent stunned was enough for the sword to find a throat or other vein. It wasn’t until one of them managed to sneak up on them that a problem occurred.

The drow managed to get ahold of one of its long tentacles. It wrapped it around their hand twice and went to slice it off. She felt its heart jolt and experienced an utterly surreal image of herself sinking her teeth into one of her–no, its–tentacles.

She pulled herself upright from the wall she’d braced herself on and jumped at its attacker, prickling with electricity. The drow’s hand jerked, and instead of slicing it off neatly, the blade curved up and ran lengthwise, slicing it in half up to about a quarter of the way up.

She finished off the drow while it stood frozen in shock. Xotchtil’s vision blurred together the two images of the past and present and it shoved her to the side as its mind reeled. The flash of memory had been a worst-case scenario, and yet somehow the present moment had still managed to outdo it. The halves of the appendage slipped around each other in its hands, quickly coating everything in thick, nearly black blood. in the outpouring She felt terror from it at an emotional depth she hadn’t realized those things even had.

Then the pain set in, and it hit the ground screaming. It had only done this to her once, when she’d inflicted a similar injury, but they were far from the only illithid to do it. That kept her on her feet longer than anyone in the room, but her vision still began narrowing to black as everyone else hit the floor.

All she could think was that she had only just found the air again, and she was already–

She fell out of the sky again, but this time instead of falling into the ocean she fell into the earth. She dropped deep into it and it caved in on top of her and smothered her. She had no idea how the body she was in was still alive when she couldn’t feel air entering it. She opened her eyes and saw a stone ceiling crushing down on her. She couldn’t move. He’d bound her again, this time inside of the earth instead of on it.

Xotchtil woke up sucking in a massive gulp of air. Their vision returned but only as blurry shapes of light and dark. Their ears were too full of static to hear anything. They couldn’t pick up their head. They coughed, then gagged, then threw up. Their vision finally cleared into a splash of mucous over the split ribbons of their face. There was still a small stream of blood steadily pulsing out of one of the halves. They puked again. There was a faint scuffling across the room, and words they couldn’t make out over the static. A pair of boots swam into view. There was some murmuring, then the boots walked away. Their ears popped and the static faded.

“What was that?”

“Something the illithid’s thrall did. It’s extremely destructive. Should be dispelled… for now.”

They were able to make out the shape of a large… lizard…? behind Rhea. Someone was riding on it in a saddle.

“With Lloth’s blessing, praise be, aaand!!!–you’re welcome.” Matron Malthra tipped her head to them with one hand splayed over her chest.

A chagrined sigh, “That too.” Tazennin was behind her in the saddle, holding onto her waist for dear life, but he still grimaced a little when she rolled her hips into him.

“Alright, well. Rhea, it looks like you’ve got this. We’ve got an afterparty to go to!”

“You know, maybe I should stay behind with Rhea. Just in case? What if she does …something else?” He gestured at the sylph laying next to Xotchtil, still barely conscious. She seemed to be under the impression that she’d been buried alive and was suffocating, but that wasn’t a new feeling for her. She was also visibly breathing even in their blurry view from across the room.

The young matron sighed deeply and leaned back into him, “Do you promise to stay out of trouble?”

“Altar boy’s honor,” he smiled stiffly as he quickly but clumsily dismounted.

Rhea sighed, then looked down at Xotchtil. Her expression moved from dispassionate assessment to a vague disgust. She went and got a lantern off the wall and crouched down, careful to only let the bottom of her boots touch the mess. Her lip curled as she reached down to grab the intact base of their split tentacle while drawing out a knife.

What are you doing? they finally managed to project.

“Stopping the bleeding. Hold still.”

No, no, no, please. Can’t you just heal it? Or stitch it together? OR SOMETHING!?

“I have about a hundred more people to get to who might get half that if they’re very lucky. Hold. Still.”

They tried to loosen her grip and squirm away. Rhea groaned in annoyance and straddled them, pinning their upper arms under her shins.

Just cut a little lower maybe? Or more carefully!? Please? PLEASE! At least JUST W–

She cut. They screamed. Rhea grimaced at the psionic burst. She opened the lantern and jammed the fresh cut end into the flame for a few seconds. They screamed louder. She dropped the tentacle and pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead in significant discomfort for a few seconds before finally just slapping them.

“SHUT. UP!” She yelled while raising her hand again.

They did.

Rhea sighed, and cleaned her knife and hands off on Xotchtil’s shirt. She put the knife away and stood up, looking down at the mess on her pant legs in disgust. Xotchtil laid on the floor in silent shock.

“I think it’s time we talked about the terms of your sanctuary. First of all–” she pointed at the sylph, “–keep that thing under control.”

At the word ‘control’ the sylph’s panic slipped sideways into rage. She started moving her limbs, slowly and disjointedly, but moving.

Just let them say what they need to say.

“Today it hurt a lot more of my enemies than my friends and I can reconcile that. If that changes your welcome will expire.”

The elemental was not taking any of this well. The situation had changed around her and the storm in her mind hadn’t found its new pattern yet. She couldn’t strike out with lightning but (based on previous experiences) this just increased the likelihood of her doing something even more insane. There was also a significant part of her that saw this as just another ploy on their own part.

It’s not! I’m– with a true thrall it was important to project calm. They needed to know you were in control of the situation. They also knew that wouldn’t work here. They stared her down –I’M SCARED. She just cut off half of my face! I’M. SCARED. I’m scared they’re going to kill us. Or at least put us back in that box, but for good.

She suddenly relaxed slightly… well, she didn’t relax, but she had stilled. They realized she was feeling their heart race. They let it race.

They don’t like your kind, the way you look at least. They’ve gone to war over it. Let them think you’re mine. Please. At least for now.

“–also!? Stay out of people’s heads unless you’re asked.”

At that, the corner of the sylph’s mouth twitched up, but she stayed quiet.

Rhea turned on her heel and left, leaving them to drag themselves up out of the blood and vomit. They didn’t offer to help clean up, and neither Rhea nor anyone else asked. Even without directly probing they could sense the general unease directed at them by most if not all members of the house.

They wandered, out of place, until they found themselves on a terrace overlooking the courtyard. She felt at home sitting on top of the railing, legs swinging out into the open air. Her mind was a flash of random images, some of which they recognized, and others they didn’t. They sat themselves against the back wall, legs splayed out in front of them. With their face asymmetrical, especially the loss of a long one, they had trouble balancing while walking. It was exhausting, especially on top of everything else that had happened. After a while she turned to glance back at them.

“So what do we do now?”

Same thing as always I suppose, survive.

“Not much of a goal.”

It’s the only one we’ve consistently met. What were you hoping for?

She didn’t answer that.

Do you miss the surface?

She missed the southern sky quite a bit, actually but there was also a deep anxiety layered into the longing. They pressed, briefly but curiously, and the anxiety suddenly spiked. It was like her mind was running away from that thought for some reason. They changed the subject.

My skin has gotten quite dry. I’ve been thinking about asking if there’s somewhere I can soak, like a bath or something.

She glanced down at the fountain in the courtyard. Through her eyes it looked as though the water held a fair amount of blood and… other things… in it. A picture formed in her head and she chuckled slightly.

She swung her legs around somewhat carelessly, and her back briefly dipped out towards the open air. In the end however, her feet came down on solid tile and she hopped forward towards them. She sat to their left, facing them, but leaning against the wall.

Her eyes had focused on their injured tentacle, the long one. She slowly raised her hand and reached towards their face. They didn’t flinch or pull away from her, but they certainly didn’t turn into the touch either. They tried to act like they didn’t care either way, like they weren’t scared of her. They doubted they were completely successful.

With the back of her fingers she gently picked up the one she’d damaged herself, the shorter one. The very tip had just started growing back in. Most of it would probably grow back eventually, but it would also probably stay shorter than the others.

“Will the long one grow back too?”

They sighed, I don’t know. It’s not impossible but… The priestess, Rhea? She burned it to seal it. I don’t know what that will do.

“You feel funny when you walk. When you’re all the way in my head. I can feel you’re off balance. I didn’t think it was that heavy.”

It’s not, it’s like… Well I suppose you don’t know what it’s like to be an animal with whiskers.

She briefly pictured them as a cat and giggled to herself. They weren’t able to hide their own amusement. Even a week away from the dragon made the holes left in their psyche mortifyingly obvious.

She dropped her hand and frowned slightly. They saw a flash of the drow’s hand slipping and the blade sliding up the length of the tentacle.

Oh don’t tell me you’re guilty now. You were quite pleased with yourself for sinking your teeth into me.

Guilt wasn’t the right word, but the emotion was so muddled there wasn’t really any RIGHT word.

She flopped both shoulders back against the stone wall and stared out at the cavern. If she didn’t look too hard she could pretend the little spots of glowing fungi were stars.

The drow pretend they’re stars too. They also miss the surface. It’s why they don’t like how you look. You look like the people that forced them down here.

A series of dark thoughts flashed across her mind so quickly all they caught was a deep sense of resentment and a desire for vengeance. Interestingly, they were almost certain it had little or nothing to do with them. Again, they didn’t press; this was one of her more peaceful moods. They weren’t ready for it to end.

The sylph felt a small shift in the air and stiffened, her eyes snapping to the doorway. Rhea’s brother, the wizard, rounded the corner.

“My mother would like to speak to you.”

Matron Selca Blundyth was ancient, but otherwise very different in person than she appeared in secondhand memories. To others’ recollection, she was half asleep most of the time, and when awake, she either said things that didn’t make much sense or acquiesced to whatever her daughters told her was the best idea (or, recently, the matron of another house entirely).

In person… she did seem tired, so that much was true, but it was more aggrieved than inattentive. She didn’t turn to acknowledge them walking in, but they saw her eyes flicker toward them and away without her ever moving her head. Even stranger, they got absolutely nothing from her psionically–not even emotion. They could sense that she was there and alive, and that was it.

Her daughter Noime, on the other hand, was constantly exuding a feeling of insecurity. She busied herself making sure her mother was comfortable, pouring out some water for her and putting her feet up. As they made their way to the center of the room, Noime straightened her own clothes and sat down next to her mother, holding her hand.

There was a long silence. Noime finally broke it. “Mother wants to know what your business is in Eryndlyn.”

They still didn’t have a good answer to that question.

We’re just looking for somewhere to stay for a while.

Noime looked expectantly at her mother. Nothing.

“Okay, but, um–why should we let you stay here?”

…We can go if you need us to. We did break out of your holding cells, but we also helped fight off your invaders. If that’s not enough, we can probably find another house to take us in.

“No! No, that’s okay. We can probably find somewhere to put you…”

Behind them, Tazennin sighed. They caught a tiny flicker of annoyed boredom. “Kelaufein didn’t make it. They can have his quarters.”

“Did anyone ask you?!” shouted Noime.

There was a long silence.

Noime recovered. “…Some of our fallen have left open living space if you would like to stay and serve our house.”

Also, she– they hesitated –my thrall needs to eat. And I need a bath, if you know where I can get some warm water and a tub.

“The goblin slaves can attend to you when they’re done with the rest of their duties this evening.”

Another long pause. She suddenly shouted at Tazennin, “Well, go show them!”

They turned to see him shrug and then stride out into the hall. Both of them followed, but the sylph trailed behind Xotchtil, watching Tazennin carefully from around their shoulders. When she looked at him, she seemed to feel compressed for some reason they couldn’t quite identify.

Two turns in, Tazennin turned to go around a corner ahead of them and froze. Footsteps closed in, and he suddenly tucked his chin and averted his eyes to the floor. “Matron Malthra.”

“Oh, I think we’re well acquainted enough now for you to call me Maluarra.”

He poorly masked the pain in his smile. “Of course.”

She walked far enough around the corner to see the two of them behind Tazennin, and although she was surprised, it didn’t seem to bother her. “Little Lightning!” she exclaimed, smiling widely at the sylph. She turned to Xotchtil. “–And the Mind Flayer. Selca keeps such interesting houseguests. It’s just one of many things I’ve always admired about her.” She was holding some kind of bottle, which she turned and offered to Tazennin. “Another is her taste in fine wines. I don’t think she’ll mind us borrowing this one.”

“Unfortunately, I promised Mother I would find these two somewhere to sleep, so we’ll have to–”

“Nonsense! I’ll come along, and when you’re done, we can enjoy each other’s company!”

Xotchtil caught a flicker of anxiety as the wizard glanced back at them. Tazennin finally managed some kind of noncommittal noise and returned to the path he was showing them. Maluarra Malthra trailed along behind, turning the bottle in her hands. She was somewhat difficult to read, but not impossible, and it matched her exterior affect quite well; she was riding a high of confidence and success.

Tazennin was silent both before and after this encounter, and more or less opaque to Xotchtil the entire time. The sylph, however, felt his heart rate steadily climb. By the last two turns, they were feeling the tiniest bleedover of anxiety from him. They finally made it to what they assumed was their destination because he stopped, but he didn’t acknowledge… anything. He just stood there in silence for a long, awkward moment.

…So, is this the correct…?

He shrugged. More silence.

Maluarra finally broke it. “Well, if that’s everything, we can head back to yours!”

He was facing away from them, but his mental defenses gave way. There was still no detectable higher-level thought, but Xotchtil was hit with a wave of nausea, terror, and hopelessness. His body visibly stiffened, and the sylph felt his heart rate shoot high enough that he might as well have been sprinting. Something must have shown on his face, because Maluarra’s eyes went wide and she froze.

Another long pause, but again, Maluarra was the one to take responsibility for breaking it. “…I seem to have miscalculated.” Another pause, but only for a beat. “My apologies. I think… I think I’ll just… go, actually.” She pushed the bottle into Xotchtil’s chest, then turned and walked away.

Tazennin stood still, facing away from them, taking long, slow breaths until his heart rate was back under control, or something close to it, anyway. He finally turned to them and eyed Xotchtil with an unreadable expression. “Did you–” he took one more long, rattling breath “–did you do something?”

More silence.

Tazennin unlocked the door, handed them the key, and left.

“Did you do something?”

I could barely tell any of what she was thinking. I doubt I COULD have.

The room was somewhat simple. It had a small window, a bed big enough for about one and a half people, a desk and chair, and a small, short shelf with a few books and some basic household mending tools.

The sylph took the bottle and uncorked it, then opened the window and leaned out. She took a long drink straight from the bottle. It was a good wine in that she didn’t immediately register the taste of the alcohol in it.

The promised goblin showed up rather quickly, actually, with a skin of water and a small sack of cheese and dried meat. Another goblin was towing a tub half full of water, a large square of linen, and a pot that was boiling. It dumped the boiling pot into the tub, silently walked out, and shut the door behind itself.

The sylph took the bag and started snacking, but they could tell starting the bottle on an empty stomach hadn’t been a wise decision for her. She pulled the chair over to the window and leaned back out while working on the food and water. Xotchtil stripped down, sank into the tub, and closed their eyes.

They heard and felt a vague rustle of movement, and suddenly the sylph… climbed into the tub!?!?!? They were, metaphorically speaking, speechless. She had stripped down as well, and there was clearly not enough room in the tub for two people.

“Oh, this is nice, actually.” She settled in with her knees up to her chest in a manner they could literally feel was uncomfortable. She obstinately stared them down. “What? I’m not letting you hog the hot water. I could tell it felt nice with the… thingy.” She gestured vaguely between the two of them, then took another swig from the bottle, which she had brought with her. She spilled a little in the bathwater. Again, speechless. She leaned back a little and held herself up by her arms hooked over the lip of the tub. Her shins pushed uncomfortably against their thighs.

They consoled themselves by listening to her thoughts as they wandered. They were a lot slower and easier to follow when full of alcohol. Instead of trying to track an object whirling around the funnel of a tornado, they were watching a slip of paper flutter gently back and forth to the floor. It was actually somewhat calming.

…So. What’s it like to be a thunderstorm?

Her eyes closed and her mouth widened into a blissful smile. “Like doing whatever the hell I want.”

It was a sort of three-way dance between her, a cold wind, and a water elemental she’d spent the better part of a hot summer day lazily wicking up into herself. She swelled with the heat and began to climb into the sky, twisting and curling the hot, salty moisture up with her as she went.

The bottle started to slip out of her hand, and they carefully caught it and set it on the floor next to the tub.

The coastline below them fell away in a hazy ribbon of sand and green, the ocean glittering beneath the afternoon sun. She rose higher, delighted by her own buoyancy, gathering more water as she climbed. The water came willingly, swirling around her in warm ribbons, laughing as she dragged it higher.

Then they met the cold front.

It pressed its weight down over her, driving itself against her rising warmth and fighting her for control of the water. She twisted away and surged upward; it shoved back. They rolled together through the sky, neither quite winning, each stealing little pieces of the other as they wrestled with the water caught between them.

She sat forward. The memory projected itself onto her corporeal body in a way they found difficult to describe with words.

The water condensed into droplets, froze into crystals, melted again, and was hurled through the growing cloud in a dizzying game of catch. Ice struck ice. Droplets battered crystals. Every collision passed tiny prickles of electricity between them, while the constant churning pulled the charges apart and carried them to different corners of the cloud.

Soon the whole thing was crackling.

She giggled and wiggled up on her knees to lean over them. Oh. That’s what that sensation was. Admittedly, that was one they’d never paid too much attention to. It’s not like thralls needed instructions to do that.

They snort-laughed. I don’t even have the anatomy to do that.

She curiously tugged at one of their remaining intact tentacles. They quickly pulled back and away. Absolutely not. No.

She sighed and sat back a little, already lost in her memory again.

She rose through the center of the dance, warm and laughing, while the cold wind plunged and curled around her, and the water spun madly between them. Positive and negative charges gathered in different places until the air itself began to strain beneath the imbalance.

Then something reached too far.

The sky flashed.

For one impossible instant, the three of them were connected by a brilliant white thread of lightning.

The air exploded outward with the shock of it.

Thunder rolled over the coastline.

And then the water, finally too heavy for either of them to keep holding, came tumbling out of the cloud in a great silver sheet of rain.

She followed it downward.

The cold wind chased after her.

And somewhere below, the ocean waited to be gathered up all over again.

She slumped over to the side, her cheek resting on her upper arm, still hanging over the side of the tub. Her legs were folded awkwardly between theirs again. The alcohol had well and truly saturated her at this point.

There was also a tower by the coastline, on a high outcropping of rock. Humans liked to do that, although she never understood why. Sometimes, as she danced with the ocean and the other winds, they would nudge the structures or even parts of the cliff itself off into the ocean. (Earth wasn’t one of her frequent dance partners, but it did join in occasionally.) The humans would always come back and rebuild them eventually. It seemed silly to her to bother, but that was most things humans did.

Then the tower spoke. They could feel its presence rush inside of her.

“Oh! I KNEW you weren’t actually dead.”

She could barely pick her head up, but her mind filled with blind panic. Her thoughts tried to run away from it, but they were too slow and clumsy.

What–no, WHO is that? they asked. She had turned paler? No, grayer. Or was that the light from the clouds forming in the sky overhead?

PLEASE DON’T ASK THAT–HE’LL HEAR YOU.

“Wait… Who are you with right now?” said the third presence.

The substance had left her wide open to them and, they realized, wide open to everything else. They suddenly realized that her tendency to obfuscate thoughts with impulsivity wasn’t developed for them, or likely any illithid. She was already linked to something… else. And that something else was the scariest thing she could imagine. They both needed to get away from it. They both needed to get away from it right now.

For a split second, they were overwhelmed by curiosity. If they just waited, they knew they would find out the answer to almost every question they had about her. And despite the sheer terror in her mind, they knew that if they really wanted to know, she would let them. She would have to; as wide open as her mind was right now, it was hardly any effort to push that much further. Honestly, they probably didn’t even have to do anything, and it wouldn’t take long for whatever this was to show itself. They could feel it prying its way in, and she was completely helpless to direct her thoughts elsewhere.

They made a decision.

Half of the memory simply ceased to exist next to her. To her right was open air over a sea, and to her left was a vast black emptiness. She could sense there wasn’t even air in it. There was no light, no sound, nothing coming from it. She tried to move her hand toward it, and a staticky pain filled her whole body and made her shake.

I know from past experience you’ll probably ignore this, but don’t mess with that. If you’re not careful, you’ll remember it again too soon and it will… hurt.

She fell under the water, both literally and in her memory. Or maybe she had already fallen into the water. They had been so caught up in her memory that they hadn’t realized she had slumped forward and fallen face-first into the water in front of them. She flailed wildly.

DON’T BREATHE.

They wrestled her upright and had to grab the back of her head to keep it from whipping back. They curled their fingers into her hair to keep her head out of the water while they jumped out of the tub, then dragged her out after. They stopped with her halfway out and let her hang over the side upside down to let the water drain out of her airway. Her head swam as she continued holding her breath.

Well, shit. She’d done as she was told. They actually hadn’t expected that.

BREATHE!

She did, and the remaining water in her throat left her wheezing, then coughing, then vomiting on the stone floor.

They finished hauling her out of the tub. She lay shivering on the cold floor. They grabbed the square of linen and dried themselves off, then got to work on her. When they were both (mostly) dry, they dragged her across the floor toward the bed, then realized they had nowhere near the strength to actually drag her up onto it. They dragged the cushioned mat onto the floor instead, then rolled her on top of it.

They sighed with annoyance. They knew that bottle was going to be trouble. It was chilly in the room, so they threw her legs over their lap and threw the blanket over both of them, which was at least a familiar arrangement by now.

They woke up late in their old quarters next to the laboratory. The thralls and livestock would be getting agitated if no one had fed them yet. They pulled on overclothes and their boots and activated the flesh golem that handled the manual labor for them. It had been a gift from… someone. It was someone they liked and had actually gotten along quite well with, but they couldn’t remember their name or face and trying was starting to give them a headache.

Or maybe it was her headache? Or maybe both. They did their best to untangle their thoughts and limbs and sat up. They had fallen on their side during the night and she had apparently spent quite some time tossing and turning. She was now partially facedown with her shoulders tilted opposite the side they’d left her on faceup.

She wasn’t all the way awake yet, and was sleeping somewhat fitfully. The main thing seeming to keep her from panicking was that her brain hadn’t settled on any one nightmare. It kept flicking rapidly between the starts of various different ones.

They tried to remember the sound made between her and the other wind as they first hit each other. It was a moderately high pitched whistle with an undulating volume and pitch. They did their best to imitate the input of that noise. They were pretty sure they had failed to recreate the noise they were intending to, because she heard herself call out to a canyon instead, as she bounced side to side off the walls down the length of it. Either way, it pushed her in a better direction.

There wasn’t a lot of water left in the bottle the goblin had dropped off. They walked out of the room and tried to make it back the way they’d come the previous night. They still hadn’t adapted to the missing chunk of their left tentacle, and they had to stop about once every third hallway or so to lean on a wall for balance, and it made it hard to navigate from memory.

Fortunately it didn’t take long to come across one of the goblins they kept for labor. They pulled the information they needed out of its head then remembered what Rhea said about doing that, and briefly went back to make sure the goblin wouldn’t remember. It wasn’t difficult but the goblin also wasn’t very smart. They made a mental note to try to stop doing that.

The nearest water pump was back on the terrace they’d landed on last night. Between having been there and the goblin’s spatial memory they made it there and back in a reasonable amount of time. The sylph’s mind was grinding its way back into consciousness.

She groaned. One side of her head hurt a lot more than the other. They were pretty sure this was a normal side effect of what they’d done and that it would probably go away, but they eyed her face as they settled in next to her. They reached over to turn her face up towards them and her face screwed up in a pained frown. She swatted at them with both hands. Yup, everything was symmetrical.

Your head will hurt less once you drink some water.

Thinking at her was exceptionally painful. She had covered her ears partway through the statement but it obviously hadn’t done anything since the sound wasn’t actually entering through her ears. They tried the sensation of cold water in her mouth, which turned out to be less offensive. They uncorked the bottle and handed it to her. She sat up and tipped some of it into her mouth with an uncharacteristic amount of caution.

“What happened?”

You–

“uUAugh. Too loud.”

They sighed

_{–you got drunk and had one of your bad memories.}

“What was it about?”

_{if I told you it would come back}

They thought for a second.

_{…also I don’t actually know what it was about. You wanted it to go away enough that you actually let me MAKE it go away.}

A trail of thought began that was promptly thrown off the side of a cliff by a spike of pain through her left eye. She folded over onto the floor where she was hit by a wave of nausea. They quickly grabbed what appeared to be some kind of waste container stashed under the bedframe for her to vomit into. When the pain and nausea faded enough for her to sit back up she turned on them,“what the FUCK did you do?”

_{You WANTED it to go away!}

“I wouldn’t let you do shit.”

I don’t even think I c–

She grimaced and swatted their shoulder.

_{–sorry. I don’t think I could’ve if you hadn’t let me.}

They felt a surge of indignant pride under her discomfort.

She drank some more water.

Her headache started fading around the middle of the morning. At least she was pretty sure it was morning. The lights outside had gotten a little brighter, and she could see down the cliff the manor was on into some kind of river. The priestess (‘Rhea?’) came to see them, looking exhausted. She asked Xotchtil for something to do with checking over imported slave labor which they were happy to help with, that being what they had been doing for… years? Probably decades now that she thought about it. She supposed they had to earn their room and board somehow.

They told her to stay in the room–something about her ‘not knowing how to behave’ or ‘if they realize you’re a force of nature I don’t actually have any control over they’ll probably kill us both to be on the safe side.’ That logic lost whatever appeal it had by noon.

She was actually just going to find her way back to the terrace for fresh air (no, really!), but a scent caught her at a turn in the hall–sweet oil and spiced wax cutting through stale tallow and stone dust. She followed it up three steps and through an archway carved with spiderwebs.

Inside, the room was soft with low couches and thick carpet. A brass burner gave off purple smoke. On the far side, a visitor sat waiting on a bench of carved bone. Her bare feet sank into the pile.

A servant stepped out from behind a silk screen holding a pitcher of wine. His eyes went wide. He set the pitcher down with a sharp clack, grabbed her tunic by the scruff, and dragged her back. He shoved her out into the hall, shouted a string of quick words, and slammed the heavy wood door.

Warm air pulled her down a set of stairs at the end of the hall. She followed it through a door cut straight into the stone. Inside, the room was narrow and hot. Three stone workbenches ran parallel down the space. Small oil lamps hung from overhead iron chains, casting amber light onto dark rock. The air smelled of carved wood, resin, dried glue, and oil.

At a central bench, a drow artisan sat on a wooden stool, working alone on a long, narrow stringed instrument. Dozens of small metal tuning pegs were already set along its neck, and a dense, silvery web of wire stretched across its dark body. He plucked them individually in sequence to test their tone against each other.

She stepped toward a crack in the ceiling over and behind him to feel a cold draft rolling into the heat from the fire. Her shoulder bumped a wooden rack holding carved instrument necks. He jumped to catch the rack before it fell and snapped a quick, angry string of what mostly sounded like curses in Drow. With him glaring at her, she stepped back out into the hallway and worked her way back up through the stairs to the upper floors.

In a room at the end of a high passage, a strip of black silk hung from a wall peg over an air vent. The breeze caught it. The fabric floated horizontal, weightless, rippling like dark water. She stopped and stood there, watching it move. She held her hand under the weave, feeling the current lift the threads.

A drow tailor stepped out from behind a paper screen carrying a measuring stick and long iron shears. He looked her up and down. She was still wearing what she’d crawled through the caverns in. He clicked his tongue three times, shaking his head.

He disappeared behind the screen and came back with a folded stack of clean, coarse grey cloth, the same she saw the house servants wearing. He shoved them against her chest, gesturing sharply from her rags to the clean pile, then pointing behind the screen.

She’d never really liked what the illithids had put her in anyway.

They finished the task Rhea had requested. The house had received a shipment of fresh laborers from the surface. By the way Rhea told them about this they suspected that there was something mildly illicit about the way they’d been obtained, even by Drow standards. That plus some kind of factional conflict. The drow herding them into the holding pens gave off a feeling of unease, like they didn’t want to get caught in this part of the city.

Rhea wanted the laborers sorted into skilled artisanal laborers (weaving, fine metalwork and the like), vs unskilled manual laborers (mining, farming, or moving things). She said this normally took about a week to sort out, but was hoping Xotchtil could cut it back to two or three days. Given that this had actually been their primary job for over a decade, the entire task, beginning to end, took most of the morning.

They went to find Rhea to tell her they were done, but when they found her she was busy talking to her brother about a shipment of some kind of luxury magical good. They didn’t want to interrupt, and as the conversation progressed, it became apparent that neither had noticed them.

Rhea smiled,“–and Narala is coming back next month with more. She says the flower essence is actually back in season now. You know she says it also makes a very potent pheromone.”

“Not that she’s ever needed it to get whatever she wants out of you.”

“What I do in my free time doesn’t affect–”

Tazennin snapped,“What? Doesn’t affect what? The rest of us!? ME? Except it DOES, actually.”

“How?”

“While you were curled up in bed with her last month, I apparently got sold to a woman who’s going to torture me to death.”

“That’s a little dramatic.”

“Everyone knows about her mother’s little ‘parties’”

“That’s just her mother, who’s dead now anyway! Also I can probably talk mom out of it easily enough.”

“What so I can get sold again next month when you’re not paying attention again? Mom’s like 600 years old. Isn’t it time you put her out of her misery?”

“It’s safer and easier to use her as a buffer. She’ll die one of these days on her own, I may as well get some use out of her in the meantime.”

“No you’re thinking about ditching me and running off to the overbright with Narala.”

“…so what if I did?”

“Oh fuck off.”

“No, seriously! You could come with me! Or if you really want to stay here Noime or Castre will take over. Life will go on with or without me!”

“Noime’s an idiot, Castre’s insane, and the overbright is a fucking fairytale. You’re the sister that’s not going to kill me or get me killed and you’re hanging me out to dry.” Tazennin stormed off.

Rhea sighed and turned to walk in the other direction. She spotted Xotchtil and froze, eyes wide. There was a long silence between the two of them, during which she got her face back under control.

…I finished the task you requested.

At this she was taken aback,“Wait, seriously?”

I used to do that all the time. It was actually most of what I did both where I was born and in my second colony.

She looked thoughtful for a second,“How good are you at like… making people do things. Mind Flayers can do that, right?”

Decent. I don’t think I could do it to you easily, but most of the workers you had me evaluate I could work on individually. Crowds are difficult and risky, like you saw yesterday.

“But one person is easy? Maybe especially if they weren’t all there?”

Depends on what you mean by ‘not all there.’ Insanity can be a mixed bag.

“But you could try?”

She had been aiming for the terrace again but at least managed to find herself in the open courtyard. It had been well cleaned since yesterday’s incident; the blood had been scoured from the paved stone and the pillars had been redressed. The burnt flora had been either righted and treated, or, more often, replaced with freshly glowing decorative fungi.

In the open courtyard, a drow woman sat with another of those broad, forty-string instruments carved from something that looked like wood but didn’t resonate the same way. Beside her, a goblin tapped a small hollow block of the same material with hardwood sticks. Click. Click-click.

The drow’s voice and plucked strings pushed out eleven squished, off-pitch notes that didn’t fit into any musical scale she’d encountered on the surface. Surface music was very tidy. The notes were cleanly calculated so that the sound waves locked together in smooth, comfortable pockets.

Instead of blending together neatly, these sound waves bumped into each other out of sync. It made the air tremble with a weird, fast buzz–like a web of tiny vibrational wobbles expanding through the room. Down here, trying to play a normal surface-style third felt completely wrong; standard notes slammed clumsily against this strange drow scale.

The drow plucked a string and let her voice slide downward, dropping just a fraction of a note. The sylph matched her, ditching distinct step-by-step notes entirely to glide her voice down then upward across three string pitches at once. Bending her voice through that tight scale created a strange kind of friction in the air, as if the mismatched sound waves were physically rubbing against one another.

The drow eyed her curiously, then stopped singing entirely. She handed the melody over and focused completely on playing the instrument itself. Her thumbs swept the low bass strings to shift the underlying sound while her fingers flew across the high ones.

Without the drow’s voice masking it, the instrument’s sound became distinctly… strange. Back in the workshop, the instrument the craftsman was working on was finely made, but the sound was a bit muddy or dull when pushed through the damp cave air. This frame looked like it was made of the same material (a bit older and more worn maybe), but didn’t sound like it. It didn’t blur, soften, or lose its edge. It was almost like it was too precise, even within this scale of notes that slid more than stepped. It was like the notes were able to ignore the quality of the air they rippled through.

The sylph glided her voice through the narrow gaps of the eleven-note grid, riding the goblin’s dry, rhythmic beat. The instrument’s eerie frame vibrated with supernatural perfection, throwing every tone clean down the stone tunnels without a single drop of muffling or distortion.

They played for a few hours until the drow stopped, either having something better to do or just having gotten bored. The sylph looked towards the terrace and tried to figure out her way back up to it.

When they realized she was missing from their room they only panicked a little. It felt like she was still nearby somewhere, and that she felt contented which ruled out both her being hurt or being excited enough to accidentally hurt someone else… probably. They could feel a sensation of air on skin which could really be good or bad all things considered.

The roof hadn’t been their first guess, but it wasn’t exactly their last either. They did check the terrace, but mostly because it was on the way anyway. From there it was more of a game of hot and cold as to where they felt her presence the most strongly, working their way up through the floors until there weren’t any more to work up through. Of course she was on the roof. Why wouldn’t she be?

The very top floor of the manor had a slanted ceiling to accommodate the slope of the roof. There was a dormer with a window poking out onto it and they were able to see her after leaning out a lot farther than was comfortable. Where did she get fresh clothes? They decided they were better off not knowing.

They decided to try a gentle suggestion to start. It was nice and warm inside. It would be nice to maybe just come inside instead of lying out near the edge of the roof.

She rolled over onto her stomach, picked her head up, and glared at them.

No, of course not. Obviously.

Can you please come in? What are you going to do if you slip? Sometimes it’s like you don’t realize you don’t have wings anymore.

Her anger spiked–again, wrong thing to say.

They really hated being honest; I’d feel safer if you came inside.

The anger immediately shifted into playfully dismissive amusement.

No, really. Every new thing I learn about this place makes it seem less and less safe and–

They let out a low, rattling sigh.

–and my odds have always been better when we’re together.

She also sighed, then slowly crawled back across the roof towards them.

She was dreaming of the desert again. They were just conscious enough themselves to try and figure out a way to redirect her nightmare when–

–her left hand slapped the knife down in the dirt next to her head. Her other hand finished pulling the chunk free and slapped it down into the dirt in front of her face. The veins still dripped poison out of the ragged edges; she’d have to keep going.

She reached back and dug her fingers in to pull the wing taut before she started sawing again. She pictured someone else’s hands doing it, but trying to picture a face made her head hurt. Someone else was doing this TO her; her hands weren’t her own right now. It was true enough in spirit and she needed to believe it wholeheartedly to finish this.

She managed to pull another chunk free. Still poison. Fuck this, she wasn’t getting caught and she wasn’t going back. Not this time. She flipped her grip on the knife and started digging directly into the skin of her back where the base of her wing met her spine. There wasn’t any point leaving them in shreds anyway.

She wasn’t getting caught again, and she wasn’t going back, no matter what it took.

Rhea came to see then in the morning again. She brought some kind of tea and sweets to share, then stood there awkwardly when she remembered Xotchtil didn’t eat that kind of food. The elemental was happy to dispose of their portion for them. They fascinated themselves with her sense of taste while Rhea figured out how to articulate her request.

It was some kind of fruit in crystallized sugar to preserve it by controlling the moisture level. It had been wrapped in some kind of flaky glutinous crust. The tea had an herbal note to it cut with a mild sweetness of it’s own. Xotchtil wondered idly how House Blundyth sourced surface luxuries in the middle of Eryndlyn. She drank the tea and ate the entire tray before Rhea could being herself to eat one. They almost expected her to reach for the cup in Rhea’s hand. Thankfully, she did not, and Rhea was too preoccupied with whatever was on her mind to notice.

Rhea stared at the empty plate. “Mom’s… slipping. She’s been losing it for a century.”

Xotchtil didn’t know what to say to that. They just waited. The sylph flopped onto the bed and lay there contentedly.

Rhea kept talking. Faster now, like she wanted it over with. “It started small. Forgetting names. Mixing people up. Then she got angry. Frustrated over nothing. We stopped punishing the servants when she’d snap. We just had them work downstairs for a few days until she forgot.”

She paused. She looked at Xotchtil, almost pleading with them to figure out the point of all this so she could stop talking. Xotchtil didn’t know where to start.

Rhea swallowed and looked away, guilty. “Now she’s mostly just blank. Sometimes she wakes up, like when M–” She cut herself off.

“Noime swears she’s still in there. Castre and Taz gave up. And I…” She rubbed her arm. “It was actually kind of nice for that part in the middle. I was always her favorite so she listened to me the most. I got to run the house, but still blame her when things went wrong.”

She pointed at the empty tray again. “Then Maluarra Malthra showed up. Mom hated her mother, but she came to a party and Mom just… lit up. It’s the only time she smiles anymore. It was hard to watch. But now she’s giving Taz to her. If Maluarra is anything like her mother… he’s dead. Or worse. You know the Vhaeraunite rumors.”

Xotchtil had no idea who the Vhaeraunites were but was too afraid to ask. They’d find someone to pull the information from later. Rhea picked at her nails. There was a long silence before she finally found her point.

“Even if it is her time soon. I can’t back out of the deal for her. She has to do it before she… goes. But I can’t talk her out of things anymore. Not alone. I need help.”

You want me to compel her to break the deal?.

“No.” Rhea shook her head. “Not compel. Just… shift her back to listening to me. She’s suggestible enough with Malthra. It shouldn’t be hard for something like you to just get in her head and nudge her back the other way.”

Another long silence.

“And you’ll always be welcome in this house once I’m in control.”

Well that was that, they supposed.

They told the sylph to stay put again, but they weren’t as desperate about it this time. She’d managed to get clean clothing without even speaking the language; she could probably manage to not kill herself or anyone else for a few hours. Probably.

They decided the best approach was for Xotchtil to wait outside while Rhea provided a familiar presence and got her mother into a comfortable position. This would be easier if they could keep her calm and unaware. After a while Rhea carefully called out with her mind, letting them in juuust enough to silently cue them, then slammed her mind shut again.

Rhea had faced her mother’s chair away from the doorway and towards a window overlooking the city center. The city lights and overhead fungi glowed softly, turning the tiny overlapping ripples of the lake into a glittering spiderweb. She’d propped her mother’s feet up in a footstool and thrown a small blanket over her lap. There was a box containing a small mechanical device making some kind of noise that–oh. That was probably music (but they couldn’t be sure).

This was absolutely perfect. Where had Rhea been for the last twenty years of their life? They carefully walked up to stand behind the chair, still out of sight.

“Hi mom,” she put on a pained smile.

Absolutely no psionic imprint. Probably one of those ‘bad days.’ They’d see what Rhea got out of her though.

“I just wanted to talk to you about Taz.”

They did their best to stimulate some sense of love or even just responsibility, vague familiarity even! Nothing.

The ancient drow matron spoke softly, but clearly. “Did you really bring that thing in here to try to talk to me? You’re THAT much of a coward now?”

Still zero psionic output, even when she spoke a full sentence. Rhea looked confused. Xotchtil suddenly felt a sense of cold dread.

Rhea, I think we need to–

“How did my only decent child turn out to be male?”

“Y–yeah, Taz! He’s–”

“–the only one out of the four of you that’s not a complete idiot. Do you want to know why I sold him to her?”

Rhea was frozen, wide-eyed, at this point.

“It’s not for the deal; I probably won’t even live long enough to see the money.”

Dead air in the room.

“I would have given him to her for free. He has no chance of surviving whatever botched stupidity leads you idiots all killing each other when I finally happen to die. If my bloodline has to continue through a son, I guess it’s better than the complete nothing I’m going to get from any of you.”

“…she’ll kill him.”

“Maybe. Noime or Castre definitely will and you’ll stand around watching with that stupid look on your face.”

Rhea snapped her mouth closed.

“And at least he’ll probably have a child first which is DEFINITELY more than I’m going to get out of you. Yes, everyone knows you let that commoner bitch eat you every time she comes back around. You don’t even have the decency to be the woman in the relationship!”

Rhea’s face flushed. “Mom, what the fuck?”

“And for what?” Selca scoffed. “Because you think you have a future traveling to the overbright someday? I thought it was bad when Castre decided she wanted to be a musician instead of training at the temple. Your destiny is here, leading the house, or dead. That is how it has always been. Commoners get choices. People like us have destinies. Do you think I didn’t have cute ideas as a child? I’ve spent two hundred years raising you. How do you still act like an infant?”

Selca finally turned her head. She looked past Rhea, locking eyes with Xotchtil. Her expression was completely empty.

“You don’t even have the decency to kill me properly,” she said. “You brought that thing to fight your battle for you. You coward.”

She turned back to the window.

“The party is next week. Try to wear something nice while you watch me salvage what’s left of my legacy before you can completely burn it to the ground.”

There was something bothering them ever since they’d gone off with Rhea that second time. She was pretty sure they weren’t telling her everything. Not in that they were actually trying to keep secrets so much as that they just weren’t used to being completely honest. Or maybe that for once they were the one trying not to think about something. She was going to have to ask outright which just seemed… annoying somehow.

They’d reached a compromise on her hanging out the window by moving the bed under it. Now she still hung an arm or leg out sometimes but at least she wasn’t perched so precariously. They had the desk chair turned so they could prop their feet up on the corner of the bed and were about a quarter of the way through a book they’d borrowed it from the wizard.

They were rereading the same paragraph for the fifth time when she suddenly flopped onto their lap and they had to throw their legs to the ground, drop the book, and catch themselves on the table to keep from falling out of the chair. She was fine, having grabbed the front of their shirt to keep herself upright.

She’d been doing things like this lately; invading their space suddenly when they weren’t paying attention. When they told her they should stick together, they hadn’t meant it literally. Visible across the room maybe. Instead she was often on or leaning on them (never under, they noticed, although they supposed that would take initiative on their own part). It wasn’t that it was a problem, it was just… annoying.

She wasn’t exactly prone to introspection, so digging out her exact motivations was useless. It did regulate her emotional distress, which definitely seemed like a mammalian trait; huddling together for warmth. They were warm blooded themselves, but apparently ceremorphosis either removed or just didn’t recreate that neurochemical system.

That said, they were pretty sure at least some of it was the personal satisfaction of bothering them. They’d tried to act like it didn’t affect them but some combination of posture and whatever permanent emotional bleedover had happened made it obvious to her. Annoying them gave her an intoxicating sense of control.

Her fingers in their tentacles… Well that was also to annoy them but it was a distinct sensory aspect to it too. Her smugly satisfied grin would fall slack with fascination as she curled each tentacle around her hand then slid out along the underside before dropping them.

“You’ve been staring at that page for an hour. What’s bothering you?”

They didn’t have a good answer to that. They could just relate the memories themselves but even with the language translated the context was probably lacking from her perspective. And really it wasn’t just distress about that one event anyway it was a greater sense of existential dread.

This was the only place I could think of that wouldn’t immediately kill us but I’m pretty sure it’s politically unstable enough to kill us anyway and that’s assuming the stress doesn’t kill me first.

She gently tugged on one of the intact shorter ones. “Huh.”

She didn’t say anything else so they reached for the book where it had fallen against the leg of the desk. She snatched it up first.

“You walked us all the way down to that creepy study to borrow a book about eels?”

I also borrowed one on mushrooms and one on botany. What is it you don’t like about him?

She shrugged,“wizards are assholes.”

She leaned on them with the book on her lap and focused intently on a page three or so ahead of the one they’d been on. “Wait, is this not about eels?”

“No, it is, but it’s also a working class treatise against institutionalized academia.” They took the opportunity to run their fingers through her hair. She leaned into it, got a shiver down her spine, realized what she was doing, and shrugged them off in annoyance. Ha.

She side eyed them and dropped the book back on the desk. “If we’re going to die anyway let’s go somewhere.”

They stared at her incredulously.

Like where…!?

She shrugged,“over on the other side of the house the windows look out on some kind of market down the hill.”

Oh we DEFINITELY can’t leave the house.

She grinned widely and tugged on their face again,“C’mon.”

They gave in to the needling and slapped at her hands. She let go but smiled wider. They caught an image from her of their own tentacles curled up into tight spirals. They breathed and forced themselves to relax.

We already draw too much attention here. They’ll probably chase us down the streets with torches and pitchforks.

“Do drow do that? Like do they even use pitchforks?”

I don’t know, and we’re not finding out.

She silently pouted for a minute or two, which they didn’t respond to. They did their best to not look annoyed that she was still sitting on them, and reached for the book again. Suddenly, she stood up and moved for the door.

“–well I’m gonna go find out!”

They froze in surprise for a second before running after her.

They stopped to catch their footing and looked down the slope.

The basin stretched almost a mile across and pushed a slow, hot updraft against her shins as she darted down the hill. Roughly four dozen people walked down the main path every minute, their combined body heat thick with dust, sulfur, and dirt. The crowd was split to three or so slaves for every one drow and the air crackled against their skin with a bone-dry static drag. Stamped metal coins passed through the hands of clerks, bleeding outward into a flat, steady buzz. Hundreds of overlapping voices and iron tools didn’t bounce, they just all vibrated together as a solid wall of low pressure against her eardrums while patrols of a half-dozen guards walked crossing paths through the acoustic static.

It was almost impossible to keep track of both her and the space around them while sharing her senses, but they worried that if they tried to shut her out they’d lose her in the crowd. They worked their way down the hill as quickly as they could without faceplanting into the stone path.

She had stopped near a street musician at the corner of one of the larger streets that entered the plaza. He was playing some kind of pipe and, based on the patterns her ears recognized, he was getting to the end of the current song. When he stopped to catch his breath, she sang a short tune that he apparently recognized because he nodded along to it for a verse or two before joining in. They wondered where she’d found the time to learn drow music (or anyone willing to teach her).

She was dancing now too, which was drawing a mixed reaction. The song was hitting some familiar notes but the dance was almost entirely alien to the crowd. They admired the fluidity of her movement, and her ability to literally float, but the updraft she was using to do it and the force of her landings struck the crowd as clumsy and crass. They also, bizarrely, were offended by not just her appearance but also specifically how happy she looked. This was also starting to attract the notice of what appeared to be armed guards.

She turned to pull them into a spin and they used the momentum to pull her around the corner of the building. Slamming into the wall was just the first of their many regrets, followed by the nauseating disorientation of having felt both sensations of spinning in circles for a few seconds. She, having barely been oriented to the physical moment to begin with, had no such discomfort. On the upside, her stopping to laugh at them stumbling around prevented her from running back out into the open market.

They managed to stumble through pulling her onto a side street behind the building they’d crashed into. She was almost doubled over laughing at them now. They were probably about to be publicly executed in the street and she was the happiest they’d ever seen her. It occurred to them that this might actually make her more pliable. They pulled her into a hug against the wall and threaded their fingers through her hair again and she quieted to a contented giggle. Ridiculous, but it worked.

They stayed that way for what felt like a long time. They didn’t want to risk actively digging through the minds of the crowd or even specifically the guards so they were left passively listening to the emotions and louder thoughts. It took a while for the overall sense of disruption to die back, and they kept waiting well after that for good measure.

They let out a long, rattling sigh. She lightly pushed away from them.

You’ve had your fun, can we go back to the manor now?

She rolled her eyes, but the contended smile didn’t leave her face. She let them drag her back across the market towards the hill. Well, they almost made it, anyway.

A guard on one side of the square spotted them and alerted his partner. One of them yelled at the Xotchtil and the sylph to stop, then started closing the distance. Xotchtil threw a sharp, desperate compulsion towards him, trying to force him to stop, and he did stumble. After the initial intrusion, however, his confusion instantly hardened into pure, offended rage. He drew his weapon. This entire ordeal had also attracted more guards, who did the same.

The middle sister, Castre, suddenly slipped out of the crowd. She had the intricately embroidered strap of a bag over her shoulder, either on her way to or from home, before or after some light morning shopping. She stepped between them and the bristling guards, smiling a thin, empty smile. “Sorry, everyone” she said, waving a hand dismissively at the guards. “My sister’s housepets got out. I’ll get them back home right away.” The sylph had a flash of memory. This was the lady she’d sang with in the manor courtyard.

The guards were hesitant, but clearly recognized (and respected) her. They backed off, muttering amongst themselves annoyance. Castre gestured at the two of them to follow her up the hill, which they did.

As they went Xotchtil tried to passively listen to her as much as possible. They hadn’t seen her more than in passing on the other side of the room or the other end of a hall. They didn’t want her to notice them listening, but they also hated the feeling of not knowing what to expect. All they got was emptiness but not in the same way as the Matron. They could tell what she was feeling, and the feeling was emptiness.

The sylph had given them that impression at times, back in the dragon’s colony, but it was at the depths of her despair. This was oddly contented somehow, as though Castre had (probably over the course of several decades or even a century) both made peace with it and even started to take comfort in it.

They didn’t know what to do with that. They weren’t sure they could compel her but it was nice to have as a possibility. To do that, they needed a deep desire or deep fear to push her to or away from. At a cursory glance she had neither. They didn’t like that.

As they passed through the courtyard into the main hall, they turned to thank Castre before they went up to their room. She suddenly pressed into their space in a way that… didn’t seem culturally appropriate for a drow. That, her internal sensation of emptiness, and the slightly too-wide smile on her face was unnerving. They stumbled back into the sylph and they both fell back into a short, dead end hall, cornered.

“I didn’t realize she could dance! Make her do it again.”

Out in the wider hall Tazennin passed through. He glanced their way and froze, face falling blank. He turned away and hurried along his path.

See? the sylph thought, pointedly, Asshole.

Honestly, we’re both a bit tired, said Xotchtil to Castre, We should really get ourselves back upstairs.

“Oh she can dance for strangers but not her Matron House? I’m sure she has a little more energy in her.”

I bet I can take her thought the sylph.

“If you can’t make her dance, I bet I can.” Castre reached for the whip of snakes at her hip.

I almost guarantee you can’t, and I’m not going to be any help.

Because you can’t, or WON’T?

“Castre! I didn’t expect you back so soon!” Rhea strode over, Tazennin a few steps behind her.

This broke Castre’s attention just enough that she took a half step back, but not enough to let them slip past.

“Your pets were going to dance for me.” It was an almost childlike statement, somehow.

Xotchtil felt a sharp sliver of… not panic, from Rhea… a rapid, but focused calculation? Formulating her words, probably. “You know, I think we just brought some slaves in from the surface who can. There’s probably a half dozen or so, a whole troupe!”

While Castre looked back towards Rhea thoughtfully, Tazennin urgently gestured at them to try to slip past her. Xotchtil was able to leverage Rhea’s distraction into a slightly widened visual and proprioceptive blindspot for them to slip through. Tazennin ushered them down the hall towards the stairs.

The sylph was… elevated. All the excitement of singing and dancing out in the market had crashed sideways into fear and anger and indignance. She was happy she’d gotten out of the manor but angry that it hadn’t ended well, irritated to run into Tazennin, and angry at Xotchtil’s lack of assistance all at once. She stormed off down the hall ahead of them.

Rhea caught up to them just as Tazennin shrugged and slunk off to wherever it was he’d been headed in the first place. “Do you… do you actually have any control over that thing?”

…it’s complicated.

Rhea shook her head. It took her a few tries to figure out what to say,“Goddess is testing me again. I did this to myself. I’ve kept order so long she has to test me against chaos.”

She pointed back the way they’d come. “Castre? Castre is chaos. At some point she just fell all the way into it and–” She paced a few steps before turning and coming back. “th–the only reason she doesn’t have goddess’ favor has to be–” she stared blankly for a long moment “we’re pretty sure she’s made some kind of infernal pact. It’s not like that’s strictly forbidden by the goddess but she’s probably not… y’know. Pleased.”

She started rambling again, talking with her hands,“She’s indestructible. Noie’s been poisoning her for a century–badly, sure, but still. I’ve arranged a dozen accidents. Nothing sticks. I’ve managed to sneak into her rooms a few times, and so has Taz, looking for the contract. She’s got so much junk laying around, some of it magic some of it not, and we never have time to really search. We started thinking we were imagining it until the raid.”

She stopped and stared them down,“She was in that courtyard, long before the lightning. She was dead center piling up bodies. I didn’t realize until after but not a drop of that blood was hers. There wasn’t a scratch on her, not even a singed hair from the lightning, nothing. She’s got some kind of deal that’s granted her invulnerability and I don’t stand a chance until it’s broken. She’s older than me so even if Noime and Mom die, the house still goes to her before me.”

I don’t know what you want me to do about it.

“Figure out where the contract is! Read people’s minds if you have to, just don’t get caught. When you find it, tell me or Taz and we can handle it.”

She was sitting on the bed when they got back, legs dangling out the window. Her head was that raw spinning emptiness that manifested sometimes when she was upset and didn’t know how to process it. They sat on the corner of the bed.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help. I genuinely don’t think I could have! Even Rhea– they cut themselves off. They were just irritating her more. They tried a different angle, It’s like I said before; it’s not safe here either I just don’t know where else to go. The surface maye but–

She did panic at that, but in a controlled way. Her legs froze mid swing. At this point they knew better than to press, but they wondered what could possibly happen to make the wind afraid of the sky. They changed the subject.

We could read about plants or mushrooms, or the funnier parts of the academic drama.

She shrugged ambivalently. They reached out a hand to playfully ruffle her hair but she flinched away violently. They fought the urge to yank her back from the windowsill and she glared back at them hatefully. As annoying as her physical presence had been lately, it hadn’t even occurred to them that they would miss it.

It turned out this party was A Big Deal in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with House Malthra at all, or Tazennin specifically. Apparently House Blundyth was famous citywide for their parties, which included all kinds of food, drink, music, incense, and… other delights, often of ‘rare import.’ People started showing up several days in advance to reserve their spots in the guest accommodations. There was a loosely formed thought hovering unsaid over guests and household alike: this was the last one, and it was going to be a blowout.

Rhea summoned Xotchtil to one of the entertaining rooms near the terrace late one morning, a few days before the party. They were really, REALLY hoping it was going to be another labor organization request.

The elemental was still in a bad mood. She was not interested in being touched, spoken to, or asked to do anything, but the room Xotchtil was being received in was right next to the terrace, and that was sufficient motivation for her to tag along. She wandered outside while Xotchtil entered the entertaining room.

They entered the room to find three priestesses from major council houses, who had arrived among Rhea’s first round of guests. They had heard that House Blundyth was hosting a mind flayer and wanted to see one for themselves. The three priestesses were already seated around a low table with wine. Ilmra T’sarran was well composed. Zilvrae Nylrae was watching the room and its occupants with interest. Veszra Draeval was comfortably reclining. Rhea introduced Xotchtil and explained that the women wanted to play a game (somehow they hadn’t realized this situation could get worse).

The priestesses had played it together at temple school, but the game was much older, with rules that probably dated back centuries, if anyone remembered them correctly. What mattered was the ritual that enforced it: a specific magical binding that verified truth. One player asked a question, the respondent answered, and the binding measured whether the answer held. If the respondent refused, or if the binding flagged a falsehood, the other two players could impose a consequence. There were two types: a command, performed immediately, or a holy vow, fulfilled within a certain timeframe (apparently the divine consequences were very real).

The women would take turns in a fixed circuit. Each turn allowed one question and one follow-up. Once the respondent had answered the follow-up, Xotchtil had to rule, and the turn was over. Nobody could continue asking questions simply because an answer had become interesting. The next round would run in the opposite direction.

Refusal counted as a failed answer. If a response was ruled false, or a player refused to answer, the other two players would agree on a consequence. If they could not agree, each would propose one and the player taking the forfeit would choose between them. A command had to be completed immediately; a vow had to be fulfilled by the same time the next day.

The game had been an excuse for gossip, humiliation, and the occasional genuinely useful piece of information since long before any of them had attended temple school, but they wanted to see whether a psion could perform the ritual’s function.

And you’re just going to let me read your minds to do that?

Ilmra rolled her eyes.

“If I can’t compartmentalize enough to just give you the parts that matter, I’m not worth my salt as a priestess, and neither are either of my sisters in Lolth here.”

Veszra nodded. Zilvrae agreed that it was an entirely reasonable expectation of someone who had made a profession of divine service and political manipulation. To say Xotchtil agreed to referee was something of an overstatement.

Rhea began collecting her things.

Where are you going? Xotchtil asked.

The three priestesses looked at one another and laughed.

“It would be ridiculous not to expect you to lie for your de facto matron,” Zilvrae said. “Obviously Rhea can’t play.”

“Yes, well, I have wines and cheeses to pick out for the party. I’ll leave you to it.” Rhea moved toward the door. She allowed them to catch one thought as she walked through the doorway. Let me know if they say anything interesting.

How am I supposed to know what you find interesting!?

Xotchtil watched her leave. The priestesses were still laughing when the door closed.

Veszra placed a small snake-headed whip on the table next to her glass and announced that Zilvrae would ask first. Zilvrae turned to Ilmra.

“Why did your little sister really fail out of temple school that first time?”

Ilmra thought in a neat decision tree. She slowly and carefully whittled the answer down to the bare minimum information she had to give, for which she apparently had a rehearsed answer: “She really did get sick. She was vomiting and everything.”

“How did she catch it?”

“She didn’t catch anything. She just got sick.”

There was a pause as they awaited Xotchtil’s judgment.

Well, that’s only partially true. A curse is very different from a contagious illness, but it’s also not really spontaneous…

All three women spoke at once in a cacophony that roughly amounted to, “NO! You can’t tell us that! You have to only say true or false! That’s the whole point!”

They collectively sulked for a few seconds before Veszra broke the silence. “Well, let’s pick a command.”

“Ugh. But I just told you!”

“You lied first,” Veszra said.

“It wasn’t even a full lie. We never got a proper binary judgment because this thing didn’t understand the rules!”

All three looked at Xotchtil, who didn’t respond. They still didn’t really understand what was happening here.

“Fine. Give me the easy one.”

“The drink,” Zilvrae said. “Finish it.”

Ilmra quickly picked up the glass and threw it back before they could think of anything more interesting.

Zilvrae took her next sip of wine and indicated that Ilmra could ask. She turned to Veszra.

“Who started that market fire ten years ago?”

On inspection of her memory, it turned out that Veszra’s family oversaw the city guard. Her thought process was a lot more scattered and impulsive compared to Ilmra: “We don’t actually know.”

True.

“Oh, I knew it! There’s no way the Vhaeraunites can be responsible for everything.” She took a few seconds to formulate her follow-up. “Who was the most likely suspect?”

“There were no suspects for intentionally setting the fire.”

This was true, at least as stated, so Xotchtil provided the ruling. Ilmra looked dissatisfied but accepted the end of her turn. Xotchtil noted that the woman seemed more invested in confirming conspiracy than learning anything new.

Veszra took her place as questioner and turned to Zilvrae.

“Speaking of the Vhaeraunites, I heard the man of the hour had leanings.”

Zilvrae thought more like Ilmra, but faster, at the expense of being slightly less precise: “He wishes. They had him back on his mother’s doorstep by the next morning.”

“Sent him back? I could understand the son of a council house causing too much of a scene, but House Blundyth is just merchants.”

“Exactly. Who do you think is buying their raided slaves and goods from the surface? They’d be stupid to cross Selca.”

Xotchtil ruled the answer true. Zilvrae had heard the rumor, and her account reflected what she believed about the circumstances.

That completed the first round, and the priestesses took a few seconds to trade comments on each other’s answers. Xotchtil’s attention drifted out to the sylph just as she threw a garland of bioluminescent cave flowers over the short wall and watched it stream over the edge to the ground. A drow servant stopped and swore at her.

Ilmra had begun answering a question, and Xotchtil realized they had missed the start of the next round.

“Please repeat that.”

Ilmra looked at them.

“I had already answered.”

“I was distracted.”

“Yes, I noticed. And now I have to do it again.”

She repeated herself, using the same wording and attempting to reproduce the tone and inflection of her original answer. Xotchtil gave their ruling, but the women appeared generally displeased. What were they expecting? It’s not like they’d spent a lot of time refereeing party games. She appeared to be telling the truth, thankfully, so there was nothing more for her to argue over.

After the next turn had concluded, Xotchtil announced that the game was tiring and that they needed a short break. They went out to the terrace ‘for some air.’

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Xotchtil realized they were rushing at her and slowed their pace. As they approached she turned to them and stiffened. The exposed tips of the furniture and wall fixtures glowed faintly. They stopped a few paces short, and her rage simmered back down into annoyance.

Xotchtil looked down into the courtyard. The servant who yelled at her was gone. Nothing appeared to have been damaged.

They looked at the string of faintly glowing flowers splayed over the stone, then glanced around and found the basket she’d gotten it from. After a moment they walked over, grabbed another one, checked the courtyard below was empty, and threw the end over the wall after the other one.

The sylph jumped slightly at the movement, but her surprise gave way to fascination.

Xotchtil watched it fall. To their eyes it was a strand of bioluminescent flowers floating through the air and settling on the paving stones. Through her senses the flowers were much more colorful, and carried a pleasant scent. She also felt them twist and flutter the whole way down, every shed petal trailing its own small wake.

When it landed, she glanced at them, and they said nothing. After a long pause, Xotchtil turned and walked away.

“I saw you double check that no one was down there first!”

They didn’t turn back, and tried to pretend they didn’t feel the edges of her mouth twitching as she tried not to laugh.

The next round began with Veszra asking Ilmra a question.

“Who cursed your sister?”

“…the abjuration instructor! She was one of my mother’s rivals at school.”

Xotchtil had figured this round would be harder in the sense of deeper questions. They had not accounted for the alcohol.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“It was embarrassing that she fell to it. It wasn’t even a good curse.”

Ilmra was being truthful about the instructor, and about her reasons. Vanity all the way down. They ruled true. Veszra looked disappointed at how straightforward it had been.

Ilmra turned to Zilvrae.

“Why didn’t Selca have Tazennin killed?”

“No one’s really sure. It might have drawn too much attention to the trade situation, but there are also theories that he’s her favorite child.” Zilvrae believed both to be speculation rather than established fact. True.

“Can’t be that favored if she’s giving him to House Malthra,” retorted Veszra.

Zilvrae turned to Veszra,“Ok well if you know so much then how did the market fire start?”

Veszra put her glass down.

“Vow, please.”

Ilmra and Zilvrae considered the options. Veszra would have to wear servant’s clothing to the party. Not a dangerous vow, but sufficiently humiliating to be acceptable. They also discussed, briefly, having her surrender the brooch at her collar, which held some ritual significance in their sisterhood that was entirely lost on Xotchtil. Eventually the vow was agreed. Veszra accepted it without argument.

A little later, Matron Malthra appeared in the doorway. Her puzzled expression quickly smoothed into a practiced smile. “Sorry, ladies, good morning!”

“Maluarra! We’re playing questions and commands! Would you like to join?”

“I’m actually in the middle of something.” She paused for a second to note their disappointed expressions. “But I’ll give you one question as an apology for interrupting!”

The three women exchanged glances and agreed on the question without much discussion.

“What’re you actually going to do with him?” Zilvrae asked.

“Have you seen him? I’m going to get laid.”

Malthra declined a glass, and excused herself down the stairs toward the courtyard. The sylph saw her come out on the ground floor just as Tazennin entered from the opposite side. He moved to discretely flee back the way he came but she yelled a greeting. Malthra stopped next to him near the other door, where he was pretending to inspect the replanted fungi.

The sylph wondered if Xotchtil found this interesting, which they did. She reminded them that she could hear that far, but they’d have to do the translating again. They did their best to keep track of both conversations.

The sylph started understanding Malthra about halfway through: “–know my dad was a wizard? I don’t mean–look. I spent half my childhood on his lap learning alchemy, runes, words of power.”

Ilmra started her turn,“Did Magistrate Velkin steal the treasury earnings ten years ago?”

Malthra again. “Honestly, I didn’t even want to go to temple school. I wanted to stay home and study magic with dad. I just didn’t realize Mom would–”

(Probably) Ilmra,“Obviously, everyone knows that.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“–anyway, I’ve got a legacy to get moving on. I need kids that aren’t stupid, and…”

Down in the courtyard, the wizard’s heart rate ticked upward. This amused the sylph for some reason.

“No.”

True.

Xotchtil delivered the ruling on reflex, and it was only afterward, as they withdrew from Veszra’s mind, that they felt a brief bright flash of accomplishment before her thoughts slammed shut behind them.

Wait. Had they missed something?

Veszra didn’t correct them, obviously. Neither did Ilmra. Zilvrae appeared to have noticed the distraction, but had no actual grounds to object. Below, Malthra had looped her arm through the wizard’s and steered him toward the far colonnade, and the fragments faded out of range. Xotchtil was fairly sure they had just ruled on pieces of two different conversations. It also didn’t help that the turn order seemed to have dissolved at some point. They considered whether or not raising that question was required as a referee, and decided it was a lot more trouble than it was worth.

The game continued.

Zilvrae asked Ilmra about Malthra’s school years.

“I hear the generational turnover of House Malthra is a big change, philosophically. You shared classes with her. What was she like?”

“She wasn’t very interesting. Kept her head down, studied hard, never joined anything.”

“But her mother died within a few months of her coming home. Do you think she did it?”

“Officially speaking, her handmaiden did it.”

“Oh, yes. The one who helped with all those parties. What was the evidence?”

“She was the last one to handle the wine the old matron drank that night. And Maluarra tortured her to death for it, as a good daughter would. It just goes to show, you can’t find good help anymore.”

Ilmra’s information was consistent with what she knew about the situation. She had no concrete reason to doubt it, and neither did anyone who had actually been in the manor that night. True.

Veszra asked her question of Zilvrae.

“Do you know which house funded the attack by–well. They’re unspeakables now, but the ones from last week. There’s no way they could afford that many mercenaries on their own.”

Zilvrae paused, visibly not believing how wide an opening Veszra had left her.

“I know enough to be careful.”

Veszra cringed at the answer but didn’t waste her second one. “Which house do you most suspect?”

Zilvrae, who did not have the skill to answer that one safely, said nothing at all.

The other two debated consequences for a minute or so. Ilmra proposed that Zilvrae pass on a brooch she’d been the holder of for the last decade or so. Veszra proposed that she take a specific, particularly unfortunate-looking male to bed at the end of the party.

Zilvrae looked at both of them.

“You’re both horrible.” She agreed to the ugly man.

The women finished that round, with the usual disputes over what technically constituted a lie. They returned briefly to the market fire, but Veszra volunteered nothing further.

At one point, Ilmra was asking Veszra about the other Blundyth sister. “What do you know about his sister?”

“Noime? Bit of an idiot.”

“No, the younger one! You went to class with her, right?”

“Oh, Castre? No one knows anything about her. I remember seeing her at some of the parties, usually with the band or something. She played the vazhan-do I think. She was super weird though. She never said it did anything important in class.”

“Do you know anything else about her?”

“Nope.”

All true.

Eventually it was agreed, with the profound diplomacy of the very drunk, that enough questions had been asked for one sitting. The outstanding vows would be fulfilled by their deadlines: Veszra would serve drinks at the evening party in servant’s clothing, and Zilvrae would deal with her own obligation afterward. Nobody looked at anyone when they said it.

Xotchtil had a few seconds to be relieved by the end of their obligation before it turned out there was another stage they hadn’t been told about. It was a count of all total lies by each player, to receive one final command / vow. It was always the same, and it always went to whoever had lied the most. It was an enchanted ring, worn for a full day, that forced the wearer to tell the truth. It was fitting, they supposed.

The count did not go smoothly. Veszra remembered three lies, two of which had not happened. Zilvrae insisted her non-answer wasn’t technically a lie, because she had answered, and produced the answer as evidence. Ilmra said very little, which from her was ominous. It didn’t take long for them to all stand up and start yelling.

The immediate shock of it all faded into anger. Xotchtil had done what they were asked in multiple ways, and everything was still turning into a ridiculous clusterfuck. At some point all three of them turned on their referee.

“How sure are you,” Ilmra asked, with the too-careful consonants of a drunk demanding to be taken seriously, “that you’re ruling true and false on the right things?”

Once again, Xotchtil had underestimated how bad things could get. They assessed the room. Three drow priestesses, drinking since midmorning, one of them standing up. The light caught the eye of one of the whip’s little snake-heads. This seemed like a good time to run.

The door opened before they got there, hard enough to hit the wall, the fixtures flaring the way they had flared on the terrace. The sylph stood in the doorway with her hair lifting off her shoulders.

Everyone froze.

The priestesses looked at the sylph. The sylph looked at the priestesses. Then Ilmra made a noise like a small choking sound, and all three of the priestesses broke into laughter at once and fell onto one of the low couches in a heap, tangled together, wheezing. Veszra wiped her eyes.

“I LOVE you BITCHES!” Ilmra shouted, directly into Zilvrae’s shoulder.

Xotchtil chose to interpret that as the conclusion of their responsibility. The sylph followed them down the hall.

“Why do I keep having to drag you out of places?”

I’m doing my best!

They hadn’t really thought about it before, but her neck and shoulders really did hurt constantly. That made sense, they supposed.

This whole problem got started from ruffling her hair again. No, it started before that. They just couldn’t remember who’d broken the touch barrier again first. Or maybe they just couldn’t decide where the actual line was. Is it when you’ve slowly and carefully gotten as close as you can before actually touching, or is it when you briefly brush up against them accidentally because you weren’t trying not to?

Both of them had alternated those approaches for the past day. Or maybe that was their memories blurring together again. Or maybe now their actions were. Eventually they’d worked their way back together enough that she was dropping on top of them pretending to try and bother them and they’d thread their fingers in her hair and act like they were trying to bother her back.

They were sitting on the tiny 1.5 person bed getting some reading done when she came back from a walk. They tried not to think too hard about where. Probably somewhere insane like the roof. She flopped down on top of them and smashed the book against their face. They managed to extricate the book carefully enough to not damage it and readjusted. There, they could read again now, completely unbothered.

One of their upper arms was still trapped under her, so they reached up with that hand to ruffle her hair. When they gently rubbed her scalp at the base of her skull (where the tendons attach) she made… a noise. It was almost pained except her body didn’t tense, it relaxed. The next noise was somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh as she leaned forward and tucked the bridge of her nose into the bend of their neck and fully dropped her weight on top of them. Again, they did not have the upper body strength to handle this. They did manage to twist a little out from under her, so that she was more to the side than on top.

…they wanted to see if she’d make that noise again. Their hand worked its way back over her shoulder and up the back of her neck. Her neck muscles were oddly tense, they noticed, even when she was fully relaxed. Her shoulders were even tenser, as they worked their way down, and the next noise actually was pained. Oh. Well of course her back hurts–

–they pulled back at the same moment she grabbed them by the front of their shirt. Her mind at this point started rapidly blurring between the present and… what was probably a memory. They were still partially under her and not really sure how to get themselves out of this without just making the situation worse. They felt… something? –grab them by …their back. That didn’t make sense because it was like there was something tightening around their….? oh. It was the phantom sensation of… wings. Ow.

They could feel her panic seeping into them the same way as the pain of her missing wings–or maybe it was just their own realization that she was probably about to do something much worse. She was already physically pushing them away but they were still kind of under her so it was mostly just succeeding at making both of them uncomfortable. The whole situation was rapidly spinning out of control.

They carefully eased the tip of one short tentacle up under the heel of her palm where it was tangled in their shirt. Her face contorted in confusion for a second, then relaxed as she opened her fingers and slid her palm down around and up the length of it. As she worked her fingers fully around the base of the tentacle they realized it was a bad idea. They held carefully still and breathed slowly as her fingertips brushed the underside next to their mouth. They tried to gently tug her hand away but her grip subtly but suddenly tightened and they decided not to test it.

There was a long moment where they stared each other down. Somehow her thoughts were actually anchored in the fascinatingly novel, but present experience of playing with an appendage she didn’t personally have. They had the delayed realization that she was also feeling her own fingertips through their skin. Somehow the constant static prickle of her emotions had been, well, grounded.

Eventually they decided that if bad decision making had gotten them this far into this mess, it was at least worth finding out where it went. They moved their hand down instead, ran their fingertips over the inside of her wrist and traced their way back up her arm to her shoulder again. Moving slowly seemed least likely to break her focus on the present, and seemed to be working. They briefly rubbed over the soreness in her shoulder but waited until the less painful middle of the neck to really work their fingers into the muscle. Her eyes fell shut and she made that noise again, pained, but not.

Her eyes fluttered back open and she caught them staring. They accidentally dug their fingers in a little too much and quickly eased back.

“…what do you want from me?” she asked.

What does that have to do with anything? they replied.

She thought the answer was obvious: Everything?

They thought for a moment, trying to figure out what she wanted to hear but mostly found that, first of all, she didn’t know what she wanted to hear. Secondly, the things that did occur to her were mostly wrong answers.

…you fascinate me.

She was able to believe that for multiple reasons. One was that this was a logical and appropriately fitting explanation for their behavior. The other was the depth of sincerity they’d managed to convey. Another was, they noted absently, that apparently she’d figured out how to read their facial expressions at some point. The truth was funny like that.

It was a stupid reason, but satisfying enough, and she wanted the pressure back.

I just need to know you won’t try to hurt me.

She stared them down for what was probably seconds but felt like an hour before admitting that was… doable.

The distrust was somewhat mutual, so they didn’t immediately apply pressure to her neck again. Ruffling her hair had proven mostly safe. They let her feel the softness of her own hair between their fingers, and waited until she was fully relaxed to gently slide their fingers down to her neck again.

They were listening carefully for what she wanted next when something weird happened. It was like she took control of their hands, and she was doing too many interesting things with them for them to dare stop her.

Interestingly she went down to her hips first. She dug their fingertips into the muscles just around and above her tailbone where they spanned to the tops of her hip bones. It was like the pain in the center of her back had diffused both up and down along the spine. The one local injury had weakened the structure as a whole.

When she pulled the palm of their hand over the middle of her back it was almost impossible to resist taking back control. They wanted to explore with their fingertips but she knew it would stab with pain and somehow they mutually decided that the tension that would cause would be counterproductive. They did their best to separate out their desire to explore more from the intensity of the physical sensation. There was just so much information to be gained, even passively. It was really hard not to let her feel that emotion.

They could feel where the ligaments had met her spine and which of her back muscles had once braided into those of her wings. They tried not to flinch or dwell where they felt muscles that could never stretch properly because their bluntly cut fibers no longer connected to anything.

After a few minutes she sighed and sat up to stretch, savoring the newfound looseness in her back. She chuckled softly and moved to straddle them, then gently tugged at their face.

Weirdly, the first thing they collectively noticed was a sudden jump Xotchtil’s heart rate. There was a small flash of light like the glint off a freshly sharpened knife. Then Xotchtil suddenly started desperately struggling to get out from under her. At first she panicked and hit back at them about the same as they were slapping and clawing at her. After a few seconds it occurred to her to just get off of them, but the conflict had escalated enough that she tumbled to the floor trying. When she looked up they were crouched in the corner between the bed and intersecting walls, wheezing with the exertion.

She felt a sharp, searing pain in her lip and cheek. She tapped at it to feel if it was broken and / or bleeding but it felt intact and her hand came back clean. It took her a moment to associate the phantom sensation with the partially intact longer tentacle Xotchtil was cradling.

Well that was… new.

She didn’t want to get closer; they’d probably keep trying to hit her. But then, she didn’t actually need to get closer to touch something, did she?She pulled air in through the the open window and crashed it into their face as hard as she could. It sent chaotic little flurries of air all around the room and back into both of them. The book’s pages fluttered where it had fallen open on the floor.

This seemed to break their train of thought long enough to leave their mind blank, which she supposed was an improvement. They stayed frozen there for a long moment, and she wasn’t sure what to do.

After a while she tried,“Do you want to lie back down?”

They slowly nodded, then crawled forward and curled up on their side. There was another long pause.

“Do you know where you were in the book?”

They didn’t respond at first. She picked it up and flipped through it.

Somewhere near the end I think.

“Good because I don’t think I can read this.”

Another long silence.

“Do you want me to go away?”

No.

“Ok.”