Chapter Text
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.