Chapter Text
Chapter 01
The first thing she remembered was darkness. The air was motionless and suffocating. There were two things in the room with her, something big, it's heart beating slow in massive waves of energy, and something more her size, it's heart a regular, steady rhythm. She tried to bring her arms up to feel around more but they were tied in front of her.
Her eyes began to adjust and she saw that the thing in front of her, the thing that was more like her, was nothing like her at all. It's face was twisting and curling and it reached towards her and she could feel it thinking. She couldn't feel what it was thinking just that it was thinking until it reached out and tried to tell her to hold still and she was frozen. She didn't know what to do so she froze.
It turned away to grab something and she pulled her arms up together and over it's head and pulled it down on top of her and it was screaming into the air and into her brain and it's heart beat so fast that it was a blur of pulsing energy and her hands were burning and suddenly the bindings fell away and her hands were free and she grabbed it and put so much energy into it that it's
heart
just
stopped.
The next thing she remembered was cutting cutting sawing through her ribcage and there was nothing she could do about it and
it wasn't the first time she'd been cut apart
the last time was in the air and the light and the desert and
She started walking because after everything that was all she had and they couldn't have that too. She would always have walking because she would keep walking, even when it hurt. A box is a box but this one was big enough to walk in. it was hard at first but the hole in her chest healed up and the thread fell out and she kept walking.
It was 253 steps to from the bars to the back. it was 52 steps from one corner to the other. It was 235 steps from the back to the front. It was 69 steps along the bars. If she did it again it would be a little different, but not by much.
The things came and went. she could reach through the bars and throw lightning at them but there were a set of metal columns that would draw it into the floor or ceiling. They never came closer. They sent her trays with a bit of mush that wasn't food but she sometimes ate anyway because there wasn't anything else.
She didn't know how long she was there. She counted how many times she slept. It was a lot. She suspected that if she had any way to see how long a day was that she would find she slept several times every day. There was no indication of the passage of time. So far, she had slept 38 times.
There were several different things and several different other things that followed them around. At first they all looked more or less the same, but there were two in particular that made an impression.
One of them was a deep green and almost twice as tall as her. It wore long robes that made it look like it floated more than walked. It had four tentacles that fell from where it's mouth should be to it's waist and two on either side that fell almost to the floor. When it entered the room she felt a squealing sound inside her head that made it hard to see, hear, or even stand. It was followed by something small that she never got a good look at but that would sometimes come inside the bars. She was never strong enough to fight it off. Not with the sound inside her head. She heard questions, faint and distant,"Where did you come from? Why are you here?" She didn't know the answer to any of them and that just made everything worse. When it left she'd dream about being cut apart.
The other had a blueish tint and had large wide-set eyes. It also had the six face tentacles, but the two long ones on the side only fell to it's knees. It wore shorter robes than the other, and a sturdy looking pair of shoes. It usually had a larger thing with it that looked like it had been stitched together. Sometimes it's stitched-together servant came alone, and either it or the two of them almost always came with not-food. When it came it would sit in the room writing for a while, then offer to take the tray and leave. She got the impression it was feeling her out. She wasn't sure what it was feeling her out for, but if it's friend was anything to go by, it wasn't good.
One day the second thing came in while the first was... visiting. The sound in her head had been pitched so high and loud she thought her head was going to explode. Or maybe it was because the thing's servant was kicking her. The noise died back and she was just laying there stuck to the ceiling... No it was the floor. Definitely the floor. She sat up, and it was just there, alone, on the other side of the bars staring at her.
I would like to get closer and look at you.
"Fuck off."
If you're damaged I may be able to fix it.
She ignored it.
I want to help.
Her head was swimming. It still felt like she was being kicked. Or maybe that was her heartbeat.
It still loomed. Just beyond the columns.
I just need to know you won't try to hurt me.
She would.
She would, she would, she would. She would reach into it's chest and STOP it.
Why don't you eat?
what
There's a full tray of food out here. I pushed it over this morning but you just sent it back. You usually do this.
That wasn't food.
It is, in fact, a nutritionally complete combination of meat proteins, complex sugars, plant fiber, and a variety of essential minerals designed for your species and portioned for your size.
It was disgusting is what it was.
You need to eat to live.
Didn't matter. Still disgusting.
I would still like to check on you.
"Fuck. Off."
It did.
So that's how they wanted to play it. Fuckers.
It was an interesting subject. It was a bit of a mystery to figure out, and a bit of a challenge to manage. They liked it ever since they'd read about it. It was just so incredibly odd. Most things, sorcerers, fae, anything, needed to talk to use magic. This thing was magic. This thing just moved it's hands, no words of power at all, and electricity flowed out of it.
They were a behavioral expert, not a magical one, and they had never had access to a subject that could do magic. Not for long anyway. They always got snapped up. But this one was undesirable because,
well.
this one had a body count.
During it's initial processing it had killed the illithid present, it's thrall, the illithid that came to assist it, and two additional thralls sent to subdue it. The subsequent investigation and vivisection had failed to produce a positive species identification or a sufficient explanation for it's psychic resiliency.
If they hadn't by sheer chance had an appropriate containment cell they would've had to destroy it without ever finding out where it had come from, what it was, or why it was there.
The more paranoid theories involved ancient prophecies and secret powers invested in the destruction of illithid society. This seemed unlikely to them, because they'd been listening; because they liked listening to it.
It was too disorganized and impulsive for any of those ridiculous theories, but it was still clever and inquisitive. Sometimes they just sat and watched through it's eyes as it looked at everything and felt as it touched everything. They felt it's other senses too, it could feel the air currents in the whole room and sense their own heartbeat from across the room. Sometimes it would make noises that sounded nonsensical to them, but if they listened through it's ears the sounds were structured, and methodical, and oddly... good. It made those sounds because they calmed it.
And sometimes they just listened to it's thoughts. Most of the time it didn't think about anything but then thoughts would dart across it's mind suddenly and disappear just as quickly. It made connections between things they never would have but that were clever and interesting.
There was only one problem. It didn't belong to them. They were in charge of feeding it and making sure it was healthy, so that Maziah could pull all relevant information out of it. The more you shake it's brain, the more information falls out. Xotchtil did respect Maziah's expertise. The trouble was that their subjects were more or less useless by the time they were done. The psyche was often so shredded the taste wasn't even palatable anymore.
Maziah preferred negative resonance stones for obvious reasons. They always left one with their subjects at every visit. Xotchtil never left them out if they could help it. The emanations had a tendency to bleed into nearby areas and agitate other subjects...
...and they left this subject's mind duller.
One day she decided to climb the bars all the way to the ceiling. She could feel the air swirling and settling in the cavern, fed by various tiny cracks in the walls and ceiling, just none big enough to fit through. It moved more up higher and she wanted to get closer, feel it with her skin.
It took five tries to and three sleeps to make it. The fourth time she made it a little over halfway. The fifth time she made it a little over halfway again and was thinking about turning back but she'd away made it so far and she just wanted to make it the whole way she just wanted-
She did make it. She hooked her legs tightly around the bars and held on with one hand as she stretched out the other and felt the smallest of breezes.
Then her left knee gave out, and gravity wrenched it free at entirely the wrong angle. Without support her right leg couldn't hold tightly enough to keep her upright and the momentum from the left leg falling pulled her backwards and she tumbled inside down away from the bars. She flailed wildly with her arm but only succeeded in getting it caught between two bars when she hit a crosspiece and felt a sickening pop and then a burn as the metal took all the skin off the underside of her forearm.
It took so long to fall. She was faintly aware of dull pain in her extremities under the glorious sensation of air rushing against her skin. She didn't even notice when she hit the floor.
They were at the other end of the facility when they felt it. It was a faint sensation of air rushing past skin like running or riding an animal or
falling
stupid stupid STUPID thing. What was it doing? What was it trying to accomplish? Did it want to
ah