Chapter Text
Note: This fic is based on a lot of in-game events for BG3. So don't read if you don't want to be spoiled. Or do, I don't control you.
Tav woke up in a jolt. She was still in the mindflayer pod on the Illithid ship. Gods above this was a nightmare. She touched her mouth to check for tentacles, of which she found none. She looked out of the broken glass lid over to a large array of other prisons identical to the one she was held in. Some were empty, some were filled with sleeping Illithids in stasis, and most of the others were splattered with blood from dead inhabitants or filled with ashes. The lid of Tav’s pod opened easily with the lock broken by a piece of shrapnel. Tav thanked Mystra for her good fortune and quickly climbed out into the burning room. She brushed a light layer of Illithid slime off the front of her wizard’s robes and flicked it onto the floor made of some combination of metal, flesh, and chitin.
Fire raged in the pod storage room from the red dragon that attacked the ship. Dead mindflayer tadpoles littered the floor which was coated with a thick layer of mucus and brine. Tav looked up to see the ceiling shredded from the frame of the Illithid vessel and a rust-colored sky moving above her raging with dozens of electrical storms. Avernus.
Tav could see someone stirring behind the hazy glass of the adjacent pod. Taking a closer look, the occupant was a human nobleman wearing an elegant patriar’s jacket embroidered with golden and silver peacocks. His honey-brown eyes bore into hers while Tav scanned his face. He was older, probably in his late forties, with rich brown hair that was tucked behind his ears. The nobleman pressed a hand against the glass and pushed, trying to open his biomechanical prison and scowling when the door refused to move.
“I’ll get you out,” Tav assured him, tapping reassuringly on the glass. The moment she stepped away from the pod door she heard an angry, insistent set of thumps as he beat one of his fists against the door. Tav searched the nearby control panel for any indication on how to free him. Several golden buttons glowed on the console, and Tav pressed one, hoping that it would open the door instead of incinerating the occupant. The pod door creaked open, and the nobleman climbed out effortlessly and took stock of his person.
“This is quite ridiculous and completely unacceptable,” the noble huffed. “My work in Waterdeep was so rudely interrupted, and then I ended up trapped on this disgusting vessel.” He noticed a glob of thick Illithid slime on the epaulet of his doublet and sneered at what Tav viewed as the lesser of the two violations inflicted on him on the ship.
“We’ve got significantly larger problems. You carry a mindflayer parasite, just like I do. I watched them put it into your eye socket.” The man glared at her reminder as though somehow all of his irritation with the situation was going to make it go away. “It’s going to turn us into mindflayers.” He gave Tav an annoyed smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
The man snapped his fingers as though he was summoning a servant to do his bidding. He scowled, scrunching up his entire face before vigorously snapping again.
“What are you doing?” Tav inquired.
“Addressing my current situation,” he answered her calmly. He snapped his fingers which once again accomplished nothing.
“By trying to make sure your fingers still work?” Tav asked him incredulously. His eyes widened at her in anger.
He took a long pause for dramatic emphasis. “I do not have to accept this insolence from you, do I make myself clear?”
“No, because I’m not afraid of your fingers snapping. I’m afraid of these fucking tadpoles in our heads. Unless your snapping can make the tadpoles disappear, of course,” Tav said while she wished his snapping could in fact remove their tadpoles. He glared at her. “It can't, can it?” Tav lamented. She sighed sadly. “Didn’t think so,” she finished after waiting a sufficiently long time.
The nobleman went over to a glass tank of a brown unknown liquid and kicked it across the burning room with his fancy boots, which had inexplicably curled toes. His boots looked like they belonged to a circus clown or a caricature of a fey creature. The nobleman walked across the room and kicked another container of Illithid material, and it almost splattered over a white dragonborn who was slowly stalking towards them.
“Another survivor,” Tav said with a smile. She was glad she wouldn’t have to deal with the annoying nobleman alone. “Are you alright?” she greeted him. The white dragonborn grinned at her with rows of sharp teeth, his red eyes shining in the light of the flames.
“I am, good lady. It is a wonderful day for death.” He held out a hand to Tav and gently kissed the back of her hand gently with a genteel smile laced with an undercurrent of something more sinister. “I am the Paladin Dark Urge.” He took a quick pause. “Or is it the Paladin Durge, I don’t really remember which one is correct, but I think I was called both at one point.” Tav blinked at the dragonborn for a moment and then looked at his sorcerer’s robes before looking into his deep red eyes again. She cross-referenced the sorcerer’s robes against the Paladin title and elected not to inquire any further.
The nobleman grinned like he was staring at a display case full of candy. “This is an unexpected pleasure to share space with such a cavalier sinner such as yourself.”
“I’m a Paladin, not a sinner. I have sworn an Oath to my god.” He seemed extremely insulted at the very idea that someone thought he was less Paladin-esque than he should be.
“Which one?” Tav inquired.
“Kelemvor,” the dragonborn answered confidently. “The god of death.”
“And what, precisely, is the nature of this little ‘oath’ of yours?” the nobleman asked.
The dragonborn paused for a while before answering. “Vengeance. Whoever caused these abominations to infest our land is going to be thoroughly smote.” Tav was half-curious whether this was a new Oath or his old one. Since turning into a mindflayer cost a being its apostolic soul, Tav didn’t doubt that Kelemvor was probably quite happy with vengeance against the Illithid monstrosities as a motivation for Paladin Durge.
“I would love to hear more about it later, but we should find a way out of here and get off this ship. We need help, and soon,” Tav insisted.
“Of course, then let us find our way out of here. We will leave these foul Hells behind.” The nobleman seemed irritated by something Durge had said. He was probably just frustrated that no one was paying attention to him.
Durge led the other two through a door that closely resembled a sphincter into another storage room for other supplies. Everything about the ship was simply disgusting. Tav sorted through piles of Illithid rune plates and other documents. The tadpole in her head could recognize the Illithid script, able to read it with ease. If Tav’s current situation wasn’t so perilous, she could write quite a few academic articles on the Illithid empire with the information she was learning through the tadpole.
“I hear something coming from up there, it sounds like someone needs help.” Durge pointed at an overhanging second story to the room. Tav and the nobleman followed him up an elevator to a room where tanks of organs and other organic matter surrounded some kind of chair for medical procedures where a man was slumped inside it with half of his skull cut off and his brain exposed. The mutilated man’s limbs twitched randomly while his face remained still.
Durge seemed strangely enthralled by the half-dead man. He circled around behind the body and the brain pulsed and twitched as Tav heard speech transmitted directly into her mind.
“Yes! You’ve come to save us from this place, from this place you’ll free us.” What kind of fresh new Hell was this? The man’s head flopped back and forth and Tav heard more speech while the mouth never moved. “Please, before they return. They return.” The voice was eager and bright and almost childlike.
“An intellect devourer,” the nobleman mused while he cocked his head and watched Durge’s inspection of the injured or dead man with the noisy brain.
“Are you a man or a brain?” Durge asked. “Not dead yet. I think.”
“A newborn. Born new from this husk,” the intellect devourer cooed at Durge. “Remove us from this body - from this case free us. Please!”
The nobleman laughed. “Do you see the edema? It should be quite simple to remove the brain with a solid pull using both of your hands.” Tav watched in horror as the man carrying the brain twitched and moaned in pain while the intellect devourer was extracted. The man with his head cleaved in two fell still with a splash of blood.
The nobleman grinned wildly at the violent scene in front of him. He pointed out a section on the bottom side of the intellect devourer. “If you press your finger into that space above the fleshy area, you may find the beast is more… compliant,” he suggested casually.
Durge pressed a claw into the section of the brain that the man had indicated, and it twitched in his hand. “Oh that is too much, you are a bit too eager with your mutilation,” he laughed with a sinister warmth. “Do it again, but gentler.” The dragonborn did as he suggested, half watching the noble’s face as he observed the proceedings and half paying attention to what he was actually doing. “There,” the nobleman cooed when he was satisfied. “The beast should resist less now.” Tav looked over at the noble and wondered how in the Nine Hells he knew how to do that.
The intellect devourer wriggled out of Durge’s claws and fell onto the floor, sprouting legs and feelers in a particularly disgusting display. “We are free! Our freedom is ours! We are Us!” the intellect devourer chirped. “We must go to the helm! At the helm we are needed!”
“You made a new friend,” the nobleman cooed at Durge. “Significantly more compliant than some of the other company we have on this ship.” The nobleman smirked at Tav, and she rolled her eyes back at him.
“We are needed to navigate. We are needed to leave this realm,” Us urged them. At least there was something on the ship that could get them out of the Hells.
“Where?” Tav asked it. “Can you take us to the helm?” The brain circled several times like a dog chasing an invisible tail before leading them back towards the exterior wall of the ship.
A large section of the hull of the nautiloid was broken away, and Tav got a proper look at the horizon of Avernus. The sky was a blood red illuminated with hundreds of bolts of lightning from various electrical storm systems. Large rocky mountain ranges speared from the reddish-brown soil. Lava trails spidered across the broken land surfaces like blood vessels. Several red dragons ridden by Githyanki knights chased fiends around the ship, breathing fire into the already warm Avernus air.
Durge stepped forward as Us trotted through the exposed halls of the ship in with a strange, crooked lilt. Its claws clicked across the chitinous floor of the ship.
A large figure leapt down atop Durge and nearly knocked him to the floor. Tav had never seen a Githyanki up close before. The female warrior was wearing silvery armor decorated specifically in the most utilitarian filigree swirl that Tav had ever seen.
“Abomination!” she hissed at Durge while holding a blade to his throat. “This is your end,” she threatened specifically. Tav felt a rush of memories exchange between the two warriors of dragons and bloodletting that she didn’t understand. “My head,” she hissed before groaning.
“My good lady,” Durge greeted. “I am the Paladin Durge. We are headed to the helm to get out of the Hells and off of this ship,” he informed her.
“The helm!” Us chattered delightedly.
“Tsk’va,” she said with a delighted relief. Tav would have to ask for a translation for whatever that meant in the Githyanki language. “You are no thrall. Vlaakith blesses me this day! We will exterminate these imps and find the helm and take control of the ship,” she informed Durge. “Bring your servants!” she ordered him. The nobleman scowled at her orders, and Tav joined in his displeasure.
The four of them and a tamed brain were faced against three imps, and it should have been far less of a struggle to kill them than it ended up being. The Githyanki was a very skilled fighter, though she seemed to tire quickly. Us, the intellect devourer, was efficient at shredding the flesh of the fiends. Durge, the Paladin in sorcerer robes didn’t have a weapon initially, but he managed to find a sword after an imp dropped one and was quite adept at carving them up once armed.
Then there was Tav and the nobleman. Tav’s Fireball and Scorching Ray spells failed to materialize whatsoever, leaving her with a few cantrips and very worried prayers to Mystra. Even the Firebolt cantrip felt like it took significantly more effort than it ever had before. Tav prided herself on her skills which she made sure to keep sharp and practiced often ever since graduating from the Wizard’s Academy in Silverymoon. All of the spell practice and upkeep seemed to have been for nothing. The nobleman stood there still, snapping his fingers repeatedly while gaining nothing from it but a callus and sore joints.
“What is happening with my fire?” the nobleman snapped repeatedly with his face a contorted mask of rage and frustration. He seemed to ignore an imp that flew up right behind him while he tried to sort everything out with whatever he was doing. Tav hit the imp behind him with a Firebolt that was far weaker than it should have been, seeming to fizzle out in her hands instead of becoming a bolt of inferno. Tav finished off the last imp with another Firebolt and she sighed deeply at how messed up and unresponsive her magic seemed.
This day was the absolute fucking worst. Not only was Tav completely doomed by the parasite, but all of her spells she had spent years mastering wouldn’t obey her commands and the Weave felt like it was dying in her hands. Tav hadn’t felt so powerless in years, definitely not since she was an apprentice wizard. Now, Tav was lucky if she would survive the next hour, never mind the months to years it would take to build her strength back up.
Tav looked over at the nobleman next to her, still snapping his fingers while nothing happened. Whatever was happening with him seemed to be far more destructive than what was happening with her. While Tav thought the brown-haired man was annoying and very spoiled and peculiar, she could empathize with one’s skills evaporating into thin air the moment the tadpole found residence.
“Do you need some help with your Firebolt spell? Is that what you were trying to do?” Tav asked him.
“No. I do not require your assistance.” He scrunched his nose in anger. “I am incredibly powerful, so much so that I could make you bow to me.”
“I should knock you into the slime. She is useful in battle.” The Githyanki then motioned over to the white dragonborn. “He is adequate, surprisingly. You have yet to do anything valuable.”
The nobleman silently fumed and raged for a moment before abruptly stopping his tantrum and giving her a bright smile. “Usefulness is not always obvious. Sometimes, people you meet have quite a knack for their ability to change your fate.”
“If that was the case, that does not describe you. Your fate is likely to be best served by acting as bait for the fiends.”
Tav didn’t doubt that the Githyanki knight was probably correct in her assessment of the spoiled nobleman whose face was flushed a deep scarlet in rage. The man slowly ran his tongue over his teeth inside his mouth, and to his credit, he didn’t fire back at her. Probably because his snapping was unable to elicit fire.
Tav grabbed Durge’s arm and led him through the halls of the nautiloid leaving the other two behind while the Githyanki knight continued to yell at the patriar who looked like he was about to burst into flames. Tav heard venomous ire erupt from the nobleman’s voice as he started to hurl other insults back at the Githyanki.
“We shouldn’t leave them,” Durge insisted. “We’re going to need their help.”
“They’ll figure it out,” Tav said under her breath.
“We need them,” the dragonborn insisted again. “Don’t misunderstand me, I am an incredibly potent warrior, but we’re stuck in the Hells on a ship that’s about to burn up. We need help, and we can’t leave them here.”
Tav started to climb upwards on a net made of sinews and other tissue towards where Us indicated the helm was located.
“Wizard,” he addressed Tav. “Let’s wait.”
Tav wrapped her arms tightly around the fleshy netting and buried her face in her forearms. She nodded into her arms, and watched as the dragonborn went to interrupt the nascent argument. The Paladin rapidly became the target for both of their arguing companions who argued in turn that Durge was a terrible sword fighter and that someone like him couldn’t possibly be a Paladin and he must be delusional.
“We need to get out of here,” Tav lectured her arguing companions. “Either both of you stop this pettiness or Durge and I are going to throw you out that hole in the wall.” Tav pointed towards an open gash in the hull of the nautiloid and the spiraling, rushing horizon of Avernus below them. The Githyanki chuckled darkly before following without complaint, while the nobleman pouted for a short while until he realized everyone was actually going to leave him behind.
Tav climbed up the fascial netting, now closely followed by the three others. They passed through another one of the sphincter doors into a control room surrounded by Illithid thralls. The thralls were seated in chitinous chairs that were connected to some sort of central tower that had a purpose Tav couldn’t discern. Several storage pods were placed sporadically on the perimeter of the room. The room was filled with an eerie red glow, and Tav quickly wondered if mindflayer eyes functioned the same way that humanoid eyes did.
“Let me out!” Tav heard furious pounding on the glass from inside another storage pod, and she rushed over to see a dark-haired half-elf woman inside with a look of panic on her face. “You! Get me out of this thing!” she pleaded. Tav went over to the edge of the pod and felt that it was securely locked.
“Don’t waste time on it. We must go,” the Githyanki ordered.
“We certainly can spare quite a long time to save another survivor,” the nobleman cooed immediately after the orders to leave.
“Kainyank! Do not be a fool,” she hissed back. “Do you really intend to die for a stranger?”
“What are you, a vin’iisk?” the nobleman said with a bright smile. “That is the word for ‘underling or minion’ is it not? Would you say that describes you?”
Tav tried to ignore them and went to the nearby control panel, looking around at the same buttons on the control panel that originally released the nobleman. She noticed an empty slot for holding something on the panel. An inspection of another empty, opened pod revealed the missing item was a grayish chitin plate embedded with the Illithid language. Tav grabbed the slate from the other panel and installed it on the one holding the trapped woman. The pod still wouldn’t open, no matter what Tav tried to activate on the control panel.
“K’chakhi!” The Gith spat back at her opponent.
“Can you do more than namecalling? See, I can do the same right back in the Githyanki language. How about shka’keth?” The Githyanki was gritting her teeth, and it seemed almost foolhardy to Tav to antagonize someone so lethal when all he knew was how to snap his fingers.
Tav called Durge over. “Can you look for another of these plates nearby? I’ll try again and see if I can get her out.”
“I know what you do not want to be called,” the nobleman continued to taunt. “Is’tark. Coward. You are too much of an is’tark and would abandon such a helpless girl.” The woman in the pod smacked her hands on the glass in frustration when the nobleman called her a helpless girl.
The nobleman grinned when the Githyanki had nothing to say back to him for quite some time. Durge returned with another eldritch slate that Tav used to open the Illithid storage pod and the half-elf climbed out. She grabbed some sort of icosahedral box which she put back into her pack. “You keep dangerous company,” the half-elf whispered to Tav.
“I know she does,” the nobleman said with a smile while the Githyanki continued to glare at him. “Well, now that another survivor has been freed we can find this transponder and escape this place.”
Tav and Durge led the charge following Us through the rest of the ship, while the half-elf, nobleman, and Githyanki trailed behind.
“This is the helm!” Us announced pleasantly. “We are at the helm!”
“When we are inside, you will do as I say,” the Githyanki ordered.
“Who put you in charge? Clearly they are the ones you should be following,” the half-elf said with a touch of bitterness since the other woman had wanted to leave her behind.
“Kainyank!” the Githyanki warrior grumbled again, and Tav would still need to ask her what that meant. Though apparently she could also ask the nobleman who apparently spoke Gith.
Tav opened the door to the helm, and all of them were promptly greeted by an outright fight between several mindflayers and cambions from Avernus. Bodies of humanoids, Illithid, and fiends littered the floor, which was spattered with blood and ichor.
“Thall. Connect the transponder.” Tav heard an order come directly from one of the mindflayers fighting a very large cambion. She could hear the words echoing through her mind, just as they did when Us was speaking with them. Tav could see an image projected into her mind of an azure control panel covered with tentacles at the far end of the room and imagined that was what the Illithid meant for her to do.
“Connect the transponder!” Us chirped.
There was a crack of glass, and fire rained in the room through one of the side walls. A dozen imps poured in through the gap, attacking their Illithid captors while the ship was threatening to fall from the sky into the rivers of blood and lava below.
Tav rushed forward, followed closely by Durge and the others, ignoring the imps and cambions while they shredded the mindflayers. Durge paused and hesitated, pointing at the large cambion commander close by while the others ran past him, eager to leave the Hells behind.
“Look at his sword. It’s made of fire.” Durge pointed out. “We’ve got to kill the cambion and take it from him!”
“Kill him? He’s going to kill us! Look at him.” Tav insisted with urgency that was two steps below a panic.
“I will have that blade. It will help secure our survival,” Durge protested fiercely, running towards the cambion lieutenant with his longsword. “Then, we will take the transponder.”
Tav saw the door open and more cambions flew into the room to aid their commander. “I’ll make you a new one!” Tav insisted, trying to get Durge to leave. When he wouldn’t move, Tav grabbed his arm and dragged him forwards.
The next minute felt like a blur. Tav ran right past the nobleman, Shadowheart, and the Githyanki across the helm to the transponder. She grabbed two of the sticky, goopy tentacles which were shaped like the legs of a squid before attaching the two halves together and hoping that was what she was supposed to do.
Tav felt a horrible lurching feeling as the nautiloid teleported out of the Hells. Tav vaguely remembered detaching the transponder to stop the horrid planar transport and being jostled and tossed about the room as the ship started to crash. She remembered falling, then gently decelerating, then landing softly in the sand. Tav closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.
The sun was shining in Tav’s eyes when she woke up in the sand on a beach in the middle of nowhere. A small rock was pressed into her back and left an imprint in her skin. She pressed a hand to her forehead in a futile attempt to stop the aching behind her eyes. Where did she end up now? Tav turned her head to see Durge laying calmly on his back in the sand as though he was trying to tan. He waved pleasantly at her when she woke, and she groaned before waving back with a grimace on her face. There was no sign of either the half-elf or the Githyanki. Tav ran a hand through her messy reddish-brown hair which was covered with sand and unmentionable slime.
The annoying nobleman was still there, standing by the edge of the river staring into the water. He was careful never to let his overly fancy boots with the curled toes get wet while the reedgrasses blew around his legs in gentle waves.
“Middle of nowhere,” the man complained. He snapped his fingers again while nothing happened. He stared at them instead of trying again. There was no way Tav was going to survive out in the wilds with her magic skills severely weakened without help. Shunning him and complaining about him wasn’t going to do any good.
“I’m Tav,” she stood up and went to shake his hand. He cocked an eyebrow before completely changing his face to a suave smile and grabbing her hand and gently kissing the back of it.
“Raphael,” he introduced himself. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”