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Chapter Text

The gith woman was free of her cage, her captors dead, and so the spider let herself shrink down, folding eight limbs into four, chelicerae into jawbone, chitin into soft skin. Then she was a tiefling again.

“You,” the gith proclaimed. “Ze’a.”

The tiefling looked from one of her companions to the other: they were called Shadowheart and Astarion. Did the gith woman know one of them as something else?

“You,” she said again, now right in front of the tiefling. “Speak, and prove that this battle has not entirely scrambled what little remains of your senses.”

“Me?”

The gith’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, istik ze’a’va, you.”

“I—not. Name, me. Ze’a.”

“It is not a name, istik. They are words in my tongue. Ze’a, one who takes the shape of beasts. And you are istik as well, a lesser being, not of the githyanki.”

The tiefling squinted back. How dare she, a voice within her said, how dare this needle-sharp nothing proclaim me lesser, when her limbs are so fragile I could snap them like twigs? With her skin so green, the blood underneath such fragrant yellow, so sweet to spill? I am nothing lesser than her agonizing death, it cried.

“Not istik,” she said. “I—“ but the rest of her thoughts vanished, breath into air, because why did she know gith blood would be yellow? The woman had not bled yet.

She stepped back and shook herself, hoping that maybe this time the gesture would shake something loose in her empty, useless mind. “I—ze’a, just. Don’t, rude. If, no worry, about, parasite. Because, you, dead. Because, I, kill. You.”

“You would try,” the gith hissed. “You would not succeed. But your spirit will serve well on our journey to the crèche.”

Shadowheart came forward, completing a triangle between the three of them, hand still on her mace’s hilt and eyes flickering between the two women.

“She is a githyanki. We cannot trust her. It would have been better to leave her to be killed,” she said. Her gaze was fixed on the tiefling, but her body was taut and alert, ready to meet any swing if the gith decided to attack.

The gith’s eyes narrowed further, and she too looked ready to pounce. The tiefling wondered who would draw blood first, who would win—and who would die, choking desperately on their own blood. How it would sound, smell, taste—

“If anyone cares,” Astarion’s haughty voice came from far off, where he hovered in the shade at the side of the road, “I think perhaps we ought not to start killing each other until we know it won’t hurt any of us. Or at least let me know if you intend to do so anyway, so I can take myself far, far away beforehand.”

“No,” the tiefling said, hoping they would all understand: no more death. No more fighting. They needed each other. To Shadowheart, she added: “She lives. Unless.” To the gith: “Not, trust you, she. I, maybe. All, we… parasite, head, want gone. You… know. And, I want, know. Why… tell, about. Crèche.”

“A crèche is many things to the githyanki. Hatchery, nursery, training grounds,” the gith said, with the air of someone reciting something they’d been told many times. “But for us, it will be nav’no’stilar: a place of healing. The horned ones said their Z’ruu encountered a githyan warrior; we must find this Z’ruu and learn the location of the g’sha, which will surely lead us to the crèche. There, and only there, we will be healed.”

Chapter Text

The gith woman’s name was Lae’zel. The tiefling watched as she, Shadowheart, and Astarion wiped the other tieflings’ blood off their weapons. She had no such task; she had been a spider during the fight, and what blood didn’t flake off her fangs as she shifted down to two legs again, she didn’t mind the taste of.

Astarion turned his dagger over in his hand, looking intently into it, as if examining his reflection. Then he lowered it again, and looked at the tiefling.

“This is getting ridiculous,” he said. “We can’t just keep yelling ‘you!’ and hoping it catches the right person’s attention. Especially if we keep walking into the kind of trouble that involves fighting.” He emphasized the last word with a dramatic shudder, as though he hadn’t brutally gutted someone only minutes before.

“As much as I hate to agree with anything Astarion says, in this case, he’s right. Even I have a name,” Shadowheart added, incongruously.

“It is inefficient,” Lae’zel said. “Every soldier should have a personal name, so their commander may instruct them quickly in the heat of battle.”

“Don’t… know,” the tiefling forced out. “Not. Name. Me.”

“Then you are worse than ze’a’va,” Lae’zel said. “Only ghaiki are without identity, subservient to the chraith’zor. You are half-ghaik already.” She stretched out her arm and leveled her blade at the tiefling.

The tiefling placed a hand on the tip of Lae’zel’s sword, pressing it downward. Lae’zel let her. Still, she shivered; and thought she could feel the parasite behind her eye squirming in pleasure at Lae’zel‘s naming. And why should it get one, when she didn’t? It wasn’t fair. She hated the parasite, suddenly, more than she had watching—feeling—it crawl its way into her head, more than she had seeing the woman in the pod’s gruesome change into a mind flayer on the illithid ship and thinking, it wants to do that to me. She wanted it gone. She needed it dead. She wanted it to suffer. She wanted to know every detail of the past and purpose she’d lost, then she wanted the parasite to forget everything about itself and to live in a haze of fear and confusion until she crushed it with her bare hands. She wanted herself back.

“No,” she said. “Want. Name.”

“Bossy, aren’t you.” Astarion pretended to examine his fingernails. “We all want things, darling. Most of us never get them.”

“I’ve never named anyone before, but I could try?” Shadowheart offered.

“No pets in your past, then?” Astarion said, glancing up at her with half-lidded eyes.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no.” She turned back to the tiefling, her dark braid swinging with the movement. “I don’t know what sort of name you’d like, but I can offer suggestions until we find something. What do you think of… Celandine?”

The tiefling shook her head. She wanted her name, not a name, but how would she find it? If she heard it, would she even know it was hers?

“This is foolish,” Lae’zel said. “A waste of time. We should be on our way to the crèche now, not standing in place. She is ze’a’va. That is enough for me.”

“Trust a githyanki not to know the value of an ally,” Shadowheart said. “She saved my life when you tried to leave me to die. I’ll waste as much time on her as I like, as much time as she deems necessary, because I trust her far more than I trust you.”

A warmth flooded the tiefling’s throat. It was… nice to be trusted. Especially by Shadowheart, who had such faith in her own decisions—and, it seemed, in the tiefling’s.

“We go,” she said. “Find… nn, things. Gold. Talk way. On way.” The tiefling bumped her shoulder against Shadowheart’s; she couldn’t quite recall a word for the feeling of gratitude, of wanting-to-please-her, but she hoped the gesture would communicate at least some of it.

Shadowheart gave her a shy, almost-surprised smile on response. Astarion rolled his eyes and stuck his long-since-clean dagger back in his belt.

Lae’zel did not sheathe her sword, but she did shift her grip to something better for movement than combat. “The ghustil will purify us without need of payment,” she said. “To destroy all that is ghaik is the githyanki’s holy quest, by the order of Vlaakith herself. We waste time.”

“Still,” the tiefling said. “Food. Rest. Need. Then go.”