Chapter Text
Protect them.
Soldier wakes unable to move and has no recollection of falling asleep. It’s an unwelcome surprise to see a bearded devil. This one -- more oblong, pulsating, and well dressed than usual -- looms tall and close. Hm, no. Not a bearded devil. Or a devil at all. The purplish creature has a partially exposed brain and round, malice-filled pearls for eyes. How does it fly without wings? In its approaching hand a small thing, no larger than an arrowhead, writhes and gnaws at the air with sharp, tiny teeth. Closer, closer, closer…
Remain still, my child. The path ahead will become clear, her voice guides, a thread of silver light in the dark.
Soldier is a soldier, not a child. Still, she must be listened to. Grateful to hear her at all, soldier pretends it is a choice to obey and allow this toothed shrimp creature to enter when the not-devil holds it disconcertingly near. Pain is part of life. Pain is normal. Pain is comforting in its familiarity if nothing else. But as the toothed worm forms a flat curtain on soldier’s eyeball and rides the involuntary blinks that follow deeper beyond, it can only be described as itchy. Itchy and uncomfortable in a way that doesn’t let soldier forget how the crustacean invader makes itself at home. Soldier’s experience with invaders doesn’t suggest any expectation of kindness.
That’s all right. Soldier can accept much discomfort, much pain, much itchiness. The rest of the mission and all the unknowns that might await present more of a concern.
She called with this mission. Soldier’s first mission, really, if the several scores of time spent battling below are ignored. And they should be. The experience won’t translate well. So it’s less that soldier is suited to the task at hand and more that soldier is the singular choice remaining for it.
Soldier likely won’t translate well either. How long ago had those lessons in Common been? But soldier will try. Soldier will try very, very hard to please her. Please her and protect them, whoever they are. She had demanded it before calling soldier to arms, after all. So much time had passed below, waiting and wishing that she would call like this.
Well. Perhaps not exactly like this. Soldiers couldn’t have imagined these many appendaged floating not-devils, their worms with knife mouths, and all the exposed brains skittering along the ground. After all, soldier was not made to imagine. Not made for many things this mission might require.
Soldier’s eyes close again for a little while; behind them, the worm squirms.
*
Soldier wakes again from a terrible lurching, and the familiar smells of fire, smoke, and brimstone dust choke the air. All sense suggests imminent conflict, but soldier sees no one to fight and no one to protect. There is only the strange containment of neither metal nor stone. Beyond it, the flames of the hells scour the alien infrastructure.
Pressing newly printed fingertips to the prison’s material brings soldier back to being a child. Back to standing before the seemingly endless expanse of freshwater sea beneath an eternal night. Oh, how child had marveled at the reflections of the stars and the white stone buildings dancing together on the rippling waves. Every shell and rock on the path astride the beach was an object of wonder and mystery.
Shell. It’s composed of shell. Soldier is inside a living creature or a once-alive repurposed one? Regardless, the shell prison gives way to touch. It hadn’t before, with the floating not-devil in the room.
The cooked-flesh smell is familiar; the thick yellow liquid pooled at the center of the room is not. It contained the worms? If it had, now it sits empty. Soldier can only guess that the squirming creatures found homes just like the one causing brain itches. What could this bubbling substance be? Soldier marches closer with interest. Discovering more of it could be relevant to the mission!
The angry liquid does not like curious fingertips. It sizzles flesh and explodes at the touch, blasting soldier into the dubious embrace of dangling blue tentacles. Strangely, these tentacles like flesh. They heal curious fingertips and keep healing until all the skin scrubbed away by the brine returns in good health. Printed fingers as good as new. Strange.
Further investigation of the room reveals that the not-devil failed to reach the friendly tentacles following whatever impact injured it. The shell prison had protected soldier from the same fate. Glad to see it not return to life, soldier pokes around the pockets of its high necked robe and finds little of note. Just a purple gem with a flat face and careful facets. It is lovely and pleasing to the touch, but does it have a use? Perhaps in trade. Or one of those soldier is meant to protect will require it.
With this new concern for storing items, the satchel on soldier’s back becomes obvious. The pack is not empty. There are gifts from her within!
Soldier is pleased to find a well worn warhammer. Something a bit heavier would be better, but at least it’s not a sword. Soldier much prefers smashing to slicing…Oh, there’s a shield. Soldier fights the urge to make a face. Gifts from her should be met with gratitude. Even if soldier would rather throw the shield at an enemy’s kneecaps and bring a nice, weighty weapon down on them with both hands.
Javelins, good, more weapons to throw. What else? A strange scroll with stranger magic…A means for resurrection? Does soldier require such a thing? Perhaps the others will. The scroll gets tucked protectively into an inner pocket. Drinks? Medicinal drinks, it smells like. And a pack within the pack filled with preserved food and a waterskin.
…How many scores of years away is the taste of food? Uncountable. The carefully wrapped nuts look crunchy, and soldier takes great effort not to squish them accidentally. The preserved, salted pieces of game have a smoky aroma when soldier dares a mere sniff. The dried slices of an unknown fruit. Sweet or tart? What is the difference between them again? Soldier could find out….Oh, these items present such temptation. But what if they are not for soldier?
….If they are not for soldier, then isn’t it more imperative that soldier try them? Just to make sure the food-appearing items are food in truth. And that they taste. Would a true protector neglect such things?
They look like they taste. Excitement like the bubbling lava soldier would toss stones into with unit mates builds more ravenous than the little worm within. This unknown body isn’t quite hungry yet, but that’s better. Soldier won’t consume too much. Soldier won’t infringe on this bounty. This is just ensuring the safety of those who may come under soldier’s care.
Ignoring the tongues of flame tasting the edges of the room, soldier lays the shield across their lap like a table and sets out one of each item, displaying the smallest portions these new fingers can achieve in a perfect row. The hardtack is too like the summoned flavorless rations of the garrison to be of much interest, but soldier’s eyes wander indecisively across the board at the rest of the offerings. What to try first seems impossible to decide! Soldier is unpracticed in the art of decisions! Decisions are for superiors and those born with choices instead of vows.
For better or worse, soldier loses the opportunity.
Help us… a high pitched voice crawls through soldier’s mind. Is this language? Or thoughts that transcend it? Release us….
Soldier was brought to this place to protect, to be of service. Tasting -- no, testing -- the food would have to wait. The prize morsels get shoved into a side pocket of the bag and soldier scrambles to balance on boots far lighter than standard issue metal sabatons.
The room doesn’t have a door. Not really. It has a sphincter…a working one that flexes open for the touch of soldier’s printed fingers. Whatever gargantuan creature soldier walks inside, it is still alive in some way. Hopefully, more than it remains alive here .
We are trapped…
The invading mind voice. How does soldier know it comes from above? Strange indeed, these threads of connection grasping for a hold. Soldier won’t learn more by standing here. But it seems too high to jump…
Hmm…a chitinous platform slatted slightly above the matching ground? A similarly shaped gap is there just above. Prodding at the glowing mechanical flower on the platform stirs it to rise. Uneasily, soldier crouches in wait.
…Nothing attacks. The platform remains steady after rising one floor. Soldier ventures forward to the body slack across a reclined chair. The request came from over here but this person seems very dead at the moment. An elf? The dead mortal twitching in the throes of death has pointed ears. Is soldier too late? Do elves come back?
We are here - here. The mind voice! Soldier jumps -- very nearly off the second floor, but manages to fall forward instead of back in a loud clatter of scalemail on the shell-like ground at the foot of the chair.
“You live,” Soldier hops up, glad to be not too late.
I am a newborn, the voice says with an edge of contagious excitement. Born new from this husk.
The idea of husk mutes soldier’s echoing trill of excitement. Husk sounds less than alive. The elf is probably not born anew, not yet. But what is?
Soldier rounds the chair containing the twitching elf and squawks with dismay to find their skull carved open with disturbing precision. The brain inside quivers. Is the brain itself communicating? Asking for help for the body? Is this a regular thing for elves?
You’ve come to save us from this place! From this place you’ll free us.
This place doesn’t seem to be a very good place at all, considering the eye shrimp, the alien machinery, and the heat of Avernus chewing its way inside.
“Help,” soldier promises in Common and hefts the elf’s slight body over one shoulder. After escaping, maybe that scroll soldier found can assist.
The voice screes with displeasure all the way down to the main floor. Remove us from this body! Please, before they return. They return.
Removing brains runs counter to everything that soldier had learned about both mortals and medicine. Patting the body’s lower back, soldier attempts to soothe-speak, “Elf good. Soldier protecting.”
This agitates the voice further. Strange taloned legs begin to poke out of the elf’s head. Soldier is beginning to think this is not normal for elves at all. The enemy! So many enemies! From this case free us! We must to the helm!
Poor elf-brain. It’s understandable to be afraid, trapped on a vessel like this. And it must be a vessel, some sort of sky ship for how high over Avernus the outer bridge presides. While trying to assure the concerned brain that no enemies will take them by surprise, soldier receives a surprise: a short warrior with a ferocious mien, wearing gem-decorated half plate armor and brandishing a longsword in threat.
The warrior speaks in a jumble of consonants that grate on soldier’s ears with anger-feeling. A dawning realization that has yet to reach soldier changes the warrior’s face and words. Some of the words are recognizable now and sound less like the warrior is about to try anything with that longsword.
“You are no thrall. Vlaakith blesses me this day,” the warrior’s smiles with exhausted relief rather than pleasure or pleasantness.
“Thrall?” Soldier repeats with a curious trill. This word is unknown. So is the name uttered by the warrior; to provide blessings it must belong to some sort of god. Strange, that soldier has never heard it before now.
“We carry Mind Flayer parasites,” the warrior says. Soldier has no idea what any of that means, but it sounds bad. “In days, we will be ghaik.” This also seems bad, so soldier puts on a serious frown and nods. Of course, soldier will provide as much aid as possible. Protecting mortals is the mission, even if soldier has never seen one that looks quite like this. That’s all right. Patterns are a matter of interest rather than importance.
The disconcertingly independent brain in the body over soldier’s shoulder shrieks with displeasure. Free us! The helm! We are going to the helm!
The warrior looks at soldier with steely eyes, “The creature you bear speaks true. Free it or be rid of the body, we cannot fight so burdened.” With the words, the warrior jerks their head toward the imps supping on the long-dead bodies prone upon the wide balcony at the bottom of the incline they occupy. The warrior is concerned about imps? In soldier’s experience, imps are hardly worth killing directly for how easily they perish. Certainly not worth giving up the quest to help the dead elf and their rogue brain.
“Help elf,” soldier tells the warrior, “Leg imp dead.” In case the words are unclear, soldier mimes a kick. Many an imp were crushed beneath soldier’s sabatons. These soft leather boots pad every step with comfort but necessitate greater force for skull crushing.
“The elf is well beyond any help,” the warrior says with a force that tries to shake soldier’s will. An intimidation attempt. “If you knew them in life, you know them no longer, let go.”
“No,” Soldier says, determined. The struggling brain makes the body twitch ineffectively in soldier’s iron grip.
The warrior says some things too quick and harsh for soldier to understand. The anger-frustrated-feeling words might be curses upon soldier, and that’s fine. The warrior can curse soldier as much as they like, so long as they are all safe to do so.
And safe does come under threat too quickly for soldier to ask more about what istik could mean. Not that imps are much of a threat.
…So why does its firebolt actually hurt? The imps and their twitching wings also seem larger somehow. They used to barely reach the poleyns that protected soldier’s knees. Now their fetid little maws gnash around hip height. Still kickable.
Soldier winds up.
Soldier lands the heavy kick.
The imp does not die? Hurt, it screams with rage.
Rage and then, laughter, when it seems that soldier has miscalculated. These new legs and their comfortable leather shoes wobble after the motion and slip on the remains spilled out onto the balcony. Soldier squawks with panic and, like a watchtower sabotaged from the bottom, collapses heavily in a disaster of wayward pieces. These wildly thrashing limbs know not how to catch soldier, and long silver hair suddenly clouds any vision that could have helped them do so.
And that’s not the only disaster. Soldier lands atop the lost elf. The elf that soldier wished to protect is crushed, their open head splitting with a sickening crunch for the sudden weight and pressure.
Free! You have freed Us! the loose brain shouts. It scrambles out and slays the imp with its chicken-like talons, but soldier only has eyes for the mangled body of the elf. Without the brain’s squirming, it lies motionless and broken like the other long dead here. Resurrecting a mortal in this condition seems impossible without a cleric of the highest blessing, no matter what scrolls she has gifted. Failure weighs exactly the same as it always has, even on this new heart.
“Come, we are wasting time,” the warrior says with a level of command that stirs soldier from these thoughts. Says rightly. More will come to waste if soldier takes this one failure as a failure in all tasks to come.
The elf deserved better. Soldier will think of them in trying harder.
Trying to push back all the light hairs plastered to soldier’s face with that resolution only results in envying the warrior’s hair tie. There had been no hair ties in the bag she sent. So it sticks to soldier’s neck and shoulders as they search the bodies for anything useful. No hair ties yet. There’s some weapons too small to really appeal to soldier, some coins that get stuffed in the bag, and a strange round bulb.
As the warrior examines and then opts to equip a salvaged crossbow, soldier notices the tell-tale discoloration of a burn spanning their neck and curling over their jaw. Oh, one of the imps must have struck the warrior!
Immediately, soldier rushes over to provide healing.
Performing the gesture and laying hands upon the wound does no more than provoke annoyed-speak from the warrior. Is soldier no longer able to heal? How exactly is soldier meant to help?!
“Hurt bad,” soldier explains mournfully. Fortunately, this time looking around in a panic produces the solution! The nice, flesh-loving tentacles are here, too. Right in front of the direction the elf’s freed brain keeps squealing for them to try. The warrior mostly yells at soldier’s attempts to persuade-sing them into the fluorescent, wriggling grasp of the good tentacles. More things soldier can’t understand but nothing more important than healing!
The warrior is stronger than expected. Soldier can’t help but squawk when their hand tries to defeat soldier’s efforts with a squeezing hand on face. But the warrior is far smaller. So that when soldier pulls off a feint, they are left no choice other than the tentacles grasp.
“No hurt,” soldier assures the warrior. As they had before, the tentacles glow a cool blue and ease the soldiers burns into the greenish yellow and spotted black of their pattern.
The warrior’s expression burns with the fires of Avernus. “Reduced to relying on ghaik machinery and accompanied by a simpleton. I numbered my blessings too many.”
With a turn of the heel, the warrior stomps off toward the terrible fleshen nets that, if their brain-chicken is to be believed, leads to the helm. Soldier climbs after them, trying not to spend too much wondering about if these nets belonged to the creature they walk inside or its victims. After some time, perhaps there is no difference at all.
Becoming nets, becoming part of this place, would be bad. They must escape. Even if there’s no one else, soldier will try for this small, brave warrior.
At the top of the ladder is another sphincter. It opens easily for them, revealing a room of many strange devices. But there are people! Mortals of several types! They lie prone on slabs connected to machinery that soldier does not know, their open eyes unseeing, their upturned hands unfeeling. Among the technology holding them captive, soldier can make out three buttons. That does not mean soldier can make any sense at all of them.
“Read?” soldier asks the warrior.
“Chk,” the warrior huffs but reluctantly obliges to examine the sigils. “Ghaik nonsense. I can grasp no more of it.”
Aside from randomly pressing buttons, soldier is out of options --
“You! Get me out!” a voice calls. Not a mind voice but a voice voice. “Get me out of this thing!”
Promising to return, soldier dashes from the tables over to the source of the voice. The voice is coming from a person in a shell cage. Except, theirs did not open like soldier’s.
“Please, it’s stuck,” the person begs, their pale face creased with fear as they pound on the hard shell without enough strength to make a dent.
Soldier doesn’t understand everything that the trapped person says. But soldier knows please. And soldier knows desperation: the sort of bosom companion soldier holds tightly and possessively lest anyone else have to meet it.
For all the trying, soldier can find no relief for the desperation of the struggling mortal. There is no hinge to this encasement. It’s not a surprise; the one soldier escaped from lacked such a thing as well. The person says more things that soldier can’t quite understand, but it’s easy enough to track the terrified eyes beneath their dark fringe to the strange device beside the cage.
“We don’t have time for stragglers,” the warrior says.
Soldier frowns, straightening up. No time? They will make time. And the warrior will wait or they won’t. Hoping to make that decision a little easier for the warrior, soldier reaches into the front pocket where the rations were quickly set away and places them in their gloved hand. Eating is always a good use of time. Therefore, it is time well spent.
The angry-frustrated-scared diatribe of the warrior as they stare at the bounty of nuts and dried foods in their palm does not agree. But the warrior is strong and eats anyway. Good. It would be a shame to waste precious food. Soldier wonders if it tastes…
No, the device. Soldier must discover this device. Soldier must not fail another mortal. Must not fail another elf.
Soldier stares at the device.
It hums.
Soldier kicks the device.
Nothing. More emotionless humming.
The captive groans. “Just get me out!” Fear. Frustration. Will soldier ever provoke a different emotion from a mortal or are all efforts doomed to punish the ears?
It is not the time to think on such matters. Soldier squats to inspect the device more closely. It is missing a piece. Soldier has seen many, many pieces scattered upon the vessel’s tables that resemble the shape. It could be anywhere, anything.
Soldier makes a frustrated sound all their own. Soldier is done. Soldier is so, so tired of thinking. Soldier was not made for this. Why send soldier at all?
In front of the pod, soldier plants feet like the tall, sturdy irons that guard the garrison. Lower stance for balance and to engage the back. This body is new, this body may not even be soldier’s, not really, but surely it’s good for something if she gifted it. Surely it can hold at least the smallest fraction of what soldier is!
Soldier digs into the chitinous curves with all the strength of these freshly printed fingers. All shells part somewhere. Soldier will find it. Soldier recalls the cage of earlier and its structure. And earlier still, soldier recalls bared feet on the sand and many many shells gathered in the clutched hem of child’s smithy apron. The wind off the freshwater sea had stirred the child’s white hair and feathers, and it aches, because soldier cannot even recall what it had felt like.
Soldier does, however, recall how to destroy.
“Get me out!” the person pleads. And for a strange, still moment, soldier sees child in their scared and scarred face instead. No, two children. The one that soldier knows from the mirror and the other small and dark haired, with two black buns atop their head and a newly striped wound across their pale cheek.
Soldier’s prying hands begin to glow. All the power soldier can draw from the slimmest thread of connection. And that’s all right. The faith that holds soldier is not one thick, severable rope but thousands and thousands of these tiny silver threads. They break and so does soldier. And yet thousands and thousands more grow in their places in perpetuity, endlessly binding to the courage, compassion, and duty that soldier swore to uphold.
Soldier promised. Soldier vowed. And so that smallest thread is meaning, motivation, care enough to curl into the shell’s mouth. Enough to force it open with the little radiance soldier can claim in this state.
And when a gap is made, the shell remembers how to do the rest, swinging open and spilling the person to the floor. Exhausted, soldier joins them there.
“You’re hurt,” the person says, scared-grateful as they reach for soldier. “Here, it’s the least I can do.”
The warrior has finished eating and is no more patient for it. “Work your magic quickly, we must reach the helm.”
“Can’t you see he’s bleeding?” they bite at the warrior, irritation replacing their fear. The speed of the words make them harder to understand, but soldier gathers enough of their message.
He? soldier wonders as the cleric, and this person must be a cleric, for how cleric calls on healing magic to mend the fingers shredded by sharp shell. Though soldier finds the magic strangely abrasive, continuing to skitter along freshly healed fingers. No matter for now; soldier is more concerned about mortal designations, which had been the topic of many a Common lesson long ago.
Yes, he. Soldier remembers that one. He, him. Mail like platemail’s mail. Soldier can do that. Maybe. It will certainly make more sense to these mortals than the soldier designation.
Ah, the warrior and the cleric likely have designations that differ from their occupations and purposes, too.
“I’m Shadowheart,” the cleric, Shadowheart says.
Names. Soldier -- He -- had completely forgotten about names. His title would cause some confusion in this place. It would also strike strangely, in this situation, for the mortals to award him a name. And he could hardly ask such a thing. Soldier has done no deed to deserve one.
“The helm,” soldier suggests as a distraction from the whole business of names and wipes his blood-sticky hands on his blue and white tabbard.
“Finally,” the warrior says, only to groan when Shadowheart needs an additional moment to snatch an object from the remains of their chitinous cage. “She wastes our time.”
She. Shadowheart is a she. How had the warrior known that? Pattern alone? Soldier does not think all mortals decide this way. Perhaps a secret mortal code.
Shadowheart glares balefully at the straight-backed warrior, “She is coming.” Looking up at soldier -- at him -- she adds, “You keep dangerous company.”
Soldier tilts his head. Dangerous? Warriors are meant to be dangerous, yes? And so are soldiers.
“Dangerous,” he repeats, pointing to himself.
“I meant her,” Shadowheart jerks her head toward the warrior -- toward her? -- and jostles her long, dark braid in the process. “But point taken. Shall we?”
Much to the warrior’s dismay, he drags Shadowheart over to the mysterious buttons and their sigils instead. The warrior impatiently taps her feet and snatches up anything on the tables, including an entire locked reliquary box, while Shadowheart works to decipher the strange sigils.
Whatever Shadowheart sees, she does not tell him. She just presses a button that makes the barely breathing mortals on the tables go limp and still, in death not in wait. He wails and looks at her in reproach.
“Trust me,” she says, hard-sad-determined. So many layers. “Of the options, it was the best one for them and us.”
How could she just decide such a thing? Soldier has no idea how to decide. Soldier was not made to decide.
Us! the walking brain chimes in. Follow Us to the helm!
The prone mortals are gone now, beyond his help. And there’s no decision to make. Soldier can only march ahead, death both in his wake and in his heart.
“We are nearing the helm. Once inside, do as I say,” the warrior -- she -- says, intimidation-concern. The browns of her eyebrows can furrow very far indeed.
Shadowheart crosses her arms and wrinkles her nose like a bit of brimstone wafted just under it. “Who put you in charge?”
“T'chaki,” she growls with anger, first at Shadowheart and then at him. Her hand grips his arm tightly, and she marches over to the dangling blue tentacles she had been so reluctant to partake in earlier. “I should not have to tell you not to stand in fire, istik.”
Soldier tilts his head. Ah, that would explain why it was hurting. Soldier is too used to hurting for it to trouble him much. Except when it hurts the heart. Somehow, there’s little getting used to that.
“What is istik?” he asks, wondering if this warrior has been attempting to name him. Does warrior have a name? It seems rude to ask in case she doesn’t.
“It means stranger in the Common tongue,” she explains. “In many cases, it also means brainless, inept, and ill-disciplined.”
Soldier -- he -- isn’t sure about all of that, but he understands stranger. As for the other part he understands, soldier points to the brain twitching eagerly at their feet in deep concern for the helm. Clearly, they have found at least one brain.
Shadowheart coughs with laughter for the incredulous, then irritated expression that finds the warrior’s face. “Come,” the warrior all but spits. “We don’t have time to stuff it back into your useless head.”
Lae’zel marches ahead, prompting the sphincter to swirl open to a long, wide room with many controls. The broad window on the far side shows the smokescape of Avernus. The machinery in front of the window must be the helm. But soldier can only focus on what lies between them and the helm: fiends.
Fiends -- the negligible ones, imps, hellsboars, and the stronger one, an unknown cambion. A lieutenant, if his read on their infernal rank is correct.
Soldier grins widely and brings out his warhammer to grip with two hands. Finally, something he can actually do.