Chapter Text

Act One

Chapter One

Arachne

“ Hells ,” I breathe, “My head.”

I stagger to my feet, my limbs leaden and my head reeling. All around me is smoke and sand and the sound of flowing water. Cutting through the earthen, muddy smell of the river is the metallic scent of blood. A rush of unbidden euphoria shivers down my spine. I should feel sick. The smell of death calls for revulsion, for nausea, but there’s something too wonderfully familiar about it. Something that causes not a twist of disgust but a ping of pleasure in the back of my brain. It feels like nostalgia. It feels like approval.

I’m not thinking straight.

How could I be?

I’ve been kidnapped and held hostage for weeks - maybe longer. I just came through Avernus, followed immediately by a freefall from an impossible height and saved from certain death by…what? A glowing shield of light? Not to mention the illithid tadpole that was recently forced into my head. It’s little wonder I’m not thinking straight…and why I can’t remember anything from before I awoke on the Nautiloid.

At the very least, I’m concussed.

I force myself forward, listing dizzily and leaving a zigzag of clumsy footprints in the sand. As the githyanki I met on the ship insisted, the tadpole is my most pressing worry - more so than whoever kidnapped me and what past is hidden behind my missing memories - so I must find a healer or some other way to remove it quickly. My lost memories can be recovered in time, but not if I turn into a mind flayer first. Laying in the sand and waiting for death is…certainly an option, but not one that I fancy much.

I’m already out of breath before I can make it more than twenty paces down the beach. My pulse is pounding throughout my whole body, and I can hear my heartbeat in my head. When the world around me dips and spins, I pause to catch my breath and let my blood catch up, bending over and resting my palms on my knees.

That’s when I notice her - another body laying in the sand.

There are fishermen and other victims from the Nautiloid on the beach - all corpses as far as I can tell, but not this one. I’ve seen this woman before, back on the ship. Her hair is as black as mine but considerably longer, swinging down to her tailbone in a braid laced with a thin chain. She wears black and silver armor with adornments of moons that make me scoff, though I’m not sure why.

This is the woman I spent several precious moments freeing from the illithid pod she was trapped in, to the great annoyance of the githyanki who was trying to escape with me. Despite everything that followed - being accosted by flying imps, the battle between illithid and cambion, and the crash - the woman is still breathing. I suppose we’re both lucky.

She wakes easily when I jostle her, eyes flashing wide as she scrambles to her feet with all the fear I feel but evidently none of the disorientation. If her head hurts, if she’s even dizzy, she doesn’t show it. Her eyebrows don’t furrow, she doesn’t rub her temples. She doesn’t even sway once she’s on her feet. She only takes in the beach around us with her huge, darting eyes.

“You,” she pants when her eyes land on me, “You were on the ship. You were the one who - ah!”

A flash of darkness spikes through my mind, and I see myself through her eyes, just as I had with the githyanki. My face is covered with smears of blood and ash. My hair is pulled into a braided coronet, but it’s messy and dotted with cinders and sand. She doesn’t trust me. Despite my help on the ship and her gratitude, she still doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know my motivations. She doesn’t know who I am.

I can’t blame her - I don’t know who I am either.

“What was that?” the woman asks as our shared vision subsides.

“I think it’s the tadpole. It’s connecting us.”

She pales.

“What did you say your name was?” she asks.

I can’t remember, but when I open my mouth to say so, what comes out instead is, “Arachne.”

She nods, “I’m Shadowheart.”

I say nothing, playing with the sound of my own name in my head, judging whether or not I like it, whether or not it feels familiar. I decide that I do, and that it does. Shadowheart’s name, on the other hand…I wonder whether the name came from her parents or if she chose it herself later in life, but that only makes me wonder about my own parents. Are they alive? Do they know I’m missing? Are they worried about me? Are they trying to find me?

“We can’t stay on this beach,” she continues, drawing me out of my thoughts, “We need a healer, and where there’s fresh water, there’s usually a settlement. We’re not far from civilization, I’d wager.”

She pauses, tilting her head as she studies me.

“Thank you for saving me, by the way. It would have been too easy to walk right past my pod, but you didn’t. I’ll remember that.”

I stiffen. There’s something unfamiliar and uncomfortable about being thanked.

“Don’t mention it,” I answer. I’m trying for nonchalance, but I fear it comes across as dismissive, so I hastily add, “Anyway, I like our chances better if we stick together.”

When she agrees, we set off down the beach together, gingerly stepping over the pieces of flaming illithid ship and human flesh as we head towards the tree line. Every so often, we come across - and accordingly dispatch - an intellect devourer or two. They’re not very formidable, as long as they’re not in large packs.

Even more rarely, we find crates or barrels filled with fish or apples. I tuck the food into my pack, and Shadowheart follows suit. As much as I hope a settlement is right around the corner, I have no idea where we are or how long we might be traveling in the wilderness before we find someone. It’s been weeks since we ate real food anyway; the mind flayers only kept us alive with some cocktail of nutrients they had pumping straight into our veins. We’re weak. We’re hungry. We’ll need all the food we can carry, especially if we’re further from civilization than we hope.

Hours pass, and judging by the position of the sun in the sky, we’ve been walking for nearly half the day when we come across a broken illithid pod surrounded by shattered purple glass and a spattering of blood.

“More survivors, do you think?” Shadowheart mutters, though the blood isn’t encouraging. 

I don’t see a body, but if the pod crashed on impact from that high a fall, there’s no chance whoever was inside is still alive. Then again, we’re still breathing somehow. More likely, the pod’s inhabitant was flung lifelessly somewhere into the forest, but just as I open my mouth to respond, a call rings out from further down the path. Then I see him - a tall elf with curled white blond hair and a gaudy leather doublet.

“ Hey ,” he yells when he sees us, “ Come here! I need some help. ”

I approach slowly, cautiously, and Shadowheart’s quiet footsteps stay a step behind me. As we come closer, I scan the area for any signs of traps, but I see nothing obvious. My hands rest idly at my hips all the same - not drawing my daggers but prepared to. When we reach the elf, he barely looks at us as he points into the bushes that line the path.

“There,” he says, “I’ve got one of those brain things cornered. You can kill it, can’t you? Like you killed the others?”

Uneasiness pools in the pit of my stomach. 

Like we killed the others? He’s been watching us long enough to put me ill at ease.

Why does he need our help with an intellect devourer anyway? He’s taller and seemingly stronger than me, if his muscles are anywhere near as large as his puff sleeves would have me believe. Certainly he wouldn’t need the help of a small woman to defend him from something barely larger than a house cat.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I lift an eyebrow and peer into the bushes without turning my back to him. I can’t make out anything through the thick brush, but I can hear the rustling of movement. This intellect devourer is more docile than the others if it’s content to stay hidden, and I doubt the elf needs to kill it at all if he doesn’t want to. If he left, I doubt the creature would pursue.

“You look more than capable,” I reply coolly, “Kill it yourself.”

When I turn back towards Shadowheart to continue on our way, she looks uneasy, her hand resting on the handle of her mace, but I don’t even bother turning back to the elf when I hear his mumble behind me.

“I hoped I would stumble upon a kind soul, but fine .”

Before I can take more than a couple steps, I feel his hand clamp onto my shoulder, the cold edge of a knife sliding along my throat. Shadowheart’s widening eyes mirror my own as I’m thrown backwards onto the ground.

“ Oof ,” the sound escapes me the same moment I hear Shadowheart snap, “ Hey! ”

“ Shh, shh . Not a word,” the elf mutters into my ear as his body covers mine. His breath is oddly cool on my skin, even as heat rises to my cheeks, “Let’s try to keep that pretty neck in tact, shall we? And you ,” he barks, lifting his head to glare at Shadowheart, “Keep your distance. We wouldn’t want this to get messy.”

Shadowheart glowers but doesn’t come any closer.

“I need her alive,” she protests, but it goes ignored.

I should struggle - I want to struggle, rather than lay here and wait for my death - but the cold metal presses firmly against the unarmored skin of my neck. It’s not worth risking the blade slicing through my flesh, and with his free hand pressing down on my shoulder and his knee digging into my solar plexus, I’m at his mercy. I can barely breathe without hurting myself.

“ Get. Off. Me ,” I demand through gritted teeth.

“Ah, ah. Not a word,  I said,” he tuts softly, angling his dagger so that it’s no longer the edge pressing into my throat but the pointed tip, “Now…I saw you on the ship, didn’t I? Nod.”

My eyes narrow, but I nod slightly, the dagger poking my skin but not breaking it. I reach for his hand, wrapping my fingers around his wrist to keep him from applying any more pressure. My other hand finds his tricep, trying in vain to twist him away, but he’s unmovable. Still, I won’t let this cocky asshole spill even a drop of my blood. It’s embarrassing enough that he was able to get me in this position.

“Splendid,” he replies, smiling with teeth that seem too sharp. He reminds me of a wolf. No, that’s not quite right. A lion maybe. “And now you’re going to tell me exactly what you and those tentacled freaks did to me.”

“Oh, gods,” I make a show of rolling my eyes, “You can’t be serious.”

“We’re victims,” Shadowheart interjects from somewhere over my shoulder, “We were captives on the Nautiloid. Same as you.”

“Don’t lie to me. I - ah! ”

Another sharp flash floods my mind as my tadpole connects with the elf’s. We trade consciousness as I did with the others, and I see myself laying beneath him as he must see me. Dirt and pebbles from the ground caught in my hair. Smudged, dark makeup surrounding green-blue eyes. Freckles smattering across my face and collarbone…perhaps lower, he wonders. He notices my glare but also the way my lips part and the blush that dusts my cheeks. There’s a spark of interest, and it feels like discovering the winning move of a lanceboard game.

Then we fall back into our own minds.

“What was that?” he demands, eyes wide, “What’s going on?”

His temporary confusion is enough for me to twist his arm, pulling the knife away from my throat and bending his wrist until he drops the blade in the dirt. I manipulate his joints to my will as naturally as breathing, reveling in his shout of pain. There’s something scratching in the shadows of my mind that wants to push further, to hurt him more,  but I shove the feeling down like bile and roll away from him the moment he’s no longer a threat.

As we both scramble to our feet, the elf grabs for his dagger as I pull both of mine from their sheaths at my hips. Shadowheart steps closer to my side, mace in hand. Our knees are bent, our eyes narrowed and focused, our posture tense like a coil, ready to spring into an attack.

“You’re…not one of them?” the elf pants.

Our shared vision should have answered that question already, but I shake my head nonetheless. After a long moment, he straightens, slowly and reluctantly letting his knife fall to his side. It feels like the trick until, in a show of trust, he tucks it back into his belt and lets go of the hilt.

“They took you, just the same as me,” he mutters, almost to himself. Then he lets out a small laugh, adding, “And to think, I was ready to decorate the ground with your innards. Apologies.”

Tentatively, I sheath my own daggers. Certainly not because I trust him - I won’t make the mistake of turning my back on him again - but as a gesture of goodwill. Only Shadowheart keeps her fingers wrapped firmly around her weapon, though it now rests at her side.

“I might have done the same, were our roles reversed,” I say, appraising him.

“Well, I’m out of wine and flowers, so I hope an introduction will suffice. My name’s Astarion. I was in Baldur’s Gate when those beasts snatched me.”

The name of the city stirs something in the back of my head that I can’t quite pin down. It’s like the itch of a forgotten dream.

“I think…I’m from Baldur’s Gate too.”

“You think?”

“I think,” I snap pointedly, “It sounds familiar, but we were just kidnapped, held captive for weeks, had parasites inserted into our heads, and then fell from several thousand feet - so you’ll forgive me for any memory gaps.”

“Hmm,” he muses, “Well, I’m not having any memory issues. What about you?”

Shadowheart stiffens when his gaze swivels to her.

“I…uh…I am too.”

Something loosens in my chest. As much as I can rationalize it, a part of me feared that my memory loss was something more worrying. I feared I was fooling myself, thinking that it was simply a result of the last couple weeks. But if Shadowheart is also having trouble remembering things, perhaps the amnesia will solve itself in time…once we find a healer.

“Just me then,” Astarion sighs, “I suppose I’ll be leading us back to Baldur’s Gate in that case.”

I raise an eyebrow, tensing as I cross my arms over my chest.

“Do you even know where we are?”

“No,” he admits, unabashed, “But once we come across something, anything, I’m more likely to recognize where we are than either of you.”

I put my hands on my hips. The last thing I want is for this elf to be our leader. If not for the fact that we’re probably safer in numbers, I wouldn’t want him traveling with us at all. He already held a knife to my neck, and I don’t know him well enough to be certain he won’t lead us into a trap or doom us through incompetence. I know nothing about him at all…but if he really is the kind of person he clearly wants us to believe he is, I’m not willing to leave him to find his own way when all three of us are in dire need of a healer. Still, there’s no way he’s leading us. I only just met Shadowheart, and while I trust her much more than the elf, I don’t trust her to forge our way back to Baldur’s Gate either.

If you want something done right, there’s only one course of action.

“It seems like the blind leading the blind either way. We’re all just as lost,” I drawl lazily, hoping confidence can overshadow the fact that I have no fucking idea what’s going on, “You’re more than welcome to join us though. Better the chances of surviving.”

The elf- Astarion pauses like he’s going to argue, but instead, he gives me a tight smile.

“Lead the way.”

The further we get from the hollowed ruins of the Nautiloid, the less opposition we face. There are no wolves, no squirrels, no birds - the loud crash and smell of fire no doubt scared away everything within a few miles’ radius. There aren’t any people either, likely for the same reason, but even so, there are occasional signs of civilization. Ruins and hunters’ scaffolding. Cages and abandoned carts with crates filled with food on the paths. Barrels of fish, fishing poles, and books near the riverbanks.

The signs of life fill me with a tempered hope. Whoever we come across might be able to save us from our affliction, or they might kill us - and that’s if they’re even human. The infrastructure we pass indicates that whoever resides in the area is likely more intelligent than kobolds or gnolls though, and the waystones we find along the path seem to further confirm that whoever we come across - friendly or no - will at least be civilized.

We travel for another couple hours before coming across the githyanki once more. 

After the crash, I thought we wouldn’t see her again, which would have been fine with me. Shadowheart clearly has some kind of problem with her, and the githyanki herself is…temperamental. Now, it seems that she coincidentally survived as well, but when we find her, she’s trapped and hanging in a cage over two tieflings debating whether to kill her or leave her. Before we get close enough for them to notice us, Shadowheart pulls me behind a large bush at the edge of the clearing.

“Is she a friend of yours?” she whispers warily.

“No,” I answer, “I found her while I was trying to flee the Nautiloid, same as you.”

“Good. I’d rather not have to cooperate with a gith again,” she sighs, her expression relaxing as her suspicion evaporates. “We should help the tieflings kill her. For everyone’s safety.”

Through the leafy shrub, I study the gith in the cage. She’s angry - that much is obvious - but she’s also scared. There’s no pinpointing where or why, but it’s a look I’m all too familiar with. The narrowed eyes, the flaring nostrils, the unusual stillness, the tilted chin, the posture. All of it carefully crafted to make her appear in control when, in reality, she’s fearing for her life. And for good reason.

Shadowheart’s fear and hatred for the her is a mystery to me. I don’t understand the utter disdain she has for a creature she doesn’t know, but I don’t need to understand it to want to kill the githyanki all the same. Something gnaws at me from within - an indiscriminate yearning for warm blood and suffering. A yearning to please.

When I turn back to Shadowheart, I flinch. Her face is a lot closer than I expect, close enough that her chin is nearly brushing my shoulder, but her cold glare is fixed on the githyanki. My gaze flicks past her to the elf, still standing upright with his hand resting on his hip. He goes miraculously unnoticed despite his height, especially compared to the bush Shadowheart and I crouch behind. His gaze bounces from the cage to the tieflings to his nails to somewhere off in the distance. He looks bored. I wonder if he even cares whether or not we kill the githyanki.

I wonder if I care.

On one hand, the githyanki is defenseless.

But on the other hand…so what?

“Alright,” I whisper back to Shadowheart with a nod, “Let’s do it quickly then.”

“What are we doing?” Astarion asks, abruptly rejoining the conversation as he draws his eyes from the trees surrounding us to meet my eyes. 

I blink. How did I not notice his blood-red irises before?

“Killing the gith,” Shadowheart replies.

His eyebrows knit together as though he doesn’t understand either, but then he shrugs, his confusion ebbing to ambivalence. If he has any objections, he keeps them to himself, and I wonder if he’s as inexplicably blood-thirsty as I am. Perhaps it’s a side effect of the tadpole - that would explain Shadowheart’s desire for murder as well.

As we come out of hiding and approach, the githyanki’s eyes land on me. There’s a glimmer of hope until her gaze drifts over my shoulder to Shadowheart. I watch recognition flicker, no doubt remembering the minutes I spent freeing the cleric just so that she could be resistant and argumentative as the githyanki tried to lead us to our escape. Then her lip curls in disdain, her eyes narrowing. How things might have been different if we landed together on the beach. If I found the githyanki before I found Shadowheart, would I be traveling with her? Could I have been convinced to kill Shadowheart instead?

Probably.