Chapter Text
'Not completely useless' is what Lae'zel had called her as she had threatened to toss Candy through the next burning chasm they pass, but the threat sounded more like a promise after she had gone behind the githyanki's back to press the button.
Candy stayed quiet while Lae'zel had insulted her in two languages, her eyes on the ground and fingers twisting ginger hair back into a braid where it had come loose just for something to do with her hands. It had gone on until another crash rattled through the ship, and the muffled voice screamed for their attention again.
The noise that Lae'zel uttered in frustration was brand new, but Candy was fairly confident it was another curse word.
"We are leaving. We do not have time for stragglers."
They'd taken the wrong door. The fleshy walls opened up into a room that felt endless and Candy had come to a halt just inside the door as she stared in horror out towards pod after pod, curving around the platform they now stood on.
"Tsk'va! How many hosts have these ghaik infected?"
There's a body at her feet and another in a single, central pod, and Candy feels a fleeting chill chase down her spine despite the heat. There are so many. She feels sick, whether from the constant tossing and turning of the crashing ship, or because of the way the pods number so high that they sink further into the abyss, giving no indication of just how many people are in here with them.
"Do you... do you think they're alive?"
"They are not our concern," Lae'zel tells her. Candy almost misses the way the iciness in her tone has dropped, but she looks towards the githyanki with brows pulled tight and concern etched into her features. As though Lae'zel can feel her eyes on her, she lifts her chin and narrows her eyes as she steels herself once more. "We have no time for them."
As Lae'zel gives the central pod a final look, Candy drops her eyes to the ground, her toe nudging the body at her feet just in case. It remains limp. Dead. Face down in a pool of blood that might not even belong to them, given the state of this vessel. Something glints, and Candy lowers her body into a crouch as she reaches for the hand that grips it tightly even in death, prising the key from where the ribbon loops around the palm.
She eyes it up, the details etched into the bow of the key telling her nothing about which lock it belongs to, but she pockets it anyway.
"I just want to..." She starts, trailing off as she sidesteps the gith and makes her way deeper into the room, her actions finishing her sentence as she peers over the edge to the depths below and then up to the platform above. "There might be something we're missing."
"This is no game, istik. What more could you possibly hope to find that may be of use? We have weapons and a clear path to follow. Our armour is strong." Her palm slaps the breastplate of her armour in gesture of its strength, and she fixes Candy with the same look of irritation that the smaller woman is getting accustomed to.
"I read something about mind flayers recently, and now I'm stuck in this stupid dream with them. I'm just trying to find the end, Lae'zel. Give me a moment."
"This gh'ath will crash unless we take control of the helm. There is no time," the gith argues.
"My dream, my rules."
"If it inspires you to fight without mercy, then I'm inclined to encourage your delusions, but only if it will aid us in our escape."
Candy is rummaging through an almost empty chest when Lae'zel snaps at her, and she stands back up to face her with her face scrunching as her own frustration begins to crack.
"No, because a dream isn't a delusion and a delusion isn't a dream. They're different. This is a dream. If it was a delusion I would at least recognise something and I wouldn't be dreaming up an angry githyanki and looting corpses. I'd be running around the city trying to claw a parasite out of my eye that isn't there."
Her eye twitches as though something wriggles behind it, and she pauses, lip turning and nose scrunching. Think about anything else. Anything at all.
"Your incessant need to talk is maddening. I should leave you here."
"Yeah, well, you know what Lae'zel? You picked me so you're stuck with me," Candy finally snaps.
---
Does she intend to die for a stranger? It's a good question, and one that has her stumbling over her thoughts as her heart can't leave the desperate woman banging on the door of her pod, and her head knows that Lae'zel is right. She's delayed them too long already.
"I can be quick," she says, imploring eyes looking at Lae'zel, as her feet already take her backwards towards the console. "I picked something up that's the same shape as that slot in the machine."
"Candy, you are wasting time!"
"We're wasting more time by arguing," she protests, turning on her heel to signal the end of the conversation. As she places the rune, a red glow floods the console and a barely discernible hum rumbles at the edges as it powers up.
"It looks like a brain," she notes, eyes following the organic matter.
The githyanki scoffs in disagreement. "I would call it a heart. A beating heart. I have held one in my very hands, crushed it beneath my fist. I am familiar."
"Fine. A heart- ah!" Candy cries out as she feels the wriggling in her head again, but sharp, biting, loud in the way it consumes her thoughts as soon as her hand comes into contact with the console.
"Stop it!" She begs without thinking, her body doubling over and fingers clawing uselessly at the surface where they rest as she balls her hand into a fist.
Wriggling. Writhing. Burrowing.
s i l e n c e
Silence and-
Authority?
Candy sucks in a sharp breath, eyes wet with unshed tears and a pain in her palms where broken nails leave little moons imprinted into the flesh.
This is different.
A hallucination within a delusion within a dream? She's losing track of what's happening to her, but her mind can't linger on it for long as she feels the pull of a connection to the console in front of her. It idles, waiting for her command, and she *knows* that it waits, but she doesn't know how she knows, and oh god just open the pod so she can step away from this.
"Please," she whispers, before the connection severs and the screaming of a burning ship rushes back to her ears.
There's the creaking, cracking sound of the pod opening, and she watches as the woman inside tumbles forwards to the ground. Candy moves fast but not fast enough to help her.
"Are you alright?" She asks, her hand held out to help her to her feet. Another armoured woman. Metal encases soft fleshy bodies and Candy looks down at the leather she has for her own protection with displeasure. She just hopes they're not going to be too upset if she uses them as cover.
"I thought that damn thing was going to be my coffin. Thank you-"
Another sickening lurch has fleeting thoughts passing through Candy's mind that don't belong to her, and she feels the wariness emanating from their new ally.
More voices. Always voices. In her head, not behind her head or next to her head. She hates when they're in her head.
"You keep dangerous company."
The words drag her back to the present, and her eyes flicker between the two women as something dark settles over both of them. A tension that they don't have time for, and they both know it.
"Is there something wrong with a githyanki?" Candy asks, brow knitting together before trying to shake the lingering voices away. "Is there a problem?"
"They've got a problem with everyone else. But there's more important matters right now - survival. Let me come with you. We can get off this ship and watch each other’s backs along the way."
Lae'zel fixes her with a vicious glare. "Chk. That would require me turning my back on you, and I have no desire to do so. But I will allow you to come with us for now, as long as you know how to wield that weapon on your back."
"It may surprise you to know that the gith aren't the only ones who know how to fight. I see why your kind are so-"
"Let's go. I'm Candy," Candy interrupts quickly, shuffling between them with a half-step to the right and immediately regretting her instinct to do so. She doesn’t care to find out just how sharp those weapons are.
"Shadowheart. One moment..."
There's an itch at the back of her skull, creeping, cold, the whisper of voices that never quite faded away after her connection to Shadowheart had dissipated. They're unintelligible, falling over each other and swelling in sound as Shadowheart retrieves something else from the pod, tucking it away.
"What's that?" She asks.
"It's nothing. Trust me."
"Enough of this chatter," Lae'zel demands. "We must get to the helm. This path must be the right one and the helm just beyond these walls. Once inside, do as I say."
Shadowheart scoffs loudly at the order, folding her arms across her chest defiantly. "Who put you in charge? I'll trust my own judgement."
"Kainyank."
Candy doesn't need to know the language to hear the vile intent behind the word as the gith spits it out.
"That... was that a slur?"
---
"His sword looks better than yours," Candy points out to Lae'zel as she flicks imp guts from her dagger.
"Now is not the time-"
"Do you want it?"
The cambion is distracted by the mind flayer seeking to contain his attacks, leaving the path clear to the transponder ahead. Candy knows she should be scrambling to the console, and Lae'zel is already taking strides towards the centre of the room, but Candy sees an opportunity.
"Look, I just- mind flayer: bad, right? So, what if we just... took advantage of the fact that they're both distracted? I can go- um... no, okay, if I go up this way, we can do the sort of- like coming in from all sides. Kill them both, and once he's dead, you can get the sword."
It makes sense to her. They're here now, they have the advantage, and Candy can make Lae'zel like her by gifting her the flaming sword.
"We don't have to kill him." Shadowheart comes up alongside Candy, her eyes fixed on the devil Commander ahead of them. "I may know a spell or two that can convince him to drop the sword, but it would help to break his focus first. Daze him, trip him, injure him... Besides, we don't know what's awaiting us once we reach the transponder. We should be better prepared."
Candy leans in conspiratorially. "And Lae'zel might be our friend if we give her it."
"You, perhaps. I would rather not be friends with a gith - I prefer my back without a knife in it. I don't trust her as far as I can throw her, which is admittedly not very far."
---
It turns out the purple liquid is flammable.
Candy sniffs it cautiously, before she dips a hand into the tank and flicks some towards the commander, enough to see them light up as the sword swings through the air towards the mind flayer. The tentacles creature is doubled over, one hand clutching his belly and the other is raised to direct the constant barrage of attacks from his body.
He's going to die, Candy realises, before any of them can reach the transponder.
"Lae'zel!"
Her voice barely carries across the helm to where the githyanki is fending off a new wave of imps that are closing in on the fight at the centre. Candy herself is tucked into the side of the walkway, her body low and creeping around the overturned chairs to avoid falling into view of the cambion only steps away from her. There are bulbs that she's tossed into the fray already, exploding on impact and leaving lasting burns on their flesh, but it hasn't been enough.
It took her longer than she'd care to admit for her to realise that a devil is going to be a little bit more resistant to fire than other fleshy creatures.
Her shout draws the eyes of them both, and she throws herself behind a pillar, her heart jumping as the very weapon she's wanting slams down into the ground where she had just been standing.
"sh*t-" she hisses, peering out around the other side and meeting yellow eyes across the temporary battlefield. She had hoped Lae'zel would be able to lift the tanks, maybe even throw them, but as the mind flayer and devil shift into her space, the path to the tanks has been closed.
"Leave the devil to me! Reach the transponder!"
no
She wants the damn sword! They've come so far, she refuses to abandon the weapon when she's so close she can feel the radiating heat against her flesh. It's as though it has seared its own image into her vision, her only care, her only focus. She escapes with the sword or not at all.
Her fingers tighten on the hilt of her dagger, determination settling on her face.
kill him
take it
She lets out a breath, readying herself and turning, only to have Shadowheart's hand curl around her arm and yank her backwards before taking her place at the side of the pillar.
"Impero tibi."
A violently purple ray leaves Shadowheart's hands, illuminating the cambion commander as his grip loosens on his sword, the heavy metal clattering to the ground. Candy doesn't hesitate, throwing herself forward again and ducking between the feuding monsters as her hands close around the flaming weapon and she drags it away before either of them notice.
Her eyes meet Lae'zel's once more, a wide grin breaking across Candy's face as she holds up the weapon.
"Get to the transponder!" Candy calls out triumphantly.
She got the sword.
