Ciri huddled at the base of her pod, hugging herself against it's protective bulk as the heat washed over her, her fingers twisting as she instinctively warded herself, the shimmering dome of Quen rippling as flames licked across it. It didn't do much for the heat itself, it was a protective barrier made to shield against harm, not the temperature, but if Ciri had to choose between the two, not burning to death and sweating was far superior to the alternative.
The flames cut out, and a rippling thud swept through the floor beneath her, the dragon's roar fading away to be released by a dull thunder, like a distant landslide or a stampede across the horizon. Peeking out from behind her former prison, absently noting the melted, twisted nature of the floor and pseudo-organic structures around her, she could see that the crimson-scaled beast was gone. How long that would be the state of things, however, she wasn't sure. Nor was she inclined to stay where she was and find out the hard way, because (as pleased as she was to know that her Quen could withstand the fringes of dragonfire for a time) she had no interest in trying to contest with the damn thing directly. Especially not with whatever changes Gaunter O'Dimm had foisted upon her, which would no doubt play havoc on her muscle memory.
Rising fluidly to her feet, she looked around the room, grimacing and biting back bile at the shattered, twisted ruins of the other pods that had filled the room. There was…not much left of the people that had been inside of them, and frankly Ciri was glad for it. From the looks of things, they had died quickly and relatively painlessly, which was infinitely preferable to a slow and agonizing death from extensive burns.
Her eyes landed on a dark shape slumped on the deck nearby, and they narrowed as she recognized the broken body of a creature just like the one that had infested her with the worm. It wasn't the same, she knew that at a glance, it's armor less ornate and it's skin the wrong shade, but it was obviously the same species. Drawing her emergency dagger from where it was concealed under her shirt by the swell of her chest, she stalked over to the face-down form and kicked it sharply. It didn't move in response to her assault nor did it make a sound, and the meaty thud of the impact reassured her that the creature definitely would have felt it. Still, there was no sense in taking chances, and she roughly flipped it onto it's back before cutting it's throat in one swift, ruthless motion. Silver-white liquid sprayed from the wound, some of it spattering against her face, and she reeled as the scent hit her.
It was immediately obvious that her sense of smell had been enhanced by her transformation at Gaunter's hands, and for a moment she feared that she would fall onto the corpse in an effort to suck it dry, but no. The monster's blood was nauseating, an eye-watering mixture of onions and garlic (with, oddly enough, hints of a far more pleasant vanilla)* that had her shaking her head and sneezing unhappily. Still, despite the unpleasant smell and the side-effects that came with it, she had been in enough tough situations before to know what to do next.
Step 1: search for anything that will help you in your immediate situation.
Nodding to herself, she quickly searched the monster's corpse, finding a handful of gold coins and another dagger. Not exactly the information on her whereabout she had been hoping for, but money was good and more weapons was better.
Looking around again, this time casting her eyes to the level above her own (or, rather, what remained of it), she spotted what was obviously a container of some kind. Chests, even those of strange, kidnapping, worm-implanting squid-men, seemed to have the same basic appearance and form wherever one found oneself. Of course, that left her the difficulty of reaching it. What stairs there may or may not have been leading to the upper level didn't exist anymore, and the distance wasn't inconsiderable. She briefly considered Blinking to her destination, before a thought occurred to her. This wouldn't be the worst time to test her newly enhanced physical abilities…
She crouched slightly, eyeing the platform that was her destination, and jumped. She hurtled through the air, higher, farther, and faster than she had ever been able to jump before, and a small grin creased her face for a moment before vanishing in an expression of dismay as she realized she wasn't going to entirely clear the strange, tentacle-waving thing ahead of her. Her toes caught it's edge, sending her sprawling into a graceless and groaning heap on the floor.
"Fucking ow!" she hissed after a long moment, rolling onto her back with a grimace and a groan, positive that she was going to have at least a few bruises from that particular fumble, and she was momentarily grateful that she didn't have her sword slung across her back. She lay there for a long moment, thoroughly unhappy with herself, before latching her hands onto the nearby small table and using it to haul herself back to her feet. As she steadied herself against it, a faint gleam of white-on-grey caught her eye, and she looked closer to see some sort of slate, covered in runes, lying on the table's surface beside a large chunk of onyx. Unable to restrain her curiosity, and hoping that the slate might be important somehow, she almost absently pocketed the gemstone and reached for the slate. The moment her fingers brushed against, she gasped as a vision appeared within her mind.
It was an outside perspective, as if she were viewing a painting or a play, of a massive, mollusk-shaped ship soared slowly through the air above a city, shimmering with magical energy, the tentacle's projecting from it's bow lashing down at the ground below, clouds of black dust erupting wherever they touched.
The vision faded, leaving her breathing heavily and holding tightly to the table, eyes a little wild as she came back to herself. Then they narrowed in thought as she considered the contents of the slate's vision, even as she pocketed the object.
"So, I'm on a flying ship of some kind." She mused to herself as she made her way over to the chest, heaving the lid open and peering inside. An act that revealed another change that had been made to herself, one she hadn't noticed in close proximity to the fire on the lower floor: better night-vision. Or, at least, the ability to see better in lesser light than she had ever possessed before. Thus far, the side-effects of her vampirism were nothing but beneficial, though she wasn't willing to bet that it would stay that way.
Ciri moved on, passing through what was obviously a doorway, even if there was neither door nor anything that looked like one in sight, into what was obvious even to her eyes as a loboratory of some nature. A bloody goblin's corpse, eviscerated with surgical precision, sat on another table, another rune slate beside it's body, which Ciri bypassed. She wasn't a scientist or a surgeon by any means, but she was aware enough of such things to know that the rune slate probably contained 'notes' of the goblin's vivisection or something similar, and she had no interest in having such visions in her mind when it was entirely unavoidable.
"We are here! Help us! We are trapped!" a soft voice, thin and childlike, echoed from above her, her head snapping up to peer at the next level. The voice spoke again, and Ciri paced back and forth as she looked for someplace she could jump to and grasp. Her eyes fell upon a strange platform, adorned by a faintly glowing orange-and-black thing, and her head throbbed for a long moment, knowledge unbidden and unknown flowing through her. Pressing her hand against the large orange 'eye' at the top of the dark stalk would cause the platform to rise to the next level, carrying her with it and allowing her to reach her destination. Frowning to herself, and with her Chaos ready to spirit her away to safety, Ciri tentatively followed the call of the not-memory, stepping onto the platform and pressing the 'eye'. She shifted slightly, catching her balance, as the platform lurched into motion beneath her feet, rising smoothly the twenty feet or so required to reach her goal.
"Hello?" she called out softly, eyes searching the dimly-lit space, even as her nose twitched at the far more appetizing smell of the blood from a creature very different from the squid-men. Far fresher than that of the vivisected goblin below as well, still carrying what she instinctively recognized as the warm spark of life within it.
"Release us!" the voice cried out in response as she followed the scent off of the platform, rounding it to find an elven man, wearing nothing more than simple leather pants, his chest and shoulders covered in blood spatter. Far too old for the voice to have come from him, and Ciri found herself licking her lips unconsciously at the smell of the crimson life still flowing through his veins. Then his body twitched, limbs and torso both, spasmodically as the voice spoke again. Spoke from his head, without his mouth ever moving, and as she crept carefully closer, she realized the top half of his skull had been removed to expose his brain. A brain that was quivering and shivering and spoke to her in her mind. "Yes, you've come to free us from this place! From this place you shall free us!"
Ciri didn't know what it was or how it had been made, but she didn't really need to know those things to know that a telepathic brain talking to her while quivering while exposed to open air was a Bad Thing. Sparing no more than a heartbeat of thought or a moment of hesitation, instead taking the dagger she had claimed from the squid-man's corpse and driving it through the center of the brain. The thing that was once the elven man's brain screeched and howled in rage and pain, but it died all the same, his body falling limp and her mind falling silent. Disgusted, feeling his hands and brain-fluid upon her hands, it was all Ciri could due to avoid vomiting all over the corpse, her thirst for his blood entirely banished by what had just happened. Entirely uninterested in reclaiming the dagger, she made her way back to the platform. A deafening roar, one she actually heard with her ears and recognized well, echoed from nearby, and she shifted her position enough to see that the path forward was heavily damaged. Indeed, the side-wall of the ship was missing entirely, rib-like structures bare but for gore and muscle and sinew, jutting into a hazy sky. Even as she watched, the dragon that had nearly killed her swooped past, in the company of another, faint figures mounted on their backs, before rolling and diving as a barrage of massive purple energy bolts flew towards them from the bow of the ship.
"Of course the dragons are still attacking, and they're attacking the part of the ship I happen to be standing in. Fucking fantastic." She grumbled as she moved onto the lift and it started to descend. "Coincidence or spicing up the 'entertainment', I wonder?"
The lift shuddered to a halt once more and she stepped off, making her way across the laboratory to stand at the edge of the carnage, and her jaw clenched. Wherever the ship was now, it wasn't the same realm that she had been taken from. Even if a place this desolate, mountainous, and dark couldn't have been in close proximity to the lush forests and beautiful farmlands, the fire that flowed through the sky like rolling clouds, the strange black obelisks floating amongst them, and the overwhelming scent of sulfur and ash made it painfully clear that that wasn't the case.
Oh, and the high-pitched, clearly monster-originating shrieking that echoed and resounded constantly through air.
A careful look further down the exposed flank of the ship showed a definitive dip a few dozen feet down the path, and Ciri gritted her teeth. It would either be someplace she could temporarily take cover to plan her next move, an alcove of some sort, or it would lead her back into the depths of the ship. Not necessarily a great option, but a damn sight better than staying exposed in the open with dragons and who knew what else in the area. The only question was, should she move carefully or should she just…
The wind shifted direction, a new scent caressed her nose, and she reacted instantly to the smell of bared steel and shed blood, half-turning just in time to see a flicker of silver-and-yellow launch itself towards her from above. Swearing vilely, she dodged backwards, dropping into a reverse somersault, as the sharp steel edge of a longsword hewed through the air where she had been standing. Silver hair now tainted with traces of blood and gore from it's brief contact with the floor, she popped back to her feet just in time for the strange armored being to attack again. Instinct ruled, the shining symbol of Aard imposed itself before Ciri, and with the crack of displaced air the stranger was sent flying out of the ship towards the ground below.
To Ciri's shock, the stranger shouted something, a blaze of purple-blue light enveloping them, and there was a deep thrumming ground as she (and it was clearly a she, even if she wasn't actually human) reappeared a few feet further down the ship, stumbling slightly with the force of her arrival. Absently impressed that the other woman hadn't dropped her sword despite being blasted off into empty air, Ciri prepared to cast another sign (Igni, perhaps. See how she handled incineration with her flashy not-Blink!), only to instead clutch her head as it abruptly and violently throbbed, her skin tingling and erupting with goosebumps as images poured into her mind. Images of red dragons, silver swords, dead squid-men…and her own face locked away inside her pod.
The yellow woman spat something in her own language, a vicious and bitter sounding phrase, clutching her own head with one hand even as she tried to keep her longsword pointed at Ciri with the other. She even did a fairly good job of it, for all that her hand seemed to be shaking. After a long moment the psychic resonance faded away, both women straightening to eye one another, and Ciri frowned slightly to herself. Her interlocutor looked like no one and nothing that she had ever encountered before, and were it not for the sneer on her lips (and the fact that the woman had tried to cut her in half) Ciri might have found her attractive enough, if in a distinctly exotic sort of way.
"Hngh. Not a thrall of the ghaik, then. Good. Vlaakith God-Queen blesses me! Perhaps we shall escape this nautiloid alive together." The stranger declared, sheathing her sword on her back, and Ciri couldn't help but blink at the display of trust. Or, if not trust, perhaps it was pragmatism. If she had to guess, ghaik was the word in this woman's language for the squid-men, and it certainly hadn't been used in a flattering way.
"I am thrall to no one and nothing." Ciri responded sharply, letting her fingers unwind from her next Sign. "And if that was your way of apologizing for almost killing me and asking if I want to work with you to escape this damn ship, it leaves something to be desired."
"Apologize?" the woman scoffed, flicking a hand to dismiss the very thought without an ounce of hesitation. Indeed, she didn't even deign to speak on it further. "You are welcome to join me in escaping here, for I am the only one who knows how to do so. If you lack the wisdom or the courage to do so, you may remain here and die in the Hells instead."
Ciri simply snorted in response, glancing towards the dip she had noted previously, which she now saw for a fact led into another interior room, much to her relief.
"My name is Ciri, yours?" was all she said in response, not interested in picking a verbal fight with this woman nor make friends with her. They need to fight together to escape, nothing more.
"Lae'zel." Came the short reply, the name strange on Ciri's ears, followed by the sound of a sword being drawn again as they made their way forward. "And unless my ears deceive me, we shall face imps within. Your dagger will do you little good here, only the foolish would allow them to get so close as to be struck with so small a weapon. Have you the ability to wield more dangerous magics than simply knocking things away from yourself, I would wield that instead."
Given that they were going to have to rely on one another to survive, Ciri opted to take the advice seriously, though she didn't sheath her dagger. She only needed the one hand for her signs, after all, and leaving her other hand entirely empty seemed an exercise in madness or stupidity.
The pair of them soon reached the bottom of the slope, and she discovered just what Lae'zel had meant when she spoke of 'imps': child-sized monsters with wings, clawed hands and feet, and horns. There were three of them, clustered around the body of a tall human man, tearing away at his flesh in a frenzy of bloodlust. Lae'zel's armored foot must have hit true metal rather than magical flesh, for a sharp and clear report filled the air, the three imps turning to look at them in response to the noise, and Ciri raised her hands in preparation as they bore long, needle-sharp teeth and leapt into the air to soar towards them. Her fingers dipped and curved as her hand thrust out. Rather than a strong plume of fire, however, a sheet of hungry, white-hot flames washed over the attacking trio. Their ashes fell to a scorched, partially melted deck, leaving Ciri staring in shock and Lae'zel considering her handywork with an air of approval.
"Powerful magic. You may not prove as useless in our efforts to escape as I had at first feared." She remarked, and Ciri got the impression that her companion considered this a great compliment to offer. She also got the impression that her companion had a degree of confidence that treaded well into the grounds of arrogance, and that it was familiar territory at that. "Now, search the bodies of the thralls. Anything that can be of use to us in our escape should be brought."
Ciri briefly considered ignoring the order, both for her own pride and because her signs were clearly far more powerful here and now than they had ever been before, but she pushed the moment aside. Now was hardly the time to ignore good sense out of a desire to avoid appearing overly obedient, and she was more than experienced enough to know that there were going to be times, in the confined space of the ship, that wielding her empowered signs would prove detrimental to their efforts.
Though this room hardly could be considered enclosed. It was heavily damage, barely holding itself together enough to be considered a 'room' rather than a 'hole', and she could already tell that the way forward was going to involve a bit of an encounter with a small path and terror-inducing drop.
Sighing, she set about looting the dead for what could prove useful, either in the escape or afterwards. Gods knew that the merchants in whatever realm they ended up in likely would not accept the contents of her own coin-purse, and even if they would she had no notion of what a proper exchange rate would be. Idly, she wondered if they would fine anyone else alive and non-hostile aboard. She didn't know if she could tolerate having only Lae'zel for company for too long, and she rather doubted the yellow-skinned warrior would be pleasant and helpful in educating Ciri about the reality she now inhabited.
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"You there! Help! Get me out of this damn thing!" The beautiful elf's voice was too firm for Ciri to honestly say she sounded panicked, but there was a distinct note of desperation there as she pounded on the class window of the pod imprisoning her.
"We have no time for stragglers, Ciri." Lae'zel said firmly from where she was cutting the throats of the thralls sitting in the chair-like constructs in the center of the room, and Ciri glanced back at her before turning her attention back to the imprisoned woman.
"I won't leave someone I am able to save to die." The silver-haired woman responded firmly, moving forward to inspect the pod. No matter how she searched though, no matter how she peered and felt and pulled, she could find nothing resembling a latch or a release. "Besides, if there are more of those squid-men, we'll need all the hands that we can get."
"This ship is crashing! Between the damage inflicted by the dragon-knights and that inflicted by the demons, we can count on crashing within candlemarks!" her companion retorted unhappily, but Ciri ignored her, settling for stepping back. She glanced over at the faintly glowing desk-like object beside the pod for a moment, considering trying to activate it in order to open the pod, as she had used the 'eye' to control the lift, but discarded the idea quickly. Not only was it risky, potentially fatal or harmful to the elf, but the colors were dull. Whatever empowered these objects and made them work, this one seemed to be lacking it.
Biting her lip, she considered the pod again. She had the speed, the agility, the sight, and the hunger of a Higher Vampire, perhaps she had the strength as well. Strength enough to rip the door to the pod free and save the woman within. There was nothing to be lost by trying, and everything to be gained.
Decision made, she returned to the pod, fingers seeking out the best purchase, and then she began to pull. The shell of the pod groaned in the face of her efforts even as it resisted them, the door refusing to yield even as it shifted and protested the abuses that she was visiting upon it.
"Do not be ridiculous, girl! You cannot simply tear apart ghaik machinery like some sort of giant!" she heard Lae'zel scoff from behind her, and she glanced up to see the elf looking down at her with hope and fear. Taking a deep breath, she resettled her grip, adjusted her stance, and pulled. The pod shuddered and shrieked, resisting for a moment longer, before the door came loose. She stumbled at the sudden lack of resistance, the door slipping from her hands to crash against the nearby pillar, and she found herself kneeling in front of the elf as she fell to her knees at the base of the pod.
"Oh, at last! I thought I was done for! You have my gratitude." She breathed, glancing up with a smile that made Ciri's heart stutter. The witcher popped to her feet, offering a hand, one that was gratefully accepted. They stood there for a moment, hand in hand, and the woman's smile broadened as she continued. "I had thought that I had found my coffin whilst still living. Thank you-"
All three of them winced and raised a hand to their heads as the parasites throbbed in unison, their emotions flowing between one another. Lae'zel's annoyance mixed with approval due to Ciri's feat of strength, Ciri's pride in herself mixed with her attraction to the woman in front of her, and the woman's gratitude mixed with shy embaressment…and a sharp tinge of wariness due to Lae'zel.
"You keep dangerous company. Gith are not known for their pleasant disposition nor their moral compasses." The elf bit out, glaring at Lae'zel, who for her part returned the look with equal distaste, and Ciri resisted the urge to groan in unhappiness. The last thing that she needed was to have her two companions fighting with each other as they tried to escape.
"You can dislike one another all you like when we get off of this thing. What I want to know is why we're sensing each other's emotions and thoughts." She said a bit more loudly and rather more firmly than she might normally have spoken, and both turned to her, silently looking at her for a long moment before acknowledging in their own ways the validity of her point.
"If I had to guess, those mind flayer tadpoles, the parasites they put into our heads, are connected to one another. As long as we have them in our minds, we're connected to one another too. Might lead to a few awkward moments if we don't deal with them quickly enough." The elf responded, and Ciri nodded slowly. She could only assume that 'mind flayers' were the squid-men, and she could imagine plenty of awkward moments that could crop up with unrestricted mental access to one another.
"Could be useful in a fight." She offered thoughtfully after a moment, as the elf turned back to her former prison and began to rummage around in it, slinging a shield on her back and a mace on her hip.
"No utility in battle is worth the final result of such an infection. I have no interest in having myself consumed by the Hive Mind of the Elder Brain and becoming ghaik myself, and make no mistake: such a fate is the only one that awaits us if we do not remove these parasites in time." Lae'zel cut in curtly, glancing towards one of the two flesh-doors barring exit from the room. "We have wasted enough time here, we must move quickly. You can talk to your heart's content once we have escaped."
"Agreed." Ciri bobbed her head, watching the elf slip a strange polyhedric artifact into a large pouch on her waist with quiet deftness. It was an obviously furtive motion, but she wasn't going to inquire. They had bigger priorities than a strange metal thing. "The Gith," and wasn't it pleasant to finally know the name of Lae'zel's species. "Is named Lae'zel. Mine is Ciri."
"Shadowheart. Lead on, Ciri." The now named Shadowheart introduced herself with a dip of her head, and Ciri felt a small frown crease her lips even as she turned towards the closest door. She had crossed many a strange name in her lifetime, human and elven and dwarven and more alike, but she knew a pseudonym when she heard one. Despite herself, she felt her hackles go up as the pair fell in at her back, wondering if she had just invited someone that could not be trusted to stand at her back.
Hopefully the desire to survive would override any ill intentions, if they existed.