The camp was dark - the fire had been put out hours ago as Lae’zel, habitually the last person to rest for the night and the first one awake in the morning, decided to return to her tent. However, despite the quiet, all members of the party lay awake in their beds. They all knew that tomorrow would be a monumental day, just like all of their days of late. But now, in an abandoned keep just outside of Rivington, none of them could stop their minds from drifting back to thoughts of the Absolute. The Absolute is not a god, but an elder brain controlled by the Chosen of the Dead Three. They mean to use it to take control of the Sword Coast. All who carry the tadpole are governed by the brain, and by extension, the Chosen. It would take but one order to transform them into an army of mind flayers. This would have been the fate of the party, too, were it not for the Astral Prism and the mysterious visitor inside it. With their help, the party had uncovered the cult for what it really is - a plan of conquest orchestrated by the gods of death themselves. Together, they all knew they had the power to thwart the Dead Three. If they followed this path to its end, the elder brain would not answer to the Chosen. It would answer to whichever member of the party was able to garner the strength to take control.
Almost certainly herself, Lae’zel thought. She was the strongest member of the party, although she hated to admit that Karlach riveled her in the area. Karlach didn’t have the sheer force of will that she did, though. Karlach would stay back to pound the remains of Gortash to a pulp, and Lae’zel would be able to run forward to fight the brain herself. It was a large task to be sure, but she was positive that she would be able to manage if the others could keep away the distractions. And if there was something to protect the brain from sheer blows, then, well, she’d never been very adept at magic, but githyanki do not fail.
She had to be the one to take control because she was the only one who could be trusted to do what was right. Some of the others might if given the chance - Wyll, she thought, seemed particularly likely to follow the path of righteousness - but others would certainly turn the brain against the rest of the party to get what they wanted. Against the rest of the world. She couldn’t help but let her eyes flick toward Astarion’s tent for a heartbeat - if it gave him freedom from this Cazador person, she was sure he would take control of the brain without hesitation. After all, it was far easier to do that than to face the man in combat like a normal being. Far from the first time, Lae’zel again thought the world would be much easier if everyone were githyanki. If one had an issue with another, you simply fought to the death, and that put an end to the matter.
Lae’zel closed her eyes, hoping to get at least a few hours of sleep before they started off again. But sleep was not for her.
Hear me. Gather. The reckoning is upon us.
A pain stabbed through Lae’zel’s head as the voice rang all around her. All through her, as though the tadpole was writhing through her brain matter in an attempt to speak. Her hands shot to her head as she rocked back and forth, internally begging for whatever gods still remained to cease her pain or pull her toward death, whichever was a swifter end.
March. Join my power.
With the last word, the pain abruptly stopped, and Lae’zel shot to her feet. Even though she felt exhaustion weighing down her bones, she knew there would not be any sleep tonight. From the sounds throughout the camp, it was clear that the others shared her sentiment. In that case, maybe they would be able to get an early start on their march toward the city. Lae’zel grabbed her longsword - despite being in camp, she never felt fully dressed without easy access to at least one weapon - and pulled open the fabric of her tent.
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On the other side of camp, on top of a semi-rotting set of stairs that must have at one point led to a lookout, she saw a blue portal glowing. She knew those portals well - they led her straight back to her home on the Astral Plane. And she knew that seeing one here, in the middle of the night in their camp, could mean nothing good.
As if on queue, three githyanki soldiers Lae’zel had never seen stepped through the blue light and onto the rotting platform. They surveyed the camp for a moment, and their eyes drifted to her for a moment before they all landed on Shadowheart. It shouldn’t have surprised her that they would be here for the istik, but there was still a sharp pain in her heart at being ignored by her people. But as the githyanki started running for Shadowheart, she pushed that down, just as she pushed down everything else, as she was trained to do.
We’re under attack! Help me.
The sound rang through her head again, but unlike the previous sound, there was no pain. Only panic, and the need to help whoever it was. It didn’t sound like the visitor she’d seen so often in her dreams, but that was the only reasonable explanation. Though who it was didn’t particularly matter, she thought, as she charged the closet githyanki and sliced her longsword across his middle. His intestines fell to the ground with a sickeningly wet thump, with the rest of his body falling suit quickly after. On the other side of the camp, Lae’zel heard the crunch of bone as Karlach swung her war hammer directly into the face of another invader. Closer to the portal, Astarion seemed to materialize in thin air behind the last githyanki, and his teeth found their neck at the same time he rammed his dagger up through the soft flesh of their gut. The githyanki was defeated but still held aloft as Astarion greedily drained as much blood as he could while their heart still beat.
“To the portal!” Lae’zel screamed, and the entirety of the party followed her lead as she ran to the glowing blue light. She jumped through first, expecting to be met with the lighter gravity of the Astral Plane that she had known her entire life. Instead, though, she found herself falling at an alarming rate toward a spread of green. Grass? There was no grass on the Astral Plane.
Lae’zel landed first, tumbling onto the soft field with a light roll to keep the impact off her joints. She stood up and dusted herself off as the others followed suit. As she grabbed her sword, though, she noticed one being she’d never seen before. Lae’zel grabbed her longsword, ready to fight another invader if she needed to, but as she approached, the stranger seemed to look at her just as curiously.
Lae’zel raised her longsword, ready to bring a blow at any minute, but as she stared into the eyes of the stranger, something seemed eerily familiar about her. While it wasn’t much to go on, it was enough to make her stay her sword. “And who,” she said, putting as much of a growl into her voice as she could muster, “are you?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” the stranger said with a shrug. “My name’s Karlach! Nice to meet you!” The stranger who was most certainly not Karlach extended her hand.
Before she could respond, behind Lae’zel, she heard Astarion curse and start running. She turned just in time to see him running toward the shade of a nearby tree, a slight trail of smoke following in his wake as the skin on his face and hands turned to ash. But, that couldn’t possibly be - the tadpole protected him from the sun. But then again, she couldn’t quite feel the presence that had been in her brain since she was first taken upon the nautiloid. Could it be that the visitor had finally been able to remove the tadpoles from their brains when even the zaith’isk was not?
It was then that she finally saw her own hands clasped on the hilt of her longsword. Or at least she thought they must be her hands, although they were not her own. Instead of her green skin, the hands that clasped the sword, the hands were an olive-tone. The stranger in front of her all but forgotten, she took one hand off the sword and flexed the tan fingers. And then she screamed, dropping the sword to the ground.