3.1 - Transition (Patreon)

3.1 - Transition

Taylor

I wasn’t really sure what to make of Karlach as we made our way down towards the south following along the river.

She warned everyone away from touching her, and, as my bugs could confirm she was indeed burning, incinerating every fly, gnat or spider I tried to put on her bare skin. The leathers she had on her the only place where a Bug could land but after just a few minutes the heat bleeding through the material would kill them anyway.

But she just seemed… nice. Not exactly the image I’d expect out of a burning “Hellspawn” that supposedly crawled out of Hell itself (because yeah, that was an actual tangible place you could both visit and get out of apparently)

It could always be a trick, play up the nice angle when she was really just… well… a devil. But if it was an act- she was pulling it off well as far as first impressions went. I almost got the feeling that if she wasn’t about as safe as a hot stove she’d have given everyone a Hug as a hello, even Lae’zel.

When she saw Emma in the cart she’d frowned, and asked what had happened; and when she got the answer that Emma was why we were off to go fight a ‘Hag’ all she’d said was ‘Right, point me at the fucker’ and it had seemingly been all she needed to hear. 

Curiously however, Wyll looked subdued. So far, at least for the day or two that I ‘knew’ him, very much quote unquote, he didn’t seem the type to sulk or even worry all that much given our circumstances, but he looked worried now. Was he really so bothered by someone having lied to him about Karlach or was there something else? Some other shoe waiting to drop. 

As the smaller river opened up and fed into the greater Chionthar we walked into the wetlands.

Somewhere in here the Hag was hiding.

From a distance it looked almost idyllic, with verdant green grass and sun dappled lilly pads. When the druids had said she was in a swamp or marsh I thought we’d be in it for muck and sludge and stank waters and everything else that came with a swamp, save for the bugs of course.

At least for me.

Sophia and Madison were fair game as far as the mosquitoes were concerned.

As we walked though and I realized I didn’t have to worry about our traveling conditions in the near future I took the time to, once more, try to focus inward. Pulling up the foreign memories still coagulating within my mind, trying to organize them in a coherent whole.

My efforts were… rather unsuccessful. 

Mostly because what I was trying to do, at least from what I understood could almost be likened to meditation.

And meditation and walking didn’t exactly go together.

Stubbornly, I tried for a short while longer, not really wanting to do what was the obvious answer, but before too long I relented. My curiosity and sense of pragmatism was more important right now than my… revulsion.

So I marched over towards the cart, trying to not even look at Emma’s body and ignoring Madison as she looked up, hopping onto the back of the cart and taking a seat, adjusting my position so I was sitting down next to Madison, Emma just a scant few inches infront of my crossed feet.

It wasn’t exactly a large cart.

“Ummm-”

If Madison wanted to try to strike up a conversation I didn’t let her, making a single bee buzz around infront of her face served as a decent enough distraction as she yelped and swatted at it, seemingly forgetting that it was under my control with the reflexive fear response.

I took the second’s distraction to finally shut my eyes and focus.

I sunk into the folds of my mind like I was falling back into a mattress. 

It was like water finding a channel, pouring down into its natural path as I took a moment and breathed.

It felt like the first breath I’d ever taken in my life.

Just as Antaa had in his first year in the monastery I felt it now, pulsing like an electrical circuit- it crackled like a live wire between the cage of my bones,  flowed with my blood, surged through my muscles.

I felt pain, unfamiliarity, this body was too weak, a dull blade, unhoned, untested it wasn’t mine

NO!

I wrenched control back, forced my sense of self and awareness to reaffirm, pushing back against the foreign, sudden feeling of dysphoria- just as the impact shook my body and I opened my physical eyes with a gasp.

“Hey- Are you okay?” 

That was… someone’s voice. I turned my head following the sound and I had to think. To genuinely try to connect face to name in my own mind.

It was genuinely frightening, that it took me several long seconds to recognize it was Madison that was looking at me. 

“Taylor?” Madison asked.

I blinked, turned and looked away as if trying to understand where I was. 

The sun was in my face.

I blinked, my whole body tingling with pins and needles, something in my mind recognizing that the sun shouldn’t be at that angle. It was too low. And I was sitting at an odd angle.

“Sorry to say mate this fucker aint movin-”

Karlach’s unfamiliar voice came from right behind me and I twisted around to look and see her standing at the edge of the cart looking down at the Wheel that, now that I looked was cracked in two, the whole cart tilted on its axis.

That had been the impact that-

Wait.

I blinked. Looking again, I could see that the wheel was cracked, split right down the middle.

So why was one of my flies standing on empty air?

I tried to shake off the fugue, the confusion clouding my thoughts. I could still feel Antaa’s thought’s mingling with mine, what was real and unreal melding together until both were deformed

Baa.

I heard the bleating of a sheep, but… I didn’t sense a sheep…

As I pushed Antaa’s thoughts away, focused on my swarm tried to center myself through the myriad senses of a thousand bugs to push him out fully once again… I sensed-

Baa.

My experience on the Nautiloid came rushing back to me, like a connection between two fuses lighting up between the folds of my brain as I could suddenly connect the taste of rotting flesh through a flie’s mandibles as it buzzed and swarmed over twin corpses right behind us.

Two corpses that my eyes couldn’t see.

Baa.

“Hey, you alright love-”

I barely even heard Karlach’s voice, my mind pushing out the sound of bleating sheep and focusing on the bugs. Because my eyes were lying to me, the bugs weren’t.

I heard the sound of a knife being drawn. Felt it moving closer.

I stood up, every instinct in my body, from my own to Antaa’s and everything in between screaming.

“IT’S A TRAP!” 

My Shriek made Karlach jump, it startled the others; all of them reaching for weapons practically on reflex.

And that’s when I felt when something slashed through the air, too slow to stop it as something very literally hamstrung Gale, the Wizard screaming in pain as he fell to one knee.

And like that, the illusion shattered.

The soft grass and rolling hills bled away to reveal grey, decaying waste, the gleaming, sun polished wetlands replaced by stinking bog, clear blue skies sloughing off of the overhead world into overcast blackness, the light barely shining through, as if it too wanted to shy away from this place.

The sheep, the harmless sheep that had been quietly circling us twisted, deformed, long hooked noses, large bulging bloodshot eyes, screaming out with a mouthful of yellowed filed down teeth, knives, sickles, hooks and blades held high as they rushed us!

“REDCAPS!” I heard Durge roar, my mind scrambling as everything descended to pure mayhem in an instant. 

Karlach, who was closest to me roared,  her whole body blazing with fire, charging at the Redcap Gale was struggling with before that monstrous axe cleaved skull from neck, one hand grabbing hold of the back of Gale’s coat and damn near throwing him one handed towards the cart.

Gale had the wind thoroughly knocked out of him, his body impacting hard enough to nearly throw me off the cart as Laeze’s blade moved like quicksilver along my peripheral, its steel clashing and clanging against three redcaps that tried to overwhelm her, a sound of deafening thunder booming out from somewhere ahead of the cart in Durge’s direction as every insect near him was obliterated like a bomb went off. 

Astarion leapt on top of the now panicking Ox, his feet on its back. 

The beast was bucking and jostling but he kept his balance using the slight height advantage to fire arrows into the screaming, howling, gibbering mob. 

Wyll fought somewhere behind me with magic and sword, green fires blooming over his weapon as it darted and whipped around him. I saw Sophia phase through one of the little monsters, returning to corporeality with her knife in its skull, ripping it free with a wild look seconds before another one tackled her, her body phasing out from under him but the thing was fast, and he’d seen her trick already, slipping away from her attack as she phased back in.

I statred gathering my bugs, I had no shortage f them, every fly mosquito, bee, gnat and a few things I didn’t recognize surging towards us behind the redcaps.

I made them buzz around eyeballs, sail down into screaming throats, minor distractions made in a rush because I’d been caught so flat footed, but the openings gave the others the breathing room they needed.

Even so, I felt it then, when several slipped by, got through the loose ring of fighters around the cart. 

A hooked blade dug itself into the side, the little monster pulling itself up, a lipless mouth wide open to reveal a row of yellowed, gumless teeth its bloodshot eye looking murky and cloudy.

Madison screamed.

I stepped towards it.

It swung its other blade, the hooked sickle nearly carving a line across my nose as it whistled past my flesh before I let my body take over.

The kick I gave it crashed straight into its head, throwing it back with a crack of sneaker into flesh and teeth crunching together, I saw a spurt of blood as the thing bit into its own tongue with a howl of pain as it fell back and I knew with my true body it would have been dead, its neck broken cleanly.

I felt the second slash without even looking, my bugs warning me, letting me step away from the edge as another redcap took a swipe at my leg before I leapt over him, my leg swinging almost like a pendulum as I moved over him, my heel crunching into the back of his head to send his teeth smashing into the wood of the cart, hearing the shattering of bone as he quite literally bit into the wood.

I landed awkwardly, my body refusing to run on pure autopilot from memories and skills unmastered, reflexively rebelling against the foreign influence as I fell on my hands and knees.

“LOOK OUT!”

Madison’s scream would have been warning enough even without the bugs; I pushed myself off to the left, a hatchet coming down where I’d been the red cap chased me, swinging with hatchet and bladed boots and the memories of how to fight slipped free of my grasp in a moment of panic.

Then, my hand grasped a rock as I crawled away-

That was good enough.

I mistimed my retaliation, the redcap taking one swing that carved a jagged line across my right breast and bicep before my left hand with rock firmly in its grasp crunched into its temple. 

The thing fell like a puppet with its strings cut, and my arm rose and fell back down, stone crunching into its temple once, twice, a third time.

I left little more than a misshapen, malformed mess of crunchy slivers in a sack by the time I was done.

I heard Madison scream.

Turning to the cart I could see two more redcaps-

One was grabbing at Emma’s ankles, seemingly trying to drag her off, the other was climbing over the side, struggling with Madison as the smaller brunette held a bag between herself and the monsters hooked blade trying to slash her.

I blinked-

And somehow knew immediately where to strike.

The hand with the rock whipped out, lightning fast, the stone sailing as it crunched into the back of the redcaps head with a sickening crack, it fell forward, twitching, one hand still loosely grabbing Emma’s shoe.

“Tormentum!” Three red projectiles sailed up and over the cart before piercing straight through the last remaining redcap, my physical eyes darted over towards Gale, the wizard’s brow was dabbled with sweat from the pain even as Shadowheart’s healing hands glowed over the wound.

And then-

It was quiet.

There was a moment of tension, of each and every one of us looking at the charnel house of carnage and dead redcaps and then at each other.

Sophia was panting, her whole chest heaving like she couldn’t quite get enough air, the knife in her hand trembled.

Wyll’s sword still burned with green fire and he moved one by one, examining each of the fallen redcaps as Astarion, still standing on top of that ox held one arrow loosely nocked in its bowstring, as though he were waiting for one more to jump out.

Lae’zel stabbed each of the little monsters on the floor, her sword piercing throats 

“You alright love?”

I jumped, whirling around with my hands up, ready for a fight-”

“Easy easy!” Karlach held her hands up, smiling a fanged, toothy smile. “Just little old me.” She said, as if she wasn’t the largest person here besides Durge. “Hey uh. Shadow-girl.”

“Shadowheart.” Shadowheart corrected. 

“Right, sorry, but uhhh… our girl here got nicked, bleedin quite a bit. Argh, Bog’s got a lot of bugs don it?” Karlach complained, and yeah… a sizable swarm was now gathered and buzzing around us like a thin curtain of angry wings and chitin.

It had been over so fast I couldn’t even get them to us in time.

“That’s Miss Hebert special talent, controlling insects.-” Gale groaned as he stood up, gingerly putting weight on his now healed leg. “If she hadn’t woken up when she did we might not have seen the trap coming until it was too late.” 

“Huh- handy.” Karlach said. 

I could hear the words, but my brain felt like it was swimming through mud, I could barely understand them, my hands trembled, my heart still pounded so hard under my ribs I thought I was about to have a heart attack.

“Taylor?”

I jumped again at Shadowheart’s voice, flinched when I felt her hand at my back and stared at her hand as it glowed with her green healing magic, as though I was just waiting for a knife to appear between her fingers to try and stab me with it.

Durge marched through the bog, towards the two bloated, half decomposed corpses 

The White Dragonborn knelt by them “Drained of blood.” He commented. “Likely the redcaps last meal.”

“Last meal?” Madison sounded tremulous, she looked like she never wanted to leave the cart again. 

“Redcaps must soak their caps in blood to survive… hence the name.” Durge explained.

He said it like it made sense. So matter of fact, like he couldn’t quite grasp the sheer absurdity of his explanation.

“You-” I felt a bubble of something, something that made me laugh coming up from within. “You can’t be serious-” I giggled. 

I kept giggling, even as Durge rumbled “Quite serious, our corpses would have kept them sated for at least a week.” He reached down, towards the corpses, plucking free… a book. It looked like a journal.

“Hey uh- you ok there?” Karlach asked me.

I just kept giggling.

“Taylor?” Shadowheart called again, now with a tinge of worry.

But I just couldn’t stop laughing.

Couldn’t they hear how… how fucking absurd this was?

The Nautiloid, tadpoles in our brains, druids, gnomes, elves, dwarves, wizards, a curse that made Emma want to kill herself, me needing to help save her, my mind invaded, my body so weak- a woman literally on fire, healing glowy hands and now this?

Soak the caps in blood to live? 

“Ha-hahahaha!” My ribs hurt, and not from the fully healed cut. My cheeks were starting to ache too.

“You just got some cred by crushing that fucker’s skull; that was a short walk out of being bitch made if this is how you act immediately after Hebert.”

“Sophia stop!” Madison shouted. And wasn’t that even more absurd. 

“I imagine it’s the shock of it all.” Gale explained. “All of these children have been through… quite a rough few days. It will pass I’m sure.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!”

At the last word I pushed. I pushed everything I was feeling, everything inside out into my swarm. I had plenty of practice. First trick I learned in Winslow really. 

I could still feel it, I still wanted to laugh, and laugh and laugh and laugh, but I forced myself into placid neutrality glaring at Gale who looked startled even as my insects began humming and buzzing in what one with a careful ear might detect was the rhythmic pattern of laughter.

Durge watched me, hell, they all did some concerned, a few leery, Astarion was amused. Durge’s, red eyes following my every movement as he stood up. Holding a tense, heavy silence for a long moment as most of the others stared

“Redcaps are known to serve Hags.” He finally said. “That tells us we’re close-” He paused, looking up towards the sky. “Lets make camp.”

“It’s early.” Lae’zel contested. 

“It’s been a long day.” He answered back, smirking at her. “We are not as strong as Githyanki.” He looked to the others. “We’ll try to find a spot that’s defensible, just incase.”

—

Wyll

They did end up making camp near what could almost be called an ‘island’

Really it was a massive ‘stone’ of sorts, overlooking the marshlands. It was a bit cramped, and there was no way to bring the cart over, but a stone surrounded by hip deep waters made for both a good vantage and an early warning system really.

It was, in a way lucky that they’d decided to camp so early, it allowed some semblance of privacy as the early hour meant everyone still had some tasks they could see to. Gale took a moment to help Madison continue her practice with Magic. If Wyll overheard right she could now consistently pull off at least the True Strike cantrip, which was good. 

Karlach and Shadowheart moved to make fishing lines in the hopes of catching some fish down by the river, still within sight of camp itself of course. Astarion went to try and hunt for something, or so he claimed. Stating he didn’t care for fish, and preferred red meat. 

Lae’zel took the time to either vent her frustrations or practice her bladework against a shadow enemy… likely both. 

Hess and Hebert took to their own forms of solitude.

Allowing Wyll, by virtue of each of them being busy a moment of privacy in what would otherwise be a very cramped rock. 

“Durge.” He called.

The White Dragonborn was sitting by the fire, the collection of twigs and reeds burning and crackling just shy of touching his feet as his red eyes darted over the journal.

“They were brothers.” The Dragonborn said absently with a sigh as he turned a page. “Brothers searching for their sister. Woman named Mayrina who seems to have sought out the Hag.”

Wyll frowned, lamenting the tragic fate of the family, but such tragedies weren’t uncommon in their world.

“It’s strange.” The Dragonborn remarked absently. “The twists and turns life gives us.”

“Heh.” Wyll couldn’t help but laugh. “That… is indeed the truth.” He agreed.

Durge looked at him, and given that he was sitting, he had to look up, no doubt an uncommon thing for the tall man. “You have concerns.” He stated.

Wyll shook his head. “I’m concerned for her.” He corrected. “You saw that reaction. I’ve seen many things but that didn’t seem normal to me.”

“It was not.” Durge agreed. “But then again… life’s twists and turns.” He reminded, waggling the journal. “Her situation is not normal.”

“Even so.” Wyll shook his head. “What can we do? We need to help her.” All of them really, they were all children with too much on their shoulders, but Hebert had him more concerned than any of them right now.

“She’s hardly diseased in need of a cure.” 

“Are you sure?” Wyll pressed. “You saw how she moved. She was untrained as far as I’m aware, and yet she killed redcaps with her bare hands. Can we be sure that psionic attacker isn’t still… there? Trying to take over?”

“Can we be sure? No.” Durge shrugged. “Not without delving into her mind ourselves. A skill none of us possess I’ll remind you. So, for now; all we can do is watch… and intervene if we need to.”

Wyll didn’t like it. He understood… but he didn’t like it. 

“And her… enmity?” Hatred more like. “With Hess. I understand you’re trying to fix things-”

“Am I?” Durge raised a single brow ridge, his tone sounding genuinely perplexed at how Wyll reached that conclusion.

It was Wyll’s turn to pause, taken aback. “When we found Karlach, you tried to make them work together-” He reminded. 

Durge shook his head. “They were the best ones for the task that needed doing. Whatever issues they have with eachother they can fix them on their own time or not”

Wyll couldn’t help but balk. “She was contemplating threatening Hess by having the tadpole eat her brain!”

Durge took a breath. “Trust me, Blade of Frontiers. That isn’t a fight you want to step between.”

“They are children!” Wyll argued. “Whatever… happened, whatever grievances they have it cannot rise to murder being a justified response.”

Durge stared at him and Wyll suddenly realized-

“You know what happened.” He said. “The Tadpole?”

Durge nodded. “Quite so.”

Wyll shook his head “Then why haven’t you tried to… fix things? Work it out?” He demanded.

Durge laughed, a sharp bark of humor that seemed entirely ill suited to the current discussion. 

“Would you believe me if I told you that this is them after I got them to agree to hash out a truce?”

Wyll stared at the snickering man in utter disbelief.

Finally Durge shook his head. “Some things even you can’t fix, ‘Blade of Frontiers’” He said with a shrug. “As I told everyone when we went and found Karlach: They’ll either learn to cooperate, or they’ll kill each other eventually if they want it hard enough.”

(X)(X)(X)

So before anyone says anything regarding Taylor's description of the redcaps, I never liked the "Tiny old man" look that they have in many depictions, including BG3. So instead we're going with a slightly different take one which is Also official to DnD wouldn't you know which is a subsect of redcaps known as a Madcap https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/f/f0/Madcap.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20191002111319But in other news- Our girl is stressed.

She's not quite losing it, but yeah she needs some time to process and maybe decompress.

Sadly that wont be happening for at least a little bit for next chapter we arrive at Ethel's tea house.

Where I'm sure everyone will have a lovely cup of tea and nothing horrible will go wrong at all.

Next chapter will have some greater perspectives from Sophia and Madison and what they "took" from the violence today against the monsters. And the full realization of their situation finally settles in for all of the girls to some degree. It kind of hit Taylor all at once now but next chapter they're all gonna really start coming to grips with it.It feels like we're finally out of the tutorial area and we can really start to stretch our legs and get these girls "settled in".

Can you tell I'm having fun? :)

I hope you guys are having as much fun as I am.

Read, review and all that fun stuff and I'll catch you all in the next one.