Ceres’ Story - Vignette 3, Fallen
Elturel, c. 1491 DR, 10 years before The Descent
“What the hells is that, Maelmir?” Aniza asked as her husband gently laid the small, limp bundle on the stone hearth. He threw another log on the fire and peeled back a corner of the blanket. “Gods below, Melmir,” she half-whispered, “who is that? Where did you find - ”
Melmir raised the girl’s head and folded the blanket for a cushion. Gently he smoothed the tangled, dirty hair , revealing a gaunt face with ashen skin. Beneath the matted hair a pair of short horns curved away from her forehead.
“Maelmir. Where did you find her?” Aniza repeated insistently.
Her husband adjusted the blanket around the unconscious child. “In an alleyway just off ____ street in the Lower City,” he said after a pause. “She was just lying there, sleeping in the street. Oh, please, Aniza, I couldn’t just leave her!” He said, seeing his wife’s gaze harden. “The child is starving! Look at her!” He pulled the blanket back, revealing the girl’s emaciated frame. Aniza gaped in horror at the sight the ashen, fragile skin stretched over sharp bones and thin muscles. “I couldn’t, Aniza,” he said softly. “She needs someone.”
Aniza knelt, examining the girl’s features, noting the myriad cuts and sores on her face and shoulders. It was a strong face even with the gaunt, sunken cheeks and dark circles around the eyes. Delicate, pointed ears indicated elven ancestry, but the horns were the question mark.
“Is she one of us?” She asked. “A tiefling?” If she was, perhaps the child’s family could be found.
Maelmir shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “No tail. I know,” he added hastily, before his wife could respond; tailless tieflings were not unheard of, “but I didn’t see the usual markings, either. And there’s this.” The child hadn’t responded to any of their discussion yet, and the fire was burning well. He pulled more of the blanket aside to reveal the girl’s shoulders and spine. “She has - or rather, had - wings.”
Aniza gasped in shock as she saw, in the flickering firelight, the scabrous stumps and blackened scars where a pair of wings would have been. Rising, she took up a coin purse and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Maelmir asked.
Aniza turned to face her husband. “The child will need a healer,” she said, “and food. Boil some bone broth and slice some cheese. I’m going for poultices.” She paused again on her way out the door. “You know, I always wanted a daughter.”
The imps proved easy targets.
Lesser devils, even the smarter of them was little more than a winged bundle of aggression and hate. The gith warrior’s blade and Ceres’ daemonic magic made short work of the creatures.
Ceres had kept her feet firmly on the deck of the alien ship and her wings tightly folded out of concern the howling winds would sweep her out in to the burning plains below.
“Your skill in battle is … adequate,” the gith informed her. “Perhaps our survival is not in question. You may call me Lae’Zel.”
Adequate? Ceres had dispatched half the imps with only her magic. This gith, Lae’Zel, had an interesting definition of “adequate.”
“Ceres,” she said without looking up from the imp corpse she was searching. A sword and a crossbow, neither of which she was trained to use, and a few coins. She pocketed the coins and tossed the weapons to Lae’Zel. “I’m sure you’ll find a use for these.” She stood and stretched, working away the exertion of battle. “Let’s find the helm.”
How long she’d been climbing, she did not know. Time had little meaning in the Underdark. It had no meaning for her, she who’d been kept in the deepest recesses of its pits for decades. She simply had no concept of it, no use for it.
When she’d first escaped her mother’s lair she had no idea where she had to go, only that if anyone caught her, it would mean death or worse. She crawled through the slave pits of the city, hiding in dark corners where vile things lived alongside degenerate, mindless creatures in human form. They mostly ignored her, taking her for one of their own.
From there she wove her sneaking, slinking way through the twisting alleyways of the Drow city until she reached the rocky crags bordering the city. She’d become quite adept at climbing and hiding and made her way up, up, up the sharp cliff faces until at last the dim cave-lights of the city lay far below and behind.
From there she picked her slow, agonizing path through the cave-warrens and winding passageways of the Underdark, eating the flesh of fungi and blind fish, hiding from anything on two legs, sleeping in dank hollows in knotted roots, until at last she crawled, starving and covered in filth, through a storm drain in a darkened alley.
The half-elf, Ceres had decided, would be a good ally to have, if she could be trusted. The woman was hiding something - Ceres had seen her retrieve, then hide, some object after she’d rescued her from the pod. She’d decided to ignore it at the time but made a mental note to ask later, if they survived. Besides, the gith had apparently not noticed, and they had more pressing issues.
“I’m Shadowheart,” the woman said. “And you are?”
“Ceres.” She gestured toward the gith. “And this is - “
“We are wasting time,” Lae’Zel hissed. “There will be time for idle chatter after we escape.”
“You keep dangerous company,” Shadowheart said softly as Lae’Zel stalked off toward another pink, mucous-slick, sphincter-like door. “I’d keep an eye on that one.”
“She’s a bitch, yeah, but she’s good in a fight,” Ceres replied. “I’d rather have her on my side. At least for now.”
Shadowheart scowled. “Your call,” she said, “but I’d watch my back.”
Ceres leaned in close and gripped her shoulder. “Do you know where we are? Do you smell that? That’s brimstone. This is Avernus,” she ignored the woman’s startled look, “so if that green bitch thinks she can get us out of here, I’ll go where she says. Unless you’ve got a better idea.” Ceres stalked after the gith without looking back.
The fighting was worst in the helm deck. The entire front of the ship had been ripped away by the dragon attack and the heat and stink of Avernus filled the space. Imps and hellbeasts brawled with mind flayers and intellect devourers, and in the center of the immense deck a massive devil dueled with the ilithid commander. As they crossed the threshold, the devil staggered under a telepathic assault and in the brief moment that followed Ceres felt the ilithid’s overwhelming, commanding presence flood her mind with instructions, the abhorrent worm behind her eye writhing in response. It did not speak but the message was clear - she and her companions were nothing to it, mere thralls to be used. They were to reach the helm at the broken prow of the ship and connect the nerves, the squirming tentacle masses that controlled the thing.
“Do as it says,” Lae’zel shouted, “we will deal with the ghaik after we escape!”
The helm lay at least 30 yards away, across the battleground that the deck had become. It was risky, but Ceres realized the best - and possibly only - chance to escape lay with her. Leaning into the hellish headwinds, she spread her wings with a few powerful strokes took off over the fighting.
Wind. Fiery blasts from the imps below raked her heels. She swooped down on the helm and griped the writhing tentacles, partly to carry out the instructions, partly to steady herself. A dragon gripped the shattered hull and loosed a savage blast of flame; she ducked behind the alien machinery and felt the searing heat pass over and around her. And then with a massive effort she linked the critical nerve endings and the ship lurched as it left Avernus, and then she was falling, falling into the void…
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
romaincrisis
jacobvanloon
