Chapter Text
The Zaith’isk stands before her, glorious in its might as it breathes otherworldly life into the room. Rays of sunlight beat down on the machine, glinting against its mechanic components as warm living flesh wraps around them and pulses in its heat. It is all-encompassing, and the air around the Zaith’isk thrums with psionic energy. Lae’zel feels proud to stand before such a creation, the masterful craftsmanship of her people. Her heart pounds with eagerness, purification so close at hand.
“The Zaith’isk. Vlaakith’s purity, distilled. My duty, my right.”
Lae’zel looks to her companions, their faces twisted with varying degrees of worry. She ignores their unnecessary concern — they will not wear such expressions once the Zaith’isk frees them of their tadpoles.
“Stand aside, my time has come.”
Wyll takes a step back, the rest of the group moving with him.
“It’s only a horrific machine of unspeakable form. What’s the worst that could happen?” He offers.
Gale shrugs in response. “Well, could go either way. But we came this far – should at least try.”
Lae’zel scowls back at the two men and curses under her breath. Some overly cautious istik’s will not ruin this moment for her.
She steps up to the machine with full confidence in Vlaakith’s will, laying back on the Zaith’isk under the instruction of the ghustil who reminds her to focus on nothing but the wretched parasite in her skull. A simple task, considering it has been her only focus ever since the damned nautiloid.
Lae’zel watches in awe as the antennae of the Zaith’isk twitches above her. She braces herself.
When the machine forces itself into her mind, an agony like nothing she has ever known erupts behind her eyes. She never expected purification to be painless, the excruciating burning in her brain appropriate punishment for a fool who managed to get themselves infected in the first place. Vlaakith only expects the best of her warriors, and Lae’zel will be one of her finest. So she pushes through, though she can’t halt the cry that spills past her lips.
Someone calls her name in the distance. The ghustil insists she keeps her focus. That Lae’zel will do. That Lae’zel must do if she wishes to be free of this vile tadpole.
She focuses on the creature thrashing wildly behind her eye as its screeching pierces her eardrums, yet the harder she concentrates the more painful it becomes. Her temples feel ablaze when the Zaith’isk pressures her psyche to crack under the weight of its psionic powers as it sears into her mind.
An unwelcome emotion twists in her gut when she hears her companions shout at her to get out of the machine. Fear. She snaps something back at them in reply. Some kind of refusal in her delirium. The fear only grows as the agony increases, and she is convinced the machine will split her skull. Lae’zel is scared to die unknown. She will not leave this world when she has yet to fully prove herself to her queen. But the Zaith’isk will not kill her. That is not its purpose.
Another of her companions calls to her – Karlach she thinks – pleading with her to save herself. How wrong they are. Stopping the Zaith’isk is asking for death, and it will not take her. Not now. Not as she speaks the Tla’ket over and over. Not even as blood starts to spill from her nose, her eyes and her ears. She can feel it dribbling down her face, sliding down her neck, the red liquid leaking into her eyes and obscuring her already blurring vision.
The Zaith’isk takes a sledgehammer to the fragile glass of her youthful memories, smashing them to pieces in search of something she doesn’t know what. She would offer it up if knew what it wanted — anything to be free of the ghaik tadpole.
Anything to stop this torment. There is only so much even she can take.
Lae’zel’s throat hurts and her voice is hoarse when she next screams in agony as the Zaith’isk probes even deeper — prodding and poking and gutting her fracturing mind. She feels like a piece of herself is being ripped away by the machine’s ruthless bombardment.
The arguing in the background is blocked out by the pain until the voice of her dubious dream visitor interrupts the barrage of psionic energy battering her mind.
“Enough!” It bellows through all their heads, echoing from her skull into each of her companions’ as the Zaith’isk combusts around her and flings her to the cold hard floor of the ghustil’s chamber.
Her body lands at an awkward angle, jarring her shoulder as she smacks her head into the ground with a loud crack. When Lae’zel squints her eyes open she sees two of everything, her vision lacking focus. Her heart pounds when she becomes aware of her vulnerability and tries to stand, failing tremendously. Moving makes her feel sick, the nausea beating rapidly against her skull and griping in her stomach.
A high-pitched ringing screams in her ears and she can sense all the bodies crowding her, calling her name in muffled panic. She can’t respond, all she can focus on is her vile nausea, which she realises far too late is hastily travelling up her throat. She tries to warn them, but all that comes out is a pathetic gurgle followed by a sickening wretch as she spills her guts onto the floor.
Somewhere in the echoing chamber of the room, the ghustil is delirious, furious, that the Zaith’isk is destroyed. That Lae’zel still lives. Someone briskly snaps back at the doctor, arguing the value of Lae’zel’s life. She thinks it might be Wyll. Though she doesn’t feel deserving of his defence in such a pitiful moment. What kind of warrior of Vlaakith’s cannot even endure a full purification?
Above her, her companions continue to bicker. She hears grumbles of the others being told not to crowd her, to make space as one of them moves her onto her side and rubs her back between armoured plating. In a brief moment of clarity, Lae’zel is astonished to find it is Shadowheart.
She blearily spots the ghustil storm past her and out of the room, the slam of the door reverberating across the floor in a vibration that contributes to her remaining nausea. Yet, the feeling starts to temper with the careful circles Shadowheart continues to caress into her back.
As the ringing in her ears dies down, she starts to make out more of the conversation happening around her even though her head still pounds.
“That fucker locked the door!” Karlach exclaims in frustration and Lae’zel hears the recognisable sound that comes with the tiefling readying her greataxe.
“Now, now, Karlach, before we do anything rash like breaking down a door , how about we go the more subtle solution and let me pick its lock,” she hears Astarion strongly suggest.
“Look, I don’t care what we do, we just need to get Lae’zel out of here,” Wyll insists, concern hanging off every word.
“I can’t treat her properly here. Not after the amount of magic I used on those death shepherds and ghouls this morning,” Shadowheart speaks up from next to her, the clearest voice of the lot.
Lae’zel zones out the rest of the discussion, her weak body refusing to obey her heavy limbs when she tries to move. She must make some sort of noise, the room briefly falling silent when her attempts to speak instead finish with her spitting blood from her mouth.
“Shit ok, just please make up your minds while I sort this mess out,” Shadowheart snaps in irritation, though the concern is not lost in her tone.
The second she finishes talking, Lae’zel just about manages to make out Astarion opening the door along with the commotion that follows.
A fire bolt blasts into the room and singes the tips of the vampire's curls. With a high-pitched yelp, he quickly ducks. At the same, Karlach lets out a primal roar while Gale darts out of the way to allow room for Wyll to fling an eldritch blast back at their attacker.
“Astarion!” Shadowheart scalds as all hells break loose.
“How was I supposed to know?!” he yells back at her, voice cracking with alarm.
Blowing out a disgruntled sigh, Shadowheart begrudgingly manhandles Lae’zel to safety. She feels hands until her armpits as she’s dragged away from the fight and lowered back to the ground. The cleric’s face suddenly appears in her line of sight.
“Lae’zel. Can you hear me? Nod if you can.”
She manages to tilt her head up and down.
“Good. I’m going to use some healing magic on you but I don’t how much of the damage I can repair right now, ok?”
Lae’zel nods again.
“That thing has left you in a pretty bad state. I’d tease you if you didn’t look such a bloody mess.”
Shadowheart’s hands press gently to the sides of her head and Lae’zel winces when a fingertip brushes over her sore temple.
“Sorry. It’s badly burnt the sides of your face. I should be able to fix the worst of it though.”
Eyes closing in concentration, Shadowheart speaks the incantation to summon her divine magic and the blue light of her healing spell glows in Lae’zel’s periphery. She feels it seep through her head, caressing her mind as it fixes some of the damage and clears her vision. She can see and hear more clearly and her limbs start to obey her commands as the spell washes over the rest of her body.
Shadowheart follows up with another smaller healing spell before helping Lae’zel to sit up and pulling out a handkerchief. She wipes over and around Lae’zel’s eyes, improving her vision as the fabric comes away stained red with her blood and black from her makeup. Shadowheart eventually tucks it away after a failed attempt to remove the remains of blood from her face. She can feel how it’s dried and crusted to her skin.
“How are you feeling?” Shadowheart asks as she rests a hand on her shoulder, green eyes wide as they search Lae’zel’s.
Reluctant as she is to admit it to herself, she is grateful for the help. If not for Shadowheart, she would likely still be a woefully weak warrior passed out on the floor. Though thanking people is not in her nature, and she will not change for this cleric.
“Sword,” she mumbles instead.
“Sorry?”
“My sword. Where..?"
“It’s over there.” Shadowheart points to where it rests against the ghustil’s research bench. “Why—?”
Lae’zel stands up on shaky legs, ignoring Shadowheart’s annoyed scoff as she stumbles over to her weapon. Her lifeline. The only way she can redeem herself. Prove to Vlaakith that she is worthy. If the ghustil dared to betray her, then she will bring about her end.
“You can’t be serious?” Shadowheart exclaims in disbelief.
“The ghustil–” Lae’zel’s words still slur a little as she tries to force them over her tongue. She stumbles toward the door, her head still spinning and temples throbbing as she struggles with her balance. “She is mine.”
“Lae’zel you are in no fit state to fight.”
“You do not command me,” she snaps back before recklessly flinging herself into battle.
She can barely aim an accurate swing as her companions immediately protest her involvement. They do everything they can to protect her from blows and she despises how they see her as so frail.
When she finally has the ghustil in her increasingly blurring sights, she throws her entire exhausted body into the motion of her swing. This hit she must land.
And land it she does. The sharp edge of her greatsword cleaves through the ghustil’s neck and she watches gleefully as it drops from her shoulders into a murky red puddle of her death’s own making.
Around her, the fighting doesn’t stop. Her kin are outnumbered — Lae’zel does not pity them. This is the consequence of harbouring a traitor. It's barely any time before she starts flagging, the sword feeling heavier and heavier in her grip by the second. Any remaining adrenaline has been sapped from her body and her reaction time has been shot by the Zaith’isk. It’s why she doesn’t spot the pommel of her kin’s weapon coming straight for her head. Smacking into her bruising temple, she drops boneless to the floor. Someone cries out her name, their voice full of panic, but she never finds out who it is. Instead, her world turns black.