Chapter 1
Your breath fogs on the glass in front of you. Wait… it is glass? Something about the color isn't right. More importantly, you realize you cannot move. Suddenly your heart kicks up, noticing how close the walls of this enclosure are, how tightly you are held in place.
An alien room is beyond the glass and creatures with long horrible faces and bright yellow eyes move about it with a sinister air. Your mouth goes dry and you reach for… something. You cannot be sure what it was, only that your mind, your very soul had reached for something for power and protection and found instead cold nothingness. Though you don't understand why, you begin to panic.
They are doing something to the next pod over. She is screaming. Your blood suddenly feels like it's on fire and sharp breaths burn the awful briney smell into your nostrils.
Malicious yellow eyes turn to face you and the creatures approach. Your mind is nothing but shattered agony and animal fear. Whatever happened to that woman is going to happen to you, and you are helpless to prevent it.
The pod wooshes open and caustic air stings your lungs. For a brief, delirious moment you notice that the creatures smell like off fish and garlic, of all things. Then the tadpole is raised to your eye and you watch its many teeth as it forces its way into your eye socket and further into your brain. The last thing you remember is your throat giving out as you scream.
Jessa woke with a start. Sweat clung to the small of her back and the back of her neck. She held herself very still, forcing shaking breaths into her lungs. Reliving the beginning of their perilous journey was not something that filled her with joy, but it was better this than red dreams that got her into trouble.
She forced her eyes shut and tried to remember what had come next. Finding the woman from the other pod, her strength and surety giving Jessa a fixed point to follow. Releasing Shadowheart from the pod. The devils, the crash.
The beach.
Jessa had first felt a calming presence in her mind there. Like someone had sat watching over her while the lights slowly came back on in her brain. It soothed some of the aching pain in her skull and temporarily dulled the restless feeling in her blood.
YOU ARE NEEDED. YOU CAN YET DO GOOD, IF YOU HAVE HEART. STAND, AND SERVE HELM. IF YOU CAN LEARN TO PROTECT THE SMALL, YOU NEED NOT WALK ALONE.
She had felt the solidity, the impersonal warmth of this being and its offer. Adrift in a sea of nothingness, Jessa grasped for it like a lifeboat and pulled herself up.
Please. I know how to be strong.
THEN STAND.
And she had come to on the beach. The memory of the ship had flooded her then, as had the realization that those were her only memories. Only her name remained in the ashes of her mind, alongside two potential allies (now missing) and the warm glow in her breast. The glow had been real, coming from a new token hanging from her neck with Helm's holy symbol emblazoned on it.
“Are you still pretending to sleep?” The slightly mocking voice pulled Jessa from her reverie. She looked over her shoulder at the githyanki sitting up beside her.
“No. Though I didn't know I was pretending in the first place.”
Lae'zel shot her a doubtful look. “Your nightmares woke you again many minutes ago, yet you've remained still since. Would you not call that pretending?”
Jessa hummed thoughtfully. She shifted to face the woman directly, noting that she had some loops of rope held casually between her hands. “Some people like to lie still when they first wake up, especially if their dream troubled them “
Lae'zel scoffed. “Such laziness will not improve anything–”
“--I was merely trying to return to sleep.”
She fixed Jessa with a skeptical look. “As you say… It does not seem you were very successful.”
“No, I wasn't.”
“No red dreams tonight?” Lae'zel thumbed the rope idly.
Jessa sighed and sat up next to the other woman, wincing at the new sore spots on her body. Her lover noticed and smirked, eyeing the marks she had made hours earlier. “No, none of those dreams. Not yet anyway.”
Lae'zel dropped the rope. “Seeing as you had not tried making any preposterous threats to my person, I thought as much. Then there will be no further need to restrain you tonight.”
Jessa leaned against the firm warmth of her lazily. “If you had not worn me out so thoroughly earlier…” she murmured and traced the shell of the githyanki's ear.
“If you had better stamina–” Lae'zel groused without much heat.
Still exhausted from her dream, Jessa let herself indulge in affection and curled herself against her partner's side. She brought her hand to the warrior's bicep and gave it a small squeeze for the pleasure of the strength she could feel there. It was a girlish whim that she would not normally allow, but the terror of her nightmare was still drying on her skin.
There was a long quiet moment where Jessa merely listened to the wind and the body sounds she could hear from where her face was pressed to Lae'zel. Then, a careful hand on her shoulder, uncertain but holding her closer. Then a more confident shift, an arm around her back and the previous hand now at the nape of her neck.
Lae'zel did not complain about the sweat, the too warm heat of Jessa's body clinging to her side. Sharp nails pricked slightly just past her hairline as fingers curled protectively into her tangled hair. A loose strand tickled her nose and Jessa huffed out air in irritation, twisting away from it.
Lae'zel pushed it out of her face brusquely. “It would not bother you so if you cut it.”
“Yes, but then it would be too short to put back unless I cut it all off. And then my scars would be more prominent as would my face. I wouldn't look much the part of a peaceful cleric anymore. And that's one of the only parts I manage to do well.”
“Jessa. You are a war cleric of Helm.”
Her eyebrows twitched irritably. “A diplomatic one! Mostly. I'm trying very hard to fight against my nature, you know.”
“And you spend a great deal of energy to do so. I do not think you should let your baser instincts rule you, but I fail to see the point of dressing and wearing your hair a certain way when it is bothersome. Our experiments with braiding were unsuccessful, your hair is too fine to hold a proper warrior's style.”
“A bun is fine when someone hasn't been tugging on it.” Jessa said reproachfully.
“An opponent in battle may pull on your hair half as gently as I did,” Lae'zel chided.
“I'll think about it.” Jessa relented.
“Do not change yourself on my behalf.”
Jessa cracked an eye to glare at her. “What I choose to do will be my decision alone. But you can hardly pretend that I have not been changed by you.”
Lae'zel stoically said nothing, which usually meant she was experiencing an inconvenient emotion and was wrestling it into submission. The line it made between her serious brows was endearing. Spurred by recklessness, Jessa pushed further.
“I would even dare to say you've been changed by me.”
The githyanki scoffed and stood, pacing a few steps away. “You dare to say?” She whipped around, arms crossed. “I have been as clear as I know how to be, Jessamine. You have become part of who I am– my blood rises and sings in concert with your own. I have bound myself to you in every way I know how and suffered the humiliation that I could not bear to fight against you for long, the distress that you might come to harm was so acute. I may understand little of it, but I know the marks you have left on my flesh on I on yours.”
Jessa stood and cradled the sharp angles of the other woman's elbows in her palms. She pushed through the awkwardness of her own touch, committing to the practice. They were both unschooled in tenderness, and it made Jessa's palms sweat in a way that taking her lover to bed never had.
“I know.” Jessa took her hand and held it over her heart, rather than fumble for words that could match Lae'zel's impassioned speech. In turn she huffed and leaned into Jessa's space, resting their foreheads together.
Jessa breathed in slowly, trying to burn this moment into her mind. She tucked away the cool skin of her fingers, the slight musk of the road and sweat, the scent of the oil Lae'zel used to treat the joints in her armor. There was the particular way her alien pupils waxed and waned along the length of her shining yellow irises. Jessa knew (hoped) that she would remember how it felt to be touched by her, held by her forever. Whatever past was lost to her, she doubted anything could compare to earning Lae'zel's admiration, loyalty, desire, even her affection.
If I can be half as strong as she believes me to be, I can destroy the brain and keep us alive. If she will stay by my side… I could carve the Dead Three from the sky myself.
“Enough.” Lae'zel pushed her away and stepped back a few inches. “We must rest if we are to journey hard tomorrow. We are close to the Gate, and have promises to keep there.”
Jessa nodded and returned to her bedroll with the smell of Lae'zel lingering in her hair and sleep quickly caught her, drowning her once again in a sea of red.