Chapter Text
When she comes to, the only thing she can hear is a loud, persistent ringing over a deafening silence. She tries to open her eyes as panic starts to tighten her chest. When she realizes she cannot, she goes to focus on the rest of her limbs instead. Fingers, feet, arms, leg, all of them feel weighted down, leaving her to struggle against gravity to move even just a painful inch. She groans through the effort - and realizes she can hear it through the fog. Good sign, she's not deaf, the explosion didn't rip her eardrums.
… Wait. Explosion?
Gravel crunch nearby, the sound muffled but still recognizable. Then, she feels something grab both her shoulders. She's lifted off the ground, just high enough to be shaken awake.
"Shadowheart?" a woman's voice pierces her ears, much louder than everything else.
Her entire body finally jolts awake - as if it finally managed to catch up with her brain. The sensation is vertiginous, and when she opens her eyes, after blinking away the painfully bright daylight for a second, she's met with the familiar face of her savior. The same tousled white hair, pale skin and almost black eyes: she's the fighter who pulled her out of her pod and helped her off the ship.
“You’re alive!” she blurts out, throat painfully raw.
The elf grabs her hand and helps her upright. She has to take a second to find her footing, swaying in place a few times while her body gets used to the change. Then, the situation finally hits her as her eyes go over her companion’s shoulder and focuses on the ship - more so on its ruins, smoking and disemboweled by the fall. There’s debris, fire, corpses strung all over the floor. “I’m… alive. How is this possible?”
"I was hoping you might know that," comes the response. She looks back at her companion, whose lips are pulled in an awkward smile.
She finishes scanning the scene around her, trying to piece together the past few hours. The pod, the mindflayers, the tadpole. And then - an attack, probably. Confusion, fear as she tried in vain to push open the door to her little fleshy coffin, the dawning realization that she was trapped inside as the entire ship is rattled violently. She still feels the panic rising in her chest as the vivid memory of another explosion rocking her entire world surfaces. And then voices, footsteps, and the elven woman appeared, pulled her out of her cartilaginous prison with that console and helped her up.
Taliesin, right? That's what she said her name was. She was with a githyanki, a woman with braided hair and a bad attitude. Shadowheart perks up and looks around: no sign of that one. Her hand tighten around the relic she just now realizes is still in her hand, and she whispers a small prayer to her Lady. That's one less threat, at least.
The githyanki woman, yes. She led them towards the helm. Then-
“I remember the ship,” she says, discreetly slipping the relic in a pouch. She massages her painful temples for a second. “I remember falling… then nothing.”
Nothing until getting woken up by the same woman who saved her minutes ago. Hours ago? How long has she really been out? She vaguely remembers it was nighttime when the ship shifter back to Faerûn. She looks back at Taliesin: she looks as lost as Shadowheart feels.
"I just woke up too," she informs her, then points somewhere to the right of them. "Just over there. There's bodies everywhere, I almost thought you were dead, too."
She takes a second to study her companion in misfortune a little more. She’d of course noticed her blonde hair and unusually small frame earlier, but she hadn’t had the occasion to actually look at her for more than a second with all the chaos and urgency of their situation.
She has fair skin, very light, almost too light? Translucent, like she hasn’t seen the sun in years, maybe. She has the pointy ears of an elf, longer than her own, and they're pierced with all sorts of rings and little silver beads decorated with dark blue stones that shine with the sunlight. Her hair is short, slicked back messily, and bleached so light it looks white. Or maybe it is white, and only looked blonde when dirtied by the dust and soot and firelight. It's messy from the fight and rough landing, with a few strands deciding to go in their own direction. She has a soft jawline, matching her expression and almost doe-like eyes. She would almost look harmless and innocent if Shadowheart hadn’t witnessed the precision of her bolts and spells earlier.
She’s cute, though.
Shadowheart chases the thought away from her mind, chastising herself.
The woman doesn't seem to notice her staring, as she takes her turn scanning their surroundings with a serious expression on her face. Shadowheart focuses on her eyes. She'd thought them brown, almost black, earlier, but now, in the light, she sees an unmistakable red shine to them. As soon as she catches that, she starts noticing a few other things: where the woman’s skin should be flushed red with blood, it’s purplish, instead. Almost like frostbite, except there’s no way it is, so close to a burning ship. Her lips, the corner of her eyes, even the tip of her fingers, they’re blue, like a corpse. The red eyes, the blue skin, the white hair. She’s not an elf, Shadowheart realizes, she’s a drow.
And a drow on the surface, that means she's a seldarine… Shadowheart thinks, bracing. Her eyes wander down to the drow’s chest, covered in leather and chainmail, onto which rests a cleric’s pendant. The symbol of Selûne.
Her eyes dart back up, anxiety catching her throat. She hasn’t done anything that pins her as a follower of Shar, right? At least, nothing she can remember right now. Will she notice her own symbols? Her mind starts spiraling, going into every direction - fighting her, fleeing, playing dumb, what was the best option for survival, when Taliesin’s voice rips her from her own head.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” she asks, simply, unaware of what was going on just in front of her. She’s still busy scanning the ship and its limp tentacles.
Shadowheart swallows back her thoughts. The woman seems none the wiser. So she plays dumb. She knows she cannot trust her, but she also knows there’s a little thing behind both of their right eyes that cannot wait for them to settle god quarrels. She’d have to do with whatever allies she’s lent right now, even if it means dealing with that little problem down the road. They’re both alive for a reason, right?
She smiles back amicably, pushing up the charm. She's trained for infiltration, everything is going to be just fine.
"The Sword Coast, I think, though I don't know exactly where. We both need a healer, let's look for civilization, together."