Braving the sunlight again after many days down in the Underdark, Ellu'kha and her people were traversing the wilds of the mountains in search for Lae'zel's creche.
In the creche, or so Lae'zel claimed, was a special healer well-versed in extricating the mindflayer parasites. Ellu'kha was dubious. A friendly mindflayer had been unable to extract or even communicate with the thing, and it had long past the incubation period for the things. This was their life now, such as it was.
They would check in with the creche anyway to make Lae'zel happy and exhaust their final option.
As they walked the mountainside, they got sidetracked on the way to the monastery where the gith had hold up — there were corpses in the distance.
Upon further investigation these corpses belonged to several gith young, some squirrels — poor little things — and some devotees to the Absolute. On one of the bodies was a letter. It demanded that Duke Ravengard be brought to Moonrise Towers, unharmed, immediately.
That suggested that Wyll's father was still alive. They would be reunited whenever they finally reached the towers!
Just down the path past the corpses a man, the very guise of a wizard, huffed and puffed by a rockwall.
Curious, Ellu'kha went towards him to offer her help.
It turned out he didn't need any help. He was the wizard Elminster, the greatest wizard to have ever lived in all of the realms, and he was searching for his fellow wizard, Gale.
He wouldn't say why he was searching for Gale though, not until he'd had a bite to eat.
Inviting the wizard back to camp to feast upon wine and cheese, he stretched, happy his belly had been sated, and got down to important business. Grave business. The business of Gale, and the horrid magic inside of him that could explode at any minute.
The Goddess Mystra was offering Gale redemption, Elminster claimed. Unfortunately, that redemption would come for Gale in the form of his explosive death. The Absolute was a force of power that they should not underestimate, it was more powerful, more dangerous than they could possibly conceive, and the explosive nature of Gale's predicament was the one thing that could eradicate it... once they found the location of its beating heart.
There was, of course, the issue of Gale's premature explosion, especially since he was no longer able to sate the desire of the thing inside of him with simple magical artifacts.
The Goddess Mystra had devised a spell, however, that would pause the explosion until ready. Elminster administered the spell immediately and prepared to leave. But first Ellu'kha stopped him. He was the greatest wizard in the realms! Did he know of a way to remove their parasitic predicament? He did not. Their parasites were bound by fate.
Leaving Gale in her protection, Elminster vanished.
Ellu'kha didn't quite know what to say. She had been growing fond of Gale, and now he was tasked with dying in a grand explosion in order to save them all from the Absolute.
She didn't want him to die. She had been hoping they would find a way to stop his inevitable explosion... but now it was the will of a Goddess.
None of their companions were happy about this. Astarion was shocked at the thought of losing a perfectly good Gale, both Wyll and Karlach were hoping he would come to his senses and refuse to do this, that a Goddess who demanded this of her people was a Goddess not worth worshipping, and even Lae'zel seemed disconcerted at the idea of Gale exploding himself.
Hopefully they would find another way to deal with the Absolute — and his strange magical condition — without it coming to an explosive end.
With that knowledge burdening their minds, they continued through the mountain towards the ancient monastery where the gith had made their creche.
They approached the monastery and entered the ruins, and as they did the voice of the dream woman entered Ellu'kha's mind. She was warning them away from the gith. That their curiosity was getting the better of them and they shouldn't let it. This was becoming dangerous.
All Ellu'kha wanted to do was to get Lae'zel into the creche so she could see for herself that their parasites were a special breed and were unable to be extracted by any means — not even by the fabled gith machine that Lae'zel was obsessed with.
Ignoring the voice, they descended into the monastery basement and faced the guards at the door. Although snappish people, they were less snappish than the gith riders they had come across earlier. They seemed to have no trouble allowing non-gith into the creche alongside Lae'zel to speak with the healer in the infirmary.
The healer was an interesting woman... clearly more devoted to more literary, scholarly, scientific pursuits, she didn't seem as brutal as the rest of the gith people.
She was curious as to why a wood elf would seek her aid, and Ellu'kha told her about the parasite infecting all of them — and the fact that they should've long turned by now but had not. That attracted the healer's attention. She couldn't wait to experiment on these parasites once extracted and discover their secrets.
Since Lae'zel wanted this so badly, Ellu'kha told her to be the first one to use the fancy gith contraption. It appeared to be a giant worm with great fangs... it seemed as though Lae'zel was going to sit in its mouth. If it was a worm. It was definitely not your average doctor's chair.
As the wormish contraption worked its strange magic, sharp pains writhed through Ellu'kha's mind as the machine interacted with Lae'zel's parasite. She could feel every spasm, each stab of pain, that Lae'zel was feeling. It was awful.
Somehow she saw through the pain and noted something important. This device wasn't meant for curing infections. It was not going to save them. The parasite may be extracted, but the "cure" was death.
She shouted out to Lae'zel to break free of the machine before it killed her. Shocked, Lae'zel leapt upright and off the seat, and the machine exploded.
Lae'zel was angered and didn't believe what Ellu'kha was saying. It was not meant to kill them; it was meant to cure them! If that machine was going to kill them, it was because the healer was a traitor and had sabotaged it somehow.
They needed to tell the leader of this creche immediately that his healer was a traitor!
Ellu'kha didn't believe that was it at all. And then the dream voice manifested in her mind once more, claiming to have protected Lae'zel from the effects and that she had warned them that this was dangerous.
Life. Wasn't life dangerous? To ease Lae'zel's rantings, Ellu'kha decided they would have to find the one in charge. And hope he didn't kill them for daring to accuse a healer of something they had no control over.
While she and Lae'zel had been snipping at one another, the healer had raced out of the infirmary and into the other room. She gathered the younger gith warriors, training amongst themselves, and demanded they attack Ellu'kha and the others. She needed to study those parasites!
If Lae'zel cared about killing her own kind, she didn't bat an eye. Soon the threat was gone and she snapped to Ellu'kha that they needed to speak with the Inquisitor, now.
They found the Inquisitor speaking with the leader of this creche, but before they could take his attention, he left the room.
Lae'zel motioned towards the leader and they stepped forth, hoping that speaking with her would allow them to speak with the Inquisitor. Instead, they were asked about the weapon the gith sought. Surely they were some of the mercenaries who had been hired to find it otherwise why would they dare speaking to her?
Ellu'kha could find no way to deceive this woman, and despite the voice of the dream woman yelling in her brain... Ellu'kha took out the artifact from her pocket and showed it to the gith.
The moment Ellu'kha did that, the gith leader pulled the artifact towards her and grinned.
Shadowheart's disapproval radiated out from her.
And then... the artifact flew back to Ellu'kha and hopped into her back pocket with a mind of its own.
The gith leader was displeased and told them to take it to the Inquisitor. Well, they had wanted to speak with him anyway. Hopefully this all turned out for the best.
Until next time! 😊
and are from the game: Baldur's Gate 3