#minthara's approval of her is still very much in the neutral zone

[blackjackkent]

Pushing north from the necromantic laboratory through the other corridors of the mind flayer colony, Rakha and her companions arrive in a long hallway lined with illithid pods.

"Mind flayers and civilians, side by side..." murmurs the guardian. "This must be where they infect and transform those they kidnap."

"This place," Minthara intones solemnly, "has been used to make slaves of those who should be masters."

Rakha shoots her a sideways look. Did Minthara inhabit one of these pods, once? Is that how she found the tadpole in her head and a commanding role over the Absolute's army of goblins at Moonhaven?

She remembers the pod on the nautiloid. Her earliest clear memory - staggering free of it to the smell of smoke and burning flesh and hot metal. The pain in her head and behind her eye. The blind terror of knowing nothing, nothing at all - not where she was, not who she was, not what had happened or what would happen...

At least she is not there anymore. She has Wyll next to her, and Lae'zel and Minthara. She has the guardian in her pocket. She knows some things - not many, but more. She's not alone...

She taps the control panel in front of one of the pods. Then another, and another. Memories flow through her, fragmented images left from those who have been tadpoled and transformed inside these devices.

Narrator: Courage... conviction... defiance. Even as her organs began to dissolve, she believed she could resist.

Narrator: Delirium... mania... laughter. His mind broke before the end, and he was laughing uncontrollably as the skin fell from his face.

Narrator: Desperation... pain... terror. Cultists raided his village. He was the sole survivor.

Narrator: Amusement... curiosity... fascination. He believed the horrors of Moonrise to be a fleeting dream that would fade on waking.

Narrator: Your lungs burn with the dry heat of the fires raging about you, but the pain is not enough to diminish your swing. one goblin after another falls to your blade. A man's voice cries out through the thick smoke. 'Ravengard!', you call, but the clang of swords and the spell-shouts of attacking drow are your only reply.

Narrator: This pod pulsates with the angry memories of Ravengard's search officer, Manip Shuurga. She laments her failure to locate him.

She slows in her movements. These last two have some resonance of familiarity. Images of the burning village near the nautiloid - Waukeen's Rest. The place where Wyll's father was taken. These people were there, and inside the pods, unlike the others, they are still alive, not illithid. Perhaps they know where he is. If she can open the pods--

"Zevlor," she hears Wyll say behind her, and the dismay in his voice distracts her from everything else.

"What?" she asks, and turns--

The teeth-ling leader from the Grove. The one Cerys said froze and betrayed them all in the cursed dark. He sits still alive in one of the pods; his head thrashes from side to side as if caught in the grip of some terrible nightmare.

Rakha brushes her fingers over the console in front of him.

Narrator: You remember the shattered windows of Elturel's High Cathedral, the burning black sky of Avernus beyond. In its horror, the Blood War unites you. Tiefling, dwarf, and elf alike huddle behind the shields of your paladin order, waiting for salvation. But when it comes... disunity. The returned city casts your people out - the devils who dragged them down to hell. In the end, it is not your paladin oath that is broken. It is your faith itself.

The images are fractured and dark and layered through with a great deal of pain. Bits and pieces of the memory tie into the small amount Zevlor told them of the teeth-lings' history. A city dragged into the hells. An exile afterwards.

She examines the final control panel in the room.

Narrator: Your tadpole forms a telepathic connection with the device, and a chorus of static energy fills your mind. Every mind flayer in the room calls out hungrily from its pod, seeking release - and sustenance. But there are others in the pods - those not yet infected, not yet illithid. Terrified. Desperate to escape. The device is open to your tadpole's command. To your authority.

(A/N: I love the way the narrator says that last bit. It's clear she's realized that au-thor-ity is basically a meme part of her narration by this point in the game. XD )

Lae'zel hisses warily. "Ghaik machinery. Cold as the Sea of Night, alien as time to the Astral Plane. Avert your eyes. Close your mind."

Perhaps under other circumstances, Rakha would listen and turn away. Even after all this time and the things that have rocked their friendship to its core, she still wants to trust Lae'zel's guidance in almost everything.

But Lae'zel didn't see that imagery, the memories from those in the pods. These people might know what became of Wyll's father. Rakha can't turn away from that. The things Wyll needs here are as important to her as her own goals.

More so, maybe...

Release.

Besides, she thinks, with deeply muted black humor as the pods begin to slide open, those that are already transformed... we can kill.