You're Not Alone — Bellini & Howie.

[Bellini]

Fight the greater evil.

No mercy for the wicked.

By any means necessary.​

The core words of Elanna's oath rang through her mind on repeat, each word pulsing with the pounding in her head. Pain spread through her body, seeming to exist everywhere and nowhere all at once, as her consciousness struggled to stay in effect. At any moment, it seemed as though she would slip back into the black nothingness that had haunted her since the crash of the nautiloid ship, but in an instant, her eyes snapped open to immediate regret as the sun glared down on her from above.

Squeezing her eyes shut, the halfling moved a hand to her forehead, rubbing with the heel of her palm as she slowly moved to a sitting position. Every muscle protested as her body stretched upright, and even though the sun sent stabbing pain through her eyes to her core, Elanna willed herself to keep at least one squinted eye open as she looked side to side.

The dark, damp enclosure of the nautiloid ship was no more, but the smoking remains surrounding her told her what had happened to it. Flashes of the free-fall made their way through her mental fog, events piecing together in her memory as she struggled to stand, one hand gripping the side of a smoking hunk of metal until she felt steady enough on two feet to move on her own.

Astonishingly enough, there were no major injuries that Elanna could detect; aside from a few scrapes, bruises, and one long gash on her forehead that dripped blood down the bridge of her nose, it seemed she had escaped relatively unscathed. Aside from the crackling of flames from the ship's wreckage and the light lapping of tiny waves against the shore, the world around her was silent; the quiet was unnerving after the chaos of the previous hours, and Elanna tossed a rock into the water haphazardly just to hear something else to break it.

Taking a few unsteady steps, Elanna kept one hand behind her back, on the hilt of her greatsword, in case she needed to unsheathe it at a moment's notice. In the tranquility of the coastline, she'd be able to detect all but the most skilled rogues, but she wasn't taking any chances – she wasn't familiar with the area where she'd landed, and she didn't know what awaited her on the horizon. There were cliffsides surrounding her, forcing her ahead on one set path; there was no way to wander anywhere but forward.

Somewhere in the distance, a few twigs cracked; carefully, Elanna approached the source of the sound, doing her best to stay hidden in the brush until she could assess who – or what – had made itself known.​

 

[how_is_you]

Why couldn't everything have died when the nautiloid crash landed?

That was the primary thought running through the head of a red skinned tiefling, currently crouched in a patch of taller grass in the beachfront landscape. One of her pair of horns snapped off near the base. One could readily assume it was in some battle, given the scars that ran rampant over her flesh. Her eyes, a piercing orange that complimented her skin tone nicely enough, were intensely focused on the sight ahead of her. Part of the nautiloid's hull had shattered upon impact with Faerun's surface, scattering pieces of it across the landscape in its immediate area. One fair chunk was remaining before the tiefling, and patrolling it were a trio of intellect devourers. Perfectly terrifying creatures. The tiefling was confident in her fighting ability, but one teensy little issue with being on the surface of Faerun was causing complications of her own.

Like a volcano bubbling under the earth, Karlach felt the onset of her flames before they showed themselves to the naked eye. Like a bit of heartburn, which was funny given the source. She stepped out of her bush, wandering back toward the nearby water, clutching her chest and stumbling somewhat, breaking a few small twigs underfoot that were immediately incinerated. Bruised and battered from the crash, it would be clear to anyone laying eyes on her that she wasn't holding her chest due to injury. No, it was something far, far worse. With a shout of discomfort from the heat of what was occurring in her chest, she leaned against a nearby rockface, hunching over. Slowly, flames began to lap out of her chest, spreading across her torso, scorching plant life around her black, minimal as that may have been on the beach. They were getting hotter, more impatient. She had to get to Baldur's Gate, though, get back home, see her friends again. Even if one so called chum was the source of these issues, so long ago

Another shout, this one melting from discomfort to determination. She would not let these flames consume her, there was too much to do. There she stood, hunched, flames licking up her clearly burnt flesh, her eyes squeezed shut as she tried to focus, the entirety of her mind on making sure she didn't get eaten alive by the anger of Avernus. That's what these flames were after all: hellfire, no mere crackling campfire. All thanks to the little engine in her heart.

"Come on, Karlach...you've dealt with...worse..." After the reassurance that this was nothing under her breath, she shouted again, once more in discomfort, falling to a knee. The flames were intensifying, now hot enough to leave a scorch mark on the rock face the tiefling's hand was lingering upon for support.