My prior entry was premature.

The woman I saved from the pod on the ship - Shadowheart - who should have died to the dragonflame - lay mere steps from my own landing spot. The artifact she seemed so intent on hiding miraculously in her outstretched palm.

To satiate my growing curiosity, I reached for it. She awoke and instantly closed her hand, hid it among her person, and eyed me. Suspicious of my motives. I claimed to be checking on her vitals, to see if she still took breath.

I do not think she believed me. She shouldn't have.

She did not know why we lived. But she also did not seem to care of the specifics. Only that we did survive.

I did not disagree.

I thought back to the memory of the drow, and her voice. The only thing left of my past.

Shadowheart wished to stay together.

I agreed.

It was worth having a companion, even one I knew so little about, in an unknown area with unknown threats.

She looked weak. She would likely fail at any attempted betrayal even as she failed at fighting others. Even so, she would be a second set of eyes. That would be enough.

As I moved forward, Shadowheart thanked me for my actions in rescuing her aboard the ship. Perhaps she thought she would have been dead without my assistance. The pod would have likely proved a safer vessel than having little more than wind as a cushion.

Her suggestion to travel together may be more sentimental than practical.

The wreckage of the ship was nearby. A handful of intellect devourers scampered about, but fled as they sensed our presence. I stole into the darkness to follow. Shadowheart stopped me to wrap my form in the shadows of her goddess.

Perhaps she would prove useful.

Bodies of both the illithid and their slaves were scattered throughout the corpse of the helm. Shadowhearts guess may have been more correct - she could have been among the dead.

And we all could have been among the dead - in the hells - had she remained trapped. She was the one to force us to safety.

Relative safety.

The intellect devourers waited in ambush. I attempted a reversal. I failed.

One of the three broke the flesh of my arm with its tentacles. I felt a power suffusing my body, lighting building up in response to the threat of death. I channeled this into the creature before its tentacle retreated. The synapses of the gigantic brain fried. The creature fell to the ground. Dead.

While Shadowheart took on her own foe, I rushed forward to the third. An alien power filled my body, aching for release. Lolth filled my soul with pure pain that needed to be unleashed. I did so.

The final creature collapsed into a corpse.

While I felt good, almost ecstatic, to accept this power into my soul, and to unleash it unto others, something felt off.

I think I am uncomfortable serving as the conduit of another. I do not wish to be a mere servant. I need to be something more.

Is that what I was before? I servant? A slave of devotion to another? Was I truly satisfied with that?

If so, I am disgusted.

One of the illithid, further in the ship, still lived. Its breaths were weak; its blood pooled beneath its crumpled form. It would die soon. On its own.

I felt a compassion for the creature as I approached, a need to save it. To heal it.

I knew this was wrong, and my thoughts shifted to a self-hatred of the pathetic mortal creature I was.

This was all an attempt to distract from my own growing malice by the creature. In a vain attempt to salvage what it could of its life.

Even the suggestion my thoughts were other than my own did little more than fuel the rage growing within me. Its spawn was already influencing my thoughts and actions. The illithid met my disgust as I fought off its influence with undisguised loathing.

I left it, bleeding out on the floor. Its facade collapsed with its hope. It would sugger a slow, painful death - an ignoble end to an ignoble creature. I soaked in its despair as it realized it would receive neither salvation nor mercy.

Its attention focused entirely on its own labored breathing in an attempt to maintain it as long as possible. Its ever-weakening breathing.

I crushed its skull in a single strike, opening the horrible creature's mind to the world. Both its body and mind were drenched in the juices of viscera and gore.

Sweet, delicious juices.

A perfume of perfection.

Despite how it started, I think today is going to be a good day.