Rip & Tear

Margot had read about those octopus headed creatures in Grafts & Symbionts. They were called Mind Flayers or Illithid, another race of aberration. They were rumored to be evil, brain eating, slavers. However, she had her doubt about this book. Mortals were known to biased against other races, and everything written by them had to be taken with a grain of salt.

The humans seemed to be in a bad spot: Only one was conscious, a red headed, muscular girl whose axe was currently residing inside the skull of one of the illithid. On her left an old man was trying to force his way out of the four tentacles grappling its head. On the wall behind her, a young man was crucified by stone spikes, slowly bleeding out.

As she tried to remove her blood covered axe from her enemy's skull, the adventurer was thrown to the wall by an invisible wave of force, toward her friend. She barely had the time to look at the "face" of the monster, before it used its psionic abilities to launch a stalagmite, impaling both her and her friend on the cave's wall. Strangely enough, the pain didn't make her lose consciousness, it only made her angrier. Sadly, willpower can only get you so far and after losing so much blood she lost consciousness.

The old man wasn't faring any better. He failed to free himself from the tentacles. The last things he felt were warm drool on his scalp and sharp teeth opening his skull.

"So much about cultural bias" Margot thought. As the events unfolded, she chose to help the humans. She was too late to save the old man, but she was sure she could save the young ones if she were fast enough.

The Mind Flayers were focused on their prey and didn't see Margot approaching.

Using this opportunity, she decided to "probe" her targets with a simple death ray on the illithid who was eating, and a disintegration ray on the other one. However, things didn't go as planned: Somehow the death ray dispersed without hurting the first illithid. As for the second one, it moved in an instant as the energy was building up in the eyestalk, resulting in a near miss and a big hole in the ground.

The two monsters glanced at each other and quickly decided on a course of action. One of them moved to flank Margot while the other tried to distract her.

Seeing her magical powers somehow negated, she figured that biting her enemies head off was probably as efficient. She charged forward, her gigantic maw wide open. Then she bit… dust, air, and a fly. Again, the dodgy bastard managed to duck at the least second. he was now below her and outside of the anti-magic cone. He used this opportunity to send an energy blast right on her "belly", making her crash against roof.

Seeing an opening, the other monster tried to use the iconic power shared by all Mind Flayers: Mind Blast. This ability is especially dangerous as it makes everyone struck by it confused and lost, creating an opportunity for the monster to grapple your head and suck you brain out.

Mind affecting abilities are indeed terrifying but can be overcome by those with incredible willpower or anger issues. And right now, Margot had both.

Seeing the situation go out of hand, Margot just decided to trust the memory of her host and got all out.

The reason why Eye Tyrants are feared so much is not because of the strength of their magical power: Many creatures have stronger abilities. What is truly terrifying is the number of magical abilities they can use at the same time. Each eyestalk has his own sub-brain controlling it, meaning that theoretically an Eye Tyrant can cast all the ray they have, while attacking and moving around.

The surgery Margot did on herself allowed her to cast spells as well, one by supplementary eyestalk. Sadly, her body was too weak to support the possibility of using so much magical power. Her limit was using 11 eyestalks at the same time. And since she didn't have many scrolls to learn spells from, she only had access to 4 basic first level spells: Burning hand, Magic Projectile, floating disk and Body Preservation.

She had no sense of strategy and was starting to get a bit afraid. What she wanted was to deal as much damage as possible. She moved back a bit, closed her central eye (to turn off the antimagic cone) and threw everything she had at them. Cones of flames, ethereal projectiles and fluorescent rays flew in every direction. Most of the attacks missed, and some were cancelled by the illithids' innate magical resistance. However, the two monsters couldn't handle the literal magical artillery strike that fell on their face. At the end of the fight nothing remained of them.

As the dust settled (literally) she was confused. Her lack of real combat experience made her underestimate her opponents first, then overdo it. While she could use her eye rays as much as she wanted, the same couldn't be said of her spells. And she used 2 out of the four she had for the day.

To cast a spell a mage must reach out to the "Web", an invisible energy field that is everywhere and in every plane of existence. By forcing the Web to take a certain shape through their willpower, a mage can distort the rules of reality and thus cast a spell. However, this process in mentally taxing. A single mistake can cause a spell go haywire resulting in random (and usually horrifying) effects. After casting too many spells a mage must rest before it can use magic again. This multidimensional origami exercise needs incredible mental discipline, and it takes mortals many years before achieving the most basic level of spell-craft.

In this regard, Margot holds a massive advantage: The sub-brains controlling her "spellstalks" are naturally able to fold magic. She just has to learn the final form of the spell to be able to cast it. Most living creatures are not capable of such a feat, and they need to revise their spell every day to not make small but deadly mistakes. However, even her sub-brains need rest, and she is still limited to a few spells per day. Of course, they are other ways to cast magic, Divine Magic, psionics… But Margot had no knowledge of those techniques.

The Mind Flayers dealt with; she could focus on saving the two young fellows. As she approached, she was happy to discover that she didn't kill them during her rampage. Sadly, the young man was too far gone, and she could only preserve his body. Things were better for the girl, her intestines were damaged, but the stone spike missed her heart and aorta. Margot did was she could to stop the internal bleeding, and decided to take care of the adventurer until she felt better.

Margot was quite satisfied with her loot: 2 human bodies, a mind flayer's body, and a random adventurer. So many organs. So many things to try. She quickly conjured a "Floating Disk" to move everything back to her lair.

********

[back to the present]

As Margot finished to tell her story, Carla wanted to clarify a few points:

"So, stop me if I don't understand everything correctly: You're a woman from another world who came here as some kind of ghost and possessed the body of a deceased Eye Tyrant. Then you decided that you were still not weird enough, so you randomly jammed more organs into you. Then you found me… Oh and you treat human bodies as loot…" Carla commented

"Why would I treat them any other way? The dead feel nothing, they are nothing. If using a corpse's organs can save my life, or someone else's why should I not loot them?" Margot said while crossing her alien looking arms. She was immensely proud of those two limbs. Choosing the illithids' was a good idea, their purple latex like skin matched very well with her general look.

"Don't you feel compassion? Don't you know what good and evil are?" Carle rebuked.

Carla regretted shouting those word as her "friend" face. She had no idea how the creature would react to her scolding, and she knew for a fact that she was alive only because Margot wanted her to be; there was no need to guess what would happen if the Eye Tyrant changed her mind.

"Compassion? What a joke. Since when compassion is an efficient tool to figure out the morality of a decision? Empathy is limited by our ability to recognize other as similar to ourselves; It starts to fall apart the second someone is too different, and that threshold is usually very low." Margot shouted back.

Carla felt perplexed, there was some kind of logic behind Margot's words, and she had no idea how to counter her point… And she felt like it was best not to.

"Hum, well I don't know, maybe you're right…" Carla answered ending the argument.

"Anyway, we have an expedition to prepare. Finding food in the underworld is no easy feat so let's move forward."