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Kireek’s voice was not his. Such was the way for all Kenku. He could not speak for himself, only repeat and mimic things he had heard.
For some time now, his voice had only been his master’s. The voice that had brought him so much pain and suffering, echoed through him. Like the mutations his captors had forced upon him, his voice was just another piece of him the illithid had taken and twisted. Kireek had accepted it as just another tool of his enslavement.
Another sign of the monster they had made him.
Something he couldn’t change.
He could hardly believe his luck then, now that it was changing.
It had started with Raul, that first friend. That hand that had first reached out and offered him the chance at a place he might belong. For what little Raul had said to him, his voice was lodged firm in Kireek’s mind. He wouldn’t soon forget the words Raul had gifted him.
Nor would he forget the greatest gift Raul had given.
He’d led Kireek to her.
Thunder crashed, the sound echoing outside as the storm that heralded the turning of the day raged across Krigala. The cave Garou had led them to was shelter enough, and miraculously big enough for the four of them. It would keep them dry through the storm, and allow them to rest without the sun in their eyes, a complaint that had arisen with Trystine very quickly, despite the fact that she didn’t even need to sleep.
That’s what she’d said, when Trystine had brought it up. Grumbling under her breath, just loud enough that Kireek couldn’t tell if she meant for him to hear it, “Complaining about the sun in her eyes— she doesn’t even need to sleep, she’s an elf! What a joke. I bet Ophelia complains about the sun in her eyes too.”
Illithid didn’t laugh, so Kireek couldn’t either. But he could repeat back to her, in her voice, “She doesn’t even need to sleep.”
Her eyes had lit up with mirth at his repetition and, seemingly without thought, she had joyfully grabbed at his shoulder. What she actually grabbed was, naturally, the illithid head grafted onto his body, and she’d let go immediately. But she did not recoil in disgust. She just shifted her hand to pat one of the parts of him that was actually him and said nothing about it. He had to commend her for that. He couldn’t say just how long it had taken him to learn not to recoil at the sight of his own horrific form, and even then it still disgusted him. He knew every inch of the mutations on his body. He’d felt them out with his fingers, over and over, finding the edges of the things the mindflayers had done to him and reminding himself that this was just what he was now. He may be free in mind, yes, but not in body. He would always and forever be one of their monsters.
But that’s not what she had seen, when she’d first laid eyes on him.
He knew the look well by now. Not that he interacted with many intelligent creatures here in the Beastlands. But given his condition, that was a blessing. Because the look cast upon him by those he did happen across was one he hated that he’d come to expect. Startlement. Surprise. Horror. The subtle reach for a weapon, the flicker of magic in a palm. He knew not to hold it against those who bore it. It bordered on sheer stupidity to look upon an illithid aberration and not fear for one’s life.
But she didn’t seem stupid to him. And he’d been wrong, for she did not see an illusion cloaking his form. She did see him. And she knew what he was.
And, somehow, this did not frighten her.
Somehow, he did not disgust her.
Indeed, she had seen him as someone to follow. She’d thought him— him— a Unicorn Knight, and she’d taken his panicked response to potential danger as a cue she ought to heed. So they’d stood, together invisible, there in the grove. And she had not hesitated to join him in the hunt.
She’d marvelled at his Kenku mimicry, she’d suggested that they could do “cool tricks.” She did not explain. Then, in the heat of battle, she had stood by his side and warded him from death. Kireek could only be in awe of her, and though the thought did cross his mind, he knew she couldn’t be a dream. Simply put, nothing conjured by his imagination could ever compare.
Now, she muttered an incantation as she waved her hand in a series of arcane gestures. Kireek watched her summon fire in the palm of her hand. She used it to light a small campfire she’d set up in the center of the cave. The confidence with which she carried out the task indicated that she’d probably done it a thousand times before.
Kireek knew magic. Or, he knew something approaching it. He knew the psionic power his illithid tormentors had used to warp and twist and bend him into something no mortal creature should ever be. He knew the psionic power they had forced into him. It was cruel, and exacting, and only slightly more likely to help him than it was to rip him apart.
Her magic was… something else. It was starlight, and fate, and the very will of the universe made manifest at her fingertips. It was dangerous, and powerful, and entrancing. But it was also good. Good, because she was good. Kireek’s power was an evil he could only try his best to use justly. Her power was made good by virtue of being channeled through her. He could only wonder, with the awe of a fool bamboozled by a magician’s trick, how she did it.
She was talking. She’d been talking for the past few minutes. Kireek hung on her every word. Memorizing, letting the sounds take root in his mind. Learning the way her mouth formed around vowels, feeling how he would make them in his own.
Kireek watched as, having lit her fire, she pulled out a deck of cards.
“So, do any of you have a question you’d like answered? Something burning at your heart that you need the guidance of the universe to solve?”
“You’re a fortune-teller,” Trystine inferred.
“Indeed, I am. The cards see your fate, and I interpret it. My readings are not always positive, but they are always accurate.”
Garou, crouched in the corner, scoffed, but Trystine just shrugged. “Alright, I’ll bite. Read my fortune.”
“Very well.” Cards shuffled together in her hands. “What question would you like answered?”
“Will I succeed in recovering the egg stolen from Grandmother?”
Kireek watched and listened as she drew a card from the deck and began to interpret its meaning for Trystine. She talked and talked, and it became very clear very quickly that the card did not in any way truly answer Trystine’s question, but Kireek still listened, fascinated by this world she created with her words. A world that was pulled along on strings of fate, governed by a higher power that told an infinitely complex story woven by individually complex threads. A world that wasn’t necessarily fair, or kind, as Kireek knew it wasn’t, but a world where everything had its place.
Strangely, the thought brought Kireek a measure of comfort. It wasn’t fair, what had been done to him. And maybe he’d just been unlucky. But there was something about the thought that it’d been fate. It eased the pain, just a little, to think that maybe he hadn’t suffered for nothing. Maybe there was a reason.
When she was done with Trystine’s reading, she turned to Garou.
“What about you, bugbear? If I recall it was the promise of my services that kept you from attempting to plant your blade in my neck.”
Kireek shifted uncomfortably at the reminder of what had happened. That she’d been threatened. That Garou had intended to harm her, to kill her. And that Kireek had not seen it. He hadn’t been there to stop it. After everything she’d done for him, in just a few short hours. And he’d repaid her kindness by failing her.
Garou crossed his arms. “Wizard, I took interest in your abilities because you claimed you could speak directly to my patron. I have no use for this… card trick.”
“My powers manifest in many ways,” she said. “I can do as I promised, but I can also do much more. You could catch a glimpse into your future, if only you have the bravery to ask.”
“No.”
Kireek sat up. Saying it the way she had when she’d introduced herself he repeated, “Katya.”
She turned to him.
In Trystine’s voice he tentatively said, “Read my fortune.”
She grinned. “Of course! What question would you like to ask?”
Kireek opened his beak and stopped.
A number of possible questions swirled in his mind. About their upcoming hunt, about him and his future. About what might become of him now that he was free.
But one question rose to the forefront, and he wasn’t sure it was the kind of question her cards were meant to answer.
It was just that all her talk of fate and destiny had him wondering about that moment where they’d happened upon each other in the grove. How lucky it had been, for her to find him there. And a part of him wanted to ask her, Do you think we were destined to meet?
He didn’t exactly have the words to ask, and he wasn’t sure he should anyway. It wasn’t really a question, after all. More like wishful thinking. It probably wasn’t helpful to say, I hope this wasn’t a fluke. I hope I was always meant to know you.
He knew he probably shouldn’t say that to her, not when he’d known her for less than a day. But a part of him still grew frustrated at the fact that, whether he wanted to or not, he couldn’t say it. He didn’t have the words.
So when she said, “Oh! You probably don’t have the vocabulary to ask the question you want, do you?” Kireek simply nodded.
She frowned, disappointed, and Kireek’s heart sank. But then she smiled, eyes lighting up again, and she said, “That’s alright! I’ll just have to keep asking you a bunch of questions until you have all the words you need. Then you can ask and I can do your reading. How does that sound?”
Kireek decided that, destiny or not, he would not take for granted the gift he’d been given in meeting her.
“I think you just like the sound of your own voice, wizard,” Garou said.
She flipped her braid over her shoulder. “And? So what if I do?”
Kireek repeated, in her voice, “So what if I do?”
He hoped she understood what he meant. Please don’t ever stop talking.
She smiled at him as Garou grumbled. “How about this,” she said. “Would you like to hear how I got run out of Sigil?”
Kireek nodded eagerly, and she launched into her tale.
Kireek sat, enraptured. Absorbing not just the story, but the words she used to tell it. Whether she knew it or not, she was doing him a great favour. It wasn’t just that she expanded the things he could say. She gave him a different voice to use, one that wasn’t harsh and frightening and composed of words only meant to hurt.
A part of him, greedy and hopeful, wondered if maybe one day he’d have listened to her speak enough that he’d never have to use an illithid’s voice again.
Kireek was lucky. His mind belonged to him. His body, yes, was a creation of the mind flayers. Monstrous and mutilated, his body was theirs, and it probably always would be. But his mind was his. And, if he continued to get lucky, maybe his voice…
Well, it’d never be his. Kenku didn’t get to have their own voices, it was just the way of their existence.
But he didn’t find himself minding the idea that, with enough time, maybe his voice could be hers.