"Did you… you know… change things in *me* while I was unconscious" Carla asked, afraid of the answer…
"Well, you needed a new eye, so I changed that. And how much do you drink seriously? You should consider a liver transplant, it's quiet a mess."
"I.. I have a new eye, that's so great… Wait. Who's… eye… was it?"
"The young man one's, the old man's retinas were shit to be honest. The rest of his body was quite healthy, too bad his brain got eaten, he would have lived long otherwise. So, regarding the matter of your liver, well I obviously took the best one for myself. I consider it payment for saving your life, so you can only get the other one. For all the other organs, well I guess they are yours since they belonged to your friends. If you don't know what to do with them, I can buy them for a good price. Or craft grafts for you – free of charge. After all, we are lovers." Paralyzed by a wave of fear, Carla's brain didn't really know what to do with the stream of words that entered her ears. "I… I'll consider it." she reflexively answered.
She felt lost. Quite literally because she didn't know where she was. And metaphorically because she came here with the only two people she trusted: Her brother Adam, and Karl her mentor. Like any human being she craved social connection. Friends, family they are our anchors in life, especially in hard times.
Right now, the only "anchor" she had was a flying, insane orb of destruction that seemed to enjoy messing with organs and transplanted her brother's eye in her fucking skull.
She was terrified of her, and at the same time there was no one else around. Or more exactly the only other beings were sadistic brain eating slavers. At least Margot seemed to genuinely care about her. If her stories were true; she was at least somewhat human, really deep down. Carla felt Margot would keep acting this way as long as she continues to play by her unspoken rules. She decided to trust her instinct for now, she had no other choice anyway. As to what would happen the day she opposed her "friend", well she had no idea and cogitating about "maybes" was of no use.
"By the way, I'd really like to meet your parents; they must be amazing people! I mean you are so well mannered, and so beautiful. A strong Jaw, large muscular shoulders, red silky hair and deep green eyes – I'm so glad I had this exact color in stock!" Margot answered, oblivious to the fact that if the man she harvested the eye from looked like Carla, it probably meant they were blood relatives. "You look like you were carved out of stone by the god of love babe."
Adrenaline ran through Carla's veins after those words. She had to say something. Something that would give her time to find the opportunity to delay such an encounter. She hated her parents for what they did to her, but she couldn't let Margot around them. She didn't think her "partner" would intentionally kill them for no reason but knowing how entitled and dumb they were they would probably offend the eye tyrant and meet a tragic end.
"You know… I'm starting to get low on rations. When I mounted this expedition, I thought we would stay for only a few days. If we are planning to go to the surface, we need to get prepared. Maybe you could go grab more of those lobster-things you mentioned?"
"That wouldn't be a great idea, they got… Pretty aggressive. And they are poisonous to humans".
"Oh… In any case I need something to eat, you know, to travel. So maybe we should hunt for a few days, pile up some meat, dry it. Travel rations. They are food. Food is great" Carla's attempt at changing topic was poorly done, but it was somewhat effective.
"Here it is, our first quest…" Margot said in a dramatic tone "The Alliance require us to kill ten boars in the forest of Elwynn. Listen to me, my fellow adventurers! The road ahead will lead us to power, glory and riches !!!"
Carla raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything: she was used to Margot's meaningless rants. Half the words she said never made any sense anyway.
As they started walking (and flying), Margot began rambling again about the days before she met Carla. As usual when telling her story, she felt that speaking in a third person was more dramatic. More awkward as well, but she couldn't care less about that.
*******
After experimenting with the crystal lobsters Margot was able to create a reliable method to implant grafts. The first step was to prepare the body part. As she was not able to cast real spells, she had no other choice but to prepare everything in one shot. First, she removed an eyestalk from the eye tyrant corpse she preserved earlier. Using her soul's powers, she was able to accurately pinpoint the best places to cut. She tried her best not to damage the blood vessels coming to the "limb", cutting as close to the aorta as she could. The extra length could easily be removed later. Afterward she followed the nerves controlling the eyestalk to the area of the brain that controlled it and removed a large lump of grey matter she felt was needed. She gave up on preserving the anatomy of the brain vascularization: It was far too complicated and controlling her own blood vessels to connect to the graft was far easier. The graft prepared; she admired her work: It loosely looked like a gross flower with bloody roots and a weird pinkish tubercule. She took just a minute to remove the magic focalization lenses, so the eyestalk could be use for spellcasting. Satisfied, she moved to the next phase of her work.
With a disintegration ray slowly eating her flesh, she felt a bit uncomfortable. After all, opening your own skull is no easy feat. Especially if you must stay conscious during the whole process. The pain wasn't unbearable as she made sure to disconnect the nerves involved in nociception from her brain beforehand. However, it didn't prevent her from feeling the whole process, since the sense of touch and pain are mediated by different axons. Using her powers, she controlled her flesh to make room for the new eyestalk. The process was long and tedious. She had to ensure her circulatory system was able to keep pumping oxygen and nutrient to all her body parts without interruption. Which meant she was especially careful not to accidentally compress a vessel.
After some room was made, it was time to connect the graft. First, she shoved the whole thing in herself. Then came the hard part. She had to carefully restore vascularization to the whole graft, while simultaneously rewriting the neuronal network of a large part of her brain and of the grey matter lump. The process was excruciating: Even with her incredible willpower, controlling so many things proved impossible. She had to cut corners and try to end the surgery as fast as possible. She chose to stop preventing hemorrhages. Her body was sturdy and could survive a massive blood loss. However, if she didn't manage to control the eyestalk soon, the raw magic coursing it would disintegrate her.
Many times, her connection to her host was close to fail, just to be restored in the nick of time. Her body was in incredible stress and almost entered shock. Still, she finally managed to get the magic energies follow the correct pathways. At this point she forced her body to somewhat regenerate and just lost consciousness.
When she woke up, she discovered how much of a shitty job she made. The grafted blood vessels were almost exploding because the poorly sutured arteries dissected, and large pools of blood collected between her organs. She had to open herself again to fix the mess. After 6 more hours of hard work everything was decent enough, and she choose to wait for her body to heal naturally. Luckily, it did fairly good job on its own. She focused on training to use her new eye in the meantime. She multiplied the incursion to the subterranean lake to feed as much as she could as she needed large amount of nutrients to heal. At this point she discovered that the crystalline lobster had a warrior class, composed of dog sized version of the small creatures. Since she was hovering disposing of them was not an issue, but their large number proved somewhat difficult to manage.
Then came the time to graft more eyestalks. The next attempts proved far easier as she knew how to prepare her nervous system to easily connect to the graft beforehand. Moreover, she started learning basic spellcraft, allowing her to put simple enchantments on the graft to make them more compatible with her body. She spent many months perfecting her techniques, and the last two graft proved to be as easy as pie.
During that time, hunting the lobster proved to be more and more dangerous. The last time she attempted "fishing", a mass of pissed off crustacean fell from the roof, right onto her face. Of course, her study scales prevented any real damage from being done, but she didn't want to antagonize the "Lobster Hive" anymore. The feeling of hundreds of small creatures pinching your skin is not pleasant. She flew as fast as she could afraid that the "lobster retribution" would somehow manage to hurt her seriously. There was probably easier prey to hunt elsewhere in the tunnels.
With that in mind she decided to roam the caverns, trusting her now twenty-one eyes to discover any ambush. as she progressed through the stone maze, she encountered a strange scene : Three humans fighting against three octopus headed humanoids...