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Chapter Text

The Emperor laid face-down in a mass of tentacles and brain-matter drifting in and out of consciousness and in and out of control over his body and mind. Dahamunzu wielded Orpheus’ powers now…tenuously. She was preventing him from being resubordinated to the Absolute, but since she needed most of her concentration to fight it, her control was wavering. 

The lightning-scorched bodies of four Illithid spellcasters laid nearby. As they were from the same colony, a human might have called them the Emperor’s brothers. The Emperor felt nothing at all for them. They had been but nodes of the consciousness of the Absolute: broadcasting, seducing, and then threatening him to force him to return to its control. They were mindless husks and empty nodes. They were dead now.  

Their bodies had barely hit the ground when his own was shattered by a war-hammer from behind. 

His claws still grasped the old wooden staff-clenching and unclenching. Its chitinous carved finial was comforting to him. The Absolute called out to him in his head, sensing his fear. 

[Become. Become one. Return to us.]

The promise of assimilation— of integration into a whole—was nearly irresistible. He longed for it. The part of him that yearned for freedom yielded as his free will drained away. He had escaped twice now. He was brilliant and lucky. If he surrendered now, he could live, nurturing a concealed hope for freedom once more. 

The Emperor gained consciousness again minutes later, now sprawled before an open portal. He didn’t remember getting there. His staff was gone. Those he had guided on this one final adventure were also gone. They were inside the portal, concentrating on the fight. He must have been completely enthralled by the Absolute—not reintegrated, not part of the Grand Design, but marched like a puppet towards the backs of the only people in the last millennia who had trusted him. He had been completely stripped of control of his mind and body once before, sang an out of tune instrument in the orchestra of his mind—a subroutine returning an unexpected answer. And once before, he had been subsumed by a wave of shame and humiliation. Perhaps he was not superior and powerful. He had been continuously outwitted and out-planned by the Absolute and by lesser beings like Dahamunzu and her companions. Doubt percolated upward into the rest of his mind, forming a realization.

This had been the plan all along.  

It was possibility that had returned over and over again in his own plans, and each time he had reflexively ignored it and then forgotten. He was defective. He was aberrant. He could never become part of the hive-mind again because he was a contagion. He could only be used until he was no longer useful and then discarded. Thus, here he was, in a heap before an open portal, with a broken body and a broken mind.

The ground shook with the impact of magic and artillery.

An armada of nautiloids had blinked into existence. They were defending the future of their species from the adventurers attacking the Netherbrain within the portal— adventurers he had guided. Despair (like hope) was a very un-Illithid emotion.  Unlike hope, the Emperor did not know how to cope with despair.

[Traitor. Imperfection. Corruption.]

The Emperor was still tenuously connected to the Absolute. It was his parent, ruler, god, enslaver, oppressor, and torturer. It whispered to him constantly, and its whispers became more sinister, sensing his despair and echoing it back to him. He lay still, just breathing. Surviving. Gradually, it dawned on him that  he might be weakening, but the Absolute was as well. Slowly, his thoughts cleared and he realised that the Absolute was no longer powerful enough to overwhelm him. 

He felt the shudder of Dahamunzu’s death blow to the Absolute in his consciousness and body. Dahamunzu and her companions had finally taken control of the hivemind.

He could not revel and shriek in Brain’s submission, though he vaguely enjoyed the thoughts of several of his old selves as they imagined this very event in lurid and violent ways. He sent a signal that he knew the Absolute could feel, though it was weak and slow.

[I win. Your plan was flawed. I will never be your slave again.]

What he hid from the Absolute was his relief. His absolute joy at being free though he knew his body was dying.

The mind replied one last time.

[We are become that which does not exist.]

The final order to terminate and self-destruct went out. A million tadpoles disintegrated. A million Illithid minds reeled: disoriented, confused, and painfully alone. The Emperor’s was one of them. As the brain started to fall from the sky, Dahamunzu's shielding power failed.

In a muddy world blurred at the periphery, the Emperor stared at Jergal.

“I once told Dahamunzu that Illithids do not possess souls. It seems I was wrong. She has one—albeit a strange one. You do as well.”

“Balduran’s.”

“No.”

Without further explanation, the God struck the Emperor’s name from the record of the dead. 

Chapter Text

She awoke to the scratch, scratch, scratching of a quill on parchment from the other side of the room. The room was dark but for the flicker of a fire against the wall, and silent but for the quill and a soft whimpering from a far-off corner.  A heavy but comforting weight pressed against her stomach. 

She’d been dreaming of adventure with her friends and companions. Astarion was flipping conspicuously through the pages of a book (which was probably smut), while Lae’zel sharpened her sword…again. 

She absently reached down to pet scratch and instead felt something…slimy?

Her eyes were wide open now as she realized that the creature curled against her wasn’t Scratch, but Us.

[Friend! You are awake!]

She stared at her hands which were spindly and translucent, with long, black nails. She remembered what she was now.

The scratching stopped and a tall, lithe figure loomed over her and then crouched next to her. A long tentacle curling to brush her cheek. Piercing purple eyes caught her own.

[How do you feel?]

She publicized the feeling of achiness that enveloped her body.

[You are a newborn, and already you have done so much. Your body has been so taxed, and you must rest…and feed. I have caught you something.]

She sat up and looked over towards the whimpering sound. A middle-aged man in soiled rags was shackled to the wall. The man’s terror resonated in the air, eliciting both Dahamunzu’s pity and an overwhelming sense of hunger. The moral weight of what surviving  now entailed sunk into Dahamunzu’s empty stomach. She started to sweat profusely and dry heave. 

[You shall learn to enjoy it in time. It is only a looter.]

She tasted a note of defensiveness in the air and another of slight sadness, as if the Emperor had caught a glimpse of something he had lost and that he didn’t realize he had cherished.

She put her hand on top of his. 

[Let this one go and make sure it forgets everything. I will catch my own when I have spent a moment upright. I do not think it will be difficult.]

[Very well.]

The Emperor floated over to the man, opening a portal before him and unlocking his chains. 

Dahamunzu sat for a moment, gaining her bearings. She then stood and floated out the door and up the stairs into the ruins of the Elfsong Tavern. It was indeed easy to catch a meal. Not a minute had passed after she had emerged into the sunlight when she heard a woman humming while hauling bodies out of the rubble to relieve them of valuables. Dahamunzu’s new mind was clouded, and her eyes blinded temporarily in the light. She cut an unmistakable and terrifying silhouette in a city that had been devastated by Mind Flayers.

The woman was upon her with a dagger almost instantaneously, stabbing wildly and screaming curses, filling the air with a mist of hate, grief, and fear. 

Dahamunzu rounded on the woman in surprise, concentrating her own sudden panic into a blast that threw the woman to the ground.

We shall not discuss in detail what happened next, except that Dahamunzu found it delectable despite the handwringing of her former self.

She did feel better now.

She looked around, hoping to survey the lower city in daylight. Most of the buildings that she could see were skeletons of their former selves. Here and there, a rustle or fleeting shadow indicated passing life. Rubble littered the streets. She was partially shielded from view by the remains of a stone chimney and burnt wooden frames, but anyone who saw her would run for help or try to attack her. Two or three, she could take. More would certainly kill her.

This was what life was going to be like, now.

Dahamunzu mourned her former body and mind, but her sadness was coupled with resolve. 

This was what life was going to be like now.

She returned to relative safety.

The Emperor was at his desk, writing with his back to her. A thread in Dahamunzu’s mind mused that the old portrait of Duke Stelmane seemed to smile mockingly (or knowingly) at her from its place on the wall as if to say: “Enemies outside and enemies within. You are changing. What shall you do?”

What indeed. 

Her resentment towards the Emperor had been growing since she had refused to kill the “looter” he had caught. Her own self loathing and helplessness seemed overwhelming. She had thought of killing herself on the dock after the defeat of the Elder Brain, but in a moment of adrenaline and defiance towards the world and the gods, she had stayed her own hand. She had wanted to live so badly, and life had in that moment life had seemed so brilliant and beautiful that she could not bear to let go of it. Perhaps those had been thoughts planted in her by a desperate tadpole.

She’d hoped for some sort of detente with the monster, which was digesting her brain, some way to cling to her old self. A truce. 

Now, she hardly knew where the tadpole ended and Dahamunzu began.

She looked at the Emperor’s bare back and soft, pulsating head. It would be simple to kill him. He had manipulated her since he had put the tadpole in her eye on the Nautiloid. He was the reason she was here. The reason she was like this. He might not have outright lied very often, but every word had been calculated to push her in exactly the direction he had wanted her to go. Every story and was told from just the right angle, with just the right shading to garner her sympathy. He always left just a sliver of doubt in her mind about whether he might not be the monster she knew he was and that all her allies knew he was.

She’d fallen for it again and again. He might not have enthralled her like he did Stelmane, but he’d bent her mind, making her undermine every value she thought she had had. She’d killed Orpheus while he was bound and defenceless. She’d condemned Lae’zel to be hunted down. She’d doomed the Githyanki to slavery under Vlaakith. She’d had to leave Gale because she’d fucked the Emperor…in front of Orpheus. She’d sacrificed her body and mind and her ability to live without fear for what? To live in the dark and to be used until the day she died. 

Suspicion turned to rage as the threads of her mind set to work calculating multiple plans on how she might kill him. Each ended with a high probability of success. He was fragile. She had seen that during the fight with the Absolute. A spell here. A knife there. She slipped a knife from the satchel near where she had been sleeping. She knew all his weaknesses and she did not need him. She was superior in every way.

He had stopped writing. He must have felt everything she was thinking. She could taste his terror and panic filling the room.

[Dahamunzu. After all that I have done for you…]

[I owe you nothing. You do nothing but take from me and manipulate me. You did the same to her.]

Dahamunzu thought of Stelmane. 

The Emperor replied, the softness of his voice concealing an undercurrent of desperation.

[You wish to know what happened to Stellmane.]

[I already know. There is nothing at all that you can say or do that will save you, because I know you and I know what you are.]

He showed her anyway. 

It was awful:

The poor woman’s grimace as she resisted his control. The dead look that clouded her eyes as her mind collapsed. Her tremors and broken health after the fact. Her dependence on him for any sort of stability. There was no reason at all for it. He did it because that is what an illithid does when it cares about a lesser being. What he had done could not be excused. If it could be forgiven, only Stelmane could forgive it, and she was dead.

Dahamunzu hesitated. All logical paths mitigated against him showing her this memory at this time. He couldn’t coerce her; she wasn’t afraid of him—and he knew it. The vision should have angered her more, should have made her hate him more. Despite this, he had shown her the truth in all its horror. Unbidden, as if forced on her by a subjugated former self, she had a very vivid memory of her own.

Dahamunzu held the Orphic Hammer, ready to give it to Lae’zel. Freeing the captive Githyanki prince was the right thing to do. She believed this deep in her heart. He had suffered too long. He had been tormented by the Emperor for their benefit. So, why did she feel so conflicted about freeing him?

Despite herself, she cared about the Emperor. He had been her constant companion for six months now. She knew how he thought at least at some level and knew damn well he tried to manipulate her using every tactic he could think of. She suspected that if she were in his place, she would not have behaved much differently.

He had never tried to mind-control her, and left to her own agency, she agreed with him most of the time. When she had not, she had done as she pleased despite his protests.

She had begun already to think like an Illithid, she supposed, but she was human enough to see that the Emperor had a blind spot for his own humanity. He didn’t realize how aberrant he was to the Absolute, and how dangerous it considered him. She also had noticed that he behaved irrationally when he was very frightened.

Were she to give the hammer to Lae’zel, the odds of the Emperor surviving to see the end of the Absolute were zero.  Orpheus might spare his oppressor’s thralls--tangential to his own suffering--but he would have no such mercy on the Emperor. Her friends would do little to stop Orpheus when he killed the Emperor. They might even help him do it.

If the Emperor defected to the Absolute in a desperate bid for survival, the Absolute would kill him itself. If it did not kill him immediately, it would probably mind-control him and throw him at Dahamunzu and her friends.

So, she had two possible paths ahead of her: one in which everyone she cared about had a chance to live, and one in which Lae’zel had a certain future alongside a mythic prince about whom Dahamunzu knew and cared little.

She made her choice. Then she made a second choice and opened her mind to the final tadpole—the one that ended life as she knew it.

The Emperor stood before her, silently. She looked him in the eyes.

[We are equals now. You cannot enthrall me, and if you attempt it, I will kill you.]

The faint taste of regret still in the air hinted that he had never really wanted to, though he did not reply.

Chapter Text

The Blushing Mermaid had an unsavoury reputation even in the lower city of Baldur’s Gate. Its large labyrinthine interior smelled like four-hundred years’ worth of vomit and booze and sounded like an ongoing riot. Legend had it that its last owner had been an honest to gods Hag. Regardless of the truthfulness of this particular story, none could deny that its many side rooms and dark corners had hosted no small number of shady characters and more than a few murders.

It was a good place to be if one was seeking information.

An elven woman with angular features, a slightly crooked nose, and stringy brown hair sat in one of the many dark corners. Her long fingers curled under her chin as she sat contemplating a stain on the floor that might have been blood with barely concealed boredom. The mug of ale in front of her had hardly been touched, but the man sitting across from her was drinking enough for both of them, and talking enough for both of them, too.

“…so yes, I still have friends in the Zhentarim. Important ones, too. I can get almost anything from anywhere in the Sword Coast, and the Underdark. Last week, I got a certain lord several measures of Noblestalk. Got him a good deal on it, too. Dream Mist, I can get dream Mist. When I worked for Archduke Gortash I even managed to get him some Sursur blossoms…. good for silencing magic you know.”

“You worked for Archduke Gortash? What was he like?”

Her eyes lingered on his face from beneath long lashes as she curled her hand back under her chin, absently biting a nail.

“Another drink and I will tell you all about it.” He said, smiling. “It is on you, yes? Server? Server? Come here.”

“On my employer, of course.”

“Your employer is interested procuring rare and luxury goods? Do I know of them?”

“You might … ah yes, here is the server.”

The man ordered and the woman again steered the conversation to Gortash.

“Do you want the honest truth?” said the man, “Things were better under Gortash. The steel watch kept the criminals and migrants under control. Baldurians were in charge of Baldur’s Gate again. Patriars were Patriars, merchants were merchants, laborers were plentiful and cheap. You could get a slave if you wanted one. Everyone knew their place.”

The woman’s mask of flirtatious disinterest fell away.

“Gortash unleashed an Illithid Elder Brain on the city,” she exclaimed, “The whole upper city was destroyed. The nice old lady in the flat next to mine turned into a Mindflayer!”

She shuddered at the memory.

“Oh yes. That was bad," returned the man, waving his hand almost dismissively. "My cousin turned into a Mindflayer as well. My aunt had to smash his head with a frying pan. But the elites want you to believe it was Gortash that let the Mindflayers in. The Mindflayers were already here. They were controlling the city government and paying off the Patriars for years before Gortash. They were keeping us ordinary Baldurians down, you see. Softening us up. Controlling the economy. Hoarding all the money for their thralls.”

“I refuse to accept that,” she retorted, heatedly “How can you believe such rubbish?”

He was defensive. He’d hoped to get in her pants or on her boss’ payroll—hopefully sex and money. Now the window for both opportunities seemed to be slamming shut. “Under Gortash, a man could speak the truth without fear, too. Gods. I need to impress her, and fast,” he thought.

It seemed for a second as if she was expecting an answer from him, though he’d initially figured her question was rhetorical. As if reading his mind, she abruptly stood up as if to leave, pressing a handful copper coins to the table.

“You know Gortash caught one of them, right? I was there.”

She stopped and looked at him with disbelief. “Is that so?”

“Yes. The bastard was mind controlling a patriar. Duke Stelmane—the one that got…”  the man made a cutting motion across his neck. “It was using her to control trade. To cut the Zhentarim out. Gortash caught it.”

“Right,” said the woman “and did Gortash give you a private show of his Mindflayer? Like you’re so special.”

“How dare this lackey question my importance!”, thought the man. “I worked directly with the archduke!” He contained most of his indignation as he boasted:

“I worked for Gortash for years. I went to Wyrm’s Crossing to personally deliver an invoice for some construction he was doing in the harbor. He asked me if I wanted to see a Mindflayer. Well, I’d known for years that Mindflayers and their thralls had been snapping up the good contracts under Ravengard, and they were the reason we couldn’t sell slaves anymore. You remember? People were getting murdered and kids were getting kidnapped in the lower city, too. It was all connected. You bet I wanted to see the monster in the flesh. We go into this room, and he has it naked and strapped to a chair. It looks completely out of it.

Gortash put a knife in my hand, and he said, ‘you got a question for that thing? Go ahead and ask it.’ So, I did. Gods, I’ve never been so frustrated. The thing didn’t flinch. Didn’t scream. Just said meaningless evasive shit. I said to Gortash, ‘it thinks it’s the Emperor of Baldur’s Gate and not some tied down Squiddie with a Sursur flower next to it.’ Gortash thought that was right clever. He was bowing and laughing and calling it ‘your majesty.’" He laughed. "It’s just bleeding and staring.”

The woman could barely hide the look of disgust on her face, but she did, composing her face into a haughty sneer and rolling her eyes. The disbelief was clear in her voice as she asked if anyone else had seen this or if he was just making it up?

“It was just me and Gortash and the Emperor of Baldur’s Gate, and that should be enough for you, little lady.”

With that, she had heard enough.

She looked distracted for a moment as if thinking of something else. Then she stared at him and he knew she was not human. He felt her in his mind, reading what he had done, rifling through his memories. His eyes were locked in hers, trapped in her black pupils, which grew and grew until her eyes were fully obsidian—sinister, shiny, and sharp. They lacerated his brain like a barbed harpoon as she withdrew her influence.

She smiled grimly. [I see.] said a voice in his head.

He cursed as he gasped in pain and building dread of what was to come.

She made a graceful gesture with an outstretched arm. A shimmering portal opened. She placed a hand on his chest and shoved him through it with unworldly force.

[Perhaps, if you ask it your questions again], she said in his head, [this time, the answers will be different.]

Dahamunzu walked through the dark alleys of Baldur’s gate. She supposed she could just open a portal and step home, but she liked observing the city: watching the new buildings rising over the ruins of the old, and gently skimming to the thoughts and conversations of the people on the corners and in the alleys. Her feet ached--her body was not used to walking anymore--but she supposed her slight limp augmented her disguise spell and gave her an air of harmlessness.

In recent months Dahamunzu had appointed herself the task of rooting out those of the surviving accomplices of Gortash and Orin who had known about the former Knights of the Shield organization. Most of the Patriars who supported Gortash had died by his hand during what was now called Massacre of Wyrm’s Rock. Of those who survived, of their family members, servants, and confidants, only a handful knew things that had posed a danger to the Emperor or the Shield. A very small number of these, those with useful skills, and who could be reliably manipulated, had been recruited. Most others had had their memories edited by Dahamnuzu. It was the alternative to killing with the greatest chance of success.  In those times, the ability to forget was in much higher demand than the need to remember what had been forgotten. Demand and supply for Noblestalk and magical memory-restoring artifacts was low. So, Dahamunzu had become adept at removing memories with a precision that Shar herself could have admired.

She had made a few (delicious) exceptions to the "no killing and eating rule" on the logic that anyone who had knowingly imported tadpoles or unleashed the Absolute on the city implicitly consented to being devoured by a Mindflayer.

The man in the bar had unnerved her. She found what he had done sickening on a personal level, but no doubt his fate and debts had overtaken him by now. His conspiracies could be signs of a deeper problem, though, one that could prove all the more dangerous because it had a kernel of truth to it. The Emperor had, using Stelmane as a front, monopolized trade in the city via the Knights of the Shield, which he effectively led, though few of the members had known what he was. However, Stelmane had been the only patriar who he had actually enthralled, and even this seemed to have happened towards the end of their relationship. As far as she had learned from her various interviews, some of the members of the Knights of the Shield had been extraordinarily corrupt and had taken the rumours that the organization had been founded to worship the literal god of corruption very seriously. These proclivities predated the Emperor, who had discouraged them because of the inherent risk in dealing with archdevils, but was happy to capitalize on a shady reputation when it was useful to do so.

Dahamunzu set several trains of thought to work exploring the branching possibilities of increasingly widespread belief that a secret clique of Illithids had precipitated the Absolute crisis. The results were increasingly alarming. She drifted through the sewer, now levitating blessedly free of the disguise, until she reached a certain ladder, and a certain unpickable lock.

[I am glad you have returned. There is much to discuss.]

[Yes. How did my gift find you?]  

[He found me terrible.]

[In the terrifying or the awe-inspiring sense?]

[In both. Apparently, he found you both spiteful and vengeful. I must caution you; these are not qualities that are useful for an Illithid. They introduce uncertainty into well-laid plans. Nevertheless, I find your capacity for them…charming. See that they do not cause you to behave recklessly.]  

[Always a fount of wise advice. I will heed it.]*

She wanted to ask him about what the man had done to him but hesitated. Would he see this as an angle to nurture her pity or to set her up to side with him later? She decided it did not matter. She caught the Emperor’s eyes, gently brushing one of his tentacles with her own.

[I am sorry for what you suffered at the hands of Gortash and the Absolute. If you wish to share it, then I will be here with you.]

He flinched slightly, and she felt a tingle of doubt and suspicion emanating from him, which were quickly concealed. Then, he yielded, taking her hand.

Two men stood over him. One had a knife in hand and a neat beard. The other had a brutish smile. They were so close to him that he knew he must be utterly helpless even before he tried to move a tentacle, finding to his horror that his body did not respond. He could feel the chains around his legs and neck. He panicked, but his body did not respond to his fear, which was even more alarming. It was as if his body was completely detached from his mind, except it seemed, for the ability to observe what was happening to him and to feel pain inflicted from without.

Neat-beard, whose name was apparently Mr. Longthorne, showily drew the knife over the Emperor’s upper arm. He felt the pain, saw the cold, silvery blood flow down onto the arm of the chair.

He couldn’t even flinch.

“How long have you controlled the city?”

He tried to formulate a reply—to communicate—but could not do that, either. He forgot what he was saying before the words even coalesced. He tried again. Forgot again…and again…and again. Frustrated with himself—he knew what to say, why couldn’t he say it?--he tried a different tactic. Since his primary consciousness could not communicate, he tried to delegate the task of assembling concepts and words to the hundreds of smaller consciousnesses and processes that he usually controlled. They did not answer. The Emperor heard a reply in his own head—in his own voice, but not from him. The Absolute was accessing his memories, formulating responses from them. He had never been so completely controlled. He had never felt so humiliated. He had never felt so helpless.

“You think I am capable of controlling the city by myself?” said the Absolute in his voice. “What a laughable idea.”

The man reddened slightly and sliced a long, deep gash through skin and muscle in the other arm.

The pain was searing.

“Bullshit me again and you’ll feel that again. It can feel pain, right?” This last, he addressed at Gortash, who assured him that the answer was yes as far as he knew.

“Your kind. You’re all connected, aren’t you?”

“I am connected to others of my kind, yes.”

“Then you know about the others. The ones who control the banks and the newspapers. Where are they now?”

“What would an Illithid want with gold? As for the newspapers, I am not connected to any Illithid controlling the newspapers.”

“Lying again!”

The Emperor could taste Longthorne's frustration and his hatred. The man grabbed a tentacle this time. The Emperor’s cry had no outlet, physical or mental. The Absolute flinched on his behalf, but only slightly.

“Don’t damage it,” chided Gortash. “I’m not yet through with it, and gods know how I’ll find a medic who will treat a mindflayer.”

“Look at it. It thinks it’s the Emperor of Baldur’s Gate! Except it can’t do anything at all now, can it? It’s no danger to anyone.”

Gortash bowed, laughing. “No, you certainly cannot, can you, your majesty?”

Longthorne added “Gortash is going to root out your friends. He is going to take back the city.”

“Indeed, I am,” said Gortash. Satisfied at having showed off his trophy, he called for the guards outside the door. “You there, see Mr. Longthorne here out. See he’s paid what he is owed, as well. The accountant downstairs will settle the debt.”

Gortash grabbed a logbook and quill and pulled up a chair. “Now that our misguided friend is gone, let us talk about matters of importance. When we captured you, you were a rogue, an autonomous Illithid beyond the power of the elder brain that transformed you, correct?”

“That is correct…”

Dahamunzu and the Emperor stood in silence, hand in hand. She now owned the logbook that Gortash had written in. She knew how the rest of the interrogation went. She had known the Emperor had been under the influence of the Absolute during it, but had not realized that he had had no control at all over his responses, or the extent of the pain and fear that he had felt during it.

Apparently Gortash had not realized that he was talking directly to the Absolute, either, or that the Absolute was not so subdued as to render it incapable of utterly breaking one of its own.

[Was serving the Absolute always so terrifying?] The feeling of claustrophobia, isolation and helplessness still resonated in Dahamunzu's mind.

[No. The influence of the Elder Brain and reinforcement from other Illithids ensures that each of us serves the needs and designs of the whole willingly. The Elder Brain is always in our minds, and there is little that it does not see. It does not need to sever our individual consciousnesses from the rest of our minds to ensure obedience. Those who persistently contradict its influence are dismantled, and the rest consider it a good thing that a contagion has been removed.]

[So, then why did the Absolute control you like that?]

[It was, I think, intended as a lesson for me.]

[Because you had gone rogue? You just told me that spite and vengefulness were not useful for an Illithid. The Absolute was the most Ancient and…well, Illithid of Illithids.]

[And it did not go well with the Absolute, did it?]

[You are trying to distract me from the subject at hand.]

[Very well. At the time, I thought the Absolute was trying to control my future behaviour through fear of being enthralled in the most terrifying way possible. I considered controlling you through fear in a similar way on several occasions, but opted for more refined methods, as I had become rather fond of you.]

Dahamunzu blinked. Her tentacles twitched slightly. They would discuss this admission later. The Emperor continued.

[Thinking again upon this memory, I find the Absolute’s mercy an anomaly. Rebellious Illithids are not usually tolerated. I have had occasion to think on this, and suspect that had it no use for me, it would have killed me as soon as I was back under its control. The only quality that I had that set me apart the other Illithids that served it was my rebelliousness. Had I considered this earlier, perhaps I could have more successfully predicted the Absolute’s plan. Perhaps our options at the last would not have been so…limited.]

Dahamunzu tilted her head, wondering what he was implying. His own thoughts on the matter did not yet appear fully formed.

[It is the conspiracy theory that troubles me most], returned Dahamunzu, [There is a future where it becomes more widespread Ravengard is spending exorbitantly to rebuild the city, but Ketherick’s armies decimated the countryside. Shortages and refugees will make peoples’ memories of Gortash’s atrocities short. People will look for something to blame for their hardships, and Mindflayers are fresh in everyone’s mind. They will hunt for secret cabals, and they will find us. We are convenient scapegoats: you and I, and anyone known to have dealt with us.]

The Emperor was quiet for a moment, contemplating his own errors: the mental enslavement of Stelmane, the ease with which he had overlooked the corruption among the members of the prior Knights of the Shield, and his power-hungry overreach within it. He thought of his blindness to the Absolute’s plan and his own role in it and his clumsy efforts to win Dahamunzu’s trust…a trust which he was nearly too late in returning. He wondered, not for the first time, why Jergal had resurrected him.

[You and I are uniquely equipped to guide the future down a different path in multiple respects, but in order to do so, it is important that we understand and correct the mistakes of the past.]

Chapter Text

It was a rainy afternoon, and Dahamunzu had just finished analyzing the budgets and expenditures for the Harpers as she had promised Jaheira at the party a month ago. Her new minds were extremely quick with mathematical operations, but gathering all the needed information was always the time-consuming part. While she waited for Jaheira to muster all the records and expenditures, she wandered the streets, practicing different methods of disguising herself, chatting with the local animals, skimming a thought and feeling here and there, slipping a coin to the beggars and small-time merchants who had become her eyes in the city whether they knew it or not. Let the Emperor deal in commerce and coin, she hoped to become one who could see a storm before it came, and a gale before it happened—their lives depended on it. She floated through the sewers, towards her quarters, having hand-delivered a fat bundle of expense reports and budget projections to Jaheira personally.

As she entered the hideout below the Elfsong tavern, she heard the scamper of claws on a stone floor as Us ran up to her eagerly, stickily rubbing her ankles.

[You imitate a cat so much that you are becoming one.]

[It is custom for a kitty to rub its friend to say it wants food. Do you have food?]

[No, but you may go out with me in a while, and we can catch some together.]

Dahamunzu patted Us (stickily) and eyed a pile of crates newly arrived containing distinctive and recognizable antiques obtained by the Theives’ Guild for the purpose of export out of the city. Something about a flat wooden box amid the various bejeweled pieces of loot had caught Dahamunzu’s eye. She pulled out the box and ran her long fingers over its varnished top. It felt so familiar to her—she had touched similar surfaces a thousand times.

Dahamunzu could no longer smell well, but she could recall the smell of the varnish on the wood. She raised the box to her tentacles, which slid of their own accord across the smooth surface, tasting the tang of the varnish, and the oil of human hands, and a residue of…sadness?

She carried the box into the small storage room that she had set up as a study and bedroom of sorts.

Placing it on a small table with a fine mirror on a stand, she opened the box, half expecting it to be empty. It was not.

She remembered this necklace with its innumerable thin silvery chains in a radiating web. Caught in the web, like so many dewdrops, were tiny diamonds. A delicate silver and onyx spider with ruby eyes was positioned so as to crouch on the wearer’s collarbone.

She fastened it around her own neck and gazed at her own reflection in the mirror. Because it was asymmetrical, the spider (whose black abdomen matched her eyes very nicely) wasn’t lost beneath her tentacles. On the other hand, the silvery web against her pale purple skin made her look like she was bleeding. Her Mother had made this necklace for a Drow, not an Illithid.

The Drow in question had been her father’s Lady. Like all minor Lolth-Sworn noblewomen, the Lady was devoted to becoming a major Lolth-sworn noblewoman regardless of the number of bodies she had to climb over to do it. Part of her strategy for attaining a higher position was dressing as if she already had the part, and so she had gone to great lengths to find a master jeweler who was not quite famous.  That jeweler had been Dahamunzu’s mother, Tiaa Silverclode. Tiaa was then a promising young human artisan whose intricate jewelry designs and delicate handiwork was just starting to put her name on the tongues of the wealthy socialites of the Sword Coast and elsewhere.

He had come in the Lady’s retinue as she travelled conspicuously to the city from the Underdark; a serf conscripted as one of many men to bear the lady’s trunks and the slit-windowed litter in which she traveled. As Tiaa later told it, she had found him hiding in her workshop the night after his lady, heavily veiled from the sun and profane eyes, placed her order and left. He explained that he had escaped into the city from the stable at a nearby inn where the male porters had been expected to sleep.  He begged Tiaa to hide him. He could pay her back. He had nimble fingers for making jewelry, and he knew a small amount of magic as well, though he admitted with some embarrassment that it was unpredictable and wild since he had never been trained and had had to hide his ability.

He wanted to be something other than a lichen farmer like his mother and sisters, subject to be traded with the land as the fortunes of aristocratic ladies rose and fell. Most of all, he wanted to live free from the fear that he might be killed in an internecine war, or experimented on, or sacrificed to Lolth—the fates of his father, brothers, and uncles.

As Tiaa told it, she was immediately captivated by the handsome and desperate young elf who had literally shown up at her house one day. Dahamunzu suspected she was motivated (at least at first) out of curiosity, pity and a certain naïveté about Drow.

The naïveté, such that it was, was quickly dispelled. The owners of the Inn found five porters in the stable where they had been bound and forced to drink poison when their comrade was found missing. Their blackened corpses told of an excruciating death, no doubt delivered by the Lady herself. Rumors of hired spies and back-alley executions abounded. The quarter where Tiaa’s atelier was located and where the Drow had disappeared, lived in fear. Tiaa took to sharing half of her meals with the escaped Drow so that the neighbors would not notice that she was buying food for two. This situation lasted only a few weeks. Imagine how worse it must have been if the Lady had wielded actual power in Baldur’s Gate.

Dahamunzu’s father held up his side of the bargain. With Tiaa’s careful training he became a skilled jeweler in his own right…the spider on the necklace the Lady had commissioned was his handiwork. His protector continued to find him captivating, so much so that she bore a little girl some ten months after he had first appeared in her workshop.

Dahamunzu’s reminiscence was interrupted by the feeling of another presence moving through the hall, which she recognized as the Emperor.  Us tore down the hall towards the newcomer.

Dahamunzu’s eyes returned to the mirror. She ran a finger over the body of the spider.

Her parents were both long dead, but would they recognize her now?

Could she even still claim to be Dahamunzu?

The last few months had been difficult and surreal as she had experienced a sort of metamorphosis. After that tumultuous second day as an Illithid where she had tried to kill the Emperor, she had gradually started to recognise the difference between her own thoughts and those of the tadpole, who she called Conductor because behaved as if it was the conductor of an orchestra of short-lived smaller thought processes, breaking up larger problems into smaller ones, sending the processes off to solve the smaller problems, and piecing together their answers as they returned.

Conductor was initially aloof and cunning, but had been changing, adapting to Dahamunzu. It had begun to sync itself with Dahamunzu’s thought patterns, emulating with the way she approached problems and viewed the world. For a while, it ran in parallel with Dahamunzu, fighting with with but eventually accepting corrections from Dahamunzu’s consciousness when the two streams diverged--an event which most often revolved around matters of hunger. One such difference of opinion occurred at Wither’s reunion party when Dahamunzu had to convince Conductor that Astarion’s thoughts could be even more enjoyable and for longer if the smooth brain that was making them stayed in his head.

Despite these struggles, which had at the time weighed heavily on Dahamunzu, she had also benefitted from her relationship with Conductor. She had learned to utilise Conductor’s ability to quickly solve complex problems and to access the many, many memories that they had acquired through feeding.

At some point recently (she could not say exactly when) Dahamunzu and Conductor had merged, or, perhaps, Conductor had replaced Dahamunzu. The tadpole had finally devoured her original self, leaving a facsimile with copies of the host’s original memories.

A hand touched her shoulder and a soft question entered her mind in the Emperor’s voice.

[What happened to Dahamunzu’s drow father?]

[When she was ten years old, the Lady’s spies finally found him. He recaptured and sacrificed to Lolth—the fate he ran from.]

[You remember so much, my Conductor. I had hoped it would be so when I cultivated your tadpole.]

[Do you not remember your old self?]

[I only remembered fragments on my own. Ansur expected me to remember so much more, and so I learned it from other sources and pretended to remember it to satisfy him.]

[…and so you experimented on me so that I would remember more.]

[I did not think that it would be of benefit to you lose your memories as I did.]

[Did you not consider that it might be traumatic for a parasite to have all the memories of the mind they were inhabiting and a sense of self that is a lie?]

[Do you consider yourself to be the parasite and not the original Dahamunzu?]

[I must be. Everything I’ve read of Ceremorphosis says that the tadpole devours the brain of the host and kills them but takes their memories.]

[You would do well to question what you read.] The Emperor shared a memory of Volo questioning a druid and recording something entirely different from what the druid had said. Conductor internally laughed.

[I felt like myself when we were fighting the Absolute. I started to feel myself lose control directly after, but Conductor and Dahamunzu then seemed to reach some sort of détente. I don’t feel a difference between myself and Conductor now, though.]

[If you cannot tell the difference, then how do you know you are a copy and not the original?]

[I want to be my authentic self. I want to be the person whose father was an escaped Drow serf and whose mother could make spiderweb from silver. The person who had used her ingenuity and resourcefulness to support herself and her devastated mother through poverty after the execution of her father and the ruin of her mother’s reputation. Dahamunzu was a person who made a warlock pact with an unknowable being because they couldn’t afford to hone their magical powers through schooling, and because it was a middle finger to the gods like Lolth who had ruined her family.  She was a hero who saved her city. She brilliant, and a fool, and a survivor. I liked being her.]

The Emperor cradled her chin in his long, bony hand.

[There are many aspects of my past that I find unpleasant to revisit. I do not consider myself to still be Balduran, and I do not think he could understand who I am now…but I was him. There is a straight line between him and myself, and though I am missing memories, I consider the ones I have to be precious and not mere crumbs left over from a parasite’s meal.  You say you wish to be your authentic self and you think you are a copy, but you cannot tell when the copy-self began, and the original-self ended. In this case, I think the concept of authenticity is meaningless. It is only a construct made to give your original-self some intrinsic value at the expense of your copy-self when there is not a real difference between the two. It is not helpful.]

Conductor put her own hand on top of his and thought about this for a moment. His words were strangely comforting to her.

[I am glad you have changed. If Balduran was anything like those ridiculous statues in the Wyrmway, he was a self-righteous ass.]

She felt the Emperor’s mirth at the insult.

[And I’m glad you have changed, too. Dahamunzu’s emotions and naivete could lead her to make ill-advised decisions, as was the case with her mother.]

Conductor was amused by this observation and reflected that she may have repeated the mistakes of her mother on a much more catastrophic scale.

[I have not changed that much.]

The Emperor looked at her reflection in the mirror, his eyes glowing in its cloudy surface. He studied the spider necklace.

[You should keep it. The spider matches your eyes, and perhaps as your memories grow more distant, it will bring them close again.]

He placed a letter on the table in front of her and then turned and floated out of the room.

She glanced once more at the necklace, took it off and placed it gently back in its lacquered box. The fact that it had been stolen from a home in Baldur’s gate by the Thieves Guild meant that its mistress had either sold it or died. It should not be above ground in the sunlight. Conductor hoped the circumstances under which it left the Lady’s possession were appropriately horrible.

She turned her attention to the letter. It was in an envelope of fine paper with a delicate and familiar seal which crackled with arcane magic. It was addressed to “Lady Silverclode, care of the Elfsong Tavern, Baldur’s Gate”, from a certain Professor Gale Dekarios at the wizard’s college in Waterdeep.

The seal crumbled away instantly as she touched it, and she slipped out the letter. As she read it, her heart pounded in excitement, and then, as the meaning of the words sunk in, a sense of impending dread.

Outside, the rain continued, and more clouds gathered on the horizon.

Chapter Text

In a dark alley somewhere in Waterdeep, a fizzle of magic announced the opening of a portal. A tall but shapeless figure stepped out, draped in long rich brocade robes under which its feet and hands were concealed. It limped slightly, aided by an ornate staff.  The upper face, visible only from the front, was that of a middle-aged drow woman, perhaps swaddling herself in veils to protect her delicate skin and spider silk undergarments as more old-fashioned people of that species sometimes do. Her black eyes hinted at darker secrets.

She had not walked two blocks when she felt the attention of two followers. One had blocked its mind from her and projected only thoughts of fish and birds. They were feline thoughts, but why would one care enough to follow her? Unless...

The other had the potential to become a bigger problem, but for now, it was fuming about some trivial quibble regarding loot.

[Fucking Lystrea calling dibs on that flaming adamantine dagger. She knew I wanted it. Not like she even deserved it….spent the whole battle lying on the ground screaming for a medic.]

Turning onto a well-lit street, Conductor moved through a crowd of people clustered around a vegetable stall. Their random thoughts and feelings were like white noise in her head. When the chatter cleared, she could still pick out the thoughts of her tails--both of them--still following. The feline was now daydreaming about chasing a cockroach. The human, apparently an adventuring rogue, was ruminating on a conversation he’d apparently had with a companion over drinks.

[“What’d you get at the shops with your five silver, Altear? Bet you bought yourself somethin’ real nice. You should save up if you want a new dagger.” A burly man with a beard and a sloshing tankard of ale broke into roiling laughter. Haw, haw, haw.]  Another one of his thoughts barged into Conductor’s consciousness. She narrowed her eyes.

[Look at that brocade…wonder how much that will fetch? Clothing like that doesn’t come cheap. Bet she’s got a fat coin purse tied to her belt under all that. The staff’s nice, too. She’s limping and not from around here, either. Easy, easy, easy.]

Here was a dark side street. Conductor cast about for presences at the end of it that might indicate that it went all the way through. There were only a few small consciousnesses, thinking normal ratty little thoughts. She paused at the intersection, looking around as if she was lost, and fumbling in her robes. Then, she turned down the dark, narrow street. The man followed. Well into the alley, she stopped again. The man drew his (apparently unsatisfactory) dagger.

She paused, thinking about her options. The moral thing to do would be to order him off. He would have no choice but to obey, but the odds were good that he would run to his friends and bring them back with him. She could certainly take on a whole group of adventurers, and these, judging by this one sample, were quite…inexperienced.  Honestly, she would rather not be bothered to fight all of them. She had things to do, and battles were long. Besides that, she was not so hungry that she could eat a whole party, and it would be a terrible waste not to do so given the chance.  A single adventurer, though, that would be very nice indeed.  Her tentacles moistened at the thought of a meal.

She would let him decide his own fate. It seemed a good compromise between her conscience and her stomach. So, she gave him a warning.

[For your own sake, you should rethink what you are about to do.]

The idiot hesitated for a second, not even realizing that the voice was not in his ears but in his mind. Then, he lunged towards her, knife raised. Oh well. She had tried.

She spun around, her long sleeve falling away from a clawed hand pointed in a magical gesture.  The man froze in mid-air as she dropped her staff and unwound her veil with her other hand, tentacles falling free.  She stared at the man, his shocked eyes drawn into the black, shiny depths of her own. Entranced. Entrapped. Then, her tentacles wrapped around his head, pulling his skull into her waiting beak.

Conductor was floating in the glow of post-meal elation and had just disposed of the body down a nearby manhole when the rustle of wings announced the arrival of the other creature that had been following her.

“Miss Silverclode, what a state you are in.”

[Tara. I thought that might be you. Please, I call myself Conductor.]

The Tressym (which is, of course, a highly intelligent winged feline) folded her wings and sat back, assessing Conductor.

“Well, Conductor. Having recently indulged myself in a songbird, I must admire the grace with which you pounced on that rogue. You should probably compose yourself a little before you meet Mr. Dekarios and his mother, though.”

[Of course,] said Conductor, wiping the gore off her tentacles and wrapping her veil back around them. [I am curious about how you were able to track me so quickly.]

“Mindflayers have a distinctive smell. Your kind are not so rare around here, but they mainly live in the Underdark below us, and so they also smell like the Underdark…musty. You do not.” She thoughtfully licked a paw. “I would not worry about it so much. Most humanoids are incapable of smelling it, and most animals don’t worry about Mindflayers. They have to worry about things like Tressym instead.” Her lips parted slightly revealing teeth in a predatory smile.

[I suspected as much. But I shall attempt to cover the smell up anyway, if only to protect against druids in their wildshape and people who like to talk to animals.]

“You do seem very concerned about being in disguise. You have put a lot of thought into this one. It doesn’t even use magic.”

[I am not interested in tormenting or depriving people of their freedom by enthralling them, and so I gather information in person…but my kind are not exactly welcome in any city, especially not in Baldur’s Gate right now. I try not to attract very much attention.]

“Well, you attracted attention anyway”, said Tara.

[Yes, I will have to dress less extravagantly next time, though it was my understanding that Waterdeep had fewer cutpurses than Baldur’s Gate. I suppose that either my information or analysis of it was mistaken. It is no matter now, though. How is Gale, and how are you?]

The disguised Mindflayer and the Tressym had re-emerged onto the Main Street and made their way towards a fountain in a square in the distance, near the house of Gale Dekarios and his mother.

“Mr. Dekarios is still teaching at the Wizard’s College. His students get lazier by the semester to hear him say it. They don’t want to learn ancient languages or write proofs. I think they were probably always like that, but do not tell him I said so. Despite his complaining, he loves teaching.”

[Dahamunzu always wanted to go to the Wizard’s College. Perhaps someday he might teach me in her honor. He would find me most studious.]

“I did not know that she was interested in studying magic. I’m sure Gale would be happy to teach you. You were once a Warlock, correct? So, you must have some natural talent.”

[I still am. My patron was not ever very motivated by souls and did not lose interest in me when became an Illithid. They were, if anything, amused.]

A flash of wary curiosity briefly flashed in Tara’s mind before she changed the subject. “As for me, I am glad Gale is no longer moping over Mystra in his tower, and no longer requires that I find magical objects for him. I explore and hunt birds at my leisure.”

They had arrived at their destination—a friendly green door on a corner house. Conductor knocked and Tara sat down on the porch, staring at the door and swishing her tail impatiently. Eventually, the heard footsteps, and the door opened to a handsome but stocky elderly lady with an apron cinched over her fine robe.She assessed the creature on her doorstep with sharp, intelligent eyes, and then looked questioningly at Tara.

“Tara, would you like to introduce your friend?”

“This is Conductor, formerly known as Miss Dahamunzu Silverclode,” said the Tressym. “Conductor, this is, obviously, Mrs. Dekarios, mother of Gale.”

“Well, well,” said Mrs. Dekarios, “I thought I might never get to meet you in person. Come in, my dear, and take off that disguise. I know what you are. I’m afraid I’ve got no food that you might enjoy, but may I offer you a cup of tea?”

Conductor unwound her veil and removed her hat and heavy cloak.  Her upper face rippled as millions of cells changed back to their natural, whitish-purple color. Tilting her head curiously at Mrs. Dekarios, she was surprised to detect very little fear or disgust at her natural form, only curiosity. “I would like some tea, Mrs. Dekarios. Thank you.”

“Then make yourself comfortable. Gale will come home from class soon.”

Conductor floated to an ornate, cushioned bench, and Tara sauntered over to a nearby chair, stretching out a paw.

“Don’t you dare scratch that, Tara,” a slightly annoyed voice floated from the next room, where Mrs. Dekarios had gone.

“She always seems to know.” Tara sighed, deciding to pick at the claw with her teeth instead.

The room was filled with books, many of them magical, apparently ordered by the color of their spines. Two very elegant staves glowed mesmerizingly, crossed above a welcoming hearth. The room was full of plants and knickknacks and old furniture; cluttered but cozy, like the thoughts pouring from Mrs. Dekarios’ mind in the other room. Out of politeness or respect, Conductor did not parse them too intently.

“I have had so many interesting guests for tea. Your friend Withers comes quite often these days. He is always good for conversation but not much for explaining his line of thinking. You are the first Illithid who has visited so far.” Mrs. Dekarios came back into the room carrying a tray full of clinking china. “You should have brought your mate with you. I would have liked to meet him in person as well, after hearing so much about the both of you from Gale.”

Conductor was not sure she would have used that particular terminology to describe her relationship with the Emperor, but the friendliness was unusual, and she reveled in the feeling of it.

“The Emperor, my…business partner…did not think he would be welcome, though I shall extend the invitation to him for the next time.”

“My mistake, dear, I thought you a couple. Do bring him next time, though.”

“Mrs. Dekarios,” said Conductor, changing the topic, “I cannot help but admire your taste in books. I should have known that Gale got his studiousness and intelligence from his family. Are you a wizard as well? “

“Yes, I am”, she said. “I taught alchemy to some of the finest minds in the Sword Coast. Are you trying to flatter me, Conductor?”

“No,” said Conductor, wringing her tentacles in a gesture that might have been embarrassment or even frustration. “I am not used to speaking in this form not to mention being welcomed in it by a human. It is difficult for me to predict how you will react to what I say because have so little data.”

Mrs. Dekarios laughed. “I assumed that since you are an Illithid, you must be looking for a way to gain advantage over me. Instead, you just seem to have social anxiety. My mistake, yet again. I will endeavor to be more thoughtful in the future.”

A coppery fizzle of magic filled the air, heralding the arrival of Gale who started with some surprise at the sight of Conductor sitting on a cushion (awkwardly) drinking tea with his mother and Tara.

He smiled, “Munzu. I was not sure you would actually come. You seemed so distant at the party a few months ago. I am truly glad to see you.”

“The writing in your letter smelled of worry and raised questions in my mind about the future. Let us discuss it.”

“You have not lost your directness, I see.”

“Very well, then, Gale, we will dance around the point a little if you wish.” There was a twinkle in Conductor’s eyes. “How are you faring?”

“Well, I think. I am happy teaching. I am back in Mystra’s favor.” Gale thought the next part conspicuously, as if he did not want his mother to hear [But I do not think I will ever be her favorite again. She has found another favorite already.  I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had kept the Crown of Karsus. I could have been a god in my own right. I could have been her equal.]

[You have long known that Dahamunzu disliked Mystra and thought she toyed with you and used you unfairly. Perhaps I even understate her feelings on this matter.]

[She went out of her way to make sure that both Elminster and I understood her feelings. But, Mystra is a goddess. She does not adhere to mortal standards of morality. Her view of history is much longer and encompasses much more. She can lose sight of the plight of individuals, even ones she loves.]

Looking straight at Gale, Conductor thought [Well do I know it. I do not think Dahamunzu ever considered that you might want power in order to interact with Mystra as an equal. Perhaps if she knew that, she might have empathized more with you, for she was in a similar situation.]

Gale cocked his head at Conductor curiously as if working something out, but he shielded his thoughts from Conductor as she continued.

[In the end, I am glad you did not take the crown.  There was a slim probability that you would have used that dark magic to become a benevolent god. There was a much higher chance that it would have devoured you and made you unrecognizable.]

[I do not mean to judge, but did you not do something similar?  And have you not changed for the worse?] Gale realized a split second too late that that last might have been offensive. It was even harder to have a diplomatic conversation telepathically than verbally.

Conductor floated to the window and looked out over the street, filled with people, thinking comforting, worried, excited, miserable, joyous thoughts. She thought of the futures and dreams she herself had cut short to survive. She replied, speaking carefully in a low voice.

“I am no longer Dahamunzu, your friend. I am Conductor. I am an Illithid, with all that entails, both horrible and wonderful. Contrary to popular belief, I do have feelings, and a need for friendship, which is pleasurable to me. I would value yours if you wished it, but only if you were to accept me for who I am rather than who I was.”

Gale was silent for a moment. He did not hide the fact that he was asking himself whether he could let Dahamunzu go when they had shared so much, both bitter and sweet.

He slowly smiled and extended a hand “Well then, Conductor. I am Gale Dekarios. I hear we have many mutual friends.”

Conductor seemed delighted as she grasped his hand in her own long fingers. “Thank you, Mr. Dekarios. I have heard much about you.”

“Only good things I hope.”

“Good, bad and also mundane.”

“I am surprised that you remember so much about Dahamunzu. Did she keep a diary?”

“No. I have retained all of my memories. The Emperor tells me that it is very unusual, and I would ask that you do not discuss my long memory with others.”

“May I ask why?”

“I do not know…though I suspect. The Emperor does not tell me all that he knows.”

“Really? That is unusual for him.”

Gale was surprised when she laughed at his sarcasm. “His relationship with what you would call absolute truth has always been flexible. In seriousness, though, he has long been in the practice of breaking the truth into parts and storing them in separate places of his consciousness. For most of his life, it has been necessary for his survival. A hivemind cannot punish an aberrant train of thought if it cannot find it. In this case, though, I think he is trying to protect me.”

By this time, Gale’s mother had left the room bidding Conductor to say goodbye before she left, though Tara stayed behind, sitting alert on a cushion, and watching a fly in the window. She was almost certainly listening in.

“What have you heard exactly from our mutual Githyanki acquaintance?” asked Conductor, changing the subject.

“I never thought I would be the one of us that she trusted, but here we are.” Gale shrugged. “I am in regular contact with her.”

“Of us, you are the one who is both trustworthy and capable of helping her.”

“Her line of questioning in her last letter made me wonder if you might be capable of helping her, too.” He noticed what he thought was trepidation on Conductor’s face, though it was hard to tell. “Now, now, I know such a thing might get very complicated, but perhaps you can start by reading the letter yourself and then, if you have any advice for Lae’zel, I can reply as if I found the answer in a book in a dungeon somewhere.” He pulled out a thin stone disk with tiny writing carved on it, radiating out from the center, and handed it to Conductor. She squinted at it and then ran her tentacles over the engraved letters.

Gale Dekarios,

 

I have always found your martial skills lacking, but your knowledge of lore and books was occasionally useful in a way I now require. The Glorious war against the Usurper continues, each day closer to victory. In the name of the Prince of the Comet, we have pushed that usurper Vlaakith into a corner. In her fear, she has become desperate. I suspect she resorts to treacherous and disgraceful tactics to the shame of all Gith.

Specifically, a band of the finest and most loyal Kithraki was ambushed on a secret mission. The survivors reported coordination among their attackers as if they could predict the nature of strikes and attacks in advance. Each attacker knew exactly what the others would do.

Naturally, we have seen such behavior before.

Before we consider the existence of an unthinkable alliance, I would like to ask you whether a lich like Vlaakith might be able to coordinate this kind of behavior independently of such an alliance? Our archives are silent on such abominable experiments with psionics, but beings in your plane have always been eager to meddle where they should not.

 

Lae’zel

Reading this had clearly agitated Conductor, who had begun to pace. Her mental connection with the Emperor hummed and vibrated, for the Emperor had set aside his work and was now paying full attention to the unfolding events in Waterdeep. She said, almost to herself: “…the Vlaakith loyalists who ambushed the Kithraki acted as if they were pieces of a larger, smarter whole.”

Gale nodded: “Now you see why I involved you.”

“I would like very much to not be involved in this, because if Vlaakith has struck an agreement with a hivemind (which would be incredibly stupid of her) then it becomes impossible for any faction of Gith to continue to ignore the Emperor and myself. Lae’zel knows how Orpheus died and that his powers did not die with him. Vlaakith might suspect, but to my knowledge, she does not know that I exist or that the Emperor survived the battle with the Absolute.”

Gale replied, “So, let us hope that Vlaakith has found some way to simulate hivemind communications outside of actual Illithid influence.  Now, I’ve thought of a few ways one might do that with illusion magic or necromancy. Those seem more like a Githyanki lich’s domain than Illithid Psionics. But all those methods are rather facile. The Kithraki would have seen right through them.”

“You would have seen right through them”, interjected Tara, “not everyone has spent their life studying the topic.”

 “As for predicting their moves in advance, Vlaakith had Orpheus imprisoned for a millennium. If I had my nemesis imprisoned for a thousand years, and if I decided not to consume him, I would get to know him better than he knew his own self, so that I might predict his actions and the actions of his followers. He would be useless against me. Had I the opportunity in the prism, I would have explored his mind further, but as it was, it was necessary for me to constantly monitor all of your connections to the Absolute in order to contradict its commands.”  

“Well, I hope that you never consider me a nemesis. That is a disturbing thought…and speaking of weird and disturbing, when were you ever in the Astral prism monitoring my communications?”

Conductor’s tentacles curled and wrung again in embarrassment. “Excuse me. I was communing with the Emperor and neglected to differentiate between our voices when I relayed his thoughts to you. I had hoped to translate his words into terms you might understand. Nemesis is more of a human or Githyanki concept, but the Illithid equivalent would be better described as “source-of-my-frustration.”

Gale smirked at this turn of phrase but his feelings on the Emperor’s involvement were sour: “I’m not sure I remember inviting the Emperor to be part of the conversation.”

“We are constantly connected. You know what it is like. But he is only involved if both he and I wish it. When I read the letter, I reached out to him. The Gith are just as likely to take his head as a trophy as they are to take mine, so he has a right to know. I should have told you earlier. I was not intending to deceive you, Gale.”

“I will operate on the assumption that you are not manipulating me, since we are friends.”

“Thank you.”

“Returning to Vlaakith, what if we assume that Vlaakith’s soldiers are part of a hivemind? Would a Githyanki lich be able to control such communication?”

“The Emperor feels that it would be possible to implant Gith with a psionic device that would simulate the connections that Illithid tadpoles can form between each other. He can imagine how such a device might work, though he does not know if it has ever been implemented. I recall that Gustill Stornugoss at Creche Y’llek was experimenting on Tadpoles. Perhaps she was not alone among Vlaakith’s scientists.”

“Yes, but could Vlaakith control this communication?”

Conductor pondered this for a moment. “I think so. How do Lich phylacteries work? I know Liches need souls, but why?”

“What kind of wizard do you take me for?” said Gale.

At this point, Tara, who was in fact listening, interjected: “Don’t pretend you didn’t think about becoming a lich when you were holed up in your tower pining for Mystra, Mr. Dekarios,”

 “I was only jesting, Conductor.” Gale glanced sheepishly at Tara, “Lich phylacteries protect the Lich’s soul and are the source of their immortality. They are usually stored somewhere obscure with absurd layers of protection, like in an egg in a duck in a rabbit in an iron chest beneath a tree on an island surrounded by impassible waters. Liches use souls to maintain the power of the protective barriers around their phylacteries, and to increase the power they can draw from their own soul.”

“So, they do not consume souls like Illithids consume minds in order to maintain multiple trains of thoughts in parallel?”

“No.”

“In that case, if Vlaakith is controlling hive-mind like communications she is probably very slow at it, since she has to handle each command in serial rather than in parallel. She may even have to intermittently stop her own activities to address what her minions are doing. If one were to attack her or her phylactery while she was maintaining such communication elsewhere, she might be very sluggish in her reactions.”

“That is a very intriguing idea. I shall write Lae’zel and ask about it.”

“I hope you know not to mention the source of the theory.”

“I know. As I said, I found it in a very dangerous and ancient grimoire in a vault filled with monsters.”

Gale and Conductor spent a while longer talking about mutual friends, about Gale’s students, sabbaticals, and plans for future research. As she wrapped her veil once more around her tentacles and shrugged her cloak around her shoulders, Gale’s mother came to the door with an image in her mind of herself, warmly embracing Conductor: a request for permission to which Conductor assented. Mrs. Dekarios thought clearly:

[“I know Gale struggled after losing Mystra, and I know that he loved Dahamunzu. Even though she did not stay with him, she made him a better man.  I will never get to tell her how grateful I am, but I can thank you for your part. Thank you for bringing him back to me, Conductor.”]

Conductor limped down the dark street, her mind floating in the warm feeling of friendship. She was content to isolate and ignore (at least for now) the thought processes mulling over a frightening possibility: that Vlaakith might not not just be playing poorly at controlling a simulated hive-mind but allied with a real one.

Chapter Text

The Emperor sat on the balcony of the old Philgrave Mansion, staring out at the harbor, watching the ships move across the skyline, their sails unfurled. The breeze was cool and salty against his face as he felt the thoughts of the city below him. He listened to each voice, each story. He felt each desire, each joy. The city was his home, and he—he was its mind. He controlled the goods coming in and going out on the ships and caravans. The traders bought and sold based on ideas that he, Conductor, and their agents planted.  The lower city was blooming—raised again from the ruins left by the Grand Design—in part through his covert guidance. It had been a long time since the Emperor had been this contented; certainly, he had not felt this way since before things with Stellmane fell apart. But he will not think of this now. For now, he is free and at home.

He held in his hands a cool green mottled disk, almost translucent when held to the light. The tiny etching on its surface radiated inward towards the center. The Githyanki script was never meant for eyes like his, though it had never held any secrets that Illithid minds could not penetrate with ease. The Emperor ran the tips of a tentacle over the tiny script, feeling it and parsing it.

 The disk was written by a Gith scholar in the age of their liberation. It was a study on Illithids, on their beliefs, their fears and their weaknesses.  The Emperor had lived a long life and been part of a collective that had been truly ancient, but there were things on this disk about his own ancestors that he did not know. This was not, he supposed, particularly surprising. The past does not usually concern Illithids—especially the parts of it that run contrary to the agreed upon cultural memory. The parts of the present-which-was which are worth preserving become part of the state of the present, and the various branching futures are simply the presents-which-could-be.

The problem with this, thought the Emperor, is that inconvenient aspects of the present-that-was can easily be hidden or forgotten. The case in point here was the section of the disk entitled “Illithid also fear the Adver[sary…].” There was a chip at the end of the word ‘Adversary’, which rendered the last two or three glyphs unreadable. Perhaps it did not matter. The Emperor had heard the story when he was young as an Illithid.

The Illithid also fear the Adversary[…]. This is the subject of stories circulating in almost all colonies. It is not certain from whence the stories came, though they seem to have arisen after the fall of the (Illithid) Empire. They vary between hives, and it is unclear if all details should be considered as part of a fragmented whole truth or whether some versions are true and others are not.

All stories speak of a being who is partial and imperfect, remembering all from their life before. In some stories, they move hidden within the Colony or Colonies they destroy. In some stories, they originate in the world of Toril. In some, they came from the Astral Plane. Sometimes, they can perform Arcane magic, manipulating the weave. Sometimes they are almost Gith-like in their psychic abilities. [A gloss in a second hand says simply:  Did we create them?] The stories say they will foil the Grand Design [Another gloss in the same hand wonders if they are in the past, present, or future?], and that all Illithid after them will be broken and corrupted [The gloss interjects: Will they finally evolve?]

The Emperor wondered if the story was true.

“I stole the Netherese tadpoles from the Nautiloid and nurtured them in the Astral Plane. I experimented on them and culled the failures. I nurtured the final tadpole in my own hope that it would allow Dahamunzu to keep her memories. Did I create the Adversary? Did I doom my own species?” He stared at the Gith disk, thinking of the gloss about whether the Gith had created the Adversary and remembering something Conductor had said to him on her return from Waterdeep months ago.

“It is as if we are are entangled with the Githyanki and the Githzerai, and for that matter, the Duergar and Kua-toa, They were forced to serve us, and their species were beaten and carved into the shape of our ancestors’ desires. They have shaped us with violence in their turn. Now the Illithid Empire is gone, it is they who will shape our descendants.” 

Did Orpheus, in being devoured, create the Adversary?

He felt Conductor’s presence in the room. He had been hiding this particular stream of thought from her and given how she was looking at the green disk in his hand, she knew it.

[Is that the disk that Rolan found in his tower?]

[It is.]

[What is written on it?]

[Read it yourself.]

She parsed the text quickly,, her eyes going almost immediately to the part which had interested him.

[Do you know this story?]

[Yes. A version of it. It is a story for those who have recently undergone Ceremorphosis…the young. I thought it was a myth to explain why Partial Illithids were killed when discovered and why their brains were discarded.]

[Am I a Partial Illithid because I remember being a half-Drow?]

[Yes. I am as well, because I remember being Balduran. So is your friend Omeluum, because he can use magic, which means he must have been a sorcerer before he transformed. We are considered partial because the transformation of our minds was somehow incomplete.]

[I assume from what you have told me in the past that Illithids are less than accepting of these…differences?]

[A understatement. Depending on how severe the partialism is, they are either exiled or killed. Their brains are discarded instead of being fed to the Elder Brain. Most partialism is very subtle. Some Illithids have ticks or mannerisms of their old selves.  If they are lucky and self-aware, they notice the behavior before others do and delegate a thought process to monitor and hide it. You and I and Omeluum are extreme examples.]

Conductor touched his mind slightly receiving a vision of what he did not explicitly tell her: the feeling of dread, the innate flinch every time the Absolute or another illithid touched his mind. He had learned to fragment the abnormal thoughts and forbidden memories into shards and slivers of a whole, hiding them deep within the sub processes of his mind, reassembling them when needed, and then hiding them again, sometimes so well that even he could not find them again.

[What would have happened had the Absolute found you?]

[It did, when it enthralled me after Gortash captured me, though at the time, I did not know it.] Conductor knew that the absolute had picked and churned through all of The Emperor’s consciousness and he was helpless to stop it. [It used my partialism and desire for freedom as the lynchpin in the Grand Design. I suspect it counted on you betraying me and then it intended to enthrall me and throw me at you. That I did not realize this was one of my greatest mistakes.]

How hard it had been for Dahamunzu and her companions to trust the Emperor. The same tendency to tell half-truths and his parsimony with information which had given him safety in the colony made him untrustworthy outside of it, as did his inability to pass as a Human or an Illithid.  He never acted how she expected a Mindflayer to act, but when he tried to act like a person, well, that felt fake, too. It was always hard to tell whether he was being manipulative or just very awkward. The Absolute’s reasoning, as always, had been cruel but sound.

[Normally, though, if a Partial is found, if they are extreme, their minds are destroyed by the Elder Brain and their bodies discarded. If their partialism is limited to a tick, they are outcast, and when they die, their bodies and brains are destroyed rather than being consumed by the Elder Brain.]

[Oh, that’s a tragedy.] thought Conductor sarcastically [Does it use something like the Zaithisk we saw at Crèche Y’llek to consume the minds of the dying?]

[You are skeptical, but it is considered a great honor and a sort of immortality, being forever integrated into the community. I wonder though if, like Vlaakith’s ascension, it isn’t all a lie? Perhaps Elder Brain simply consumes the useful knowledge and memories and discards everything else. The device used is the same. What the Gith call a Zaithisk is our technology and is used to peel away the minds of the living and dead, integrating them into the consciousness of another…or into nothing. It is why I was distressed when you insisted on using it. We are all lucky I was able to use Orpheus’ power to destroy it.]

[My patron enjoyed helping you destroy it. If Partial Illithids are so despised  then perhaps a Partial Illithid told the story as a caution to the young to learn to hide themselves, and it got propagated as part of the collective memory.]

[The thought has occurred to me, for the story served as a warning for me when I was just starting to realize that I remembered and desired things that the others did not. But I wonder sometimes whether the story of the Adversary might have been true after all? The Gith author seemed to think it was.]

[This legend is what you have not been telling me when you asked me to keep silent about my memory.]

[You have killed a Netherbrain with a plan for the Grand Design, and you did not assimilate the Netherbrain to yourself. Shall we spread it around the Planes that you are the Adversary?]

[Do not patronize me. The story of the Adversary as the Gith tells it could equally describe you, and you have not lived subtly.]

There was something akin to amusement in the Emperor’s eyes—a sort of delight at being challenged by an equal, then an acknowledgment.

Both of them had poured over the past and tried to learn from its errors. At first they had tried to rebuild the Knights of the Shield. Prior to being tortured and then re-enslaved by Gortash, the Emperor had controlled the organization in Baldur’s Gate in all but name, but as an Illithid, he had a tendency to think in terms of the present and the potential future only. He had buried himself in political intrigue and the numerical intricacies of controlling the city’s finances, and he had remained  ignorant of the organization’s past, and the dark secrets to which the Knights were bound.  Its members were now dead, their archives opened, their secrets spilled out with their blood. The organization’s roots in the cult of the God of Corruption, Gargauth, were a risk and liability in a city nearly leveled by the Dead Three. The Emperor could see few routes through which he might return the Knights to their former prestige, even if Conductor managed to erase all memory of the organization among the populace. In any case, after the death of the Absolute, and with Conductor now at his side, he had started to become attached to the city in a way he had never felt before. He felt protective of it, even nurturing towards it.

So, they decided to let the Knights have their secret artifacts and obligations to the God of Corruption.  Let the second sons of the surviving Patriars jockey for power within their secret society, effectively neutered. They might be able to pull the levers of commerce, but those levers were not necessarily attached to anything real. Instead, some of the levers were actually in the hands of the official government. Some were in the hands of the Thieves’ Guild and the mob, but if one was able to peel apart the layers of shell organizations, proxies, and circles of agents with little knowledge of each other, one would find that many of the real levers of power were now operated from Philgrave house. The former home of a mummy-lord was now the home to an equally secretive but shrewd family of merchants with an encyclopedic knowledge of the city and its workings.  In a short amount of time, this family had built a small empire on exports and imports to the city.  They were one of the few parties, along with the Thieves’ Guild, who had shown an interest in rebuilding the Lower City after the devastation wrought by the Absolute. The Lower City rose from the ruins, with it, the fortunes of The Emperor and Conductor, or rather Master and Mistress  Korlit of Philgrave House.

[We should both hope that we are not the Adversary and that nobody thinks that we are. We live on a razor’s edge with Ravengard as it is. If it were not for an ongoing civil war, the Gith would be hunting us…]

[…I suspect we also have Lae’zel’s discretion to thank for that, though a reckoning will surely come for the death of Orpheus.]

[…perhaps. Should our fellow Illithids decide either of us are the Adversary, they would hunt us across time and space.]

Conductor considered the sheer cruelty and humiliation involved in the Absolute’s plans for the Emperor and decided she would prefer the silver sword of the Gith should it ever come to that. She changed the subject to something slightly less bleak.

[Speaking of living on a razor’s edge with Ravengard, Master and Mistress Korlit have been invited to a Masquerade ball in the high city to raise funds for completing the cupola of the High Hall.]

The Emperor did not hide the disdain in this reply [Which is of utmost importance. How can a city be governed without a cupola?] He set aside the Gith disc. [Will Archduke Ravengard attend?]

[Yes. Will you? Or will you leave me to go alone to spy for you?]

[You could hardly be stealthy were you to go alone. Every fiend, monster and aristocrat in the city would want to steal you away.]

[Lesser beings, all of them. And in any case, how can I be stolen if I am free?]

[You cannot be.  Will you go with me as a friend and an equal then? I wish to pick Ravengard’s brain.]

[Hopefully you do not wish to pick through it. Ravengard is credulous and self-righteous, but I care about his son and daughter-in-law. I also care about not fighting all of the Fists.]

[I am interested Wyll and Karlach as well, though perhaps not as strongly as you are. I do not loathe Ravengard as you do. If you hate him because of what he once said of me, do not. He is quick to judge, and divides the world into good and evil, but he is not stupid and tries to be just. He is better than any of the alternatives.]

[I suppose you are right. He is good at balancing the patriars against each other while keeping them all just happy enough. Now the important question: what form will you assume for the masquerade?]

[Every callous and morbid young noble will doubtless go as an Illithid, so perhaps we should dazzle them all with the accuracy of our disguises?]

Chapter Text

The colored reflections of artificed lights glowed softly from the cobblestone courtyard of the partially rebuilt High Hall. Beyond the area of the high hall, the city seemed to hover in a state of transition. The upper city had been rebuilt for the most part, and some places seemed from the outside even more splendid than they had been before the Absolute exploded from the caverns beneath. The opulence was shallow. A scratch at any surface revealed fortunes stretched thin—cheaply manufactured tiles placed quickly and crookedly, frescoes which devolved into scribbles when not at eye level.

A gala was an opportunity for ostentatious display of wealth, even if the wealth was more aspirational than real, and the great ones of Baldur’s Gate were not ones to forgo such an opportunity. Every corner rustled with life as the monied elite made their way to the masquerade gala in their finest regalia.  Footmen in the guise of rare beasts and monsters carried gilded and enameled sedan chairs from which emerged ladies and gentlemen dressed as devils, angels and every manner of creature in between. A few dignitaries stepped out of portals, their glittering trains and entourages following them into the courtyard from places unknown. Music and laughter spilled into the courtyard, a promise of revelry for those about to enter.   Some wore ingeniously crafted costumes: concoctions of feathers, embroidery and sequins. Others had hired a magic user to disguise them, sporting illusions that seemed real from every side and angle.

The wizard Rolan stood inside the Hall’s heavy wooden entrance, wearing a very shiny and obviously fake white beard, long blue robe, and wide-brimmed pointed hat. He observed everyone who entered. He could not tell what they were hiding, but he did note who was wearing what and the methods they were using to affect their disguises. Every so often, he would make a subtle gesture, causing his long sleeve to ripple as he cast detect thoughts on this person or that, discerning their intentions.

He and his best friends had inherited (or commandeered) a great wizard’s tower attached to the Sorcerous Sundries Bookstore in the lower city. While they lacked for nothing, Rolan did occasionally do odd wizarding jobs for extra coin. So, tonight he was acting as a sort of magical bouncer for the Gala.

A clever papier-mâché beholder sauntered by with its large shining lacquered eye fixated on a plate of hors d’ouvres. Its many little eyestalks, subtly wired together, wiggled as it grabbed some fancy tidbit on a stick. Rolan probed the mind of yet another Drizzt Do’Urden. This one was thinking about getting a drink and propositioning a lady in a costume drawn from a pulp novel illustration with a green-painted face and impractically busty armor. Was she supposed to be Vlaakith? Gods. She was lucky the real Vlaakith was nowhere near here.

A subtle hum of magic sung in the back of his mind as a very tall mindflayer with long tentacles and flamboyant purple and black enameled armor floated through the door. On its arm was another, smaller mindflayer, with a rounder head and opalescent skin.  The smaller one caught Rolan’s eye, and he he could have sworn that it was laughing.

[Have you found anything interesting yet with your poking and probing, Rolan?]

Rolan bowed slightly. “Welcome, Mistress Korlit” and nodding towards the tall mindflayer “Master Korlit.” He thought as deliberately as possible [Not until you walked in. Most people use magic to make their costumes, not to make their natural appearance seem like a costume.]

“Have you seen any other mindflayers tonight?”

“At least six, but you two are the most convincing so far. Your pulsating brains are very realistic.”

[Well, that is a disappointment.] “While I would like to show off my costuming skills, we would not want to frighten anyone inadvertently.” Conductor said something softly and waved a hand in slight, graceful gesture, and both her and the Emperor’s heads became both more glossy and static, as if they were sculpted and painted rather than living flesh.

“Ah. That’s much better. Any more realistic and people might think that actual mindflayers came to the gala dressed as mindflayers. Can you imagine anything so brazen? I’d certainly be jailed for letting you in.”

“It would not be to any of our advantage if you were to be jailed,” said The Emperor patiently.

Rolan sighed, “..and I’d rather not get you in trouble. You are one of the better landlords the bookstore has had if the archives are to be believed. Were you ever able to translate that disk I found? The Githyanki or Githzerai one?”

“Yes. I found it very useful.”

Rolan waited expectantly for more.

Conductor’s eyes seemed to roll upwards towards her partner and her tentacles twitched at Rolan, who sensed that there was probably a conversation happening here to which he was not a party.  The Emperor finally continued.

“It is a Gith treatise on Illithid culture in the hopes of understanding the enemy to better hunt and kill them. It is of value as a historical document because Illithids do not write about their own history. They do not see time as being…linear…in the same way other sentient beings do.

“How do they see it, then?”

“As a tree that stays just as complicated no matter how closely you look at its branches or how far away you get from it. How did you find the disk?”

“Sheer luck, really. It was behind some books on various types of psychic magic, and I found it while cleaning. I suppose a former owner of the tower must have been interested in such things. Could you translate it for me? It might be useful for future scholars.”

“Really? You are asking me to translate a document about hunting and killing Illithids.”

Conductor’s tentacles twitched again in what Rolan was starting to suspect was a sort of laughter. “I know of someone at the Society of Brilliance who might be interested in doing such a thing in the interest of science. I will introduce you someday.” Tugging at the Emperor’s arm, she led him off into the crowd.  Rolan was left alone to scan the crowd for dangerous beings in disguise, and now to ponder the nature of time.

The Emperor was awash in the brilliance of the party. His mind flitted through the crowd, sampling the thoughts and feelings of the partygoers, churning lazily but attentively in eddies of drunken political machinations, riding the waves of emotion through love triangles and petty slights. A small portion of his mind went through the motions and pleasantries of introducing himself as Master Korlit of the lower city, of issuing meaningless complements and listening to the praise of his terrifying but exquisitely crafted costume. None of this was particularly interesting to him—but the thoughts of all of the partygoers at once, those were exhilarating.

Scanning through the crowd, he alighted on the one particular mind with which he had come to speak. Conductor still with him, he began to walk confidently towards it. It saw them, moving through the crowd. The Emperor felt closer scrutiny of their relative heights and head-shapes. Recognition…followed by the all too familiar sequence of fear, then disgust, and then hatred.

Archduke Ulder Ravengard descended towards them, with his lieutenant, Florrick, and two armed bodyguards close behind him. Florrick whispered in his ear, giving him the “names” of the two attendees he was approaching.

“Master and Mistress Korlit. It is my pleasure to finally meet you in person.”

Both the Emperor and Conductor bowed deeply. The Emperor replied, “The pleasure is ours, your excellency.”

“I have heard that we have you to thank for the repairs to the defensive wall and Sorcerous Sundries in the Lower City, among other things,” said Ravengard, coldly.

“We have done no more than any good citizens with the means would.” The Emperor gently touched at the edges of Ravengard’s mind, trying to find any weakness or angle he might take to make this conversation easier. Ravengard was keeping his feelings regarding the Emperor and Conductor under control. That was good at least. He sensed that Ravengard feared for the city’s fortunes in the coming winter. That was his in, and perhaps he could be direct in asking Ravengard about it.

“As you know, Mistress Korlit and I are involved in the import of commodities into the city. We have noticed that prices have started to fluctuate at the markets and bazaars, and we worry about the availability of food come the winter, especially in the Lower City.”

The Archduke’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps we ought to take this conversation somewhere more private.” He gestured to Florrick to accompany him with the guards and commanded another attendant to “Tell Dukes Shattershield and Hhune that I will be with them shortly.”

Ravengard led The Emperor and Conductor out of the main ballroom into a small, luxuriously appointed room with thick walls and large wooden table. Florrick was left outside the door. Inside, Ravengard turned on his heels abruptly, and looked up at the Emperor.

“The two of you live in this city at my pleasure as a thanks for services rendered, on the conditions that you do not interfere with government or menace the law-abiding public.”

Conductor’s indignant rage built at the edge of the Emperor’s consciousness.

[What hypocrisy! Was Cazador Szarr also allowed to live in this city only at Ravengard’s pleasure?  What of the Dukes and Duchesses who have for centuries used the city as a playground for their sick indulgences while giving nothing back? Are they allowed to remain here only at his pleasure? The Magistrates and Fists have run on bribes and extortion since anyone can remember. Where is Ravengard’s outrage at that?]

The Emperor sent images of calm along their shared connection. Anger would gain them nothing and may even endanger them.

“Have we not proven ourselves worthy allies in the rebuilding of the city, Archduke?”

Ravengard appraised the Emperor and Conductor. These creatures were the last twisted remnants of two of the city’s greatest heroes. This monster who had eaten Balduran’s brain and now wore his identity like a costume made a mockery of every parent who had named a child for the city’s founder, of every child who dreamed of being a great adventurer like Balduran when they were grown. As for Dahamunzu, Ravengard had known her personally. He had found her rebellious and flippant, but a good leader. She had guided his son through a time of great peril and saved the city from unimaginable horror. This Illithid was frighteningly good at mimicking her mannerisms but it was all a façade concealing a hollow, evil void. The Emperor gazed down at him, meeting his eyes, doubtless reading his thoughts, anyway. He swallowed and said them aloud to remove all chance of misunderstanding.

“You are both abominations, and it would have been best for Baldur’s Gate had you both drowned with the remnants of the Absolute and become the subject of songs. Do not forget that I was once part of your hive. I have seen how your kind think, how you are incapable of thought that is not part of a larger plan, how nothing you do is altruistic, how you are incapable of caring for others. Your minds are horrific. What you do to survive is horrific. The way your kind treat other species is horrific. You are a shame upon this city and to the heroes whose memories you taint.”

Conductor’s fury boiled.

 [We have done nothing but help him. Dahamunzu did nothing but help him. You protected him from the Absolute. How dare he judge us!]

“I have long known where you stand, Archduke” said the Emperor, after a long silence. “Regardless, it may be that there are parts of our long term, selfish plans that align with the interests of the city, at least for now.”

Ravengard thought he had heard a note of sadness in the Emperor’s voice, but he reminded himself that speaking was always very deliberate for an Illithid, so any emotion in it must have intentionally placed in order to deceive. Still, he was curious, and perhaps slightly ashamed of his outburst.

“Go on.”

“The city faces famine. The countryside was ravaged by Ketherick’s armies last winter. Even if the crops had not been blighted and salted, the workers that would have planted and harvested them fled here as refugees and have not yet returned to their fields. The aqueducts leading into the city were either tainted or destroyed. We are surviving on imported grain and water from the Chionthar.”

“I am aware of this. Though I will admit that the Upper City is somewhat insulated from the effects.”

“Indeed. But in the Lower City, they cannot afford to pay magicians to conjure clean water. Prices for vegetables at the market have increased a hundredfold in the span of a month. People blame the refugees for the high prices and harass them in the streets. Some express nostalgia for the stability under Archduke Gortash. Some imagine that the city is run by Illithid thralls—a sort of rear guard left behind by the Absolute.”

“…ah. And you fear what will happen when they find out the lower city is indeed run by Illithids. This is where the self-interested plotting comes in.”

“Is it so evil to wish to live?”

“For one such as you, perhaps. It also depends on what you wish to do about these conspiracies.”

“Suppressing the conspiracies would only fuel them further. The only real solution to the problem is to solve it, which is complicated.”

“Continue. How would you start?”

“I would send a guarded team of workers to repair aqueducts. The river water is contaminated and there will almost certainly be outbreaks of plague in the coming months. Curing the afflicted will be the domain of the clerics, as will spreading the knowledge of how to purify water. A conference of the clerics in the city temples ought to be convened in order to make them aware of the coming troubles and so that they can coordinate an organized response. It may be beneficial to redirect some funds to the temples so that they can recruit and train additional magic users. There are many more complicating factors as well, but this is how I would start were the city in my hands, which it is not.”

“What other complicating factors do you mean?”

“For one, there is the question of what to do about the House of Grief. Shar’s devotees would surely be offended to be excluded from the effort, but sabotaging the city’s water supply would be sacrament to some of them.”

“Indeed. So, to summarize our little chat, you wish me to direct my attention and the resources of the city to securing the countryside and repairing infrastructure, in the hopes of alleviating food shortages, and also so that you and your partner are not scapegoated by an angry populace should your identities be discovered.”

“I think we understand each other, archduke.”

“Very well then, I shall take it under advisement. Florrick. See Master and Mistress Korlit back to the great hall.  Continue to keep an eye on them.”

Ravengard turned away as the Emperor and Conductor were led out. Though Conductor had remained silent throughout the conversation, he had gotten the impression that she (it?) had evaluated him and found him wanting. He felt a moment of self-consciousness, and then anger—to think of yielding moral high ground to a brain-eating aberration. He had neglected the Lower City, though. To the extent that it had been rebuilt at all, it had been through the efforts of the Thieves’ Guild, the Mob, and the “Korlits.”

 The disparity between the two halves of the city was still stark. In the Lower City, the lack of infrastructure and influx of refugees had meant the destruction of many of the old alleyways and streets. The cobblestones were pulled up to build huts among the ruins of ancient buildings, and atop hills of rubble. The extensive sewer system had partially collapsed, overwhelming the handful of Kobolds brave enough to return to work after being decimated by the Murder Cult beneath the city. The counting house had been thoroughly sacked and looted during the calamity, and out of pettiness or self-interest, it had been impossible to convince the lords and ladies of the Upper City to allocate any substantial monies to the unwashed masses down the hill.

The Emperor had been clever to propose the aqueducts as a starting point. While the elite might not be impacted in the near term by high food prices, and while they might never have to worry about clean water, fear of disease was universal.  The specter of an unstoppable plague spreading from the Lower City may well persuade people to open their purses.  In the long term, he knew it was not just the fate of the Emperor and Conductor which were tied to the wellbeing of the whole city. It was his own. Good advice is good advice, even it if comes from a Mindflayer.

[I admire your restraint with Ravengard.], thought Conductor as they emerged back into the ballroom. She saw Ravengard walking past, heading towards a portly man dressed as a werewolf, holding a glass of wine in his hand.

[His reaction to our presence was understandable. You will grow more accustomed to it as time passes. In any case, anger would not have helped us to secure his cooperation.]

[How things have changed. As a half-drow, people were always suspicious of me, and a little fearful, but I could have talked the signet ring off of his finger. You, you were always so obvious to me when you tried to be manipulative. Now I am just angry, and you are the one who is rational and collected.] A small orchestra had begun to play, and the costumed party guests danced around them, a blur of colorful shining costumes amid the flickering mage-lights.

[Perhaps you are accustomed to receiving grace and do not know how to react when you receive none.]

[That is likely true. And what of you? Do you always expect that nobody will give you the benefit of the doubt?]

The Emperor was silent for a moment as if weighing his words carefully. [It is easy to be hated by Ulder Ravengard. I do not care about him, and he considers me to be evil. We both want the city to prosper, and we are both reasonable enough to work together. What is difficult is to be hated by someone you care about. It is when I have felt betrayed that I have let my anger control me.] The Emperor remembered when Dahamunzu decided to break into the House of Hope to steal the Orphic Hammer. He had barely kept his fury in check. What a different path they would have all taken had he threatened to mind-control her? Whole branches of possible presents-to-be, including the one he was currently living might have been obliterated. He thought of Stelmane and even Ansur. What futures might have been possible had he reacted differently? In most of them, he would be dead…then again, the world might be dead as well.

[If you recognize this as a weakness, then you can work to change it…not that I plan on betraying you, mind. Unless of course, my nefarious plans require it.] Conductor’s tentacles twitched in laughter. [Regardless, you showed much grace to Ravengard tonight, though you received none.] Conductor looked around, her tentacles writhing of their own accord to savor the whirlpool of emotions swirling in the heads of the dancing partygoers. Her mind circled the dance floor with them, absorbed in the festivity. She gazed up at the Emperor and spoke: “Do you dance?”

“As you know, I am quite graceful. Do you?”

“Wyll Ravengard himself could tell you that I do not. He tried to teach me, but then you knew that.”

“Since he is in Hell, will you allow me to pick up where he left off?”

Conductor placed a hand upon the Emperor’s slender waist, and he took her other hand in his own.

At first, her movements were clumsy. Conductor felt good-natured laughter at the sight of two mindflayers tripping over each other. She felt the not-so-good-natured derision of noblemen and women who saw them as an example of the crass nouveau riche invading the city’s elite. Awkwardly as she had started, she learned quickly. Though one astute bystander noticed that his dancing style was quite antiquated, The Emperor was a good teacher, gently guiding her, and leading her to repeat the movements with which she struggled until she got them right. Gradually, feet and hands learned where to go, and her body began to respond instinctively to the rhythm of the music.  

Her mind started to wander as they spun across the floor, colliding with the consciousnesses around them. She shared a young woman dressed as a mermaid’s effervescent joy at dancing with a lover. A man dressed as a Red Dragon let waves of happy drunkenness wash over him and Conductor as he stumbled unsteadily towards his best friend. Now on the other side of the room, a lute player fretted about whether he could play the upcoming passage without mistakes. A waiter laughed at the ridiculousness of a nobleman’s Gelatinous cube costume.  An older man seethed with jealousy as his wife stared a little too long at his rival’s sequined codpiece. Part of Conductor’s mind was paying attention to where she was going, but most of her mind was preoccupied with feeling, with floating among the thoughts of others and bobbing in the eddies of their emotions.

Always, there was the Emperor, mentally and physically beside her. She found herself drawing closer to him as the music slowed. His body was not warm. Neither of them were, but his thoughts were familiar—warm in their own way. Comforting. She felt a pair of tentacles reach around her back, embracing her protectively. She brushed his arm lightly with her hand, laying her head upon his shoulder.

[Now they will know for certain that we are not real mindflayers.] There was amusement in her thought. [Because everyone knows that mindflayers cannot feel. But this is exhilarating and you…you are wonderful.]

A small thrill of delight ran through the Emperor’s mind, quickly suppressed. He led her through the crowd to the great door, leaving a relieved Ravengard to enjoy the remainder of the party. Rolan, who had found himself a seat and had long since started reading a large tome he had stashed in his knapsack looked up as they passed, noting with some surprise the seemingly affectionate way one of the Emperor’s tentacles was draped over Conductor’s shoulder, and her arm was around his waist.

[Come] The Emperor thought. [We have done what we have set out to do, but the night is yet young. Let us enjoy it together.]

Chapter Text

Conductor and the Emperor emerged out into the summer night, their minds still reveling in the party, and the exchange with Ravengard for now quiet in the background.  They floated down into the courtyard where the carriages were waiting and a few guards and liverymen were sitting, playing dice and drinking. The rest had doubtless dispersed to cheaper entertainment to return when needed.  Conductor turned lightly to look up at the Emperor.

[Do you remember all of those books I collected during our adventure?]

[I could hardly forget. You wasted everyone’s time reading every last one of them.  Even Karlach was unhappy with having to carry them from camp to camp.]

[You seemed pleased enough when I brought you a stack of them in the prism. You were eager to discuss “Baldur’s Gate and the Dialectics of Plunder” with me.]

[I was. And, at the time, I was touched that you had thought of me.  But what were you going to say about your books?]

Conductor waved a hand and muttered a word, and became a short, buxom human woman with straw-colored hair, richly embroidered robes, and a headdress with a veil that left only the front of her face exposed. The Emperor was now Master Korlit, a tall, middle-aged human merchant who dressed for the titles he wanted.

[ I would like to build a library in the lower city, and to donate my collection to it. I have so many interesting diaries and first-hand records of the crisis with the Absolute. If they were preserved together, they might be a way for people to remember the threat of the Absolute and the Dead Three so that such a thing does not happen again.  Perhaps if scholars had access to them, the future might remember the crisis from multiple perspectives so that we would have more than just one boring story about what happened…wait. Is that a person under that carriage over there?]

The Emperor and Conductor walked over to the far side of the carriage. The Emperor cocked his head and Conductor imagined his tentacles eagerly sampling the air as if they had minds of their own, which in a way, they did. She could feel the thoughts coming from beneath the carriage as well.

[A little to the right. Twist this wire, but not this one. Gods. I smell like smoke powder. Done. Hopefully the guards are still playing dice. I just have to stick to the shadows until the gate, and then I’m free. First pothole the carriage hits, and Ravengard will be done.]

Emperor gently probed around the edges of his mind, finding an inlet, and following the current deeper and deeper into his psyche. He transmitted the experience to Conductor, for his years of experience had given him skill and subtlety at reading thoughts that were hidden. The assassin was a student of poetic sagas at the Bard’s College, who had also, apparently, read “Baldur’s Gate and the Dialectics of Plunder.”  Years before, the  public hanging of a murderer who happened to be his brother had shown him the how fundamentally unfair the world was, and the city in particular. For the first time, he saw the gap between his merchant family, who were punished severely for his brother’s crimes, and the nobility, whose most heinous sins were ignored. In school, this sense of wrong was nurtured and hardened, and he found friends and allies, who fancied themselves  “of the people.”  Though some of them had tried to go out into the countryside to educate ‘people’ about the systemic injustice perpetuated against them, they had not received the warm reception they had expected: one had gotten eaten by goblins for his trouble, one got driven out of a peasant village with pitchforks, and one had decided to stay with the myconid fungus people indefinitely.  Then, the Absolute came, and desperate refugees driven to the protection of the city found themselves turned away, shut out, ridiculed, and rejected. Funneled into hard labor in the harbors, mines, foundries, the reality of the world and their place in it came into sharp focus, and the message of revolution began to sound ever more sweet.

As representatives of “The People”, the group of students had become ever more bold. Those at the top needed to feel the same fear that those at the bottom felt on a daily basis. They needed to feel unsafe in their homes and in their carriages, as if “The people” could take out any one of them next. They needed to know their power could be challenged, that they no longer held the monopoly on violence. Only then could real change happen.

The young elf slid out from beneath the carriage, hands readied in the gesture for an invisibility spell…and found himself staring up into the faces of Master and Mistress Korlit. He realized then that not only had he been caught, but that they had done something to him.

[Shit…..] and then [What? I can’t move my arms. I can’t move my legs. Help!]

 Conductor raised him into the air with a flick of her wrist and stared into his eyes. Though she still appeared to him as the plain but affluently dressed matron, he could tell she was not what she seemed.  Her eyes, for one thing, were too black.

She gazed into his mind again. He was…so young. He could have been a fine bard, or a scholar. His thoughts were good, his abilities were good. He had a sense of justice and morality, except for one thing. She found it curious that he thought about the Nobility of Baldur’s Gate the same way most people thought about Mindflayers. That they had no fond memories or hopes and aspirations for the future, no joys or sorrows, no families or friends who might mourn them. Nothing that was worth keeping.  She contrasted this with the way Mindflayers thought of people, and Drow thought of sun-dwellers. They weren’t entirely analogous. Most mindflayers thought of people as inferior beings with feelings that were usually inconsequential. They did not think of them as monsters or  hollow, valueless creatures. People were occasionally useful, and at least good to eat. Her voice echoed in his mind.

[How many ways there are to dehumanize others. Each different, but in the end they are all the same for the person whose humanity is stripped away.]

The man could not even scream in terror.

[If it is consolation, this is a quicker and more painless death than the gallows, though you probably would have liked the notoriety.]

Behind the man, the Emperor’s disguise flickered. His tentacles curled around the man’s chin, and his mouth wrapped around his skull. The Emperor’s eyes closed in pleasure at the thoughts and memories he was consuming. Such rage. Such righteous certainty washed over the Emperor’s whole being, making his skin prickle and his muscles shiver.  He reluctantly pulled his mouth away, cleaning his tentacles. He passed the body to Conductor, who enjoyed the remaining hemisphere. She opened a portal to somewhere unknown and dropped the body into it. As they walked out of the courtyard, the Emperor entered the mind of one of the dice-playing guards, inserting a sudden need to search the Archduke’s carriage for sabotage. As the illithids passed through the gate, they heard him remark to his friend.

“Did you hear something? I just got this weird feeling out of the blue like something was up over by Ravengard’s carriage.”

“I heard a sucking sound, but I just figured it was you about to lose another round,” his companion said, laughing at his own joke.

“I’m going to go check it out.”

The other guard replied shaking the cup of dice threateningly: “Sure, if it makes you feel better, but you cannot escape your fate.”

Well away form the uproar that was about to ensue, the Emperor turned to Conductor [The feeling after eating is always such bliss. I had been starting to feel dull around the edges.]

[I still struggle a little…with ending a life, with violently enjoying a living being’s innermost thoughts.]

[When I lived in the Absolute’s Hive, I had no regrets about feeding. I knew it was our nature to take pleasure in eating and to nourish ourselves. Then, Ansur rescued me from the Absolute.] There was much sorrow in the Emperor’s thoughts. He did not talk about Ansur often, and when he did, it was as if it was painful for him to dwell on the subject long enough for coherent thoughts to congeal. [Ansur loved Balduran. He taught…no…he made me remember that other creatures have feelings and inner complexity.  While he searched for a cure for my Illithidness, he…I mean…we, developed a moral code about who was acceptable to eat. They must be violent criminals, they must have had and rejected a chance to reform, and they must not be falsely accused.  Ansur noted that the sense of morality that he instilled in me was quick to degrade, but in general I still adhere to the rules we developed. With them I can allow myself to enjoy feeding.]

[Perhaps I should adhere to your code, then. I have limited my feeding to those who attacked me first, because that is what Dahamunzu would have done.  I admit that part of me dreads feeding because I understand why others want to kill me and at some level, I think they might be correct.  It is a strange feeling for a predator.]

[Do you regret what you have become?]

Conductor paused a moment and thought. [That is a complicated question. I do not regret what I am, but there is a list of things about what I am that I do regret. I suppose Dahamunzu would have also had such a list too, about being half-drow, had she thought of it much. I do not regret staying with you, and transforming was the only way for me to do that.]  A self-conscious warmth surged along her connection to the Emperor.

They walked through the city night, past a theater in which a play about the fall of House Oblodra was playing, into a square alight with mage-lights around the edges. Here, there was a fountain, featuring Balduran stoic and forward-looking among a bevy of smaller bronze sirens. Conductor could feel an undercurrent of embarrassment from the Emperor as he stared at the statue. He gave a slight nod, as if to brush away a train of thought, and turned to Conductor.

[You had mentioned you wished to build a library in part because remembering history might ensure that it did not happen again. That is wishful thinking. It is easy to look to the past for confirmation of what you already believe. This is especially true for those who are educated and confident in their own superiority, but it applies to others as well.]

[You are cynical!]

[The Dead Three seem to have an affinity for the city, and there have always been people here who want to follow them.] The Emperor shrugged. [That I think they will return is not cynicism, but a logical deduction.]

[I would still like to build a library. When Dahamunzu was small, her world was restricted to the lower city. There are bookstores there, but they were always out of reach for a child who did odd jobs for a handful of coppers. To see a document in Qualith or Tir’su, or to read a diary of a wizard who turned into a Phase Spider Matriarch…she would have loved that.]

[That particular sense of joy in the unknown is something I understand. Would you like to see one of my favorite places in the city?]

[Is it a place unknown to me?]

[I think it will bring you joy.]

He led Conductor through the rebuilt areas of the upper city, with their broad streets, to a small neighborhood seemed to have escaped the notice of both the Absolute and the restoration. The streets became narrow again, and grand, decaying houses rose up on either side of the street. They walked down a short stair between some buildings and found themselves on a narrow walkway that ran between the sheer walls of the houses on one side, and a precipitous drop into the sea on the other. Eventually, they emerged into a place which had once been a great park on a cliff, but which had now gone back to nature: overgrown and dramatic in the night. The elegant, slender silhouettes of trees stood stark against the deep blue of the moonlit sky, and the waves crashed on the rocks below them. Standing on the edge of the cliff, they looked down into a ruin at the level of the water. Brick retaining walls tamed the waves around a series of crumbling circular pools and large, jagged ruins of a once fine building.

[The old bath-house from the time of the first patriars. I remember that the walls were made of rock crystal of various colors, wrought in the the Underdark. They sparkled in the sun and in the flickering of mage lamps at night. I remember seeing by night from the deck of my ship and also from above on Ansur’s back.  I do not recall which of the calamities of the intervening years destroyed it, but even in ruins it is stunningly beautiful.]

[It is still grand. I cannot believe I had never heard of it before. Is there a way down? I suppose we could fly.]

[There is no need for that.]  said the Emperor, gesturing towards a narrow staircase. [The original descent was much more extravagant. This one has been built by the local fishermen who sometimes bring their catches up to the Upper City this way.]

The descent was much easier for beings that could levitate than it would have been otherwise, and the two Illithid made their way down the face of the cliff to the ruin below. The pools were completely vacant, except for the crabs which scuttled through the rocks and the bricks, and silent, but for the waves smashing against the retaining walls. The Emperor and Conductor removed their odd two-toed boots, and sat on the edge of one of the pools,  trailing their webbed feet into the water. Fragments of the crystal walls of the bathhouse shimmered on the bottom of the pool: green, blue, and magenta in the moonlight. Conductor grasped the Emperor’s much larger hand in her own and looked into his eyes. Her tentacles seemed to want to reach out for his, but she held them back.

[I have told you of my plans. What do you wish to do with wealth and power?]

The Emperor withdrew slightly, his eyes turning away from hers as he seemed to think about how to reply. Conductor had known him long enough to understand that this was how he behaved when he was afraid of how she might react. [Just say it. I will not stab you in the back and leave or accuse you of manipulating me.]

[Do you  remember what it was like to be connected to Lae’zel and Wyll and the others? Do you miss it?]

[I do, sometimes, but being connected to you is usually enough for me, and reconnecting with Gale as a person has been enjoyable to me.]

[I think of our relationship as less of a connection and more of a you-me, as if we are strongly bonded together, but I find myself longing to be part of something larger still.]

[Like a hive-mind?] Conductor felt she knew where this conversation might be going, and had started calculating possible outcomes to her responses, making an honest enumeration of the information which she was still lacking.  The last had bubbled up to the top as a thread of thought finished and then vanished.

[You should learn to control your thoughts better.] said the Emperor, with a small amount of sadness.

[And you should stop looking for betrayal. Such suspicion is beyond illogical at this point, because you know exactly how my mind works. Have I not committed to you?] Conductor was silent for a moment. [If you do not wish to start a colony, then what do you mean by ‘something larger still?’]

[I wish to be part of a network of equals.]

Conductor’s normally lively tentacles froze for a moment, and then an alien rumble burst from deep within her chest. Her laughter was normally limited to a twitch of the tentacles and a sparkle of the eye, and the Emperor started at the sound, which continued for what seemed like a long while. She put a hand on his shoulder, gradually regaining composure. [You want to start a family. Your big nefarious Mind-Flayer plan is to start a family.]

[…says the monster who wishes to build a public library. Illithid spawn up to twice over their lifetimes. My turn has come up once.]

[‘Your turn has come up.’ I suppose it has come up again now. That sounds romantic. Is the rest of this process equally titillating?] Conductor was slightly embarrassed that she did not actually know how the production of tadpoles happened. She glanced furtively down at her groin area, where there was…nothing at all anymore.

[We are hermaphroditic. We can…uhm…fertilize ourselves, or another can do it.]

[Who did it the first time, then? Should I be jealous?]

[In the colony under Moonrise Towers, the Elder Brain did it.]

[The Absolute? Gods.] It was hard to tell whether the feeling of abject terror came from her own imagination or from some echo of the Emperor’s memory slipping through the connection. She now knew what it must have meant to have one’s turn come up.

[It is of no consequence. I would like you to do it this time. Would you?]

[Yes….]

[You have some trepidation. Tell me.]

[I wish our offspring to have a chance to live freely in the open in this world. I do not want them to face the same hatred that we do. You have some talent with tadpole culture. Do you think it is possible for a tadpole have a more symbiotic relationship with its host?]

[This is a question that I have also spent some time considering, and I am certain that the answer is yes, and that the reason it has not happened yet is that our species has put its considerable intelligence towards ensuring that that does not happen.]

[Do you also want to ensure that it does not happen?]

[I would not want to deny our offspring their full potential as Illithid] He paused before continuing: [You have an extreme form of Partialism, and at the same time, you’re the most perfect Illithid I have ever known. Even when you were only half-transformed, you were stunning and powerful and brilliant. Yes. I think if a more symbiotic relationship between the tadpole and the host looks like you, that is a future worth working towards.]

If Illithid could blush, Conductor’s sharp cheeks would have been bright red. Her tentacles stretched out longingly for his of their own volition. A gentle question [May I?] appeared on their shared connection [Yes.]. He pushed himself into the pool, reaching for her waist, and pulling her in with him. She asked [You will show me what to do?]

[Of course, but it will come naturally to you.]

It was a clear night, and a field of stars stretched across the sky above the city of Baldur’s Gate.  In the High Hall, a masquerade ball had just begun to wind down. The space between songs was becoming longer and longer, and a steady stream of flamboyant and drunken aristocrats was being discharged into the streets.  The guards were on high alert, having found a smokepowder bomb beneath the archduke’s carriage, and a few splashes of blood that seemed to lead nowhere.

In a forgotten corner of the Upper City, at the bottom of a tall cliff, in the ruins of an ancient bathhouse, two figures lay in a crumbling pool of seawater. Their long limbs were intertwined. The pink tip of a tentacle gently caressed the cheek of a lover, and the moon glistened upon their silvery purple bodies.

Chapter Text

Only a few days after the masquerade ball, a courier arrived bearing a letter sealed with the Archduke’s signet.  The Emperor sliced through the seal with a claw and read the letter with his usual obtuse dignity. It contained an announcement of a new project to rebuild the aqueducts above Baldur’s Gate and the appointment of Master Balduran Korlit of the Lower City as the chief overseer and engineer of the project.  Though he was slightly annoyed at the first name that Ravengard had assigned him, Conductor could detect a current of excitement beneath the surface of his thoughts. This was a puzzle and a challenge for him: something to plan and organize. He folded up the letter, tucked it away, and set to work. He spent the next few days poring over the one ancient blueprint that had miraculously survived the Absolute—he had gone in person to fetch it from the High Hall. He would have to reconstruct the plans of the other damaged sites by observing the situation on the ground, and in order to do that, he would have to organize expeditions to the site. Perhaps he could enlist the help of the Gondians for the redesign.

Though his work on the aqueduct continued at what an outsider would consider great speed, the Emperor found himself tiring easily. His thoughts had a tendency to wander, to become interrupted by bursts of small half-baked thoughts that were not his own or Conductor’s, and which rudely interjected and bubbled to the surface.  This was in addition to the dry and itchy skin, the sore swelling in the back of his head, and the sudden onset of piercing hungers. His mood reflected his discomfort.

Such was the situation on the day when the Gnomish engineer, Zanner Toobin paid a visit to Philgrave Manor. The Emperor, disguised as “Master Korlit”, showed him into the large parlor which also served as his office. The old blueprint was spread across a large table.  Toobin was blind, but he could tell the age of the plan by the feel of the paper between his fingers. Through Master Korlit’s thorough descriptions, he formed a clear picture in his head of how at least one section of the aqueduct was constructed, and how it had been engineered to regulate the flow of water from the mountains to the city. Master Korlit’s precision and mastery of the details of the plan fascinated Toobin, and soon, the two of them were of deep into a discussion of various technical improvements that might be made.

 It was at that point that Toobin’s daughter arrived. The Emperor delegated several trains of thought to the plans and ushered her inside. Then, a shouting from within his head brought the Emperor’s mind to a near halt. The voices yelled half-formed words and returned answers to calculations that were never posed. They tried to divide by zero, and bombarded all of the Emperor’s thought processes with infinitely repeating syllables. The Emperor doubled over, putting his hand to his head in confusion. His disguise flickered and disappeared. Instead of the tall, middle-aged human Master Korlit, Obelia Toobin saw a great, slender, tentacled monster— towering over her oblivious father.  She screamed.

“Father! Get Away! He’s a Mindflayer!”

Taking advantage of the Emperor’s state, she rushed past him and grabbed her father, and shoved him through the door. Pulling him along, she ran panting through the street to their house.

Conductor was below supervising the construction of salt-water pool in the cellar when she felt the Emperor’s distress. Half-running and half-floating upstairs, she quickly realized what had happened.

[I shall handle this.]

[They know. They will have told half the city by now. We must leave.]

[Prepare then, but I do not think it will be necessary.]

[What do you intend?]

[Trust me. It is not in your nature, but trust me.]

The door of the Toobin house was unlocked, and Conductor let herself in. The house was dark. Her first impulse was that the Emperor had been correct. The Toobins had run to the Fists…but then she heard their thoughts. She felt both Gnomes upstairs, cowering beneath a bed.  She also sensed that they had left her some surprises around the house. So, she gingerly stepped around various exploding booby traps in the living room. Then, she sat down in an overstuffed chair, which was luxurious for a gnome, but comically small for a mindflayer.

“Zanner Toobin, Obelia, it is Mistress Korlit. I only want to talk with you for a moment. I will not eat you.”

No response.

“Master Korlit did not mean to frighten you. He has been ill and it is difficult for him to maintain a disguise.”

Silence.

“I shall wait here, then, until you are ready to come out.”

She crossed her legs and levitated a book over from a nearby shelf, turning its pages with a flick of her fingers. It was a collection of wordy parables set in a fantasy world about a demigod of average intelligence entitled “The Sermons of Vivec.” Her tentacles undulated in the air, testing it for thoughts and movement from upstairs.

An hour passed.

“If I had wanted to harm you, I would have done it by now. You can come out.”

… and another.

“What is the difference between the Gondians and the Iron-hand gnomes?”

Conductor felt surprise. Toobin was not expecting this line of conversation. Good.

“You have both aided the Dead Three, both of your factions would have aided in the destruction of the world and most of the beings in it. Descendants of both of your communities shall bear that stain. Are you both Evil?”

Conductor felt Zanner’s indignation. His people would not have built the Steel Watchers if they had not feared for their lives and if their families had not been held hostage by Gortash.

“Your gods are not evil. That cannot be the problem, then.  Before he became the leader of the Ironhand gnomes, I knew Barcus Wroot to be capable of caring for a man who showed him no respect or kindness in return. So, Ironhand gnomes are not all selfish. I also know that Zanner Toobin loves his daughter such that he refused to rebel against his Banite overseers while she remained trapped in Gortash’s prison beneath the sea. So, I know that individual Gondians are not evil.”

“Are you going to argue that not all Mindflayers are evil?” Queried Obelia.

“That would be a logical direction for me to take this, but no. I would not claim to be good, and I would not claim that Master Korlit is good, either.”

“There is a difference between not being good and being evil, though” Zanner observed.

“That is true, and why I chose the words I did.”

“Then why did you start this conversation?” Zanner Toobin had slipped out from beneath the bed. Obelia grabbed at his shirt, trying to pull him back under, but he gently touched the back of her hand and shook his head. The creature downstairs had not yet eaten them or attempted to mind control them. Had it wanted to do so, it would not have been stopped by an old wooden bed. He slowly made his way down the stairs.

“I started this conversation because it made you think on a subject other than the Mindflayer in your living room. Had I said what I wished to say, no matter how I had chosen to say it, you would have thought I was attempting to manipulate you. To be thought incapable of sincerity is one of our curses.”

“How do we know that you are not trying to make us pity you so that we do what you want”, said Obelia, who had crept down the stairs behind her father.

“You have illustrated my point. You cannot be sure, Obelia. But then again, you cannot be sure that anyone is completely sincere. There comes a time when you must simply take a leap of faith…or not.”

A nagging feeling had been bothering Zanner more and more over the last hour.  He was a man who lived by recognizing sounds, and he had heard this mindflayer’s voice before. He was certain it was the mindflayer who had given a speech among the ruins of the High Hall before leading a band of adventurers to fight the Absolute. Come to think about it, that Mindflayer’s voice had bothered him as well. He had forgotten about it because lord knows he had had other things to worry about at the time. He had remembered thinking that the mindflayer at the High Hall had a voice similar to that of a woman he had known, who, along with her companions, had saved the Gondians from Gortash and helped them to destroy the foundry where they had been enslaved. He took a leap of faith.

“Do you remember who you were before you were a Mindflayer?”

“I was a half-drow named Dahamunzu Silverclode.”

“And how do I know you?” He steeled his mind against any probes, but felt nothing.

“You were familiar with the work of Dahamunzu’s mother, the jeweler Tiaa Silverclode. She consulted with you for several of her designs because of your ingenuity with clockwork. Dahamunzu was five at the time,” she added. “She remembered you when she met you under much worse circumstances at the Steel Watch foundry, and was sad for the situation you found yourself in.  She led the expedition to rescue Obelia from the Iron Throne prison.”

“She?”

“I am not Dahamunzu, but I was her. I have all of her memories.”

“From what I’ve read of Mindflayers, and experienced” Zanner shuddered, “that is unusual.”

“It is almost unheard of.” Conductor was suddenly curious about what Zanner had experienced. “Did you have a friend who transformed?”

“Not a friend, I mean, I considered Dahamunzu a friend, but the person who transformed before me was not a friend. He was a Fist who was leading some people to safety. I hear gruesome sounds as he transformed: the tearing of flesh, cracking of bones. I remember the people the Fist had been protecting moments before suddenly screaming and begging it not to attack them.”

“We are compulsively hungry when we first transform, and then for some time after. It is hard for us to control at first. Your Fist had lost all of its memories and probably had the Absolute comforting it and assuring it of its superiority over everything around it. The Absolute was probably soothing any reservations it had about eating the people it found around it.”

“I almost pity it now.”

“Then you are a good man, for it would have shown no pity to you, as it showed none to those around it.”

“Do you think it could have been capable of pity? Are you?”

“If it had been free from the Absolute, or free from Illithid culture, and depending on its experience with other species. Such emotions do not come naturally to us because of the way we think, but we are capable of them if the right conditions are met for long enough.”

“Who would have thought I’d go from cowering beneath the bed to spending the evening discussing nature versus nurture with a Mindflayer. When you say that the way you think makes it difficult to experience some emotions, what do you mean?”

“I can show you if you like…. a simplified version as I do not want to hurt you.”

“Father,” interjected Obelia, who remembered Dahamunzu but was unconvinced. Mistress Korlit(?)  was after all, a Mindflayer, and Mindflayers lie and manipulate. “It is going to eat you or thrall you or worse. Your intellectual curiosity is going to get us both killed!” But Zanner had already felt his way down the stairs and walked towards Conductor’s voice.

“I don’t think this one will. I don’t think it intends to hurt us….and, Mindflayer, I am curious.”

Conductor stretched out an arm and placed her hand on Zanner’s head, over his ears and the cloth which covered his unused eyes. She closed hers and gently grasped his mind, tugging it gently under the surface of her own consciousness.

Zanner Toobin’s world expanded. He sat atop a great tree, each branch and leaf its own world of thoughts and memories and emotions. They were coordinated, directed and sequenced by Conductor—a being fused with the consciousness of the half-drow he knew as Dahamunzu. Conductor itself was fragmented and dispersed throughout the tree, amidst the memories and thought-power of the beings upon which had fed. Though the tree itself was finite, each leaf and branch was so complicated and complete in and of itself, he felt as if he was staring into eternity.  And the result was that he, and every other individual consciousness, was small almost to the point of being insignificant. It was all so vast and deep and overwhelming that he thought he might be terrified to the point of a mental breakdown if Conductor were not filtering it, simplifying it, and interpreting it for him. He found Conductor fascinating as well: the fact it had a personality was almost counterintuitive amidst this overwhelming expanse. He could sense that Conductor was conflicted and internally inconsistent and very much driven by Dahamunzu’s memories, but it had forged for itself its own consciousness separate from Dahamunzu’s or any of the parts of the tree below it.

Conductor let Zanner Toobin’s mind go, placing it softly back where it belonged.

Zanner staggered back: “That was terrifying. Wondrous. Terrifying. Thank you.”

“I hope there are no adverse effects.”

“I don’t think so. So, I do not understand. Why did your partner (Should I say mate?) enlist my help at all? It could have just designed the aqueduct itself.”

“We are both partners and mates. He respects your expertise and wants your insight into how the pumping mechanism on the aqueduct might be improved for the future.”

“Why not just eat me and integrate my expertise into that vast tree?”

“Simply put, Dahamunzu grew up here. The person my partner used to be came from here as well. We are both invested in the future prosperity of the city and its people, and that requires that we live here and that we have a moral code about who we eat. In addition, we can appreciate thoughts whose control is outside of our domain.”

Obelia seemed to have gotten more comfortable but remained skeptical. “Father, you must tell her that you will not continue with this project. Think about what happened with Gortash and the Steel Watch. He drew you in by appealing to your intellectual curiosity and kept you by imprisoning half of our people while the other half worked on his abominations.”

“Indeed.” Said Zanner. “The legacy of what I and those under me did for Gortash will weigh heavily upon me for the rest of my life, and I fear repeating the mistake again. You will give me some time to think about whether to continue to aid you.”

“I understand that.” Said Conductor. “I have trusted you and shared with you my greatest secrets. May I trust that neither of you will reveal them?”

“Do you swear on behalf of yourself and the other to not kill or mind-control the Gondians of Baldur’s Gate?” Interjected Obelia.

Conductor consulted with the Emperor momentarily: “That is something we can do.”

“Then you remain Master and Mistress Korlit, humans of the lower city” said Zanner, and I will consider collaborating with you.

Conductor returned to Philgrave manor to find the parlor disturbed. Papers were strewn across the floor. Including the plans for the founding of a small but elegant library next to the Society of Brilliance. The Emperor had hidden this carefully from her, and she was touched. Her minds were filled with warmth towards him.  She would pretend she had not seen them.

The Emperor slumped shirtless at his desk, head in hands. His skin was normally shinny but was now dull and dry. His back and neck were covered in furious deep gray scratches that he had made while trying to relieve the itching. Two empty brain jars were turned on their sides beneath his chair, the remains of their liqueur seeping into the floor.

[Come] She said.

[I do not require your help], snapped the Emperor.

Conductor ignored him, lifting his arm over her shoulder and part levitating part walking them both upstairs to a wooden frame filled with damp moss that served as his bed. Placing him down in it, she dug through a nearby drawer, drawing out a pot of herbal lotion she had purchased shortly after she had become Illithid. Even though it wasn’t made for Illithids specifically, it could cool and dampen dry skin and she hoped it might provide him with some relief. As he sat there, she rubbed it into his body, which normally supple and slippery, but was now almost scaly. She asked affectionately, but with some sarcasm:

[How did you manage to get through this the first time?]

The Emperor clutched his head and psychically muttered something disjointed and nonsensical, then:

[The Colony was very efficient. Breeding individuals spent most of the incubation period in steam baths. The Elder Brain could dampen the little voices.]

[A steam bath would be lovely. I can hear the stray thoughts sometimes through our connection. They are loud, but not fully formed. They stop in the middle and make incorrect calculations.]

[They learn as they grow. It would be entertaining if it were not so disruptive.]

[What will happen when you spawn?]

[In the colony at least, we laid the eggs alone in small brine pools, gathering them and presenting them to the Elder Brain in its pool.]

As if offering to a god, Conductor thought.

[Then we went back to our duties in the colony, though if those duties involved tending eggs, we were temporarily reassigned.]

[Why?]

[The Elder Brain eats the eggs and the tadpoles which hatch from them. The Egg Tenders nurture the eggs and shield the ones with superior traits from the Elder’s predations. You can understand the complications which would arise from letting a breeder select their own offspring for survival.]

[This time, you will have full control.]

[I will enjoy it.]

She climbed into the moss behind him, pressing her damp body against his, wrapping her arms and tentacles around him as he slowly relaxed himself.

Some of the workers that Conductor had hired to dig the large pool in the basement of the Philgrave House had wondered what it might be for, and Conductor had led them to the thought that they’d had weirder requests in a city populated by Shar-worshippers, necromancers, vampires, murder cultists and eccentric wizards. They figured perhaps Master Korlit might want a place to swim in private—which was adjacent to the truth. So, they excavated the pool according to the detailed design, divided it up into subsections, and excavated a further small furnace that could be used to create a steam-bath.  Then, they filled it with salt-water, took their (generous) pay, and left.  

Some six months after the masquerade ball, the Emperor and Conductor waded into the pool together.  He had told her this was something she did not have to help with, but she insisted. The Emperor laid across her legs in the water and she held him in her arms as her tentacles drew out the long strands of eggs emerging from from the growth at the back of his head. Each string she fixed to the wall of the pool. When they were finally done, and she sat back and admired her work. The eggs rippled in the waves, glistening like strands of pearls.

The Emperor sat up and levitated them both out of the pool. As the stood on the edge, he put an arm around her waist. One of his long tentacles reached for and curled around one of her shorter ones. Conductor spoke.

[Dahamunzu would have found this all so alien and grotesque, but it is not. It felt…natural. Warm.]

[The Illithid of Moonrise Colony would not have recognized the process either. I do not know of any other Illithid who have treated it so…sentimentally.]

[You have been just as sentimental as I, if not more so.]

[Indeed. I did not think myself capable of these sorts of emotions, but I have been surprising myself more and more lately.]

Chapter Text

The Emperor stared into a large pool full of salt-water, watching silvery tadpoles swim in circles. Sometimes they twitched their tails in a stately fashion, sometimes, they seemed to sashay around the edge of the bowl.  He listened to their little thoughts. This one thought only of eating, and that one dreamt vaguely of sailing a starry expanse. Another one revelled in calculation. None of them had particularly deep thoughts—they were as yet one-dimensional creatures (well, except for the one that was inverting matrices for fun).  They were only a few weeks old.

The tadpoles had hatched after months of meticulous care. The Emperor and Conductor went to the cellar several times a day and aerated the strands of eggs by gently lifting them and letting them fall back again. The Emperor sometimes even spoke to them, reading them various contracts and invoices, telling them of his current plots and schemes. It was not at all sentimental, of course. He hoped they might start to learn even within their eggs. Gradually, the eggs had become translucent, revealing tiny, swirling black tadpoles who broke free of their soft shells to swim in and amongst the forest of broken eggs and strands of mucus. He and Conductor moved them to an adjacent, clean pool.

From there, the Emperor had taken over. He had in fact tended the tadpoles under Moonrise towers, and later on the Nautiloid and in the Astral Prism.  He knew which ones to pair together so that their thoughts resonated off of each other. He knew how to group them to best encourage them to teach and condition each other. He knew how to spot the ones that would not survive and to preemptively discard them, or to place them where they would be consumed by the others. He spent much time thinking of which traits he ought to encourage, and which to discourage or weed out.  There were over two-thousand tadpoles in all, and most would not survive.

Today, he was conducting a little experiment. The Emperor caught ten tadpoles at random, snatching their tiny tails in his long fingers, and dropping them into a large copper basin. He separated a train of thought into ten separate ones, acting on their own, but in concert, each connecting to one of the tadpoles swimming around the basin.

[Hello] The threads of thought said.

[Greetings] The tadpoles replied.

[You will do as I say.]

Only half of the tadpoles assented.

[Go left; Go right; Go straight….] Each tadpole was ordered to swim in a different direction. Five obeyed. Two did the opposite, and three said:

[No.]

The Emperor separated these out and tried a little bit harder this time. The tadpoles were not asked to obey, they were compelled to obey. The three that had previously refused pushed back on the Emperor, giving him a feeling not unlike a tiny electrostatic shock in the forehead. The Emperor set the three aside and went to test the remaining tadpoles in larger numbers. Perhaps this ability to push back on the commands of a superior was something that arose naturally but rarely in Illithid Tadpoles. Such an ability would have certainly been weeded out by the Elder Brain in the past. Then again, maybe Conductor had passed Orpheus’ ability to resist psionic commands on to their offspring. He would have to consider whether to encourage or eliminate this phenotype. The prospect of offspring that could never be enslaved or deprived of their mental and physical autonomy thrilled him, and his own bias could easily lead to mistakes and irrational thinking, so he must take care. But his tadpoles—they could become free Illithids!

[You have been quite thoughtful] said Conductor, descending the cellar stairs and gazing at the tadpoles in the basin, and then at the larger, teeming pool. [So, you think these have inherited Orpheus’ power?]

[Perhaps. Or perhaps they have developed it on their own.] Though his broadcast thought was sedate, a barely perceptible undercurrent of excitement ran beneath it.

Conductor scooped up a tadpole, cupping her hands. It tried to squirm away. She bored into it with her eyes, commanding it to stay. Defiantly, it bit her and jumped back into the basin. She laughed. [Or maybe they have instead inherited your strong personality, Emperor.]

[I could not have wished for better luck. I will have to observe the trait further, but if there are no deleterious traits linked with the resistance, I will select for it. Think on it! They will be able to choose to obey a leader or not, rather than being compelled to do it. They will have agency.]

Conductor thought of all the times the Emperor had told her about life under the Absolute. He rarely told her directly that he had lived in fear of being discovered as a partial Illithid, but his allusions to it had made clear that this fear was pervasive and constant. That the Absolute might at any time poke around in the wrong location, or dive deeply and thoroughly into the far recesses of his consciousness or glimpse a stray uncontrolled thought. She had never known this sort of fear, but part of her felt a flutter of delight in the Emperor’s happiness.

[They will be able to choose to adhere to a moral code or not, as we can. As the Gith do. It is a good thing for the future of our species, I think.] Conductor’s fears did not lie with a hypothetical Ulitharid or Elder Brain, but with the horrors she had personally experienced: the vengeance of the Githyanki and more immediately, the distrust and hatred of humans, elves, and smaller folk. [Have you thought any more about my request? The one I made that night at the ruined baths? I want our offspring to be able to live freely among the people of the city without being hated for what they are. I want them to be as I was when I was half transformed.]

[We are on the cusp of a new generation of Illithid, and you would make them less of what they are? You would limit their minds and consciousnesses?]

[Maybe the limitation would help them to see others as their equals and not as trivial points of information to be manipulated and dominated. You wish to give them agency. I wish to make empathy easier for them, and dominance and manipulation less of a temptation.] There was a rising anger in Conductor’s thoughts. She had trusted the Emperor when he had assented to her request, and he seemed to be backing away from their bargain.

[That is a delicate way of saying that you consider us to be evil as we are. I have seen how you enjoy your power and intelligence. Surely you do not regret the decision that you made to transform. Yet you would have our offspring be less powerful and intelligent than you are now in hopes that the people of this world will accept them. They will not. They cannot even accept species that look like them. A person with your past should know this.]

[What Dahamunzu faced as a half-drow is nothing compared to the distrust—the assumption of ill intentions that we face every day. If changing their appearance only made it so that they were not immediately treated like monsters, it would be enough.]

[To the people of this world and to its gods, we will always be soulless husks and unfeeling monsters as long as we have Illithid traits and ancestry. A change in appearance would only be a temporary reprieve—another way to hide. And in the meantime, our offspring would be too mentally limited foresee danger and to plot the best course away from it, and too psionically weak to defend themselves.]

[Then you do not intend to fulfill your promise?]

[You are insecure about what you are, and I will not prevent our offspring from reaching their full potential because of your regrets.]

[Then…you lied to me at the bathhouse. You told me that though I was partial, I was still a perfect Illithid. You said you would be willing to select for tadpoles that were more like me. You used me for my power.] Conductor was angry, but there was hurt and betrayal in her voice as well.

 She felt her anger growing into a psionic storm which raised motes of dust from the corners of the room and caused distressed insects to scurry for their holes in the walls. She envisioned the bronze basin of tadpoles shattering in the Emperor’s hands, spilling its contents across the floor in a flood of spasming tadpoles and shorn metal.

The thought was broadcast and imprinted on the Emperor’s mind. The basin trembled on its stand, and the Emperor spread his tentacles over it protectively, a shocked look on his face. He hissed at Conductor [Get out!]

Conductor swallowed her rage with a sigh. [This. This is what I want to get rid of. This compulsion to manipulate and use and deceive. I do not want them to be like you.] Her eye lingered on the basin and then on the Emperor, and she turned and floated out of the cellar.

That night, the Emperor dreamed of Ansur, though to say it was a dream would not be quite correct. It was a memory that had been fragmented and buried in the depths of multiple rarely used thought processes. It wiggled loose and floated to the top of the Emperor’s subconsciousness as he slept alone in a nest of moss next to the tadpole pools.

Balduran sat in the Wyrmway across from Ansur. Balduran had taken to sleeping in the old folly because it was damp and cool, and because it was near a convenient food source. Those were the days before he washed away his old name in the subterranean pools along with blood red and silver. Before he left the Wyrmway for what he had hoped was forever.

He watched Ansur read a letter he had spent much time in writing, explaining his feelings (or lack thereof) for his old friend on paper in a way that was solid and tangible. The letter explained Balduran’s desire to remain Illithid and how he had come to be at peace with his new self. When the Dragon folded the letter with resignation and looked up at him, he knew he had made a grave miscalculation. The dragon’s normally jovial eyes were cold.

“You are no longer “my” Balduran, Mindflayer. My Balduran, the real Balduran, would never have wanted to be a monster.”

“I am changed, but I am still the same…except I am better. There is no boundary between my body and mind. The world is so deep, so saturated.”

“And you got this at the cost of your soul, your capacity for empathy, your capacity for love, your sense of morality. Was it worth that?”

“I have never been the man you wanted me to be, Ansur. The man you’ve been trying to make me be again. These statues,” he gestured behind him “were always a fantasy for both of us. We did not know what it was to be truly tested and our egos told us stories of how we might react.”

“They were no fantasy to me, Mindflayer, or to Balduran, who was a hero both noble and just.”

“Do you know what happened on my final voyage?   I threw a sorcerer overboard because I thought he’d cursed my ship, and then I abandoned my crew. I was a bastard, but you never doubted that I could feel love and empathy then. And I still can feel love and empathy. They just…feel different now.”

“You said yourself that you cannot feel the way you did before.  Millennia of Illithids enslaving and enthralling others confirm that you are not capable of compassion or empathy. How many species are corrupt and evil because the mindflayers have forged them in oppression? How many thralls have your people tortured and forced to do unspeakable things for your enjoyment? That will be you. That will be your offspring. Your very nature is evil and deceitful.”

“Ansur, I do not have to be those mindflayers.”

“You already are. I offered you redemption and you threw it in my face. No, monster-who-was-Balduran, you are not special. Do you not eat the brains of sentient beings? Have you not meddled in my affairs in the city? Have you not lied about loving me? Have you lied about your memories too? Have you been lying all this time about helping to find a cure?”  

Ansur continued “Do not answer. I don’t want to hear your deceit. I have turned you loose and you are my responsibility. You tell me to fly, but I cannot. This is my city and I protect it. I will protect it, even from you.” He turned and walked away.

Balduran waited for Ansur’s return. He knew what would happen, of course, and he dreaded it. Ansur would come and would placate him with words of reconciliation, speaking of old times with false levity in his voice. He would offer Balduran a strong drink, laced with anesthetic, which Balduran would pretend to drink. Then,Balduran would pretend to go to sleep, his friend watching over him.

He must hide his sword beneath the moss of his bed to defend himself! But where was it? Ansur would arrive at any moment, and the miserable events of the night would begin. He searched the Wyrmway, thinking of other weapons he might use to defend himself against the Dragon. He could not even find a rock, and his psychic powers were useless. As much as he called on the power that was usually there in his mind, he could get no answer. He heard footsteps on the stairs, passing the first of the ridiculous statues, and he began to panic.

Arms gripped his waist and across his chest, holding him tightly. He struggled against it, thinking it was Ansur, having come in silently behind him to quickly cut his throat.  A tentacle caressed his shoulder. What was Conductor doing in the Wyrmway? Was she there to kill him, too? She held him, stroking his shoulder and the back of his head, probing at his mind, asking to be let in, asking to comfort him.

[You have been thinking on the dragon again. I shall be your sword against him should you need me. We are bonded, even in dreams, you know, and though you have never wished to share these memories with me, I can feel how it still hurts you. I forget sometimes that you have tried to be more human and that it only led to betrayal.]

He yielded to her, relaxing in her grasp, and letting her consciousness wash over him, falling backwards into the expanse of her mind. He let the Wyrmway and Ansur fall away from him, into a small, marble-like object that could be studied, analyzed. He gazed at it, rolling it in the palm of his hand.

[I could not make Ansur understand me, and even if I could, he would have thought I was trying to manipulate him. For him, I could never be myself and a mindflayer because mindflayers were by definition evil and Balduran was in his mind lawful and good.] His next thought had a bitterness about it [After years of trying to hide Balduran from the Elder Brain, I embraced him for Ansur and tried to hide my Illithid-ness. At first, it was liberating, but I realized that I could never be what Ansur wanted as long as any of the Illithid remained.] He paused for a moment and then continued [Come to think of it, I never really understood Ansur, even when I was Balduran.]

[That he could be cruel in his certainty about what was right and wrong? That he refused to see complexity or nuance? Oh, Emperor. I noticed this within a few seconds of meeting him when he assumed I was your thrall and not deserving of bodily autonomy.]

[It was easy for you to see. You never knew his good side. He always knew the right thing to do, but he was always so joyful and curious. He and Balduran…they had such adventures.]

[Well, he was wrong about you. You have done more for this city even as a Mindflayer than he ever did, even if sometimes your intentions have not been wholly altruistic. You have never been a monster.]

[I know that. And as for altruism, Are anyone’s intentions ever completely altruistic?]

Conductor seemed to be trying to find an example of someone who did good without being at least a little bit selfish. Her tentacles curled in amusement, her minds voice echoed and faded and the Emperor was alone in his dream.  No longer in the Wyrmway, but at sea on a quiet night, he drifted beneath the stars and moons. In the real world, Conductor lay on a mat on the third floor of Philgrave house, fast asleep, with Us nestled in her arms and tentacles.

The next morning, she found the Emperor at his desk, working on one of the new designs to replace the broken sections of the aqueduct. He had received a very terse letter from Zanner Toobin that the Gondians had considered his proposal, and that all things considered, they had decided to work with the Korlits to redesign the branches of the aqueduct which had been destroyed by Ketherick’s armies and which could not be rebuilt from the original blueprints. Toobin acknowledged that there was no chance of outsmarting the Emperor or Conductor, and so this cooperation was to be based on trust. There was to be no mind-control or telepathy under any circumstances.

The Emperor was greatly relieved, and was excited to share the news with Conductor, but first, they had unfinished business. The Emperor halted all of his thought processes and turned in his chair to face her as she floated in the doorway.

[You feel like you were betrayed, but I did not ever intend to use you for Orpheus’ power. It would have been unwise and overly risky to jeopardize our alliance for a trait I did not know was heritable. In my excitement over finding that it was, I did not wish to fulfill my promise to you. This was foolish of me, and irrational. Perhaps you would be willing to discuss the details of what you envision for the tadpoles, in hopes that we might find points of agreement?]

[Is this an apology?]

[If you choose to interpret it as one.]

[In that case, I will. Let me clarify my request and reframe it in a way that might be more appealing to you. I feel as if Conductor and Dahamunzu exist in a sort of symbiotic relationship at the level of our consciousness.  Dahamunzu is integrated into the expanse of Conductor’s mind and power. As for Conductor, I suppose the relationship is beneficial to her in the sense that Dahamunzu is bad enough at being a stereotypical mindflayer that it has dissuaded people from killing us both on multiple occasions. Also, I know for certain that your similar relationship with Balduran is why you are still alive, Emperor.]

[Perhaps coexistence with the host is advantageous for a mindflayer without the power of a hivemind and the protection of a cohort of other mindflayers. It is an interesting theory.]

[Indeed, and I have another. Remember when Minthara and I consumed the Astral Tadpole and partially transformed. Our teeth were blackened. Our veins ran with blood the color of tarnished silver. Our eyes were obsidian…and in a city beset by diseases and curses and inhabited by all manner of sentient creature, nobody cared. Minthara and I had a conversation with a mindflayer hunter who was none-the-wiser to what we were. Then we broke into his secret basement and stole his books.  Were you in that body, but with your current consciousness, you might stand at Ravengard’s side, a curious but welcome participant in city governance. You might be the adventurer again rather than the creature the adventurer inevitably tries to kill.]

[My current consciousness has no desire to adventure again, as you know.]

[I do, but you like a puzzle, Emperor, and you like your autonomy. Imagine if our offspring could choose their hosts and be accepted willingly? Imagine if they could choose whether to transform fully or remain as a half illithid, as I had the ability to chose? Would such self-determination not be beneficial for them as free Illithids?]

[You are trying to manipulate me, and without finesse, Conductor.]

Conductors tentacles twitched as they always did when she chuckled [On the contrary, I can tell from your thought patterns that I am doing a good job of it.]

The Emperor continued: [Your tadpole was infused with Netherese magic, which made your transformation subject to the command of the Absolute when it it would have otherwise occurred naturally within a few days. If I was to reverse engineer the magic that infused your tadpole, it might be possible for the host to issue the command to transform instead of the Elder-Brain. Assuming I could do this, though, we have none of the netherese tadpoles to experiment on, and even if we did, Netherese magic is exceedingly rare. I do not know if any of the tadpoles survived the destruction of the city. As you know, the source of the magic, the Crown of Karsus, has been given to Mystra and is beyond our reach.]

[The person who gave it to Mystra is not, though. Gale knows more about the Crown and Netherese magic than anyone save Shar or Mystra herself. Perhaps he could find some way to replicate what was done to the tadpoles but using the Weave. The harder problem seems to me to be forcing the tadpoles towards a symbiotic relationship with the host.]

[It is not] said the Emperor. [They only need strong encouragement. At least, that is all yours needed.]

[Then, it is settled. I will write Gale, and you…what do you intend to do?]

[You ask me so you may confirm my commitment. That is fair. I intend to continue to separate the tadpoles with your power and to observe their other traits and behaviors. I will also initiate attempt to start training them to coexist with other threads of thought. And Conductor, I have a favor I would ask of you.]

[What is it?]

[ Do you still keep in contact with the Mindflayer Omeluum of the Society of Brilliance?]

[Not since before the battle with the Absolute. I remember that it left the city for the Underdark shortly before the city was attacked.]

[That was wise of it.] Thought the Emperor solemnly. [The Absolute would have killed it, but on the slim chance it survived, the citizenry would have finished it off. It did not seem to be a fighter.]

[It is a scientist, along with its partner, Blurg the Hobgoblin.]

[Indeed. That is why I wish to consult with it. But since I never met it directly, I was wondering if you might formally introduce us.]

Omeluum lay on a bed of moss beneath a glowing mushroom. Blurg laid nearby on his back, mouth open, snoring loudly. Omeluum considered planting an urge to roll over in his head and thought better of it. It was mainly concerned for the Hobgoblin’s comfort as it could isolate auditory processing in another train of thought and ignore the snoring. It opened a book on psychoactive properties of fungal spores, and ran its tentacles over the pages, feeling the subtle ductus of the ink on the paper and assembling the strokes into words. Reading was so much faster this way than via the sight of words on a page. Suddenly, it felt a tingling in the back of its mind, a sort of probing that seemed to be coming from far away. The presence felt familiar, but Omeluum could not quite put a tentacle on why.

Then it remembered. The presence felt warm like the half-drow woman with the strange tadpole. The one who had spoken kindly to Omeluum and rescued it from the Iron Throne prison. If she was talking to it like this, she must have undergone Ceremorphosis. A pity. All of her friends seemed to be trying so hard to avoid it. Omeluum cautiously touched the probing consciousness, guiding it into the outer levels of its own consciousness and requesting to be granted the same access to hers. It asked:

[Who are you?]

It replied [I am Conductor. I was once Dahamunzu Silverclode, an Adventurer. She knew you.]

Omeluum’s consciousness intertwined with the incoming thought and saw a picture of a small Illithid with short tentacles, piercing black eyes, and the wrong number of fingers.

[I remember Dahamunzu well. It was the consensus of the society of Brilliance that Dahamunzu had died fighting the Absolute, and when I learned it, I felt loss.] Omeluum took her mind in, sampling the trivial thoughts which floated by. It could feel her doing the same with its own, though more tentatively as if she had had little contact with others of her own kind. [I am glad that I may now number you among my kin, Conductor. But what of Dahamunzu’s companions? The Githyanki woman and the Elf who was certainly not a Vampire, and the Wizard, and others? Did they also transform?]

[No. Their tadpoles died with the Absolute, and they continued their lives. Dahamunzu chose to transform before the battle with the Absolute.]

[You are very…stable. Excuse me if I offend, but young Illithids are very volatile in their emotions and in their hunger. They need to be taught control and they do not survive long outside of a hive. And you seem too unusual to survive long inside of a hive. You are not alone, I think.]

Omeluum caught an image of Conductor staring at her five fingered hands with amusement in her eyes. She tucked her small fingers beneath their neighbor to conceal them. [It is very obvious isn’t it? That my Ceremorphosis was partial? You are perceptive, though. I have not been alone. One of the reasons that I have contacted you is to introduce you to the Emperor, who has been my ally.]

Omeluum, still in the peripheries of Conductor’s mind, sensed another presence there, imposing but also secretive and cautious. Omeluum’s immediate impression was that this mind felt more Illithid than Conductor’s mind did, but as Omeluum brushed against the  edges of this new consciousness, it noted a very subtle nervousness that it would have missed if it had not been for personal experience. Here was another partial Illithid, but this one was very much accustomed to hiding its abnormalities from others. Omeluum recalled something else as well. It had felt this presence before when it had examined Dahamunzu’s tadpole, he thought he had felt the signature of another Illithid. It was almost imperceptible, intertwined with whatever magic pulsed around the tadpole and prevented it from transforming.

[You were traveling with Dahamunzu and her companions the entire time, weren’t you?]

[I hid myself from you well.] returned the Emperor. [Good. Our first meeting was unforeseen. It would have jeopardized my plans had you discovered me.]

[Which were?]

[To gain my freedom by destroying the Absolute.]

There was an Illithid plan if there ever was one. Intricately complicated and grandiose for completely self-centered purposes. He supposed he ought to be grateful the Emperor’s plan for emancipating himself happened to involve saving the world and everyone in it. [And Dahamunzu. Did she know about you?]

[She suspected what I was long before I revealed myself. But that is not what I wish to discuss with you. I have a project in mind for the benefit of myself and Conductor, in which you may find interest as a scientist. I would like to commune with you face-to-face in order to discuss it.]

It was interesting, thought Omeluum privately, that The Emperor included Conductor in his plotting, and that she seemed to assent. When he mentioned her name, there was a certain warmth and protectiveness wound around his thoughts that Omeluum, who had known many Illithids, was not at all expecting. Omeluum wondered wistfully if its people might finally be evolving.  It thought of Blurg and wondered how he was sleeping. It delegated a thought process to check on his breathing; to ensure he was sleeping comfortably. It supposed it would meet with the Emperor. It would feel good to see Conductor again, and it was certainly curious about how it had managed to miss the presence of another mindflayer, and about why Dahamunzu chose to undergo Ceremorphosis, if indeed she had chosen it.

[I will be in the Underdark with the Myconids, should you choose to visit. Blurg and I are quite busy with our research, but Conductor’s case has always been fascinating and puzzling to me, so I expect yours will be worth my time as well. I would welcome a visit from both of you.]

Chapter Text

A small group of Gnomes made their way through the rolling hills above Baldur’s gate on a winding trail that never seemed to end. At their head was a very tall half-elf with gray hair. Though he carried a long staff, he moved with such grace that he seemed almost to float, even on the rough trail.  In the distance was the object of this excursion. Over hills filled with dry brown scrub worthy of the name the Fields of the Dead, wound the Baldur’s Gate aqueduct like a great black snake.

Closer to the aqueduct, the scrub was burnt away and the remains of tents and burnt bodies littered the ground. From the hill on which the small party walked, these remains of Ketherick’s army of the Absolute looked like so many files strewn over the gray ground.

“You did not have to come, father” said Obelia Toobin as she helped her father scramble over a rock. “You should not have.”

“I am the leader,” said Zanner. “I was the one who agreed to a deal with him. My presence sends the message that it is safe, and if it is not, well I am here to take responsibility.”

“Why did you agree to work with him?”

“Look at the Ironhands, Obelia. They served Sarevok Anchev centuries ago and they are still shunned for it. Between that and their own infighting, they can’t even live in the city anymore. We are gnomes living in a place of men and elves. We must always be proving that we are loyal. So, if we see the opportunity to do good for the city, we must do it…especially if it is something that people will notice. “

“I have always known this, but did we have to work with a…” she lowered her voice to a whisper “…Mind flayer? Surely there was another project we could have worked on?”

“Hmmm. Probably. But as I said to the other Gondian elders, the need to fix the aqueduct is obvious.  You know as well as I do that the city sewers empty into the Chionthar. So did Elturel’s upstream before it got sucked into the abyss. If the aqueduct isn’t repaired, there is no question whether there will be plague. It is just a matter of what kind and when. That the only person with power willing to see this is a Mind flayer is even more alarming. Obelia, we Gondians have the skills required to rebuild it better than it ever was.

“Do you think anyone else in the crew knows what he is?”

“No. They certainly think he is strange. Some of them think he is a sorcerer.”

“Gond willing, it will stay that way. He plays the sorcerer well.”

The tall half-elf stopped and turned backward, walking towards Obelia and Zanner. He stopped next to them. He spoke somewhat awkwardly, like a man who was not used to speaking. Certainly, organizing consensual labor was something new to him.

“Ahead, the trail is overgrown, and it is necessary to clear it. Since you are the leader, Master Toobin, I will let you select someone to do it. That red-haired woman in the back with the machete is capable.”

“Poppy.” Sighed Zanner. “Her name is Poppy.” He turned and commanded: “Poppy, could you clear up the brush ahead of us?”

“Why can’t the sorcerer do it? Just throw a fireball at it.” Poppy laughed and put down the tube of blueprints she was carrying that must have been three times her size and unstrapped the machete from her back.

The half-elf looked incredulous. “Is she really so dim? The whole hill would go up in flames.”

“I suspect she is just being difficult,” said Zanner.

Poppy hacked through the brush and returned to her tube of blueprints, smiling cheekily at the half-elf sorcerer as she passed by. The small procession continued toward the aqueduct.

Obelia, who had been lost in thought, spoke to her father: “Do you ever think that by helping the city with this project, we are helping to keep the patriars in their halls?”

“What do you mean?”  said Zanner.

“Well, perhaps if people like us…perhaps if we did not repair things like the aqueducts and the sewers, people in the lower city and the countryside might finally see how bad this whole system is and rise up to make something better. I mean, I would like to live in a city where we in the lower city had a say in how the whole city was run. I’d at least like to live in a place that was properly rebuilt and not by the Guild or Mind flayers. You know, by the people.”

“You think people would rise up and not just be horribly miserable? And if they did, do you think they would replace the patriars with something better? Remember, Gortash was one of us—little Enver Flymm from right down the street.”

“Is it our lot to always be ruled by people like Gortash? I heard rumors of what he did to his parents. Everyone thought they were awful people, but….” Obelia shuddered. “I don’t know. It is just…since the Absolute, people have been talking rising up. It…sounds exciting.”

“I think there are many paths to the better future you want—but the ones that don’t involve hurting a lot of people are the better ones.”

They were approaching the wall, now. The carnage on the ground was no longer something abstract. All around them were burnt pieces of cloth, remnants of siege engines, and bodies: of goblins, of elves, of men. Many had holes in their skulls where the brains had been sucked out. Some of the Gondians stopped in front of the decaying body of a mind flayer, impaled through the stomach on a stake, bent over backwards, seeming to hover over the ground.  Below it, the gray dust was stained black. As the Netherbrain had broken free of its magical tethers, the True-souls of the army had transformed into mind-flayers, and when the Absolute died, the soldiers had risen up against them in the realization and horror of what the Absolute was.

Obelia looked around.  Stones from the ruined aqueduct lay all around, strewn over the battlefield, but densest next to a large breach in the great arched structure. The aqueduct had exploded. Perhaps it had happened as a part of a plan to sabotage the city or perhaps it had happened in the utter chaos that ensued when the Absolute died, and the soldiers and Illithid True Souls turned on each other. Either way, it had crushed dozens beneath it.

It was towards the gaping breach that the tall half-elf, Master Korlit, walked. His pace quickened and he held back a hand in a motion to “stop.” He gripped his staff in both hands, and his body seemed to blur as he walked deliberately toward a small hole where the collapsed blocks had been piled into a sort of alcove. To a one, the gnomes looked for something to hide behind. Some tried to flatten themselves against the ground. They did not know why they had been ordered to stop, but they could recognize danger. Master Korlit was crouched to the side of the entrance to the tunnel. To the Gondians, it seemed as if he just sat there silently, saying nothing. What was happening?

Master Korlit, or rather, The Emperor, had sensed another presence when they entered the ruined camp. It was weak, but familiar. He sent a thought out to it.

[Who are you?]

It responded, its thoughts moving slowly as if moving through a thick substance. [One of us! I have no name. I am a survivor.]

[Why are you still here then, survivor?]

[Do you also await the Elder’s return? The return of purpose? Of guidance in such a large expanse?]

[Do you speak of the expanse in your mind?]

[What else? It is so very large. I am lost in it without the Elder. So many different thoughts at the same time. I can only feed and fight and wait for the elder to return. Did you bring us more food, sibling? Were you the one who sent the food days ago? I was too slow to catch it.]

This nameless Illithid had been pulled from its colony and elder brain before it had even learned to think. It was mad. The Emperor knew the wisest course of action would be to kill it. Nine months ago, he would have done it without hesitation. It was, after all, a threat to the Gondians and his mission to fix the aqueduct. But now the Emperor hesitated. He felt…pity? If there was ever an emotion so unbecoming of an Illithid. He pressed against the mind of the creature, asking to be let in.

Inside was chaos. Thoughts everywhere, processes out of control and untracked, and at their core, a weak, starving weed of a consciousness, made mostly of yearning, hatred, and hunger. A memory of shadowy men who had come, who the Illithid had watched and tried but failed to lure to this cave. The Emperor promised himself that he would return to this question later, as the presence of men in this remote place worried him. As for the Illithid, the poor creature’s mind could not be salvaged. Too mad and weak from a year of loneliness and the hormonal collapse that came from starvation.

The Emperor brushed up against the Illithid’s consciousness, letting slip an image of himself commanding Dahamunzu to dominate the elder brain with the Netherstones, and then of Dahamunzu landing the killing blow against the Brain. He felt a wild surge of anger from the other Illithid. This was as planned.

[You. You and your thrall did this. You killed the Elder. You killed our other siblings.]

[Indeed.] Replied the Emperor, in his mind. [And are you not glad of it? Now that I am here, you have a purpose.]

[Traitor!]

[That is correct.]

Obelia, peering through the holes in a collapsed war-tent saw a spindly, emaciated Mind Flayer rush out of the hole with astonishing speed. It pounced towards Master Korlit, who leapt backwards and unleashed a wave of raw power at the creature. The gnome’s hair stood on end as the psionic force lapped past her, leaving swirling motes of dust on the ground.  

The little energy that the Mind flayer had left was drained, now that its assault had failed, and the small blast had mortally injured it.  It lay on the ground, twitching, and she felt a strange compulsion to go to it. [Come to me, little one.]  it seemed to whisper in her mind. [I am dying, and I am so alone.] Did she really pity it, or was it in her head manipulating her. She began to walk towards it, but Master Korlit got to it first. He pulled a knife from his boot and thrust it between the Illithid’s eyes. Immediately Obelia checked her surroundings. What was she doing? Was she really going to just walk up to a dying mind flayer? Would she have stuck her head in its tentacles, too? She looked up at Master Korlit.

“It would have eaten you. It could have healed itself in part by feeding.” He wiped brain matter from his knife and tucked it back into his boot.

She stared at its starving, emaciated body, still dressed in the bloody rags it had worn as one of the Army of the Absolute. Its eyes had glowed just a moment before, but now, they were but empty, fleshy sockets.  It was both terrifying and pitiful. She wondered if it had had people who cared about it somewhere, before it had turned. As for Master Korlit, it had saved her, and, she remembered, not for the first time. Was it really different than its kin? Could she really trust it? She caught Master Korlit’s eye. “He says you helped to save the city with Dahamunzu. Is that true? He said that you advised and protected her.” Master Korlit only glanced down at her, turned, and walked away.

Zanner Toobin was distressed. The event had been eerily silent up until the point where he had heard Obelia’s voice talking to Master Korlit. He had felt the mind-blast and gathered from Master Korlit’s words that there had been a Mind flayer. Did they kill it? Was it safe? He called out: “Obelia? What is happening? Are you alright?”  She went back to her father and explained what had happened, that Master Korlit had lured the creature out of its cave and stunned it. How it had spoken to her in an alluring voice, but before it could harm her, Master Korlit had killed it.

Having reached their destination, Master Korlit, Obelia, and Zanner erected a long, low flat table and spread the blueprints out upon it. The rest of the Gondians set out to survey the site, assessing and recording the damage to the aqueduct. Obelia assumed the role of foreman, perching on a rock overlooking the table and the site seemingly made for the purpose of supervising. She relayed information to and from the team to her father, keeping a careful eye on him all the while. He had always been a little too easily taken in by another sharp intellect. After the incident with the mind flayer earlier, she realized how helpless she would be if Master Korlit decided to attack her father. It was as Conductor had said, trusting him was a matter of pure faith. Well, she thought, that did not mean that she would not do her best to watch over him and to fight should it come to that.

Zanner Toobin for his part, did not seem bothered. He and Master Korlit were once again lost in planning. They were thinking through ways to make the structure better, stronger, and more efficient. The repair itself was labor intensive but uncomplicated. Master Korlit thought of everything, and quickly. Zanner could not help but admire how he could suss out problems and analyze them from multiple perspectives at once, and for his part the Mind-flayer was impressed by the Gondian’s experience and ability to come up with unconventional ideas. He should not have been surprised, he reflected. This was the man who had built a printing press to be possessed by a Fey, and whose people had built a mechanical man using necromancy and Illithid psionics. He was a genius of an artificer.

The Emperor was comfortable talking with the Gondian, to the point of feeling something like pleasure, and to the point of allowing his mind to wander in multiple directions at once while maintaining a discussion with the gnome. Civil engineering was not something Balduran would have enjoyed. Balduran would just as soon have fought another man with a knife than over a Lanceboard. In fact, when he and Ansur built the trials, he had been the one to make the strategy trial winnable with a well-placed lightning bolt to the opposing King rather than the correct sequence of moves. The Emperor relished Lanceboard now, though he still found himself lightly amused by Balduran’s wit.

Another train of thought worried about the Tadpoles and Conductor. The former were back in the city in the secret room beneath his house. Were they secure enough? They were unguarded, except by Us, whose could be inattentive, especially when there were cats around to distract it. Conductor had gone to Waterdeep on business, and also to visit Gale Dekarios about the matter of reverse engineering the inverted magic that had suspended her transformation into a Mind flayer.

The Emperor always worried when she went to Waterdeep. Conductor was a force of nature in a fight, but even she could be overpowered. The great dungeon under Waterdeep brought danger in the form of other Illithid. Though he had never seen it personally in his own adventures in the tunnels, he recalled from the collective memory of the Absolute the existence of a portal to the Githyanki Crèche K’liir was located in the under mountain passages. The better to hunt Ghaik, he supposed. Conductor could certainly best an adolescent Githyanki looking to take a trophy head but she was very afraid of Lae’zel’s vengeance for the death of Orpheus. Had he shared the information of the existence of the portal with her? He reached out to her, but she did not respond.

At the same time, the Emperor returned to the mysterious men in the mad Illithid’s memory. Who were they and what were they doing here?  The only thing up here were the aqueduct and the dead. There were too many possibilities. He should have probed the poor creature more about what they were doing.

The Emperor’s natural paranoia put him on guard he felt something disturbing in the background of these thoughts. A sense of unease in the air, growing into anxiety and then into panic. He realized why the men must have been here seconds before he heard a panicked cry from the place where the Gondians were surveying and digging out an area below one of the arches on the lower echelon which had been partially buried in rubble.

“Bomb! There’s a bomb!” The two Gnomes standing on the arch above him froze with stricken looks on their faces and then cast Misty-Step.

The Emperor reacted. He could cast Sheild of Thralls, and if he split the signal in about fifteen different streams, he could cast it on each of the Gnomes. It would not be enough to fully protect them from injury should the blast be large, but it would be something. If he could just touch the minds of all fifteen, and see which ones were slowest to react, he could cast the spell fewer times but with a stronger effect. It occurred to him that he had sworn to do no mind reading with the Gondians.

Well, that promise had not lasted very long.

He reached out, subtly probing the minds around him, he found one casting misty-step. That one would be out of the way of the blast in time. He touched the mind of the woman called Poppy—she was frantically trying to figure out what to do.  Another was paralyzed in fear. He was grasping his neck, remembering the detonation collar that Gortash had used to control him. These two and a few others needed protection.

 He concentrated on the spell, the energy rushing into his mind as he surrendered to the reservoir of power latent within himself.  Despite his best efforts to maintain his half-elf disguise, the power made him levitate from the ground. He forked off eight thought processes, one for each confused or distracted gnome, and released them with a great sigh as he sank back down. Eight dark, oily bubbles expanded around the confused gnomes just in time.

The explosion rocked the ground, and the great aqueduct groaned and cracked. It seemed for a moment as if the side in which the bomb had been planted might fall. The arch under which the bomb had been planted collapsed, spraying a great plume of debris into the air, and throwing bricks every which way like shrapnel, but the echelons above it held. Of the Gondians who had not had the presence of mind to Misty-step away, a few were hit by falling bricks, which bounced off their volatile shields. Others were thrown into the air by the blast or hit by shrapnel and again saved by their shields. Most of the gnomes were too distracted to notice Master Korlit, flying to a safe perch on atop the side of the aqueduct that still stood.

He surveyed the damage, his staff in hand, and his face a mask of calm. None of the Gondians were seriously injured. Good. They were useful allies and would be needed in the reconstruction efforts.

Poppy stood at the edge of the crater where the bomb had been. She stared at the wreckage around her. She shouldn’t have survived that blast, but someone, probably the sorcerer Korlit had shielded her. She was shaken. She had not been so frightened since the Iron Throne. She had never been so glad to see anyone as she had been to see Dahamunzu, who had pulled the lever to lower her prison gate. She’d even thanked the half-drow—to think of it! Today, she was ashamed to say that she had not acted rationally. Nevertheless, she now had a chance to face her fear and to find some clue as to why this had happened. Some debris—fragments of clothing from corpses and other light remnants of items which must have been left in the collapsed military tents fluttered from the like snow or ash. She picked up a piece of metal from the crater. This was probably a piece of the bomb, made of infernal iron. She ran her thumb over it. Along the edge was a a raised inscription. She stared at it. This was gnomish, and as she held it close to decipher it, she caught the whiff of rune powder.  The inscription was part of a manufacturer’s mark. Of course the Ironhands would have made such a thing, but they had dissolved after Wulbren Bongle had assumed control of their faction, that hateful shit. Now, their hideout was abandoned.

A shadow fell over her as she wondered how the bomb might have gotten from the Ironhands to the aqueducts, and she looked up to see Master Korlit standing over her. He was so…tall…and unnerving. As if he knew what she was thinking, he knelt next to her.

“Poppy, you have found something.”

There was something strange about him. He smelled like garlic…and vanilla? She had smelled a similar but stronger smell when she walked past the impaled, rotting Mind flayer, and the one who had tried to eat Obelia. He had wiped his knife on his cloak after killing it. Maybe that is where the smell was coming from. She wrinkled her nose. He silently extended a hand for the bomb fragment.

“I think this came from the Ironhand gnomes. See the characters here? That’s their insignia.” She pointed at the inscription and realized she had gotten ahead of herself. “It’s a fragment from the bomb. It contained rune powder.”

“I recognize this sort of bomb.” He saw suspicion growing on her face. “I have not personally used one. How do you think our bombers came by it?”

“Sure you haven’t, old man,” said Poppy. She shrugged, “It could have also come from the black market.”

“I doubt that. Where do you think it came from?”

“Oh, you want my opinion now, sorcerer? Then I’ll give it to you. I think it came from the Ironhands’ hideout. Knowing our city, some menace has probably moved into there. But I do know that the people who planted it here didn’t know half as much as a gnome about how to use a bomb. If an Ironhand had planted this, it would have destroyed a lot more. They would have stuck it next to a loadbearing pillar, or in a place where we couldn’t have just misty stepped out of the way, depending on whether their goal was to kill us or destroy the structure.”

“That is a sound observation.”

Obelia, walking with her father next to the newly damaged wall, had also found something, or rather, something had found her. She felt a tickling on her ankle and looked down to see a line of beetles walking across her foot. She bent down to brush them off and in doing so noticed that there were many such lines of insects, walking over the ground towards the wall. This was so strange to her that she grabbed her father’s arm and watched as the thousands of streams coalesced on the wall

Thousands of beetles climbed the stone and then stopped, fluttering their wings. They formed a pattern. Obelia squinted to make out the design. One by one, the insects spread their wings outward and exploded with a tiny pop, splattering their bright red insides over the stone, spelling a message:

THE PEOPLE WILL RISE UP

Obelia called over the others, telling them of the insects and the way they had all died at once.  She was unnerved. Was she supposed to see this, or was the message supposed to have been viewed later by whoever came to the aqueduct looking for them when they did not come home? A nagging voice in the back of her mind wondered why she wasn’t part of the “people?” Deep down, she knew.

Master Korlit noted the message on the wall. He now knew who did this and where to find them. He didn’t quite know why they had done it, but he had thought of several possibilities. For now, though, he needed to go home as quickly as possible. The tadpoles were unguarded, and thus, his identity as a Mind flayer was as well.  He pointed a finger and swept his arm in a circle, opening a portal back to the city. They all crossed through carrying plans and equipment.

Standing in a square of the lower city, he turned to Obelia and Zanner.

“I hope that the adventure of today has not deterred you from our work.”

“I do not think so,”  said Zanner. “None were injured, and you have apparently kept your end of our bargain.” The Emperor had in fact broken their agreement by reading the minds of the Gondians around him in the seconds before the explosion. Zanner, quick witted as always, had deduced as much. It seemed as if the trespass was excused for now.

“I will ensure”, said the Emperor softly, “That this is the last such inconvenience to our work.”  As he turned to walk away in his unnaturally graceful fashion, he nearly ran into Poppy, who had blocked his path.

“Ey sorcerer! Watch yourself,” she yelped with mock anger, and then more earnestly: “You’re a strange sort of sorcerer. You smell funny, and you walk like you’re trying not to float even when you’re tripping over me. But you saved my life, and you’re damn clever. I like you. I’ll see you when we go back up to fix that thing.” She held out a hand as if to shake with Korlit, but he did not take it. Instead, he squinted slightly, eyes twinkling. Then, he bowed his head and walked away.

Beneath a house at Wyrm’s Crossing, in the underground workshops where the Ironhand gnomes had once worked, a small group of men huddled over a sheaf of papers amidst too few flickering candles.

“Korlit’s back in town, and so are the Gondians.” said one angrily.

“What? Where? Are you sure? Does he know about us?”

“Well, he might now that Samar over here fucked up the operation at his house so badly.”

“That witch he is always with was out of town,” hissed Samar. “I watched her go. How was I supposed to know she could teleport back? And how the hell was I supposed to know that the Harpers would get involved?”

“Anyone could have predicted the Harpers would get involved. Their job is to uphold whatever horror is the status quo in the name of stability. It’s what they do.”

“I always saw them as heroes,” said Samar sadly. “They helped save the city from the Absolute.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing. Gortash and the Steel Watchers would have taken care of the Absolute and Ketherick’s army and Ravengard and all the undesirables invading the city, too, if he hadn’t been assassinated.”

“Look, Vance.  We all know you are irrationally supportive of Gortash. You’ve told us. As I’ve said before, Gortash was a means to two ends—he literally eviscerated the aristocracy, and he got us to the place we are now. Deprivation has raised the veil from the eyes of the masses. They are starting to see the truth of what we were telling them even before the Absolute: that the system is rotten to the core! Now,  all we need to do is offer them hope through revolution and they will join us in tearing down Ravengard and the rest of the elite and making a future where the people have real power!”

“Well, Adamant,” said Vance, “We agree at least, that the people must lead. I see our job as preparing them to take the reigns, and when they do, guiding them so that they can drive the city with a steady, firm hand as Gortash did.”

Samar looked as if he didn’t quite agree with either of these positions, but he held his tongue. Instead, something prompted him to turn his head and look to the doorway to the next room. A great black shadow in the doorway stared back with burning violet eyes.

The Emperor, in full regalia, floated into the room, followed by Conductor. The light flickered against their pale, shiny skin and the jewels inlaid into the Emperor’s crest. His tentacles undulated hungrily. There was little to say, and the Emperor owed the revolutionaries no explanation.

The Emperor freely browsed the minds of Samar, Adamant, and Vance. They were the ringleaders of a small band of adventurer/revolutionaries—mostly students and members of the lower-city merchant community.  The Emperor and Conductor had encountered their comrades before—after the masquerade at the High Hall, and in the blushing Mermaid. The Emperor lingered on Adamant. The man had been a wizard of some skill and creativity. The Emperor rather admired the idea of using insects to send a message. This one might be a powerful ally if he was fully controlled. The so-called “people’s” movement might be better nurtured through the Emperor’s guidance, and any political gains it made might accrue to the Emperor’s benefit. This was a pleasurable idea indeed. Ah, but Conductor would not like it very much, and what had the Emperor ever wanted with power, anyway? It was the game of acquiring it that the Emperor enjoyed, and as much as he loved the chance of power and wealth, he liked freedom and autonomy more. Political power came with too much danger and responsibility. No, it was time to bring this movement to its conclusion. The Emperor consumed Adamant and Vance.

Conductor devoured Samar though she felt a pang of pity for him. He was a coward more than an ideologue. They would have been caught, as unsubtle as they had been. Then, they would have all been tortured and hung in the Lower City Square after summary trial. She figured that all-in-all, being devoured by a Mind flayer was a better end than they had any right to hope for.

The two walked home in their usual disguise, neither sharing their thoughts with the other, but each thinking that in some ways, the Samar, Vance, and Adamant had been right. The city was profoundly unjust. With their stomachs full of brains and thoughts, they had gotten to see it through the minds of three men for whom the good life was always on view, but just slightly out of reach.

Chapter Text

[In the Underdark, there aren’t many people, and everyone hates and fears everyone else.] The minute Conductor told the Emperor this, she marveled at how freeing it was. The Illithid as a species had left a trail of misery and resentment everywhere they went. The Underdark was no exception—but here, they were hardly the only species to have done so.

Here, she and the Emperor could travel without disguise for the first time in a long while. Since everything wanted to kill everything else, it a relief to feel like you didn’t have to be constantly careful to appear as harmless as possible. It was comforting to know that, in the worst situations, you did not have to try against all odds to convince people that you were one of the ‘good ones.’  

Additionally, as they made their way towards the Myconid village, Conductor was increasingly confident that she and the Emperor could take down anything they encountered. Indeed, when they encountered a band of Duergar, she was almost disappointed at how little a challenge they presented. It had only taken a few casts and a few swings and the whole band had been dead upon the ground. They had taken a few brains to preserve in jars for later. The Myconids would take the bodies for food or for making reanimated servants—and reanimated servants did not need brains.

The downside to the Underdark was that you were always fighting something, and the Duergar were shortly followed by a pair of Hook Horrors. Conductor took the role of melee fighter—she had had her favorite mace slightly modified so that it fit more comfortably in her long, spindly hands. It had been so long since she had fought with swords or spells. Her body, more nerve than muscle, was physically weaker now, but it remembered how to swing and parry. She could make up for lack of strength by augmenting her attacks with small bursts of psionic force, keyed to the moment her weapon struck home. The last time she had seriously fought, when she had battled against Absolute, she had relied heavily on arcane magic—her body felt strange and alien…unreliable. On top of that, she was convinced that if she ran enough magic through her mind, she could use the weave to tie it into place—to force the non-illithid part of her to stay. She remembered hearing her patron laugh in her head at the time. Her metamorphosis had delighted it. It had enjoyed watching her struggle against it.

She need not have worried so much. Dahamunzu was still there, intertwined with Conductor. Now much more comfortable in her own skin, she marveled at how good she felt, and how smoothly her mind and body functioned. Before she changed, she had to focus intensely on her opponent’s moves, and on maintaining the flow of magic through her mind and body into a spell. Now, part of her could concentrate on a spell, and another part of her could fight at the same time. She could almost subconsciously track her opponent’s movements. As for the Emperor, he was always at her side, shielding her, using his psionics to pull attackers into range of her ever-swinging mace, repulsing enemies away when too many got close. She felt his power all around her—bursting out, and then slowly drawing back in like waves crashing against their opponents. His presence was always there in her mind—not intrusive or overbearing—it was like a tiny light that could become brighter if she called upon it. He had a similar light from her in his own mind.

The last Hook-horror fell, and Conductor lifted a hand from her mace to telekinetically hurl it away from her onto a pile of its brethren.

[I have always found it exhilarating to watch you fight.] said the Emperor.

[It is possible because I have the finest of shields.] Conductor noted the fine thread of desire in his thought and returned it to him. As a half-elf, such conversations would have involved so much interpretation. There would have been so many chances for miscommunication. Humanoid speech was so…one dimensional. She did not miss it.

She supposed she ought to collect the hooks from the Hook-horrors…along with any other interesting thing they might have on them. Omeluum probably had thousands of hooks already, but maybe not since he did not seem the fighter. She remembered them being good for some elixirs.

[It is less enticing to watch you dig through monster guts. You have no need to grub for valuables.]

Conductor laughed [Perhaps I am grubbing for knowledge.]

[You are not…and do not eat its brain. Gods, are you feral?]

Upon reflection, Hook Horror brain was deeply unpleasant, but Conductor had not been outside of an urban environment in so long, and was curious about the flavor of a creature that was not humanoid.  She gagged slightly.  Ignoring the Emperor’s laughter in her head, she wiped her tentacles.

[Can I put these in your bag?] she asked the Emperor.

[If you wrap them in something first.]

[I bought it for you] she retorted [you should not be so picky]. She wrapped them in a cloak she had lifted from the corpse of a Duergar and gave them to the Emperor.

There was a story behind the Bag of Holding that the Emperor was carrying. Some months ago, Conductor had returned from Waterdeep and had just entered Philgrave manor when she sensed a presence and felt the sting of smoke in her eyes. Someone was in her house. More urgently, her house was on fire!  One of her first thoughts was to make sure that the intruder was nowhere near the secret entrance to the cellar where the tadpoles were kept. They were not. Conductor teleported to the cellar. She had no means to put out the fire, she would have to save the tadpoles and salvage what she could of her papers and the Emperor’s. She felt the tadpoles’ consciousnesses as they swam without a care in their pools, and their sudden confusion as she levitated them out, sifting them into a barrel of brine. They thrashed with discomfort at suddenly being so close to their brethren. She would have to put them into hibernation so they did not devour each other. Then, she would put them in a container and teleport them somewhere safe, perhaps the ruined bathhouse.  As she was doing this and mentally building an inventory of all the papers she needed to salvage, a strand of her mind searched out the consciousness that had set the house on fire.  She found him and clawed into his psyche.  

The revolutionary Samar shouldn’t have stayed so long, but on his way out, he’d found something interesting: a stunningly intricate necklace of a spider, caught in a silvery web, and housed in a lacquer box.  He would have expected to see such a thing around the neck of one of the famous actresses at Baldur’s Gate theater—the kinds of ladies that the aristocrats liked to take for mistresses and lavish with exorbitant jewels behind the backs of their wives. Well, now a nobleman could buy it for his side-piece and finance his own overthrow, Samar thought, smirking. He was just imagining the glamorous necklace around old Mistress Korlit’s fleshy neck when he heard a key turn in the lock.

Shit. She was not supposed to be home. It was like he had summoned her with his thoughts. Maybe he had. The thing he had heard about her around town, other than praise for her philanthropy and fair dealing was that she was uncanny. She seemed able to anticipate what people would do. There was certainly magic of some sort about her.

He turned to run across the living room for the balcony, which had been his original destination, but the smoke had gotten thicker. His eyes burned. He dropped to his belly and crawled towards the light…towards escape. He got there after minutes that seemed like years. He burst out onto the balcony and onto the neighbor’s rooftop. Gods, his head hurt. He felt like he was being stabbed in the brain. It must be smoke inhalation. He took deep breaths. There. It was subsiding.

Below him, the street was swarming with Harpers. The first story of the house was burning. Windows were shattering under the heat, and flames were licking upwards through them.. One Harper was working on summoning a rainstorm over the building, while another had raised an earth elemental to stamp out flames. Neighbors watched from the streets and nearby windows. On the roofs were crushed more harpers with bows at the ready. Samar thanked the gods he’d remembered to bring an invisibility potion. He could see harpers on the rooftop across the alley, more than close enough to hit their mark. He swallowed the silvery liquid and vanished, just as a portal opened in the alley below him.  Mistress Korlit emerged with a great satchel in her arms. He watched her talk with an aged but well-built half-elf. Watched her bow her head at the conclusion of the conversation and then turn her face upward to look near where he stood, her eyes searching… she couldn’t see him, could she? He was invisible. He turned and ran, scrambling down a large vine into a dark alley. He wanted to be as far from her as he could and fast.

He could not have known that he had in fact been seen. The Emperor had deduced the location of the revolutionaries’ hideout in the former home of the Ironhand gnomes.  It would be but a day before Samar’s fate would overtake him.   

The two Illithid had moved to an abandoned house while Philgrave manor was being rebuilt. Though the cellar had survived the fire, The Emperor and Conductor had agreed that it would be best to divide the tadpoles. They would store them in multiple caches and on their persons, the better to prevent the lot from being destroyed should they be attacked again. So, Conductor went to great lengths to procure something that she had always wanted: a Bag of Holding.

…into which the Emperor was now placing the wrapped hooks. They stowed their weapons and continued on their way.

[It is not much further to the Myconid Village,] said Conductor.

[I know. I have been there before,] the Emperor reminded her.

[I did not expect you to remember the way, being as you were buried in the bottom of Shadowheart’s bag.]

[My location was of no relevance. I saw through all of your eyes.]

The Emperor thought about Omeluum, and considered with some trepidation the favor which he wished to ask. It was against his instinct to trust the other Illithid. When Dahamunzu and her fellow adventurers had met Omeluum in the Underdark, they had trusted it almost immediately. They had accepted its goodwill towards them, smiling and nodding when it said that it had secured its food by making a deal with a Lich. A Lich! As if devouring peoples’ brains after an undead wizard had drained their souls was the most understandable thing in the world! The Emperor was envious of Omeluum and the ease with which he had been accepted. He did not have time to reflect on this, though, because the ground suddenly began to shake.

The Emperor flew to one side and Conductor to the other as the Bulette erupted from the ground where they had just stood, sending rocks flying in every direction.

[Damn it, I thought Dahamunzu had killed this thing,] hissed Conductor.

[There are many Bulettes in the world, you know. When one dies, another takes its territory.]

[Well, I am about to make its territory vacant again.]  Conductor drew her mace with one hand and extended her hand, fingers splayed. She uttered words of power and felt the weave course from her mind to her arm to her hand, pulling and tingling. Three blasts tore into the creature. A hole opened in the ground before Conductor, and the light of the glowing mushrooms along the trail seemed to bleed into it. The Bulette warped for a moment into a sickening stretched version of itself and then the hole closed leaving the creature in front of Conductor. Without hesitation, and in one graceful movement, she dealt the killing blow.

The two illithids floated around the gory mess in the trail and floated down into the Myconid village. They felt a strange fuzzy sensation in their minds, reaching through the networks of nodes and thoughts and memories and then saying in the deep, breathy voice of Sovereign Spaw, ruler of the myconids in this part of the Underdark.

[Visitors who are like us but not like us: who speak without speaking, who know by reaching out.] A hesitation, then…

[But the circle knows both of you already, yes? With one we have spoken and the other felt faintly inside the first? You have saved our circle from evil within and without. You are welcome here.]

Conductor replied, pushing back gently on the hyphae pushing inquisitively into her mind. [We are pleased to be among you and your circle again, Sovereign Spaw. Much has changed for us since we were here last. Your circle has grown, and we have left you some…presents…alongside the trail.]

[We continue despite those who would break us, and we thank you for your gifts. Your circle too has grown much more expansive.]

Conductor wondered what Spaw might mean, since she had been with more people when she had last visited. She replied cautiously: [I am now an Illithid. I suppose my consciousness must feel like a great forest to you, whereas it was once much simpler.]

[Yes, yes. A great glowing mycelium, and your mate another, and Omeluum another. He knows you are here. He is waiting in the usual place.]

[May your song repeat always, Sovereign.]

They continued through the colony, which had in fact grown, perhaps fed by pockets of Duergar and Drow who had fallen in combat with the True Souls among them.  The brilliant fungus people filled the paths, walking as if they danced. The reanimated, mouldy corpses of monsters and men alike, slack of face and dead of eye cleaned and tended the village’s ubiquitous glowing tree-like mushrooms.

They reached the corner where Blurg and Omeluum had set up a lab and a small office.  The Hobgoblin was seated on a wooden stool while Omeluum examined some dried mushrooms in an exaggerated manner, as if pretending to be busy.

“Greetings, old friend.” Blurg stood up, smiling. He approached Conductor as if to hug her, hesitated, and then bowed and extended his hand, which she took eagerly. “Omeluum has told me of your condition. As far as I am concerned, you no less a friend than you were.”  He turned to the Emperor. Blurg looked up into the Emperor’s eyes—and smiled warmly. “There are few people to whom I must physically look up.  I am Blurg, but I suppose you already know that…and you must be the Emperor? A humble name.”

“Yes. It was given to me in mockery, but it suits me.” The Emperor gently skimmed Blurg’s thoughts.

“I would rather you did not do that,” said Blurg.

“Oh.” The Emperor was taken aback. “Then, I will not.” He had been very subtle. Omeluum must have trained the hobgoblin to protect himself.

Omeluum very deliberately put down his tweezers and turned towards them. The Emperor knew his irritation was mostly an act. He radiated warmth towards Confuctor—towards the Emperor, curiosity and wariness.

[You told me you were coming months ago; I cannot stop everything if you suddenly decide to drop in.]

“Do not mind Omeluum, we are delighted to see you both—and we knew you were coming. Two Illithid arcanists in the underdark cannot help but attract some attention.”  said Blurg

[I was trying to demonstrate a point, Blurg.] projected Omeluum testily. [But come here, Conductor and let me examine you.] Conductor floated over to him and held out her hands, commenting as he looked her over.   The other Illithid ran its large, four-fingered hands over hers, feeling her extra finger. Then it assessed her short tentacles [They are growing.], and the sharp fin that had begun to develop at her temples, and the shiny yellow and green freckles upon her forehead [Loveley, are they not?]. Finally, he locked her black eyes in his own and she let him in.

He stood amidst the glowing branching synapses of a great tree, and at its heart in an inseparable tangle was  a pulsing, flaring knot: a duality, singing in concert. Conductor and Dahamunzu. A memory floated by, glowing intermittently like a firefly. Omeluum caught it in his palm: a little girl, half drow,  dirt-smeared with scraggly hair. She ran through an alley filled with refuse, one follower in a throng of urchins. She had a sharp rock tucked into her belt and a treasure in her pocket: a bracelet she’d spotted gleaming beneath potsherds and food scraps. She’d bared her teeth, rushing at a stray cat while brandishing her makeshift dagger. The cat had just been poking about for a meal. It hissed and ran. The girl grabbed the bauble and gazed at it It was cheaply made, but magical. She could feel a tingle coursing through it. She couldn’t wait to show her father. He would know what it was. He knew magic.

This place was alien to Omeluum. It was a Drow mind and a human mind…but also Illithid. He had never seen anything like it. He saw it for what it was: an illusion. It was a façade of herself that Conductor wanted him to see.  [It is a lens on the truth], said Conductor, omnipresent.

Conductor wandered, lost, through Omeluum’s mind. Around her was an enigma: an alien landscape of seemingly infinite complicated geometry. These complex shapes could baffle the mind from any distance. A labyrinth of glowing tesselations pulsed in vivid color against the void of a black sky. Each tesserae seemed to burst with thought and life. Conductor stretched towards one with a train of thought.

She was in a great stalactite-filled hall—a tiered amphitheater filled with thousands of other mind-flayers, looking down upon a familiar figure who held everyone’s attention. [My name is Omeluum], it announced, for this was the occasion of its naming. The words seemed to echo around her again and again, like a mirror broken into thousands of fragments as thousands of illithids joined in its mind, affirming the name, welcoming it to the collective. The memory was of a great and terrible song, sung by the minds of individuals but synchronized in concert. It was a song of conquest and domination. Conductor reveled in it. She longed to feel it wash over her, to add her own voice, welcoming Omeluum to the whole, adding her thoughts to the network of tendrils surrounding the individual and tethering it to the whole. The song was seductive. She felt compelled to immerse herself in it, to yield herself to it. She wanted to be filled with its history and to work towards its great collective future. Part of her cried out and struggled, pushing back on the voice and swimming against the current. What the song offered was slavery and enthrallment—the death of Dahamunzu and of memory and introspection. As the music swelled, a million Belynne Stelmanes emerged from the darkness before Conductor. They were slack-jawed, broken-minded, glowing-eyed puppets, allowed free thought only to the extent that it allowed them to implement the wills of Illithid. Once able to feel a range of emotions, their emotions were now clamped to feel only love for their illithid enslavers. Conductor was intrigued and then repulsed. She swarm harder against the strong tide of the song.

Swimming beside her was Omeluum. She felt the fear in its heart, and felt the moment that the song turned against Omeluum on the day it had detected the spark of magic within. Now, the song was no longer comforting. It no longer offered contentment and belonging. Now, it was inescapable. Conductor and Omeluum were lashed down by it, buried by it, suffocated by it as it swam into every orfice, closed off every breath, and pressed down on their chests and heads.  It covered every train of thought, and every reaction and impulse slowed as if stuck in amber. Suddenly, like a wave crashing into shore, it dissipated. Omeluum stood over her, and she spoke to him.

[You, too, have showed me an apect of yourself that you wished me to see. You wish to make a point.]

[I showed you my Naming-day. The one called The Emperor never reached its own. I fled my colony, but the Emperor was stolen from its hive by a dragon while it was still a child, when its mind was still malleable and plastic. It was not yet old enough to be a full part of the collective, and the dragon convinced it it was not one of us.]

[Was he one of you?]

[Hmmmm.] Omeluum paused as if thinking about how to phrase what it was about to say. [The Illithid called the Emperor is clever at hiding, but this was certainly not always the case.  Were its partialism at its ‘birth’ such that it is now, the Nourishers in its hive would have euthanized it shortly after its transformation, before it could learn to conceal itself.]

[Why did they let the Emperor live?]

[There are a few possible explanations. The Absolute was not sane.  The way it implemented its Grand Design involved methods repugnant to most others of our kind. It trained arcanists among its illithids and allowed necromancers into its hive. Perhaps allowing a degenerate illithid to live was part of its plan. Perhaps in a time of starvation and hardship, the Nourishers neglected their duty.] Again, Omeluum paused. [The other explanation is that the one called The Emperor was born a perfect illithid and that the dragon did something to it to dammage its mind.]

Conductor’s thoughts churned. She had never had a long conversation about Ansur with the Emperor. She knew that he wanted to forget. Though they sometimes shared dreams, she was usually shut out of the Emperor’s recurring nightmares of Ansur. On the rare occasions she had found her way into them, her presence dissipated the memories embedded in the dream. She knew Ansur had forced the Emperor to repress his Illithidness. She suspected Ansur had tried to deprive the Emperor of food—in the nightmares he was sometimes gaunt and unnaturally slender, his eyes crazed. Had the dragon gone to even greater extremes to cure his friend? And what of the Emperor’s unnaturally long lifespan. Had Ansur’s cures caused that, too? [Why are you telling me this?]

[The one called The Emperor has told me of its plan to alter the tadpoles it has produced such that their final Ceremorphosis initiates on the command of the host. It has asked me to begin experimenting with some of them, supplementing their diet with a mixture of fungal extracts to simulate the nutritional benefits of consuming brain matter. It wishes to reduce the burden that our people place on the surrounding environment, so that we might better live among others who are not our own kind.]

[Do you not think such a thing desirable?]

[I have long thought so, but now that it is within grasp, I am frightened.]

[Why?]

[I am afraid of what will be lost. The Emperor does not understand. It does not consider itself to be one of us.]

[He is proud of what he is. He has suffered greatly to persevere as an Illithid.]

[It thinks itself better than an Illithid. It thinks you are better than an Illithid, where  in a functional colony, you would have been terminated in the gestation pod, so incomplete are you.]

Conductor did not find its words threatening. They were correct. The landscape of Omeluum’s mind was alien to her. She had never heard of the naming ceremony in his memory, and throughout it all was the Illithid song. It was alluring. It offered her belonging that she had never felt as a half-drow. As an Illithid, she had only felt it with the Emperor. Despite this, the song felt deeply, viscerally wrong. It made her nauseous.

Omeluum’s words about the Emperor also rang true.  She remembered long ago when Dahamunzu had told Omeluum about escaping the Nautiloid. Omeluum had been fascinated to hear of the flying ship—a relic of its own people’s past greatness. The Emperor may have admired it as a ship but felt no connection to it as something his own kind had made.

Omeluum spoke: [Walk with me, and I will tell you of our beautiful, terrible people, so that when you alter the lifecycle of the tadpoles in your care, you will know the magnitude of what you are doing. You are one who will never choose a name, and will never hear your name sung by thousands. You will never feel what it is to be part of a greater plan that is not of your own making. I will allow you to taste and savor what you and your descendants will lose, since I myself have had and lost it.] The tesselating patterns around Conductor rippled and rearranged themselves into a sort of path through a sort of garden where curling fractal figures burst from the black void around her like fiddlehead ferns, and far below the path spread a network of sparkling hyphae. Conductor walked and listened.

The Emperor and Omeluum stood behind a curtain of moss, watching Conductor converse with Blurg. The Emperor glanced at a table full of alembics, flasks, and test-tubes. His eye lingered on five small jars, each containing a tadpole, swimming in circles, lost in its own thoughts. Omeluum had been…interesting. It had exceeded the Emperor’s expectations as far as being willing to hear him out about guiding the evolution of the tadpoles. It had come up somewhat short when it came to being agreeable.

[Does my proposition interest you?] the Emperor returned to the subject of tadpole cultivation.

[How did you persuade Conductor to become illithid?]

For example, thought the Emperor, Omeluum liked to change the subject abruptly. [I did not. I encouraged her to consume tadpoles because I felt it would make it easier for her to fight an Elder Brain if she understood how it would fight and think. She chose to undergo Ceremorphosis of her own accord.]

[I am glad to hear you did not unduly influence her. It is something that has been troubling me. Perhaps then she did it because she did not trust you to wield the stones?]

[That is not why she changed. Her companions certainly did not trust me. She fought with them on my behalf, especially with the Githyanki, who wanted to free the captive prince.]

[How curious. Had they freed the prince, would you have fled back to the Absolute?]

The Emperor was unnerved by this line of conversation, and by Omeluum’s questions, which seemed designed to force him to  admit his own weaknesses. Before the defeat of the Absolute, the Emperor had thought himself successful at keeping his partialism a secret from the brain. In the time since, though, he had come to understand the truth was far more cruel. The Absolute had been aware of his rebellious nature for years. So confident had the Absolute been in its understanding of his psyche, that it had built its plan for the Grand Design around its ability to place the Emperor in situations that exploited his hubris and deepest fears. It had predicted that Lae’zel would turn to Orpheus and that Dahamunzu’s conscience would lead her to free the captive prince. It had also predicted what the Emperor would do if Dahamunzu were to turn on him.

Dahamunzu had retrieved the hammer from Raphael. She had been ready to free Orpheus. She pitied the prince who was bound and subdued. She cared deeply for Lae’zel, who was convinced that Orpheus was a messiah who would free her people from bondage under Vlaakith. Had anyone but Dahamunzu been able to read the Emperor’s expressions, they would have seen the picture of terror on his face as Dahamunzu slid the Orphic hammer from her pack: the tool which could free Orpheus, son of Gith. The Emperor saw the course of his own future change from one in which he was free to one in which Lae’zel presented his dripping head to Orpheus as the others wiped silver blood from their weapons and bantered with each other, as if he was just another dead monster beneath their feet. Perhaps Dahamunzu, who had enjoyed him in body and mind, would shrug with a pang of regret. Perhaps she would not. 
The Emperor thought then that it would be better to die fighting for the Absolute than to die in shame and humiliation, betrayed yet again. The Emperor could tell Omeluum thought him imperfect, more prey than predator. Better to be thought a fool than thought a weakling.

[I would have fled back to the Absolute. I would have had a better chance of survival as a thrall.]

Omeluum’s eyes narrowed, as if it was laughing. It did not believe him.

[You remind me of a story I heard when I was yet a child in the hive, of a partial illithid we called the Adversary. According to the story, it lived among us, pretending to be one of us, but it was not. It had no appreciation for our culture and our plans, and would annihilate our species. For a time in my life, I thought that I myself might be the Adversary, with my magic skills and experiments. Why would I have been cast out, otherwise? This was an irrational thought. I love my people too much to be their mythological enemy.]

The Emperor was cautious. He did not think himself a mythical monster from a childrens’ story, but he would play along.  [If the Adversary were to ask you aid in the destruction of your own kind, would you?]

[I have had a long discussion with Conductor about this. It has strengthened my resolve. We are already a dying people, Illithid Called the Emperor. There are only pockets of us left, scattered through the planes, hunted by Githyanki and others who hate us for the destruction we left in our wake. Perhaps evolution into something new is our only way forward.]

Chapter Text

Conductor stood still in a dark corner of the extensive sewer of Baldur’s Gate. She was waiting for someone…someone who was quite late. She was almost ready to start the long float home when she felt him: a familiar tart consciousness, with a deep bitterness and fragmentation underneath.  He rounded the corner and was about to walk past her when something alerted him. Quietly and swiftly, he drew a knife from his boot and sunk into the shadows. She chittered, laughing—an alien noise to him—and dropped her camouflage. Her skin color shifted, and to him it seemed as if the bricks in the wall rippled and then resolved into a tall, slender figure with tentacles and black eyes.

He started, and, then he noted her features and caught himself.

“My favorite aberration in the flesh. Dahamunzu.”

[Astarion Acunin. It has been a long time.]

“Can you speak normally? I am quite done with having foreign voices in my head.”

“Very well,” said Conductor, lisping at first and then falling into a more comfortable pattern of speech “though to speak telepathically is normal for me. In any case, how are you?”

“As good as I can be. There is no lack of bounties to hunt in this fine city, and, as my work is quite specialized, I can name my price.” He smiled, showing just a glimpse of pointed canines.

“Anything particularly interesting?”

“Ah, ah, ah, my little terror. I am not your spy.”

“I am not little compared to you. What if I asked as your friend, curious about your adventures?”

“Now there is something ‘Munzu would have said. You’ve gotten quite good at impersonating her. She was delightfully manipulative.”

“…and you would recognize a fellow master, Astarion” said Conductor, already weary of the direction of this conversation. “Or is the man you are now different from the man you were?”

“I’d like to think I’m a little different. I am free, after all. I no longer look over my shoulder. Did you know, I heard that Cazador’s mansion burnt to the ground. At least to ground-level, that is. Who knows about the dungeons underneath? Perhaps some monster will move into them and give the city’s bounty hunters even more work.”

“Baldur’s Mouth said as much. I wondered if you might have had a hand in it.”

Conductor tasted a thought in the air. A memory of a pale woman with pointed features and a wide-brimmed hat in a carriage handing Astarion a bag of coin through the window as she smiled with thin, red lips: “Burn it all to the ground. Let the city swallow its pathetic remains.” The Illithid filed that thought away to ponder later. She already had a theory as to what must have happened.

“I’d like to see anyone try to prove I was involved.” Astarion smiled smugly.

“I’m happy on your account to be rid of Cazador’s remnants. And on the city’s account to be rid of a monument to one of its worse ghosts.”

“Fine one you are to talk about the city’s ghosts. Last time I checked you were sleeping with one.”

He said the last very pointedly. What had started in Conductor’s mind as annoyance had reached a crescendo. Her Illithid self gently subdued Dahamunzu’s fury. She asked calmly, “Why do you still hate him?”

“Ah-hah! Munzu would have given me an acid tongue-lashing for saying that if she had not given me a real lashing instead. You’ve not quite mastered her. In answer to your question, he smells like garlic and being beholden to him reminded me of being under Cazador’s control. The real question is, why don’t you hate him? Oh. I know, you think he evolved you…after beguiling Dahamunzu into sticking fifteen tadpoles in her eye.”

“I do not follow.”  There was an iciness in her voice that made clear that Conductor did, indeed follow. Astarion might be good at using words to cover up his deep hurt, but he was not good at hiding his thoughts. There it was: the anger, bubbling to the surface…and a small amount of protectiveness, which surprised her.

“You always played the saint,” he snarled sarcastically. “Oh Gale, you cannot become a God. Go kiss and make nice with Mystra and be a professor instead. Absolute power corrupts absolutely!” He said the last in a high-pitched, mocking voice and then continued in it. “Astarion, you cannot be a Grand Vampire. I am not letting you near the levers of power. Go let free the spawn you created into the under-dark so they may forever remind you of what a bastard you have been. Go live in the dark for the rest of your days. You must break the cycle of abuse and find yourself.”

Conductor’s more calculating self tried to hold back her fury, but it rose anyway, turning her face pale.

Astarion continued: “And then, what do you do? You get the chance at power, and you grab it. You get the chance to break free of your abuser and you become his fucking moll. You are either the greatest hypocrite in the planes or the easiest mark.

“Maybe,” said Conductor icily, “That was the plan all along. Maybe that is why Dahamunzu wished you and Gale to forsake power…because she did not want a rival.” It was her turn to mock him: “She was a warlock in truck with an Eldritch power, after all. Perhaps she had her own Grand Design and she was the abuser…and maybe if you were not so absorbed with your own tragedy that you had bothered to find out the most basic things about her, during the six months in which you and she were practically sleeping on top of each other, you would not have been so thoroughly played.”

Astarion was silent.

“That little outburst was rather un-Illithid of you.”

Conductor still seethed at the insults directed at her by one she had considered a friend, at the suspicion she felt she had done nothing to deserve. Her more illithid thought processes had found another route through this situation. “I strive to please, Astarion. After all, you did say that Dahamunzu would have buffeted you with her temper.”

“It was a good impression. Now, why did you seek me out?.”

“I have reproduced and am looking for willing hosts for my offspring, as I would rather not infect them as I was infected. They have been modified so as to require feeding less often than I do. I hope to alter them further so that complete transformation only occurs upon the consent of the host.”

She registered Astarion’s revulsion. As he laughed, she explored the fear in his mind. She saw herself through his eyes: even has a partial Illithid, Dahamunzu had been hideous with her black veins and eyes, with her strange teeth that fell out and grew back in, sharper and smaller. When  he had been tadpoled, he dreaded daily that that he might lose control over his looks. He could not look in a mirror to examine his face for veins and it frustrated him to no end. He  considered his handsome face and silky hair his only lever of control in a world determined to oppress him. He was, of course, always one to forget that he held the power of life or death over his victims.

“Oh, not me. I’ve had quite enough your brain worms,” he said, catching his breath.

“I remember your aversion to evolution. I was rather thinking of the spawn in the Underdark who are frozen forever as children, and who will never otherwise see the sun again. I do not know their location.”

She felt a pang of guilt from Astarion. He had wanted to kill the spawn, if only to make them go away so he did not have to think about what he had done to them. Dahamunzu had strongly encouraged him to give them a second chance at life in the Underdark, and she still wondered if it was the correct decision. Her mind mind had calculated a thousand branching scenarios where sending them to the inhospitable Underdark simply prolonged the inevitable. She had envisioned other possible futures in which they predated the fragile life below ground to extinction. The last at least had seemed unlikely. In the Underdark after all, everything wanted to kill everything else.

“You think they would want to become hideous, soulless husks for a parasite, eating brains and pretending to be human so as to not be slaughtered? At least allow them to keep their dignity. I do not mean to cause offense, well, not much. You know what I mean,” said Astarion.

“I do. And I realize I am interrupting you during a mission. Shall we hunt then? Two monsters together?”

Astarion grinned.  “Why not? I am looking for a group of wizards rumored to be searching an artifact from the old Bhaal temple. Powers that be would rather leave that temple undisturbed until such time as there are resources to demolish it completely.”

“That does sound like a wise course of action.”

 “Do try to contain yourself around their leader. I need his head to prove I did the job, and it would be best if it did not have a hole in it.”

“Of course, but I would appreciate the meal. I have not fed in a week, and I begin to get a little peckish if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I certainly do”…and after a pause in which Astarion was thinking about his finances, he said: “…do not expect to get a cut of the bounty, either.”

“What need has an Illithid for shiny things?” replied Conductor in a detached voice.

As they walked along, Conductor’s skin changed to match the wall: a patch of moss or lichen here and there, but mostly brick gray, with vague black patches where the mortar filled larger crack the patches of colors were constantly, growing and merging organically on the blank canvas of the exposed parts of her body.

“That is quite the trick”

“Indeed.” Said Conductor. “it is an ability many Illithid have, but not many know how to use. There are many things that my people are capable of that are suppressed when we are under the control of an Elder Brain. It is to be hoped that my descendants will inherit the ability.”

They both sensed the footsteps at the same time—Astarion with his keen hearing and Conductor with her psionics. A gentle skimming of the thoughts revealed that this was indeed the target of their pursuit. Astarion crouched in a shadow, and Conductor disappeared, into another shadow at the far end of the room. Astarion could not see her, and it made him nervous. Never mind. He had other things to worry about. The group rounded the corner unaware, and Astarion was upon one of them. A flash of the dagger and the leader of group was down with a gurgling scream as blood shot from a gash in his throat. A fireball crackled, illuminating the room and a slender, horrifying figure in the far corner, whose camouflage adjusted to the light just a second too late. Had the two wizards not been so focused on Astarion, they would have seen its hands moving as it muttered, a rasping whisper: “senetch.”

The wizard closest to the shadows was caught off guard by the wave of paralyzing fear that hit him, making his mind swim and his knees tremble. He tried to ready another fireball spell, but he kept stumbling over the words. He felt an overwhelming need to stand still in hopes that the fear that was spiking in his brain and body would settle. Astarion advanced on the other wizard, who backed away from him, into the shadow, where long fingers grasped his shoulders, and what felt like wet snakes started to wrap around his head. The fingers felt their way up to his hands, and slipped a ring from his index finger, but he did not care. He had never felt such bliss, such drunken euphoria as his skull crunched under a powerful jaw and his mind was laid bare.

As Conductor enjoyed her meal, she rolled the ring between her fingers. She pushed the fear she had collected from Astarion’s mind into the ruby set in the middle of the ring. The fear of having tentacles erupt from his mouth, of his beautiful body being ruptured and shed like a cocoon. She pushed in her own memory of the same event. She saturated the stone in her own experience of looking in the mirror and seeing a shiny, slimy face—a cross between a squid and a human skull staring back at her instead of the handsome black-haired half-drow that remained her image of herself in her head long after it no longer reflected reality. She felt a long dormant laughter bubble up through the firing network of nodes in her mind: her patron.

She pulled her maw away from the wizard’s empty skull and slipped the ring back on his finger, whispering the incantation upon it as she lowered his body to the ground. She felt a certain gratitude to her prey for the nourishment he had provided.

Astarion lit a torch to see the dead wizard, and Conductor, cleaning her tentacles.

“Gods, I’m glad I missed that.”

 “I am glad to be spared your snide comments on my biological requirements.” She slipped the image of the ring on the wizard’s finger into Astarion’s head as easily as she had planted the ring itself. She ensured that he noticed it. That he found it uniquely appealing. That he wanted it for himself. “Now that your business is through, I must attend to my own business as a…what did you call it? Oh yes. The Emperor’s moll.”

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The pounding on the door of Philgrave Manor resounded through its dimly lit halls.

Us scampered towards the door, its claws clicking on the floor.  The Emperor ignored the sound. He was not expecting a visitor and hoped that whoever it was would go away.

The banging continued. Us meowed loudly.

[Tell me what it is with thoughts, Us]

The Emperor reluctantly stood up from his desk, floating, his tentacles undulating in the air. This presence was indeed vaguely familiar.

He gestured gracefully and muttered a word of incantation and was again the stately, tall half-elf with gray streaked hair, dressed in the sumptuous but slightly gaudy way of one who aspired to be boyar of Baldur’s gate.

He opened the door and looked down to see a youth with a round, freckled face staring back up at him with piercing brown eyes.

“Is Mistress Korlit there?”

“No.”

The Emperor shut the door and went back to his ledgers. He would have to personally visit the Harbormaster later, for it appeared that a shipment had gone missing.

The pounding resumed and did not stop. The meowing also resumed.

The Emperor sighed, reassumed his disguise, and returned to the door.

“My name is Yenna. Are you Mister Korlit?”

“Yes.”

The Emperor felt Us brush against his legs, and before he could grab the intellect devourer, it ran out the door in the form of a large orange tabby cat. The Emperor felt a spark of recognition in the youth’s mind as she saw Us.

“Please sir, can I come in to talk?”

Yenna was surprisingly good at shielding her thoughts, but the Emperor felt an undercurrent of fear in her mind—she suspected what he was. He also felt desperation. She needed him to say “Yes, come in”, even though she was afraid of him. There were thousands of ways that encouraging this relationship might end in his or Conductor’s death, or in Yenna being mind-controlled. The girl was clever, but he could easily overpower her mental defenses, excise her memory of having been here, of having wanted to be here. The girl could then be directed to a place far away to regain her senses. He started to dig deeper into Yenna’s mind.

The girl winced slightly.

The Emperor also winced, as a memory he had tried long to repress bubbled to the surface. He could not go through with this.  He would no doubt regret this course of action later.

He turned and walked inside, leaving the door open behind him. “Mistress Korlit should be back within the hour.” The Emperor could feel Yenna’s relief and a tiny glimmer of hope.

The Emperor  took his seat at his desk, his thoughts already returning to the minutia of business both legal and not. He started to send a thought to Jenna and stopped himself, speaking instead. “You may sit. I regret I have little food or entertainment to offer you.”

Yenna looked around. The shutters were closed and the room was dark. Aside from the clutter, it seemed clean enough, but its decoration and furnishings were spartan and there were scrolls everywhere. A shelf nearby hosted an assortment of random yet carefully arranged knickknacks: an incomplete set of cutlery, a seashell, the collar of a dog, and a twenty-sided prism with spikes on its corners and strange runes carved into its faces. Now, she was certain she had found the right place.

“Are you the Emperor?”

If Master Korlit was startled, he did not show it. His writing continued unbroken as he thumbed through a book with his other hand. This time, though, he answered in thought.

[Where did you hear that?]  The voice was commanding, powerful…authoritative. Yenna was caught off guard. The answer left her mind almost unbidden.

[Arabella told me that Miss Silverclode was living in the city with The Emperor—she knew because Bone Man said so.]

[…and how did you come to meet Arabella?]

[I found her in the sewers. I remembered hearing Gale and Dahamunzu talking about her in camp, so when I encountered a strange girl in the sewers, I recognized her. I remember people in camp talking about you, too.]Her thoughts were nervous, almost frantic. [You’re a Mind-flayer, aren’t you?]

[You know the answer to that question.]

“I’m not afraid of you.” She said aloud, as if trying to convince herself.

[The cadence of your thought indicates otherwise. You should listen to your instincts.]  

Yenna fell silent, trying to calm her mind. She picked nervously at a hole in her shirt. She tried to recall all she knew of the Emperor. He was a mind-flayer. He lived in the prism, and before they killed Orin (Gods…she still had nightmares about Orin) he was doing something to protect all of them. Yenna had overheard Wyll and his father talking once in hushed voices about how the Emperor was a monster who had done horrible things, and nobody must know who he was. Lae’zel ground her teeth whenever anyone mentioned his name, but then again, Lae’zel had a Mind-flayer head on the wall of her tent. Yenna had always found her a bit scary anyway, though she had once shown her how to sharpen a knife. Gale had once made a joke about being glad he didn’t have to cook for the Emperor, because he had no idea what to do with human brains. As for Dahamunzu, she sometimes cried out his name in her sleep in a voice that didn’t seem frightened at all.

“Dahamunzu was not afraid of you.”

“Dahamunzu was unusual.”

“Are you going to eat my brain?”

“That is unlikely.”

A few moments later and Yenna heard the door open, and soft, uneven footsteps. A small, figure entered the room, with a long veil wrapped around her face, and a slight limp. She said, in a voice that Yenna recognized:

“Yenna!”

“Miss Silverclode? Do you remember me?”

“Of course!” Conductor’s form shimmered and grew transforming into a tall, muscular half-drow with black, curly hair, and thick lips. Jenna recognized Dahamunzu Silverclode’s face, covered in veins the color of tarnished silver. She knelt next to Jenna’s chair and took in the youth’s appearance through one black eye and one painted porcelain bead. The youth’s clothes were ragged, and her form thin and gaunt. “How old are you now?”

“Fifteen and a half.”

“Where have you been these five years? Did you not go with Halsin to Reithwin?”

“No…I…everyone disappeared from camp and then the great Brain rose from the ground. I…I lost Grub. I had to hide. Then, when I came out, everyone I knew was gone. I lost Grub.” The emotion in the last statement was so raw. So sad.

Conductor caught a memory that had drifted to the top of Yenna’s consciousness. She was so lonely, so heartbroken, hiding in the dark in a rotting barrel in an alley in the the lower city—the only protection she could find. The screams reverberated off the cobblestones and brick walls. She heard alien clicking and hissing, the crunching of skulls, sobs of fear, and the seemingly never ending pounding of running feet.

 The girl was shaking, and tears were streaking down their face. She swallowed and tried to sound cheerful. “It wasn’t all bad after the Mind-flayers were all dead. I helped clean up around the city, and I worked in what kitchens I could find. I told them I cut vegetables for the Hero of Baldur’s Gate. Sometimes, they let me sleep by the stove if I washed dishes.”

Conductor herself felt a wave of grief and regret. A little paranoid thread of thought running in the background  gently scanned Yenna’s mind. To feel regret was to be vulnerable—to open the door to manipulation and control—but the girl was telling the truth.  She was not trying to manipulate any more than anyone else who wants care or comfort. Conductor sighed and let down her guard.

“I am very sorry I did not come to find you. My own life has…changed. I am not Dahamunzu Silverclode anymore. I call myself Conductor.”

“Are you a Mind-flayer now, too?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see what you really look like?”

The Emperor hissed softly from across the room. 

[All of our other companions have seen us for who we are.] Conductor said, firmly.

[And what will you do if this one betrays us? Will you eat a child?]

[I do not think Yenna any more likely to betray us than the others. Perhaps she can be an ally to us.]

[I cannot see how this relationship is beneficial to any of us in the long term. It is risk to all of us.]

[Be that as it may, we need allies regardless of the predictable benefit. The part of me that was my host has convinced me that it is right to try to mend the wrongs of the past if only to open up new potential paths into the future.]

 Conductor stood, and kept rising, her toes lifting from the ground, her body thinning and elongating. Her face rippled as veins, skin, eyebrows and hair dissolved into a translucent whitish-purple mantle with a streak of blue and yellow spots at the forehead.  

Yenna gasped softly and forced themselves to look.

Heavily-lidded slanting obsidian eyes stared back from beneath a skeletal brow. Four undulating tentacles surrounded a mouth of sharp teeth.

Yenna thought of all of the fairy tales that her mother had told her, before the plague took her. Powerful beings like devils and Fae often preyed on desperate people, offering them great powers at horrible prices that inevitably came due. She asked softly, though she knew that it was useless since both the Emperor and Conductor could read her mind. “Did he do this to you?”  She looked at the Emperor.

[I wished to change and The Emperor evolved me. He is my ally and my comfort. I hold and feel all of the memories of my host, Dahamunzu, who chose of her own free will to merge with with an Illithid tadpole. They are both me. This has been my form since the day I fought the Nether Brain. In the last five years, I too have had to grow up, though I do not presume to understand your sorrow, Yenna.]

It was difficult for Yenna to image anyone wanting to become a Mind-flayer, especially not someone like Dahamunzu, who would help an orphan on the street and expect nothing in return. “But…mind flayers have to eat brains. They like to control people.”

[Hmmm. It is true. I do very much enjoy brains, and when I first changed, I could be indiscriminate in satiating my hunger. But I find that I enjoy most peoples’ brains more when they stay inside their heads and continue to emit thoughts and feelings. I try to limit my eating to those brains which will not be emitting thoughts and feelings for much longer, or to those that been reducing the total number of other brains to enjoy. For example, I have eaten many Bhaal cultists and so has the Emperor. As for manipulation, I have to be very careful when I do it, and so it is often more trouble than the pleasure I derive from it.]

Yenna was not completely sure that she believed this, but she wanted to and so she was willing to pretend. Conductor sensed her doubt, but let it rest.

Finally, after a long silence, she asked “Can I…touch you?”

Conductor knelt down beside Jenna, who cautiously reached out and touched the Illithid’s arm. It was cool and damp but not as slimy as she was expecting.  She could feel a soft tingle in her hand where it made contact with Conductor’s skin. The tingling felt as if her hand had fallen asleep, but through it, she could still feel a faint pulse that was not her own.

“Do I feel like a monster?”

“No. Like a person. Just a little different..”

“The Emperor feels much the same as I do. Not really like a monster. Now, let us talk about you. Why did you not seek out Halsin or Jaheira in these long years? Either of them would have given you a home.”

“I…both of them were such Heroes. I heard stories of Jaheira from my mother…and Halsin, I did not think he would want me because I was from the city.”

“But why did you seek me out, then?”

“Because I felt safe with you when you were a person. You weren’t famous then, and you always seemed to understand when I was sad about my mother.”

“You cannot stay here. I do not need to tell you that mind-flayers are hated, and I do not wish to endanger you should we ever be found out. Also, we are not yet comfortable in the presence of humans for long periods of time.”

“Can I visit you sometimes?”

Conductor consulted with the Emperor.

“That would be possible, and I would like to see you, but you must not tell anyone what we are.”

“I can keep a secret.”

“Good. You must. Now, shall we go to Jaheira’s house? I do not wish you to be uncertain about whether you will have a place to sleep from night to night. She is not so intimidating once you get to know her.”

Not long after Conductor had returned from Jaheira’s house, the Emperor was once again disturbed by a hammering on the front door. Exasperated, he thought to Conductor:

[What have you done to Astarion? It is unwise to antagonize useful allies, and he is certainly angry with you.]

[I have not antagonized him nearly as much as I considered doing. I have merely given him an excuse to part with some information.]

She opened the door as Mistress Korlit and narrowly avoided being hit by a small golden object which bounced off the wall behind her head rolled down the corridor.

“Damn you, Munzu. You cursed me!”

“How so?”

“I have gone from seeing nothing in the mirror to seeing my own eyes staring out of a squid every time I pass a reflective surface. I can barely sleep because every time I close my eyes, I am choking as tentacles burst from my throat and my body splits in half. It took me three nights of this to figure out that one of my only friends, the one who I thought understood me best, cursed me like a Night Hag! Let me in and tell me what you want from me.”

“No. I think not.” There was a levity in Conductor’s voice. “It is dark. Let us walk and we will find somewhere away from prying eyes to discuss this.”

As they made their way towards a small park, Conductor continued. “I do not understand your problem. I look in the mirror every day and see tentacles. At first, it was disconcerting. I wanted to see Dahamunzu, who I knew was still there. But the longer I looked, the more I started to see the beauty in my black eyes, the delicate translucence of my skin, and the daintiness of my pink-tipped tentacles.” Mistress Korlit looked up at Astarion and smiled. “The Emperor, of course, has been my great support. I cared for him long before I changed.”

Astarion paused as if putting together a particularly tricky puzzle. Then, he started to laugh in an exhausted, exasperated way.  “Damn you, Munzu. You broke up with Gale for the Emperor, didn’t you? You’ve been fucking that squid since the minute we set foot in the Gate. Gods you’re mad. How did I not see it?”

“My madness saved your life and the city. Now that you have figured out what Jaheira, Minthara, Halsin and Gale have long known, we should discuss this curse. Tell me what I need to know, and I will remove it.”

Astarion seemed to think for a moment. Conductor felt his guilt, distrust, reluctance, and finally, she felt him flush all of it from his mind. “Fine.”He recited by rote a set of directions through the Underdark. “Do what you will. Just leave me out of it.”

Accordingly, Conductor recited a short incantation under her breath, contorting her fingers into complicated gestures. He felt an electrical wave wash over him and a weight lifted away.

[Goodnight, Astarion Acunin.]

Astarion did not return the goodbye as he sauntered off into the dark.

Chapter Text

A familiar presence greeted the Emperor and Conductor the moment they stepped out of the portal into an alley of Waterdeep. Somehow Tara had known exactly when and where they would arrive. She prowled along the top of a nearby brick wall, making the two illithid wait as she stalked a nearby pigeon. The Emperor and Conductor used this brief opportunity to check the other’s disguise for flaws. The air was chilly, and the two of them had changed to their usual respectable and innocuous half-elf forms but had donned thick jackets and shawls in layers over the leather armor that protected their skin. They had enough respect for their fellow predator to let her dispatch her quarry and eat her fill. When the Tressym had finished, she hopped onto a nearby crate and sat back on her haunches, scratching to dislodge a feather that had found its way into her fur.

[Mmmmm. Greetings, Conductor. And you] she said, looking at Master Korlit and seeing right through his disguise, [must be The Emperor. It is good to finally meet you. Gale has said much about you—some of it was flattering.]

[I hope Gale remembers that he is alive in part thanks to my guidance and protection] said the Emperor.

[Do not get your tentacles in a twist. He has acknowledged as much on a few occasions…after having been in his cups.] Tara was clearly enjoying this.

[He is in his cups often?] Conductor was concerned.

[Sometimes he has little gatherings with his friends from the College. He does brag about his adventures, but he is always careful to protect the identity of you both.]

[Is he happy, though?] asked Conductor, whose concern had been multi-faceted.

[Oh, you’ve always been such a dear. He is happy, but I think sometimes he misses the danger and excitement of his adventuring days. Mind you, this does not mean you can involve him in any mad extra-planar schemes. I do not think I could stand the worry.]

Conductor felt the Emperor try to gently pry into the Tressym’s mind. The minute she had mentioned ‘mad extra-planar schemes’, he had become suspicious.  She put a hand on his and thought to him alone. [Be careful, my ally. I like her and do not wish to make an enemy of her or Gale.] The Emperor proceeded cautiously. Conductor sighed. She wished he did not insist on mind reading people when it risked alienating them. She pre-empted him by asking Tara the Emperor’s question. [Has anyone tried to involve Gale in mad extra-planar schemes of late?”]

[Of course you would ask. The Githyanki of the Comet have visited him.]

The Emperor recoiled. Conductor felt his fear, and his desire to leave immediately. They had come to ask Gale to examine the tadpoles. They wanted him to reverse engineer the Netherese magic that had mingled with the tadpole from the astral prism—the magic that had made Conductor’s transformation halt before it had completed, and then allowed her to keep her memories. They could find another wizard. There were many wizards in the world, after all. Some might be willing to work with Mindflayers given enough coin.

[Ha!] thought Tara. [I am enough a predator that I can smell fear! Who would have thought that I could frighten a Mindflayer!] There was a feline delight in her mental voice. [Come, Emperor, Conductor. I know that my Gale has not betrayed either of you, and though the Githyanki are many things, they are not clever enough to trick him into betraying you.]

The Tressym seemed to be telling the truth. The Emperor managed to temporarily halt the multiple streams of thought in his mind concurrently, imagining the different ways in which the Githyanki could be plotting to capture and Conductor and himself. Conductor again touched him on the arm. He was slightly annoyed with her coddling, but also found her touch soothing. They would go to see Gale despite his reservations. The two of them could handle anything they encountered. They would survive.

They walked with Tara through the alley, out into the street, making small-talk with the her, listening to her recount her hunts and describe her favorite hiding places. Conductor shared a little information of her own. Baldur’s Gate was slowly rebuilding. She and the Emperor had funded much of the construction in the lower city.  Us still admired everything feline and had gotten quite good at imitating their mannerisms. Its synaptic discharge ability allowed it to effectively neutralize the swarms of cranium rats that had proven fatal to many a neighborhood stray since the fall of the Absolute. Its usefulness and street-credibility thus proven, Us thus built a sort of posse among the Baldurian street cats.

[I am happy for Us, though I cannot say I approve of the company it keeps. Who knows what low habits it might bring home.]

[Can I interpret that as your volunteering to teach it proper manners?]

[Ha! Master of manipulation, you!]

Conductor’s tentacles twitched in amusement beneath her scarf. They had arrived at the corner door of the House of the Professors Dekarios. The figure of Morena Dekarios, Gale’s mother, stood in the door. Her dress was disheveled as if she had been interrupted at some important task, and her hair was upswept into an explosion of curls behind her head.  She peered up at the Emperor through her spectacles with a flinty, yet amused gaze.

She thanked Tara for escorting the guests, greeting Conductor. “I am so glad you could come, and that you could bring your mate with you this time.” Conductor felt a tingle of amusement from the Emperor at this new title.  Morena Dekarios continued, “Remove your disguises, you are among friends. I have seen an Illithid before and so has Tara”

Conductor shed her guise, her skin steaming slightly in the warm house. She bobbed with relief as she began to float. Her feet had vestigial toes with claws that scratched the other toes as she walked. It was why she had a slight limp. The Emperor hesitated, apprehension visible in the eyes of his humanoid disguise. Then, he too assumed his natural form.

“Well, aren’t you a handsome and formidable aberration,” exclaimed Morena Dekarios, admiring his long tentacles and hourglass figure.

The Emperor’s eyes flickered for a second in surprise and then, in a completely deadpan voice, he replied, “I am not available” and then “But it is not a reflection on your desirability.”

Morena laughed. “Don’t I know it! In my youth, I was second only to Mystra in the number of magicians paying me complements, and my popularity has only slightly diminished with age. Did Gale ever tell you that I dated a Djinn when he was younger? Do sit down, both of you…or float around, as you like. Do either of you take tea?”

“I should like very much to hear about the Djinn some day. My interactions with them have always left both of us wanting. As for tea, we cannot taste it much of it, but the warmth is pleasant,” said Conductor.

“I am sorry that I could not find a suitable meal for you—unused sentient brains are not easy to source in the course of my daily activity. But I read that you might be able to enjoy food vicariously through another’s experience. Would you like to try?”

The Emperor politely declined, but Conductor shot a glance at Morena Dekarios and said slyly:

“Would you have any fern fiddleheads? I have a recipe I have always wished to try. From the instructions, it does not seem like too much bother to prepare.”

“I do. Fortunately for you, they are in season and that I grow them in my herb garden.”

The Emperor spoke to Conductor in her mind. [You speak of my mother’s soup recipe, but I have no need to indulge in such sentimentality. The part of me that enjoyed that is only a memory and a far-off one at that.]

[I am requesting it because I would like to taste it. You can disconnect from me temporarily if you would rather not.]

Conductor knew he would do no such thing. She followed the elder Professor Dekarios off to the garden, leaving the Emperor alone in the sitting room where, a few minutes later, Gale found him floating, and leafing through a book by flicking his long fingers towards its pages.

“Oh! Emperor. I did not realize Conductor had brought you. Well, this is a surprise, though not an unpleasant one. Have you been enjoying your freedom since I last saw you on the docks of Grey Harbor?”

“Yes. I revel in my freedom of my mind and body. It is marvelous to be able to work towards my own ends and to think whatever thoughts I desire…and to share them with those with whom I wish to share them.” Gale got the distinct impression that he was thinking of Conductor.

You’ve lived with Conductor for five years now. If you don’t mind me asking, how does that work? Everything I’ve read about Mindflayers indicates that they are only reliable partners as long as both parties have shared goals.”

The Emperor replied: “these sources must be authoritative that you trust them over your own experience.”

“Well,” said Gale, “if Mindflayers always turn on allies when they no longer have common goals, and you did not turn on me, I can assume that my behavior was never in conflict with your goals.”

“Outside of the theory of Arcana, such logical contrapositives are of little use,” returned the Emperor. “They rely on the ability to simplify complex systems down to facts that are either true or false and not ‘both true and false’ or ‘nothing at all.’ Furthermore, if your underlying assumptions are wrong, for example, if your facts were drawn from a source that is biased or ignorant, your logic will be wrong as well.”

“You have always been a such a delightful conversationalist, Emperor. I miss having your voice in my mind.”

“You are sarcastic, but your reasoning was always better with my guidance. In answer to your question, a Mindflayer’s designs need not be immutable. I have found that when I am with Conductor, we function as a connected whole such that her goals are mine, and mine are hers. Sometimes, when she wants something that I do not want, we must both change our goals such that they are again in alignment, because our mutual interest lies in functioning as a unit. And you, Gale, have you found contentment, having turned down the chance at divinity?”

Gale thought for a moment, and the answered with an earnestness that surprised the Emperor. “I think so. I was a child prodigy, you know. All those around me told me I would someday achieve greatness. Then there was Mystra. I would have done anything for her praise…and to continue being a marvel among my peers. You know how that ultimately went.” He smiled cheekily, pointing a finger at the Emperor. “The minute I got back on my feet again after a year in despair, you snatched me off the street and stuck a tadpole in my eye. I had to work my way back up to archmage from nothing.”

“I did not personally tadpole you,” said the Emperor. “I had to pilot a Nautiloid.”

“Well, it looked like you. Though, now I think of it, its eyes were a different color. In any case, I have come to realize that giving the crown of Karsus to Mystra meant that I could be content. It meant accepting that I was not her rival or lover, but another acolyte, and that I wasn’t a marvel anymore, but a very talented wizard.”

“You did save the world,” said the Emperor, softly.

“…and that was enough. I can be confident enough in who I am to serve as a role model for the next generation.”

“…the next generation,” repeated the Emperor, calculating the thousands of ways in which what he was about to say might go poorly. “I wish to show you something, and do not wish you to misunderstand my intentions. Will you let me into your mind?”

“I suppose so, for old times’ sake, if you get out again and leave it as you found it.”

The Emperor agreed and Gale relaxed his mental defenses. Immediately the images and words flooded in nearly overwhelming him: a barrage of non-linear scenes and voices and feelings. Gale grimaced and the Emperor pulled back. [Your old mind was more familiar to me and I forgot that your new one cannot process information at the same rate. I will show you in a slower and more sequential fashion.] Gale’s eyes narrowed slightly but he nodded. The wave of thought washed over him again.

He stood over a brass bowl of Mindflayer tadpoles, swimming circles. Mesmerizing. [They are mine] said the Emperor [and Conductor’s. They have Conductor’s ability to intercept psionic commands. Listen to them think.] And indeed, Gale heard the quiet burble of small thoughts, each unique.

Gale thought felt a feeling of adoration and pride that was certainly not his own. […is that yours?  I’ve read Mindflayers don’t feel positive emotions.]

[As I have told you, your sources are unreliable.]

Gale looked up and saw Conductor floating before him. She, too seemed fascinated by the tadpoles…but also wary. [Will you keep your promise to me?] She asked. [Will you alter them so that they have a symbiotic relationship with the host as I did? So that they are not as drawn to dominance and manipulation as we are?]

Gale felt a wave of anger and protectiveness. Conductor considered him (no…that’s not right, these were The Emperor’s feelings) innately evil and their offspring as well. He hovered protectively over the basin and lashed out at Conductor. [I will not damage our offspring so they might fit in in a world that would hate and suspect them no matter how ‘good’ they might try to be.]  Gale felt the air still around him as the room went suffocatingly silent. It was too hot. He could almost see the energy gathering on the edges of his consciousness. Conductor meant to destroy the tadpoles. She was gathering power. He arched his body protectively over the basin.

[She did not destroy anything,] the Emperor intoned. Gale watched the Emperor apologize to Conductor for breaking his promise. [Perhaps Gale would know how to reverse-engineer the Netherese tadpole that allowed me to keep my memories and metamorphose only on command,] mused Memory Conductor to the Emperor.

Gale furrowed his brow... “It is hard to believe that you went from fighting to apologizing. It seems to me that you are showing me an altered story that suits your ends. If you are going to explain yourself by sharing your memories because you do not think I will trust your words, you had best share all your memories.”

[It is personal. Conductor comforted me in a moment when I needed her. I realized that my own experiences had led me to become paranoid such that our common goals were no longer aligned. So, I changed my goals.] After a pause, he continued, [I hope that explanation is satisfactory to you.  Will you help us with the tadpoles?]

“You have changed a little.” said Gale. “The Emperor that I knew would not have explained himself at all.”

“My freedom and life are no longer dependent on your goodwill. The risk of explaining myself is less.”

“You do have a point. The companions spent a lot of time deliberating over whether you were trustworthy, but we did not wonder whether we were deserving of your trust. In retrospect, you were just as dependent on us as we were on you, and I am sorry I did not recognize that at the time. Let us say I choose to believe you, and I help you. What is my assurance that you are not going to use what I create to enact some horrific Grand Design? Who do you intend to infect with these tadpoles?”

“It seems you have changed as well. I acknowledge your apology. In answer to your question, I was never interested in a Grand Design unless you mean the desire for small-scale perpetuation to which all species are subject. We will only tadpole those who are willing to embrace this gift. Conductor has reached out to the children of the Gur in the Underdark. Those will not otherwise see the sunlight again. There are other prospects as well. But we have both resolved that they will all make the decision to evolve freely and without coercion, as Conductor did.”

“I’ll admit, I knew of your mission already. Conductor wrote me a letter about this months ago, and I have spent much thought on it,” said Gale. “I wanted to talk with you in person. You understand why, I hope. History is full of stories of magical experimentations with ill effects…”

“…and wizards in their hubris being tricked by aberrations and Fey. Yes, yes, I know, Gale.” Conductor chimed into the conversation, floating back into the room with a tureen of soup, which she gently levitated onto the table.

“Now, Munzu…I mean, Conductor, don’t you be frustrated with me. I will help you. I was just explaining my hesitation. I will need some samples of tadpoles and of spinal fluid from both of you. Yours will act as a control, Emperor, since you came from the Absolute before it was under Netherese influence, and since Conductor’s original tadpole was produced by the Absolute under the effect of the crown. I also do not know how or if the, what, twenty (?) additional tadpoles you absorbed effected you, Conductor. I expect they did, since Baldur’s Gate was full of Illithid from Netherese tadpoles and there are no records of others who retained their old personalities…”

“Gale, sit down to eat, dear. You can talk about magic after supper,” said Morena. “Now, Conductor. You mentioned that it was possible for you to taste food through me if we linked. What do I need to do?”

“Relax, and when I ask to enter your mind, let me in. I will form a small connection to your sense of taste and then leave.”

Morena closed her eyes and relaxed, and Conductor gently entered her consciousness. She did not probe, but she concentrated for a moment on the streams of thought around her, searching. She found a single gossamer thread and plucked it, wrapping it gently around one of her own threads of thought, and drawing it back with her as she exited the wizard’s mind. Gale’s mother was surprised. “That is all?”

“Yes. I have linked one of my trains of thought to your sense of taste and smell. I shall unlink them when we are done.”

“Let’s test it, then, and try your soup. It does smell lovely, but of course everything does when you cook it in butter.”

Gale ladled out a small bowl for everyone, and then his mother took a sip. A soft, squeaky sigh escaped from the Emperor’s mouthparts as his eyes narrowed and then closed. He picked up the bowl, comically small within his hands, and tipped a small amount of soup into the opening between his tentacles, feeling the creaminess and warmth of the soup in his mouth and throat. Conductor caught a flash of memory…a rosy cheeked human woman with dark hair spooning the soup into a bowl, and a boyish delight in how the fiddleheads resembled the tentacles of sea-monsters. Beneath the table, Conductor placed a hand on the Emperor’s leg.

“Thank you for this gift,” said the Emperor to Gale’s Mother. “The recipe was my host’s mother’s, and while I admit that sometimes sentimental in a way not befitting an Illithid, I was surprised at how enjoyable it was for me to taste it and remember her.”

“Your host’s mother must have been a formidable woman, Emperor.”

“Indeed. She was fearless and insatiably curious about the world, but also kind.” The Emperor’s Eyes narrowed. I wish I could remember her better, but the memories of my original host are often cloudy. I think he inherited much from her, though.

Conductor finished pouring the soup down her throat and released the thread of Morena’s mind that she had borrowed.

“Do you ever keep in touch with the others?” Gale asked this with what seemed like anxiety in his voice.  

“I am sorry to say that I have not talked much to them,” said Conductor, “Though I did speak to Astarion in a fashion. He seems contented enough as a bounty hunter. He was paid by a mysterious woman to burn Cazador’s palace to the ground. I shall leave it as an exercise to you to figure out who that might have been.” Conductor seemed to smile, her tentacles drifting through the air before her face autonomously.

“Ha. Lady Incognita!”

“That was my theory, too. I was never convinced of her death. I found it difficult to talk to Astarion, though. He distrusts me because of what I am, and he is still angry at me for transforming and siding with the Emperor.”

“I have talked with Wyll Ravengard. After five years of fighting in the hells, he has grown weary. His father has been trying to convince him to come back to Baldur’s Gate and help in the governance of the city, and he has accepted. He wanted to know if I have found anything that could help Karlach.”

“And have you? Do you not have a scroll of True Resurrection?”

“Her body has been altered to the point where I do not think that it would work. You can capture a soul and force it back into a body…but not if that body with a broken engine for a heart which cannot be fixed. It is similar to how you cannot talk to a dead body which has no head. There’s no place to house the soul anymore, even for the span of time it takes to ask three questions.”

“I understand. I shall write her, then.  I was always very fond of her, and have refrained from writing her for fear that she might mistrust my motives. Ceremorphosis is, of course, risky and traumatic, but a good part of the host’s body is reconfigured and regenerated. If she wishes to host a tadpole, we will welcome her as kin. If she does not, we shall mourn her and honor her memory.”

The Emperor, who had remained silent, interjected. “I would not be surprised if she took the offer. Karlach can be surprisingly practical.” Conductor could tell that he was still ruminating over the implications of the Younger Ravengard sharing power with his father. He also relished the thought of Karlach as a new ally. The Emperor was always contemplating the city and its politics. Conductor had always found his scheming endearing.

“You should both know,” said Gale at last, “That I have been in contact with Lae’zel.” Instantly, both Illithids were focused on Gale. He flinched uncomfortably. “The second War of the Comet is not going well.  She will never admit it, but I can read the fear between the lines of her bravado.”

“Was she able to find out how Vlaakith was predicting the movements of her knights?”

“She thinks Vlaakith has made an unthinkable alliance, either with an Ulitharid or with an Elder Brain.”

The Emperor spoke.” She is a greater fool than even I thought, as are the Gith who follow her. They will be eaten or enslaved.”

“It is unthinkable to me,” said Gale with a shudder. “That a Githyanki would have done such a thing knowing as much as they do about how the Ghai…I mean, the Illithid, the ones that live in colonies, think.”

Morena chided Gale: “Think before you talk, Gale. He meant no insult, I am sure.” She continued. “You told me that Vlaakith was the hundred and fifty-seventh of her name. How can that be?”

“I don’t know, mother”, said Gale. “I suppose that every time there is a new one, the number increments. Maybe they are all duplicates of the original.”

“You said she was a Lich, too. Githyanki live in the Astral plane. They do not age. Is immortality not the point of becoming a lich?”

“Well, there’s also power,” interrupted Gale. His mother continued.

“...And in any case, if she was a lich, why would she have one-hundred and fifty-six predecessors, especially since both Orpheus and Voss were her contemporaries?”

“For that matter, the Illithid lifespan is less than a century and a half, yet you are nearing five hundred, Emperor. Does time mean nothing?”

“My life,” said the Emperor, “was artificially prolonged by one of Ansur’s cures. It was not intentional.” He said this last in a distant voice, but there was an undercurrent of sadness in it. Perhaps this was only Gale’s imagination, for when the Emperor continued, his words were forceful. “As for Vlaakith, her number is likely a mistake made by a human sage who did not understand the Githyanki lifecycle but wrote about it anyway. You had something else you wished to say, Gale. Do not prevaricate.”

Gale looked dejected. He sighed. “Lae’zel is looking for both of you, and she thinks that Vlaakith’s forces are as well.  She asked me if I knew your whereabouts and I told her that you were likely in Baldur’s Gate, where she left you. Don’t look at me like that, Emperor. I told her nothing she did not already know. I do not know what she wants of you, and she refused to explain when I asked, but I thought it my duty as a friend to warn you.”

The Emperor looked at Conductor for a moment, then she turned away, gazing listlessly down at the table. The Emperor spoke. “Then our reunion is inevitable and there is little we can do but prepare for war once again.”

Chapter Text

Gale had agreed, after a long discussion, to experiment on ten tadpoles. The dangerous magic that had once almost ruined his life was still alluring to him, and the opportunity to study it in a controlled experiment was too good to pass up. He also saw some appeal in the Emperor and Conductor’s dream of changing their own species. Such ideas were dangerous, yes, and he was learned enough to know that the road to Avernus was paved with people who tried to play god by manipulating complex systems they did not understand…but he’d always had a weakness for playing god. He drew quicksilver fluid from Conductor and then the Emperor into several vials, and retreated into his tower that night with several jars of mind-flayer tadpoles.

For the Emperor and Conductor, shadows flickered at the edges of a bright future. Tara walked them back towards the alley where they had emerged, and where they would open the portal to Baldur’s Gate once more. All three minds were alert at every motion, every stray thought. The crisp air was still. The alley was silent. The Emperor opened a portal to Baldur's Gate, and the two Illithid stepped through.

The Githyanki struck as the Emperor and Conductor as they emerged from the portal in a narrow side street of the Lower City. They were both still reeling from the change in environment when Conductor felt a ripple in the air as an arrow struck the ground near her feet. Another struck the wall near the Emperor. Conductor drew her mace and assumed a defensive stance. The Emperor moved behind her, raising a volatile shield around them both. She felt his thoughts within her own mind, pointing out the locations of each soldier—this one on the roof to the right, next to a gable.  Another was at the entrance to the alley, bow taught. There were dozens in all, for now content to fire warning shots.

[They are not shooting to kill], Conductor observed.

[Yes, but should we be captured and brought to their stronghold it would be nearly impossible to escape, regardless of the loyalties of our captors.] replied the Emperor.

Conductor felt a whisp of fear snaking through her trains of thought. The implications of being caught by Vlaakith’s loyalists and traded to the queen’s new ally chilled her. It would be better to be captured by the rebels loyal to the memory of Orpheus. She wondered how many of the rebels knew that she was the Ghaik who had killed their prince? [Then we must ensure that we are not caught.]

She must isolate this fear. She must bury it. She could sense the Emperor’s resolve to do the same. She busied herself with flicking arrows off course as the Emperor prepared to open another portal. The arrows came with ever increasing frequency and accuracy and as if the archers were becoming increasingly tired of shooting just to warn and had decided to shoot to maim instead.

Just as the portal started to crackle into existence, the Gith descended upon them from every direction: warriors with silver armour and swords raised high, and monks leaping at them from impossible heights and distances. Conductor unleashed a wave of invisible force, sucking half a dozen of them into a great pile in a place where time and space seemed to warp and bend. Conductor’s mind reached for the weave, preparing to blast the downed assailant and felt a hesitation within her. A small nagging unease, perhaps from the Emperor’s subconscious, perhaps from her patron, perhaps from her own intuition led her to drop the thread of arcane magic. Instead, she raised her mace and swung with every ounce of strength and stamina she could gather summoning the scraps of muscle memory and experience from the body and mind of her former self.

The Emperor’s concentration broke and the nascent portal closed with a sizzle. In desperation he lashed his tentacles at another attacker coming in from the side, grabbing her about the neck. She screamed as his teeth sunk into her scalp. He threw another against the wall with a free hand.

They fought like cornered tigers, and they fell, overwhelmed, exhausted at last. In the dead of night, around a certain narrow street the lower city of Baldur’s Gate, lights began to flicker in the windows of the buildings around a certain narrow alley. Some claim to have awoken the clash of swords, of familiar alien screams. Many citizens would talk the next day of waking, screaming from the same nightmare of being pulled down. They remembered the same painfully emphatic cry of desperation reverberating in their minds.

[HELP US.]

Chapter Text

The Emperor awoke in pitch darkness.  He felt the cold chafing of manacles on his wrists and ankles.  The steel collar about his neck chafed against a particularly sore spot where they must have injected him with something. The metal bars of a cage dug into his back. The chill spread through the wetness of his skin. He shivered slightly. He reached out a tendril of thought and felt the familiar presence of Conductor, though her mind did not respond to his gentle handshake.  She was unconscious. He rubbed his neck, chains clinking.

He hated the Githyanki.

Of all the creatures that wanted to kill him, he had to be captured by them. Strong, stubborn, paranoid and psionically powerful, the Githyanki would give an Illithid no grace. Illithids, having created, enslaved, and experimented on the Gith for millennia, were hunted with extreme prejudice by Githyanki youth, who displayed the heads of captured Illithid as symbols of their adulthood.

The Emperor consoled himself with the idea that, since neither he or Conductor were dead, there might be a slim window of opportunity for negotiation and escape. Perhaps the Gith’s rigid expectations about Illithid behavior might be used to the Emperor’s advantage, but those stereotypical behaviors included lying and manipulation. Lying and manipulation would have to be done with the utmost care and subtlety. There were too many unknown variables at this point for the Emperor to formulate plans and calculate the probabilities of their success. All he knew is that Gale had told them that both Vlaakith and Lae’zel were looking for them and that Vlaakith was thought to have formed an alliance with an Ulitharid—an ultra-powerful Illithid capable of controlling its less powerful brethren and of becoming an Elder Brain. He did not know why they had been kidnapped and imprisoned, he did not know what the Githyanki intended to do with them.  He would have to wait until someone came for him or until Conductor awoke.

It was not long before blazing torchlight pierced the dark and the sound of footsteps dragged him from his thoughts. He saw blurry faces and the flicker of silver armour. He heard the sound of a key in the lock. Now, a Gith stood before him, and there were three others close behind. He could very easily influence the thoughts of the Gith right in front of him.

Perhaps they did not want to hurt this Ghaik. Maybe they would rather set it free and help it to fight the other nasty Githyanki…the Emperor dismissed the idea. There was a time when he might have tried it, but experience had taught him that the short term and long-term risks of doing this and getting caught weren’t worth it—The Githyanki would see such a trick coming in any case. Though surely it would not hurt to gently reach out a tendril of thought in order to get a read on their intentions….

“Keep your thoughts to yourself, Ghaik.” The world swam and he reeled in pain as one of them clubbed him between the eyes with the hilt of her sword.

In his momentary incapacitation, they were upon him, grabbing his arms and forcing his head and tentacles into a black sack. He was half dragged, and half pushed through what seemed like endless twisting tunnels and corridors which he deftly mapped out in his mind. They were underground, clearly, but there was something more. There was something haunting about these caverns. A sort of psychic resonance in the walls themselves gave rise to visions of shadowy, tall forms which floated through the hallways, plotting domination and thinking a flood of dark thoughts.  This could only mean one thing. They were at Creche K’illir, which had been built and then abandoned by the Illithid before being resettled by the Githyanki. It meant they were isolated and any route out would involve opening a portal or stealing a spelljammer.

They emerged into a well-lit room; he could see the flickering light through the bag on his head. He probed the room subtly, bracing for another blow to the head. His Githyanki captors, busying themselves with tying him to a post, did not seem to notice. Good. There were five of them, two attending to his bonds, a red dragon in humanoid form standing in the far corner, two guards over by the door, and their leader. The sack was roughly pulled from his head and he found himself staring into the face Kith’rak Voss.

The knight stared down at him, smiling wanly, his grey hair glinting in the torchlight.

“I will not bother with introductions. I have seen you before, and you have been party to conversations with me. One Ghaik is much like another in any case.”

The Emperor stared at him blankly, his tentacles unnaturally still. Voss Continued.

“What do you know of the Illithid Adversary?”

The Emperor replied slowly and deliberately: “You kidnap me and bind me to a post to ask me about a children’s story?”

One of the Githyanki guards moved to administer a kick to the Emperor, only to stop at a gesture from Voss.

“You walk a thin line, Ghaik. My patience will not last long.”

“Very well. According to the legend told to newborn Illithid, the Adversary is an Illithid who retains the memories and personality of its original host but successfully hides its defect from the others of the colony. The Adversary is feared because it lives in plain sight but schemes to destroy the colony from within.”

Voss pretended to think momentarily, stroking his chin with his fingers as if he had a beard. Suddenly, as if struck by inspiration, he said: “..but you plotted to destroy your Elder Brain and succeeded!   I’ve been told you remember your life before ceremorphosis. You were  some sort of hero in your world. Would that not make you the Adversary?”

The Emperor shrugged. “It is possible to interpret the story that way.”

“But you do not. Why?”

“There is no reason to believe in the literal existence of a character who is a metaphor.”

“Vlaakith’s Ulitharid seems to believe in the Adversary.”

“Illusion is their language, they think and breathe in metaphor and allegory. Who can say what they really believe?”

“Because Vlaakith would not have prom…” Voss began to answer and cut himself off.” When he was a child, he was forced to serve a Ghaik who would get the same inspired  twinkle in its eyes as the Emperor had now. That Ghaik enjoyed the flavor of Voss’ humiliation. Its eyes would twinkle in anticipation when it thought of a new and cruel way to torment him, and as he suffered, it would sit and savor his thoughts, its pleasure palpable. Voss signaled to one of the Gith standing nearby who happily smashed the Emperor in the base of the tentacles with the hilt of her sword, and as he recoiled, kicked him in the stomach. She kicked him a few more times in the ribs as he doubled over, just for good measure.

Voss waited a few moments for the Emperor’s gasping to subside. Silvery blood dripped down his tentacles. His mouth hung slightly ajar as he panted.

“The other Ghaik—The one who used to be an insubordinate, gullible human girl with a funny eye—Lae’zel talks of it as if it also remembers who it was. It fought the Elder Brain for you while you protected it with stolen power.  Could it not also be the adversary?”

 “As I have said, the Adversary is a personification of genetic impurity. As such, I suppose Conductor may be an Adversary.” Voss was no Gortash, clever but drunk on self-regard. Voss knew what manner of creature he was interrogating. Unlike Gortash, he understood that the Emperor was analyzing everything he said, searching for advantage, and he was letting precious little slip. He had given the Emperor some crumbs of information. Vlaakith and her Allies wanted the Adversary. Since Lae’zel and Voss had captured them first, and since they were both still alive, perhaps they were to be traded as bargaining chips for peace, or used otherwise as leverage. The Emperor continued cautiously.  “I advise against using the Adversary as leverage with Vlaakith and her ally. The queen is a fool for making alliance with an Ulitharid. Once their goals diverge, their alliance will end. She cannot win against an Ulitharid strategically, and she lacks the wisdom to use her arcane power against it effectively.” He remembered when Vlaakith had ordered Dahamunzu to kill Orpheus (Or him. He did not think Vlaakith particularly cared which of her enemies was killed at the time). Dahamunzu’s inclination was to thumb her nose at the Lich but she had instead engaged in a verbal dance, satisfying Vlaakith and promising nothing. Through her mind, the Emperor had sensed Vlaakith’s madness then—her unpredictability.  The fall of the Gith is a bigger prize than a fictional Adversary, and Vlaakith knows it. She has traded the freedom of the Gith for her own power. They will be enslaved or eaten, once again cattle of the Illithid. Of course, your followers will enslaved first if you strike a deal with her.”

Voss’ eyes narrowed in barely hidden fury as he again signaled to the two younger Githyanki guards. The Emperor screamed psionically as a club shattered his left arm and then his right. Yet, he dragged several trains of thought inwards, shielding them from the all-consuming pain. Insulated, they doggedly pressed on, processing and listening to the thoughts of the guards who were breaking his fingers.

[The Kith’rak is desperate and weak without a leader to follow. If he wishes to give up, he should  name Lae’zel as his successor and not dishonour the rest of us with his shame.]

[We only need one Adversary. Why can we not just kill this one?  It’s tentacles are long and formidable. It would be a magnificent trophy.]

 Voss continued as the guards continued to rain blows down upon the Emperor’s body. “I did not ask for your advice, nor will your honeyed words save you, mind-flayer. Whether or not your evaluation of the situation is correct you will never know, for if I cannot deliver victory to my people, I will give them justice for the prince who could have saved them.”

A hundred trains of thought were dispatched to process the pain, and isolated from those threads still plotting, processing, trying to find an angle. The Emperor’s agonized expression changed almost imperceptibly as the pieces fell into place, and with them, he saw a slight edge to grasp. He saw a very slim path to escape, though treading it would not be pleasant.

The Emperor reached out to Conductor, and for a moment, he saw through her eyes—not that there was anything to see. She sat, chained, in the damp dark of a cage just like the one in which he had awoken. He should share the information he had gathered so far. He owed her that at least. He gently touched her mind, then, he severed the connection. For the first time in years, he was completely alone.

He gazed up into Voss’ amphibian eyes, his tentacles parting slightly.

[You do not really know what happened to your prince, do you Kith’rak? Lae’zel never told you, did she? It is fortunate for you that the Adversary who must live to serve as your political pawn is not same Ghaik as the one upon whom you seek revenge. Let me show you.]

Dahamunzu stood before the Emperor, with a sly grin on her face. She held the Orphic hammer. She grasped the haft, preparing to throw it to an overjoyed-looking Lae’zel.

“You did a good impression of a person,” she said, “but you didn’t fool me.”  She  launched the hammer, but no sooner had it left her hands than it stopped mid-air and flew into the Emperor’s waiting claw. A quick gesture of his free hand sent a great surge of energy towards Lae’zel, Minthara, Gale, and Dahamunzu, throwing them to  the ground. The Emperor casually tossed the hammer over the edge of the rock on which they stood, consigning it forever to the Astral Sea. He floated towards the stunned party, staring down at Dahamunzu who glared defiantly back at him, even from this position of weakness.

“You chose this moment, when we are all vulnerable, to betray me? I should not be surprised. You have always been overconfident in your poor judgement.  Now, for once, you will obey.”  He snapped his fingers, raising a flailing Dahamunzu to his eye-level. He entered her mind as she struggled against him, screaming, grimacing, and he took control of her body. He could feel her panic rising as he produced a final Tadpole— one he had been cultivating for just this occasion. She struggled mentally and physically against him. He held it to her terror-filled eye, and watched as it squirmed its way into her brain. Every fiber of her being rebelled against both the Emperor and the parasite he had forced upon her. It was no use. He dropped her protection, and her body began to spasm and bleed. She choked and screamed. He gave her back her mind for one final moment before she lost it forever.

He could feel the crushing fear in the minds of the rest. He could see it in their eyes as they watched the grisly transformation.

“As I have demonstrated, you are my puppets, and you will do as I command. Without me, you are all without worth. I can and will drop your protection at any time.” He turned for emphasis, towards the creature that was Dahamunzu. It now lay in a fetal position amidst the remnants of Dahamunzu’s skin and hair, gasping. Its tentacles moved spasmodically.

Lae’zel looked past him at Orpheus, and the Emperor sensed her resolve, her certainty that she was doomed and that the only thing that could now end the Grand Design were Vlaakith’s knights. She lunged towards the captive prince sword drawn.

“I will send the prince of the Comet to the Astral Sea with Honor, and if I must die a slave, then you shall as well, Ghaik!”

She was a second too late. The Emperor’s tentacles were already wrapped around the Prince’s head. As the Emperor’s teeth cracked open his skull, the prince gave a great psionic cry of resentment and hate. Lae’zel once again was sent flying to the ground, body intact but spirit broken. The Emperor felt a flush of power in every part of his mind. The Absolute’s commands came furiously to him, ordering him back, ordering him to surrender, ordering the companions to transform. He batted away each one with ease and control. Orpheus’ power was his.

Dahamunzu stood, its body remade, confusion filling its large black eyes.

[Where am I? I am frightened.]

[I am the Emperor. Until you think of a suitable name for yourself, I shall call you Conductor. Gather your strength, for we must now fight for our freedom.]

Voss staggered backwards, clutching his face in horror. He regained his stance and stared down at the Emperor, who did not return his gaze, staring at the ground, breathing heavily.  Voss’  face hardened, but not before a strange expression flickered over his features—doubt? He gestured to the two guards.

“Do with that thing what you please, but do not kill it, and do no further damage my trophy. The crèche will watch me take the head of this Ghaik and will know that the death of Orpheus has been avenged.”

Chapter Text

Conductor was awake when the Emperor was returned to his cage. He refused to communicate with her, but she knew that he lived because she could feel his consciousness even though he would not let her in. She could see little but the flickering torches and a wet, silvery glint trailing behind the figures as they dragged a figure much larger than themselves across the floor. What had they done to him? A hundred thoughts concurrently worried and worried.  Conductor struggled to control them, forcing herself to shut her eyes and breath in and out. She corralled the thoughts, forcing them to rejoin her main consciousness. As she did this, she pondered what he had told her before she had lost contact. He had bought her time by distracting Voss, who would not be anticipating her next move. She was determined that they would both live, and that the Emperor would not have suffered in vain. She knew what needed to be done. She sent forth a tendril of thought, among the sleeping Gith in the barracks nearby.

She was surprised to feel a familiar consciousness: a Gith dreamed of Waterdeep, though it was not the warm sun or the famous bathhouses that the Gith remembered fondly, but its dungeons.  They were filled with monsters waiting to meet her silver sword, and in her dream, Shak’ik ran through them, sword raised, spells ready. There, in the Gith’s dream, Conductor appeared.

“Shak’ik, of Crèche K’illir. Student of Gale of Waterdeep.” With a flick of her wrist, Shak’ik’s sword froze in midair.

“I will hunt you down, Ghaik, and I will end you.” Even as Shak’ik growled her threat, recognition filled her eyes. “You. The mind-flayer who fought with Gale Dekarios against the Elder Brain.” She hissed: “Get out of my dream.”

“Tell Kith’rak Lae’zel that an Adversary of the Illithid would speak with her.”

“An Adversary? A bold claim. We shall see. But you are a Ghaik above all, and I do not simply do a Ghaik’s bidding.”

“Even in dreams you argue. But I do not wish to fight nor do I wish to dominate you. I place my fate in the hands of the Kith’rak, if she would hear me out.”

“All Ghaik wish to dominate, and all Ghaik lie.”

Despite Shak’ik’s best efforts, she was waking even as she spoke. As the dream ended, her mental defences hardened, and Conductor’s thread of thought was expelled.

Not long after that, Conductor felt other consciousnesses in the room, the clank of boots on the floor, and the creak of her cage door as it swung open. Her manacles were inspected and secured. Then, as the Emperor had been hours before, she was half dragged half shoved through the winding halls of the Crèche until she and the two guards who accompanied her came to a wooden door. It was opened and Conductor was flung through.

She stood slowly, naked and chained. Then, as if resolved to reclaim some lost dignity, she floated towards the muscular Gith in shining armor who stood before her, arms folded and eyes narrowed. Behind Kithrak Lae’zel stood Shak’ik, her face and body locked in imitation of her superior.

Conductor was the first to speak, asking in the flat, measured tones of Mindflayers.

“Why did you kidnap me? Why have you imprisoned me? Why have you harmed my ally?”

She felt a gaping hole where the Emperor had been in her mind. It was like a part of her, an essential part, was missing. Her skin had darkened to a bluish purple as she spoke, rising ever higher in the air, her arms and tentacles extended to make her taller and more formidable than she was. Her chains rattled and clanked.

Lae’zel hissed at her. “Monster who was Dahamunzu Silverclode. I owe you nothing at all except for the death that all my people owe their old enslavers. Now, bow.”

To her surprise, Conductor obeyed. She alighted on her heavy feet, then fell to her knees. Then, after a slight pause, she fell forward, tentacles and spindly arms splayed out before her, fully prostrate, fully vulnerable before the Githyanki knight.

“You still remember,” said Lae’zel softly. “You still remember when I commanded Zorru the Tiefling to tell me the location of Crèche Y’llek in your world.”

“My host did not like how you treated him.” Conductor spoke now, stilted.

“Your host? What did you think of it, Worm?”

“That he was a coward but that forcing him to submit served no purpose.”

“The answer of a Ghaik, though is strange to hear one of your kind pass judgement for cowardice. Are you a coward?”

“My host was no coward, but sometimes sought pain to feel alive. I have changed. I am better than she was.  I am selective about the danger that I face, but, I do not consider myself a coward.”

Lae’zel was silent for a moment, thinking and remembering.

“Then we will fight, abomination. Now. To the death.”

Conductor thought of her options. To decline would be wise, but would concede her cowardice, and confirm to the Gith that she was more a calculating monster than a person. To lose was to die. To win was to die and to shame Lae’zel.

“I do not want to bring dishonor to you or to your people in my victory.”

“Tchk! Hand the Ghaik a sword, Shak’ik. Not the silver one. A mind-flayer should not touch sacred silver. Give it the steel one and let us see if it knows how steel can cut flesh.”

Shak’ik handed Conductor an old, rusty sword. It was awkward and unwieldy in her large, spindly hands. She gazed at Lae’zel. So be it.

The two advanced on each other—the pale, bare skin of the Illithid soft and exposed in the same light that shone upon the Githyanki’s armour.  Conductor focused on her sword, running a line of psionic power, an invisible tentacle up its blade to guide it, to make its lighter in her hands.

Lae’zel lunged and the rusty sword was there to block her blow. She fell off to the side. Lae’zel murmured an incantation. Her body seemed to blur in the flickering torchlight. Her moves became faster, she lunged and sliced and lunged and sliced before Conductor could get an attack through. Conductor would have been dead on the first blow, but she knew Lae’zel. She could spot the subtle movements of Lae’zel’s head and arms and legs and predict what she would do next, for she had watched the Gith fight more times than she could easily recount. They had even trained together on occasion, though her natural indifference with the sword meant that the Githyanki had always held back. Not this time. This time, her fifth “arm” helped her swing the blade with an agility that her host had never had.

“You fight less pathetically than most of your kind,” said Lae’zel.

“I had opportunity to train with a good teacher once,” Conductor replied.

Clang! Another hit met with the rusty sword. Clang! Clang! Clang! Conductor danced in the air, backwards and forwards, dodging and parrying. Finally, she saw a window. She called upon the power she had felt latent inside her since her host was a child, a sparkling, unpredictable well, held in control by the ancient, unknowable being she had called out of its slumber long ago. A bolt of pure energy shot from her hand. Her fingers moved in another gesture aiming another bolt, and another. The air seemed to warp in place as the eldritch bolts hurled towards Lae’zel. The first two struck home, sending the warrior reeling. The third was blocked by a shield of psionic energy, which rippled against the force of the bolt.

Lae’zel growled and unleashed a furious attack on Conductor. Each attack missed, and then Lae’zel feinted, thinking of attacking from one angle, and changing her mind at the last possible moment to attack at another. Conductor reacted a split second too late, parrying the silver sword and spinning away only after after it sliced through skin and muscle on her left shoulder.

She raised her sword again and launched herself at Lae’zel, her tentacles whipping through the air, a great wave of force plowing anything and everything out of her way, throwing Lae’zel onto the ground with a clatter. The Githyanki jumped to her feet almost immediately, and Conductor alighted before her. The Illithid’s black eyes were filled with haughty authority. They were compelling and irresistible.

DROP YOUR SWORD

Lae’zel felt her hands loosen around the hilt of her weapon. As much as she tried to tighten her grip, her hands would not obey her mind. “How strange though,” she thought, as her mind detached from her body. “She is not using psionics. She is using the weave.” Lae’zel saw the guards advancing to intervene. She saw Shak’ik with her sword drawn. She motioned to them to stop. This was not Ghaik magic, and besides that, she did not need their help.

“You wait until now to dominate me, and then you use primitive magic to do it?”

“Given the fraught history of our kinds, it seemed needlessly provocative to lead with domination, or to use psionics.”

Lae’zel extended her arm and concentrated all of her will upon the fist in which she had held a sword seconds before. From thin-air, a great, sharp, black blade coalesced. It’s metal swirled in hues of black and green: a sword forged from thoughts and will. It felt like she held nothing in her hands—it was so light. It moved at the speed of thought.  She leapt at Conductor, her attacks blindingly fast and precise. Conductor struggled to keep up. Again Conductor found the smallest of openings and struck Lae’zel with three bolts of magic. Lae’zel felt the pain but continued.

“You too delay needlessly in using your full power. Why did you not start with this sword?” Conductor gasped while parrying Lae’zel’s blows, her forearms growing numb as the thought sword smashed into her rusty blade again and again.

“It is not a tool of the Githyanki, but of the Githzerai. It is not the weapon I have trained with since birth.”

Lae’zel’s final attack smashed through the rusty old sword. It clattered to the ground in fragments. Conductor’s hands contorted themselves in another gesture, raising a bubble-like volatile shield. It would not last long.

“Then you, too have evolved,” Conductor observed.

Conductor’s fingers moved swiftly in an intricate cat’s cradle, pulling, drawing and contorting the invisible weave, draining the unruly well within her into fizzling bolts of pure electrical power. The lightning  hit Lae’zel again and again, running through her armor. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air, but in the end, Lae’zel still stood. Her face a mask of pain and her hair standing on end. “Endure, and in Enduring grow Strong,” she said, as she plunged her thought blade through Conductor’s shield. The shield burst with a popping sound, and Conductor fell to her knees, quicksilver blood spurting from her chest where the volatile blade had plunged in and then vanished into thin air.”

She gazed up at  Lae’zel, her eyes unfathomable. Lae’zel kicked her in the chest, throwing her onto her back.

Conductor thought of the Emperor. There was no way out of this place except through the grace of Lae’zel. “Let this be enough,” she gasped as she stared up at Lae’zel, who had been handed a large knife by one of the guards. “Dahamunzu promised nothing to Voss in Sharess’ Caress, but she…I mean, I betrayed your trust when I sided with the Emperor over you and consumed Orpheus. Take your revenge but let this be enough. Send the Emperor home.”

“Are you begging?”

“No. I am asking. On behalf of my host who thought herself your friend.”

Lae’zel, her foot on Conductor’s chest, signalled to her guards, who held Conductor down by the legs and shoulders as Lae’zel snatched her one arm and then the other, using the knife to carve off the smallest finger on each hand.

Conductor panted, staring in pain and disbelief.

Lae’zel held up the dripping long clawed fingers, speaking to Shak’ik and the guards “Look upon the Ghaik who killed the Prince of the Comet. See how I have dominated it in battle and taken its fingers as proof of my dominance. You have seen as well it is unique among its kind. It is capable of remembering, and bravery and putting the life of another above its own. It is an Illithid who *knows* itself. It is now my servant and my living trophy for as long as I deem fit.  Shak’ik, you will bandage it, and when it is stable, it will tell me why it has asked to speak with me.”

—

Chapter Text

Only a blurry slit of light, and an olive-colored face, flickering. Then, a crash as a glass vessel was flung to the floor in surprise as Conductor suddenly sat upright, black eyes wide open. Shak’ik, the young Githyanki doctor stood at the ready, her hand at the hilt of a knife strapped in a hilt at her waist.  Gods, Conductor ached. Every nerve of her body throbbed in pain. She felt every hole of each tiny stitch in the hole in her chest, which hurt most of all, but her hands, with their missing fingers and bandaged stumps were a close second. She separated out part of her mind to process the pain and deaden it. She would scream later in her mind, and the entire crèche would feel it in their nightmares. She was also dreadfully hungry. Her maw watered as her eyes fixed on the doctor. This thought too was banished.

Instead, she stretched out a four-fingered claw. Hesitating a moment as if realizing that having only four fingers necessitated re-learning how to work the weave, her mind remapped the familiar old finger movements, severing old connections and building new ones. A large shred of glass with a few drops of liquid in it levitated from the ground and delicately flew to her. She grasped it with her free hand, staring at the pink, translucent liquid inside.

“You have been watering down your health potions, Second Ghustil of Crèche K’illir. No wonder I am consumed by pain and hunger.”

“We are in a war, so I make what I have last. You should be grateful to be alive.”

“I am. And I will keep this for my mate, who is dying. Otherwise, I will have to heal him with my own will and soundness, and I do not wish to reopen the wounds that you have so carefully closed.”

Shak’ik stepped closer, her hand still upon the knife and defiance in her eyes.

Conductor’s tentacles parted, revealing obsidian teeth.  “You have little to fear from me,” she hissed. “My life is in your hands.”

“You seem to care about the other Ghaik.” She paused, thinking for a moment “ Tell me, how does one choose to become a monster?”

Conductor did not answer. Crows’ feet formed at the corners of her eyes—unnervingly fixed on the Githyanki.

“Did the other Ghaik force you to become as you are? Did it devour the brain of our Prince as it has claimed, or was it you as Jhe’stil Lae’zel has claimed?”

“I did it.”

“Why?”

Before Conductor could answer, Shak’ik continued. “Tell me in the way of your kind, not in words. I have fought for this rebellion for five years, in the name of a Prince who exists only in legend. I would understand your crime as you understand it.”

“There is a reason I speak in words,” said Conductor. “Were I to speak in your mind, in visions, as my people do, you would feel it. You may not enjoy what you feel. You may see things in their fullness—things that are flattened when translated into language. For you, that would feel like manipulation. It might hurt your sanity.”

“I trained among the Zerth—those who create wonders from pure chaos using only their will.  I can handle your illusions.”

“Very well.”

Darkness, and then light and a feeling of being surrounded by dampness. She sat up, body raw and slick. Around her was blood and viscera and hair, some still clinging to her translucent, damp skin. A hand on her shoulder, and another reached out before her, helping her to her shaky legs. Everywhere, there was consciousness—and thoughts—and emotions, and she could perceive and feel them all. At first, it was dizzying, and then, as her mind began to naturally process them all, exhilarating.  She looked around and saw her companions—she remembered them! Minthara, with her schemes and inscrutable smile, Gale: horror mixed with curiosity—and Lae’zel, whose feelings of fury and sense of betrayal struck her with such force. She looked to the Emperor instead, whose magenta eyes shone with exuberance. She loved him. That, she thought, looking at the remnants of her host, was still part of her.

What began as a dull ache in her stomach had accelerated almost unbelievably quickly in only a few moments into an all-consuming, gnawing compulsion. Her entire body seemed to convulse with it—it was overpowering. It was all she could do to turn away from her friends, as her tentacles moistened and her mouth filled with saliva in anticipation. She forced herself to stop thinking about how delicious they all might be. She heard an excited chattering sound…(was that her own voice?). She was barely in control of herself. [You must eat,] said the Emperor [and we will need the Githyanki Prince’s power against the Absolute. He will be of use to us one last time.]  Her eyes alighted upon Orpheus, hovering in the air, so close. He was chained and vulnerable, and she could feel the thoughts in his head—the dread, the anxious anticipation, the fury, the overwhelming hatred. She sighed in anticipation, spinning him around, angling his delightful, bald cranium towards her mouth. His psychic screams rung out as he died. She had never tasted such bliss, such euphoria. She felt his power flowing into her mind and knew that she now had the ability to defy the Absolute and to shield those she loved against those of her kind who would enslave them with thoughts. As she looked up, letting Orpheus drop to the floor, she saw Lae’zel’s face. The heart of Dahamunzu, which still beat as one of the hearts of Conductor, broke in shame, guilt, and sorrow.

Conductor blinked and Shak’ik stared back, her thoughts resounded in Conductor’s mind as their connection was severed:

 [How sad that the prince had lived longer as a specter in the minds of her people than he had as a free man. How sad that his entire life had been so small, so lackluster in comparison with his myth. How sad that had met his end in the jaws of a hungry child. How sad that the child, now grown, was remorseful not for Orpheus sake, but for Lae’zel’s. It was so ridiculous and tragic and fitting.]

The clanking of armor marked the arrival of Lae’zel and a small entourage, who crowded into the room. The guards moved to either side of Conductor as Lae’zel stood before her. Conductor rose, her grotesquely slender figure floating off of the ground naked except for stitches and bandages.

“Lae’zel.” She said, with a certain finality in her raspy voice.

“Ghaik who was once Dahamunzu Silverclode,” Lae’zel replied.

“Why are the Emperor and I your captives?” The voice had just the slightest force of a command behind it, and Shak’ik felt a compulsion to speak even though it was not addressed to her and she did not know the answer to the question for certain. Lae’zel seemed unfazed.

“Shak’ik,” said Lae’zel, “The disc.”

Shak’ik nodded and went to the table where her notes and scientific instruments were set. She brought back a long, flat, shiny box, which she opened, to reveal a Githyanki document in the form of a disk with notched spokes radiating from the center point, so closely spaced as to be difficult to see, but perceptible to the fingers. She handed it to Lae’zel, who held it up before the ghaik, whose hands were bandaged. Its tentacles lightly grazed its surface. Shak’ik suppressed a shudder on behalf of her ancestors. This script was a used to write the legends and sacred texts of the Gith. It was not to be caressed with tentacles.

“Can you read it?” Asked Lae’zel.

“The Illithid also fear the Adversary. This is the subject of stories circulating in almost all colonies. It is not certain from whence the stories came, though they seem to have arisen after the fall of the (Illithid) Empire. The stories vary between hives, and it is unclear if all details should be considered as part of a fragmented whole truth or whether some versions are true and others are not...”

“Tchk! I did not ask you to recite it aloud. I know well what it says. I asked if you could read it and the answer is clearly no, because you just recited your damaged copy from memory. This is the original copy. When Gale Dekarios first sent it to me saying Rolan had found it in Ramazith’s tower, it intrigued me. When I learned that the Armies of Vlaakith and her Ulitharid ally seek you, I spared nothing to find the original of it in the libraries of the great city of Shra’kt’lor. It differed from yours in one word, for the original says “the Illithid fear the Adversaries. So, who are these adversaries? The Emperor, certainly. Shka’keth though he is, he did plot to destroy his elder brain, and, unlike most of his kind, he is no coward. Some of him seems to have survived ceremorphosis. And you…you are stranger still. How could you not be an adversary? You are almost a person. There most be more that you are not telling me, though. Our language has a dual form, and if our scribe had meant to write that there were twoadversaries, they would have done it.

There was a long pause. Conductor’s mind raced down a hundred different branches of decisions and their probable outcomes. On one hand, the Emperor had been entirely correct. Lae’zel knew far more about the adversary than Voss did, which meant there was a split between Lae’zel and Voss which should be exploited—but how? On the other hand, she knew what Lae’zel was going to say next without reading her mind. Lae’zel knew about the tadpoles, and Lae’zel could also exploit.

“Silverclode, what have you done?”

Conductor did not reply. She blinked slowly and stared defiantly at Lae'zel.

“Who are the adversaries?”

Conductor remained silent still.

“In Shra’kt’lor, I spoke with many a Zerth scholar who study the Ghaik. It is important to know your enemy, so you can snare them without being trapped yourself, so you can slice them while avoiding the tentacles. Do you know where your people come from?”

“I was not raised in a hive so I do not know our memory.”

“The Ghaik are poor at remembering, anyway. It is said your people originated on a world of brilliant jungles and reefs and that your species diverged into different appearances who formed social hierarchy. You? You are strange and primordial with your black eyes and your skin that changes colors at a thought. To me, you look like a picture in the books discussing the most ancient of your kind. It would be easy enough for my soldiers to believe that you, and only you are the Adversary of myth.”

The veiled threat was not lost on Conductor, but some long-lost memory arose from the oldest depths of Conductor’s mind—from the earliest days of her tadpole frozen in the astral prism…of crashing waves and passing clouds and colors so vibrant as to burn the eyes. The part of her that was Dahamunzu sighed at the staggering beauty of it. Then it was gone.

“Other stories say that nobody knows where the Ghaik come from because they do not come from the past, but from the future. Some say that they jump backwards and forwards through time, hunting the Adversary, who will destroy them. I think that if Vlaakith’s Ulitharid knew about your tadpoles, it would tear apart Torill looking for them, sacking your city and slaughtering anyone who had one. I suppose it is good that there is only one undamaged copy of the report on the Adversaries, and that your people are so poor at transmitting parts of their history that they do not like.”

Something of this seemed like it must also be true. The Emperor sometimes teased her for thinking on the past more than any Illithid ought. Her mind wanted to see memories as concurrent presents, and to see the past as something that did not exist. Perhaps Illithid minds evolved to disregard the past because the past did not exist for them.

Conductor replied, thoughtfully. “I am touched that you think enough of the person remains in me to blackmail. I admit, I do fear for my offspring and for their other parent.” She flooded their minds with a vision of a brass bowl with five tadpoles swimming in it, strong and vigorous. Their silvery flesh rippled with shades of gray and violet as they swam. Their thoughts chattered with random minutiae mathematics and language, and even rudimentary toyings with the weave. She let the Githyanki feel her pride as she commanded one to jump, and she felt its tiny mind push back against her own, refusing. She imagined releasing one gently on the cheek of a seated, red-haired woman, who suddenly gripped Conductor’s shoulder in pain, but without fear, staring up into her eyes after a few moments with a darkly veined face and eyes that glowed magenta. She imagined the woman an advisor to the Grand Duke, a Judge, or even an adventurer: a free half-Illithid who was neither a slave to an elder brain or to biology.

Lae’zel hissed: “I should have gutted you in the Astral Prism the moment I suspected you would betray me for the Emperor. I should have put you both out of your misery the moment the Absolute was dead. I should have taken off your head when I took your fingers. What kind of leader of the Gith would let a Ghaik live knowing that it was carrying out its own Grand Design? A poor one indeed! But you have always been my weakness, Silverclode, for I respect you despite my loathing. You and the Emperor are uniquely brave amongst your kind—not that that is very difficult. …and Vlaakith wishes me to kill you or to hand you over for a truce that cannot last. I would rather plot with a Ghaik than give that bitch anything she wants.

“Ironic, isn’t it? That the future where the Gith rebellion survives is the one where the Adversaries also live?”

“What is this Ironic? There is no Ironic here because letting you and your spawn live is not my only choice. I could kill the Emperor and let you live. I could tear apart your world, finding and exterminating your tadpoles.”

“Would it help you to decide in favor of letting the Emperor and the tadpoles live easier if I were to return something to you that I stole?”

“What?”

“I think there may be a way for me to return the memories and powers of Orpheus…on the condition that I will return them to you alone and that you will spare the tadpoles, heal the Emperor and free him when the Ulitharid is vanquished.”

Lae’zel thought for a moment.  “You propose a coup d’etat, Ghaik. We will all certainly die if your plan fails, if not by Voss’ hand then by Vlaakith’s. Then again, we may well all die by Vlaakith’s hand anyway if Voss is allowed to bargain you away to Vlaakith as he wishes. In that case, you will be lucky to be skinned alive to make psionic leather to line the walls of her contemplation room or to writhe in agony forever in in her tormentory. You know this—it will not serve you well to betray me.”

“As I said, you do not need to threaten me, but you should give me some token to show you will be acting in good faith.”

This last statement was very persuasive. The Githyanki rolled their eyes.

“I do have to threaten you,” said Lae’zel. “One does not simply accept a gift from a Ghaik—countless of my people have learned that lesson as their last.  One must always have a knife at the throat of your kind—but Shak’ik, go and see to it that the Emperor is healed, and that there are no witnesses.  Now,” she said, turning back to Conductor, “how would you go about returning these powers that are not yours?

“Does the crèche still have a Zaithisk?”