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When he wakes from his first slumber outside the Astral Prism, the world remains intact. Startlingly, his city is still the same as ever. The same smoky brine, the sailors still irritably tolling bells at one another's ships, the ill-tempered, opportunistic gulls.
A half-drunk Fist, freshly soaked and stained from the Blushing Mermaid, stumbles into the Emperor and then yells at him (he is not standing in anyone's way).
And it's like nothing even happened to Baldur's Gate.
Of course, the wagons and Flaming Fist patrols are skirting around piles of rubble and fire-blackened wood and crumbled Steel Watch automatons. The air is thick with ash, and the plans are to rebuild the Lower City with wood again, because that is what they do.
Grey Harbor is painted with sunset. Umberlee's temple sits upon a strip of sparkling beach, awash with pristine blue waves. There are crabs scuttling between the knotted clumps of kelp. Away from the main road, it's almost quiet.
The Emperor does not love the ocean. That's been gone for a long time. But if he closes his eyes, he can still summon such an eidetic impression that, for a brief, gossamer moment, he can hear the sea again in his bones, like a physical voice.
A half-drunk Guild member stumbles into the Emperor and then yells at him.
Once more, he suppresses the urge to bifurcate a skull in public, and chases the man off with a glare.
The city is still the same: It's chaos. Loathing fills the Emperor's chest as he watches recently admitted refugees dig latrine pits around the same place they prepare meals. There is confusion over whether or not oxen are allowed now. There is confusion over where the donated supplies are supposed to be distributed. And there is no order in Ulder Ravengard's overnight sentiment to open the gates, so that the people can perish within the city walls instead of without.
Instead, wild revelry permeates the air, even from here. All around him, the people's minds wail with relief at being alive. This is well and good, and nevertheless the Emperor is aghast at the time being wasted. Of course, he understands it intellectually, and in that past, distant life, he, too, was guilty of ignoring the future with alcohol. He is past that foolishness now.
Speaking of foolishness, a human woman approaches at the angle of a seasoned knife-fighter. She is one of many Fist deserters, who hired a boat out of the city as the Absolute marched on it; as her dinghy bobbed on dark waters, she watched the lights of Grey Harbor flicker in the distance and listened to the lap of the waves, until someone whispered that her sister's children weren't aboard, because there wasn't enough coin. The boat was hardly stopping, and so she leapt overboard and swam.
"Spare some bread for a poor mother of three?" she says sweetly, with knife hidden behind back. She will keep her left hand outstretched and then strike with her right.
Wordlessly, the Emperor holds out a pouch. The woman's eyes go wide at the heavy jingle it makes.
"Thank you, saer." She doesn't know what else to say. The last time someone simply handed her anything was when she was fifteen and her husband figured she liked sweets. She leaves now, wondering if there are any bakeries still intact.
The coin has some counterfeit mixed in—difficult to tell exactly how much, given the sloppiness of the Stone Lord's work (the remaining thugs were a mediocre first meal following Orpheus, but everything will be). Still, since they are digging latrines in the grass beside the street, nobody will notice for at least several purchases.
Having divested himself of his potentially problematic currency, the Emperor takes his legitimate coin to the clothing shop next to the Old Gate, which dutifully remains open even in the midst of illithid corpses stacked near its doorstep.
The proprietor is as annoying in person as he sounded from the Astral Prism, but the Emperor mentions that he knows Tav, the hero who saved everyone in the shop from shapeshifting assassins, and so secures a steep discount.
It's still almost not worth it. The Emperor's illusory disguise shows Figaro Pennygood exactly what he wishes to see, but the dwarf still manages his incessant habit of insulting every aspect of his customer's appearance. He is handsy and nosey and nearly breaks said illusion by getting too close. The Emperor is tempted to compel the shopkeeper into handing over his goods, and then forgetting about the encounter.
However, this idea is immediately accompanied by a memory of Tav wandering upstairs in establishments like this to take the paintings off walls and pluck tin cups from cabinets and fish half-eaten apples from under beds.
The Emperor does not do things like that. He pays and turns to leave.
“A moment, if you please. As thanks for your patronage even after, well, yesterday’s events, please take this. I’m afraid my assistant made a terribly embarrassing blunder and put in for far too many of these, and I’ve no idea what to do with them. Not manage to sell them to my clientele, certainly!” Figaro holds out a crystal pin in the shape of a ship upon the waves—the city’s coat-of-arms.
Despite what the dwarf implies, the make is not cheap enough to give away. The Emperor’s current appearance reminds the shopkeeper of his sister, Carmen, who is due a belligerent letter this week to distract her from her sudden suspicion over their father’s will, which was abruptly changed to leave Carmen as the sole inheritor of the fortune, while Figaro got only the shop.
“Go on, then,” the dwarf says. “If nothing else, you can pawn it off. Times like these, every bit could help.”
“Keep it,” the Emperor says.
Now that the Emperor has a nice, gilded cloak, he can walk more freely and without such a meticulously crafted illusion around the Upper City. He will search for a minor patriar—one that won't immediately be missed—who has perished during the Absolute attack. He can then borrow their identity, make a trip to the Counting House before the confusion settles, and secure the funds to begin his endeavors. So at least there are some benefits to this sluice of chaos.
Outside the shop, the street rings with shouts. A jeering crowd has fomented around the statue of Balduran. This is because there is a bard very drunkenly playing a shanty atop the statue’s shoulders.
A few other familiar faces stand out among the crowd: A silver-haired cleric, an unimpressed drow, and two druids, one of whom is the High Harper of Baldur's Gate herself.
The elf atop the statue finishes his song, and then, egged on by his audience, balances precariously along the statue's arm. He tosses his fiddle like a bouquet into the crowd. Then, utilizing the giant carved hand as support, he leans over and plants a long and lingering kiss upon Balduran's stone lips. The crowd surges in outraged delight. Somebody invokes Balduran's name with the awe of a first-time blasphemer.
If Tav falls to his death here, the Emperor decides he will watch, and possibly gloat.
With Shadowheart present, this outcome is unlikely. The Emperor puts his time to better use: Turning around and procuring tools to secure the hidden doors of the Elfsong hideout.
There is risk of course in not moving somewhere else, to leaving his location under the Elfsong Tavern known, even among a few. He should secure a different space far away from where the githyanki discovered the location, where Gortash broke down his door, where Belynne got slowly dismembered by a Bhaalist in the upstairs suite due to his absence.
And yet it's his. So, he is going back.
When the Emperor returns from the locksmith, he finds that the crowd has dissipated but Tav is still there, for some reason, now alone.
The Emperor crosses to the other side of the square, far enough to avoid attention, though he is now also out of earshot; for reasons unfathomable, the bard appears to be speaking to the statue of Balduran.
How strange it is to be alone in one's own head by default. The Emperor now floats in an ocean of only surface thoughts and memories, unmoored from any deeper connection, fundamentally sundered from the elf he is watching.
He could alleviate some of this by reaching out with his mind, crossing the gap with a one-sided bridge constructed from his end. But that sort of probing would be detected. While sharing minds was necessary before, people do not tolerate mind flayers rifling through their heads. It's better to leave things on a high note. And he is not actually curious about what lies behind the inebriated nonsense that Tav is babbling.
Tav sets a basket of flowers at Balduran’s feet. Puts his hands on his hips. Then, bends back over to align the basket neatly with the statue’s plaque, so it is spaced evenly with two bottles of wine on either side.
Then he starts wandering in the Emperor’s direction, unfortunately, because he loves making unsolicited conversation with strangers. Since it would be more suspicious at this point to rapidly walk away, the Emperor adopts a look of distant disinterest upon the face of his disguise.
“Freakishly tall fellow, isn’t he?” Tav says to him, nodding at the statue of Balduran. The elf sways a bit as he takes another step. His thoughts are like a field of bubbles. “Ha. Those legs just go on and on and on. Gotta crane your neck every time.”
The Emperor says, “Perhaps you should invest in a stool.”
“Ooh! Won’t, though. If I could loom over everyone, I would want people to let me have that.” The Emperor makes sure to stare blankly as the elf smirks at his own cleverness. “You know I saved the city, right?” Tav says, suddenly wry. “You are in the presence of a hero now.”
The Emperor does not deign to reply.
“It was a lot of work, I’ll tell you that.” From the north, there is a sudden spike of intense emotion, and the Emperor turns his head in time to see one man pummel another with a brick, apparently over a basket of onions. Tav follows his gaze, sees the body slump over, and then gives a drunken giggle. “And nothing’s changed at all. Do you think it was worth it?”
“Of course. The city endures. No matter the cost.”
“That’s an excellent attitude to have! That’s why they call us the City of Blood. Balduran’s grace go with you, eh?” The elf laughs again before walking away, humming to himself.
Six months later, a letter is slid under the door to the Knights of the Shield meeting room. It is an invitation to a party. The Emperor, without any desire to trek down the Chionthar valley in late autumn and stand around a campfire while fielding awkward stares, contemplates how to answer the letter. How long has it been since he's written somebody?
In the end, he pens something appropriately polite and signs with "Your friend", because Tav will probably like that.
In the softened bustle of dusk, the Emperor finds a rooftop high enough that the ocean is far away. He opens his mind to his city.
In the vacuum, in the silence, that vastness where an elder brain is meant to fit and puppet him with the sweet chorus of unity, singing with a thousand other minds like his, the Emperor instead listens to the murmuring, drunken thoughts of the Gate. A city is a beating organism of its own, with its own joys and hopes and terrors.
Balduran did love his home, despite it all. He just happened to be the type of personality unable to stay for long. This got him killed, and it caused a lot of grief. Though ultimately, his death serves Baldur's Gate better than when he lived, limited as he was by his nature—a reckless creature of inconstancy and gold-lust and a hero complex.
Transcending begins with ambition, and now he will begin again where he left off. The Emperor will raise the Gate until it towers far past Balduran's sea-beat statues.