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Our glasses were all raised to the air, the clinking creating a pleasant symphony in the verdant clearing. The picnic had been a joyous reunion. It seemed like it was just yesterday that we had gone to hell and back in a desperate bid to save not just ourselves, but the whole world from the ravages of the Elder Brain. My comrades were all such productive people now, having new leases on life after our incredible adventure. It is astounding to consider how much has changed in just a short period of time. I have been no exception. I’d been questing away, facing fearsome foes, and delivering the weak from the forces of evil. I’ve spared no detail in retelling my recent exploits with the partygoers. They seem as impressed with what I’ve been up to as I have been with them.
But the truth is that I haven’t been fully transparent with them. All those journeys I’ve been having as of late have been mere detours from my real current project. I omitted myself from disclosing it, worried about how my companions would react. I had not seen them in a long time, and I wanted to keep the energy of things light and upbeat. That was perhaps a bit spineless of me to not reciprocate their openness to share, but part of me could tell that they don’t even need a Detect Thoughts spell to figure out what I’ve been up to. After all, I had been the one to command them in our last battle against the Elder Brain, where they all heard me shout,
“Charge for the crown, only engage if you absolutely must! And whatever you do, don’t lay a finger on him!”
There had been no sign of “him” since we foiled the plot of the Dead Three and the Absolute. I was completely certain he was still alive after the crash. If you listed all the people I knew and told me to rank who I would be most worried for in that situation, he would be trending towards the very bottom. All these months I have been scouring the land looking for any sign of him. I have accrued a massive collection of newspapers from dozens of cities and townships. I spend every free moment I can fishing for rumors in taverns, hoping to catch word of any mysterious individuals lurking about that could potentially be him. Every time I foolishly get my hopes up pursuing a lead, only to discover that it’s just another ne'er do well exploiting some obscure form of evil magic or arcane beast to achieve their foul ambitions. I thwart their schemes and turn them into the authorities, I get awarded a handsome sum of gold for being such a great hero, rinse and repeat. I try not to wallow in my disappointments too much. I do need those funds for all my news subscriptions after all.
Today I was extra dead-set on being a fool. I convinced myself that this was the day that he would show his face. It would be too appropriate for my prayers to come to fruition at a time when all my other friends would be gathered. Despite my irrational expectations, he never showed up in person. I did get a second wave of optimism when I saw the big mailbox filled to the brim with letters from the allies we met throughout our journey, but nothing in that box was from him. I sighed heavily, then rejoined the soiree, doing my best to mask any dejection I felt. That thankfully wasn’t as difficult as it could have been with the wonderful company that was already present, and the wine taking the edge off of things didn’t hurt either.
Eventually, the event came to an end. Everyone said their goodbyes and headed off on their own ways. Before I left, I arranged a private discussion with Withers, who had hosted and managed all the invitations for the dinner. I asked whether or not he had made any attempt to summon my lost colleague to our gathering.
“I did not,” he replied. “Though even if mine will desired, it shall not be done. Thoust are aware that mind flayers lack souls. Tis an impossible task beyond my abilities.”
“Ceremorphosis destroys the soul of its host, I know,” I mumbled in response, displeased to hear the factoid I’ve heard plenty of times before. “But never have I believed it for a second, not with the illithid I’ve met. I’ve seen, with my very own eyes, their kind make their own choices, have their own wants, and be their own people once they’ve escaped the Elder Brain’s control. And that one illithid in particular loved me. And I loved him too. My soul was grasping onto something tangible when I was with him, I felt it in my very being. If love is two souls meeting, then I say with full confidence that I have personally witnessed the soul of a mind flayer, the thing I’ve been told time and time again doesn’t exist! And that’s just him, I haven’t even mentioned Karlach yet. That woman is the same sister-in-arms I’ve always known, no matter how much she has changed since we last met.”
My eyes were starting to get a little moist, yet I ignored the wetness as I passionately continued with my testimony. “I believe in just gods, Withers. If one day I pass away and don’t ever see the woman who saved Baldur’s Gate in the afterlife because ‘no soul, no service’, then my faith in all that is good in this world will be no more. But that won’t happen. My faith is unwavering. My sister has a soul. The man I love has a soul. That I know more than my own name.”
“It seems we disagree in matters of the metaphysical,” the skeletal figure’s solemnness was then suddenly broken with a smile. “Naught may be said that shall sway thine mind. But thou art wise to trust in the gods. Remain pure in heart, and thy shall provide the closure thou tirelessly pursue.”
While his words did not provide any of the answers I was looking for, his encouragement further motivated me in my search. I decided a change of strategy was necessary. Instead of scowling about the streets of cities abroad and constantly barking up the wrong tree, I decided to head back home to Baldur’s Gate to take a more spiritual approach. The city was both my home and his. Even with there not being a tadpole to connect our minds anymore, there was still something in this world that linked us. Once I made it back home, I began to take little pilgrimages across the city to places that I knew were important to him. Often these were in locations that I would normally not want to get caught snooping around in, but with my connections, I was able to get Duke Ravengard to pull a few strings for me. That was quite helpful of him, as it spared me from needing to import a Cloak of Invisibility for my antics.
One day I decided to set my sights on the Wyrmway. The Flaming Fist guard was thankfully not a bother as he let the famed hero of the city waltz into the cellar jail unchallenged. I headed to the lonesome corner where the secret entry to the trial rooms awaited. I fired off two Lightning Arrows at the dragon-shaped torches, stepping through the threshold the second it appeared. My first order of business was to head to the back of the sanctuary to pray over the remains of Ansur. I hoped that his soul had been forgiven for his transgressions against his old friend and for attacking me and my cohorts who had done him no wrong. It was a good moral look for the powers that be, and good practice for bestowing pardon upon my lost love too.
I then exited the dragon’s makeshift burial chamber and headed back to the foyer, turning my eyes to the statue of Balduran in the corner. As I knelt at the figure’s pedestal, I produced the Astral Prism from my pocket. The artifact was but a cold, lifeless piece of metal with its residents having moved out a while ago. I had kept hold of it as an item of sentimentality. Feeling his old abode in my pocket always reminded me of him. It pushed me to continue past the nagging feeling that I was wasting my time with all of this.
I looked up at the statue’s face. I would always stop and contemplate whenever I saw Balduran’s likeness around the city. The locals would hail me as his successor, destined to carry his legacy as a great hero of Baldur’s Gate. While I would always appreciate the sentiment, those statements would only widen the chasm in my stomach. If I wanted to be recognized like that, I would much prefer it be from his own words and not from the masses who could never know the real him. As I meditated by his visage, I became extra sensitive to the cool, pointed edges of the artifact in my hand. It fueled the intensity of my prayers as I pleaded to the heavens over and over,
“Please, just let me see him one more time.”
After a while, I figured that was enough demanding the gods for my petty little wants for the day. I got up and began to exit the secret tunnels when I suddenly heard a voice.
“You would spend years of your life searching for the one who declared to your face that you were now enemies? Does that not seem like a senseless endeavor to you?”
I turned around, and standing right where I was just moments before was unquestionably the mind flayer who had been my guardian throughout the entire Nautiloid incident. I froze up for a moment. This could be some sort of trick or illusion. I had fought more than my fair share of devious shapeshifters, so I knew better than to naively trust everything I saw. Part of me wanted to brandish my blade and demand that the being verify their identity, but that wouldn’t make for a very amicable greeting. Instead, I approached the mollusk man, slowly inching my way toward the one I had toiled so hard to find. I was finally within arm’s reach of him, at long last. I then raised my hand…
…and decked him hard across the face with a resounding slap.
“What were you thinking, you IDIOT!?” I shouted as he reeled from the force of my strike. “Since when was the ever-vigilant Emperor a QUITTER? Our path to victory couldn’t have been clearer, and you thought THAT was a good time to throw in the towel? To turn against the only person who ever loved and understood you?” I distanced myself from him slightly, looking him straight in the eyes. “Please tell me that the Absolute’s presence was interfering with your frontal cortex, that’s the only way I can make heads or tails of any of this.”
His eyes shifted away from my gaze. They held his signature look of annoyance but also carried a noticeable underlayer of hesitance and shame. Finally, after an extended moment of silence, he finally spoke.
“Indeed. I had failed you. When I saw what the Elder Brain did to you and the true power of what we were against, I became consumed by panic. I could only think of ensuring the fastest route for my own survival. Your insistence on saving Orpheus’s life was the breaking point for my madness. I believed that without his power infused into mine, my odds of victory would be slim. That would be assuming that I would be even able to leave the Astral Plane to begin with, not if Prince of the Comet had his way. It was not until our confrontation that I began to realize the gravity of my errors. Watching you and your comrades charge effortlessly across the battleground reminded me just how much I have continuously underestimated you, of how many times I had advised you to avoid unnecessary danger and yet you still faced it without fear and came out alive every time. Still, my cowardice held me in its inescapable maw. Coming to your aid would have been suicide with the enthralled dragon I had brought to the battle. Deserting prematurely was possible as well, but if I did that and you failed to destroy the brain, then the Absolute would hunt me down in a deadly pursuit I had no chance of escaping. It was only after I sensed that you had made the final blow that I made my exit.”
“You harped on about me trusting you, yet you couldn’t put your trust in me just one time?” I asked acidly. “I knew Orpheus wouldn’t dare to hurt you or any of the rest of us, Voss assured me that. And even if he did, do you really think I would have let him? I have defied far worse than the likes of him and you know it.”
“It is amusing how dissimilar we are,” the Emperor stated, seeming almost oblivious to my vehement frustration. “How paralyzing my own fear is, yet how utterly absent it is in you. How I have never held back any means to justify the ends that must be met, yet you always insist on doing things the fair and righteous way. How many times I had offered you the opportunity to become a more powerful being, yet you always rejected it, trusting in the strength of your lesser, uncorrupted form.
"It is an impossible miracle to ponder how you ever came to love me.”
“You make this more complicated than it needs to be,” I replied, my anger quickly dissolving in the stale dungeon air. “You’re my friend. You wouldn’t be my friend if I didn’t see at least a little good in you. We might be different in more ways than I can count, but the important thing is that we understand each other on a level I can’t say I share with any of my other allies. I suppose the reason your betrayal wounded me as much as it did is because it was the first time in so long that I didn’t understand. Why you would do something so uncharacteristically stupid, why you would leave me in the dark for all this time…my lack of understanding of it all has been a knife in my heart for many moons.”
“I suppose I can share some of that sentiment. I do not understand why you would waste your limited mortal time on finding me. I only decided to come to you so you would cease this insolence. It is a task I have regrettably procrastinated on for far too long. It was not something I hastened to do while my disgraces haunted me. You have been freed from the Absolute’s influence. It is a price that has been paid with the untold blood of your enemies and the endless sweat of your brow. Now go. Live and be prosperous.”
“I will not know prosperity until the man I love is at my side once more,” I held my ground as I clutched his clawed hand with all the strength I could muster. “I did not go through all this trouble just for you to just leave me again!”
“Perhaps this will come as a surprise, but I have my own existence to tend to beyond yourself. That may be difficult to comprehend when my priorities were fully dedicated to stopping the Absolute during that time, but it is true. There are matters that demand my attention that I would greatly prefer you not get yourself entangled in. But do know that this is not the end for us. There will inevitably come a time when I will require your cooperation again. Only then will we stand together as we once did.”
I did not like one word he was saying. This is not how I hoped our reunion conversation would go. But perhaps I was being overly selfish. I was not the Elder Brain. I could not command him to do what I wanted whenever I wanted. I have trusted my own judgment over his several times, but I decided it would be wisest to concede to him this time. Perhaps the things he was getting involved in really would be better off without my presence.
“Alright,” I huffed with resignation. “But please…not just yet, okay?” I gently embraced him, burying my face in the crook of his neck. “You would not be so cruel as to deny me but a moment of your company, would you?”
I felt his facial tentacles drape down the length of my back. We stood there for a good while, neither of us saying a word as we relished in our first embrace in what felt like eons. I then pulled back and gave him a modest smooch on the bridge of his face.
“I must admit, I do miss this,” he said as my singular peck swiftly became many, his hand rising to meet my cheek. “You show your affections as if I had never wronged you. I did not even have to alter your memories for you to act this way. I have done nothing to deserve any of this.”
“It’s called I love you and I forgive you,” I beamed. “I apologize for my outburst. And I’m sorry I couldn’t find the right words that would have brought you peace back then. I don’t want either of us to cling to any grudges. The last thing I want is to repeat what happened between you and Ansur. I want to do better than that.”
“Twice I have betrayed those who had come to cherish me, but I have learned nothing. I fancied myself your knight in shining armor, yet I neglected to see that I was in as much peril from myself as you were from the Absolute.”
“Don’t discredit yourself,” I chuckled lightly. “You are still the most gallant illithid I have ever met. Well, that is until I watched Karlach punt the Elder Brain like a big rubber ball. You better start working harder if you don’t want to lose your title.”
If he were not an illithid his lungs would have been rolling in the waves of a hearty chortle. While mind flayers can comprehend the concept of comedy, they always make for a tough crowd. Predictably, he reacted with his usual cool stoicism. “Yes, I was surprised when I saw that she had taken the tadpole I had intended for you. She is indeed a brave warrior, and it is because of her valor that she has saved her own life.”
“I can’t thank you enough for that. My friends are only able to be happy because of everything you’ve done for us. Now that I’ve finally found you, I’m happy now too. And…there was something else I’ve been considering for a while…”
I took the Astral Prism back out of my pocket. The Emperor gazed upon the object with confusion. “You still hold onto the Githyanki artifact? It serves no purpose anymore since Orpheus and I have vacated it. I would long have parted ways with it if I were you.”
“If it is just an ordinary hunk of metal now, I was maybe thinking we could smelt it,” I explained. “And…we could get it cast into something new. Something special, just for us.”
“And what is ‘special’ thing you had in mind?” As his oculi peered so deeply into mine, I felt deeply affirmed in my suspicions of the hidden spiritual nature of his kind. His eyes were undeniably a window to a soul, those windows attached to a complex of countless rooms, stairways winding up to the heavens above and down into the earth below. I saw a place so massive and storied that I could never hope to fully explore it all in my whole lifetime. Yet I knew in my heart that those mysterious halls were my home. I had lived in Baldur’s Gate my whole life, yet I had never known the city in the flesh. Now its avatar stood before me, as intimately familiar with me as I was with it.
My philosophical ponderings co-mingled with the nervousness inherent to the phrase about to leave my lips. Their combined efforts tried their best to hold back my tongue, but my determination to express my proposition was indominable, having long waited for its moment to be spoken into the world.
“When you’re done with whatever you’re doing, I was…thinking that we could settle down and have our rings molded from the melted Prism. I don’t think either of us care all too much for jewels, but the thing that brought us together to begin with…I think it’s perfect.”
His previous confusion quickly evolved into full-on bewilderment. “You may be more mad than any of the craven Bhaal fanatics I’ve hunted in the underground. No creature in their right mind would ever desire to ask for a mind flayer’s hand in marriage, except for perhaps those shameless enough in their…unusual appetites.”
I shook my head, speaking as sincerely as I possibly could. “But I’m not asking to marry a mind flayer. I’m asking to marry my friend.”
He then sighed, not of irritation, but out of an almost grateful surrender. “I expected you would say that. You have always treated me as a person above all else, the only one I know who doesn’t treat me as a lesser being for my condition. There is no alternative for me should I ever wish to be wed. So yes, when it is convenient for me, I shall consider making you my bride.”
“Consider!?” I belted in a fit of faux rage. I grabbed the collar of his metallic robes with both of my hands, yanking him closer for daring to say something so audacious. "Maybe something a little more conclusive-sounding than that, please?”
He gently pushed me away with a tenderness frankly unearned for such explosive behavior. “I will have a more substantial answer for you in due time. My current situation is a volatile one. Once matters have stabilized, I will be more free to offer you a matrimonial ceremony according to your every preference. Consider us now to be engaged if that brings you any peace of mind.”
“Better. Much better,” I leaned playfully into him, my one arm wrapped around his shoulder while the other fidgeted with his facial tentacles. “You know, I think we’ve been standing around this dingy dungeon long enough. If you’re not in a rush, why don’t we teleport out to my flat? You know where it is. It’s much more comfortable, and I just bought a bottle of Suzalian Sweet the other day.” I ran my finger around the cusp of his lamprey mouth, the digit lightly dancing around the jaggedness of his many teeth. “You like wine, don’t you? Or at least you are very good at pretending you do.”
“Very well. Your arrangements please me,” He waved his arm, a portal appearing behind the two of us.
“Just you wait, I have to give you enough kisses to last you however much longer you’ll be gone,” I teased him, my face snaking up even closer to his. “And there’s the ones to make up for lost time too…They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. And we have been very absent. And I have grown very fond, my dear.”
“Enough of this,” he groaned with endearment. “Less speaking of love and more doing of it, my betrothed.” He then proceeded to sweep me off my feet as we floated through the portal together.