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You have always been under the impression that mind flayers cannot go mad.
A calm and complete control over one’s own psyche, no matter the duress, is a part of the package. You have enjoyed these benefits before, surviving loss, betrayal, enthrallment, an indeterminant period of isolation that would break most sentient creatures. You have been in great pain. You have even been crushed under this very power before.
But when that power is turned against you in wrath, nothing quite compares.
You wake up in psychic agony, again and again, and remember that he has still not allowed you to die, and at this rate, likely never will. During another time, this would be a relief; living means there is a chance to better the circumstances, no matter how unpleasant the straits. You have always been patient.
But there is a limit to even your resilience in that regard and having your mind torn open by the Absolute for—days? Weeks? Forever?—makes you reevaluate your preferences.
--BETRAYER---Coward---PUNISHMENT---
The voice of the Absolute drowns everything else out. There is nothing else, not even yourself, though somehow the arrangement leaves you aware enough to feel yourself breaking. That is the point of it, you suppose.
At some point, you muster the wherewithal to say, Please stop.
It is a whisper to a hurricane. There is only laughter in response. It seems that emotional appeals no longer work on him.
You think to yourself that eventually he will get bored. Though he now sits upon the Crown of Karsus as his throne and commands the Netherbrain, though he now wears the form of an illithid himself, his evolution has retained enough of his human self for him to hold a grudge—this is evidence of it. If he is still something resembling a human, somewhere in there, he will eventually wear his spite out.
Nonetheless, it’s out of your hands, so to speak. You will endure or die or get erased into a neater kind of thrall. There’s no point in wondering if you could have changed the outcome, now. So, you don’t.
Every so often, a slack-faced thrall crawls up to you and puts their head in your mouth and provides nourishment that way. Unfortunately, nothing physically is being done to you, so you will unravel in agony forever.
Eventually, it occurs to you that the Absolute is actually looking for you to beg for death, not mercy. That’s the lesson here. Once, you fled his side –TRAITOR-- in order to preserve your own life. You had no ch—--You had EVERY CHOICE---
Right. You had every choice. It is impossible to disagree with the Absolute. You chose to betray him, and return to the Netherbrain, because he wished to free Orpheus. As the Netherbrain’s thrall, you faced him down. But Tav won.
And then, he seized the Crown for himself.
Now, he is your master, too.
So, if you beg for death, it’s the ultimate admission that it wasn’t worth it. He can simply make you say the words, but he hasn’t. Has he always been like that?
You don’t know. Despite all your time studying the human in order to make an alliance, this situation proves you made some type of massive miscalculation. You hoped that a paladin would have the conviction to see the destruction of the Netherbrain through. You hoped that such a person would feel loyalty enough to accept you, even when your secrets were revealed. You hoped such a person would listen to your counsel.
Whenever you look up now, you often see an obsidian-armored knight standing next to Tav, a looming sentinel. Crimson fire blazes through the visor of its helm. It speaks in a dry echo, with a distant sort of sorrow, though you cannot make out its words. This is interesting to you, because there is a void where its mind should be, like it is undead or a construct, an empty suit of armor animated by something ancient. The undead are disturbing to illithids for this very reason, but in this maelstrom, you find bizarre comfort in the little spot of quiet you can glimpse over there.
This figure never leaves Tav’s side, even when his closest do—his Chosen. Lae’zel is there, her expression shining with a serenity she never had with her own will. Gale is most commonly at Tav’s right hand. And, of course, Karlach. She volunteered to become illithid after your departure. She is not angry that Tav usurped her would-be sacrifice and her chance to make everything entirely different—she is incapable of feeling that now.
But sometimes, as she drifts past where you are pinned before the throne, you catch a faint confusion from her, about the absurdity of the state of the world now: Why would Tav do this?
You certainly have no answer for her.
All this to say, you must have gone mad, despite your illithid nature. Otherwise, you would have folded and begged for death, because logic should trump pride in this scenario, and none of this would be your problem anymore.
At first, Tav set you by his feet like a doll and asked you questions. You gave the answers he desired, deep down. This is because he has dominated you, so when he wants something, you cannot refuse. You are unsure what exactly about this is frustrating or mysterious to him. Possibly, he is having some crisis of identity, because he wore his human form and his shining paladin armor as he asked:
“That night at the Elfsong, why did you offer yourself to me?”
Because I love you.
“It was all a ruse. The entire time. You were manipulating me from the beginning.”
No. I love you. I adore you. I have always adored you.
If you had a little slack on your leash, you would suggest how he could reword his commands, and you could perhaps elaborate to his satisfaction. Of course, you are a notorious leash-slipper. So he keeps you as a little hand puppet until something you say to him makes him very angry indeed. Perhaps his new status as Absolute has bolstered his ego.
You’re not sure what you said, but it’s probably to do with your tone. Among your many notable abilities, you can convey contempt quite well, and sometimes sarcasm on your good days, even when you are enthralled.
You are unsure what exactly happens. The state of your awareness is not the sharpest these days. Your surroundings rock and twist and shake, like there is a bombardment occurring.
You blink and there is smoke. There is also a pair of sandaled feet in front of your head. For the first time in an eternity, your mind is quiet.
“Arise,” a familiar voice above you tells you rather sternly.
No, you say. You feel justified in being contrary for no logical reason, if only to test your ability to be.
“Hast thou misplaced thy fire so easily? Thy work is unfinished. Fate must be restitched. The authority hast been thus placed unto me, to strike thy name from the records."
No, you growl again, futile as it is. Naturally, you are ignored.
“Thou hast fallen far and hard. But not as far, perhaps, as fate’s wheel. A correction to the course may yet be made. New cards, drawn; new hands played. I have forayed far for this opportunity: Do not squander it.”
You have no chance to reply; you are falling.
It is not a terribly long fall—only the floor collapsing to the story below, but you instinctively call upon your powers…only to feel nothing. You hit the floor and roll into a heap over your elbows, barely catching yourself with your hands.
Your elbows. Your hands. You look down and see pink skin, as if hot from a bath, scraped raw by the tumble. You feel your face. Nose, stubble, lips. A lock of dark hair falls over your vision.
It is not like when you were reborn that other time—when you split open from the ribs of a screaming, bloody mass. It’s so sudden that for a moment, you wonder if you’re undead. You are as raw as sliced meat. Before, you were sun-kissed, always out among the open waves. You had calluses from tying knots and swinging swords.
But changed as it is, it’s still your old body again and the previous one falls away like a mask, as easily as the first change. It’s you. It’s you.
Then, you feel your feelings. Terrible, terrible idea. All sorts of things are returned to you all at once—you don’t want them. All sorts of things are taken from you—it’s quite unfair how you don’t have a say in any of it. You are human again for the first time in…you don’t know. You don’t want to think about it. But you can’t not think about it. The truth is here, delivered by merciless divine hands, hammering you over the head.
You have always been good at facing reality, even when you want to look away. Your name was Balduran and, trembling like a newborn lamb on your hands and knees, you would weep, except you remember that you have eaten just the prior hour, and now you are violently retching brains all over the floor.
Withers does have a point. Your will hasn’t entirely left you, otherwise you would lie there and die anyways instead of moving.
Someone has attacked the Netherbrain directly—insanity. Or is it? Obviously, Tav has not been sitting upon his throne right across from you. You were not aware of his departure, but perhaps something deliberately called him away.
There is fire raining down and dragons winging above. It seems there are still gith left in the world. This is such a familiar situation that it’s funny.
You stumble down passageways, your legs buckling underneath you every so often. You have not walked in a long time. Illithids and intellect devourers race past you in the opposite direction. None pay mind to you and you don’t worry about them, either. It’s not as if you can outrun them if they suspect anything.
You make your way down to the thrall common rooms so that you can find some clothing and feel less like a newly birthed foal. The thralls are all gathered there, mostly doing nothing except taking shelter. During a dire situation, they might be mustered to battle. This does not bode well for whatever gith are attempting the assault.
Nobody stops you from locating some trousers or walking in front of the weapons rack. You stare for a long time, wondering what you should take. As an illithid, you held a staff, more of a symbol than a weapon, and stayed back from the frontlines. And before that? Once, you wielded a mighty greatsword and wore heavy armor. Once, you rode upon the glittering back of a beautiful dra—
No, don’t think about that. You know better. Even the Emperor knew better, and he was not liable to do what you are doing now, which is openly cry. Luckily, you are in a room with a bunch of mindless and thoroughly brainwashed slaves who do not care.
You take a shortsword. It is light enough that you feel somewhat comfortable carrying it in whatever deconditioned state you’re in. You have doubts about your ability to swing it, but it brings you some comfort.
Explosions. You get moving. Behind you, the room burns and none of the thralls bother screaming.
Eventually, you find what you are looking for: A storeroom, where the unsorted possessions of captives are all initially tossed. You pick out a backpack and some shoes, and then sort your way through trinkets and parchment until you locate a scroll for the Featherfall spell.
Then you head back towards the sounds of chaos. You pass some crates, one of which has its lid loosened. The top of a sealed jar pokes out. There’s a parasite inside, brimming with potent magic. You have an excellent eye for them, obviously.
You slip the jar into your bag, almost before you identify what it is. Perhaps there’s old looting instinct still knocking about within you.
There’s little enough time to look around for anything else useful. When a blast of flame rips open the nearby wall of flesh and tissue, you don’t overthink it: You jump.
The Netherbrain is floating high in the atmosphere. It’s freezing. But the view, as you plummet, is terribly striking. Toril is jeweled below you, blue oceans and emerald swathes of land. You don’t even think the fleet of nautiloids ruin the image—perhaps you are just used to seeing them.
Below you, there is a figure also falling. A githyanki, from the looks of it. You start to tuck your arms, hoping to avoid them, to let the fire raining from above cover your escape, but the figure is not controlling their descent like a veteran dragonrider would in freefall. They are unconscious.
Terrible idea, the Emperor would say. Terrible idea, your human mind agrees. You hold a brief conference with both of those concepts and placate them with your old adage, regardless of how it’s gone previously: You should find some allies, since the world is only more unforgiving without them.
You turn your body towards the figure and dive.
By the time you reach them and catch a limp arm, it is also time to unfurl your spell scroll and recite from it. You do it with your voice, which is controlled by your tongue—that is how you talk now. The Weave, which skirts away from illithid bodies, embraces you. You are not sure if you’ve missed it.
You float down in a grassy field, yellowed by the sun. High above, the Netherbrain is a pink blimp, trailing fire. You watch as great energy gathers around it and then—a blast in the sky. When you blink, the fire is gone, and dragon corpses are raining instead. The Netherbrain drifts unharried once more. It seems that is the extent of the raiders’ luck.
You hear the grass rustle behind you, and then a groan. You gather yourself to deal with them. Though you lack tentacles, it will likely still be a fraught encounter.
Instead, the voice says, “It seems that I owe you a debt, istik.”
You look down properly at the githyanki for the first time, and then stare for far longer than is polite. You have seen this face before, locked behind a mask of infernal iron. For the longest time, it was the only company you had. You are a cosmic joke, the plaything of the gods.
“I thank you for your aid,” Prince Orpheus says. “What might I call you?”
Orpheus thinks you an escaped thrall, your mind fractured by your traumas, and it’s an excellent excuse to not say much to him. He does not attempt to touch your thoughts, either, fearing he would further the damage. He assumes, rightly, that you are too feeble to be a threat to him anyways. He even offers you his shoulder on the occasions you simply collapse to the ground while walking.
You expected Orpheus to have been enthralled or killed long ago, as he was atop the Netherbrain when Tav took control. However, it seems his mother’s gifts gave him the chance to escape at some point, and from what he says, you put together that the gith resistance across Faerûn against the Absolute includes a coalition of other races. It explains the githyanki’s surprisingly approachable attitude. Or perhaps he was always like this. You wouldn’t know. You would have broken his skull with your teeth without having a conversation.
The fact that Prince Orpheus is kind to you makes you ill, even if he is repaying you for saving him first. Surely this is learned behavior he has adopted in order to cooperate with his new allies. And even if it isn’t, why do you care? What’s done is done. He was already an eternal captive to unbreakable chains when you entered the Prism and dominated him—it’s not like it hurt him. On the contrary, it was probably the best sleep he’s ever gotten.
Though you did kill his honor guard, his loyal friends and guardians. He was awake for that part, because your concentration slipped. That probably hurt him.
You are a sentimental person. This fact is descending upon you rapidly and horrifically. If you were obsessed with the city you founded and keeping your old silverware around as an illithid, how much worse will it be now that you are human again?
When you reach the River Chionthar, which still courses and splashes and sings the same after all this time, you collapse to the sweet-smelling dirt and start weeping again—indeed, in front of Prince Orpheus—so that’s the answer to that question.
Eventually, you make it to his hidden enclave, abuzz with activity—gith, surprisingly of both ilk, humans, halflings, dwarves, elves, drow, orcs. Even goblins. Every kind of remaining creature that wants its freedom. Every remaining sentient thing united against the Absolute.
You are brought to one of the resistance leaders. Jaheira, former High Harper of Baldur’s Gate, examines you with weary eyes. She has more lines around her eyes, but not that many more; you calculate it has been only a few years, then, since Tav took the Crown.
“I hear that you may not remember your name.” She then asks a variation of the question that you avoided answering earlier, that made Orpheus pity you as mind-broken: “Is there something else we could call you in the meantime?”
You can’t exactly say “The Emperor”, though it has grown on you, like a well-worn coat. You should pick something nondescript. There’s another name, of course, which is not nondescript at all. But you cannot bear to press it down, even now. And there are no statues here to give you away; you are not wearing the armor or helm, the most recognizable parts.
You say, quietly, “Baldur.”
Jaheira raises an eyebrow, but smiles. “You wouldn’t happen to remember where you are from, would you?”
You just nod, exhausted. “The Gate. That was my home.”
“As it was mine,” Jaheira says. “We’re glad to have you, friend. If you’ve enough fondness for our old city to hold onto it even when your mind has been thumped out the back end by the Absolute, then the rest of us have no excuse to give up, eh? There are some others, also from Baldur’s Gate. Slim as the chances are, perhaps you may find a familiar face—or perhaps something else that jogs a memory free. If we aren’t able to do it for you first.”
You look up, alarmed, as a pair of gith enter.
“It’s standard protocol,” Orpheus assures you. “They will take a look into your mind to ensure there are no…undue influences placed there by the enemy. And they will seek to heal any damage, or begin to, at the very least. Then, you will be free to enter the enclave.”
You are panicking, but nobody seems surprised by this. There’s no point in struggling—what can you do? As a human, you do not have innate mental shields. But at this point you’ve spent so much time as an illithid; surely something lingers.
You muster yourself. You think of the indeterminant time screaming at the Absolute’s feet, too prideful or stupid to give in. You project it. The gith who enters your mind takes one look and then hurls herself out immediately. And now both of you are crying!
You need to get it together. While embarrassment is a distant, unimportant thing, you are spending a great deal of time crippled by your raw emotions. You certainly weren’t like this when you were a sailor, and compartmentalization is not a skill exclusive to illithids. You need to go and relearn it.
Sympathy permeates the air as they discuss your terrible, terrible case. They shake their heads and mutter. They search your bag and congratulate you on stealing a parasite from the Absolute, which will contribute to their efforts to study the enemy. They give you a shirt and a blanket.
At some point in the conversation, it seems that Orpheus has taken responsibility for your rehabilitation, as he feels he owes you his life. It would not be characteristic for a former thrall to be argumentative towards a prince, and so you swallow your pride and let him pity you.
You are introduced to the people from your old city and placed in a bunk with them—there’s not enough room to be picky about it. You are genuinely relieved when you see faces you do recognize: Wyll and Shadowheart. You overhear that Minthara was captured by the Absolute again a year ago, her worst nightmare. As for all the others not currently enthralled…
A part of you is shocked Astarion and Halsin are dead, that any of Tav’s former companions could stay dead. That they would not simply take the Scribe’s hand again and again. But perhaps they have gotten tired of fighting their friend. Perhaps that’s why you’ve been dragged into this mess, like this.
Somehow, Minsc is alive—you are furious this is the case. Your hostility bleeds out against him and his empty head and his damned space rat, unrestrained; everyone assures you that all of the things you feel are okay.
The things you feel cannot be described! You want to spend all your time screaming, at yourself, at whatever god thought this was a good idea (well, you know the exact one), at the prospect of taking up a sword again to destroy the Netherbrain—because that is why this you was brought back. It would be much easier if you were the Emperor again, with the ability to calculate terrible odds under terrible pressure, unfazed by terrible circumstances or setbacks or loneliness. You are not even the person they made statues of. Your hands tremble when you rest them on your knees!
And all of this is before they tell you about the bronze dragon.
But you dodge danger. This dragon is young and energetic, and about half the size that Ansur was. You avoid him like the plague anyways, don’t even learn his name, and all is well.
Your fellow Baldurians eagerly seek your company. Wyll goes with you each morning, and together you drill against straw dummies and eventually, against one another. You build your stamina until you are able to swing a sword again consistently.
“You have the experience of a veteran warrior in there, even if you don’t remember,” Wyll encourages you. “I can see it in your movements. No matter what they’ve done to you, your body still recalls itself.”
He is puzzled when you start laughing, but does not inquire about it. The last time he came too close, you got up and practically fled.
You have never been shy. Balduran the Founder captained ships and made speeches; the Emperor held meetings and advised dukes and was probably physiologically incapable of social anxiety. Nonetheless, you’ve spent the first two weeks cowering in your bunk and also annoying everyone with night terrors. You’ve never had those, either.
When it gets intolerable, you begin getting up at dawn and dunking your head into an ice-cold stream. You try breathing exercises. You sit up in tall places and pretend you can still float, as serenely, as gracefully as a butterfly. You go with everyone else to the temple they have set up and when you make an offering to Helm, whom you only picked because his cleric came round first, you feel a response from the divine. You can’t even begin to pick apart your feelings about that.
You make yourself talk to Wyll. There’s no point being rude.
“Tell me about the parasites in your heads,” you says.
“There’s nothing to fear,” Wyll assures. “They’ve been in stasis for years. Orpheus ensures that we’re protected, from enthrallment and from transformation.”
“And if you are separated?” you ask. “What then?”
“We do have to stay close to him,” the man admits, after a pause. “But it’s based on distance from the Netherbrain. When we are physically far away from it, we have more leeway to separate from the prince.”
“Do they provide any benefit? Any power you can leverage against the Absolute?”
Wyll pauses, and his gaze turns wry. “Someone I knew once told me that there was power to be gained from utilizing our parasites.”
“And was there?”
“Some,” Wyll admits. “I do have some powerful abilities, atop my humble ranger skills. I hesitated about using them in the beginning, but now we need every bit of help we can get. But I don’t know if it makes any difference.”
His gaze lingers on you. You don’t need to read his mind to know he has taken a liking to you because you are utterly indifferent to his horns. You have not asked, either, which probably sets you apart from other people; you’ve already guessed that Mizora fled as soon as she saw the Absolute’s victory, taking with her the last vestiges of the broken pact.
And if his gaze continues to linger, you will ignore it. You do not have the ability to turn into a golden paladin at the moment for him.
“I took a parasite with me when I escaped. I could wield it. Unless you prefer to consume it yourself?”
Wyll looks alarmed. “There’s no need for you to volunteer! Once inserted, it couldn’t be removed without killing you. You’d be under Orpheus’s protection, but you would be trapped here with us.”
You shrug. Despite it all, you’ve still ended up here anyways, so you do not see any particular difference.
Orpheus is curious about you, and about human life. He chooses to ask you. Apparently, most of his allies are too intimidated to talk to him, whereas you are a recovering, mind-broken thrall with no care for propriety. It’s true that you have not bothered to address him with any more decorum than you show to anyone else. This has the opposite effect that you hoped for.
He is likely difficult to lie to, so you do what you do best and wrap the truth in velvet. You tell him about your life at sea, though you are careful not to implicate yourself as the founder of a city, in case he knows any local history at all. You keep your tales to amusements about treasure and pirates and sea monsters—surely he will be unimpressed, being a traverser of the much broader astral sea, as well as being royalty to boot. He keeps asking questions, though. As the days go by, you remember that you once had quite the golden wit and as you relearn how to apply it, sometimes you are able to draw out laughter.
And then, one day, his hand rests a little too long on your wrist.
Since that is a terrible idea, you pull back. Orpheus has a speech prepared about how he expects nothing—his people are free with such things—and so you should not fear his status playing a part in what he is offering.
The Emperor would be besides himself with mirth. And he’d advise with absolutely not, this is the opposite of the Tav situation, do you want to get yourself brutally killed?
You almost do say yes, simply on a whim. You don’t really care about whether it would be twisted—the world has crumbled, and it’s not like you currently have the tentacles that Orpheus so despises, so he’s getting exactly what he’s asking for. And if the truth ever comes out, he will attempt to murder you, whether he’s slept with you or not.
In the end, you consider what you feel like doing. Then, you politely say that you remember a lover’s death, which weighs on you, and so you are not ready. Orpheus assures you that your choices are respected and that no offense has been given.
After this, things continue as normal. You find, to your dismay, that the prince is a good friend.
You start besting former Fists in spars. You stop weeping for no particular reason. They send you out on missions. You surprise everyone with how much you know what you’re doing. They are all proud. You might be a little proud as well.
“You remind me of someone,” Shadowheart says.
“Who?” you say.
“The Absolute was once a man, you know. He was our friend, our companion. We lost him to the darkness.”
“How?”
“I think…” Shadowheart curls up. “I think we weren’t there for him. When we met, all of us had our own troubles. We ended up heaping them on him. He was a paladin—he broke his oath trying to do the right thing. And when it happened, none of us knew what to say. We didn’t say anything, even though he was clearly devastated by the loss of something that had guided him his entire life. To be honest, it didn’t even occur to me at the time to ask if he was upset.”
“And there was another friend,” Wyll adds. “I wasn’t there, but I learned later that he left us, at a crucial moment. Joined the enemy. It must have crushed Tav’s spirit.”
“What friend?” You are fascinated that they are using that term.
“Believe it or not, he was a friendly mind flayer. Well, perhaps not friendly, but a renegade, a foe of the Absolute. Or so we thought. I tried to warn Tav that as soon as our goals stopped aligning, the creature would go its own way. I suppose that’s what ended up happening.”
“I sort of miss it,” Shadowheart says. “I wonder, sometimes, if he’s still alive.”
“Do you think Tav promoted him to First of the Mind Flayers?” Wyll says dryly. “Maybe it turned out well for him.”
“Among those illithids, there is not much internal hierarchy beyond subservience to the Netherbrain,” you tell them, amused. “In everything, there is unity. It is a sort of ultimate equality, I suppose.”
“How long did you spend there?” Wyll asks hesitantly.
“Longer than I preferred.”
Shadowheart squeezes your hand. “I’m glad you escaped.”
You pry it from her grasp, ignoring the flicker of hurt in her expression. You try to recall if everyone was always trying to sleep with Balduran.
…They were, actually. There’s a reason you brought even a bronze dragon low.
It must be the brooding. It is making you too mysterious. You resolve to act with more lightness of heart—and if you are honest, you are glad of the chance to be a little less strange and frightening, even only for a short while.
In the end, it’s carelessness that is your undoing. During a battle, the enemy spellcasters create spectral chains to try and bind your movement; one of them catches Orpheus by the arm. You cut him free, but in that moment, you are reminded of his imprisonment—you picture it in your mind. He must see it.
Afterwards, he seizes you and demands, “How do you know about that? Who are you?” There’s no answer you can give, since he plunges into your mind after, anyways. Out comes the silver sword. “You.”
“What is going on?” Shadowheart demands, as Wyll steps in front of you, hands held up assuaging.
“That is the ghaik who siphoned my power in the Astral Prism,” Orpheus hisses. “The one that destroyed my honor guard. The one that would have slain me, as well.”
“What are you talking about?” Wyll says. “Baldur is—” The color drains from his face. “Balduran.”
“That’s impossible,” Shadowheart says. “The Emperor was—is a mind flayer. They can’t just be turned back!”
You are now used to being at the mercy of others, who will decide whether or not they should kill you. You say, resigned, “I am not your enemy. Everything I told you was true. I escaped the Absolute. I saved you, Orpheus. And I seek the destruction of the Netherbrain.”
Now, there is a lot of shouting between the three of them. It gives you a headache. You close your eyes and picture being alone in the astral sea. It was terrible there but also beautiful and more importantly right now, it was mostly quiet. At some point, Wyll places a hand on your shoulder and gently asks you about the events that led you here. You succinctly summarize your escape, and Withers’s charge upon you.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you’ve done the exact same thing to us again!” Shadowheart yells. “Why can’t you ever convey the truth?”
The answer is that Orpheus is stalking towards you, emanating fury. Wyll and Shadowheart both hurry to step in front of him.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” you say to Orpheus. Your tone is flatter than what is appropriate, but your head hurts a lot. “I didn’t have any other solution. I knew you’d kill me.”
At least you’ll be vindicated in your decision, if he slays you now, just as you’ve always said he would.
The gith stops short. He looks away. “I know. I looked in your mind.” His jaw sets. Probably, he is thinking of how he propositioned you and that is causing him a crisis. Perhaps the relief that you turned him down is staying his hand. Well, that’s one more point to the Emperor. His reasoning is usually sound.
“Which one are you, then?” Wyll asks, scratching at his horns. “Balduran? Or the Emperor?”
It surprises you to be asked that, especially when you’ve assumed hero-worshipping Wyll, of all people, would take your current name at face value. You shrug. It’s complicated. You settle with, “Everyone is many different things at various points in their lives.”
“That’s a bit of a cop-out,” Wyll replies. “There’s a look in your eyes, like you aren’t quite settled in your skin. I mistook it for something else, but it seems a different ghost haunts you than we thought.”
“I hope that I haven’t disappointed you,” you say dryly. “Again.”
“No,” he says in that earnest way of his. You’ve been in his mind before, starkly suffused with sincerity and it seems the years have changed nothing. “If you’re still the Emperor, that’s alright.”
“He is a part of me, I suppose. Everything—the illithid, the sailor, the boy who used to play by the banks of the Chionthar. All of it.”
“Then maybe you can tell me what happened up there on the Netherbrain. All these years, we’ve wondered. When it all went wrong, we were down in the streets of the Upper City, fighting off the Absolute’s forces or helping the evacuation. We didn’t realize we’d lost until Orpheus made it back and told us we had to run.”
That means Orpheus had escaped nearly immediately. This bodes well for your chances now, perhaps.
You shrug. “Tav used the Hammer. Orpheus was freed. He barely stayed his hand today, and certainly was not going to do it back then. So I ran.”
“That means…You went back to the Netherbrain?”
“Yes.”
Wyll nods sympathetically. "It was just because you were frightened."
He uses that word because Wyll Ravengard, an abysmal monster hunter in several respects, is trying to humanize what you were, to reconcile the calculating illithid and the highly distraught human waking everyone with his nightmares. You scrub your eyes. "Yes," you say, just to make things simpler. It's close enough.
The Emperor was not merely frightened in that sympathetic way he is depicting—there was also some anger involved. Indignation at being ignored and defied, at the last crucial moment. Although when you review these memories, you also feel quite a bit of indignation at being wronged. You are trying to defend yourself, though, so you don't mention any of that.
“I wasn’t disappointed in you.”
You glance up, broken from your thoughts (you can only think one set of them now, sadly). Wyll smiles and repeats himself.
“Back when we discovered the truth about you and Ansur. To be honest, it was just another crazy revelation amongst a hundred more that were happening. I was far more concerned with my father, with Mizora and my pact. And now that I’ve gotten to know you, the fable of Balduran only pales in comparison to the real thing. Despite everything that’s happened, you’re still here and fighting. How can I find that anything but inspiring? It’s better than any boyhood tale or statue they built by the sea.”
You can see why they wanted to make this one duke. Too bad your city now lies in pieces by the river.
“If anything, I’m sorry for being so absorbed in my own problems back then that it never even occurred to me to ask after you.”
You think he is suffering a little too much from hindsight. “There was no reason for you to. I wasn’t all that interested in you, either, if that’s helpful.”
“Well, you could’ve kept that to yourself!” Wyll chuckles.
Shadowheart asks you, “What was it like? Being a mind flayer?”
You sigh. Being illithid is being air, whereas even now you are packed much too tightly within yourself, with all your meat and bones. “Peaceful. Assuring. Even when it was all too much, even if I had terrible regrets, I could bear it. I could press on, even if the whole world turned on me.”
“That sounds lonely,” Shadowheart says.
“It was,” you reply. “But there wasn’t much I could do about that. I sought companionship when I could. I did see if any of you were interested in joining me in illithid-ness, but that didn’t work out.”
“You could’ve just said so,” the cleric replies. “That would have made you seem more human than any of your dream guardian nonsense. Maybe then…”
“I couldn’t have said so, and meant it. It wasn’t in my nature. Because I wasn’t human.” It’s hard to explain what you were, what you are now, what you understand about it.
A smile quirks at her lips. “You were too proud?”
You think for a moment. “Something like that. Illithids are made to dominate. To rule every creature that is not them. I tried not to be so driven by my instincts, and to become unable to interact with other beings through any other lens. In some ways, I succeeded, thanks to the partialism of my original transformation. Most mind flayers retain nothing of their original personality or memory. But when I did form a relationship, I was glad about it.”
“You sound…fond of it. The Emperor, that is.”
You shrug. “It was me. I think, at least.”
“I can understand that,” Shadowheart says. “I didn’t think he was that bad, either. Terribly demanding, perhaps, but we all were. It’s too bad that the circumstances forced it all apart. Maybe things could have turned out differently.”
“Too bad,” you echo.
Actually, you’re mistaken. Ansur is back. This is because you are a cosmic joke.
Even dragons have a god, and Bahamut is as invested as the others in ensuring that the Absolute does not devour all sentient things.
“I wasn’t sure of it.” He takes the form of a dragonborn, looking the same, in that very exact golden armor, because…he hates you, probably? “You’ve been avoiding me entirely, haven’t you? But eventually I heard there was someone called ‘Baldur’ in the enclave. And as much as you kept your distance, I did spot your face eventually.”
You don’t know what to say. Unlike before, you have no tears at all—it is eerily reminiscent of when you emerged as the Emperor from the Astral Prism into the Wyrmway to make your initial confession to Tav. There is nothing within you now but numbness.
But unlike the vengeful spirit, Ansur does not get angry. He just grimaces. “I don’t have adequate words to even attempt to address what happened. I…don’t know if we can begin again.” His emerald-flecked-with-gold eyes fix on you with sorrow. “Not because I don’t want to try, but because I have only been returned as a champion to defeat the Absolute. Those were the conditions. Once we have succeeded…”
You nod. You, too, are only here because of blatant divine intervention; you have but one purpose. When that is over, you don’t imagine you will be able to stick around and get more statues commissioned. That’s not how these things work.
You go and kneel before him, to tell him what you could not before. “Dear Ansur. I am so very sorry.”
His arms close around you. “No. I should have let you go. I should have let you fly.”
“I could fly,” you say nonsensically. “It was as wonderful as you always described. Only I could do it with my own power. But all of those things, those abilities and how they felt…I want to say it wasn’t worth it, that nothing could possibly be worth losing you—I want to say it. I should! I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Hush,” he murmurs into your hair. “It’s over now. You were always going to be torn from me in some fashion. Always sailing, and always unable to stay. I think you would say the very same thing about the ocean, if that had been what claimed you instead. My only regret is the part I played in it all.”
“You saved me,” you are sobbing. “I went on without you.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m glad that you did. I want you to keep going. Even after all of this, I hope that you can.”
As it turns out, Orpheus has not been attacking the Netherbrain and taking casualties for no reason.
“The time has come,” the prince says, pacing before the war table. His voice echoes through the makeshift audience chamber, shaped into a bowl by druidic magic. He points his blade at a large ink diagram of the Netherbrain. “We have struck a dozen times, and each time I’ve left a lingering trace of psionic damage, hidden from detection while our other forces keep the Absolute’s attention with constant assault. But the losses sustained will not be in vain. Our next assault will be our last. It will resonate with all the others—” He points to the twelve places on the diagram. “—starting a chain reaction, an internal brainquake, and this will be enough to cripple the brain. For a brief window of time, at least.”
Enough to try for the Netherstones in Tav’s hands.
He hesitates only minutely before his next words. “If we are able to seize the Netherstones and separate them from the Crown within the time frame, then any of us should be able to take control of the brain as the new Absolute, and force it to destroy itself. However, should we take too long and miss this window, the elder brain will not only recover but also begin to break free from control. And in that case, it will be as it was before—in order to fully dominate it again, we would need an illithid.”
Everybody deliberately avoids looking at you, which makes you laugh quietly. The jarred parasite you stole is sitting on the war table. You get up to fetch it. From among those gathered in the war room, Ansur gazes at you with brightly shining eyes and remains silent.
“It doesn’t have to default to you, just for a backup plan,” Wyll feels the need to say. “You’ve only just gotten free, by way of a miracle.”
You raise an eyebrow. “Is somebody volunteering?”
“Don’t say it like that,” Jaheira says, with a dark chuckle of her own. “So little faith in your own countryfolk, saer. If you want to refuse, if you want to seize your new lease on life, then you should do it. I am only getting up there in the years. I can stand to sprout some tentacles and destroy a Netherbrain, and then bow out soon afterwards.”
“How quaint,” you say. “That won’t be necessary.” You smirk at the assembled gith. “It would be a pleasure to ascend again.”
Then, you pop the lid open.
“Wait.” Shadowheart puts her hand over yours, her eyes wide. “At least take a moment to think about it.”
She is so stricken that you feel the need to reassure her. “There’s no need for these dramatics yet. I’m only absorbing the tadpole. The Absolute knows my psionic signature and would detect me immediately if I drew near to the Netherbrain as an illithid. We have a higher chance of success if the moment of transformation is delayed until I am in position.”
Orpheus nods gravely. “Of course. I will not drop your protection unless the situation calls for it, and that is the new plan. There is a good chance you will not have to become illithid at all.”
But because they are stubborn, Wyll and Shadowheart drag you and the jar away into the hallway so they can repeat their concerns in private.
“Think of everything you’ve gained,” Shadowheart pleads. “The odds are not as wonderful as Orpheus makes them out to be. There is a very real chance that you will have to become a mind flayer again, if you do this.”
“Correct.”
“Do you really want this?”
You look at her for a moment. “No.” Yes. It’s complicated. She’s right, however. You have trained very hard with the sword recently, after all.
“Then…”
“But it will be much worse for either of you. I also saw that Orpheus was about to volunteer. That’s essentially a death sentence on him, for no reason. It won’t be so dire for me.”
Wyll interjects, “Don’t you at least wish to go back inside and consult Ansur first?”
This makes you laugh. “No.”
You hold the jar in your hands and the parasite within stares back at you, eyeless, and nonetheless its gaze held upon you.
Being illithid is terrible, empty and vast, and it's the sweetest relief on the planet.
You fish the parasite out and, easily as taking a breath, open your mind to it. It wiggles, rising into the air, and then launches itself at your face.
With a psionic push, you send Wyll flying across the field. His wooden sword clatters from his grip.
“Hells, you are good at this.” He sits up and accepts your hand.
“I would hope so,” you say.
The parasite in your head responds easily to your commands, eagerly. It whispers to you, Soon. Soon everything will be returned to its proper state.
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” Shadowheart is quick to remind you from where she stands. She has really been about choices, ever since she turned from Shar. “I think I would make a glamorous mind flayer, myself.”
“You would be parted from your moon goddess, whom you spent so much effort reuniting with.”
She deflates and scowls. “I’m trying for some levity here.”
“That’s something I will miss,” you muse.
“Gale did say something once about illithids being famously humorless,” Wyll ventures. “But he attributed that to the slaving and conquering.”
“It is more that humor requires a certain ability to not take oneself seriously.”
Shadowheart smiles. “Maybe you can write down your favorite jokes right now, and we’ll keep them for you, for later. Just in case.”
You don’t see what this will accomplish, exactly, but that night, you take out a blank sheet of parchment. You put down some bawdy sailor japes that are lukewarm to you currently and will fall entirely flat to an illithid. You imagine yourself as the Emperor having to read it, and this is absurd enough to fold the parchment and cram into your pocket.
The night before your final assault upon the Absolute, Orpheus joins you atop the hill you like to sit upon.
“You fight like a gith,” he says absently. “A flawless combination of psionics and martial prowess. Your skill with the greatsword…it is a thing to behold.”
You disagree, remain silent, waiting for him to get to the point.
“I’ve misjudged you,” he says.
You don’t really want to do this. But you sigh and say, “How so?”
“When I was chained within the Prism, I saw what you did as a ghaik. Manipulations and vile, honeyed words, I thought at the time. The lowest of tactics. Misdirection. Seduction.” His expression wrinkles. “Now, I can…respect that you would go to any lengths to defeat the Netherbrain.”
“You were free to look away,” you deadpan. “Nobody forced you to watch my rendezvous with Tav.”
The reminder of the incident only makes his face twist more. “I was a prisoner, an unwitting spectator.”
“You could have closed your mind. And if you are complaining that I was a poor roommate who should have taken my personal business elsewhere, I will remind you that I was just as trapped within the Prism, at that point, as you were.”
He huffs. “I don’t suppose I can blame you. When there’s an opportunity for companionship, no matter the reason, you learn to seize it.”
“If you are propositioning me again, because it’s the last opportunity you will have with this form, the answer is no.”
He hesitates and sits next to you. “You may not have to transform into an illithid.”
“And if I do, I still do not require your pity.”
The prince laughs quietly. “What a terribly proud creature you are. Is that why they called you what they did? ‘The Emperor’? Such a lofty title. What grand empire did you rule?”
“What grand one do you?” you say flatly.
He looks taken aback, still ultimately unaccustomed to being spoken to thus. “It’s true that my people lie scattered, fractured by war. Once we achieve victory over the Absolute, I hope to rebuild it in glory.” A pause. “From what I know of renegade illithids, they still innately desire to build their own colonies, their own kingdoms.”
You hum and stare out at the stars. “I have always liked achieving things.”
He follows your gaze and nods. “Yes. To ever greater heights, I suppose.”
You and Ansur ride out together against the Absolute. Somebody thought it would be funny to put you in golden armor. They lost your Giantslayer years ago, but you wouldn’t want to carry it with Ansur around anyhow; the blade you have now is a fine, deadly thing, and apparently infused with sussur bark.
Prince Orpheus leads the charge on the back of his own crimson dragon. This is highly risky, but his presence will draw the majority of the Absolute’s forces away from the Crown. Gith riders flank him, and the sky is full of fierce, graceful wyrms—of both chromatic and metallic ilk. As impossible as it seems, against the Netherbrain, even Tiamat and Bahamut have called a truce.
Not even Tav can stand against destiny. The gods always win in the end. It’s their pieces that don’t always get out intact.
Shadowheart and Wyll part ways with you upon reaching the Netherbrain. They will engage their enthralled companions, Lae’zel, Gale, and Karlach, possibly Minthara as well, hoping to capture and subdue.
“Be safe,” Wyll calls to you, as Ansur wings you away. You lift a hand at him in response.
There’s little time. We must strike now, Orpheus calls in your mind. Get to the Crown.
Dragons fall from the sky, screaming—ancient creatures snuffed out just like that, all of those long years extinguished. You reel as a cut of psionic energy nearly knocks you off Ansur’s back.
The window is closing, Orpheus warns.
You tell Ansur to stop, to retreat, tend his wounds, and find a different approach. You will become illithid if it means he lives.
“No. I already told you—it doesn’t matter. We must press on,” Ansur gasps. You don’t dare ask how badly he is hurt; he’s never been good about sharing that with you anyhow.
The Netherbrain trembles and from it comes a low, bellowing rumble.
--Unleashed---FREE—---Unite----DESTROY!
Now, Orpheus cries. You must seize the Netherstones now!
Through sheer might, your forces reach the Crown, the throne where Tav sits. The great band of dragonriders with you all charge him.
Next to him, the black-armored knight heaves a papery sigh.
“The reckoning comes, Oathbreaker. What will you do?”
Tav answers this with a terrible surge of psionic power. Next to you, dragons fall like cut birds. Ansur shrieks in pain, beats his wings over the last few meters, and then lunges for Tav with lightning seething in his maw.
With a flick of his wrist, Tav sends your dragon crashing from the air, to fall at his feet. You roll off Ansur’s back at the last moment, greatsword arcing with the momentum.
Tav rises from his throne to meet you with his own steel. His eyes glow with the effort of holding Ansur down. Next to the throne, the black knight hasn’t moved, and so you take your attention off of it.
“My new world is close at hand,” Tav says. “The gods are standing in the way of glory. No more conflict. No more needless death. But that wouldn’t be in their interests, would it? Under my design, no one will need to beg at their feet for salvation. Their little economy of soul-bartering would be shattered. You know this is true. Come back to me. Don’t betray me again—you can make the right choice this time.”
You answer with another pair of strikes, fierce enough to break through his guard and make a cut in the gap of his plate. The anti-magic of the sussur bark sparks blue, and now you can worry less about getting smited to death. You are faster, and you can land more blows, and Ansur is demanding his concentration. You can win. You will win.
Your cut has shattered the illusory paladin, revealing his true illithid form. Tav actually loses a bit of height in the process. You are about as tall, even though he’s floating. You never knew why his ceremorphosis turned out like that.
His midnight black eyes gleam like oil. He floats a little higher so he can look down upon you, and this strikes you as hilarious.
I will let you stay with Ansur. I’ll give you the power to take whichever form you’d like—nothing is impossible under the Absolute, not when we break the limits set upon us by the gods, and become whatever we want. You can have an illithid mind and human emotion. You can have it all. Do you not deserve that? Does an emperor not deserve a crown?
“No. It’s enough for me,” Ansur whispers to you. “It’s enough.”
Now, Orpheus cries.
“I am sorry,” you tell Tav. “I wish that I could have been different to you. A proper friend, as you needed, instead of someone to fear.” You were once hailed a hero, of the shining-armor sort. You hold out your hand, like one of your statues, like you did so long ago when you showed yourself to Tav in a dream, like you did when you offered the Astral Tadpole in the most earnest gesture you could muster at the time. “It’s not too late. Give me the Netherstones.”
There is that pivotal moment, when he considers it. Or perhaps he is just admiring the irony of the moment, him an illithid and you an armored warrior.
As he lunges for you, you meet him with your blade. You catch him on the shoulder and your fist closes around the sharpness of the Netherstones. At the same time, his arm grapples with yours, and his blade turns towards your ribs. You feel sharp, ripping pain that punches the air from your lungs.
But the stones are within your grasp. This is probably your destiny, or something.
You close your fist.
You draw in a breath and slowly let it out. The world has gone quiet.
The parasite squirms in your eye. With a practiced hand—or in this case, a mind—you seize its power and direct it. It is enough for the Netherstones to recognize your authority.
The black-armored knight sighs again.
Tav snarls.
You command the Absolute to die.
Ansur carries you to a riverbank. He trails blood the entire way—it is raining down below you. Neither of you bother to watch the Netherbrain sink from the sky. Both of you are busy dying. Ansur seems to have it worse than you, though—parts of him are dissolving into copper-gold dust, which don’t have anything to do with his wounds.
“We made it,” Ansur says, after a moment. “Though you cut it close, as always.”
You look down at the hole punctured through you. “I don’t know if it matters.”
“Fair enough. I wish I could stay with you longer.” He is quiet. “Since you didn’t command the Netherbrain to destroy the parasite in your eye.”
“I’m still deciding,” you say, feeling the worm in question squirm with panic. You are bleeding out and your vision is getting hazy. “It could be very romantic to go out with you.”
He places the tip of a great claw on your shoulder and there’s a smile in his voice. “It doesn’t suit you, this sort of thing.”
You turn your head to look at him. “You think tentacles suit me better, after all?”
“You make a fetching mind flayer,” he drawls. “Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”
Ansur’s final words to you are simple. He tells you to live.
The Netherstones are cold in your hand. There is a spark of power that remains, enough authority to reach the last remaining parasite in your head and instigate the transformation. None of this vast, dominating power is the healing sort by itself—figures. You have only the two options.
The grass underneath you is soaked with crimson. If you wait much longer, you will fall unconscious, and then the choice will be made for you.
“Very well, Ansur,” you whisper to the wind. At least you have his blessing—that is not something you dreamed of ever obtaining again. You stick your hand into your pocket and fish around until you locate a piece of parchment, soaked in your blood but still intact. You set it aside in the grass.
You start bleeding silver at first and you wonder if the hastened transformation won’t save you, after all. But gradually, the feeling of your vitality ebbing away fades—it is replaced by a familiar nausea as new tissue grows over old, as your bones shift and crack. You are no longer dying, though now you certainly feel much worse. Over the next hour, it rapidly turns to chills and cold sweat. You glare at the Netherstones and try to make them hurry it up.
At some point, you hear the crunch of boots through grass. Familiar voices.
“You shouldn’t be here,” you say through your remaining gritted teeth. “When the transformation finishes, I’ll be hungry. It won’t be safe for you.”
Exclamations of horror. You don’t have the wherewithal to elaborate. There’s a rustle of movement, of consultation. A few minutes pass. Then, there’s a thump: Somebody has dropped a corpse next to you.
“We’ll stay with you,” Shadowheart says, sitting down besides the dead body matter-of-factly.
“Sentiment,” you growl. “I’m fine. I…know what to expect. I’m not afraid.”
“Neither are we.”
“There’s no guarantee I’ll even be the same illithid that you knew. It’s a different parasite in my head. Whatever combination that results from me and it…I could try to kill you anyways.”
“You won’t. Someone like you will be nothing less than themselves,” Wyll says with that bizarre confidence of his. “You’re much too stubborn to be any less than the Emperor.”
The nausea grows. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, if I remove your head from your shoulders.”
“In that case, we shall run away,” Shadowheart promises, with a weak chuckle. “We’ll do that rather than fight you.”
“But it won’t come to that. So we’ll stay,” Wyll insists.
“Fine. Alright.” You clench your fists and take deep breaths. “Don’t be so hard on him, whatever he turns out as. He’s always tried his best.”
Orpheus drifts closer. “You were a true friend,” he says quietly. “I hope that you will choose to be one again.”
It’s a nice thing to say. You would comment, except you are too busying throwing up bloodied tentacles that turn your esophagus inside out.
It is agonizing, but it’s quick. And behold, there is a fresh meal, still warm, at your feet. You dive like a raptor and devour.
Then, at last, bliss. No more anxiety, no more weight on the cruel earth. You are light and air and glory and freedom again. And you are monstrous to them again.
“I can’t get used to that,” Wyll says, with his head turned. “Nope. No matter how many times I see it.”
But none of them have moved, not even Orpheus.
Shadowheart swallows. “Baldur? I mean, Emp—which do you prefer?” She has prepared herself to utilize whichever is the “correct” one.
It doesn’t matter, you say. This statement causes them to deflate. They are already disappointed.
You can think in many directions again. You reach out and realize Tav has survived, wherever he fell. That’s interesting. You sense, also the minds of his other surviving companions.
“But you know us?” Wyll is saying.
Of course. You are my allies.
You stretch. It feels like you can finally breathe, your mind free to expand outwards as it is meant to. In the process, your consciousness bumps against Orpheus’s. Both of you jump.
You look down at the grass, where a piece of parchment is folded and crumbled. It’s so crimson that you would not even be able to discern what your previous self halfheartedly wrote for you there. But it’s not as though you’ve died. You can recall the words and their intended audience.
You recommended that I write down some terribly salacious jokes for your review later, you tell Shadowheart.
This is the correct thing to say. Their relief is palpable in the air. Shadowheart laughs with a palm curled over her chest. “I didn’t say anything about them being salacious.”
In a sense, you are playing pretend, pulling on the echo of Balduran again, wearing his skin. But though you’ve torn him asunder in order to be born—a second time—you have never been the self-hating sort. Before, as Ansur sought to cure you, you had to become something new, for your own survival. But this time, you think you can carry Balduran a little closer, and consult him more. It feels right to do so.
Orpheus steps closer and holds out his hand. You can float to your feet on your own, of course. But it would be illogical not to build some rapport.
“Will you go your own way now?” he asks.
You think about it, shuffle through the new mixture of your instincts. You recall Ansur’s words. Tav is an illithid, loose upon the world—someone should take responsibility.
I will stay, you say. The thought brings you warmth.
There is no harm to it. It’s what Balduran would want. It might even be what the Emperor would do.
End.