Chapter Text
He wound up at the sea that night. The hidden passage under the Wyrmway took him across the fortress isle, to the Chionthar’s rocky banks, and from there he drifted into the mist. Past the fishing skiffs and the smuggling tunnels along the cliffs, past the city rising from the shroud of gray and the grand statue mounted atop the bluff, its stone gaze cast to the west.
An onshore breeze had rid the coastline of the river-haunting mist. Dory boats sailed on moonlit waters, nets cast around them like a dragon’s drooping wings.
He sank his feet into the sand and watched his reflection ripple. The blood on him had dried, a dark stain eclipsing the silver sheen of skin. Already his cutaneous enzymes were disintegrating the exogenous material.
The wave, when it came, was cold around his ankles.
He didn’t move for a long time. He was still there when dawn broke and the boats returned to dock, and when the sun rose from behind the crags and cast its glare on him, and then lowered and lowered until it bled into the sea.
When the last light was extinguished, the first stars shimmering in a sky grown cold, he lifted himself aboveground and made his way to the city.
He never returned to the sea. He was never given reason to. And besides, his now- eidetic memory could recall it at will, every decisecond from dawn to dawn, from the spume on the waves down to the particles of moisture seeping into his pores. The redolence of brine was of course forever gone, as was the midday sun reflected upon the water, too bright for his eyes to gaze upon.
****
There is a saying in Baldur’s Gate, that ambition has a price and it is paid to the Council. The same can be said about Amn’s Council of Five, for it took the Emperor the better part of the year to find among their merchant families someone of befitting ambition and someone with a price to match.
The Ulvax family has long sought to claim the rights to spice trade, which it lost to their rivals, the Ophals, over a century ago. More importantly, they are willing to do business with the Lords’ Alliance, which their rivals are not. Unfortunately for the Ophals, they themselves have connections to the Shadow Thieves which the Ulvaxes have been trying to expose to the Council of Five in hopes of acquiring the trade rights. A move that will weaken the Ophals and the Shadow Thieves both—and it has finally been set to motion. The Emperor stands before Athkatla’s map pinned on his board, considering the most efficient placement of his agents for the next phase of his plan.
Focus on ensuring the Tessarch doesn’t cover the scandal up, Tav says from her desk. Anticipation pulses over the steady flow of concentration she has been emitting since the early hours of morning. Once I’m briefed and in vicinity I will require no support.
This personal distaste you have developed for the Shadow Thieves is amusing, the Emperor remarks.
Your agents shared the sentiment last time you sent me in the south. Lift a rock and you’ll find one of them under. Like roaches. She tugs at his attention. Now, behold.
The Weave crystallizes, as it does when the Emperor pulls himself into Tav’s senses, where prismatic threads and psionic waves intertwine and recede in harmonious flow. This harmony is acquired—for all its clarity on a conceptual level, the fabric of magic remains intractable to the Emperor’s will.
Tav’s will is currently directed to the drow blade hovering before her. With a command the slender sword fades out of the plane, leaving behind a spatial imprint.
The Emperor catches a flicker of uncertainty. This is the part where Tav loses her grip on the Weave and the sword returns to the Material Plane in pieces. Over the last season the pile of magic sword parts has grown taller than her desk.
The uncertainty flips into irritation. This is all standard procedure . She moves across the hall, not quite thrusting and not quite dancing, and the projection of a sword follows her motions. Do you think spells are created by snapping one’s fingers?
The Emperor spares the pile of junk another glance. Evidently not.
Shriek.
The sword pulses once, and then a thundering cacophony blares into the hall and penetrates the Emperor’s ears, making his vision tilt.
It worked! Tav’s psionic outburst is akin to laughter.
I congratulate you. Now subdue it.
The shrieking ceases, with the sword continuing to orbit Tav in silence.
I’ve been meaning to tamper with this spell ever since I acquired it from the Well in Myth Drannor, she says, extending an arm. The blade stabs the air. Mordenkainen ranks it high in the spell cascade, but its power was so lacking its only benefit was that no one expected I would use it. By replacing the bronze sword component with an enchanted weapon and rewriting 85% of the original formula I was able to create a vastly superior version.
The explanation is redundant, of course, as the Emperor has been at the riverbanks of her mind for those last nine months of intermittent experimentation, but Tav enjoys the sound of her own voice as much as the next wizard in matters of the arcane. The Emperor observes her not-dance, the motions more reminiscent of elven finesse than an illithid’s self-possessed elegance.
That is because it is an elven dance, Tav says mid-spin. A war dance, that is, practiced by a specific sect of wizards. They are supposed to wield their weapons in their hands, of course.
She sends him an accompanying vision, a vague visual of battle-mages training in a copse of red maple trees. One hand holding a luminescent blade; the other moving in the formation of a spell.
A certain wistfulness has crept up to the memory, distant but deep-rooted. Tav notices too, and the grove vanishes.
My mother’s upcoming visit has nothing to do with it, she says.
I did not say it did. I did not even think it.
You would have, had I given you another millisecond.
The Emperor demurs from arguing this case. You have somewhere to be, don’t you?
The planar disturbance abates as the sword bleeds back into reality. Tav plucks it out of the air before it drops and slides it into its sheath on her belt.
A shame I will miss Returning Day, she says.
The Emperor gives her a look she finds amusing. If you fail this task the Gate’s economical future will be set back by twenty-two years . Take as long as is required.
The series of raps on the cellar entrance make the Emperor look up from his work. He is not expecting any of his spies tonight, which means this must be one of the High Harper’s customarily unannounced visits. He assumes a disguise before he opens the passage, all the while considering which one of his moves could have reached Jaheira’s ears.
“Balduran,” Tav’s mother says from the door.
The Emperor drops his disguise in acknowledgement. “ Saelihn .”
She saunters in like a commander during a barracks inspection, taking in the statues and the cork boards. Her eyes narrow at Us, who is dozing on the table, feline glamor pulled tightly around it like second skin.
“I didn’t take you for a cat person.”
“I had a dog once. Tav is not expected to return until the end of the tenday.”
“I know,” the elf says. “I’m here for you.”
The Emperor slides a chair out for her, two seats over, which ignites a spark of amusement. She never fails to pick up on all the manners in which he maintains a proper distance between them, but of course she makes no motion to close that distance. Since their first meeting, benign as it was, the curved sword has never left her belt.
“Let’s walk instead,” she says. “Not that your… ah… office isn’t cozy, but I like to be on the move.”
The Emperor doesn’t challenge her.
He has kept a close eye on the calendar, what with all his deadlines running, but it takes him aback to see more leaves piled up on the streets than on branches. With the approaching winter the days in the Gate are cold and sullen, the fog crawling well into the late hours of morning. By afternoon the sun has sunk into the Chionthar, its remaining radiance veiled behind the gray overcast.
“So, how are things with Tavrys?” Saelihn asks.
“Uneventful, as of late.”
“Hm. A good thing, given recent happenings.”
They walk in silence for a time; the elf considering her approach, the Emperor immersing himself in the minds of the passersby, a shallow, discordant stream of thought and emotion.
“Do you believe you have a soul, Balduran?”
He casts her a glance. “I consider the question to be irrelevant.”
“Irrelevant.”
“To my species, yes. Your souls have value to your gods. By allowing you to retain some semblance of self they ensure your faith in them is preserved, which in turn fuels their power.”
“That is a very… transactional outlook of life and death.”
“Every interaction is transactional on some level.”
“You forget love,” the elf says with uncharacteristic vehemence. “Perhaps not among your selfish human gods, but the Seldarine love their children.”
The Emperor returns his gaze to the road ahead. “In any case, this is irrelevant to me. My kind was not created by your gods.”
“But mind flayers have gods.”
“Illithid gods are the objects of respect and admiration, often envy, but not worship. Perhaps in this instance they are closer to the concept of patrons or saints. But I admit to knowing—or caring—little for them.”
“So you are faithless.”
“My kind is typically assimilated into the collective of the mind hive when they die. As such they do not concern themselves with matters of an afterlife.”
Saelihn smirks at his tone. “You don’t speak of it fondly.”
“Assimilation is most often the purpose, not the succession of death, as directed by the Elder Brains. Illithids lack the will to oppose it—let alone the means.”
“It’s true then. It is said your lifespan doesn’t reach two hundred, but there are records of rogue illithids who have been around much longer. You yourself have far surpassed the two-hundred-year mark, no?”
“ Yes ,” the Emperor says carefully.
“And is that because there is no Elder Brain to summon you for consumption or because you’ve found some dubious psionic methods to extend your lifespan?”
“Yes.”
She laughs. When the Emperor expresses curiosity over her approval, she laughs some more.
“I am four hundred and fifty-eight years old,” she says, steering them towards the park across the street, “and if she were still a half-elf, my daughter would soon be getting ahead of me in physical age. My husband was thirty-six when we met, one hundred and twelve when he died. There are ways to prolong one’s youth and vitality, some more effective than others. But sooner or later you have to accept that not everyone is meant to live as long as you. And that when you die, you will not end up in the same place.”
Beneath the bitter acceptance, the Emperor senses the elf’s caution. Whatever her intention, she does not expect the Emperor to take it well.
“All this to say that I’m not blind to the advantages of my daughter’s… condition. She might even live long enough to bury me. Ah, the half-elf’s parent’s dream.”
“With Tav’s penchant for danger,” the Emperor says, “I find that doubtful.”
“Well, I don’t live the sedentary life myself.” She braces herself, even as her stride doesn’t break. “I did my research on illithids when I went back to Evermeet. There wasn’t much in our records—a few brushes of our spelljammers with nautiloids here and there. But I spoke to a friend of mine, a High Mage, who believes he can… restore an illithid. Back to who they were before.”
The Emperor directs the attention he was courteously keeping away from Saelihn’s mind back to it. Wariness, distrust, restrained hope. “You assume that is something Tav will want.”
“I assume,” the elf says, “that she will show me the door.”
“Naturally. It was her choice to become illithid.”
“It was a forced choice.”
There are a number of paths this conversation can take, none of them auspicious. The Emperor says, “If you want me to speak to Tav on your behalf about this reversal of ceremorphosis, you realize that is contradictory to my interests.”
“Wouldn’t your mother want her child back?” They’ve stopped now, holding each other’s gaze. Passersby stroll past along the cobbled footpath. “The offer isn’t just for Tavrys, you know. You could return to your former body.”
Return.
“It was also my choice,” he says.
“To become a mind flayer?”
“To stop searching for a cure.” ‘ Searching for a cure.’ The choice of words, slithered up from the dark vaults of his mind palace, is appalling. “The advantages to my current form are many.”
“It doesn’t have to be permanent, you know. As it was explained to me, the spell can be nullified afterward.” Saelihn resumes walking. “If your current form is so superior, you can just return to it. Right away.”
The Emperor considers his options. A memory wipe and a one-way passage to the Green Isles would be his preferred way of dealing with the elf, but Tav would disapprove of him taking liberties with her blood kin, even if she agreed to his methods.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” he says to Saelihn, “but you should go directly to Tav with this appeal.”
“Hah, that girl will refuse anything that comes from me out of sheer stubbornness.”
Naturally.
“One of our species’ benefits is that our intellect doesn’t allow emotion to challenge a perceived situation. Her refusal is more likely to be out of rationale.”
The elf snorts. “As is yours? Balduran, Founder of Baldur’s Gate?”
“That is not a name I use anymore.”
“Ah yes, I was told. Apologies saer Emperor, but Her Majesty Queen Amlaruil is the only royalty I will ever address by title. And,” she waves over the park square up ahead, where Balduran’s statue stands tall amid a sea of dead leaves, “I wasn’t talking about your name.”
“You are distracted.”
The Emperor levels a look at Jaheira across the Knights’ table. She looks at him smugly, like she just caught a displacer beast stumbling after a poorly calculated leap (her simile, not his).
“I can repeat all the words you’ve said to me since our first meeting,” he says, and the druid’s mind instantly empties of all ambient thought. “What I mean is this matter has my attention.”
With the Guild’s matter settled to a mutually satisfactory conclusion—Straightstick once again barred from the city proper, Nine-Fingers forced to relinquish part of the Lower City to the Knights of the Shield—his partnership with Jaheira resumes after a fashion. ‘Mutual updates’ is what she calls the purpose of their meetings, by which she means she comes to keep tabs on him. She is of course aware that this is a two-way street.
“Then when are you going to ask me how I know about Ardulith’s Swallows, hmm?” The Emperor stills and she tips her head, initial smugness restored. “And I didn’t even try to hide it when I walked in here. Hah, don’t be discouraged, bosom companion. I know how it can be—meeting the family.”
The Emperor suppresses an involuntary swish of his tentacle. He made no secret of his interest in the company Saelihn works for, mainly because it is a personal affair which does not involve the Knights or the city, but he somehow missed that Jaheira also had her eyes on them. “I do not see how they are relevant to our current matter. Unless this is a goading attempt without an ulterior motive.”
The half-elf’s smirk grows. “Ha, who do you take me for? The Harpers are interested in Evermeet. Information has always been scarce—you know how incestuous those full-elven establishments are. And there’s been a vacuum since the island’s century-long disappearance.”
It was the year after the Spellplague hit and magic ceased to function that word reached the Gate—the Green Isle had vanished, all contact with its inhabitants was lost. The information had little value to the Emperor; the Gate was still recovering from Bhaal’s first ploy and the loss of magic had destabilized Faerûn’s economy on the whole. But a certain part of him had been amused by the news.
Then, twelve years ago, the city was sent into uproar when an elven vessel flying Evermeet’s flag appeared in the Chionthar’s estuary. Duke Torlin Silvershield was overjoyed. Belynne took an immediate liking to the Sparkling Wandertale Evermeet’s merchants had brought with them, and expressed her desire to import it through the Knights. That was only months before her relationship with the Emperor turned to the dark.
“You want me to bring you into contact with Saelihn,” the Emperor says.
“An acquaintanceship that benefits everyone, don’t you agree?”
Information, of course, isn’t Jaheira’s only aim. The High Harper has never met Saelihn, but the elf seems to evoke some kind of solidarity in her. A mother-child tragedy in the making, and in the Harper’s mind the Emperor will only serve as a catalyst to a refrain of his own disastrous past.
And after his recent conversation with the elf, the Emperor is not inclined to dismiss Jaheira’s concern.
I thank you for the delivery, the Emperor. These spells will ease mine and Blurg’s journey to the Underdark. Please, relay my gratitude to Tav.
The Emperor regards Omeluum. Even as it conveys this information, tentacles over the qualith tablet and mind skimming over the sensory outpour, the arcanist is observing him with blatant curiosity.
Forgive my interest, the Emperor. You are as much of a singularity as your partner among our kind, yet there have not been many opportunities to interact with you.
I am aware, the Emperor replies.
The inflection in his voice is noted, identified as sarcasm after a brief delay, and then filed away as curious use of subtler humanoid communication patterns—frequency of usage pending, estimated to be higher than partner’s — shared preference for verbalized communication—default state of mind: closed.
The Emperor begins to shift himself out of the library when Omeluum asks, What do you inquire of me?
He pauses. No inquiry was expressed.
You needn’t have made the delivery yourself. I presumed it was because you wanted to speak to me. It radiates excitement at the prospect.
The Emperor is already reconsidering, but relents. The only thing he has to lose is time—which he probably will. Do you believe illithids are soulless?
Omeluum ponders that. Allegedly, humanoids retain a certain sense of self post-death as a result of their symbiotic relationship with their deities. Our gods do not require worship. Even if the soul—the driving force behind our minds—persists after our death, the loss of memory and any other semblance of individuality separates that existence from ours.
We are our minds.
The arcanist pulses in accordance. I would be interested to know if your case of extreme partialism affects your beliefs. It is not a subject I have discussed with Tav before.
The alleged former God of Death did not turn his attentions from Tav after ceremorphosis. And there was Gargauth’s ritual, which would thankfully remain a mystery.
There is little value in the subject, the Emperor says.
Practical, yes. But I find it of great academic value. As I find it interesting that you ask, the Emperor. Did your partialism make you more inclined to worship our gods after your ceremorphosis?
The Elder Brain did not require it. There was no directive as to the nature of our worship.
You misunderstand. I meant a personal incentive to—Oh. I see. The Child of the Weave mentioned you think of yourself as your host, like her. It stands to reason that you would not consider our gods yours.
Its mind is brushing against the Emperor’s, stimulated by the interaction and the proximity of a non-hostile psionic presence. It feels different from Tav, more comparable to the brain of a colony illithid. Omeluum doesn’t share the Emperor’s idea of what should be kept private, yet the Emperor finds himself reaching back to fill the hollow of her absence.
It offers a memory. Omeluum doesn’t know the origin of this memory. It is just another entry in the grand archive of the collective it was once a part of.
—the Emperor finds himself within the chorus, and simultaneously far away, farther in space and time than his mind-eye can see. There, in the deepest caverns of thought, lies a mindscape so vast it could be infinite. It is a web of power that spans across the cosmos. It is the sun and the abyss both, and in its wake no secret remains hidden, no knowledge undevoured—
--GROW—
--LEARN--
--ENFORCE--
The memory ends, leaving the Emperor in the middle of the Society’s library with only Omeluum’s inquisitive mind.
The Grand Design, the Emperor says.
Correct. The arcanist stills with realization. You do not espouse it.
I understand the reasoning. Enforcing authority by the right of intellectual superiority—a logical conclusion. Yet the sheer magnitude of the undertaking, the indiscriminate control. There exists a point beyond which the effort of the undertaking outweighs the benefits or the purpose of it.
You and I profess superiority over every insect in your garden, he says, every feline on this city’s rooftops and every goblin in the caves of the city’s outskirts. Yet neither of us has a desire to control their populations and manage their affairs.
The arcanist pulses with pleasure. I, too, share no desire for absolute domination when the lives of the various species are so delightfully self-sufficient. It reinforces its statement with various excerpts of its lifelong observations on the behavior of mushrooms.
What is the tipping point for you then? it asks with genuine curiosity. A city? An empire?
The Emperor glances out the window, where ships sail across the Chionthar; their numbers doubled in the past year despite the Absolute’s setback, and now with Returning Day approaching they are several times that number.
He asks back, Does it upset you that death will separate you from Blurg permanently?
As expected, it has never considered that question before. For all illithids entertain all possibilities, all possibilities end with their deaths.
It is…, the arcanist’s inner tentacles curl against its robes—over where its heart beats in its ribcage. … Inevitable.
For a moment it appears as though it will say more. When it doesn’t, the Emperor leaves it to grapple with its newfound perspective and teleports away.
Returning Day arrives and is more pompous than ever. The ongoing city repairs and the upcoming ducal elections did not financially permit much fanfare for the first anniversary of the city’s triumph over the Absolute, but now that municipal revenue is back on an ascending trajectory, the Council has apparently assented to running their vaults dry. The Emperor has yet to pass a block and not be serenaded with the feats of heroes or stumble upon some other variation of street performance. The streets have been swept clean of fallen leaves; now wreaths of flowers in alchemical bloom pile up at the feet of statues.
This sea of idleness and morning inebriation grows more condensed around the main street leading up to the Wide, with the throng of civilians, patrols, and pickpockets becoming increasingly harder to evade. The Emperor has little desire to watch the parade, but events such as this provide him the perfect opportunity to observe the city’s pulse, its response to authority.
He hovers behind the bulk of bystanders and watches them cheer as the Council of Four comes into view. Most of the applause is for Wyll Ravengard who precedes the three Dukes, clad in platinum armor and mounted on a white horse, the very picture of a storybook hero. Florrick rides after him, flanked by Wyllyck Caldwell and Skie Silvershield. Ulder’s untimely death created enough vacancies to keep both families happy and at each other’s throats.
As the City Watch marches after the Dukes, the Emperor notes the undercover guards on the surrounding rooftops and balconies or hiding in plain sight with magic—a yearly precaution ever since the assassination of Ulder’s predecessor eleven years prior. The Emperor had missed that particular event. He had been in Belynne’s residence, putting her mind back together after he had taken it apart. But he had felt the surge of terror when the last of the Bhaalspawn appeared to fight his kin to the death, when the survivor emerged as his father’s avatar and wrought death on the city.
This year’s Returning Day is considerably less dramatic.
After the City Watch comes the Flaming Fist, and then, once the Dukes have taken their seats up on the dais at the Wide, the performances begin. Typically they involve reenactments of Balduran’s fabricated tales, but this year they also include events from the Absolute’s plot.
The Emperor takes in the dancers—a half-elf twirling a prop spear that bears the symbol of Selûne, an elf painted head-to-toe green and dressed in a replication of the githyanki’s silver-hued armor, cartwheeling past a human wizard who’s releasing sparkles out of his hands. There is even a Wyll Ravengard lookalike, with fake horns and an eye glamored to look artificial.
A second group of dancers comes running, faces and toy knives dipped in red paint. Bhaalists and Banites, followed by an intricately outfitted and adorned Enver Gortash. The performer gives an impression of an evil laugh, amplified by magic so that none in the Wide miss it, and heroes and villains engage in highly theatrical combat.
The Emperor knows what comes next.
“The Parliament voted on it,” Wyll had told him by the way of apology. “Personally I find the whole thing tacky, but everyone’s… enthusiastic about it. It would be good for morale. But say the word and I will have it replaced.”
The cultists slain, scutter off laughing under the audience’s jeers. The heroes have just enough time to bow before a second wave of enemies enters the stage, this time from above.
The audience gasps and shrieks.
“It makes no difference to me,” the Emperor had said.
And it doesn’t. The illithid masks look quite realistic from a distance, but their tentacles flutter in the wind like tattered rags, and glimpses of stilts are caught beneath the performers’ billowing robes. The heroes rush in to engage in another operatic battle and the only thing the Emperor would feel at the scene, had he the capacity, would be embarrassment.
It is not the play.
It is the crowd’s response. The rush of excitement as wooden blades find padded flesh and fake blood dyes the cobbles silver.
Many fought mind flayers on the streets the day the Netherbrain broke free. Many fantasize about that moment now as their bodies recall, taut with the influx of adrenaline, the paralyzing fear of witnessing the eruption of gray flesh, the writing tentacles, the gaping maws. They relive the moment when they picked a knife, a shovel, a razor, and plunged —
The Emperor flinches as someone shoves him from behind.
“Oy!”
For a fraction of a second, the Emperor is consumed by the thought that his disguise has slipped. But the human glaring murder at him is looking at his chest, where Tav’s eye level should be.
He simply bumped into someone. The human is no threat. The Emperor could flatten his mind in an instant, as well as the minds of this whole block.
“Apologies,” his disguise says in Tav’s voice, and gets a grumble of a response.
Up on the dais Wyll is waiting for the performances to finish to end the parade with the Grand Duke’s customary speech. From this distance the Emperor can’t read his mind or make out his expression, not with the midday sun glaring down on the square.
As the last of the mind flayers fall the Emperor finds his thoughts turn to Saelihn. He wonders if he she is somewhere in the crowd, watching them bleed.
Before he and the elf parted, the Emperor had said he would consider her proposal, which he already had, and had subsequently rejected. Appeals to sentimentality have little effect on illithids. There is no logical reason to forsake the benefits of his present form to appease someone long dead.
In the dark, the Emperor runs his thumb over his mother’s knife, presumed lost in the sea until recently. There isn’t much a cutlery set may evoke in terms of memory, but even after all those years it never fails to surprise him how small it looks in his hands, how wrong his four-fingered hold feels.
There is no logical reason to appease someone who is long dead. But of course, Tav’s mother is alive. And hadn’t he himself once consented to trying cure after cure, for the sake of another?
On his desk, Us stretches themself awake in a faithfully feline fashion. “Emperor, the night has come and we go to hunt. To hunt we go!”
The Emperor eyes them for a moment. Then he drifts after them, up to the Elfsong’s kitchens.
The helping hands have turned in for the night, the floors freshly scrubbed and utensils left to dry, but he finds the cook hunched over the table, skimming through the week’s list of supplies.
“By Tymora!” the dwarf jumps when he sees his disguise looming in the doorframe. “Kitchen’s closed, saer. Come back tomorrow.”
“I have an order.”
The dwarf’s face grows placid. The Emperor places a gold coin on the table and then watches him chop vegetables and toss the fiddleheads—pickled, for their harvesting season ends with Kythorn—into the steaming pot. He sits across from him as he eats the soup, breathing in the warm, earthy fragrance.
Tav returns the following evening, mind vibrating with echoes of a recent battle and the hem of her robe scorched, but otherwise unscathed.
What did I miss on Returning Day?
Their minds loosely interlace, but she senses that the Emperor is not in the mood to share and doesn’t probe. While she draws herself a bath, she offers up her own tendays of adventure: heated negotiations escalating to a turf war, a skirmish involving two mummy lords and an iron golem. Even in the Merchant’s Domain, diplomacy extends only so far.
The Emperor joins her in the water, and Tav leans her head against his as he washes her, and when he coils around the deepest parts of her mind, she lets him enter unresisted. Thoroughly dominated, she offers no more thoughts, merely holds him as he holds her mind, quietly, into the night.