Prologue

27th day of Elient, 1492 DR.

The end has come to pass, an end utterly inconceivable mere weeks ago. The sheer scale of the challenge was daunting; the objective seemed insurmountable, especially to one who had relinquished all hope. One such as myself. Yet as I pen these words, with hands that tremble and eyes blurred by tears, I feel an urgency to enshrine them for posterity, fearful that fate might deny me this chance. The cacophony of battle still rages beyond these walls—the anguished cries, the chilling ambiance of death, the reminders of a brutal war. But in spite of this grim backdrop, an overwhelming elation courses through me.

The Absolute is vanquished.

After what feels like an eternity, my mind, once ensnared, is finally liberated. The oppressive grasp of the Illithid parasite has been relinquished. It isn't merely subdued or dormant—it is utterly gone. All that remains is the essence of my being. I am, at long last, myself.

The Netherbrain's death rattle resonated like the chill embrace of death itself. Its icy touch seemingly reached for my very soul. In that fleeting moment, thinking everything lost, I could only clutch this journal, crying in pain yet resigned to the fate I believed to be imminent. As I braced for an existence where my very essence would be bound to the Netherbrain, doomed and soulless, I mourned for my comrades, thinking that perhaps, had I only nurtured their hope, they might have prevailed.

Yet, how presumptuous of me! To think that I, a humble chronicler, could have influenced their ultimate triumph or defeat. My role was to bear witness—to transcribe their victories and setbacks, their joys and sorrows.

Now, as I revisit the opening lines of this journal, a profound gratitude engulfs me. How different it all seemed then.

Chapter 0.

21st day of Eleasis, 1492 DR.

Dear reader, should these words find you, know that they are penned with a heart heavy with the weight of despair, for I am certain they will be my last. In but a few days, I shall be no more, gone and leaving behind nothing but an empty shell enslaved to the Illithids.

I am Aereleth Deneirvale, an Adept Scribe of the Order of the Timeless Word, and a humble servant to the Lord of All Glyphs and Images, the First Scribe, Deneir. To put it plainly, I am but a mere scribe, one whose greatest and only skill lies in her simple ability to set quill to parchment.

It was a mere three days ago that the tranquil skies of Waterdeep were rent asunder. From this tear emerged a monstrous vessel, appearing like some unholy union between a giant squid and the fevered dream of an inebriated tinkerer gnome, chased by dragons and their riders, locked in mortal battle. As this nightmarish construct descended upon the city, its writhing tentacles extended, ensnaring us with a magic I could not comprehend. Within moments, I found myself trapped within an impenetrable pod aboard the vessel. A face, a mass of wriggling tentacles dripping with malevolence, peered at me from the other side of the glass. It was an Illithid, a creature I'd only known from ancient tomes and whispered legends. In its grasp, it held something that, at first, seemed to be a small worm or bug. How wrong I was. How little I knew. It was one of their insidious parasites, a device, I only just learned, the Illithids use to corrupt and convert mortals into their own grotesque form. As the Illithid drew it close, the parasite jumped to my face and, ignoring my silent screams, burrowed its way past my eye and into the very recesses of my brain.

Time lost meaning within my prison. I was divorced from the notions of day and night, hunger and thirst. When the Illithid returned, and with a single gesture, my terror evaporated, but so did my sense of self. I was emptied, transformed into a mere puppet. With no resistance, I obeyed its command, stepping out of my pod and following into a different chamber. There, another pod not unlike my previous prison, only larger, awaited me. What it was I didn't know, didn't care to know; didn't need to know. As I discovered later, it was a device designed to hasten my vile metamorphosis. I stepped inside as I was ordered, and shortly after I settled within, darkness enveloped me, and yet, devoid of all free will, I felt no fear. I would be transformed, and that would be the end of my story.

But fate had other plans.

When my eyes flickered open, a wave of confusion enveloped me. I could hear muffled voices, and in my blurry vision I could barely make the outline of three figures. Confusion gave way to fear. Attempting to rise, my legs failed, and my arms flailed, looking for purchase. But strong hands quickly pinned me. Fear became panic that seized me, and a scream tore through my throat. My own voice was back.

"Hey, hey! Take it easy, you're free! Calm down!" a man's voice interjected.

I blinked repeatedly, demanding better from my eyes. Slowly my vision cleared, revealing a handsome, chiselled face, strong jawed with blue eyes and short hair the colour of chestnut. The man was holding me down, and as I took it all in, my panic started to subside.

"You managed to pry the pod open. Impressive," remarked a woman to my left. She had a tightly wound high braid of dark hair, intense yet seemingly unfathomable blue eyes, framed by a horizontal scar from nose to cheek under her right one, and was clad in a light chain shirt with a circlet adorning her forehead.

"We cannot waste any more time," rasped another voice. I glanced right and sharply inhaled at the sight of a Githyanki. Her disdainful gaze met mine, and I felt a chill run through my spine. Her unique features were unmistakable, despite having never met one of her kind in the flesh: Pale green, leathery skin, sharp features with a small upturned nose, elongated pointed ears that bore no decorations, golden eyes with vertical pupils, and a series of markings around her eyes with two wide streaks painted along the cheekbones. She wore ornate half plate and bore a rather large sword.

"What happened?" My voice wavered, while my head raced, grappling for understanding.

"To shorten the story for the time we don't have, Illithids abducted us," the man began, but a searing pain interrupted him – and me with him. I clutched my face where the parasite had nested, and memories flooded in. I saw myself climbing out of a pod. Finding the others. Lae'zel, the Githyanki. Shadowheart, the half-elf. And myself: Tavarius Dawnshield, Monk of the Order of the Platinum Fist.

As the recollections ebbed, I collapsed back, disoriented. The pain slowly subsided, and the parasite stopped squirming.

"And yes, we have been infected by an Illithid parasite, which allows us to share each other's thoughts," he said. "Aereleth," he added after a small pause. He had seen my memories, inasmuch as I had seen his.

Speechless, my mind did not slow its desperate scramble for understanding. The implications, the revelations, the lurking danger; our potential doom loomed large. As many years as I had trained as a scribe, no words came to me that could adequately convey my feelings. The only sensation I could describe was that of the icy hand of terror grasping my heart from within.

"I will explain everything I know," Tavarius said, extending a hand. "But we must go."

I took the offered hand, feeling the rough texture of his grasp. "Thank you... Tavarius."

"Just Tav," he grinned, though the gesture seemed ill-suited to our grim surroundings. "Let's go."

"Where?" I said, complying nonetheless.

"To the helm, and hopefully a way out of this thing," Tav replied.

Free from the pod and the mental enslavement of the mind flayers, I could finally examine our prison, which revealed itself as a Nautiloid, one of the bizarre fleshy transports the mind flayers use to travel between worlds and planes. Its insides were a grotesque blend of muscle and metal, pulsating doors and rooms seemingly carved from skin and shell. Prisoner pods lined the chambers, some vacant, others housing the unfortunates who did not survive. Though I had to ask myself who the unfortunate ones truly were. Others, yet, lay dormant though their transformation – ceremorphosis, as it is named – seemed complete.

The helm itself was not far. As we approached, Tav turned to Shadowheart and, after giving me a measuring glance, called her attention.

"Shadowheart," he said. "Keep Aereleth safe."

"Me?" she replied, and I couldn't make in her tone whether she was surprised or offended, or perhaps both. "As we go into battle? I cannot afford the luxury of looking after someone else."

"Well, consider it payment," Tav replied.

This time I could easily discern her annoyance. Payment for what, I could not know. She, too, gave me an intense look, but then, and to my surprise, she turned to Tav and nodded. An entire conversation had transpired without words and outside my understanding. "Fine," she grated between clenched teeth, and turned to me. "Stay close, and do as I say."

She raised her hand, and her eyes took a faraway look. For a moment nothing seemed to happen, and a moment later, it was clear that indeed, nothing had happened at all. She looked down at her hand and furrowed her brow.

"Something's wrong," she said. "My divine link. Sh- Something has severed it. Almost completely."

"Same. My ki is completely blocked too," Tav replied. "I blame the tadpole."

"What? How could a mere tadpole do something like this?" Shadowheart said.

"An Illithid tadpole," Tav replied.

I looked at Lae'zel, but she responded with a gesture of disdain and a very loud clicking of her tongue.

"Tsk. I am Githyanki. I will not be bested by a tadpole," she said.

Whether it was true or she was hiding a similar loss from the parasite, I knew she would never show. We climbed a gelatinous ladder, enter a small chamber, and came upon another of the Nautiloid's unsettling doors.

"We're nearing the helm," Lae'zel said. "Once inside, do as I say."

"Who put you in charge?" Shadowheart replied.

"Tsk," was all the answer Lae'zel offered.

"Enough," Tav interjected. "Let's act like we have done this before, shall we?"

He looked at me, gave me a nod for reassurance, and hit the centre of the door. As it opened, a gust nearly knocked me off my feet, and the din of battle assaulted my senses. Small imps and demonic beasts battled Illithids and grotesque brain-like creatures. The howling of the wind almost drowned the sound of battle, and the acrid smell of sulfur filled the hot, heavy air, choking my very breath.

A commanding thought resonated in our minds, its origin frighteningly familiar yet distinct from my previous experience. There was no pain this time. Only authority.

Thrall. Connect the nerves of the transponder. We must escape. Now.

One of the mind flayers. The voice was commanding, but there was a note of fear and desperation to it.

The controls. A grotesque arrangement of tentacles we had to reach through a room full of fire and death. Lae'zel and Tav exchanged shouts as they prepared to enter the fray, but true to her promise, Shadowheart stepped in front of me, shield raised and mace in hand.

"When I tell you, run. Find a good spot, and hide. You hear me?"

She didn't turn as she spoke, her eyes were scanning the battlefield as Lae'zel and Tav dove in.

"Yes!" I acknowledged, and did the only two things I could do at the time. Watch events unfold, and pray to Deneir that I would be granted the chance to chronicle this ordeal.


Author's Notes: Well, it's been a while since I started a new fic, and I've been enjoying Baldur's Gate III enough that I decided to go for it. The setting? Right after the end of the game. The objective? Have a little fun with a story threading the aftermath of the war of the Absolute. Plus, discover how this particular playthrough went for the characters involved (non-spoiler spoiler: Things don't always go your way the first time!). The latter will be, in part, inspired by my very first playthrough, as I had purposely been keeping myself 100% isolated from all hype, spoilers, and news regarding BG3 until its launch (and until I saw enough reviews convincing me it's worth playing). While flashbacks are involved, starting straight from the intro chapter as you can see, the fic will be set after the war.

I'm not going to be re-narrating the whole game! Just putting it out there.

The obvious first, though the warning should be obvious from the description: This fic will obviously spoil the whole freaking thing!

SPOILERS AHEAD!

(I mean, duh!)

The other thing is the PoV that I'm going to be using for the fic. My idea is to take an ascended extra (who I expect most people recognize from very very early in the game given the description), and use her as the narrator voice, writing this thing as if it were a journal. The tone/style I'm trying to use is aimed to evoke a more "classic" fantasy setting theme - if you haven't read the original Dragonlance books, you should, they're fun - which makes it somewhat challenging, at least for me, specially when it comes to consistency of tone. If I slip, I apologize in advance. It might end up that most of you think it's unreadable, I guess we'll see :D

Opposite of that, most of the speech used by characters in the game is rather... well, just normal; or modern, really. Karlach is, I think, the worst offender, because she just sounds like a TikTok influencer. That is not to say the voice acting or dialog is bad - in general it's good, and there's standouts like Gale, whose voice actor really manages to sell the Wizard from Waterdeep, with a taste for the finer things in life and a penchant for the dramatic, with the material given; or Raphael, who is evil and he knows it, and loves every second of it. Very well done. But the tone is quite the mismatch in many cases with what one would traditionally expect from a fantasy setting. Which leads me, once again, to apologize in advance if I don't manage to keep a consistent voice and tone with them.

But anyway, I hope this will be fun, I think it's going to be smaller in scope than the other still ongoing fics I have, which means there's a chance I'll actually finish (The King's Key is still the one that stands out in this regard from my fics, and with an R rating it doesn't get a lot of light).

And while this may be a bit cheeky, if you like what you see, you can always throw a bit of support (which is GREATLY appreciated) my way at:

tinyurl (period) com (slash) y2q9cop6

In the near future, except the party to deal with the immediate aftermath (if you've finished the game and seen the characters, you know what I'm talking about) and the big setup for the fic - part 1 at least.

(And how nice it is to start with a brainfart! Thanks to SpecterXCove for pointing out that Shadowheart is indeed a half-elf, not a human. Let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come LOL).