"Karma is the thunder
Rattling your ground
Karma's on your scent like a bounty hunter
Karma's gonna track you down

Step by step from town to town...-"

The Loretakers took the tower in the darkest hour of the night. They had arrived shortly after midnight, but the wizard was still awake, which threw a wrench in their plans. They could sense him puttering around on the fourth floor, poring over old books to aid in deciphering the qualith tablet the adventurers had brought him.

"Good luck with that," one of the illithids outside the tower sneered. "Maybe we let him break his own mind first, make things a bit easier for us?"

"We should make our move now," another thought impatiently, her tentacles moving restlessly in a motion not unlike the impatient tapping of fingers. "This wizard, along with his adventurer-scum comrades, has stolen knowledge directly out from under us! This cannot be allowed to stand."

"At least we paid them back in kind," said a third mind flayer as he finished preparing the magic-dampening sussur grenades. This one was smaller and darker in color, but his bite and mind blast were no less deadly than the others'. "I would have loved to see those adventurers' faces when they went to save their friends we captured, only to find that two of them had already been tadpoled. Hilarious!"

"No, apprentice," the fourth and final illithid chided. It was dressed in the most elaborate robes of the group, indicating its status as a senior member of the Loretaker creed. It had been with the creed for over fifty years now, and had the final say in all decisions made on this mission. "That's the least humorous part in all of this. They still managed to leave with their friends, remember? I'll bet they thought the wizard could save them. Humanoids are so damned optimistic... But there's no cure for ceremorphosis. It's likely that the wizard killed them once they turned, or even worse, decided to study them to learn our secrets."

Then the elder cocked its head slightly, as if listening for something. "Good," it hissed. "That monster is finally sleeping. It's time to make him atone what he has done to our children."

The four mind flayers silently levitated to the top floor of the tower where they could sense the wizard was located. At a wordless signal from the elder, the single small window in the living quarters shattered inward, instantly setting off a series of caterwauling alarms. The Loretakers also heard the hum of arcane turrets powering up, but those were taken care of by throwing one of the magic-nullifying grenades in through the broken window. Rather than fire or shrapnel, it exploded into a shower of deceptively innocent-looking blue flower petals strewn across the floor.

"Ah, thank the God-Brain for surface-dwellers' need for natural lighting," mused the leader as it broke down the stonework around the window frame into a hole large enough for it to enter. If the tower had been solid brick, this would have been much harder.

The wizard was awake now. They could feel his alarm, hear his panicked thoughts in the next room as he mentally ran through all the offensive spells he could remember.

"No need for that," said the elder, speaking to the wizard silently through the wall dividing them. "Do not resist. Come to me."

The old man emerged from the doorway to his bedroom, mindlessly following the command. Robed and bearded, he was the very image of a stereotypical wizard. But there was a cruel twist to his mouth and a hardness to his eyes that belied the image of a kindly old man, and the Loretakers knew better than to underestimate him.

As the wizard approached the assembled illithids, an amulet around his neck glowed purple and his vision seemed to clear. He started, looking around frantically, and began muttering an incantation.

One of the illithids reached into her pocket for another sussur grenade, but by the time she threw it the wizard had already generated a ball of fire between his cupped hands. The illithid jumped back, letting out a surprised huff as her tentacles were singed, but escaped mostly unscathed. Thank goodness the fireball had fizzled out mid-strike, or they'd all be in a world of pain by now.

Another illithid snapped its fingers, and the chain of the amulet around the wizard's neck snapped in much the same way.

There was true fear in the old man's eyes now. He yelled out another incantation, his voice raspy with sleep and age, but it did nothing at all in the anti-magic field generated by the sussur petals released from each grenade.

"Surrender," the elder said again, and this time the wizard listened. He shuddered, trying to stay on his feet, but the superior force of the illithid's will prevailed. The old man went down onto one knee, then the other. He knelt before them, his head bowed... And the elder took the offering. Its tentacles wrapped around the wizard's skull, pulling him into a crushing grip.

The others waited politely, ignoring the crunching and slurping sounds as their leader finished its meal. To their surprise, it looked murderous rather than satisfied as it straightened up, flicking drops of blood from its robes.

"Yharessin and N'Ikrikex, search this tower top to bottom. Find what has been stolen from us, and any other useful knowledge besides. Deosin, with me." It motioned for the smallest member of the party to accompany it.

"Where are you going? Shouldn't we stay together in case there are traps?" Asked the feminine-voiced Yharessin, who had been in such a hurry to enter the tower less than an hour earlier.

"The basement," the elder said grimly. "From what I saw in his memories, that's where he took our kin."

The lowest level of the tower was six flights of stairs down, and only one floor below ground level. An amateur attempt at a wizard's lair, really. The man had been a bumbling fool, and those adventurers were idiotic to put their faith in him to cure their comrades.

What the wizard had been adept at, however, was cruelty in the misguided name of science.

As they entered the basement, the elder and Deosin were greeted by an illithid corpse lying spread-eagled on a makeshift operating table. It had been embalmed or preserved in some manner, and the skin was tinged an unnatural greenish shade. The body was in a half-dissected state, left carelessly on the table with its organs exposed.

The elder's thoughts radiated disgust at the sight. "I should have made that wizard's death far longer and more painful than it was."

"So that's one of them," Deosin said slowly, the sight making him sick to his stomach despite illithids' high tolerance for blood and gore. It was different, somehow, when it was a member of his own species rather than a prisoner or thrall laid out on the table. "But you said two adventurers were tadpoled. Where's the other? There's a tentacle pickled in that jar over there, but this one still has all four attached..."

The elder hushed him. "Shh. Can't you hear it?"

"Hear what?"

Deosin fell silent, concentrating. On a purely physical level, there were no sounds but his own heartbeat and the bubbling of cauldrons set to an eternal simmer. But when he delved deeper into the mental background noise around them, he began to see what the elder meant. He could sense the agitated hum of its thoughts nearby, as well as the more distant presence of the other two upstairs. But beneath it all, he thought he could detect a much fainter fifth presence. It was muted, as though blocked by distance, and even when he honed in on it he couldn't detect any specific thoughts or words. But it was identifiable as illithid all the same.

"There," the elder said softly, levitating a shelf away from the back wall as if it weighed nothing. Behind it lay a lever, which was activated remotely in much the same way. An entire section of brickwork slid back, likely controlled by magic, leaving an exposed hole that led into a narrow hallway.

The two illithids scanned the passageway for danger, but could detect nothing aside from the faint presence they had already sensed. They entered the dark hall without need for torches or other forms of illumination, relying on their keen darkvision and ability to sense both heat signatures and thoughts of any creature that lay ahead.

At the end of the hallway, they found a set of tightly-spaced bars blocking the way into a room that had been converted into a prison, except it contained only a single cell. The lock was more a formality than anything, since the bars themselves were coated in some viscous substance that blocked psionic influence. It would be near-impossible to bend or break them with telekinesis alone, so they wasted long minutes searching the outer part of the basement until Deosin finally found the key buried under a stack of papers on the wizard's lab bench.

With a muted click, the door opened, revealing the prisoner that the wizard had kept ever since the adventurers' raid nearly a month before. The illithid lay slumped in a corner, still dressed in the stained and ragged remains of whatever clothing the poor sod had worn before ceremorphosis. Its eyes were closed, and its breathing was so shallow that if not for the ability to detect its mind, the two Loretakers could have sworn it was dead. Worst of all, all four of its facial tentacles had been severed at the root, leaving its set of buzzsaw teeth exposed.

"Well, shit," was all Deosin could say. "I guess now we know what happened to the other one."

Author's Note: This is technically one of the prequels to my Baldur's Gate fic, Fidelity.

Please favorite or leave a comment if you liked it! There should be a few more chapters to come.