"We hold in our hearts
The sword and the faith
Swelled up from the rain clouds
Move like a wraith...

Well after all, we'll lie another day
And through it all, we'll find some other way
To carry on through cartilage and fluid

And did you come to stare or wash away the blood?"

Videxthrod was not having a particularly good morning. He awoke far earlier than he needed to and was unable to go back to sleep, no matter how comfortable the moss of his bed was. After an hour of this, he finally gave up on chasing slumber and decided to report early for his shift tending the ceremorphosis pods. They had stood empty for weeks now, but today was the day the next batch of form donors was set to arrive.

As he donned his robes and prepared for the day, Videx tried not to notice the echoing emptiness of his domicile or the way he had to levitate everything over to himself rather than have someone bring it to him. He really needed to invest in a new personal thrall sooner rather than later. Maybe he should go look for a suitable candidate on his next day off, whether that was paying off the Nourishers to gain personal ownership of one of the thralls at work, or buying a fresh one off the auction block. It was so hard to get good help these days.

He'd been putting it off, really, ever since Vera had died. Humans lived even shorter lives than usual down here away from the sun, but his favorite thrall had gone before her time from an illness that healing potions and his own limited medical knowledge couldn't cure. It was such a shame that the colony saw individuals - both thralls and even illithids, to some extent - as disposable, and wouldn't invest the time or the resources into creating some sort of medical Creed or praying to Ilsensine to empower its clerics to heal more effectively. Oryndoll was one of the few colonies with a Venerator Creed that persisted for more than a single generation, but they were rather stingy about extending their clerical services to the population at large.

Videx tamped down these bitter thoughts as he stepped from his chambers. After all, it wouldn't be good for anyone else to hear. The route from his domicile to the part of the Nourisher headquarters housing the ceremorphosis pods was a short one, less than one spoke of the 'wheel' that made up each ring cavern of Oryndoll.

When he got to his workplace, Videx found that nothing had been prepared in his absence. He was far from the only illithid working here, and not even the most senior... but why did everyone else seem totally incapable of functioning without him?

Videx sighed and decided to get a head start on his tasks for the day, sending thralls running to clean the pods and check in on the estimated delivery time for both hosts and tadpoles. The tadpoles came even before the thralls had returned, sloshing around in their carrying case until Videx emptied them out into the small brine pool in one of the caverns.

His two apprentices, Uddul and Elizavo, arrived soon after he did. Uddul's only distinguishing features were his uncommonly long tentacles, and Elizavo was a lanky lavender-colored creature who used the female pronouns of her form donor. They were both less than ten years of age, with the enthusiasm of youth but little experience to back it up. This would be Uddul's first time witnessing the process of ceremorphosis from start to finish, in fact – if those damn hosts would ever arrive.

Having ensured that the basic preparations were complete, Videx plopped down on a bench with a sigh, half-listening to the apprentices' conversation while he waited.

"Do you think anything will happen this time?" Uddul was asking. "I wish I could've started my apprenticeship a month earlier, just to see all the commotion."

"I doubt it," Elizavo said, flicking her tentacles disdainfully. "I don't think you realize just how rare it is for something like that to happen. One does not simply walk into Oryndoll and expect to get out alive."

Videx wondered idly who she was quoting. "Quite right," he added, making them startle a little at the realization that he'd been listening. It was best for them to get used to the idea that, in Oryndoll, someone was always listening. "And Uddul, I wouldn't sound so excited about that if I were you. That incident is not something we will ever strive to replicate."

Just the thought of it still made him shudder over a month later. A trio of adventurers had infiltrated the city disguised as thralls, wearing rings of mind-shielding that were doubly enchanted to project an overlay of false thoughts. They'd been trying to rescue the two remaining members of their party, who had been captured elsewhere in the Underdark and brought to Videx's unit for ceremorphosis.

Between the rings and that scroll of long-range teleportation they'd used to escape with their friends, they must have been bankrolled by a powerful wizard. The worst part of the whole mess was that the two captured adventurers had already been implanted with tadpoles, so Videx had to explain to his superiors why two pods were broken open and two potential members of that month's clutch had vanished into thin air.

Videx just hoped that the 'rescued' adventurers had met with a quick end once they got wherever they were going. For a mind flayer, he was rare in that he didn't actively enjoy others' suffering. Before he'd had any clout or seniority in this place, everyone had laughed at him for putting the occupants of the pods to sleep anytime he was on duty. He'd said their screams gave him a headache, and soon his colleagues noticed that healthier illithids tended to emerge from pods whose occupants hadn't spent the entire week screaming themselves hoarse and bashing their bodies against the glass. Now the new generation of apprentices was just beginning to see his policies as normal, and that was the way he liked it.

Finally, over an hour after Videx had arrived, his fellow Nourisher, Qhesk, showed up with ten thoroughly dominated humanoids. Seven drow, two humans, and one half-orc. They were not only under mental control, but also locked in chains and escorted by a pair of vigileators in addition to the usual Nourisher.

"All thralls this time," Qhesk noted. "We're taking a break from using prisoners after what happened last month. Additionally, Svull here will be supervising the process." One of the vigileators dipped their head in a nod.

Ugh, Videx thought to himself, mindful to keep it private. Oversight.

He escorted Qhesk and Svull back into the ceremorphosis unit, flanked by his assistants and thralls.

"Wait," Svull spoke in a deep telepathic voice. "Have these been thoroughly vetted?" They indicated the thralls working in the facility with a wave of their hand.

"Of course," Videx said smoothly, though internally he seethed at the insinuation. No, this was definitely not shaping up to be a good morning. "After the incident, we've reduced our staffing to only those who have already served loyally for years. Feel free to interview them personally if you desire."

"Perhaps," Svull said without any particular emotion. "If I tire of watching these others squirm."

The vigileator, who was tall even for an illithid, bent down to unlock the chains from the thralls' wrists. Elizavo opened the covers on the row of pods that lay along the back wall, and Videx sent her a gentle reminder to show Uddul how the controls worked since it was his first time seeing the process.

The thralls stepped into the pods at Qhesk's command, glassy-eyed and obedient. The other Nourisher and the vigileator hung around in the room like vultures while Videx plucked the tadpoles from the brine pool and, one by one, inserted them into the eye sockets of the uncomplaining thralls and closed the lids of each pod.

With that, Qhesk released their mental domination on the thralls, leaving them with just their basic conditioning. Thoughts and reactions varied widely between them as each awoke to find themselves in a pod. One of the humans started sobbing almost immediately, and was soon followed by a male drow. Most of the others lay stony-faced, their thoughts ranging from elation at being chosen for this greatest of honors, to "Well this is it for me, I really shouldn't have offended that mind flayer in the market the other day..."

The half-orc was the most problematic, since his first reaction upon waking was to give the glass cover of his pod a slap that shook the whole container. It was probably more of an instinctive reaction than a true escape attempt, since his thoughts radiated confusion rather than anger. But Videx told him to take a nap just in case, and the thrall obliged.

"Listen, all of you," he said to the rest, feeling self-conscious about the presence of Svull still hovering in the back of the room. He decided to keep the speech brief this time, and tried to keep its range limited to the thralls themselves. That way, his overseer wouldn't hear unless they were paying specific attention to his thoughts. "I appreciate that you're about to make a great sacrifice for the colony, and for that I promise to make this process less painful for you. Does anyone want to be put to sleep for the whole of it?"

The crying human woman and a couple of the drow nodded. "Go to sleep now," Videx told them. "Sleep deeply, and do not dream. I will be watching over you."

Their eyes shut in unison, and for the first time all morning Videx felt like he could relax just a little now that there was nothing to be done for the next several hours. Unfortunately, his moment of relief was not fated to last for very long.

Videx felt their presence before he saw them arrive. A thrall and an illithid, neither of which he recognized, approaching the ceremorphosis chambers at a hurried pace. But... something felt off. Was there just one of his own kind in the party, or two? Videx detected one clear stream of thoughts layered over a sort of background hum - a presence without intent or awareness. It felt like a fully mindbroken thrall, except the signal originated from one of his own kind.

Before he had time to ponder this strangeness for too long, the strange party materialized in the doorway and answered these questions for him. Unfortunately, their appearance immediately generated a new set of questions in its place.

The leader of the visitors was a tall fellow wearing black robes with the insignia of the Loretaker creed. Unlike Svull in the next room, this one was thin rather than burly, making them look rather like a scarecrow (like a what? He caught himself in the aberrant thought and quickly tamped it down). Videx noted with some interest that visitor's robes were torn in one place and singed in another, as if their owner had recently been in a fight.

The thrall was a hulking troglodyte, grunting as it surveyed the room with its beady little eyes before setting down the limp bundle it was carrying.

The Loretaker spoke. "I believe this belongs to you, but it is dying. Can it be helped, or shall I take it to join the Elder Brain?"

Videx looked closer and saw that the bundle was actually the body of a fellow illithid, though not one he recognized. The first thing he noticed was that it was missing all four of its facial tentacles, leaving its buzzsaw-like set of teeth exposed. The stranger was dressed in a set of torn rags that were splattered with a mixture of red and silver blood, not to mention far too short for its spindly limbs.

Videx thought he remembered those clothes from somewhere. If he squinted, maybe they could have once have been a shirt and trousers of fine elven design, just like the outfit worn by one of the adventurers who had been tadpoled during last month's debacle...

"You've found one of the missing hosts?" he gasped. "Well, not a host anymore, clearly. But how?"

In lieu of words, the Loretaker showed him a memory; a condensed version of the raid on the wizard's tower.

When it was over, Videx approached the newborn illithid and performed a cursory examination. The newborn was in awful condition, the worst he had seen in anyone who wasn't already dead. The poor thing looked like it had gone through a completely normal ceremorphosis, then had its tentacles lopped off at the root and been thrown into a dungeon to rot without any contact with anyone whatsoever. And according to the one who brought it in, that was pretty much what had happened.

"After taking the tentacles – God-Brain only knows what for – he kept it imprisoned for the rest of the month," the Loretaker concluded. "So, what are you planning to do?"

Some small part of Videx wanted to tell them to take the newborn to the Encephalithid and just give it a merciful death. It was probably suffering anyway, and this definitely wasn't the best time for him to take on a personal project, what with the new batch of recruits undergoing ceremorphosis and the vigileator keeping an eye on things in the next room.

But Videx found that he couldn't just give up so easily. He still felt personally responsible for what had happened the month before, and he'd grieved the loss of two potential members of the colony more than most of his colleagues. Then Vera had taken a turn for the worse, and he'd put the missing tadpoles out of his mind...

But now one of his greatest failures was here in front of him; a tadpole no longer. Videx had previous experience with cases where ceremorphosis had gone wrong, and he hated to give up on one of 'his' children unless absolutely necessary. Sometimes they just needed a bit of extra attention in the beginning, and then ended up being functional members of the colony - or at least ceremorphs that could provide useful labor or amusement.

"I'll take it from here," he assured, pulling himself up to his full height and levitating an extra inch off the ground for additional effect. "Perhaps this one can still be saved. And if not, I'll deliver it to the Encephalithid myself."

The Loretaker nodded and withdrew, followed by their troglodyte thrall.

Videx mentally scanned the next room. The occupants of the pods were silent, watched over by the vigileator and the apprentices. He could afford to spend a bit of time away after all.

The first thing he did was strip the remnants of humanoid clothes off the newborn's body, revealing dry and flaking skin shriveled tight to the underlying skeleton. God-Brain dammit, he wanted to resurrect that wizard just so he could kill him with his own two hands...

The newborn was still unconscious, and Videx could have sworn they'd brought him a corpse if not for the faint background hum of its mind. He levitated the poor creature up to waist-level, noting that it weighed only half the amount of a typical illithid and thus was well within his powers to carry using telekinesis. He took it down the hall to the baths where he normally let newly-awakened illithids cleanse themselves after emerging from the pods, careful not to bump his cargo's dangling limbs into the stone walls around them.

The baths were empty now, since aside from the periodic influx of newborns they were only occasionally frequented by his Nourisher colleagues. Though not as luxurious as those used for recreation and relaxation by the colony at large, these had the significant advantage of privacy. The bathing pools were carved out of the rock around them; artificially deepened versions of small indentations that had naturally formed over eons of time. The water in each pool was a comfortable temperature, fed by underlying hot springs beneath the cave floor.

Videx set the newborn down in the shallow end of one such pool. His ward remained completely limp, its ugly tendril-shorn head lolling back in the water. Videx found that he had to take off his own robes and get into the pool with it just to prevent the wretched thing from drowning.

From what Videx could tell, the worst of its injuries had long-since healed over, but had been prevented from regenerating properly due to a lack of the nutrients and psionic energy that one could only get from eating brains. But the issue that would kill the newborn sooner than injury or malnutrition was dehydration. Had that animal of a wizard really not given his prisoner something as basic as water? No, he must have at some point, for it to have even survived this long. But either he'd stopped providing this basic need after growing bored of it some weeks in, or he'd seriously underestimated the semi-aquatic nature of illithids. Or, perhaps – the third possibility offended even Videx's not-so-delicate sensibilities (though, more delicate than usual for his kind). Maybe the wizard had been conducting some kind of experiment to see how long an illithid could survive without food and water?

Their species' amphibious ancestry was part of the reason the newborn was so badly off, but maybe it could come in handy for saving it as well. Videx dunked as much of its body underwater as he could while still allowing it to breathe, hoping that it could at least absorb some of the liquid through its skin. In the meantime, he sent out a mental call for his apprentices, since there were so few nearby thralls after the staffing cuts and all of them were otherwise occupied.

Uddul and Elizavo appeared shortly. Videx could hear the surprise in their thoughts at seeing their elder naked in the water with an injured illithid they had never seen before. It wasn't like they had a serious nudity taboo or anything, but it was still a rather unusual sight.

Ignoring their unspoken questions for now, he sent Elizavo off for cleaner water - the stuff in the bath was already beginning to turn a grayish-brown - as well as humanoid blood or brain fluid if she could find it. Uddul went to find one of those cups that looked like little teapots, spout and all - designed to prevent illithids from having to tilt their heads all the way back or make undignified slurping sounds when drinking water.

Some time later, which Videx spent alternating between daydreaming and checking the newborn for any signs of life, the two apprentices returned bearing gifts. Elizavo looked sheepish as she approached with only one of the substances Videx had asked for. "All out of brain juice," she said. "They told me to go to the festhall or get some fresh from the thrall caverns. What should I do?"

"The festhall is fine," Videx said absentmindedly, considering the stoppered bottle of blood as he levitated the cup over and set it down at the edge of the pool. "Ask Tranchex for a mindgate, tell him it's for creed business."

The two apprentices scurried away, shooting furtive glances at the pool's other occupant.

"All right, you pitiful creature," Videx thought in the newborn's direction. "Are you going to wake up, or will we have to do this the hard way?"

No response. Videx braced himself and took a deep breath, but the shout that left him was purely mental. "WAKE UP!" He commanded, trying to minimize the psionic reverberation to this single room to avoid disturbing the sleeping humanoids in the pods or their vigileator guest.

The newborn's eyelids fluttered open, revealing eyes sunken in their sockets that nonetheless shone a vivid blue. But there wasn't any true thought or intent behind them, and they soon closed again as if staying awake was simply too exhausting.

"Oh, no you don't," Videx muttered as he poured an even mixture of blood and water into the cup his apprentice had provided, supposing that this would be better than nothing. He held the spout of the cup up to the newborn's mouth, easing it past the rows of teeth and hoping that it wouldn't choose this moment to wake up and bite down. "Hey, stay with me here. Do you think you can swallow?"

He poured a little of the mixture into the younger illithid's mouth, holding his breath. Useful as this cup was, its spout wasn't quite long or curved enough to go all the way down its throat, and due to the quirks of mind flayer anatomy members of his species could only breathe through their mouths. But thankfully, there was no coughing or choking, and the newborn did as it was told. With eyes still shut, it obediently swallowed the mixture, then returned to its former state of inactivity.

Videx sat in the bath with it for a while longer, enjoying the warmth of the water and trying not to worry too much about things he couldn't control. Either this one lived or it died, he told himself, and neither outcome would reflect badly on his own abilities or his value as a person. (You couldn't help Vera and you won't save this one either, a nasty voice taunted him, but he did his best to ignore it.) Either Svull the vigileator wouldn't care about his absence, or they would report him for negligence even though there wasn't much to be done at the pods anyway.

After an hour or so, he half-carried, half-levitated the newborn out of the pool and dried it off with a towel. He was dismayed to see that after the last of the bathwater had soaked into its skin, it became nearly as dry as before. And, once the layers of dirt and old blood were gone, several deep cracks in the translucent skin at its joints began to sluggishly ooze silver.

Videx called for Uddul again, asking him to bring a health potion and a set of novice robes. At first he hadn't thought a potion would help, but now he berated himself for not seriously considering it earlier.

Uddul returned quickly, holding out the potion and a neatly-folded robe. "We need to get more of these," he said, and from his thoughts Videx knew he meant the potion. "Our stock is really low."

"Oh, I know," Videx answered tiredly, dabbing some of the potion onto the worst cracks in the newborn's skin. "We'll get more tomorrow. The Possessors should be getting a shipment in soon."

He saved more of the reddish liquid to rub on the stumps of its tentacles, but those seemed healed over already and would naturally grow back with time if the newborn survived. The remainder of the potion went down its throat in much the same way as earlier, though with perhaps even less response than there had been before. Videx wondered again if health potions only worked on injuries, or if they could also improve the newborn's general condition.

"What happened to this one?" the apprentice asked timidly. "The others are wondering."

As he dressed the newborn in the robes like an unresisting mannequin, Videx expounded on the threat posed by free members of the thrall races, particularly ones who could use magic and had a vendetta against illithid-kind. He even decided it was time for Uddul to learn some new and more colorful vocabulary...

Afterwards, he deposited the newborn onto a bed in the nearby dormitory reserved for the upcoming batch of novices. That way, he would be able to keep tabs on it while putting in appearances in the main room down the hall, and would be able to return quickly if anything went wrong.

And so Videx plodded through the remainder of his shift at the ceremorphosis unit. The thralls that had chosen to remain awake after Videx's initial speech now began to complain of (or in most cases, silently think about) headaches, then shiver with fever. A few of the sleeping ones awoke, disoriented and afraid, and had to be coaxed back to sleep again before they started screaming or beating their fists against the glass.

"You're far too soft with them," Svull grumbled as they leaned against the back wall. "Couldn't you just toss them in a pod and be done with it? But I see no major abnormalities here. If all goes smoothly today, maybe I'll get to do some real work tomorrow."

They had the shortest attention span of any illithid Videx had ever met, frequently tapping the glass of a pod as if it were a fish tank, or going off to question some thrall or other – at which point Videx would also slip off to take care of what he was already beginning to think of as his newborn.

He made sure to offer it something to drink every few hours, whether it was water or blood or the cerebrospinal fluid that Elizavo had finally managed to source from the Succulent Encephalon. With its leftover residue of psionic energy, that would do in lieu of an actual brain for now, but who knew for how long? This newborn was at least a month old already, and by the looks of it, it had yet to have its first proper meal.

The second time he visited, Videx tried giving it another health potion in addition to the brain fluid. However, he was forced to stop when a sense of pain and nausea gripped him, coming from the newborn's direction. Though it hadn't yet formed a single coherent thought, thankfully he could still pick up on its passive sensations. He'd given it too much too quickly, perhaps. Videx had to remember to take it slow despite his instincts insisting that it needed to eat something more substantial soon.

Finally, his shift was over. He made sure the occupants of the pods were resting as comfortably as they could, all things considered, and dismissed his apprentices. The thralls remained, and Videx gladly handed over custody of them as well as Svull – who, over the course of the past ten hours, had become more of an annoyance than a true cause for concern – to the night shift manager. Videx wondered how much longer the vigileator was required to stay to make sure that nothing nefarious was afoot... but that was none of his business anymore.

He did ask one of the thralls, a burly lizard-man named Grit, to wrap his new project in a blanket and carry it home for him.

Videx briefly wondered why he was bothering to be so secretive about this. It wasn't that he was forbidden from helping this newborn, unless his focus on it became so single-minded that it interfered with his work and led to poor outcomes. But his superiors in the Nourisher Creed would probably agree with Svull in thinking that Videx was too soft already, and he didn't want to strengthen this negative impression of him. And it would definitely do to be discreet in public, since others might frown upon seeing him carrying an unconscious illithid down the street as if it was dinner or a misbehaving thrall.

That night, Videx sacrificed the bulk of his own moss bed so that the newborn could be as comfortable as possible. As for himself, he lay curled in a ball uncomfortably close to the edge of the bed, not wanting to brush up against the newborn's bony limbs or unpleasantly dry skin.

Despite this, he somehow awoke around midnight with it curled up next to him like a pet intellect devourer or squidling. Videx sighed and decided to allow this. The newborn needed companionship, after all, and its touch didn't feel quite so unpleasant anymore. Its skin was no drier than a human's now, and he had sometimes slept like this with Vera if he was feeling particularly lonely.

The thought of Vera made him wish she was there, both to share the load of caring for the newborn and to poke fun at him for his serious demeanor. She'd become far more friend than thrall over the years... Videx knew he should replace her soon, but he was afraid that no one else would feel quite right as a personal attendant.

Videx sighed, lost in his own thoughts... But then the newborn stirred beside him. Those blue eyes opened again, this time alert and focused on him.

"Hello," he said gently. "I would say welcome to the world, but it seems you've been well acquainted with its dark underbelly already. So welcome to the first day of the rest of your life."

Author's Note: Here ya go, hope you like this chapter! I think there should be around 2 more after this? But it's harder to write than my main Baldur's Gate fanfic because I don't have the game as a framework, so it may not update quite as frequently. Stay tuned for next time, when we'll get to see just whose Tragic Backstory this is!