"Drowning deep
In my sea of loathing
Broken, your servant, I kneel
It seems what's left of
My human side
Is slowly changing in me

Looking at my own reflection
When, suddenly, it changes
Violently, it changes
Oh, no, there is no turning back now
You've woken up the demon in me

Get up, come on, get down with the sickness..."

Del had been in a drugged sleep for nearly twelve hours based on the clock hanging on the wall – Blurg's addition, he guessed, since illithids had no need for timepieces - but to him it felt like mere minutes had passed. He was far from well-rested, and in truth felt even worse than before.

He sat up in the narrow bed and immediately regretted it as a wave of dizziness swept over him. He felt weak as a kitten and likely still had a fever based on how cold he felt, shivering even in a warm room under a blanket. Del decided not to get out of bed for fear of falling over, and instead lay back down with a sigh.

Where were Omeluum and Blurg? And what about the rest of his party? The room was dim and oddly silent aside from the ticking of the clock.

No one had left a note or anything, but Del noticed a glass of water on a small table beside the bed. He drank it gratefully, noting by the ripples in the water that his hands were shaking.

Everything hurt now, not just his head, which throbbed in time with each beat of his heart. His eyes stung fiercely, and the shapes of various research apparatus in the room seemed to shift and sway in his vision. Everything was tinged with a faint reddish haze, and when Del rubbed his eyes to clear them, he found a streak of what looked like blood on his hand.

Great... was he at the "blood leaking from orifices" stage already? At least it was just the eyes for now...

Del examined his hands and arms more carefully, looking for other changes. His skin was already ashen due to his drow ancestry, so at first he couldn't tell if it had changed color... But when he looked closer, he could see a faint mottled pattern shifting between different shades of gray.

There was no denying it now, even to himself. Del realized that despite Omeluum's diagnosis, he'd still been holding on to a tiny shred of hope that this was just a regular illness. But all the symptoms fit far too well for his condition to be anything other than ceremorphosis.

Hopefully everyone's trip to get the mushrooms wouldn't take too much longer... And hopefully the second potion would work...

But what if it didn't? What if this was it for him? It seemed like such a waste, to die right after getting his first taste of freedom. Somehow he hadn't minded the idea so much in the days right after the nautiloid crash, with the loss of his master still fresh – but now it felt far more tragic.

Del had never seen ceremorphosis take place, but he'd heard tales of it from Videx, his master's friend from the Nourisher Creed. There had been cases of partialism, sure, but never anyone retaining their complete personality after they turned. That was so rare the illithids made up scary stories about it; they had a whole legend and everything. So Del couldn't delude himself into thinking that ceremorphosis would be anything but the end.

He lay tossing and turning in the narrow bed for a while, unable to get comfortable. Even his bones were beginning to ache. Did a slower rate of transformation mean a longer time enduring this pain?

It was thoughts like this that tormented Del until fatigue won out and sleep took him once again.

Due to the lack of pharmaceutical influence, Del was able to enter the Astral Prism in his dreams. He sighed in relief at the freedom from physical pain that always accompanied these visits, then looked around to see where he was.

This time, he had manifested closer to the giant skull than ever before. The prismatic barrier that usually pulsed and swirled around it was absent, having been breached at some point since the last time he'd visited. The thing just looked like a regular skull now, albeit one larger than most buildings and wearing an equally enormous crown.

As Del pondered this change, the Emperor spoke. "Come join me." Del looked around in every direction but saw no sign of the illithid. "Inside the skull."

He wondered how on Toril he was supposed to get into the skull, considering the floating boulder he stood upon was still some distance away from its enormous brow.

"Gravity works differently here. Just jump, and the momentum will carry you there."

Del hesitated for a moment, trusting the Emperor's words but still a little afraid to step out into nothingness. He realized that, just recently, he would've done this sort of thing without question. Was the Emperor choosing not to use a compulsion this time, or had something changed about Del himself?

"Come here," the Emperor prodded again. "I need to speak with you about an urgent matter." The illithid's mental voice sounded tired and more than a little exasperated.

Del felt bad for keeping him waiting (but he sure kept you waiting, didn't he? his thoughts whispered). He took a few steps backwards to get a running start, then held his breath and leapt toward a large gap at the skull's temple.

Just as the Emperor had told him, Del was nearly weightless as he sailed through the void. He felt a brief surge of elation at the sensation of flight... then landed on his feet inside the skull with a soft whump, crouching reflexively to cushion the fall.

The Emperor was waiting for him inside the hollowed-out cranium, but he was not alone. The first thing Del noticed was the centerpiece of the whole diorama – a Githyanki man, floating suspended in the air in the center of the skull with chains clamped to cuffs on all four limbs. A metal mask covered most of his face, but Del could see that his eyes were rolled up in his head and he seemed quite unaware of his surroundings.

And then Del saw the other githyanki. There were at least ten of them, lying dead at the chained man's feet, their faces locked into varying expressions of rage and horror. The top of one's skull had been messily removed, and Del could see that the brain inside was gone.

In the midst of this grisly scene stood the Emperor. The illithid looked rather worse for wear than the last time Del had seen him, covered in a mixture of Githyanki blood and his own silver ichor. The crest of his robe was ragged and torn, and he stood flat on the ground as if he couldn't muster the energy to levitate. One of his tentacles was now several inches shorter than the others, and Del could see its tip lying on the ground nearby, still faintly twitching.

"What in the Nine Hells happened here?" Del asked in shock, temporarily forgetting his own dread of ceremorphosis and his simmering anger at the Emperor for not being available in Del's hour of need.

"As you can see, I've been a bit preoccupied," the Emperor said wryly. "The Githyanki decided to mount a large-scale attack. I was just moments away from revealing my true nature and summoning the rest of your party for aid, but managed to defeat them myself. Now that the honor guard is dead, I can finally turn to other pressing matters."

"Honor guard? Who were they guarding - that guy up there?" Del motioned to the floating Githyanki.

"Indeed. Though at that moment they were not guarding him, but trying to free him. That is Orpheus, and he has been imprisoned here for centuries. His shackles are not my doing, and I couldn't release him even if I wanted to. But he must stay imprisoned for both of our sakes, since he is the source of the power keeping us safe from the Absolute."

Del took a moment to digest this information but refused to let it distract him from his purpose. "About that..." he began. "I'm not feeling too safe at the moment." He tried to keep the accusatory tone from leaking into his voice, then realized the Emperor was probably reading it in his thoughts anyway. "Omeluum said I'm starting to go through ceremorphosis, but everyone else is fine! Is this happening because I absorbed the energy from those tadpoles?"

"I have been using Orpheus's power to slow your transformation, but have been unable to prevent it entirely. I can only speculate why, but your tadpole is different from the others'. Stronger, somehow. Absorbing those others shouldn't have affected anything, and it did not for your friend Astarion. But perhaps there were other factors I failed to consider..."

Though his face lacked the ability to form most humanoid expressions, the Emperor's posture showed the depths of his fatigue and concern. He stood slightly hunched, staring down at the ground with his injured tentacle hanging limp and the tips of the remaining three curled in on themselves. The sight was so pitiful that Del found he couldn't stay angry with the illithid for long.

"It's all right," he found himself comforting the Emperor rather than the other way around. "You just said you couldn't have known. Maybe it's my tadpole like you said, or something else they did to me back in Oryndoll?"

"That could be," the Emperor allowed. "In any case, before the Githyanki attacked, I was aware of your problem and was already developing something of a backup plan. Something that would allow you to retain your identity even if you were to fully transform. I don't mean to frighten you further, but I'm sure you already know how this works. If left unchecked, tadpole will replace your mind fully with its own consciousness in a matter of days. Yet, if I were to somehow wipe clean that consciousness, then imprint it with a copy of your own mind... You may be able to become an illithid while still retaining your sense of self. Truly the best of both worlds."

"Me, an illithid?" Del was having trouble wrapping his head around the idea. As long as he could remember, he'd been told that both the human and drow halves of his ancestry made him an inferior creature, only fit to serve or feed the master race. The thought of becoming a member of that race himself filled him with an odd mixture of excitement and anxiety at being somehow unworthy of the increase in status. Not to mention, how would his newfound friends react to such a change? Would they even believe him if he said he was still himself? This was just the kind of thing they'd all been trying to prevent ever since the nautiloid.

The Emperor's next words radiated a touch of amusement.

"You'd make a better illithid than you think. It would be fascinating to experience your mind without the barriers and limitations imposed upon it. Ceremorphosis would remove those, you know. It would allow you to unlock your full potential, and perhaps even restore your lost memories if your mind is imposed on the tadpole in sufficient detail to preserve even the parts that were previously repressed..."

"You know, I've been thinking about that," Del mused, suddenly remembering something else that had been bothering him during those sleepless hours. "About the memories. I've been starting to remember things from my past here and there, things that don't quite make sense. There was this one time where one of my opponents in the arena said he knew me, and called me Jonas. I thought he was crazy, but... maybe..." He trailed off, grimacing at the possibility that he'd killed someone who once was as important to him as his fellow castaways were now.

"I suspect the same," the Emperor said. "From what I have been able to glean from your mind, you were captured while on a foray into the Upperdark and taken to Oryndoll as a prisoner. This man may be someone you knew beforehand. It's not so unusual for someone of drow ancestry to live on the surface - especially considering you have a human mother. I can assure you, at least that much of your history is true."

Del sat down in an unbloodied spot on the skull's stony underside, cupping his head in his hands as he plumbed the depths of his regret for the first time. "Damn, I should have listened to that guy... But Eldriss told me to kill him! Surely they couldn't have known?"

The Emperor came closer, then sat down next to Del with a sigh. The two of them were near the edge where the skull began to curve up and back, and the illithid leaned his back against this natural wall. "On the contrary," he said with surprising gentleness. "That's likely why your master wanted you to kill him. To cut all ties to your former life and prove your loyalty, not to mention test whether your memory was truly lost. A cruel and unnecessary tactic, in my opinion. As I said on the beach after the nautiloid crash, your master was no saint. It's for the best that you're now free of their influence."

Del's head spun with the force of this realization. Damn it, now he was starting to get a headache even in his dream! But more importantly, his faith in his master was being shaken more and more. Each revelation hit him like a fresh blow, and he wasn't sure how many more he could take without cracking entirely. Had his whole life really been a lie?

"I understand..." The Emperor said softly. "Sometimes it is easier to live in blissful ignorance than to confront the truth. When I first served an Elder Brain, I was almost happy for a time. But, like you, one day an old friend came to my rescue. He was too late to save me from ceremorphosis, but powerful enough to remove me from the brain's influence and restore my memories. I was lucky that as a tadpole I absorbed some aspects of my host's mind and personality, which made the process far easier. What was once a defect in the colony has come to serve me greatly in the years since I was freed."

Del nodded, clutching at any distraction from his own woes. "Partialism; I've heard of it. Eldriss said it's a sign of weakness and means you can't join the Elder Brain when you die. But -" he was quick to add - "I guess you wouldn't even want to do that. And it's not like Eldriss was right about everything anyway..."

He sniffed once, but managed to hold back tears for the time being. For the first time, he wondered what kind of person he would have been without his master's influence. Would he have more sympathy for slaves and the downtrodden? Learn to cast spells? Make some kind of vow like that poor paladin who called him by a dead man's name?

He let out a ragged breath, the sniffles turning into outright sobs as he lost the battle against the tide of emotion. Rather than pulling away as Del expected, the Emperor actually leaned closer, giving him a literal shoulder to cry on.

"I'm sorry," Del choked out through his tears. "This is so stupid. You're tired and hurt, and here I am unloading all my issues on you. Why do you even care about my problems when I'm turning into an illithid anyway? If Omeluum can't stop the transformation and your backup plan doesn't work, maybe I won't even care about all this in a few days' time."

"That may be true, but I find I cannot simply ignore your pain. Blame the shadow of the man I used to be." The Emperor stroked Del's arm with one of his uninjured tentacles. Del automatically leaned into his touch, and the tentacle moved to rest on his shoulder. "Your master touched you like this, didn't they?"

Del nodded.

"But sometimes..." the Emperor continued hesitantly. Suddenly he seemed oddly... shy? And yet the tentacle on his shoulder was joined by another that twined around Del's neck as if expressing its owner's subconscious desires. "Sometimes you wanted more."

Del reached up and laid a hesitant hand on the appendage, stroking gently down its length. His master didn't like it when Del touched back, especially on their tentacles – they seemed oddly sensitive about that area of their body. But then, this wasn't Eldriss, was it?

"Maybe I wouldn't have wanted it, if I'd known what they were really like," Del said bitterly. "But I just wanted... All I wanted was to make them happy! I heard of other masters doing things like that with their thralls, but Eldriss always thought it was beneath them. So I tried not to think about it too much in case I upset them."

The Emperor winced as his injured tentacle tried to join the others, forgetting for a moment that its tip had been severed. The illithid paused and pulled back, seemingly trying to regain control of himself. Finally, he spoke again. "I see... Unfortunately, now is not the time. But if we can stall your transformation further; if we are given more time together... I'd like to try things with you that your master would most certainly not have approved of."

Despite himself, Del found his tears drying up as he pondered this new development. The emotional turmoil was still too fresh for him to be able to switch gears on a dime, but a subtle heat rose up from his groin to his belly at the Emperor's rebellious suggestion.

"I... I think I'd like that."

"Now," sighed the Emperor, bracing one hand against the wall of the skull as he got to his feet. "To business. I need to rest, but I dare not stall this any longer. We must try out this plan for you to keep your memories."

He walked to one of the gaps in the skull and reached out a hand as if beckoning something from the void beyond. Within moments, something small and pale flew into his hand. A tadpole, Del saw as he stood up and walked closer. Just like the ones he'd seen on the nautiloid and taken from dead True Souls, but it was paler in color and lay still rather than wriggling incessantly.

"I have been nurturing this tadpole to help you reach your full potential," the Emperor explained. "It has been trapped in an Astral void, unable to grow or change or experience anything beyond what I chose for it to see. I have projected your mind upon the tadpole, forcing it to relive your memories over and over until it began to believe it was you - then imbued it with the ability to override and influence the mind of your own parasite. Now all you need to do is open your mind to its power."

A lump formed in Del's throat at the thought of the Emperor's generosity. These past few days while Del thought the illithid was ignoring him, he'd actually been working to save Del from the part of ceremorphosis that he feared most.

"Thank you," Del said, reaching out to pull the Emperor into a hug. The illithid stiffened in surprise, levitating the tadpole out of reach to avoid it getting crushed between them. After a moment, he relaxed and wrapped his own long arms around Del to reciprocate the gesture. Del had the sense that the Emperor hadn't had anyone hug him in a very long time, longer even than Karlach perhaps. So they stood together, drawing out the moment until the Emperor was first to pull away.

"Right," Del said. "The tadpole."

He put out a hand and the Emperor floated the pale tadpole right into it. The parasite seemed to unfreeze, awakening from its stillness and beginning to squirm. Del closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind of all the events of the previous few minutes. Hells, the previous few days . All that was important now was himself and the tadpole in his hand.

Del opened his mind to the tadpole, trying to focus on both it and the one inside his own skull. The one in his head seemed larger, more of a presence than it had been before. It coiled there in his brain, munching his grey matter and sending out tendrils as it gloated in its supremacy over the worthless humanoid whose place it would soon take. It was all Del could do to not recoil in horror when he touched its mind.

By contrast, the worm in his hand was serene, with no thoughts of its own but full of a sense of latent potential. Del pulled at its power, coaxing it to enter and mingle with the mind of his own tadpole. This felt different than absorbing the others in the goblin camp and the Emerald Grove – as if this one was a willing participant in the process. The Emperor didn't need to explain how to do this, since somehow Del just knew . Or maybe the second tadpole was giving him instructions on a level deeper than words.

There was a sense of resistance from his own parasite, pushing back against the intrusion of the Astral-touched creature. But the combination of the Astral tadpole and Del's own will overwhelmed it, slowly beating back its influence until it cowered in a back corner of his mind. You can't get rid of me, not really! it seemed to shriek. I'm sitting here inside your head. How could something you do in a dream ever change that?

Del ignored its feeble protests, drawing upon more of the Astral tadpole's power until he felt the two larval illithids begin to merge into a single mental presence. His own tadpole fell silent, subsumed by the force of the other... And then even that faded, and Del felt like he was alone in his own head once more.

"I think it worked!" he gasped, blinking to clear the stars from his vision. "That definitely did something. Emperor, I -"

But before the illithid could reply, something shifted. Del felt a vertigo-inducing sense of motion, as if he was being pulled sideways by the navel. He opened his mouth to cry out, but the world of the Astral Prism melted away around him.

Author's Note: If you haven't yet read my first prequel oneshot, called "Glory and Gore," I suggest you do if you want a deeper exploration of that memory/incident Del is talking about. On another note, I wanted to keep updating this twice a week for as long as possible. But I'm starting the last semester of my PhD, so will probably have to go down to once a week pretty soon here. Updates will be on Sundays, and I'll try my best not to skip a week :)