"Alright, come close
Let me show you everything I know
The jungle slang
Spinning 'round my head and I stare
While my naked fool

Fresh out of an icky gooey womb..."

"On the fourth day of ceremorphosis," Videx lectured, "The bulk of the internal transformation occurs. The skeleton and organs reform and reposition, causing excruciating pain."

"How can they even feel pain?" Elizavo asked him, her tone somewhere between curious and disparaging. "There's practically no brain left at that point, only tadpole."

"Good question," Videx acknowledged. "True consciousness is gone by this point in the process. But the nerves still fire, and the body responds on reflex in ways that may be harmful. So it's important to avoid disturbing them and triggering that reflex. Sometimes less intervention is better than more, especially at this stage."

"Is that reflex why they're still trying to escape sometimes?" Uddul asked.

"Yeah, he walked by a pod and got spooked by one banging on the glass before you got here this morning," Elizavo said with relish. "You should've seen him jump!"

"Anyway," Videx continued, gesturing at Uddul with one tentacle. "Can you tell me what we should expect tomorrow?"

"Limb elongation," he said promptly. "And more internal changes. But not tentacles yet – that's the sixth day."

"Very good," said Videx, nodding in satisfaction. "I see you've been reading."

Just then, a loud tapping noise distracted the mind flayer's attention. Videx looked up to see Eldriss had stood up on their own accord and was tapping one long clawed finger against the glass of the nearest pod, peering in at its distorted occupant.

"Stop that!" Elizavo admonished sternly. "Didn't you just hear him say not to disturb them?"

The younger illithid flinched as if expecting a physical blow. They stumbled back, still unsteady on their feet, and were inches from crashing into the pod when Videx caught them with his psionics.

"What?" Elizavo asked, sensing Videx's displeasure. "You literally just said not to touch them."

"Don't scare Eldriss like that," he said. "They've been through a lot – show some understanding."

Eldriss themselves said nothing, but their surface thoughts were a mess of self-recrimination.

sorry didn't mean it didn't think, why did I even do anything, should just sit back down and shut up...

"It's fine," Videx said, disrupting their rumination. "I appreciate the initiative. We don't want you to sit down and shut up, so by all means continue to do things if you so desire. Just ask me first if it involves those pods."

That night, Eldriss accompanied him to his domicile again, this time walking steadily at Videx's side while he levitated. Videx kept a mental eye on his ward's thoughts. With every passing day, Eldriss seemed more curious and aware of their surroundings, but they still were unlikely to ask direct questions.

"Those are lizardfolk," Videx answered in response to the younger illithid's unspoken query. "And that's a quaggoth. All of them are enthralled, though the quaggoth are barely sentient anyway."

Eldriss nodded. "And what's that?" they asked timidly, referring to an illithid carrying – not levitating, but physically carrying – an unconscious human woman dressed only in an extremely sheer robe.

"That's, uh…" Videx was taken aback as he tuned into the stranger's surface thoughts for a moment, earning himself a dirty look. "That's someone who needs to get right with the Encephalithid even more than I do."

Eldriss merely stared in confusion.

By the sixth day of the ceremorphosis – and the third of Videx's allotted week with Eldriss – the two apprentices had accepted the newborn as one of their own.

Videx walked in on Uddul teaching Eldriss how to levitate, with only partial success – the newborn illithid could only stay up in the air for a few seconds at a time. Still, it was a marked improvement from where they had been less than a week before.

"Come on, you've nearly got it," the apprentice encouraged – just in time for Eldriss to fall flat on their face, hissing in distress as they failed to catch themselves in time. When they came up again, they were bleeding silver from the stub of one tentacle, and Elizavo rolled her violet eyes as Videx fussed over them.

"They're joining the next cohort, right? Won't the others be jealous if you keep coddling them like that?"

Videx shot her a sharp look. His apprentice did have a point, and she'd phrased it as a question rather than a judgment - but he caught the negative thoughts simmering below the surface of her innocent-sounding query.

"Yes, they will officially join tomorrow's group of newborns. But I see nothing wrong with making sure they haven't aggravated their injuries too badly with that fall. Our regenerative capacities aren't unlimited, you know."

To a discouraged-looking Eldriss, he said - "Don't worry. You're still ahead of the rest of your cohort. You'll be levitating while they're still learning how to walk."

On the morning of the seventh day, Videx and Eldriss arrived earlier than usual. Over the past week, the younger illithid had become his shadow, following him everywhere but remaining mostly silent unless spoken to directly.

Videx floated down the row of pods, hands folded behind his back.

"There," he declared, stopping in front of one when he detected its occupant had awoken. Such was his mental control over the machinery that he directed the console without so much as touching a button.

The pod tilted, going from a reclined position to vertical. Its glass cover slid open with a hiss, and the newborn illithid inside nearly tumbled out as one of the walls enclosing it disappeared. Videx caught it with a gentle telekinetic push in the other direction, and it stood there blinking at him in surprise.

"Who are you?" Videx asked, knowing from experience to keep his first message short and direct.

The newborn cocked its head to one side, eyes shining bright orange from a face still splattered red with its form donor's blood.

"Slarden," it said finally in a deep mental voice at odds with its tentative tone. The original host had been the male half-orc, and sure enough, this newborn was nearly half a foot taller than Videx as he stepped from the pod, holding onto its sides for balance as he tested his shaky legs. "What is this? Where am I?"

"You're an illithid, and this is the great colony of Oryndoll," Videx explained as he examined the newborn for any defects or abnormalities. This one seemed sturdy and inquisitive, and all his parts were in the proper places. Each tentacle seemed to have a mind of its own, waving around randomly, but that was normal in the first few days after ceremorphosis.

"Come with me," Videx said, leading Slarden out of the room and trusting his apprentices to hold down the fort. "Let's get you cleaned up."

As he left the room, Eldriss followed him out. They'd taken to inhabiting the long curved bench that wrapped around the room's central console, where the apprentices did their reading and Videx supervised the pods during those times when nothing needed to be done.

Videx thought briefly of what Elizavo had said. Should he start being sterner with Eldriss now that the new cohort was arriving? Surely the younger illithid could handle Videx going somewhere without him. But as he turned to shake off his ever-present shadow, he saw the matching sparks of excitement in the eyes of both newborns, and found he couldn't do it. Eldriss could do with a dip in the bathing pools too, anyway.

When they got to the baths, Videx motioned for both of the young illithids to immerse themselves into a pool. He expected Eldriss to choose the one uninhabited by Slarden in a desire to avoid bathing in water that would soon be bloody and disgusting, but to his surprise Eldriss followed Slarden into the closest pool.

As Eldriss stripped off the robe and stepped into the pool, Videx was struck by the differences between the two newborns. Eldriss was still far thinner than their companion, and their purple hue was several shades paler than Slarden's deeper mauve. But some of that could be explained by natural variation within illithid-kind, not to mention the different species of their hosts.

Eldriss's tentacles were only a quarter of the length they should be, but they were growing back... Their motions as they stepped into the pool and sank up to their neck in the water were slow and deliberate, unlike the clumsy fumblings of the true newborn, who hesitated at the unaccustomed sensation of the water around him and needed a small mental prod before he dared to actually submerge himself.

Videx smiled to himself – or he would have, if he could actually smile - as he watched the two novices size each other up without any of the conniving or one-upmanship of mature illithids encountering one another for the first time. Had they all been so innocent, once? It was too bad, really, that their basic biological makeup demanded a loss of that innocence; a building of mental barriers between oneself and any 'lesser creature' used for sustenance and reproduction... And their society didn't help, pitting one illithid against another in a series of battles for dominance. If not for the uniting influence of the Elder Brain, they'd likely all turn on one another within weeks...

Videx shook aside the unwanted and borderline heretical thoughts. There were no other adults around, but what one of the newborns picked up on what he was thinking? He really ought to be more careful.

"Videx? Can you – check – I'll come here and watch -" Elizavo called to him from the ceremorphosis chamber, her voice fading in and out at the edge of her telepathic range.

"All right, give me a moment," Videx projected back. "You two stay here," he told the two younger mind flayers. Surely the brief time it would take to switch places with his apprentice wouldn't be long enough for them to cause trouble...

As he levitated out of the room, Eldriss made a move to get out of the water and follow.

"I said, wait here,"Videx reminded them a bit more firmly as he left the chamber, trying to ignore their crestfallen expression. Maybe Elizavo was right about Eldriss becoming too used to special treatment…

Thankfully, the cause of his apprentices' alarm wasn't anything dire like a death among the cohort. That happened sometimes during the last few days of the transformation, but it was never fun to explain to Qrr'dekvin. Elizavo and Uddul were merely surprised that one of the newborns had woken up in distress and was trying to claw its way out of the pod.

It was the pod that had previously contained the drow female afraid of spiders, Videx noted. Perhaps that terror and sense of claustrophobia had somehow carried over during ceremorphosis? For the newborn's sake, Videx hoped it hadn't, since that could be the first harbinger of partialism…

"Should I let it out?" Elizavo asked nervously as she hovered nearby. "Is it abnormal in some way?"

"Just go watch the others in the baths," Videx said. "I'll take care of this. But for future reference - in cases like this, let them out and give them one of the resonance stones from the supply room. They're all set to calm emotions and project a sense of contentment. They'd get one anyway, so there's nothing wrong with handing them out a bit early."

As Elizavo left, he opened the pod. The second illithid in this month's cohort came out ready to fight him. It flared its tentacles outward in an involuntary threat display that nonetheless showed impressive coordination for one so young, and bared its teeth at Videx as it tried to stumble toward him.

"Easy there," Videx said, keeping it at arm's length. "You're safe. Everything's fine."

"You… you let me out," the newborn said in surprise, stilling its frantic struggles. "I was trapped… But where? What is this place? What are we?"

Ah, now things were following the usual script.

"I am Videx, and we are illithid. You have been born into the colony of Oryndoll. Open your mind up to its Elder Brain and your fears will be calmed; your questions answered." Videx wondered if he was waxing poetic to compensate for his earlier lapse in the baths, or to calm the new mind flayer with the weight of tradition and authority. He reached for the resonance stone he'd taken on his way from the baths and put it into one of the newborn's hands, which immediately closed around it. "I've given you my name. Now what is yours?"

The newborn thought for a moment, putting a claw from its free hand up to its face as if to bite a nail, then getting surprised by the presence of tentacles there.

"I am… Alliks, I think," it – she? The voice was vaguely feminine – said with even less assurance than Slarden had done.

"All right, Alliks," Videx nodded. "Let's go join your new friends."

The way Videx saw it, earlier was better when it came to introductions. If the other newborns saw Eldriss as one of their cohort from the start, then they would integrate far more easily than they would as a strange-looking outsider who upset the established pecking order.

So, once Slarden and Alliks and the eight other newborns had all awoken, bathed, and each been given a resonance stone and a set of novice robes, Videx led Eldriss along with them in a loose procession to the communal dormitory that they would all share for at least the next year.

With his heart in his throat, Videx watched as Eldriss sat down on the small moss bed reserved for them and simply watched the others. The other ten newborns were soon engaged in a variety of tasks, ranging from sleeping to talking to one another to trying – mostly unsuccessfully – to levitate as they had seen Videx do on the way there.

Eventually, one of them decided to approach Eldriss.

"Hi there," they said. "Who are you?"

It took Eldriss a few seconds to realize that someone aside from Videx was talking to them, but thankfully they eventually replied. "I'm Eldriss."

That was it, though. Even if Videx's ward possessed the boundless curiosity of most young illithids, they kept quiet about it.

But before Eldriss could respond further, the other newborn – Kualt, if Videx remembered correctly - continued badgering them with questions.

"What are you doing here? Why weren't you in the pods with us? And what happened to your tentacles?"

Eldriss looked to Videx for help, utterly overwhelmed. "It's okay to talk, remember?" Videx prodded in the youth's direction. "They just want to know more about you."

"I'm here to join you?" they said, their answer sounding more like another question. "I'm not new, but not as old as Videx…"

Videx chuckled to hear himself referred to as old. He was only forty-five, for God-Brain's sake, and could look forward to living for at least eighty more years.

"And your tentacles?" Kualt prompted. "They're so stubby."

Videx could tell that Eldriss was uncomfortable with this line of questioning, but he restrained himself from stepping in.

"I… uh… lost them," Eldriss said. "Someone cut them off, but Videx says they'll grow back." They looked to Videx for reassurance, and he nodded in confirmation.

The other newborns looked horrified by that last statement, and the ones who were still awake broke off from whatever they were doing and gravitated toward Eldriss to hear more.

"Give them some space," Videx admonished the youngsters. "They're going to be living with you now, and you'll have plenty of time to ask questions. Losing a tentacle is quite painful, and I wouldn't recommend it, but they do grow back when cut. This time next month, Eldriss will look just like you."

That seemed to at least partially satisfy their curiosity, and a few of the newborns drifted off toward their own beds. But Alliks and Slarden still seemed fascinated by their new companion, and hovered around them for a while longer.

Uddul came in to give the newborns water - since aside from bathing they'd barely been able to drink anything for the past week – and Videx was treated to the amusing spectacle of watching them figure out how to raise a cup to their mouth while avoiding the tentacles that they still had only partial control over. Between their previous experience in drinking water and assorted other fluids during the past week with Videx and their lack of long tendrils to get in the way, Eldriss had a far easier time with this than the rest of them. Was that a faint hint of smugness Videx detected from their mind when they looked around and saw that everyone else was still having trouble?

"All right, everyone," Videx said once they had finished. "I have to leave soon, but try to get some rest. Tomorrow will be a big day for you, when you will learn what it truly means to be illithid."

As Videx turned to leave, Eldriss looked up at him. "I'm staying here this time, aren't I?" There was resignation in their tone, but underneath the sadness Videx thought he could detect a fresh sense of resolve.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. But this will be better for you. You should get to know some others your own age."

"Will you come back for me?" they asked.

"Of course. I'll be back first thing in the morning."

Videx counted it as a personal victory that Eldriss let him go without further protest.

His domicile had never felt less like a home than it did that night. He shivered and tried to burrow deeper into the moss of his bed even though the temperature was no lower than usual. His next day off was only three days away, he reminded himself. He really needed to spend it getting another personal thrall…

As he tossed and turned, he wondered what Eldriss was doing right at that moment. Were they sleeping soundly, or lying awake just as he was? He hoped that leaving them with the other newborns that first night was the right thing to do, rather than a choice that would set them back further and run the risk of Qrr'dekvin's judgment.

Videx almost got up and went to check on them, but managed to hold himself back. There would be someone looking over the dormitory for the first few nights, he told himself. They probably had things taken care of – and even if they didn't, they would see him visiting and judge him for it. Eldriss was doing better now. Perhaps it was time to start letting go.

The next morning felt like the first one with Eldriss all over again. Videx had no idea what he would find when he went to visit the newborns in their dormitory, but to his relief they were all still asleep in their mossy beds. Well – all but one of them. Thankfully, it wasn't Eldriss's bed that was empty, but rather Alliks'.

Videx could still sense her presence in the room, so he looked more carefully until he found her nestled into Eldriss's bed beside them, her tentacles entwined around one of their arms.

Eldriss twitched in their sleep, then was still again, whatever nightmares they were having calmed by the presence of another warm body.

Videx knew he should separate the pair, wake them up and tell them to prepare for the day ahead. There was much on the agenda, including a tour of the colony and a chance to taste their first-ever brains – or first whole brains, in the case of Eldriss. But first, he would let the newborns have this moment. Neither of them would ever be this young and innocent again.

Author's Note: Dang, I can't believe I posted 3 chapters of various fics in one week, but that was just because I had a really slow week at my actual job while waiting for feedback on a project. Now things are picking back up again so I may slow down in fanfic writing.

I was originally going to end this story at 4 chapters, but after writing this one, I feel like it could probably use one more. Not sure when that will be posted, and technically it *could* end here, but keep an eye out for a bonus 5th chap at some point.