"I see the bad moon a-risin'

I see trouble on the way

I see earthquakes and lightnin'

I see bad times today

Don't go around tonight

Well it's bound to take your life

There's a bad moon on the rise..."

When he fell asleep that night, Del found himself back in his childhood home. Unlike the sunny day from his previous memory, the view out the window was a sea of white as snow blanketed the countryside. This memory was crisper, somehow, allowing him to see details of the house that he hadn't before. The cabin was smaller than Del had previously thought, and he couldn't help but notice the crudeness of the homemade furnishings and the rags stuffed into cracks between wooden planks to keep out the cold.

Another difference was that, this time, Del didn't inhabit the body of his younger self - as he suddenly realized when the door flew open and he came face-to-face with a teenage boy that looked alarmingly familiar.

"Jonas!" called a voice from behind him. Del turned around just in time to see his mother emerge from the bedroom, which seemed to be the only other room in the cabin aside from the combined kitchen and living area. "Don't slam the door so hard, you'll break the hinges again! And take off those boots before you track all the snow inside…"

The younger version of Del huffed in frustration as he set down the stack of cut firewood he'd been carrying. "My hands are full. You try kicking the door open gently, Ma." He took off his hat and gloves, then hung his coat on the back of a chair rather than the conveniently-placed hook on the wall. The muddy slush-covered boots didn't come off until the boy had walked halfway through the room while wearing them. In that moment, Del found himself feeling a portion of his mother's frustration.

As the youth shed his layers of clothing, Del was faced with a version of himself that he'd never seen or remembered. The boy was tall, almost Del's current height, but lanky and thin – though it wasn't clear if he was actually underfed or merely growing tall before filling out. His silver-white hair was long and unkempt, and he kept brushing it out of his eyes. How old was he here – Fifteen? Sixteen?

As Del examined his younger self, the memory stuttered and skipped like a broken record. The light in the room dimmed noticeably, and when Del looked out the window again the sun was setting between snow-covered trees.

"You don't know what's out there!"

Del jumped, startled at the sound of raised voices. He was still missing the memory of what had happened in the intervening hours, but his mother sounded angry with his teenaged self. She stood at the back of the room with her arms crossed, near the hearth in which burned the logs young-Del had chopped earlier that day.

"Yeah, because you've stopped me from learning anything!" the boy retorted, gesturing wildly. "Things like who my father is, how to defend myself, how to learn a trade... Half the boys in town are apprenticed to someone by now!"

Young-Del - or should he call him Jonas? - paced back and forth across the narrow room, grinding his teeth together in the way that present-Del did when he was angry.

"The world is a harsh place, Jonas," his mother sighed. "Both here on the surface and down below, you'll be judged for your heritage and the color of your skin. I was just hoping to shelter you from their cruelty for a while longer."

"Tyron's not cruel," Jonas retorted. "At least he doesn't judge me! So what if the other kids in town are rude? I bet I'd have more friends if you didn't make me hide here in this house all the time, and if they didn't all think you were a witch anyway."

"I wish I was a witch," his mother said bitterly, the corners of her mouth twisting as she stared down at her calloused hands. "If I could cast a spell to protect you from the danger that stalks you, I would. Instead all I can do is dream of it and try to warn you."

Del's ears perked up at this statement – was his mother some kind of seer? But his younger self blundered through the conversation, ignoring his mother's words as he sought his own goals.

"I can learn to fight," Jonas insisted. "Then I'll be able to handle whatever's coming for me. And I can get past everyone's stupid ideas about drow and find a way to make a living. But to do that, I've gotta get out there… Meet more people, get good at something. I feel like I'm just sitting here, waiting around for my real life to begin."

Del shook his head at his own naiveté. He'd been so young, barely halfway through adolescence, and already raring to go out to seek his fortune… He'd wanted excitement? Well, he'd certainly gotten what he'd asked for and more. The memory began to fizzle and spark at the edges, fading more and more despite his best efforts.

"Don't fault your youthful idealism," came the voice of the Emperor from somewhere inside his mind. "We were all young once, and I can sympathize with your desire to explore. I, too, was an adventurer once. Neither of us could have known the fate that awaited us on our travels."

The memory faded out entirely, leaving Del floating in a liminal grey haze.

"Where are you?" Del wondered silently. "It's been days since we last met."

"Time flows differently here," the Emperor explained. "I needed to rest after the battle with the Githyanki. To me, several hours had passed while I was asleep – but for you it was days. And after that, it proved too difficult to bring you to my side while also resisting the Absolute's call. Its power strengthens the closer we get to the surface and Moonrise Towers. I have failed you once already, and I refuse to do the same again with you or any of your companions."

"Will you be all right?" Del asked. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No, I will manage. I'm surprised you asked, but I suppose I should cease being surprised by you," the Emperor said softly. "You have such a unique mind. Anyone else would be afraid of my control slipping for their own sake, but from you I sense a genuine concern. I feared that your care for me was a consequence of your previous enthrallment, but even now that the shackles have been loosened..."

"I still care," Del assured him. "You've been nothing but good to me. Thanks to you I'm not working for the Absolute, and even have some of my memories back... That was you, wasn't it?"

"I found these images in your subconscious, yes. Prolonged enthrallment eroded some of the memories, and others were consumed by the tadpole. But I've done what I can."

The gray haze around Del began to lighten by degrees.

"We will meet again soon," the Emperor promised, his disembodied voice beginning to fade. "Properly, next time. With every mental attack by the Absolute, I am learning how to better resist its commands. But for now, you should wake. Your friends await...

After several more failed attempts to enter the Shar temple without triggering traps or cave-ins that morning, the party admitted defeat and decided to go out to the surface.

But when Del took his first real look at the landscape outside the temple, he was struck with the immediate urge to go back inside. Even though it was supposedly daytime, the sky above was barely brighter than it had been the night before. Despite Del's darkvision, it was impossible to see more than ten feet into the gloom. Everything beyond that point was consumed by a mass of shadows that were somehow thicker than mere darkness. The shadows seemed to pulse and writhe at the corners of his vision, shifting every time he looked away.

Del looked at the shadowy landscape, and then back at the torch he held in his hand.

"Ugh," Karlach groaned, echoing his own thoughts. "Are we seriously gonna go out into this? Do you guys think the torches are enough?"

"Probably not, but we don't have another choice," Del said grimly, and took the first step out into the darkness. He shivered as the temperature dropped by ten degrees almost instantly, and a feeling of dread seeped its way into his bones.

"Hm?" Shadowheart made a small noise of surprise as she followed after him. "I thought I would feel different out here, but nothing. The Dark Lady must be protecting me."

The rest of the group joined them, lit torches in hand to keep the darkness at bay. They followed the distorted and half-obscured remains of what had once been a path, looking for any sort of landmark they could match against Gale's map of the surrounding lands. Del had hoped they would be able to look up and see the lofty height of Moonrise Towers, but it was too dark to make out its silhouette against the gloom. They'd just have to stumble around blindly for now and hope they found something or someone to show them the way.

For some time they continued on this way, torches brandished against the darkness, meeting neither friend nor foe. The silence of the shadowlands was oppressively deep, broken only by the occasional cawing of birds or their own hushed voices.

Everyone jumped when, out of nowhere, a high-pitched screech cut through the still air. The sound was more avian than human, but that didn't much decrease the likelihood that it spelled trouble.

Del tensed, reaching for his weapon, and his companions around him did the same. The shadows around them echoed with the sound of flapping wings, but the darkness was too thick to determine what manner of bird had been flushed from the undergrowth.

For several long seconds, nothing more disturbed the silence, and Del allowed himself to wonder if it had been a false alarm after all...

But then the sound of running footsteps reached them. More than one set, and rapidly coming closer. The shadows to their left rippled like a liquid, then parted to reveal a large white figure darting across the path. It was a pale-scaled dragonborn, clearly running for their life.

As the figure crossed their path, another smaller creature leapt out behind it. From its hands came the flash of some kind of string or wire, and the dragonborn reared back like a spooked horse as it was caught around the neck. The small creature rode its victim to the ground, hissing in triumph.

Del readied himself to leap into the fray and defend the fleeing dragonborn, but two shadowy figures peeled away from the mass of darkness and blocked his way. They seemed to be literal living shadows, with no hint of substance behind them. Del tried swinging his sword at one, but the blade went right through. He reached out with psionics, but there was no mind to touch nor a body to throw with telekinesis.

"Gale! Shadowheart!" he yelled for his two companions who were the most proficient in magic. "Help me out here!"

Gale shot a bolt of fire and Shadowheart sent out a beam of radiant magic, parting the shadows just long enough for Del to get away from the one that was menacing him. He took the opening, dodging between the shadows and instead flinging himself at the long-limbed creature that was busy strangling the life out of its victim.

The creature was surprised, and that made it slow to shift its aggression from one enemy to the other. Del dodged its garroting attack with the wire, then managed to take down the wretched thing with a single thrust of his sword in its back.

"That's right!" he spat at the creature as it died. "Try fighting someone armed next time." For he had seen that the panting dragonborn on the ground had no weapons with which to defend himself, aside from his own teeth and claws.

Behind him, Gale and Shadowheart had taken down the shadows as well.

"That wasn't too bad," Shadowheart said slowly. "But why do I feel like this is only the first taste of what the curse has in store?"

Karlach and Astarion were more interested in the person Del had rescued. "And who's this, now?" the pale elf asked, stepping closer to where the creature's victim was still trying to catch his breath.

The dragonborn wore a loose-fitting robe without undergarments that fell open in front, leaving nothing to the imagination. Del's eyes scanned over the milky-white scales at his sides that blushed to pink and then red at the front of his torso - then stopped looking when his eyes wandered too low. No sane person would go out into the shadow-cursed lands dressed like that, so Del figured that he must have been robbed or otherwise separated from his clothing and supplies.

"Are you okay?" Del asked him. "Do you need a healing potion or anything? We've got extra."

The dragonborn sat up slowly, one large clawed hand rubbing at his neck where the wire had been. The garotte didn't seem to have cut too deeply, but when the man turned his head Del could see that he was missing a horn on one side, and that there was a literal dent in his skull a small distance below where the horn should have been. The wound didn't seem recent, since there was no blood and pale scar tissue had grown over the gap in the scales.

"I..." the dragonborn stuttered, working his jaw stiffly as he tried to form words. His voice was hoarse, as if he hadn't spoken in a long time. "Want... Yes. That."

Del felt a sense of frustration emanating from the man's direction. Then, to his shock, something sought entry to connect with his mind. A tadpole, like the ones in his companion's heads – not a full illithid, and not even as advanced as his own. He almost beat it back on reflex, but then decided to allow it to say hello. The dragonborn seemed to have some kind of speech impediment, and maybe the mental connection would allow Del to tell if he was a cultist or someone like them who'd managed to escape the Absolute's influence.

When the dragonborn made contact, Del briefly regretted his decision to let him in. The other man's mind was nearly as scrambled as his speech, full of disjointed scenes and flashes of memory.

Del saw a rapid succession of scenes from the dragonborn's perspective. He was running down a dark corridor between walls made of flesh that pulsed and breathed. He was holding a knife, grinning wickedly as its blade dripped with red. Then the scene twisted and he was the one under the knife, screaming gutturally as it pierced through his insides. The pain faded to darkness, quiet, and the – familiar, too much like what Del himself had known - sensation of someone stroking the top of his head...

Del gasped, pulling himself away from the other's mind. He still couldn't tell if the man before him was a victim of violence or its perpetrator – maybe both? But at least Del didn't think he was under the control of the Absolute. And there was something oddly compelling about the poor fellow – he seemed like a ruined shadow of a once-powerful man. If they helped him now, maybe he could prove to be a valuable ally in the battles to come.

"He's like us," he said to the others. "He's got a tadpole, but isn't a cultist. There's something wrong with him though; he might need more than a potion. Shadowheart, do you think you can help?"

"All right," she sighed. "But I hope you lot won't need much healing today, in case I use my strongest prayers on a random stranger…"

As she bent down toward the dragonborn, Shadowheart winced and massaged the back of one of her hands with the other. Del noted that her 'wound' (which looked more like some kind of magic sigil carved into her skin) tended to hurt her whenever she did something nice for someone, like healing a stranger by the side of the road. Maybe her goddess hated basic human decency or something? If the shadow curse really was Shar's doing, Del was beginning to see why so many people were prejudiced against the goddess.

"Te curo." Shadowheart laid a hand on the dragonborn's forehead to channel the healing energy. Del could see the mark at his throat fade into nothingness, and the dent in his skull unbent ever so slightly... but it refused to heal entirely. "Ugh," she huffed at the dragonborn. "Can't heal old wounds like that so easily. You should've seen a cleric weeks ago."

A pair of deep-set red eyes merely blinked at her from a white-scaled face. "No clerics," he said in a gravelly voice. "Only Kressa."

Whoever this 'Kressa' person was, she hadn't done a very good job of healing him after whatever dreadful injury he'd suffered. "Okay," Del said to the dragonborn. "Let's stick to the basics. What's your name?"

The stranger frowned, grinding his teeth in frustration as if the word was on the very tip of his tongue.

"Ssscion," the man finally hissed. "I think Scion. The voices say."

"Okay, Scion," Del nodded. "Where are you going?"

"Anywhere," Scion shuddered. "Need to… get away." He crossed his arms over his chest in an instinctive gesture of self-protection.

"Is anyone else after you?"

"Don't know," the dragonborn grunted. "Even she... scared. The shadows."

"It's a miracle the shadows haven't gotten you already," Shadowheart said to Scion. "You were lucky we happened to cross paths."

"You should join us, at least for now," Del offered. "Safety in numbers. We're looking for Moonrise Towers, trying to find out more about these tadpoles in our heads. You've got one too, right?"

Scion put a hand to his head, instinctively reaching for the dented spot on his skull. "Is that what? It… it moves sometimes."

"Yep, unfortunately," Del confirmed. "We've all got them too, but we're trying to find a cure." He left out the part where it might be too late for him to be cured already, trying not to freak out the poor guy even more. "That's why we're headed to Moonrise. We think this strain of tadpoles originated there."

The dragonborn grimaced, showing his teeth. "Nothing good there. Only bad news."

Next to Del, Astarion rolled his eyes. "Trust me, we know it's bad news, but we have no other options. I'll assume you're fleeing from there? Can you at least point us in the right direction?"

Scion looked around, trying to orient himself among the inky-black shadows.

"You came from that direction," Astarion prompted, pointing into the shadows. "Is that where the Towers are?"

Scion shook his great scaled head. "Don't think. I was... lost? Turned backwards. Escape from... the shadows."

Astarion rolled his eyes. "Can't you see what he's doing here, Del? The man clearly doesn't want to go back, so he's playing coy about the directions. Are we sure he's not enthralled by the Absolute?"

"I'm pretty sure he's telling the truth about not knowing," Del countered. "A bad hit to the head can cause memory loss, and in case you didn't notice, it's pretty dark out there… It's not like we know where we're going either."

"You make a good point, my fanged friend," Gale mused. "How has Scion been resisting the Absolute's influence up until now, if he doesn't have the Prism to help him?"

"You mentioned voices," Del said to the dragonborn. "What are these voices like? What kinds of things do they say?" He wondered if the Absolute was speaking to him, but maybe he was somehow able to resist its commands…

Scion frowned, trying to form words.

Del had a sudden stroke of inspiration. "Is it any easier to talk like this? Without actually using words?"

The dragonborn cocked his head in surprise, then seemed to realize what Del was doing. "How are you talking to me inside my head?" he asked. "Are you one of the voices too?"

"Hmm," Astarion mused aloud. Del was getting better at controlling his telepathy now, and he had made a point of including the others in the conversation. "Our friend here seems more fluent this way, but he's still a bit challenged in the reality department."

"It's me, the one standing here in front of you," Del continued. "My name's Del. The illithid tadpoles in our heads are letting us talk directly, mind to mind."

Scion nodded. "So that is you. The other voices have no substance. They're just there, inside my head. One is a woman, who tells me everything will be better if I join Her. The other is… myself, I think, only twisted. It's been whispering dark things in my ears ever since I awoke in the Towers with no memories."

"You've lost your memory?" Del asked in surprise. "So did I – or at least some of it. Do you know what happened to yours?"

The dragonborn shrugged. "Either this tadpole, or the same thing that happened to my head. I know nothing of myself before I woke up in Moonrise." He paused, his jaw clenching in the grip of some deep emotion. "Gods, you don't know how good it is to actually talk to someone. Everyone thought I was stupid… and I was starting to believe them."

"Aw, you're not stupid," Karlach reassured him. "I bet whoever thought that just didn't have these handy little tadpoles."

Del nodded, glad for his tiefling friend's skill at lightening the mood.

"So what do we do now?" Shadowheart asked.

"Let's stick together," Del said. "I mean, Scion, feel free to split off if we do find Moonrise and you decide you don't want to go back. It doesn't sound like you've had a good time there. But if you remember anything at all about where it is, or how to get inside, or what's going on in there – please let us know. We're really flying blind here."

Scion nodded and fell into place beside them.

"It's really that easy, then?" Astarion said. "Picking up another companion? One who admits to hearing the voice of the Absolute along with who knows what else?"

Del shot the elf a stern look, and Astarion backed off. "I almost miss the days when you were a pushover," he muttered, but said nothing more.

Though he seemed to genuinely want to help them, Scion didn't prove very useful in helping Del and his friends find Moonrise Towers that day. Thankfully, Gale had been mapping all the paths they'd already tried in their attempts to avoid the worst of the shadows. The curse was like water, deeper in some places and shallower in others. The thinner shadows were safe enough to travel through as long as everyone carried torches and Shadowheart or Gale periodically refreshed the radiant magic cast on items they carried. But if one of them dared stray off the path even by a few steps, it felt as if their hearts were seized by icy claws and their breath froze in their chests. How had Scion survived exposure to the curse without so much as a lantern? It was just one of the many mysteries surrounding their newest companion.

When they eventually got back to the Sharran temple – after a brief scare that they'd somehow lost the way, but Gale and his map came through in the end – everyone rummaged through the various clothes they'd bought or gathered to search for something that would fit Scion. The dragonborn had the look of someone who'd once been fit and muscular, but had recently fallen on hard times. His shoulders were too broad for all but the largest of the cast-off rags they'd found along their travels, but he looked grateful to receive these clothes all the same.

For dinner that night, Gale made a stew out of preserved meat and leftover mushrooms from the Underdark. Scion inhaled it with gusto, as if he hadn't eaten in days. Quite literally inhaled, since he ended up choking on something at one point and going off to hack it up in a corner.

Astarion and Shadowheart shot each other matching looks of disgust at the sight of the dragonborn acting like a cat coughing up a hairball. "He's positively feral," Astarion said in dismay, watching as Scion actually hissed at Del when the half-drow came to see if he was all right.

"No, don't," the dragonborn said, cowering back as if Del was a threat. "Get away!"

"It's okay," Del said soothingly, then switched to telepathy to remind Scion that there was a better way of communicating. "Not sure what you're worried about, but everything's fine. No one's angry at you, and Astarion was just commenting on your table manners."

Scion shivered and twitched once, then seemed to come back to himself. "Sorry," he said hoarsely, then continued silently. "Don't know what happened there. Was back in Moonrise for a second. When I first woke up, I couldn't remember how to do anything right, even eating... And Kressa wasn't exactly sympathetic about it."

As they talked, Del was unaware that Scion's desire for privacy had inadvertently turned this into a conversation between just the two of them. To the rest of their companions, it appeared as if the dragonborn had simply shrugged off his bizarre little fit and gone back to eating as if nothing had even happened.

"I'll take first watch tonight," Astarion muttered, eyeing Scion suspiciously.

"Wake me up for second," Shadowheart agreed.

Author's Note: Long chapter this time, the next few might be a bit shorter. Buuuut here is the explanation for the "Dark Urge" tag! I wasn't sure at first if I should include my Durge character, Scion, in this fanfic, but I thought it might be fun to have a crossover between two of my Tav character headcanons. Del is still the primary focus here, but I'll try to give Scion his own character arc. Basically, Scion is what would happen if the default Durge character wasn't taken to the nautiloid, but instead stayed under Moonrise Towers long enough to partially regain his senses - so his memories start from there. Unfortunately poor guy has even more brain damage than he does in the game since he was experimented on by the cultists for a longer period of time.