"I'm just an animal that strains against my line
I push and pull the cord, to make me feel alive
I had to fight to wrest the reins back on my life
Here come the stars again
Here come those scars again
What goes when I relinquish sin?
What's that beating in?
What goes when I face who I've been?
It's that old griеf again
How quickly we become the things that we despise
So many questions, stalking through me, day and night
Gimme the ghost back…"
After resting briefly and saying their goodbyes – Omeluum tried to give Del a ring of mind shielding, which he refused on the principle that the illithid needed it more, since it didn't have the Emperor as a secret weapon - they sailed across the lake again and returned to the underground temple. It was blessedly empty, since it seemed the cultists' absence hadn't yet been noticed by their peers.
"Darn, maybe we could've taken a longer nap then," Karlach complained, yawning. "Doesn't look like these Absolute idiots are in any hurry to check up on their dig."
Scratch yipped in agreement, and Del shushed him with a pat on the head. The dog had insisted on following as they broke camp, sensing that this was a more final departure. Maybe they should have been firmer about leaving him with the myconids and researchers? But it was too late now, so all Del could do was hope that Scratch didn't make too much noise and draw the attention of anything still lurking around.
Del and his friends returned to the site of the cave-in that had trapped Nere. To their relief, the poison geysers must have been linked to some reservoir of gas that had since exhausted itself, because the air in the partially-blocked hallway was actually breathable now. After over an hour spent clearing out additional rubble from the other side, they found that the hallway led to an enormous set of double doors. Locked, of course – but Astarion made short work of the door with his thieves' tools as usual.
The ornate doors opened into a vast chamber. Like many structures in the Underdark, it was built into a natural cavern, complete with stalactites and stalagmites and even an underground river winding across the cave floor far below the stone ledge upon which they stood. Scratch barked once into the void, then jumped back in startlement at his own echoing voice.
What the cavern lacked, however, was a passage to the next section of the Shar temple, which they could clearly see on the other side of a chasm. At one point there had been a bridge linking their section to the doorway into the temple proper, but it had long since been broken.
Del was crestfallen at this sight, since he yet didn't trust himself to levitate even a fraction of the distance across - until he noticed that Gale didn't seem particularly fazed by the gap.
"I know the perfect spell for this occasion," the wizard explained. "Dimension Door. I should be able to take you all across."
Gale did as he had said and had the rest of them across in no time, though he had to take them one by one because he couldn't teleport more than one person aside from himself at a time.
"I hope there won't be any more battles today," he said, insisting they take a brief rest before exploring the temple further. "Spellcasting is exhausting work."
"Thanks for teleporting us, though," Del said. "Magic is amazing! I don't know why Eldriss hated it so much… They were even more against it than most other illithids."
Any mention of illithid culture provoked Gale's curiosity, so Del's offhand comment perked the wizard up despite his exhaustion.
"Really?" he asked. "So mind flayers hate both magic and the undead. Does magic clash with their psionics in some way?"
"I don't think so," Del replied. "Omeluum told me it left its colony to learn magic, and it still uses psionics just fine. Plus I think Eldriss's thing was personal. They'd at least try to run a trade for anything but magic items... But spellbooks, scrolls, and enchanted weapons? They cheated and stole just to get them out of everyone else's hands. All part of the job, I guess. They don't call them Loretakers for nothing."
Del found himself unable to stop talking as stories he had been forced to repress for years tumbled out of him like water from a faucet. "This one time, a man invited us over to his house to show us his stock of potions for sale. But he lived in a tower, and he had all sorts of spell scrolls next to the potions..."
"What happened next?" Gale prompted, as if Del's story was an engrossing tale of fiction. At some point, the others had decided they were bored of resting quietly and had also come over to listen. Suddenly, Del felt a bit self-conscious about oversharing in front of such a large audience.
"There's not much to tell, really. Eldriss ate the guy's brain." Del shrugged. Everyone else seemed shocked by how nonchalantly he'd said that, so he explained further. "They said it was because we couldn't afford to buy all those magic items away from him, and it was risky to just leave them in the hands of the 'lesser species'…" He looked around furtively, as if the ghost of his master might be listening, and said the next line almost in a whisper. "Gods, they were so full of shit."
After their break, the group spent some time wandering through the basement of the Shar temple on the other side of the chasm. Shadowheart kept stopping them to gush over a statue here or a plaque there, pointing out subtle quirks of iconography and changes in Sharran architecture over time.
Del was more interested in the fact that in addition to crumbling from age alone, the temple appeared to have been invaded at some point, judging by all the crumbled walls and armed skeletons lying around.
"I vote devils," Karlach said as she touched a yellowish mineral deposit on one of the collapsed walls, then licked her fingers. "Tastes like sulfur."
Whoever the invaders had been, they'd really done a number on this place. The party found multiple hallways and passages leading up into the temple proper, but every single one was blocked in some manner. The cave-in that trapped Nere had only been the beginning.
"They're all still trapped, too," Astarion said grimly after examining one such blocked hallway. "They've been already been triggered once, probably to seal off the upper temple from invaders. But these kinds of things often have a backup mechanism. If we destabilize the rubble, it'll likely trigger some kind of explosive or poison. Whoever set these traps really didn't want anyone to follow them. Either they had another way out on an upper floor, maybe at surface level… Or they were so desperate to keep out invaders that they trapped themselves in there too."
Eventually they came to an elevator. The thing was rusted and creaking with disuse, but Shadowheart got it to work through sheer determination. Unfortunately, the first floor it stopped at was a bust. The inner doors slid open smoothly, only to reveal a second set of outer doors that were jammed shut and utterly refused to open, with no lock for Astarion to pick.
"Come on..." Shadowheart muttered, pulling the lever again. Rather than descending, the elevator began to rise again, going up and up for what felt like an eternity. Damn, how far underground were they?
When it finally clattered to a halt, the doors slid open onto yet another dark hallway – but everyone except for Del could immediately tell something was different.
"What is it?" he asked, picking up on his companions' mingled hope and apprehension.
"Can't you smell it?" Karlach asked. "Outside. I think we're close to the surface."
"But something's wrong," Astarion added. "There's a foulness to the air, as if an entire forest died and rotted in place."
"Must be the shadow curse," Gale said as he exited the elevator. "A veil of dark magic lies thickly around us." He cast a Light cantrip on his staff to illuminate the hall, making Del wince as the sudden glow whited out his dark-adjusted vision.
The doors at the end of the hallway were unlocked, but as Gale and Karlach suspected, they led to the outside world rather than the interior of the temple.
It was pitch-black out there, with a howling wind that whipped their hair back into their faces.
"Uh... can we not go out into that?" Karlach asked, stepping back inside. "Shadow curse or not, I'm pretty sure it's also dark and stormy outside. Maybe things'll look better in the morning."
"That's fair," Del said. "This place looks pretty dead; doesn't seem like any cultists are coming to investigate. We're all tired anyway, so let's go back downstairs and camp in the basement? We can go back out first thing tomorrow morning." Del noticed Shadowheart was looking rather dejected, so he added, "Sorry we couldn't explore the temple more. It's just too dangerous with all those traps..."
The cleric sighed, fiddling with the tip of her long black ponytail. "You're probably right... But it's so hard to give up now, when we're so close to a piece of living history. This place looks like it's been a stronghold of Shar for centuries! Think of what I could learn here; think of how I could pray. I've seen skeletons wearing the armor of Dark Justiciars. I think this is where they used to train them, back in the olden days. I've always wanted to be one, no matter what Mother said."
"Mother?" Del asked. "I thought you were an orphan."
"The Mother Superior. The one who found me in the woods and took me in. She said I couldn't be a Dark Justiciar yet because I wasn't ready."
Del didn't know what exactly becoming a Dark Justiciar entailed, but he could sense it was something of great importance to Shadowheart.
"All right," he capitulated as they walked back to the elevator. "Maybe in the morning we can look around one more time to see if we can find any other ways inside."
Later that night, when Del was almost asleep, he suddenly sat bolt upright in his bedroll as two thoughts occurred to him. One, he had nearly forgotten to take a dose of his potion, which he quickly gulped down. And two, it had been just that morning that he'd promised Astarion to use their tadpole powers to get a good look at each other. Del couldn't believe he'd forgotten, but the intention had gotten lost somewhere along the course of this very long day.
He padded over to Astarion's tent, trying not to wake the others.
"Hey, Astarion," he whispered through the flap. "I'd still be glad to take you up on that offer."
For a few seconds there was only silence, but then someone stirred inside. "Oh darling," Astarion purred, drawing back the piece of cloth that served as a door. "I thought you'd forgotten about little old me, but I'm flattered you remembered."
He gestured for Del to follow him inside.
"So, how did we want to do this?"
"Getting straight to business?" Astarion pouted. "Don't even want to have a drink first?"
Del shrugged. "Sure, if you want to. But your wine might be wasted on me. I didn't exactly have good taste before, and now it'll be even harder to tell the difference."
"In that case, I'll pour you only the finest Chultan Fireswill." The pale elf busied himself with getting out two goblets from the unorganized mess of stuff inside his tent. He poured himself something from one unmarked bottle – blood, perhaps? It looked thicker than wine… - and gave Del wine in another.
"All right, that's enough," Del motioned for Astarion to stop before he filled his goblet to the rim - the elf had a very heavy pour. "Last time I got drunk, I let down my guard and Lae'zel jumped me."
"I promise I won't jump you," Astarion smirked as he took a sip of his wine. "Or at least, not in that sense. No promises about the other."
"I hope you're not getting the wrong idea here," Del cautioned as he drank his own wine. "I just want a look at my face since there's not exactly a ton of mirrors down here. I mean, have you seen all those broken ones in the temple?"
Astarion pouted. "Going to be boring about it, are we?"
"Look, I'm tired," Del said, which was the truth. Every time he'd taken his potion so far, it made him sleepy, though the effect seemed to be getting less dramatic over time. "And I'm still getting used to all the changes from the tadpole. It's hard to think of much else when I feel like I'm some kind of freak."
Del briefly felt bad for rejecting Astarion's attempts at flirtation. The pale elf was attractive in an androgynous manner, but Del honestly wasn't interested in him in that way. He still didn't remember what his 'type' had been before being captured by the mind flayers, or if he'd even had one - and during his enthrallment he didn't remember feeling any attraction to anyone unless given an aphrodisiac for breeding purposes. Oh gods, he thought suddenly. Does that mean I might be a father?
"Are you all right?" Astarion asked, peering into Del's eyes. "You went somewhere for a moment there, I hope I didn't offend you."
"No - I mean yes, everything's fine." Del waved away the vampire's concern, trying not to think about any children he may have sired into a life of servitude - or worse. In comparison to that horrific thought, the matter of his lack of attraction to anyone - any humanoid, some distant part of his mind prodded - was a relatively minor one.
"All right, if you say so. Shall we get this over with?"
Del nodded.
"You first, then," Astarion said as he settled himself into a cross-legged position.
Del sat down opposite from Astarion, staring into the vampire's red eyes. He reached out to his companion's tadpole, unable to restrain the brief shiver of satisfaction that ran through him as their minds touched. He could feel the elf's apprehension; his reluctance to engage in this strange form of intimacy overcome by the aching desire to know more about -
"Sorry," Del muttered, trying to redirect his focus. Not thoughts, he reminded himself. Senses. I just want to see through his eyes...
Eventually, a vision of himself materialized in his mind's eye. Thanks to Karlach and Shadowheart, he'd been prepared, for the most part, but seeing the changes in his appearance for himself affirmed the suspicion that his companions' reactions had been polite and understated.
Del's ashen skin was several shades darker than before, and the black vein-like markings Karlach had described radiated outward from his eyes and covered his cheeks and neck like a spiderweb. The eyes themselves were the strangest part, with his usual blue irises shining out from a sea of black sclera. They reminded him of Eldriss's eyes, in a way, but were less luminescent than his former master's. Other than that, the basic structure of his face remained the same. From a distance he would look like his normal self, but the dark discoloration was clearly visible to anyone who got too close. And his hair, too, had seen better days. The central braids and locs were still intact, but Del desperately wished for a razor when he saw that the hair on the previously-shaved sides of his head had grown nearly an inch in some places, but then fallen out in uneven patches in others.
"All right," Del said, then winced as his voice echoed through both his own and Astarion's ears simultaneously. He continued mentally instead. "Can you see what I'm seeing? Are you looking at me or yourself? Let me know what you want to see."
"I see myself," Astarion replied in the same manner. "The face was a good start. My, I'm a handsome devil. But yes, there was something else as well. Let me show you."
Del withdrew partially, cutting off his own access to Astarion's senses, but maintained the other half of their mental connection. He too was curious what Astarion meant to show him, so both of them were watching from Del's perspective as the pale elf unbuttoned his shirt, then shrugged out of it entirely. Uh oh, thought Del. Are the pants going to come off next? But to his relief, Astarion stopped there, and instead turned around to show his back to Del.
"What in the hells?" they both thought simultaneously. Del had never seen the scars on Astarion's back before, and Astarion had only felt them as the lines were carved into his skin. The scars were carved in a pattern of concentric circles, broken up by gaps and lines running perpendicular to the main spiral. But I thought it was a poem? Astarion thought in surprise. Del didn't respond because he couldn't tell if the thought was private or directed towards him.
If the scars were a poem, it was in no language that Del could recognize. He watched as Astarion scrambled for a parchment and a quill, copying down the shape of the scars as best he could while still half-looking through Del's eyes. Del tried to help him out by looking down at the paper as well.
"Thank you," Astarion said eventually without his usual air of nonchalance. "This should be helpful. Now that I know what the marks look like, I can figure out if they're written in a real language, or if this is just Cazador's idea of a sick joke."
Del broke the connection fully and leaned back against one of the many pillows Astarion kept in his tent for some reason. He'd already been tired, and holding a mental connection for so long felt as if it had strained a muscle he was still developing. "No problem," he yawned. "Do you need anything else? Have you been getting enough to eat lately?"
He could feel as Astarion's mental barriers snapped up again. "Are you making fun of me?"
"No, of course not!" Del backpedaled. "I was seriously wondering. I saw that bottle of blood was almost empty. What've you been hunting in the Underdark?"
Astarion shrugged. "Bit some duergar in the heat of battle. Got a drow that the spectator petrified while we were out hunting mushrooms. Then the usual small creatures."
"Well let me know if you need anything else... Since we're about to go into a region where everything's supposed to be undead and all."
A series of expressions crossed Astarion's face in quick succession: Surprise at Del's suggestion, then gratitude, followed by a small flash of disgust at the thought of biting into Del's half-changed flesh. The vampire got control of himself quickly, schooling his features into a more neutral expression. "Thanks for the offer," he said politely. "I'll make sure to keep that in mind."
Del wondered why Astarion had flirted with him earlier, if at least some part of him thought Del disgusting... But he tried not to be too insulted by the split-second judgment.
"Thank you too," Del said awkwardly. "It was good to get a look at myself; see what everyone else's been talking about. I... I hope you have a good rest of your night."
And with that, he retreated back to the safety of his own tent.
Author's Note: New chapter, hope you enjoy! Poor Del, I feel like I'm just abusing him at this point, but don't worry - based on my plan for the next few chapters, next week he'll meet someone who's had an even worse time than him, and the chapter after that might even have some romance...
