"Let me know that I've done wrong
When I've known this all along
I go around a time or two
Just to waste my time with you
I'll keep you my dirty little secret
Don't tell anyone
Or you'll be just another regret
Hope that you can keep it
My dirty little secret
Who has to know?"
By the time Del emerged from his tent that morning, his companions were already awake and sitting around the makeshift fire pit that he'd helped them assemble out of loose bricks on their first night camping in the temple basement. Del frantically tried to read their expressions to see what kind of reception he might be walking into. Should he try to act normal? Was there any chance they would dismiss what they'd seen the night before as simply a strange dream?
Based on what he saw, Del didn't think so. Shadowheart's face was grim and downturned as she stoked the small blaze that was fueled more by magic than actual wood, since nothing in the shadow-cursed lands would even burn correctly. Astarion sat cross-legged, staring into the fire. There was an unnatural stiffness in his posture, as if he'd given up on the pretense of being a living man who need to breathe and periodically shift positions. Karlach looked up at Del with a wounded expression that hardened into anger as she met his eyes. Only Gale didn't seem particularly upset, but more like he was trying to remain serious for everyone else's sakes. And Scion was still wrapped in his bedroll on the far side of the camp, since he didn't have a tent yet. Del didn't remember seeing him in the group of gawkers in the dream, and it seemed that somehow he hadn't awoken yet. That was probably for the best…
"So, Del, how'd you sleep?" Shadowheart asked in a silky-smooth tone with a hint of danger. "I don't know if you're aware, but we all had the most interesting dream last night…"
"Oh?" Del asked, striving to keep his tone light despite the tightly coiled ball of anxiety settling into his guts. "Um, what was it about?"
"Don't try to deny it," Shadowheart warned. "It felt so real, just like the ones with the dream guardian. But the subject matter… Well, let's just say it's a terrible day to have eyes." She grimaced, as if she wished for nothing more than to remove the image from her mind, and Del briefly wondered if he should have let the Emperor do just that.
"All right, I know what you're talking about," Del sighed, hovering near the fire but not feeling comfortable enough to sit down with the rest of them. "But I promise, I can explain."
"Explain what?" Astarion piped up, his voice oozing with twice the usual amount of sarcasm as he broke from his unnatural stillness. "I think we've seen all we need to, darling."
"We thought you were getting better!" Karlach snarled suddenly, standing up to face Del at eye level. "And here you were, enthralled to a new master this whole time!" Flames briefly flared around her as her engine went into overdrive, then subsided into swirls of smoke.
"I'm not his thrall!" Del protested, taking a small step back but refusing to be intimidated any further. Multiple impulses clashed within him. He wanted to defend himself; to shout his feelings for the Emperor from the rooftops and make his companions see that the illithid meant them no harm. Beneath that was the instinctive urge to retaliate, to make Karlach back off by showing her that Del was the apex predator here… But at the same time, another part of him wanted to submit, to roll over and show his metaphorical belly as he put himself at his companions' mercy. So instead of fight or flight, Del just froze, feeling his heart pounding in his ears as he tried to figure out what to say next.
Karlach did not look impressed with his answer. "And do you think that makes it any better? Gale and Shadowheart think that mind flayer's been our dream guardian this whole time. When exactly were you planning to tell us?" Her voice rose to a crescendo, and Del realized that his secrecy was the biggest issue here, more than the Emperor's identity or the compromising position the others had found them in.
"I knew you guys would react like this," he tried to explain. "And that's exactly why I was afraid to tell you!"
"No, you don't get to turn this back on us," Karlach spat. "You and your secret dream lover betrayed our trust."
"That. Was. Private," Del said through gritted teeth. "I'm really sorry you had to see that. But can we deal with my, uh, relationship with him as a separate issue? What I do with the Emperor - of my own free will, by the way! - is my own business."
Karlach shook her head and muttered something to herself that sounded vaguely like a swear word, but backed down from her threatening stance. "The Emperor? What a great name for a mind flayer. You really are something, Del," she said, and the resignation and disappointment in her voice hurt Del far deeper than incisive words ever could. "I can't believe I trusted you."
"I'm sorry…" Del said, looking down at the ground and trying to think of how to climb out of the hole he had dug for himself. "I really am. I should've told you guys earlier… I was just afraid you'd hate him for being an illithid. And I get if you're still worried about that, but if you look past his species, I promise the Emperor has our best interests at heart. He broke free from the Absolute! He wants the brain and its cultists stopped just as much as we do."
Astarion loudly cleared his throat. Del looked down just in time to see the pale elf roll his eyes so hard that Del was surprised they didn't go all the way back into his head. "And we're just supposed to believe that?" he asked. "Believe you, who are oh-so-great at determining what's in your own best interest?"
"What about you, Gale?" Del continued his futile search for an ally among the once-friendly faces around him. "You haven't said anything yet. What do you think?"
Gale smirked briefly, perhaps reliving the image of seeing Del with the Emperor, but then grew serious again. "I think I'm still, well, thinking about it. That's quite the rug you've pulled out from under us... One of the very creatures that got us into this mess, protecting us from its own kind? Mind flayers are masters of deception, as you very well know. This 'Emperor' figure has had a hand in our survival, but its true motives remain shrouded in deceit. It seems we need his protection for the moment, but we should stay wary of this creature instead of getting overly familiar with it…."
"Oh, gods," Shadowheart groaned, looking vaguely sick as a new thought occurred to her. "This is utter madness. I just realized… I was supposed to take the Prism from the Githyanki before the nautiloid snatched me. Why would the Temple send me to steal a mind flayer?"
"Well, not exactly just a mind flayer," Del said reluctantly. "There's someone else in there too. A Githyanki named Orpheus, who has some kind of power to resist the Absolute's commands. He's being kept prisoner there, locked in unbreakable chains, but the Emperor is channeling his power to protect us. I know what that sounds like!" Del's voice rose and his hands went up in a pleading gesture. "But the Emperor didn't put Orpheus there, and can't get him out. He's been imprisoned for centuries, and that's the power your temple probably wanted."
"How can you be sure the Emperor is telling the truth about how the Githyanki got there?" Gale asked. "Is he able to back up his claims? And, for that matter, are you?"
Del's face colored. "I – he –" he sputtered. He desperately wanted to prove that the Emperor was trustworthy, but he realized all he had to go on was the illithid's word. Surely he wasn't being manipulated, not again?
"He can't be sure, of course," Shadowheart finished his statement. "So it's possible that we've all been blindly following a mind flayer and its thrall all around the countryside for nearly a month now. Maybe Lae'zel was right all along…"
Del ground his teeth together. "Right to try to kill me, you mean?"
Those last few words came out a lot louder than he intended, and it was at that point that Scion finally sat up in his bedroll. He'd slept like the dead all night, ignoring even the start of their argument, but now he looked disoriented and alarmed at all the commotion. "What? Kill who?"
"Gods, Del. Nobody's killing anyone," Karlach assured. "Right, Astarion? Shadowheart?" She gave the two of them a pointed look.
Scion didn't look fully convinced. "What's wrong?" he asked Del silently. "Everyone here seemed to like you yesterday, but today… I smell danger in the air. Do you need me to take care of them for you?"
Del gave the dragonborn a subtle shake of his head. "No need for that. And as for why they're angry… Well, it's complicated. I didn't tell them something I probably should have, and they found out in the worst possible way."
"All right, I'll stay out of this," Scion said, opening his jaws in an enormous yawn. "Thanks for waking me up with all your yelling, though. I'm not even joking – I appreciate it. For some reason, I couldn't move a muscle for a while there, even though I was having terrible dreams."
"Just... give us some time to think about this, okay? We have to get used to the idea." Karlach continued, and Del realized that none of the others had heard his conversation with Scion. He wondered if the dragonborn would be able to learn to broadcast his telepathic voice to multiple people at the same time, or if that was something Del could only do now because of his partial ceremorphosis? Ah well, he'd worry about that later, since dealing with the rest of them was a far more immediate problem.
Shadowheart looked from Del to Karlach and back again. "Fine," she huffed. "Wasn't planning on fighting you anyway. But I still wish we didn't have to see that!" she yelled over her shoulder as she stomped off back to her tent.
"The Emperor could erase your memory of it, if you want!" Del called after her, but Shadowheart ignored him.
"Well, that's just peachy," Astarion said. He shot Del his usual smirk, but the expression seemed forced. "Glad to know our benevolent protector can wipe our minds anytime he wants to."
Through either intuition or some aspect of his new senses, Del could tell that the pale elf might be the most affected of them all by the morning's revelations. A veritable ocean of pain and rage seemed to simmer under the surface of his cool expression, and Del quickly withdrew lest he get pulled into it and drown. He was beginning to realize just how much of Astarion's unflappable persona was a mask, carefully donned to cover the storm inside.
"Perhaps I'd even take him up on that offer," the vampire continued smoothly. "If I wasn't worried about a mind flayer mucking about with my grey matter. And if it didn't make such excellent blackmail material." With that, he sauntered off to change into his day-clothes and armor, deeming the conversation over.
Del let out the breath he'd been holding. He hoped the last comment about blackmail was a joke, but who knew with that man? He was just glad that that it didn't look like he was about to be attacked or forcibly evicted out into the shadowlands… At least, not at the moment.
Still, a lingering anxiety simmered inside him. Del pulled out his greatsword and deliberately began to hone its edge on the grindstone that Lae'zel had acquired and then left behind in their camp after her untimely death. He hadn't used it much, but right now in particular he felt both the literal and metaphorical need to keep his blades sharpened. Maybe some dark little part of him also hoped that seeing him sharpening his sword on Lae'zel's grindstone would remind his companions of the fate that had befallen her when she lost the Emperor's favor after attacking Del. What did that mean about him? Del wondered upon realizing what he was doing. Was he really the type of person who would threaten his friends, however subtly, over a disagreement?
"Not a threat, simply a reminder," came the voice of the Emperor in his mind. "Let them read into it what they will, if they notice your actions at all. I was able to hear most of that conversation, by the way. It went… not as badly as it could have, though I agree with your assessment about the cleric and the vampire still being potential threats. And I don't know what to think about your new dragonborn companion - there's something strange about that one. I will speak to everyone directly the next time they rest."
"Thank you," Del thought. "Hopefully that'll help. I'm sorry if I only caused you more trouble last night."
"Do not worry," the Emperor assured him. "If anything, I am at fault for letting down my guard. Perhaps we should have been more cautious, but I have no regrets about knowing you at a deeper level."
Del smiled to himself, feeling some of the tension drain out of his body as he finished sharpening the sword. As he went back to his tent to don his armor – he'd learned to fight without it in the arena, but he preferred light armor when he had the chance - Del reflected that at least there was someone who had no reason to be angry with him. He held that thought of the Emperor close to his heart, and it carried him through the rest of the morning.
Author's Note: I honestly didn't think I'd be able to update this fic this weekend since the second half of the chapter wasn't done yet, but this scene kept stretching out longer and longer until it somehow *became* the entire chapter. So hope you like it, and hope the companions' reactions are at least semi in character. Next week, we get to meet even more new characters in Act 2!