"When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you..."

"Te curo. Vis medicatrix. Te absolvo. Fiat voluntas dei. Well, that's all my healing spells for the day," Shadowheart sighed, even though it was still well before noon on the morning after Lae'zel's attack. Gale had told everyone that, based on his reading, enthrallment by a mind flayer was equivalent to brain damage. Now the team's resident cleric was trying to kill two birds with one stone by throwing as many healing spells as she knew at Del to cure injuries both visible and invisible.

The rest of the group watched Shadowheart and Del as they sat around the embers of the burnt-out campfire and other assorted detritus from last night's aborted celebration. Del was the one who normally cleaned up the camp, and he'd been out of commission up until now.

"Feel any different, Del? Wanna punch any squids in the face yet?" Karlach stood up, bouncing up and down excitedly on the balls of her feet as she waited for Del's answer.

"Depends on the squid," Del said, realizing he could speak properly now. "Hey, my throat feels better. That's an improvement?" He had yet to see himself in a mirror since the attack, but knew that he'd have an impressive new scar to add to his collection. Still, he could breathe and speak and was barely even lightheaded from blood loss anymore. If there was one kind of magic he'd grown to like since leaving Oryndoll, it was definitely healing spells.

"That's good, I guess." Still, his fellow barbarian seemed oddly disappointed. "Maybe a bit of progress. But come on, don't all the mind flayers deserve a good smackdown?"

"If it were me, I would be furious." Astarion's tone was so frosty that Del flinched a little even though its ire wasn't directed at him. "Nothing against you, Del. You can't help it, I suppose. But you need to find that anger you use in battle and direct it at the proper people – or erm, aberrations - if you ever want to be truly free." The vampire paused, biting his lip. He seemed to be debating if he should continue, even if it meant showcasing his own vulnerability.

"I don't know if you all know, but when I was turned into this thing that I am, my sire decided to... keep me. His name was Cazador, of the Szarr family, which some of you might recognize as Baldur's Gate aristocracy. Well, it's all a sham. No family, just one megalomaniac vampire lord. As Cazador's spawn, I was his servant by nature and could no more disobey a direct order than Del here. I did that damn vampire's dirty work for nearly Two. Hundred. Years." Astarion's teeth audibly ground together as he recalled his captivity. "But somehow, the tadpole saved me. Took me right out of his control. What I can't understand is why it hasn't worked on you, Del. Your master is dead, right? Then why do you still have to listen to anything he said?"

Gale also seemed to be thinking deeply. "It could be because the tadpoles and Del's mind control are both illithid in nature, that one didn't cancel out the other. Or, perhaps the mind flayers simply enthrall their servants at a deeper level than vampires. Sorry to pry, my fanged friend. But did you, ah, enjoy working for the vampire who sired you? At the time, I mean."

"Gods, no!" Astarion spat, looking furious with Gale for even suggesting the idea. "I cursed Cazador's name when I awoke every evening, and every time I closed my eyes in my coffin come morning. If I never see that man again, it will still be far too soon."

"What about you, Del?" the wizard asked. "Did you get any satisfaction out of serving your master?"

Del hesitated, knowing that he was about to walk right into a trap but unable to avoid it. "Eldriss was a really good master," he defended. "I guess I've never known any different, but I've seen how bad some of the others had it. There was this one illithid who ate his thralls every time they disappointed him!"

"You never knew any different." Gale repeated. "See, that's the key there. And yet," he said to everyone else. "When the tadpole allowed me to take a look into the mind of our friend here, what I saw suggested something different."

After that conversation with the Emperor, Del thought he knew exactly what the wizard was talking about, but he hated to hear it confirmed by yet another person that his memory was full of holes.

"It was a memory of a memory, perhaps," Gale mused. "On the nautiloid, you-" he gestured to Del - "hesitated before striking the mind flayer at the helm. This was because, at some point, they indoctrinated you. I saw you thinking of it when the tadpole connected us. They applied psionic techniques that... well, some would call it torture. But they taught you to never disobey orders, and to never take an action that injures one of them. But, Del, you were an adult in that memory. If you lived in Oryndoll since you were a child, as you say, why would they wait so long to enthrall you? And why do it in such a violent manner?"

Del saw it now, replaying before his mind's eye – that fragment of memory that had flashed before him, of receiving his core instructions in the Vaults of Terror.

Karlach looked horrified. Astarion wore an expression closer to disgust. "And I thought Cazador was bad. But no matter what that monster did to me, I still had my mind. I still remembered what it was like to be alive and free."

Shadowheart was the only one who was more or less unfazed. "Come on, all of you are acting like this is the end of the world. As long as Del isn't a threat to us and whatever the mind flayers did is in the past... then it's not so bad. I've had my memories erased plenty of times! Even right before this mission, so I wouldn't reveal anything if captured. But mine are stored in the temple of Shar in Baldur's Gate. There must be a way to get Del's back. What say you, Del? Do you even want them? Sometimes the Lady of Loss teaches us that it's better to let go of such things."

"Of course he wants them back!" Astarion interrupted before Del had a chance to say anything. "If he doesn't, he's beyond help. You're soft in the head for even suggesting -"

Del held up a hand, and everyone stopped. "I have known illithids to do that. Erase memories, I mean. But I thought that was just for bad thralls. Ones who tried to escape. Or wouldn't listen. I've always been loyal. Or, I thought I was. If I get back memories of... not being good, then I don't know if I'll be able to go back."

"Go back ?" Astarion shrieked. "You - you absolute gods-damned idiot! Shadowheart, clearly your healing spells aren't working, because this man here is still utterly fucked in the head."

Karlach and Gale were looking at Del with something that felt uncomfortably like pity. "Stop it," Del grumbled at them. "Stop looking at me like that. Okay, maybe I don't want to go back, not with Eldriss dead. Don't wanna go back to the caverns or the arena. But I feel like... Eventually I have to?"

"So you feel you must return to Oryndoll... Or what?" Gale asked. "Is there a clause in - well, let's call it your contract, for lack of a better term - that prevents escape? Some self-destruct mechanism if you stay away from the mind flayers for too long? And if so, is it tied to your master, or the elder brain itself?"

"I don't know," Del sighed. "I just know that at some point I should go home..."

"We won't let that happen," Karlach promised, her eyes blazing. "We'll hold you down, tie you up if we need to. But you're never going back there."

"I should get to a library," Of course, Gale would be the one to say that. "I need to do more research about illithid enthrallment, and techniques for reversing it... Not to mention the city itself. Oryndoll is no home for anyone but mind flayers. Rather, it's known as a place people disappear to, never to be seen again except for a few very rare cases. I remember hearing of a drow in the Underdark captured by the illithid and taken there. They enthralled him, but somehow, he was able to be saved. Perhaps higher-level healing spells, or a repeated application..." He trailed off, muttering to himself.

Halsin approached their group, clearing his throat. "Pardon me, but I thought I heard talk of the Underdark. There's something related that I wanted to mention to you." He glanced over at Del, who was sitting up and talking with the others; a far cry from how the druid had left him the previous night. "And I wanted to check on your friend Del, but I see my services may no longer be needed."

"Go on..." Shadowheart seemed oddly suspicious of whatever Halsin wanted to discuss, but then she was suspicious of everyone so this was no surprise.

"Well, as I said the other day before that unfortunate incident between two of your party members, the cultists are sending all their captives to Moonrise Towers. Innocents go in, True Souls come out. You need to cut to the source of this cult, but to get to the Towers, you'll need to pass through a terrible place – a cursed place. This curse shrouds everything in shadow. You will not find life, light, or anything natural there. Any who linger are twisted by the curse, then become shadow beings."

"And what's this about the Underdark, then?" Astarion asked. "This shadow curse of yours sounds like it's above ground."

"The Underdark is actually the safer route to get to Moonrise Towers," the druid explained. "Even a place like that is the lesser evil compared to the shadow-cursed lands. You will still need to pass through shadows to approach the tower itself, but for a far shorter time than you would if approaching overland. I, however, must take the more direct route to Moonrise. There are a few things to take care of at the grove, and I cannot leave until the new First Druid arrives. I'll take the route through the mountain pass, since I know the intricacies of the Shadow Curse better than anyone, and meet you at the Last Light Inn."

"An inn? In the shadow-cursed lands?" Shadowheart still seemed skeptical.

"Yes. It's the single flickering point of light in that cursed land. If you stop at Last Light, you can meet with Jaheira and her Harpers to join forces for an invasion to take the tower by force. Or, you can try to use the worms in your heads to talk your way into Moonrise without a fight... But either way, be careful. The cultists keep many prisoners there, and you may end up among them. But we can talk strategy further at the inn. The first goal is to arrive there in one piece."

Halsin walked away, leaving the group with more questions than answers.

Now that the goblins were dead and the looming threat of ceremorphosis seemed less imminent, they could afford to stay in the environs around the Emerald Grove for a bit longer while they prepared for the journey through the Underdark to Moonrise Towers.

Late on the afternoon of the day Shadowheart had tried to heal Del, the druids brought news that they'd found the body of Lae'zel in the woods near the grove. After attacking Del and leaving behind her sword, she had managed to escape the grove without rousing an alarm. However, she then did something which everyone except Del thought was utterly bizarre: she found a dagger somewhere, probably hidden in her boot or carried at her belt, and used it to slit her own throat in much the same way she had dealt with Del. No one seemed to know why - or even if - she had done it to herself, and theories ranged from remorse (unlikely) to murder (also not substantiated) all the way to impending ceremorphosis (probably the truth, based on what the Emperor had told Del, not that he could mention that to anyone).

What Del did discuss with the others was his past. He still didn't like to bring up the topic unprompted, but found that now he could at least reply properly when people asked him questions.

Most of said questions were asked by Gale. By that evening, Del felt well enough to start tidying up the camp - didn't these people know how to clean up after themselves? - while Gale followed him around like a curious puppy asking question after question about Oryndoll.

"What do you use for light down there? Or do mind flayers see in the dark?"

Del answered almost absentmindedly as he gathered empty plates and bottles from the tents. Why did these people drink so much wine? "They have regular darkvision, but can also see heat signatures. Full drow have that heat vision thing too, but not me. A lot of us thralls can't see in full darkness, so in the city they use... uh what's it called? - bioluminescence. You'd be surprised at how many types of glowing mushrooms and moss we've got in the Underdark."

"Where did you live? Do they have houses down there? I've heard the place described as an eldritch maze of non-Euclidian architecture..."

And so on, and so forth. Del tried to answer as best he could, but it got old pretty quickly.

The following days were relatively uneventful aside from a few specific incidents: the dog and the monster hunters. Del heard about both of these events secondhand, since his companions seemed determined to confine him to camp as often as they could. They said it was to give him a chance to recover fully from his injuries, but he knew better. He'd felt fine since the second round of healing spells on the day after Lae'zel's attack, aside from the raised reddish scar that encircled his throat like a macabre necklace. It would fade to white, eventually. But the truth was, his companions still didn't trust him fully, not after what had been revealed. Del supposed he couldn't blame them, but the rejection still stung.

At least after the first day he had Scratch to keep him company. Karlach and Shadowheart had found the dog standing guard over the corpse of his master, who had clearly been dead for several days already. Scratch seemed to know this, for he had come back with them without much convincing, but the girls said he kept looking back mournfully at the body as they led him away.

Honestly, Del envied the dog his closure. He could see a lot of commonalities between the animal's situation and his own, but at least the dog was sure his master had fallen and was able to say goodbye instead of being stuck in limbo. And Scratch was a simple creature, living in the present moment instead of being haunted by what-ifs and should-have-beens. Sometimes Del wished he had been more thoroughly enthralled, reduced to a mindbroken husk like some of the laborers and bodyguards in Oryndoll. They acted when they were told, and that was all. It seemed simpler and more straightforward than the situation Del had gotten himself into. If one of them had been on the nautiloid, it would have simply followed the instructions of its new masters under the Absolute, or maybe broken like an automaton upon receiving contradictory commands.

But at the same time, another contradictory part of Del was glad to be free and breathing the fresh air aboveground, traveling with an interesting group of people on a quest that nobody could quite see the end of. It gave him a strange feeling almost like nostalgia, but he couldn't remember what it was nostalgia for.

Del sighed and ran his fingers through the dog's thick white fur. Having Scratch here was soothing, despite sometimes serving as a trigger for his own dark thoughts. He and the dog could grieve their masters together, and perhaps find new reasons to go on.

The second incident related to Astarion, and it led to the party learning that the Absolute cultists were not the only thing hunting them. They'd run into a group of monster hunters near the border between forest and wetlands, who said they were looking for a certain vampire spawn who had last been seen in Baldur's Gate but was rumored to be headed in this direction. Luckily, this encounter occurred in broad daylight so they didn't immediately suspect Astarion, but the pale elf had been uncharacteristically unable to keep his cool long enough to sustain the deception. Things escalated, and the altercation ended with the monster hunters dead and Astarion practically carried back to camp by Gale and Karlach with a stake sticking out of his chest. Luckily, it had missed his heart, and Shadowheart was able to restore him to full health with a series of spells while Gale gave a lecture about how unusual it was for healing magic to even work on someone who was, technically, a member of the undead.

Speaking of Gale, his priorities shifted somewhat away from finding a cure for Del's affliction, as his own hunger for magical items increased. As he explained to Del, the ring he'd looted from the goblins should have lasted him at least a tenday, but instead he felt the need to consume magic again when less than half that time had passed. Stuck in camp as he was, Del had nothing to offer him except a gentle suggestion that he should ask the others for help. However badly they would take the news that Gale had a ticking time bomb in his chest, Del doubted it would be worse than the way they'd reacted to his own enthrallment. Aside from healing spells, Shadowheart had barely talked to him since his past had been revealed. Astarion seemed to vacillate between pity and contempt, and even Karlach was a bit awkward and unsure how to act around Del.

Gale promised to consider telling the others, and sure enough ended up breaking the news a day later when the magic-hunger became unbearable. Del was proven right that their group had become numb to dramatic personal revelations, and the rest of them took Gale's condition remarkably in stride. They even provided him with a pair of enchanted boots, which he carried off to his tent to 'consume' in private while Karlach ribbed him about the taste of leather.

After a few days, the tension in the group thawed somewhat and Del found himself participating in conversations again that were not about the topic of his past or how to break his enthrallment. They would need to trust him if they were to travel through the Underdark together, and Del was the only one of them who could even remotely serve as a guide. They had given up waiting for Halsin, who seemed torn between wanting to go with them, a desire to see the Emerald Grove left in safe hands, and other motives that they could only guess at.

Del had never been to this particular region of the Underdark, whose locales were nearly as varied as the lands of the surface, but the group hoped he could still be helpful in a more general capacity. Any knowledge would be better than none when it came to identifying the flora and fauna, as well as steering them around common dangers that a surface dweller would be unprepared for.

They stocked up on torches and long-lasting provisions in case food was sparse down there. Gale studied spells to stun deep-dwelling enemies with radiant energy. Shadowheart grudgingly deciphered Selunite riddles to open a convenient passage under the derelict temple in the goblin camp. Del and Karlach sparred and polished their weapons.

Finally, they were ready to descend.

Author's Note: Annnd finally, we are caught up with where I currently am writing! Updates will be a little less frequent now but still 1-2x a week.