"Feel like a brand new person
But I make the same old mistakes
I don't care I'm in love
Stop before it's too late…

Feel like a brand new person
So how will I know that it's right?
In a new direction

So how will I know I've gone too far?"

After the fiasco with the clown, Alurdel felt he'd had enough excitement for one day. He fought against the desire to return to camp and simply process all he'd seen and done, telling himself he needed to power through for - For what really? The good of the party? Now, that was a past-Del thought if he'd ever had one…

No, if anything, Alurdel's stubborn persistence was born of a desire to prove to both himself and the others that, even though he was new to this, he would be a powerful asset in the trials ahead. So if that meant being a little tired and overwhelmed during this initial adjustment period, he'd find a way to handle it.

So as the sun overhead approached its zenith, he stood next to Gale and Astarion while they conducted interviews with various circus employees, trying to figure out when and why some of their own had been replaced with doppelgangers. The others asked the questions and heard what the performers had to say, and Alurdel listened to the thoughts they didn't speak aloud. It was quite the efficient system.

Unfortunately, this line of investigation didn't tell them much that they didn't already know. The circus's ringleader was a necromancer, the mud mephit was married to the elemental, and of course the genie had rigged his wheel to never, ever land on the grand prize.

According to his coworkers, Dribbles the clown had been acting distant and standoffish before the show today, but had been fine the day before. All of the other doppelgangers had been posing as stagehands, roustabouts, and other minor roles within the circus, so no one had been keeping a particularly close eye on them. But there were no revelations to be had here; nothing that would crack the case in a single blow.

Eventually, Alurdel and the others left the circus with a promise to Lucretious, the ringmaster, that they would keep their eyes peeled for any sign of the real Dribbles, since every day he stayed missing carved a deeper dent into the circus's profits.

"Well, that was pretty disappointing," Shadowheart remarked as they left the circus. The guests had all gone now, driven away by the sudden outburst of violence, and the mood among the remaining employees was sullen and suspicious as they took down the tents and scrubbed blood from the flagstones. Even the bright colors of the advertisements and the performers' clothing seemed slightly faded now.

Astarion seemed to agree. "Nothing like a bit of murder and a missing persons' case to put a damper on things…"

"And we didn't even accomplish anything useful," Alurdel complained, twining two of his tentacles together under his cloak. The motion accomplished something like a wringing of hands in terms of serving as an outlet for his frustration. "We haven't gotten into the city or found any leads on Scion, Gortash, or the Absolute itself. The army of cultists is still marching on the Gate."

He felt a sense of guilt tinged with annoyance emanating from Karlach, since it had been her idea to go to the circus in the first place. "Sorry for wasting your time, guys. I just thought a circus would lighten things up a bit." But then the tiefling perked up again. It didn't seem possible for Karlach to stay in a bad mood for long. "But what's done is done. It's barely past noon - what should we do with the rest of our day?"

From skimming the surface of various refugees' thoughts, Alurdel had realized that getting into Baldur's Gate proper wouldn't be a matter of simply strolling in. The gates at Wyrm's Crossing were currently barred to anyone who couldn't provide proof of citizenship or legitimate business in the city. Something about trying to mitigate the refugee crisis - or more accurately, to prevent the Gate from being overrun by 'undesirable elements.'

Out of the six members of their little group, four of them had lived in Baldur's Gate at some point in their lives, but no one had the paperwork required to legally re-enter the city with things locked down as they were. Shadowheart had left secretly on a covert mission, Karlach had just spent ten years in the Hells, and Astarion hadn't officially existed ever since his first death two hundred years ago. Jaheira had been quartered at Last Light Inn since before Gortash had begun to seize power months before. Gale and Alurdel had only briefly visited the city before - if you could even call it a visit for Alurdel, since it was more like a half-forgotten memory of a previous life. So getting past the Steel Watchers at the entrance could prove to be a challenge.

Alurdel relayed this to the others, who felt about as pleasantly about the lockdown as the refugees themselves. He tried to take his cue from his companions, even though he himself felt neutral on the issue of locking the gates (aside from the obvious inconvenience to their own party).

Though he hated to admit it, Alurdel could understand the perspectives of both the refugees and the Baldurians. It was the same when they walked past a dispute between a property owner and the squatters who'd taken possession of his home in his absence - on one hand, he owned the place and had the right to defend his property. But on the other - it was simply a poor allocation of resources. Did one man really need so much space when there were people nearby sleeping in the dirt?

He decided to stay out of the property dispute that afternoon. Karlach, Gale, and Jaheira stayed behind to try and talk some sense into the man and come to an agreement with the squatters. Thus lacking their usual do-gooders, the rest of the party continued onward through Rivington.

The next few hours seemed as if they had been specially designed by some sadistic deity that wanted to uncover the skeletons in everyone's closets. First, Shadowheart ran into a member of her former temple, who seemed shocked that she would show her face again after failing her mission to retrieve the artifact - which vibrated in Del's pocket at the mention of it, betraying the Emperor's anxiety about the Sharran returning to her old ways and ratting out his presence.

Later, there was another tense moment when Astarion was spotted by a small encampment of Gur; a nomadic tribe with which he'd apparently had quite the history. They demanded that he help them recover several of their children - children who, it turned out, he'd kidnapped on his former master's orders only a month before. Astarion refused to go anywhere near Cazador's palace, and the party narrowly avoided a fight with Alurdel's help. Said 'help' took the form of a mind blast, followed by everyone making themselves scarce before the Gur woke up. Even if they reported the presence of a disguised mind flayer in Rivington, they were a marginalized group and no one would believe them…

Shadowheart seemed shocked that their friend was capable of condemning children to certain death at the hands - or rather, fangs - of a master vampire. Alurdel, however, found himself feeling rather more sympathetic toward his fellow 'monster,' as Astarion had dubbed both of them earlier that morning. Astarion had just been doing as he was told when he'd kidnapped the children. He'd been under a compulsion that made it literally impossible for him to disobey. To Alurdel, that absolved the spawn of personal responsibility - but it seemed that others may disagree.

Alurdel had thought that at least he would be safe from uncomfortable moments and personal revelations for the day. He focused instead on putting one foot in front of another and not saying or doing anything too strange. Despite the fitted boots that had come with his illithid outfit from Moonrise, his feet hurt from walking, since his kind were meant to levitate most of the time. And, though he hated to admit it, Gale's eight-hour Seeming spell was a godsend, since he wasn't sure he could've kept up his own disguise over such a long period.

Just as they'd decided to regroup and meet up with the others so they could plan something more useful to do the following day, Alurdel heard something strange. Not a physical sound, exactly - if it had been, Astarion would have picked up on it long before him. No, this was a sudden burst of mental static - like the sensation when the Emperor spoke to him, but with no words behind it, only raw emotion. The psychic broadcast consisted of a mix between confusion, loneliness, and a sense of overwhelming hunger…

"Can anyone else hear that?" Alurdel asked. "Or - sense it, I mean." His companions just gave him blank looks, and he realized that, tadpoles or not, the sensation must be outside of their range of perception. "It's coming from up that way." He gestured toward the general direction of the psionic emanation. "I'm going to go see what it is."

"We're coming with you," Shadowheart said immediately.

"Not that you can't take care of yourself, darling," Astarion clarified. "But we've already split the party once, and I'd rather not divide us further."

The source of the psionic energy seemed to be a lone windmill at the top of a hill. The strange sensation fizzled out as the party approached, but Alurdel was still drawn to its source as if magnetized. For, despite the sudden silence, he could still feel the presence of another mind inside the windmill.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Shadowheart asked as the door swung open at a nudge from Alurdel's telekinesis.

"There's someone in there," Alurdel said. "I can feel them. Either someone with a tadpole like yours, or maybe…" He didn't finish that sentence, because as he opened the door that led to the mill's inner room, his suspicions were confirmed.

He was face-to-face with another illithid. Now that he saw it, he had no idea how he'd mistaken its mental signature for a mere tadpole, unless -

Oh. It was a newborn, wasn't it? His fellow aberration's skin was still slick with the red blood of its afterbirth, much as Alurdel's own had been less than a tenday before.

"A mind flayer!" Shadowheart exclaimed, and Astarion reached for his dagger.

The newborn just stared at them. There was another surge of static, but this time it slowly resolved itself into words. "S-stand back! Get away, you, you… Wait. What areyou?"

Alurdel wished he could drop his disguise, but Gale's spell was still active and he didn't know how to counter magic with his psionics. "I'm an illithid like you," he answered, making sure the words weren't filtered through the spell and instead sent directly to the other mind flayer. And then, he added on impulse; "My friends and I aren't here to hurt you."

This illithid wasn't instantly hostile like the ones under Moonrise Towers had been, and Alurdel suspected that the Absolute wasn't currently paying much attention to it. It certainly wasn't under the Elder Brain's direct control. So what was the harm in letting it live, at least for now? It was fascinating to observe how its mind worked, taking in and cataloging sensory information as it tried to make sense of the world around it. It was a true newborn, like Alurdel himself would have been if he hadn't retained the memories of his past self.

"Like me? You look different, but feel the same." It tilted its head, confused by the difference between what it perceived with its eyes and its psionic senses.

"Not here to hurt it? Speak for yourself," Shadowheart chuckled nervously. "Sorry, Del - We have to deal with this thing. I've got nothing against you, but we can't just let a normal mind flayer out to terrorize the locals."

"Are you talking about me?" the newborn asked innocently. "I'm not a thing, I'm… Renekt. Yes, that sounds right. Since you're like me, can you help me?" Its tentacles reached out toward Alurdel hopefully. "I'm so hungry…"

Alurdel felt Shadowheart's mind begin to turn to a spell. She wasn't casting anything yet, but definitely considering it. Oh - that was interesting. She must have forsaken Shar entirely now, considering she was currently praying to Selûne to empower her magic…

As he was preparing to interrupt the cleric, Alurdel felt the stirring of a third psionic presence in the room. It was coming from the Astral Prism, which was still held by Shadowheart for the moment. "A newborn, unattended? How fortunate." said the Emperor, as if he was just waking up from a nap in the Astral Plane and becoming aware of his surroundings. "You must hurry - kill it before the Absolute takes notice. Perhaps, as with the tadpoles, you can even harvest its potential…"

Gods. And now the Emperor, too? Why was everyone so determined to kill this newborn?

And then Alurdel realized what the Emperor meant by the last part of that statement, and he didn't like it one bit. "Harvest? Really?" He was incredulous. "I can't just commune with it like Del did with the tadpoles. The only way to do that would be to eat its brain, and that's cannibalism. Were you raised by wolves or something?"

At first he wasn't quite sure why he was reacting like this, but then the memory clicked into place. During his time in Oryndoll, Del had picked up many illithid social norms by passive diffusion, even if they didn't exactly apply to him at the time. One of these was an injunction against illithids consuming one another's brains. Even if Alurdel couldn't exactly remember the reason for it, he knew it was a major taboo in most colonies.

The Emperor's annoyance leaked through their mental connection. "If you refuse to utilize its power, then it must be killed. This newborn is a liability. It could come under the Absolute's control at any moment."

Alurdel wished that the newborn hadn't told them its name - that would make it harder to kill if they indeed had to. Though, he wondered why he even cared. Had he been infected by Del's sense of sympathy? Why was he so resistant to killing another of his kind? After all, humans killed their own all the time. Maybe it was because Renekt represented the prospect of companionship with a member of his own species, without posing an imminent threat like the adult members of the Absolute's colony or acting all prickly and condescending like the Emperor was at this very moment.

"I agree with you on exactly one thing: This newborn is a liability if the Absolute gets to it. Any chance you can extend Orpheus's protection? We could do with another illithid on our team against the Elder Brain."

"I'm stretched thin enough as it is," the Emperor sighed . "I cannot afford to indulge this childish desire to pick up strays. Letting the dragonborn join you was foolish enough, but he at least may have been useful…"

Alurdel's temper flared. "That's all that matters to you, isn't it? Whether someone is useful? I bet that's the only reason you still keep me around…"

It was then that Alurdel made a critical error of judgment. His anger at the Emperor led him to focus exclusively on their conversation, losing track of the other threads of thought unspooling around him in real time. He missed Astarion and Shadowheart's frustration with his own lack of decisive action against the monster in their midst. He failed to notice that Renekt had managed to access some reservoir of instinct or inherent racial knowledge and realized what, exactly, its kind was supposed to eat. The newborn stepped closer to Alurdel's companions, its tentacles spreading to expose a tooth-lined maw…

Whether or not this was a true case of predatory intent, Astarion certainly took it as such. It was only then that Alurdel realized what was happening, and he looked up just in time to see the vampire launch himself toward the illithid.

At the same time, Shadowheart began preparing her spell, and a ball of radiant energy grew between her cupped palms. Alurdel shut his eyes to ward off the brightness of it, which hurt to look at despite his tinted glasses. And so he missed the moment that Astarion sank his dagger deep into the newborn illithid's heart.

Alurdel wished he could say that something possessed him. That he lost time, or maybe any sense of himself, and came to later without knowing what had happened. But unfortunately, he was all too aware of his own actions.

As Astarion pulled out the knife, it drew forth a gout of silver blood in its wake. The illithid fell to its knees, hands clutching at the wound in its chest while its tentacles twisted and writhed in agony.

Alurdel could tell at a glance the blow was fatal, so he didn't waste time mourning his fallen kin. As the newborn toppled forward and lay still, with only occasional twitches to mark its fading vitality, Alurdel gave himself over to the sudden surge of rage that rose up within him.

Who did Astarion think he was, to interfere with his plans like that? How dare the spawn take matters into his own hands and slaughter a child with more potential than Astarion himself could ever hope to achieve?

Alurdel circled over the surface of his companion's mind like an eagle sighting its prey. As before, he saw the vortex of darkness within it, but this time he was too angry to fear whatever lay beneath the surface. Instead, he willingly dove in.

It turned out that the mental abyss that had seemed so frightening just the previous night contained nothing more than the vampire's own nightmares. Ah - what a disobedient creature Astarion was. He'd suffered terribly for it at the hands of his master for the past two hundred years, and still he refused to obey the commands of his betters…

What are you doing? A voice in Alurdel's own head asked nervously. Stop, before you do something you'll regret.

Alurdel ignored the useless ghost of the dead man that haunted his psyche. Instead, he sifted through Astarion's bad memories at random, searching for a tender spot to poke at.

Each scene was worse than the last. There was Astarion being flayed, fangs bared in a silent scream as a skeletal figure peeled back the skin from his arms. There was Cazador, painstakingly carving the Infernal runes into his flesh. There was a long stretch of darkness and terror, fading to a muted sort of resignation over days-weeks-months- years…

That would do nicely. Alurdel seized the memory and pulled it to the forefront of Astarion's mind. He wanted to make the vampire pay for what he'd done; to frighten him into remembering his true place in the world.

Astarion suddenly stiffened, his eyes going wide and hands stretching out in front of him. Alurdel watched in sick fascination as his pupils dilated, becoming enormous black pools as if searching for the barest hint of light in a pitch-black room. He sank down to the ground, his fingers moving as if to claw at the lid of an invisible coffin…

"Astarion?" Shadowheart exclaimed in alarm, cutting off the spell she'd been casting at the mind flayer before its death to rush to the pale elf's side.

Somehow, the sight of her concern broke through Alurdel's rage and made him realize the truth of what he was doing. He was digging his own grave, as surely as he was making Astarion relive time spent inside one. If Astarion and Shadowheart were allowed to realize what Alurdel had impulsively just done, there might not be a way for them to continue to exist on friendly terms.

He hastily drew back from Astarion's mind, then upon second thought dipped back in to take the memory of the last few seconds with him before it could descend to join the rest of the dark moments in Astarion's history.

There - he was safe from discovery, at least for now.

"What was that?" Shadowheart asked suspiciously, glancing between Astarion and Alurdel.

"I don't know," Alurdel said innocently. "I felt a surge of psionic energy. Maybe that mind flayer did something before it died."

The three of them looked at the body on the ground. Astarion's hands were still trembling, but it was purely a physical reaction since he no longer remembered what had come over him. Still, his thoughts turned briefly toward Alurdel, wondering if it had really been the newborn who'd done something strange to him.

Alurdel took a deep breath, trying to swallow down the remnants of his anger. The tension that coiled through his sinews was fading now, to be replaced by a bone-deep weariness.

What's done was done, he told himself. There was no sense crying over spilled blood. He'd have to improve his own reaction speed next time, or perhaps find more subtle ways of preventing his companions from acting out like that. And besides, maybe Astarion and Shadowheart - along with the Emperor, at least in part - had the right idea. How did Alurdel think he'd be able to balance defeating the Absolute with caring for a newborn who was even less experienced than he was? Without the Elder Brain's control, Renekt would have needed months or even years of training before it could have been an asset in battle.

"I saw that," the Emperor chided. Ah, speak of the devil and he shall appear. " You must learn to control your temper. You could have seriously harmed your companion with such a careless use of your power. Trust me, any temporary vindication you may gain would not be worth it." These words came with the impression of lived experience, flavored with a heavy sense of regret. The Emperor had hurt someone close to him before.

"Noted," Alurdel said. "But it's fine. I stopped myself, didn't I? I have everything under control."

As he left the windmill with Shadowheart and Astarion, Alurdel repeated that to himself like a mantra. I have everything under control…

Though the sun hadn't yet slipped below the horizon, it had been a very long day.

Author's Note: Just a heads up, I will be on vacation next week and haven't written the next chapter yet, so can't guarantee an update. Might still post one if I manage to finish it before my trip, though :)