Lies and Deceit Again, My Dear?

by PortentProxy

Politics and schmoozing. Kronnis thought he was going to have a little adventure, as a treat. Turns out he's just living a slightly different version of the past 5 years he spent as the Hero of Baldur's Gate, rubbing elbows with dukes and lords. At least the Emperor is having a great time, and the Forbidden Forest has giant spiders to fry.

18. Chapter 18

Author's Note: The first half of this chapter is completely normal human (drow) behavior. The second half… is not. We're eating brains again, in a very gross way, and they're not even humanoid ones this time! I feel like you get plenty of warning in advance. If you aren't a fan of vivid descriptions of viscera, well… shame.

Parts of the ending were edited to conform with FF's guidelines on mature content. This fic is also available on AO3 (same title and author), where I've just updated it's rating to explicit in accordance with the sexual content I've allowed to slip through the cracks of my story.

Beta read by Circade.

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In between classes, research on the dark arts, a seemingly endless stream of letters, helping out with his half of Wyll's colour-coded business reports, and about a dozen other small tasks, it took Kronnis a week to track down a schedule for the Quidditch pitch's use. Turns out, it resided in the staff lounge, and each team's captain was allowed access to scribble their requests into available timeslots, where a head of house would then approve them.

Gryffindor had it booked next, and two days later Kronnis headed down to join the group of red-robed teenagers with less-than-eager steps, his slightly-dinged Firebolt in hand and a warm coat shielding him from autumn breezes. He was not playing schoolboy, as Yaxley had so boorishly suggested, but rather seeking education in the proper use of a new tool. Hogwarts' students just so happened to be the most experienced locals he had access to, and the easiest ones to manipulate into giving him a free lesson.

"Brooms will be one of our most valuable imports," the Emperor was saying, his feet barely disturbing the crisply scattered leaves that gathered in the shadows of the forest's edge. "A novelty for the rich and an invaluable revolution of travel. Once we sell the rest of our stock, we will have made back all the funds already allocated to this project. Each one after that is easy gold – I have never before seen a product with such a high return on investment capital."

"I know," Kronnis said.

"And one of us must possess enough experience of their use to properly educate buyers, before their reputation becomes one of danger and risk. Obviously, this cannot be me."

Why couldn't it be, Kronnis thought uncharitably and irrationally, unenthused at being forced into a task that was partially of his own making. He tried not to let hints of his bad mood spill over into his response. "I know," he repeated.

The Emperor's head tilted to look down at him. "It 'couldn't be me'," he said drily, "because it is not my face that the people trust."

Kronnis knew this. He'd been there when they'd redrawn their plans and told Wyll to hang on to the rest of the Nimbus'. He well was aware that someone would have to learn and then disseminate this knowledge, given how treacherous the damned things turned out to be. He still couldn't help his petty response, an absurd solution suddenly making itself known as he digested his partner's words. "You could wear my face." His feet took another few steps before that idea and its tangentially-related possibilities fully manifested in his head. What a novel concept. "Actually, do you want to try that in-"

"Focus, please. Now is not the time to be crass," the Emperor interrupted, with not quite enough disapproval for Kronnis to believe the idea completely dismissed. "I have already completed the first draft of the product brochures. You need to learn how to use your Firebolt," a claw pointed at the broom, held in Kronnis' hand, "and then when we next return to Baldur's Gate, it will be with proper safety briefings on the usage of brooms."

"But you're making me get back on it first."

"Yes, that is true."

"Even though it smashed my face into a wall," Kronnis continued bitterly. A little guiltily too – the Emperor appreciated the sacrifice he was making for the greater good of their goals, and he was even coming along to ensure that Kronnis didn't again injure himself. Not that he'd done a great job of helping the first time around.

"Yes."

"It just…" He struggled to articulate the source of his aggravations. "I don't like it."

The Emperor's mental sigh conveyed a great deal of emotion – a frustration and impatience that had remained magnanimously unvoiced until now, swallowed by a constantly reassessing mind. Kronnis ignored these sentiments – they were slightly more rational than his own dark cloud – and focused instead on the sympathy that washed them away like seafoam waves clearing a beach of clutter. "I do not favor the broom either, but it must be done. As I said, we cannot allow a reputation of danger to become associated with our products."

"I know," Kronnis said again, "and I'm doing my part! I went and figured out when the next practice was being held, and I was the one who reminded you about it today! And when we had to go back to the Whitburn girl's apothecary to reappropriate some of that Skele-Gro, I barely even cried when my nose bones forced themselves back together!" He paused for a couple of seconds. "Do you know how embarrassing that was? I had to tell her that my eyes were just watering because of some dumb side-effect of the potion, and I don't think she bought it."

Behind his veil, the Emperor exhaled. "You do not always need to excel in your endeavors," he said softly.

Kronnis didn't respond, and for some time the crunching of leaves under his boots was the only sound between them. His partner, indulging in the slightest bit of a freeing hover as he feigned a human gait over Hogwarts' grounds, was silent.

Something about the absence of his footfalls bothered Kronnis, though he couldn't figure out why. A sense of horrible inadequacy welled up as he walked, and when the Emperor's feet descended a quarter of an inch to crush fallen leaves with him, it didn't help him feel much better.

"…Would you like me to salve your bruised pride? Pamper you as a- as a foreign emperor might?"

Kronnis snorted at his partner's attempt at a joke. "Don't be silly. You don't have to do anything. I'm allowed to just… dislike things."

"But why do you dislike it?" the Emperor asked, looking back with eyes that hinted at an unvoiced concern. "You seemed so eager before."

"I don't know. I suppose flying a broom just isn't how I expected it to be."

"So it has nothing to do with the fact that you drove one face-first into our wall?"

"Alright, maybe-maybe my pride is a little bit hurt," he admitted. "But it really was strange, to hurtle through the air with barely any control, like some sort of crude amateur." He gestured with his Firebolt and looked up at the sky, where four figures soared above the Quidditch pitch. They were elegant, and he envied them for it, but when he fantasized about flight it was without a crutch. Under no power but his own. "Why did I want to fly on a broom? It's banal, childish, unsatisfying, and- it just doesn't feel like it's natural."

The Emperor was silent for a moment. "Like it is not psionic?"

"Yes." Kronnis knit his eyebrows together, an epiphany sparking in his mind. "Exactly like that. I feel like I'm capable of so much more, and yet…" And yet, psionic flight did not come easily to a brain that was only half illithid. Only half as capable as his partner's.

He'd deluded himself into thinking that a broom might let him reclaim the phantom scraps of his old abilities, and found that the opposite was true. It only highlighted the grief he'd buried for five years. His enthusiasm had curdled into resentment, aimed at the scrap of wood in his hands; its necessity implying a shortcoming that needed to be accommodated until tireless hours of practice paid off. It had also broken his face, but he was going to get over that someday.

"This broom is a poor substitute," Kronnis eventually concluded, trusting his partner to have followed his line of thought. Certainly, those illithid fingers had caught every other consideration and aimless musing that had recently drip-dropped from the wet machine of his brain.

"Kronnis." The Emperor's calling of his name was soft, and the clawed hand on his shoulder even more so. "It takes years for illithids to master their psionics. I see the effort with which you practice, and I treasure your dedication. You have such potential. Flight is not far from your grasp; I am sure of it."

Something inside Kronnis melted at his partner's reassurance, like rich butter on freshly-baked bread. Only it was his very soul, warmed by the sun glowing in purple eyes – the Emperor's care magnified a hundred-fold until he might've lost himself in its comfort.

His lips twitched. He tried to come up with a snide comeback to downplay his vulnerability, but the Emperor would've seen right through his words, just as he'd seen through his insecurities. "I wish I could figure it out faster," he whispered instead, fragile and honest. "I miss it – the power." The way psionics had enhanced his magic and the ease with which the tadpoles in his brain had allowed him to manipulate his enemies' weaknesses. The mental force to bend the world to his whims and the sheer, overwhelming feeling of authority that had flowed through him, years ago. Flight was just a small part of the package.

Deep in his mind, Kronnis could feel his partner's probing tentacles. They curled and flexed, brushing over a patchwork of corrupted flesh, as though the seams of illithid and drow grey matter might conceal some sort of answer.

"There is no answer," the Emperor absently corrected, "or easy solution. Some things simply come more naturally to you."

"Like what?"

"You are quite adept at reading minds."

Kronnis scoffed. "You're sure that's not just because it's the easiest thing to practice?"

"Perhaps," the Emperor conceded, a spirited delight singing in his mind as Kronnis performed his own fruitless investigation of his partner's head, delving into the archaic knowledge of an alien race as though a previously unnoticed insight might be revealed.

"Your mind blasts are also rather strong."

"Now you're just trying to flatter me. Is there a difficult solution?"

An image flashed through the thoughts that Kronnis had been examining; a cluster of newborn tentacles that erupted from blood and bone, glistening and hungry. The Emperor's mind was corralled into a careful blankness and they disappeared as quickly as they'd formed. Purple eyes again focused on Kronnis' face. "What would you consider a difficult solution to be?"

He shrugged, pretending the concept he'd brought up didn't bother him. "Another tadpole, I suppose. But we have no guarantees that it won't erase me, when it forms a mind flayer from my body, so I'd rather keep this half-existence," Kronnis said, gesturing to his head. "You're right about practice, after all – a decade or two is but a drop in the bucket. It'll come eventually."

The Emperor hummed as they crossed into the shadow of the Quidditch pitch. "Until then, you will need to get used to flying on a broom," he stated bluntly, mirth dancing across what little of his face Kronnis could see. "Unless you had hoped that I would extend an offer to again carry you through the forest?"

"Would you?" Kronnis asked with exaggerated brightness.

"No. And I will be delaying our trip another week if I find your skill on a broom inadequate. It is important to me that you are safe."

"I know." This was not a sentiment that ever needed to be voiced – it often made itself obvious in the fringes of the Emperor's mind. "And I will be."

The four figures in the air were clearer now. Kronnis craned his neck to watch, and saw that three of them were tossing a ball around, while the last one zipped back and forth between the goal posts. Leaving the hands of a dark-haired girl, the ball whistled as it flew past the defender's too-slow fingers and through the leftmost iron ring.

"Do you think they will buy your story?" the Emperor asked, watching with him.

Tilting his head down and to the side, Kronnis grinned at his partner as they entered a passage under a spectator stand. "Come on, what reason would Lord Teken'rret have to lie?"

When they emerged, they saw another three Gryffindors near the center of the field, standing around a box that occasionally thumped and shook. Kronnis thought he recognized the glint of Harry's glasses and the identical blaze of the Weasley twins' red hair, and squinted against the sun for a better look.

One of them pointed a wooden bat at the sky and demonstratively traced several curving arcs from one side of the pitch to the other, explaining a formation or strategy. He then spotted their approach and waved, before whistling to summon down the rest of his team – Ron and a trio of older-looking girls.

"We already did tryouts," the twin – Fred, Kronnis was pretty sure – called out with a grin. "You'll have to come back next year if you want to play for the team."

"I actually thought I might form a new team," Kronnis lied as he walked the last few steps to where the Gryffindors had gathered. "A Baldurian one. Only," he held up his broom, "I'd need to learn to fly this thing before I can introduce the sport back home. Would you have a couple minutes to help with that?"

The dark-haired girl frowned and crossed her arms. Kronnis caught the flash of a silver badge on her uniform, presumably marking her as the team's captain. "Our new Keeper needs practice," she hesitantly declared, ignoring the excited elbows of the other two girls.

Ron reddened at her words and turned from where he'd been exchanging bewildered looks with Harry and his brothers. "S'fine," he mumbled, absently fiddling with his gloves. "I could use a break."

Kronnis felt a bit bad – the boy really did need the practice, but so did he. Pinning the Firebolt under his arm, ostensibly preparing to leave, he waved his hand dismissively. "No no, that's alright. The Slytherins have the pitch booked in a few days. I'll see if they're up to it."

The team murmured and shifted at the mention of their biggest rivals. "The Slytherins wouldn't know the arse-end of a broom from the handle," muttered the other twin.

"Come on Angelina, just a few minutes couldn't hurt," another girl said to the captain, her eyes darting between Kronnis' broom and his face. He added some extra charm to his smile. "I think it'll be fun to show him the ropes – like a team-building exercise."

"I don't know if we have ti-"

"And imagine the upset of a new team entering the World Cup! We might even get to play against them someday!"

Angelina sighed. "Just a few minutes," she reluctantly agreed, before turning to the Emperor. "And did you want to be taught as well?"

"No. I am only here to satisfy my curiosity," he claimed, also lying. He then pointed directly at Kronnis' Firebolt. "Speaking of which, would it be possible to add a cushioning charm to a broom's enchantments?"

"Like, for sitting?" Harry asked, his eyes narrowed with skepticism. He looked like he was trying very hard to figure out the truth of their intentions – a difficult prospect without the power of telepathy.

"I was thinking more for safety. In the event of collisions, or other accidents," the Emperor replied, ignoring the way Kronnis exaggerated the ember of offense that flared in his mind and the surreptitious step he took to the side, planting his boot firmly onto his partner's shoe with visceral satisfaction.

"Toy brooms for kids come with additional safeties," said the third girl, "but real ones don't usually have them. And you shouldn't be messing with their enchantments – they're more delicate than you'd expect."

Kronnis cleared his throat to interrupt the conversation, and they were soon back on track after a round of proper introductions, where Harry and Ron struggled to pretend that they didn't know him. The twins fared better, but were quickly shooed away before their jokingly solemn usage of lordship titles could annoy the Gryffindor team's guests. That only left the trio of girls – the team's three Chasers, they proudly declared – to walk Kronnis through the proper use of his Firebolt.

"You want to hold it firmly, too loose and your grip will slide," Alicia said, demonstrating on her own broom. "Gloves are usually better than bare skin."

Katie eagerly reached over to adjust his hand. "No, not like that, curl your fingers underneath."

A shadow then fell over his broom's handle as Angelina took a closer look. "Are you right-handed or left-handed?" she asked.

"Right," he replied.

She gestured to his hands. "Switch them around. Your dominant one should be in front."

Kronnis did as instructed, and then had the position of his fingers criticized a second time. Surely the overlap of a pinky wasn't that big of a deal. And was it really necessary to keep his palm flush with the handle? A tapping against its wood interrupted his private grumbling.

"What's that?" Katie was asking, her finger tracing a dent at the Firebolt's tip, where it had collided with the wall of the Emperor's office. "It almost looks like-" she broke off and pressed a hand to her lower face, unsuccessfully hiding the way her lips curved with amusement.

"Nothing," Kronnis answered quickly. A half-stifled snort of laugher came from somewhere behind him and he clamped down the magic that surged beneath his skin, promising it release at a later time. At more appropriate targets. "What did you say the controls were again?"

Angelina hopped onto her own broom. "It's simple," she said, illustrating her explanation with subtle shifts of her body. "Lean forward to accelerate, and back to slow down. Pull and push the handle to control direction – the broom will sense the pressure."

"That's why you're supposed to avoid slipping around," added George from the side. "Some brooms misinterpret what's going on and will buck you right off."

Fred grinned. "Yeah, remember that time Charlie lost his grip during a dive? He grabbed the handle as he fell and it whipped him around in circles until he threw up!"

"That'll only happen if you've got a shoddy broom," Angelina shot back. "I won't even ask how, but he got his hands on a Firebolt. It'll handle much better than that."

"Baldur's Gate is still trying to figure out if trade is worth opening our borders for, so it was agreed that we'd try out some of your more unique products," Kronnis mentioned, interrupting a conversation that had somehow made him feel both better and worse. He paid a bit more attention to the way his hands shifted on his broom's handle when Katie coached him through mounting it and maintaining a neutral hover. It was best to immediately ingrain good habits, he supposed, rather than correcting them after some time of sloppy carelessness.

"So its your Minister that's put you up to this?" Angelina asked, now looking a bit nervous in her role as tutor.

"Our dukes," the Emperor corrected absently, "but yes – the potential applications of brooms are intriguing, to say the least."

"Right," she mumbled before turning back to Kronnis, her finger pointing across the pitch. "Let's see how you do then, think you can make it to the other side and back?"

"Of course," he agreed, hiding hesitancy behind a confident smile.

"Perfect. Now just like we said, lean forward and-" she cut herself off when Kronnis' broom jumped into action at the slightest change in posture, and he quickly reclined to arrest his startlingly sudden change in momentum. Two dozen feet away, he then hovered with trepidation.

Technically, that was a victory and an improvement, since he hadn't ended up all the way in the wooden framework of the stands another hundred yards away. One careful push and a hesitant lean later – warranted, as his broom again shot off like a canon – and Kronnis found himself back in front of the Gryffindor team. Its members had scattered upon his approach, and some of them were very clearly trying not to laugh after they'd leapt aside to safety. The only person who hadn't moved was the Emperor, a display of trust that would've been reassuring if a thin shroud of psionic power wasn't surrounding his raised hand.

"That wasn't quite to the other side," Ron pointed out, not even bothering to hide his grin.

Kronnis didn't have a response to that, and was currently trying to convince his partner – who staunchly refused to do his dirty work – that none of these teenagers really needed to retain their memories of his less-than-stellar performance. Unfortunately, messing with seven brains at once was just slightly beyond his own psionic capabilities. There'd be hell to pay if he miscalculated and accidentally erased all knowledge of Quidditch from their minds.

"I think," Angelina said as he dismounted, "that your broom is too fast for you."

It sounded an awful lot like she'd just called him inept. "You're sure it's not broken?"

Ron shook his head. "Nah mate, that's just how Firebolts are. I had a go at Harry's a couple years ago and it took me by surprise too," he mentioned, jerking his head to where Harry stood with a nearly identical broom.

"Right," Katie chimed in, offering an encouraging smile. "It's not that you're doing a bad job, you're just learning to fly on the broom with the fastest acceleration in the world."

Kronnis pursed his lips. He was starting to feel rather silly now. "I thought its handling was supposed to be good?"

"Oh, it is," she reassured him, "but, well, you've never handled a broom before."

Angelina shifted in place as she considered something, glancing between Ron and Kronnis. "Hey Harry?" she asked, drawing the boy's attention. "You'd probably do a better job of showing him how to properly use a Firebolt. How about you take him over to the other side of the pitch while the rest of us get back to practice?"

"Uh, sure," Harry agreed, nervously looking anywhere but Kronnis, seemingly afraid that interaction with him might hint at their previous acquaintance.

The group then split up, with Angelina telling the twins to go fetch the Bludgers so Ron could better experience the full force of an enemy team bearing down on him. By the time Harry had led Kronnis and the Emperor to the other set of goal posts, his teammates were already in the air, darting around in a complicated dance of broom and ball.

"Are you really making a Quidditch team?" he asked, a very respectable distance away from any other living soul and with a set of suspiciously narrowed eyes.

"Ah, no," Kronnis replied. "Funny story that – I couldn't figure out the whole flying thing on my own."

Harry blinked. "And you had to come for help in the middle of a team practice? I'd have made time if you'd asked."

"We have no reason to publicly associate with you," the Emperor remarked bluntly. "It is merely coincidence that Gryffindor's Quidditch team was next to have the pitch reserved."

"So, if Umbridge sees us flying together…" Harry trailed off, looking to where the towers of Hogwarts peaked over the wooden stands surrounding the Quidditch pitch.

Gods, did he think Umbridge was spending every waking second spying on him? Maybe they'd been a bit too heavy-handed when they'd warned him to be careful around her. "Can you even make out the castle's windows from here?" Kronnis asked, squinting in the same direction. "She won't see a thing, and if she does somehow hear about it, she's hardly going to give you detention for helping us out. That's practically a public service."

"Right," Harry said, flushing and shifting the grip on his Firebolt into a more ready position. "I suppose we'd better get started then."

That dissolved their conversation, and Kronnis soon found himself back in the saddle, so to speak.

The first thing that was explained to him was that he'd been sitting too stiffly. Urging a broom to accelerate ought to be done with a shifting of muscle, rather than an awkward tilt of his rigidly-held spine. And instead of clinging to the Firebolt's handle with his hands, he should be using his thighs to do most of that work, leaving fingers free to direct subtle changes of direction.

At a speed that Kronnis now found remarkably easy to control, they did a few circular laps, rising some feet and then descending back down to skim the turf. Harry had him brake in midair and turn corners so sharp that Kronnis had to fight to remain seated. They spiraled higher and higher, leaving the Emperor behind. He was a speck, a pebble on a lawn – or a cricket in the grass, Kronnis thought as he watched his partner take a shortcut through the air to go sit in nearby spectator stands.

He truly did hate to admit it, but the experience quickly became exhilarating – much like how Kronnis had first imagined his rediscovery of flight to be. A good instructor made a big difference, and Harry rose to the task like a falcon hurtled into the sky by a warm thermal.

Kronnis left migrating swallows in the dust and disturbed the seasonal winds. He could've blown clouds into insubstantial wisps, if today's weather had allowed their formation. He also learned rather quickly that he should be keeping his mouth shut, when flying fast enough to barely notice songbirds before passing them. Putting earlier practice to good use, he braked sharply, gagging on some sort of insect that had managed to lodge itself uncomfortably in the back of his throat. Harry flew over to call a small break, mentioning that many players wore goggles to prevent similar incidents.

The magic of the moment faded after that. Kronnis would admit that the Firebolt was fun, and it certainly had its uses, but his previous misgivings, lingering in the back of his head, were now joined by new ones.

Two hands were required to control a broom, leaving none free to cast spells or manipulate objects. Hovering in place would free them for other purposes, but then he'd be a sitting duck until he got his fingers back around the handle to steer out of danger. It was also a lovely target – destroy a rider's broom, and they'd be unable to stop themselves from crashing to the ground.

He carefully shifted his posture to look out over the landscape, feeling a pang of bittersweet longing erupt in his chest as he remembered the last time he'd admired this scene, safely engulfed in the Emperor's arms. Kept aloft purely by the power of an illithid mind, under the soft beauty of the stars and the moon. A floating island of tranquil peace in a soothingly dark expanse.

This harsh, sunlit vista just didn't quite compare, and he thought with petty vindication that anyone relying on a broom to enjoy it would have to retire after a few hours, lest they develop sores in uncomfortable places. The skies should be left to those with the power to claim them.

Still, not everyone was gifted with the privilege of versatile and self-sufficient flight. "Do you ever get tired of it?" he asked.

"Are you kidding?" Harry shook his head, following his gaze to where the feet of mountains gave way to forests and rivers. "This is the only thing Voldemort and Umbridge haven't ruined for me yet."

Kronnis laughed. "It's better at night, you know."

"I- are we still talking about flying?"

"And the view," he said, regarding the Black Lake with distaste as it sparkled with brightly reflected sunlight. "You should try it sometime – the stars are gorgeous."

"I know you've got better vision in the dark, but humans are basically blind without any light," Harry pointed out, as if Kronnis might've forgotten how most of the people he interacted with saw the world. "With my luck, I'd fly right into a tree."

He responded by pointing to a nearly-round orb in the sky. "The moon gives off plenty of light. A guiding glow, gifted by Eilistraee herself."

Harry squinted up to follow his finger. "…Right. But how exactly are you flying around at night? I thought only the Emperor could do that fancy levitation thing."

The reminder was like a bitterly poisoned arrow, straight to the heart. "You'd be surprised at how creatively telekinesis can be used," Kronnis muttered.

"And what are you even doing-" Suspicion brought wrinkles to Harry's face, and he broke off to follow a different line of questioning. "Those flashes of light in the forest a few weeks ago, was that you?"

"Are people still talking about that?" he asked casually, having hoped his previous indiscretion long forgotten by now. The few students who'd witnessed the more eye-catching spells that he'd unleashed on the Acromantula horde hadn't defended their story for very long. With no new sightings, it was easy to ridicule classmates and dismiss midnight glimpses as symptoms of sleep deprivation, after all.

The castle should be sound asleep when he returned for a repeat experience. They'd checked the Astronomy schedule this time – no classes on weekends.

"Not really," Harry admitted, "but I've been wondering for a while." He paused. "You didn't answer my question."

He was using that tone again. The one that threatened a loss of trust if his requests for information were ignored. Kronnis offered an olive branch. "Professor Snape told us you had a bit of an Acromantula infestation."

"So you set them on fire?" Disbelieving and confused, Harry looked like he was struggling to decipher motivations incomprehensible to him. "And, hang on, since when are you running errands for Snape?"

"It wasn't an errand, it was important work," Kronnis declared, of the opinion that he had very valid reasons to moonlight as Hogwarts' exterminator. Everyone was allowed to have hobbies. "Have you any idea how boring life becomes when you only need a mere four hours of sleep, and the rest of the world shuts off between dusk and dawn? There are only so many books I can read before the threat of insanity becomes real."

They drifted higher as Harry tried to work up the courage to ask more questions. "You only sleep for four hours?"

"Technically I don't even sleep. Drow meditate when they rest." Most of the time, at least. Occasionally it was nice to slip past trance and into a deeper unconsciousness, abandoning all perception of the world around oneself. Not that anyone living in Menzoberranzan would ever risk such vulnerability. That was a good way to get assassinated.

"I can't tell if you're having me on," Harry replied, looking even more baffled.

"Oh?" Kronnis grinned. "And what if I told you that our eyes aren't just good at seeing in the dark, but that they can detect temperature as well? Or that drow can live to be over seven hundred years old?"

Confident realization replaced Harry's bewilderment. "There's no way any of that is true," he declared.

Ha. With a smug smile, Kronnis flew a bit closer to confide his age, casting an exaggerated gaze through the air in the manner of someone sharing an important secret. "I'm celebrating my hundred and fifty-ninth birthday this year."

Harry snorted. "Nice try. You could be in your thirties, but you're nowhere near as old as Dumbledore."

They laughed together, for different reasons. If Harry didn't want to believe the truth, then Kronnis hardly saw a problem with allowing him to presume a harmless delusion.

"I was wondering, actually," Harry said after some seconds, casting a look down below at the spectator stands. "Do you remember back at the beginning of the semester, when I showed you my map and asked the Emperor about his name?"

"Yes?" Kronnis replied hesitantly, drawing the word out. What he remembered in more detail was the mopey act that the Emperor had put on after being reminded of his past life.

"When I asked him about that name – Balduran – he said that's who he was before he became what he is now. What did he mean by that?"

Ah, the curiosity of youth. It seemed that the Emperor had been too honest. "How old are you again?" he asked, making a show of squinting at Harry. "Have you ever heard of the birds and the bees?"

Harry sputtered and made a very funny face, a splotchy redness growing on his ears. "Wh- what?"

"It's kind of like that," Kronnis continued casually, pretending to ignore the boy's discomfort. "Only, not really. You don't want to know."

"Right, um…"

Lost for words. Excellent. Hopefully he wouldn't raise the topic again – Kronnis was not going to explain mind flayer reproduction and ceremorphosis. As the silence dragged on, he decided that this was a fine time to raise more serious topics. "Have you come to a decision on your defense group?"

"Dumbledore's Army?" Harry shook himself out of the haze of embarrassment that he'd been caught in. "Neville found us a brilliant spot – it's a hidden room that I've never seen before."

Kronnis had to correct his posture when an intrigued lean spurred his broom into movement. "A hidden room? And you think it can keep you out of Umbridge's eye?"

"Hermione said it was called the Room of Requirement, because it always has what the seeker needs. We just have to walk by its entrance and think of how badly we need a room to practice our spells, and it materializes into exactly that."

It did indeed sound conveniently perfect. "And it's in the castle?"

"On the seventh floor. I can show you sometime," Harry offered. He then paused and regarded Kronnis rather seriously. "You said you'd be willing to help keep Umbridge off our backs, right?"

"We did," he confirmed. "It would be easier if you gave us some idea of when you'll be meeting, then we'd know when to distract her." And when the room wasn't in use.

"I'll let you know once we figure out a schedule. It's been a bit difficult getting in contact with everyone."

Kronnis nodded. "What do you even intend to teach?"

"Simple stuff," Harry said. "Stunners and disarming spells, mostly. I think they're dead useful, but not everyone knows them."

"These disarming spells would knock weapons away, right?" Kronnis asked with narrowed eyes.

"Of course, what else would they do?"

He shrugged, relieved that he wouldn't need to ferry students and their missing limbs to the infirmary – he'd read enough books on curses to know that some spells' names were very literal. "I'd just never heard of that one before. I'm serious though, let us know when you have a meeting. Or, better yet, plan them when she has a late afternoon class to keep her busy."

Harry hesitated for some seconds before replying. "Why do you even care so much?"

A strong gust of wind ruffled their hair as Kronnis considered his answer.

Harry was… someone to protect – not that he'd ever appreciate hearing so. Thrust into struggle and danger at every turn, he refused to do the sensible thing, to let the headmaster and his merry band of war veterans keep him safe while they fought a shadow war in his stead. He risked expulsion from the best-protected castle in Magical Britain, just so he could prepare his friends for the war looming on the horizon. The lion that roared on his uniform, a banner of selfless courage and endless determination, was mirrored by the tenacity of his mind.

It was endearing, to a certain extent. Kronnis just hoped that Harry wouldn't also try to get involved when it came to dealing with Voldemort. "Personal investment?" he ventured, receiving only a skeptical and unsatisfied look in return. He sighed. "Listen, we wouldn't be here if we didn't care. I've made my fair share of questionable decisions in the past, and I can see that you won't be talked out of antagonizing Umbridge so I won't even waste my breath on trying. I'd rather help you than leave you to struggle on your own. Is there something wrong with that?"

"No," Harry conceded, "I suppose I just thought that you'd tell me to leave it be. Or that you had better things to do than help out."

"We told you, didn't we? That you could come to us with problems?"

"I guess…"

"Did you think we wouldn't make good on our promise?"

"No," Harry said again, "It's just that all the professors always-"

"Do I look like a professor?" Kronnis interrupted, knowing exactly where Harry was going with this. "I'm not here to dismiss you and tell you to go back to your dorm to study, or whatever it is they try to distract you with whenever Hogwarts has a problem. I'm here because Dumbledore needed results, and the situation has escalated a little bit past what he and the Order can handle. And," he grinned, "we've already been messing with Umbridge. Keeping her away from your defense group won't be any trouble at all."

---

"Have you put any thought into how exactly we would distract Umbridge from Harry's unlawful activities?" the Emperor asked, floating in the dim moonlight that permeated the Forbidden Forest. His cloak blended with the shadows of dark pines, and had he closed his eyes – bright points of light that stood out against the inky haze of midnight – he would've disappeared entirely to the unwary watcher. Like a lurking predator, waiting high above for ignorant prey to wander beneath.

Kronnis tilted his Firebolt to fly another lap around his partner. "It should be easy enough. We pretend to walk through the halls and engage her in conversation if she ever looks like she's trying to investigate what Harry's up to."

"And if she grows tired of our machinations?"

"She won't. And she can hardly be rude to us."

"You sound awfully confident," the Emperor commented, his words infusing Kronnis with a distractingly warm fondness. He then turned glowing eyes to a nearby tree and flexed his mind to blast a prowling Acromantula from its branches.

Between eagerly-whispered cantrips, Kronnis responded. "You know I'm right. We've been outwitting her for weeks." A splash acid flew from his hands. "Lucius too." The chill of necromancy followed, a ghostly hand reaching out to wither compound eyes and the flesh beneath. "And the Minister, and half the professors," he listed. On the forest floor, the Acromantula's stunned body rotted, melted, and died. "Do I need to go on?"

"You have made your point. I only wonder if this distraction is worth the time we would invest in it."

"If you have a better way of keeping Umbridge from expelling Harry, do share."

"He should not be taking this risk in the first place," the Emperor declared. "It is foolish and unnecessary. Harry is a schoolboy, and would likely struggle against the average Death Eater. We will eliminate Voldemort long before they have a chance to meet on even remotely equal terms."

Kronnis laughed. "So confident!" he crowed, mimicking the sentiment of his partner's earlier compliment. "But you can't make me a liar. I told him that we weren't going to try to talk him out of it again."

The Emperor sighed and turned to float between the forest's branches. "For your sake, I will refrain."

Through thicket and grove, they tracked down other scouts to brutalize, lone hunters that had strayed from their nest and out into the dark forest canopy, where a pair of monsters waited to exterminate them. Despite Kronnis' initial misgivings on broom-mounted combat, it was fairly simple to pause and hover above targets that were stunned, or ones that the Emperor held still for him. And so long as they didn't jump, Acromantulas couldn't do anything to him while he remained in the air. At his hip, the extendable bag he'd stuffed full of potions seemed useless now.

He had to wonder if he was doing damage to the forest's ecology. How often did these apex predators normally die, and was something worse going to take their place, if given enough of a gap to settle in? He found himself caring less and less, his worries washed away with each joyous channeling of the Weave, each trickle of magic to leave his fingers. It greeted Kronnis like an old friend, kissing his palms and singing through his veins. He would've cast more than low-level spells – ached to cast something with real power behind it – but a good, satisfying, Chain Lightning required more than a single target.

When a group of centaurs passed below, obliviously galloping through roots, he eyed them with restrained hunger.

Something else eventually caught his attention. A strange creature, ten feet long and resembling a scorpion. Lacking a clear head or mouth, the hissing noises it created left them confused as they considered it from above. "What do you suppose that is?" Kronnis asked.

Baleful eyes rested on him. "I hardly know every magical creature plaguing these woods."

"But you've already read the fifth-year textbook. It's not mentioned in there?"

"No."

"Well," Kronnis said, eagerly letting fire fill his hands, "it's not a centaur or a unicorn. I think that makes it fair game." A surge of indulgent power left him, a Fireball that screamed through the air to meet its spine. He then quickly ducked his head when the shine of its carapace reflected his spell right back, setting nearby branches aflame.

On the ground, the creature thrashed in anger, impotently blasting a short inferno out of one of its back ends. Kronnis was suddenly very glad to be safely out of reach.

"Would you like to try again?" the Emperor asked mockingly, silhouetted against a merrily burning pine and waving a hand to restrain the beast. His fingers shook with the effort it took to hold it still.

Kronnis narrowed his eyes. "Rotate it. There must be a weak point."

A tremendous heave brought the oversized monstrosity into the air, all eight of its legs squirming. The carapace, apparently resistant to either fire or magic, ended at its sides, revealing a softer looking underbelly.

Carding his fingers through the myriad textures of the Weave, Kronnis considered his options. He was still hesitant to waste Chain Lightning on a single target, and who knew if it was resistant to fire all the way round. No, he thought as a burning branch broke from the pine to fall to the forest floor, another Fireball would only draw unnecessary attention. Discarding these patterns, he summoned a wild tangle of thread – a Chaos Bolt whose potency he let grow and grow, until it had built up to several times the amount of power that the spell would normally require. It came out as a blinding streak of red and white, and its force pulverized chitin and dashed the creature to the floor, ripping it from the Emperor's telekinetic grasp.

Satisfied, Kronnis bared his teeth at the corpse, eager to return to his hunt. "This is far too easy."

"You should allow the colony some time to recover." The Emperor warned, reading the intention in his mind like an open book. "If you wipe out a hundred Acromantulas each month, you may soon find the forest bare of appropriate targets."

"Then we'll have done Hogwarts a service," he replied blithely, pretending that the prediction didn't worry him.

The Emperor was right, of course. Weeks ago, Kronnis had privately hoped to finish this adventure within a few months. Not because he wasn't enjoying it, but because this world seemed incredibly bare of creatures upon which it might be socially acceptable to unleash the gurgling river that rushed beneath his skin, swirling with wildly leaping cascades, bubbling whirlpools, and rushing rapids.

He couldn't just start flinging spells at confirmed Death Eaters – killing their best sources of information would be incredibly short-sighted, and broadcasting his repertoire in non-lethal duels would only lose him the ability to surprise his true targets, when the time came to eliminate them. Most other magical beasts were either protected or domesticated. Or too far away.

He missed Baldur's Gate, where adventurers could find excitement under every rock, bush, roof, and basement. Even at the beach! If he killed all the Acromantulas, who would he turn his magic upon next? Fantasies of Voldemort's screaming face – its features stolen when the Emperor had glimpsed Harry's memories – kept him going. A mirage in the distance, urging desperate travelers onwards.

Still in his head, the Emperor chuckled. "A short break, perhaps?"

"What, getting tired already?" Kronnis countered, again circling his partner, like a seal corralling and courting an ever-temperamental school of fish. He brought his broom to a halt next to the illithid's floating form. "You know, this broom isn't as uncomfortable as I thought it would be. I could give you a lift."

Purple eyes regarded it with insulting uncertainty. "Two days ago, you could barely ride it yourself."

"That was two days ago. This is now, and I've kept pace with you all night."

"Keeping pace is not quite equivalent to demonstrating skillful command."

Kronnis pretended to look hurt, hiding the amusement he felt at his partner's skittish apprehension. "Do you think I'm not doing a good job? Harry said he was impressed by my improvement."

"You are twisting my words," the Emperor grumbled. Despite his complaints, he flew a bit closer, swinging a leg over the Firebolt to settle just behind Kronnis. "I am indulging you. Do not think for a second that your manipulation was clever enough to trick me."

"Uh-huh." Kronnis waited a generously patient second. "You haven't put your weight on it," he then pointed out. "I can tell that you're still supporting yourself with levitation."

A breathy sigh disturbed the hair on the back of his head. The broom wobbled as the mass of another body suddenly materialized upon it, and long nails scrambled across the front of his armour as Kronnis steadied their mount. He smirked. "Don't worry, I'll focus on where we're going, you just have to let me know if you see anything worth stopping for."

The Emperor barely had time to agree before Kronnis shifted, leaning forward and pulling at the multitude of limbs that had wrapped around him. He abandoned the labyrinthine branches of the canopy's lower edges in favor of the sparsely-obstructed understory, where he wouldn't lose an eye to an errant twig.

Flying was more difficult with a passenger, as it turned out. Tentacles fidgeted anxiously after a near-miss with a broad trunk, winding closer to where Kronnis' neck provided both convenient purchase and a way for the Emperor to non-verbally communicate his displeasure. They curled with restless movement and clenched alarmingly when the broom swerved to avoid a low-hanging branch.

He'd never say it out loud, but Kronnis found his partner's tendency to cling rather adorable. Mornings where he didn't wake with eight limbs tangled around his own were rare. The Emperor's subconscious desire and attachment made themselves known while his mind was lost in the fog of sleep, and it was honestly somewhat cruel to restrain his tentacles behind a veil. Both for his comfort, and how it limited his ability to express casual affection.

In the privacy of the Forbidden Forest, Kronnis would take what he could get. He pushed the Firebolt's handle down into a dive, spurred on by nails that dug into his side and the warmth of illithid skin against his own. Following a stream that led them back to the outskirts of the colony's territory, he chased freedom, and was yet again found wanting. Craving something that remained just out of reach.

Trickles of water soon became a river, and its banks then crumbled into an impressive ravine, earthen walls tight around their shoulders. Unease intruded in Kronnis' mind, poorly restrained by the head adjacent to his own. He was reminded of the experience he'd had to suffer through at Gringotts, where the Emperor had manipulated him into a harrowing ride. Here, there were no rails to keep them from crashing into an obstacle, or any nested, long-term, and strategic plans that would benefit from the risks they were taking.

None of that mattered to Kronnis. This time, he was in control. Mostly.

"To the left," the Emperor urged with wavering voice after they reemerged to dart through ancient trunks, "an Acromantula-"

The words were torn from his metaphorical mouth by a sharp turn. Kronnis spotted the dark mass, roosting in the branches of a distant oak, and brought them to a stop. Momentum rocked the Emperor's body into his own with a faint grunt.

He was already pulling on the Weave, bringing the insidious creep of Chill Touch to the forefront of his mind as he considered how they might ambush this wary predator, a lesser being whose siblings thought they might make a meal out of him. Clashing against visions of its body decaying on the forest floor, a slowly seeping idea eventually pushed aside his intent.

It was a bit of a waste, wasn't it, to leave all these carcasses lying around? Snape had said that he was still selling the first batch of venom, and supposedly it didn't keep long enough to hoard in large amounts.

But Acromantulas, like all intelligent creatures, had other organs of interest.

"Did you want to try eating one's brain?" Kronnis suggested. "I'm not sure where spiders keep them, but we can do some digging."

Surprise radiated through his head. "No. Wherever did you get that idea from?"

"Remember Pertinger from the Ministry? He said that they were smart enough to talk, so they must have enough psychic energy to be worth a nibble." More than pigs, at least.

"And how exactly do you suggest I go about fitting its head into my mouth?" the Emperor asked disdainfully, his tentacles loosening from Kronnis' body to scrunch with emotion.

"I'm not saying you should do it, or that you need to," Kronnis reassured him, in case his partner got the wrong idea, "I was just wondering if you were interested." There was a moment of silence, and that probably should've been the end of the discussion, but he couldn't get the notion out of his skull. "That's why I suggested digging the brain out," he added. "I certainly wouldn't wrap my tentacles around it, if I were an illithid."

The Emperor hummed, the periphery of his mind entirely neutral as he peered through their connection and into Kronnis' own. "Now that you raise the topic, was it not you that licked a spider carcass in the Gauntlet of Shar?"

"You were watching?" he asked, delighted. It had never been clear just how closely the Emperor had monitored his party during their journey to Baldur's Gate.

"Sometimes. I distinctly remember you trying it again a second time."

A silly grin grew on Kronnis' face. What he wouldn't give to turn around so he could press it to his partner's tentacles. He'd probably fall off his broom if he tried, and he again cursed its inefficiency. "Is that when you fell in love with me?"

The Emperor's laugh rumbled through their heads, and his arms shifted to encircle Kronnis in a proper embrace. "No, but it was when I realized that you might not judge my true face as harshly as I had feared, though I never did manage decipher your motivations for even touching that carcass in the first place."

"It was taboo to hurt spiders in Menzoberranzan," Kronnis explained as he leaned back, "and ones that grew large enough that they might be worth butchering for their meat were often trained as guardians or mounts. Lolth forbid you ever touch a hair on their overgrown legs, or the priestesses might come and flay you alive. I've only ever seen my matron mother eat one as part of a ceremony, and I wasn't going to pass up the chance to steal a taste for myself."

"And how did it compare to the… it was cave crickets that drow commonly eat, yes?"

"Among other arthropods," he confirmed. "It was a little rancid, but I'm sure a fresher specimen would've been good."

Conversation paused as the relevant memories of cultural cuisine were pulled from deep in his mind; crickets caramelized in imported honey and bowls of still-wriggling grubs, dug from the dirt of the fungi farms where they were raised. "You have unusual tastes."

That was just offensive. "Excuse me?" Kronnis twisted to glare behind him, the tilt of his body urging the Firebolt into a slow circling loop. "I have unusual tastes? You were waxing poetic about mermaid brains just a few weeks ago."

"Remember that, do you?" the Emperor replied, his amusement evident in the way his eyes glowed and his tentacles curled with satisfaction.

Abruptly, Kronnis then turned back around, seeking some semblance of privacy. He wasn't sure what his partner might see on his face as he recalled the pleasant flavors that had flooded his perception. "How could I forget," he groused. "You were very vivid with your descriptions."

"I find it intriguing how quick you now are to protest. At the time, I do not remember hearing a single complaint."

"What of it?"

Hands tightened around his body, either pulling him closer or preventing his escape. "I have analyzed your desires," the Emperor declared softly. Eagerly. Intimately deep in Kronnis' head. "You only suggested that I be the one to eat an Acromantula's brain because you were unable to fathom your own inclination to do so."

No, that couldn't be right. "Me?" he questioned. "Is this a joke?"

"It sounds appetizing, does it not? And is it any different from dining on kidney or liver, or those grubs? They too had brains." A tentacle rose to slither over his lips and caress the side of his face. "It is all meat in the end."

The Emperor's words made a strange sort of sense – it wasn't much different, really, if you thought about it. What was a brain but a strangely intriguing organ of meat and thought? Nutrients that were wasted each time a butcher stripped muscle from a carcass and discarded the rest.

Kronnis was familiar with twelve different cuts of goat, from neck to rump and hoof. Nineteen of sheep, and thirty-four of rothé. The denizens of the surface ate the tongues of oxen and cooked their tails in soup. They slurped mollusks out of their shells and scooped the cheeks of fish from their faces. They dined on the hearts of cattle and poultry, and didn't care one bit that a life was snuffed out for each of these meals.

He knew better than to bring up the diet of drow among the patriars of Baldur's Gate, who served buffets of overcooked swine and pristinely green vegetables, picked fresh from a sun-bathed garden. They thought themselves civilized, and held certain views of what was and wasn't appropriate to eat. What carried the stigma of poverty, and what was monstrous. The sights of Menzoberranzan's bazaar, where eels were beheaded by request and served still-wriggling not two seconds later, would've turned their faces a sickly green. And the rumors of cannibalism in the slums? Kronnis had seen a thing or two, riding through those streets as a boy, accompanying the sporting hunts of his elder House members.

The question remained, why was the brain taboo, and why in the Hells did he care? He was certainly keeping the wrong company if it truly did bother him, and he quickly found that it didn't.

"So what if I want to eat it?" Kronnis said, realizing immediately afterwards how ridiculous it was to defend his choice of midnight snack to a mind flayer.

He couldn't see his partner's face, but a smile was clear in the Emperor's voice, and the vicarious thrill in his mind even more so. "I admit, the intricacies of drow culture are unfamiliar to me, but I will not judge. I am simply pointing out that you may have been projecting your own desires."

Was Kronnis really that transparent? Whatever, possessing an outside perspective of his mind probably made the Emperor better equipped to decipher the unconscious desires swimming beneath his higher mental functions. He turned back to the oak-bound Acromantula that he'd carefully kept his distance from. "Don't stun it just yet, I want to see if it actually can talk," he said in a hushed voice, nudging his broom forward until their proximity was noticed.

Barely visible against the textures of bark, the spider adjusted its legs with intent and rubbed bristled palps together. The gap was too far for it to jump, but a few nearby trees would be better suited to a sudden ambush. He called out before it could decide on a course of action. "Hello, are you hungry?"

It skittered a few feet to the side before responding in a raspy exhale, crouched cautiously under an overhanging branch. "Yes. Come closer."

Kronnis shot a triumphant grin over his shoulder. "You look lonely," he then said. "Don't you have any friends around?"

"Friends? No. Only Aragog has friend."

"Who's Aragog?"

"Father. Come closer," it repeated itself.

What an insistent creature. And it had a concept of family? Kronnis pushed aside his curiosity – its curt responses didn't instill confidence in its ability to hold a proper conversation. "I'll come closer if we can be friends."

"Don't need friends. Hungry." It clicked its fangs together. "Come closer."

The Emperor leaned forward, holding his head over Kronnis' shoulder. "It may be intelligent," he muttered disdainfully, "but only just."

Kronnis stifled a laugh and mentally shushed his partner. "I can help you find food, but I want to get to know you first. Are you aware of what a brain is?"

"Yes. Where thought happens."

"Do you know where yours is?"

"Large," it said proudly. "In thorax. You have juicy brain?"

"I do," Kronnis said, fishing around for an appropriate description and clamping down on an intrusive thought before it could stray too far from his mind. The Emperor's probably wouldn't appreciate being compared to an Acromantula. "I've been told it's a very appealing brain. Robust and complex."

"Haven't had human in long time." Several of its legs flexed and advanced on the branch, leaving the concealment of the leaves' shadows. "Come closer. Want to see your brain. Your pulpy organs."

It likely didn't have very good vision – spiders tended to hone in on movement, rather than details – so Kronnis graciously forgave its insensitive misidentification. He leaned back into his partner's chest, craning his neck to look up into narrowed eyes. "This one's a real charmer. You could learn a thing or two."

"Stop flirting with your food," the Emperor replied dryly, almost with a snap to his words.

Kronnis sputtered. "I am not flirting with it!" he hissed, so as not to be overheard. "Why in the world-" Tentacles coiled tighter around his shoulders, mirrored by a possessive grasp around his mind. "Is this because it wants to eat my brain?"

"I do not like the way it talks to you. Expedite your hunt, or I will do it for you."

"Are you insulted?" Kronnis asked. He'd never before seen the Emperor jealous like this. And of a spider. "You know I was joking about it being charming, right?"

"I am insulted for you. Your brain is so much more than… juicy," the Emperor finished lamely, shifting the claws that encircled Kronnis' midsection. "And I doubt its own is as large as it claims."

"Of course. A tiny brain, with uncreative compliments," he agreed, biting a traitorous tongue before it could ask if this was some strange illithid thing, if it was bad form in mind flayer circles to ask if someone's brain was juicy. Or perhaps the Emperor just didn't appreciate anyone talking about eating him. That seemed a bit more likely. "We'll be finding out soon enough, and then you can watch me eat its brain."

This appeased his partner, and the vice around his thoughts suddenly let up, replaced by an eager anticipation that was far more complex than Kronnis had time to analyze, given that the Acromantula chose that moment to inquire into his sudden departure from their conversation.

"Friend?" it called, scuttling even further from the safety of its overhanging leaves. "You bring me food? Still hungry."

Kronnis brought the Firebolt to drift closer, and its searching eyes latched onto the movement. "Yes, I have something very exotic, actually." He grinned. "Have you ever had squid?"

A mental thwack rang through his head, followed by a chiding tirade that Kronnis thought a bit over-dramatic. It was worth it though, and he laughed as the Acromantula asked what a squid was.

"Meet me on the ground," he suggested, urged into springing the trap he'd been baiting by the Emperor's burning disapproval. "I'll show you."

His parlay of tentative peace accepted, they watched it scuttle down the trunk, dangerously quick. Their own descent and dismount were cautious – this thing was the size of a small horse, with a speed to match.

Crouched low to the ground, the Acromantula shuffled its claws and shifted its thorax as they approached, sizing them up. "This squid?" it asked. "Large. Filling."

"Yes, very filling," Kronnis said, huffing another laugh as the Emperor crossed his arms. "I need you to hold still for me." His Firebolt was thrust into his partner's direction, freeing his hands when it was levitated into the air by a lazily curling finger. "Just for a second."

The Acromantula evidently had other ideas. "Hold still? No," it declared, tensing its legs as the Weave surged to his fingertips. "Food here."

A barrage of Magic Missiles met its lunge, four of them slamming through its leg joints while a fifth and sixth pierced its abdomen. Kronnis and the Emperor were forced to take some steps back as it fell to violently writhe on the ground, screaming unintelligible words in that raspy voice and flinging limbs this way and that. Several of the damaged ones couldn't take the strain, and they tore off to roll from the scene. Milky fluid leaked from its carapace to pool in the leaf litter that had been collected by the oak's cradling roots. It convulsed one last time, curled its legs in the air, and went still, just like he'd asked it to.

Kronnis hoped it had been correct about the location of its brain. He kicked the body a couple of times to ensure it was dead, and then crouched to examine it, careful of dripping fangs. A fifth leg had snapped off and its back end looked deflated, a strange goo still escaping from where its exoskeleton had been cracked open.

He suddenly realized a problem. He didn't have a knife.

Privy to the crisis Kronnis was now going through, it was now the Emperor's turn to laugh. "Do you need help?" he asked with far too much enjoyment, looking perfectly content to watch Kronnis struggle as he pressed his boots to the body and tugged, twisting the remaining limbs to separate their ungainly shapes from the only part of his kill that really mattered.

"No," he grunted. One finally came free, and he stumbled with the force of his yank. The others were removed with a bit more elbow grease, and he then flipped its legless body over, considering it and cursing Lolth under his breath.

There weren't any convenient joints with which he could open it up. More Magic Missiles might batter its organs beyond identification – his previous spell had purposely avoided its thorax, so as not to damage the brain – and using Chill Touch to rot a hole into its carapace would ruin the flesh below. It went without saying that Acid Splash was the worst option available. Perhaps it would pop open if he roasted it?

He was just about to go looking for sharp rocks when a purple haze settled over the body, an invisible force that pulled and pushed until a crack formed along the edges of the broad, shield-like plate that made up the top side of its thorax. "Try pulling on that," the Emperor suggested, suspiciously helpful.

Kronnis stuck his fingers into the crack and heaved, widening it until the exoskeleton popped open like the lid of a rusty treasure chest. His reward was jeweled tissue that sopped with juices, transparent and off-white – reminiscent of the Underdark's familiar delicacies.

Crouching, he examined the Acromantula's innards. Some of the warm meat still twitched, filled with the remnants of life and the firing of dying nerves. Having no frame of reference, his fingers poked around aimlessly, pulling bits aside to see what lay hidden underneath, the monster he'd spoken with just minutes ago laid intimately bare beneath him.

"It would likely be connected to the eyes," the Emperor said, stooping to join his investigation. "Perhaps with a nervous system bundled through its limb joints."

"Can't just sense where it is?"

"…are you unable to?"

That was an uncharacteristically senseless question. "I'm not a mind flayer," Kronnis pointed out while his hands followed his partner's advice, locating the stringy flesh that might once have been ocular nerves and following them through the body. "I just thought you had some sort of instinctual draw to psychic energy." Concealed by several tubes, this flesh terminated at an organ that spindled off in many different directions, attached to just about everything else. His mouth watered at the sight. "Does this look right?"

Tentacles reached out to probe the organ with excitement, and Kronnis almost smacked them away when an errant thought presumed that they might be stealing his prize. "Yes, that must be it."

Kronnis grinned. Under the dancing moonlight of Eilistraee, hunt successful and trophy earned, he tore out the brain of her mother's beloved subject.

It was poetic, in a way. Drow culture would always be part of him, ingrained in his psyche. But defeating the symbol his people worshipped, consuming its essence in conquest rather than the reverent respect was a delectation alighting every nerve with anticipation.

The organ smelled earthy and malignant, steeped in vile magics. Kronnis looked the Emperor in the eye, meeting unrestrained and keen interest with a teasing smile, and ran his tongue over its pale flesh.

Indescribable tastes flowed through his mouth, singing of vitality and aggression. Ripe nectars awaited, contained within protective membranes. His teeth made short work of them, desperately sinking into the organ as he was overcome with sudden impulse, an addict amnesic to his vice. Powerlessly unfocused on the world around him, as everything he hadn't known he'd been craving suddenly exploded in his mind.

He saw glimpses of an endless forest, of skittering legs and running prey. Of webs and dirt and leaves that fell and grew with the passing of the seasons. Of deliciously wet flesh and countless sets of eight eyes, mirrored by his own. The shock of this last vision reminded him of a tyrannical goddess, and he pulled himself from his strange reverie, fighting ebbing glimpses of what surely must have been memories. He saw himself last, astride a broom and illuminated by a shaft of moonlight, a shadowed figure seated behind him.

Blinking, Kronnis realized that his hands were empty and their palms were slippery with fluids. He looked at the ground, and a heart-wrenching disappointment cut through the puzzlingly unexpected surge of psychic energy that still electrified his neurons. He couldn't find the brain at his feet. Had he already eaten the whole thing? More importantly, would any of the Acromantula's other organs be just as delicious?

Reaching back into the carcass to sort through cooling layers of spongy tissue, he couldn't believe that wizards had somehow missed the greatest delicacy in the world. To think, that they only cared to harvest an Acromantula's venom!

Tubes and sacks and other fleshy bits. A frown matured on his face as he inspected everything he could get his hands on, searching for something, anything, with the same spark that its brain had held, a brightness that now resting snugly in his skull. His fingers slid through slime and brushed against the inside of a hard shell. He ripped another gland from a cavity and threw it aside, finding it just as unappetizing as the previous four he'd considered. He tore at the remnants of optical nerves, nibbling at their scraps, but it just wasn't the same.

The rest of this body was only meat.

"You have already eaten it," a voice said, and Kronnis was jolted back into reality by a gentle presence in his mind. Purple filled his vision, white-hot and burning with delight. Inches from his face, the Emperor looked almost giddy, if such a word could ever be attributed to him.

"I- the brain, yes," Kronnis stammered, self-consciously straightening up into a slightly more dignified posture when he realized that his partner had just watched him dig around in a dead body for several minutes. He licked oily residue from his lips. "I was looking to see if anything else might be worth eating."

The Emperor's head tilted. "Only the brain matters."

Kronnis tsked. "That might be true for you, but I consider my palate a bit more diversified."

"You…" Scrutinizing tentacles washed over Kronnis' mind before retreating. He returned the favor, tasting a fading exasperation. "…how do you feel?"

"I don't know." The Acromantula's foreign energy was persistent in its tickling of his thoughts. Kronnis had never before experienced anything even remotely similar after eating a potentially ill-advised meal. He would've been concerned that he'd just accidentally poisoned himself, but the Emperor would surely have noticed if something was amiss with his brain, and he was never shy to voice worries about Kronnis' health.

The emotions he found in his partner's head, however, were unconcerned; brightly surging joy and the tiniest, well-hidden hints of impatience. Desire too, blossoming each time their minds brushed closer. He filed that information away for later, when he wasn't trying to figure out if there was something wrong with his brain. "Alive, I suppose. Like I've never been before."

He certainly felt different – invigorated, like he was more. Kronnis had suggested that the Acromantula's intelligence would make it a suitably nourishing meal for a mind flayer, but he hadn't expected it to be so flush with psychic energy that even he could absorb it. Perhaps this was because the spider was magical in nature – it certainly hadn't been using telepathy to speak, and his brief examination of its throat had only confused the matter of how exactly it had been able to produce all the necessary sounds to make itself understood.

His new theory – some sort of evolution that allowed psionically-adjacent magic to substitute for a mouth incompatible with the skill of speech – made little sense, but while Kronnis didn't exactly consider himself a student of magizoology, he doubted anyone in this plane had ever eaten an Acromantula before. In some way, that sort of made him an expert, achieving ground-breaking strides in scientific advancement. He should write a book.

"You should try it," he suggested. "It's… ambrosial."

The laughter that flooded his head carried an undercurrent that he couldn't decipher, somehow both wry and adoring at the same time. "Perhaps I will," the Emperor murmured, gently grasping Kronnis' jaw to run claws over parted lips, wiping a smear from their corner. Without breaking eye contact, he then brought those fingers to his own face. They reached past unfurling tentacles. Past skin that might be considered the edges of a mouth. Past mucus-coated walls and the sharp points of teeth, until several of the Emperor's knuckles were no longer glistening in the moonlight, the tips of his fingers swallowed by a briefly tightening throat.

He said something about it being unique. Something else about how he'd had better.

Kronnis had just seen one of the most erotic sights in his life, and didn't hear much but the blood rushing from his head. He grabbed those tentacles and pulled the Emperor close with startling quickness, his mouth eagerly chasing the mingled tastes of his partner and his meal. The arousal he felt was mirrored back in his mind, and the Emperor was just as enthusiastic in pushing back and slamming Kronnis against the corpse beside them, crooning with desperate relief.

Gods, what the fuck was it about dead spiders? Once is coincidence, twice is a pattern. Though, to be fair, the first had been drenched in an aphrodisiac. Kronnis had no such excuse this time. "Fuck me. Right here," he urged, mentally cursing the restrictive armour he'd donned for their excursion.

The Emperor's hands scrambled to pull up the metal mesh that covered Kronnis' torso, giving up when it got stuck just above his navel and reaching enthusiastic hands down for his pants instead. "Are you mad?"

"I want to renounce everything," Kronnis breathed. "I want to feel only you atop me and I want to crush Lolth under the weight of our sins."

"Gods." The Emperor's moaning response was an exclamation of emotion and desire, rather than a meaningful phrase. The way his brain shifted and heaved at Kronnis' demand said more than words ever would. It was like music, an orchestra accelerating with a maddening pace, cymbals crashing together and piano keys hammering with inhumanly aroused frenzy, culminating in a rough burst of telekinesis that assisted the Emperor's hands in twisting Kronnis to heave him over a nearby root.

His loud and immediate protests – this was not what he'd had in mind – were silenced by claws across his mouth and a heavy body settling over his back. "We are not doing that," the Emperor announced, though the fingers yanking away at buttoned trousers apparently had other ideas. "I do not care about your petty hatred of ancient deities. Your symbolism is appetizing, but the idea is barbaric."

Too good to fuck on a bed of corpses, huh? The Emperor's hypocrisy brimmed with gall – Kronnis remembered how fervently grasping tentacles had dragged him down to the bare stone of the Astral Prism's floating islands, stained with the blood of gith and intellect devourers. It had been part of the charm; the lack of fuss and pretense. The Emperor didn't need a bed to make Kronnis blind to everything but the stars in the sky, imprinted behind his eyelids. He didn't need a pillow or the softness of a silken sheet. His devotion was enough, an unexpected consequence and an inevitable conclusion, inescapably and unavoidably fated by the gravitational magnetism of their minds.

No matter the Emperor's strange standards, Kronnis was willing to compromise. He pressed his body back, meeting sharp hipbones, caged and pinned. "I want you. I want you inside me, in my head – in my soul." Some slick alien thing in his brain, breaching higher from his subconscious than ever before, screamed in defiance at his next words. It was unwilling to be subjugated, spurring him to assert dominance instead. Smothering it was only slightly more difficult than usual. "Make me yours."

That did the trick. The hand muffling his words moved to the back of his head, pushing him into moss. Pressure around his consciousness constricted with a rumble of drums to bring bright points of light to his vision.

"Very well." The Emperor sounded inordinately pleased. Felt even more so in his mind, where heat threatened to melt synapses. He stripped cloth from Kronnis and applied tentacles to great effect, saving one to wrap around wantonly open and pleading lips to silence the moan that echoed through the forest. The Emperor wanted him to sing with his mind.

Kronnis did so eagerly, begging and clawing and pulling wordlessly at the consciousness above his own. He knew that the pleasure he felt now paled in comparison to the one that would explode in their brains, if they were to let themselves crash together into an irreparable fusion. They were halfway there already – a piercingly enjoyably and jarringly desperate grip on his mind betraying the illithid's urgent desire for connection.

He felt like he was rotting. Spoiled by the indulgence of it all, everything he craved. The Emperor's hands in his mind were like an enchanting rose, all-encompassingly wide and hiding a thorny stem. Upon closer examination, a portentous maggot might be found resting on those petals. Presented with it in real life, Kronnis would've plucked the rose from loving fingers, accepted sharp pricks of pain as an inevitability, cooed, and then popped the maggot between his teeth. A delicious poison, a pollutant just as hungry for him as he was for it.

All the while, he was burning. Entwined tightly with an illithid mind that reached deeply and covetously into his own, melting whenever surges of emotion throbbed from him. Whenever that newfound psionic power vibrated and trilled.

Kronnis still had enough sense – just barely – to recognize this pattern. It was the same arousal the Emperor faintly felt whenever Kronnis forced his way into a death-row convicts head, ruthlessly dominating them and then analyzing his mistakes, learning how to refine the craft. When he rearranged a memory, securing promises from weak-willed members of parliament. When he brought his feet off the floor with naught but the strength of his mind, higher and higher each time.

Pride, admiration, and an ever-lingering possessiveness. Kronnis reached back when his partner's mind next dipped towards him with barely-controlled yearning, twisting to brush bubbling energy against the consciousness embracing his own.

A restrained cry echoed through his brain, a deafening gasp. The Emperor trembled. Claws clenched, cracking and popping bones and joints. A wordless command told him to do that again.

Kronnis could barely think. He felt like he was soaring among stars and gazing into infinity. Pushing at the energy again, dragging his own fingers across the Emperor's thoughts yielded a bounty of emotions, caught under his nails. He tasted the wonder, kinship, and longing that he'd shaken loose.

The world became a rush of white. Pleasure rose in the Emperor's mind, crashing through their connection to drag Kronnis into its depths. He was surrounded by heat. The air shimmered with vibration and a pressure he could feel as it drummed on his skin.

When he was sensible again, heart slowing and adrenaline faded, Kronnis opened his eyes to a faceful of moss. Heavy breathing panted in his ear and an immense weight slowly lifted from him as the Emperor shifted to the side with a groan. An arm remained, draping across Kronnis' shoulders.

He didn't want to get up, but this was quite possibly the worst position they might be found in, whether by Acromantula, centaur, explorer from the castle, or – Gods. He suddenly stood on shaky legs, fearing the fractional percentage chance that someone actually was wandering the forest at night.

"I would erase their minds," the Emperor said from the root.

Kronnis wiggled his clothes back into order, an affair that involved a lot of grimacing as he fought damp and sticky fabric. "That's well and good," he replied, shaking away a leaf that had transferred from his knee to his hand, its skin yet coated in hemolymph that was reluctant to dry. "But I'd still have to live with the memory."

There was organ juice on his face, moss in his hair, and slivers of wood lodged in his armour. He wasn't sure if his trousers would ever feel comfortable again. The Emperor had been right to put his foot down – all this was already going to take ages to clean, even without an additional coating of filth from the Acromantula's body. Tonight's hunt was over.

"This was your idea. Are you about to say that you regret it?"

"Never," Kronnis declared. "I only regret that I won't be able to fly this broom back." The Firebolt in question was fed handle-first into the bag at his hip, from which the sound of clinking glass bottles could be heard. Sitting currently sounded like the worst idea in the world, closely followed by the long walk it would be to return to Hogwarts. "You should get up, before something comes to investigate."

The Emperor groaned as a floated into a standing position, sounding like satisfaction incarnate. "I was savouring it."

"What?"

"Your brain."

Snorting, Kronnis walked around the Acromantula's corpse, kicking leaves onto evidence of their prior activities and scuffing any obvious footprints into obscurity. His earlier comparison drifted back to mind. "If you're not careful, you're going to start sounding like this thing did."

A huff communicated the Emperor's annoyance. "I value your brain for its uniqueness," he said, waving a hand to imprint deep scuffs into the dirt, too large to have been made by anything but a house-sized beast. A dragon was a bit of an obvious red herring, but Kronnis would rather that a fantasy take the blame than he. "Not its nutritional value."

"But it would be very nutritional, right? Since its so smart and cunning and creative?"

"Fishing for compliments does not become you."

"You must have some idea," Kronnis pushed, "I bet I'd taste better than the average drow, with the richness of my experiences – and what do drow taste like anyway, compared to humans or elves?"

"Refreshingly bitter and prideful, though it depends on the individual. You might be more arrogant than most." The Emperor paused before shifting his gaze from his handiwork on the forest floor to Kronnis, a teasing glint in his eye. "If you like, you could have a taste when Ravengard next has one in Wyrm's Rock."

Kronnis suddenly felt uncomfortable, and the way his partner stalked towards him didn't help. "What, take a bite of someone's brain?"

Tentacles reached out to climb his neck, shifting hair from his face and tilting his skull back. The glow of the Emperor's eyes was brighter than the moon his head eclipsed. "What is the difference between an Acromantula's brain and that of a drow?"

"You must be joking. You don't honestly think I'd entertain cannibalism?"

"Would it really be?" the Emperor whispered, pushing his question into the depths of Kronnis' mind, where the remnants of illithid tadpoles agreed with their kin.

His stomach turned, it's contents laden with the evidence of a grotesque crime. "Get out of my head," he croaked, grasping at the claws that had settled around his waist, hoping to both steady himself and distance his mind from foreign inclination.

It worked, to a degree. The Emperor's touch disappeared from his thoughts, taking ravenous hunger with it. The idea, however, remained, like a seedling spontaneously sprouting after drought. Watered by the viscous organ he'd devoured, it pushed roots into his past self. The sun it reached for was the antithesis of life – the dying gasps of intelligence as consciousness' shriveled and winked out.

Clinging to his partner, Kronnis tore this seedling apart, scattering its shreds. He investigated its origins, but the hull that had encased it left no clues. It must have migrated over from his connection with the Emperor, he reasoned to himself, like a spore in the air. A strange intrusive thought, easily crushed and ignored. And it would be ignored – he had no intention of ever entertaining it again. "…I'd like to go back to the castle now," he whispered, wondering if his mind would allow him any rest tonight.

"…Very well."

---

Emps is down to clown damn near anywhere. Mans canonically fucks you on the bare rock…