Author's Notes:
So sorry, slightly late as I was too tired to give it one last review yesterday.
The vibes of this story are literally all over the place. I don't know what genre I'm writing anymore.
Playing fast and loose with the rules of illithid abilities. yolo.
Lets play a game of 'find the red flags in my shitty dollar store monster romance'.
Beta read by Circade and Nibenay.
Kronnis was running for his life.
Looming on a hill in the distance, the moonlit walls of Hogwarts were a shining refuge – a sanctuary flashing between broad tree trunks. Welts formed on his hands as he tried to keep branches from blinding him, sprinting and stumbling his way over roots and rocks.
His staff, Markoheshkir, bounced painfully where it was slung across his back, tormenting burns that flared with each shift of his skin. It was a beacon, alight with crackling electricity that highlighted his position to every being in the forest that wished him harm. And, well. As far as Kronnis was concerned, at this point that was pretty much the entire forest.
Hundreds of legs dogged his footsteps. Arachnid in nature, the drumming of their claws was a constant threat at his back. Some rhythms were lopsided, their creators having recently lost a leg or two or three. The sheer amount gave the impression of an earthquake rumbling behind him, or a landslide tumbling ever closer.
Above his head, oaks and sycamores rattled as spiders climbed and jumped through the canopy to menace him from the sky. A brief turn to unleash another mind blast bought him a few more feet to breathe.
Just his luck that a literal army had erupted from the ground.
Not even an hour ago had Kronnis snuck out of the castle under cover of darkness. Alone, as the Emperor had brushed off his request for company, opting instead to draft gruff responses to unanswered letters.
Kronnis was aware that this wasn't a slight against him, privy to his partner's inner thoughts. Despite providing what he'd hoped to be a distracting deep tissue massage – every night when the veil came off it was the same complaints about cramped tentacles – and a tender tumble through the sheets, the Emperor's melancholy had remained. A mood that blew in like a summer storm, gathering when Balduran's hot temperament stirred to rise into the cold calculation of the Emperor's higher thought processes. The resulting instability melted previously analytical thoughts into philosophical ponderings.
As soon as he'd laid eyes on the name displayed on Harry's map, Kronnis had known it was coming. He couldn't hope to understand the blend of identities residing in the Emperor's head. Was he an illithid born with vestigial memories, or had Balduran survived, only to be twisted into something unrecognizable by alien instincts?
Sometimes, the storm dissipated under the slightest breeze. Other times it would shake foundations and crash through the air, and Kronnis would have to take care not to compare it to Ansur's tempest. He'd done so once, and the Emperor had turned to walk right out of the Elfsong, disappearing into the wind for a tenday.
So when his request for company was denied, Kronnis had respected his partner's answer – an unsaid desire for privacy – and set out on his mission, his gait confident and eager. A monster-filled forest awaited, its allure calling to him like the song of his goddess.
He'd wandered. He'd gaped at the tall pines. He'd investigated hoofprints in the dirt and heard the howls of wolves in the distance. Trails of glinting silk had led him to a cobweb-filled depression in the ground, occupied by a group of enormous spiders – certainly the Acromantula that Snape had mentioned. Ignoring how suspiciously extensive the terrain alteration was, a Fireball had gleefully been sent into their midst. That had been mistake number one.
After blinking away temporary blindness, night vision ruined, his first instinct had been to use his staff's charge of Chain Lightning to take care of the stragglers creeping out from hidden burrows.
He could handle this with ease, he'd thought. It was only a few more.
Only, they hadn't been stragglers, but rather the first scouts of a colony he wasn't equipped to face alone.
A deluge of further fire and electricity descended like the wrath of an increasingly perturbed god, upcast as high as possible in the hopes of wiping the entire nest off the map. Psionic shoves sent back anything that came too close, and he'd spared extra seconds to gather the willpower necessary to warp gravity into a dense pit, slowing everything in range.
It was a brutal fight. They'd died in droves, and when the tides started turning – magic was not infinite – Kronnis had reasoned with himself that he couldn't just leave empty-handed after all this effort! Surely there must be an end to the madness. These were spiders, after all. Solitary creatures by nature.
And yet they'd reacted like a hive of ants, kicked and prodded and enraged and – the sudden pain that gripped his mind and soul when he tried to cast another Fireball revealed that he was out of third-level spell slots.
Staring, Kronnis' heart had thudded into his throat as horrifyingly massive limbs continued to burst from collapsed tunnel entrances, the newest wave intent on savaging him to shreds.
They were on him before he could get far, only briefly stunned by a mind blast. Claws battered him to the ground and stomped him into the dust. Fangs clashed against armour as the roiling mass of bodies fought over their prize, tearing flesh wherever they found purchase.
The panic that had seized Kronnis was unfamiliar. He had no backup, no companions to distract or make up for his weaknesses. The immediate death rushing to meet him and the torrent of curses and internal screaming that deafened his mind as he stared into the inhuman eyes of his would-be murderers prompted a split-second decision, mainly fueled by an urgent need to get these fucking things off him.
Reaching his fingers to where Markoheshkir had been knocked away, he'd pulled on its power to overcome a shortage of higher-level magic, gritting his teeth and casting a seventh-level Fireball. This time, it was centered on himself. That had been the second mistake. Or perhaps the third, with the first being his possession of a confidence that left him unable to strategically retreat.
The blast had thrown back the heavy bodies crushing his own. And the burns, though anticipated, were so painful that he'd almost blacked out. Kronnis' heart then sunk, acrobatically tumbling from his throat to the cold dirt beneath his stomach as a familiar feeling sparked with predictably bad timing.
A wild power had filled him, burning through his body in a completely different way than the Fireballs had. The intense sensation brought shudders to his body as the undiluted fabric of the Weave used him as a conduit to cast Fly.
Not on himself, to his dismay. That would've been too easy. Instead, a small spider on the periphery that had escaped his initial blast with five of its eight legs intact began floating up into the air, convulsing in confusion as it tried to make sense of its newfound ability.
Staggering painfully to his feet in the new crater – thanking the gods that at least he hadn't polymorphed himself into a sheep ripe for slaughter – he'd then made his escape from a fresh wave of seemingly endless monsters. Or rather, he'd tried to.
Curses now flew from his mouth as he ran, broken between ragged breaths. Directed at the spiders – wretched servants of Lolth. Directed at today's misfortune and misery, and directed at himself. Kronnis was supposed to have saved one of those spell slots to Teleport back to Hogwarts in an emergency. He'd promised.
The Emperor would not be pleased.
Kronnis just hoped that he'd given up on the letters and gone to bed, leaving him free to sneak back into their rooms without an earful about why he had a foot and a half in the grave. He was betting everything he had on the hopes that his pursuers would simply be bounced off the wards. Those had to exist for a reason, right? How else had the school not yet been assaulted with the combined might of the entire Acromantula colony?
Thinning ahead, the tree line now granted a clear view of Hogwarts, its lawns a wide-open expanse of no-man's land. Kronnis just had to keep running, keep up the desperate sprint and-
His feet left the ground, momentum almost sending him head over heels in the air. Not that such a thing would have been possible with the absolute control his partner's telekinetic grasp had on him.
"What happened?" The outraged words reverberated in his head like thunder, blasting thoughts into disarray.
Instincts compelled Kronnis to adjust to his new position, arms pinwheeling uselessly as he was levitated ever higher above the legions of Acromantula that now poured out of the forest and onto the green grass he had just stepped foot on. His vision swam with exhaustion, and perhaps the first effects of the venom pulsing through his veins. It was his mind that eventually pulled itself together to help him orient himself, feeling his partner's presence in the air above.
"Sorry, sorry," he gasped, fighting to suck air into searing lungs. His body made its displeasure known, various injuries that he'd been ignoring now jostling for attention.
"I thou-ggrk-" About to defend himself, his voice was interrupted when large claws painfully pulled his head back to push the glass lip of a bottle to his mouth. The taste of a healing potion was instantly recognizable.
Forced to either swallow or choke, Kronnis tried to relax his throat against the sudden intrusion to allow the liquid a smooth passage. Wounds faded as the potion worked its magic. He only had a brief second to cough and clear his airway before another was relentlessly force-fed to him. A half-formed comment about terrible bedside manner was quickly drowned before impulsivity could vocalize it.
"Of all the idiotic…" The Emperor's words trailed off, likely continuing the furious tangent in the privacy of his own thoughts, stone walls harshly cutting off the direct access Kronnis would normally have.
As if the embarrassment of being man-handled wasn't enough, insistent and impatient prodding at the periphery of Kronnis' mind strengthened now that he was no longer in danger of either bleeding out or passing out. He felt rough hands brush through his most recent memories without regard for permission, peeling them apart to figure out what had happened, panicked concern leaking out almost imperceptibly from behind the anger currently throttling his mind.
Blinking to clear his vision, Kronnis made out a threatening image towering before him – an illithid, livid and wild, eyes blazing brightly in the dark of night. A fearsome expression was pulled over features that normally softened at the sight of him. Tentacles were agitated with emotion, tremendous effort keeping them restrained to prevent a constricting of his neck.
"Should probably-" Kronnis paused again to wheeze for air, feeling quite pathetic compared to the strength currently on display before him, "take an antidote as well."
A rounded bottle was wordlessly levitated out of the pack of emergency supplies that the Emperor wore slung over his shoulder. Kronnis curled his own fingers around it before clawed hands could mercilessly shove it down his throat like they'd done with the other potions. Swallowing the bitter taste down, he felt the sting of lacerations ebb, venom flushed in a way that regular healing potions were unable to fix.
Satisfied with Kronnis' health, the Emperor then settled his full attention on the problem beneath them, where angry chittering occasionally warped into something resembling words. "We cannot simply leave them here."
Clawed hands released Kronnis' head once its imminent movement was sensed, allowing him to twist around to see for himself.
Horse-sized spiders were swarming the grand pines that marked the edge of the forest, branches bending under their weight. The dense mat spilling out on the empty Hogwarts grounds, a dark sea of infinite legs, indicated that the rest were congregating. Deliberating on how to reach their escaped prey.
"They might follow us back into the forest before anyone sees," Kronnis said, grateful for the distraction from the argument that was sure to follow. He hoped there wasn't an astronomy class watching from a tower. This would be difficult to explain.
"You intend to go back in there?" the Emperor challenged, squeezing his mind in incredulity and grasping his collar as if to hoist him into the air. A show of force, or an attempt to regain command over the situation. Clearly the loss of control was disturbing to an illithid psyche, something Kronnis couldn't fault his partner for.
They were already a hundred feet above the ground. If the Emperor truly wanted to intimidate him, he would've just let telekinesis slip for a second. That would have gotten Kronnis' heart racing in the intended way.
"Do you have any better ideas? I only have first and second-level spells left."
No reply was forthcoming.
Their conversation paused, the Emperor considering the spiders again.
Something moving in the sky caught Kronnis' attention as he waited for his partner's decision; an undulating blob of black and brown, blending in with the canopy beneath it. As the moon showed its face between the clouds, bathing the scene with the radiance of Eilistraee, he realized it was the five-legged spider that his wild magic had chosen to cast Fly on.
Annoying. If he'd been the one Fly had been cast on, he would've been much more graceful and appreciative. This wretched creature somehow hadn't yet realized that force of will was the only thing needed to move through the air, and was frantically wheeling its legs around like a fly thrashing in a web.
The Emperor, attention pivoting once more from the problem below them, looked up to see what had caught Kronnis' ire.
"Ah." Ugly emotions quickly rose to a crescendo, recognizable not only on the Emperor's face, but also clear in the air – a hair-raising tremble that grew as his agitation finally bubbled over. Releasing one hand from Kronnis' person, the illithid aimed it in the spider's direction with intent. Badly-concealed righteous wrath and perverse excitement, resplendent on his partner's features, stole his breath away.
Expectant, the Emperor clenched his fingers violently as soon as the spider came into range. Legs flew through the air. Goo splattered the trees below them. An empty carcass thudded to the ground, cannibalized by older siblings.
Kronnis wiped a smear of opaque grey sludge from his shoulder.
The Emperor's attention shifted back to him. "We will lead them back into the forest, from the safety of the air."
Indignant, Kronnis shot back his response. "That's what I said!"
"You only suggested that they may follow us back into the forest. That was not a plan."
"That was-" He broke off, a low psionic hum warning him not to test the subject further.
"We will lead them back into the forest," the Emperor repeated, "and then we will have words."
Kronnis did not argue.
The Emperor solidified his telekinetic grip, releasing the collar of Kronnis' armour to clutch his hand instead. Long fingers, conveying emotions that were not admitted out loud, held on like a lifeline.
They were off with an intangible push, masterful illithid control sweeping their bodies past trees that carried eight-legged fruit. Kronnis turned his body to watch as the horde followed, a furious and ravenous black mass spilling back between trunks like a river flowing downhill, an orchard picked clean by unseen hands.
Purple eyes plotted their course, guiding them around boulders, over hills, between roots and low hanging branches. In their wake, flashes of fire erupted to illuminate the scene. Scorching Rays streaked from Kronnis' free hand to thin the herd, sending the foremost spiders bowling backwards like flaming cannonballs, broken limbs crunching as they crushed brothers and sisters. The forest was painted black and grey with the evidence of their passing, charred foliage and pooling hemolymph changing the landscape.
Locating a relatively flat and open clearing, the Emperor conjured a circle as dark as tar beneath them as they passed above. A trap, intended to corral pursuers.
Their flight continued to the other side, and so did the spiders, not pausing for even a second before tripping headlong into Evard's Black Tentacles, appendages sprouting from shadows to restrain and smother. Siblings climbed over each other, undeterred by the sudden wall of friendly bodies before them. Row after row met the same fate.
The Emperor brought their momentum to a controlled halt, allowing steady aim at their captured prey. As Kronnis manipulated sorcerous energy into the power needed to call forth another Fireball, he thought that the sight was the second most beautiful thing he'd seen that evening. A moment was spared to relish satisfaction before he lobbed destruction below him.
Dozens of arachnids cooked in the open inferno. The sounds – the sizzling and screaming, the popping and crackling – didn't last nearly as long as Kronnis wished them to. Conjured tentacles faded after a minute, and eventually the golden glow of fire did as well, leaving only silver moonlight to illuminate the clearing.
Once his darkvision readjusted with the changing light levels, Kronnis was granted a view of scorched grass and charred husks.
Clinically efficient, he identified the last targets, aware that this was not the time to drag out his fun. He muttered arcane words and twisted his fingers to guide the blinking lights of Magic Missiles as they broke open carapaces, stilling the few bodies that remained in motion. A series of crunches echoed across the clearing before it was silent again.
"I'm out of spells," he announced. It had been a long time since he'd felt empty like this. Since he'd felt that glorious aching sensation of his soul being overstimulated by the raw abrasion of magic, the last dregs of power wrung from him.
The Emperor lowered their bodies to the ground but didn't lift a finger to help cut fangs from whatever bodies were not currently dissolving into ash. Aloof as though atop an ivory tower, emotions clearly being restrained within himself, the mind flayer's expression resembled granite.
It was dirty work. Kronnis quickly found his hands stained with soot and juices that he couldn't even begin to identify. A half-burned spider on the edge of the clearing weakly chittered in fear when he approached it, its legs having been crushed by the heavier bodies of its comrades.
He put it out of its misery with a simple cantrip. Shocking Grasp forced its way out of his palm with a rough surge of electricity and a pained groan, but the death curl of broken limbs indicated that it had done its job.
The heavy weight of an illithid's watchful eyes followed him until he returned to their owner, dripping fangs stowed in a satchel at his belt.
"I'm sorry," Kronnis apologized again, more sincerely this time. "I… miscalculated. If I'd known how many there were I wouldn't have started a fight without more preparation." Humiliation burned through him, casting his eyes low.
"A miscalculation that could have ended your life, had you had not made it close enough to the castle for me to feel your desperation." The Emperor's words were cold.
He was right. Kronnis could have easily died in this forest. Alone and pitiful, devoured by the very fangs he'd set out to collect. Why had he upcast Fireball to seventh-level instead of Teleporting away to abandon the endeavor? Was it just a panicked mistake, or was it a portent – a prediction of his eventual downfall, implicating the culprit to be undefeatable arrogance?
"I-" He broke off, not knowing what he'd even been about to say in his defense.
The Emperor was angry, yes. Furiously so. But Kronnis would be too, had his partner been the one to almost get himself killed on a foolish self-imposed mission.
The anger, however, was only the uppermost layer of emotion that he could feel in the Emperor's words. The tip of the iceberg. Underneath lay the truth of the issue – a bone-chilling fear of loss and solitude. He knew this illithid's mind well enough to recognize the insecurities he'd triggered, and at the worst time – the Emperor had probably been in the midst of mournful memories.
Shaking, his hands reached out to clutch the Emperor's. Kronnis bundled his shame. His regret. His own fears and frustrations and adoration and attachment. In his mindscape, he stood before the iron bulwark guarding his partner's mind, offering in hand. A pathetic knock requested entry – an intimate coalescing of minds was a thousand times more efficient than mere verbal conversation, preventing misunderstandings and allowing insights that words could never describe. Some things just could not be fixed with silver tongues.
The barrier was slowly lowered after a moment's deliberation, claws tightening their hold on his fingers as emotions were released to flow freely between them once more.
A complicated exchange followed, the intensity of which would have given any non-illithid the world's most splitting headache. Kronnis was just barely spared this fate by virtue of his extensive experience in navigating the mental realm that made up their connection, and the illithid tissue that had replaced much of his brain. Still, the Emperor had the upper hand in this environment, and it showed.
His overbearing and multifaceted mind immediately forced Kronnis' into capitulation, absently shrouding him in a protective shell at the same time. The Emperor's displeasure and distress were merged so tightly that one could barely tell them apart.
Pushing back against the presence that had caged him, Kronnis worked to blunt the anger that pricked at his synapses like thorns. He salved his partner's emotions with compassionate sentiments and they reflected together on memories steeped in regret.
He was smart enough to have learned his lesson, his near brush with death clarifying that jumping into danger without preparation was foolish at best, and a death wish at worst. In the back of his mind, he thought that he should've known. He hadn't been born yesterday, after all. Years of letting his talents languish unused had festered something in him.
In the elaborate web of communication that Kronnis wove between their minds, the message of devotion was clear, a vow reaffirmed. "I'll never leave you."
Lines of thought extended to sort through his apology. Seconds passed, an eternity in their mindscape.
The Emperor heaved a slow sigh, tense muscles relaxing. Too proud to stoop, gentle psionics instead lifted Kronnis into the air again, where they could press their foreheads together. Reassurance bloomed, overpowering the harsh emotions the illithid had been stewing in. "Your arrogance and recklessness control you."
"I thought you found my arrogance endearing," Kronnis said, finding the strength to muster a smile.
"At times." A shifting in the Emperor's mind caught Kronnis' attention – the tail end of a dismissed thought that threatened to lock him away in a gilded cage. "I understand it is in your nature, individuality that I cherish. But you cannot endanger your life like this."
Kronnis mulled his response over before taking a risk. "It wouldn't have happened if you'd come along. I know you weren't really writing letters – you were drowning yourself in work, and I bet that none of what you wrote ended up being professional enough to send off."
As the Emperor pulled his head back an inch and narrowed his eyes in warning, Kronnis rushed to speak again, wagering that the admiration purring in his words would ensnare his partner's attention. "I also know that you enjoyed it when you crushed that spider. I saw it in your eyes. When was the last time you held absolute power like that over another creature?"
The invisible grip holding Kronnis level with the Emperor's head tightened. "About two nights ago, I believe."
Chuckling, Kronnis released his partner's hands to instead wrap arms around broad shoulders. If he hadn't been dangling weightlessly in the air, his embrace would've brought the Emperor low.
Lips whispered softly against what passed for an illithid's jawline, the underside of tentacles twitching in Kronnis' warm breath. "You know what I meant. You were beautiful – devastatingly so. An illithid reinforcing dominance over those beneath it. You don't need to question who you are. You simply are," he paused to let his words sink in. "Was it not cathartic? Thrilling? When you hold something's life in the palm of your hand, what do you feel?"
"Power. Authority. Satisfaction." The words were slow to come, as though the Emperor was relishing the memory.
Kronnis knew he'd won, smirk hidden against his partner's neck. "Come with me next time, I'd like to share this with you. I know you yearn for adventure – I can taste it in the sea salt that breezes through your mind, as much a part of you as the pursuit of control is. It's why you agreed so easily to come to this plane."
Reluctant grumbling met his request, but the Emperor's emotions betrayed that he'd already made up his mind.
It suddenly seemed like everything in the world was right again. Having slaughtered hordes of monsters, diffused their argument, and tamed the storm in his partner's mind, Kronnis made another suggestion, high on success. He didn't want to return to Hogwarts just yet. "Let's go flying, it's a wonderful night."
"Only for a little bit," the Emperor murmured in his head, long arms wrapping around his waist and tentacles holding him close. Moonlight dappled their forms, rising through the trees in a mixture of levitation and telekinesis until the full force of its silver light finally illuminated them.
Reminded of the exchange they'd shared during Flitwick's Charms class, Kronnis laughed at the easy acceptance of his demands. Telekinesis on demand indeed, the Emperor never disappointed.
Their ascent only slowed once they were dozens of feet above the canopy. Kronnis could see the forest stretch for miles into the distance, pines turning into a dark blob on the horizon that surely hid countless secrets. Reflections danced across the Black Lake, interrupting the darkness of its namesake. Ripples in its waves hinted at movement below – a mystery for another day. Faint lights in the distance evidenced other human habitation, likely the village of Hogsmeade.
Dominating the landscape, Hogwarts stood proud on its hill. No longer a desperate refuge of safety, but rather the centerpiece of a stunning vista, windows lit with teeming life. His refuge now floated with him, tenderly writing a love song on his skin.
The world tilted. Reclining comfortably as though the sky was a bed beneath him, the Emperor pulled Kronnis to sit on his torso, legs spread and feet swinging over empty air. He straightened up once tentacles loosened their hold, eyes returning to the panorama no one else could claim as their own.
It was views like these that he'd left the Underdark for.
He was only allowed meagre minutes of awe before hands captured his face, the Emperor's nails tracing down his cheeks to demand attention. "Spellbinding, like a newborn star. I seem to find myself bewitched anew every day, as sure as the sun rises in the morning."
Kronnis beamed down at the love of his life, basking in the full force of the illithid's fixation, rare as it was with how labyrinthine that mind tended to spread itself. "What makes you say that?"
"You shine brighter than any others in your shadow. Let me show you." An incomprehensible consciousness pulled at his own, requesting permission. Kronnis didn't hesitate for even a second. Falling into alien perception, he saw himself through the Emperor's eyes.
Twinkling stars framed his body, a backdrop of black and white and a dozen other colors imperceptible to humanoid eyes. His hair was radiant in the moonlight, strands falling past his face in glowing curtains. Strong features stood in stark contrast – grey skin tinted silver by the light of his goddess and shadowed ominously where the moon's gift was broken by black claws.
Kronnis felt his breath catch. He saw his own lips part as the double vision stunned him. In his mind's eye he held both the Emperor's gaze and his own at the same time.
The feedback threatened to spark a wildfire in Kronnis' brain, halted only by a quick reaction from his partner. Gentle pressure soothed something within him, not only the neurons that had been about to revolt at the unnatural perception, but also the aching and worn-out muscle that allowed him to manipulate the Weave.
Kronnis would have leaned into the touch if he could, settling for the mental equivalent of melting into the Emperor's mind instead. He was received with delight, cupped amidst countless lines of thought that curled and then flowed through him.
Half-lidded lilac eyes seemed to shift in colour, mirroring the vibrant purple below him. Kronnis' view of himself was then severed with a precise snip of the Emperor's mental fingers.
He waited a few moments before speaking, vision drifting above his partner's head to where flickering points of light bathed in a stunning swirl of colour. "You truly think I'm more captivating than the stars?"
"More than the night skies of both Faerûn and this world combined. More than the stratosphere of the Astral Sea. More than the twilight horizon and luminescent fireflies of the Feywild." The words were drip-fed into Kronnis' ego, hypnotically pulling his attention back down to the being uttering them. Claws, still cupping his head, brushed smugly over the smile growing on his face. "I could go on."
Kronnis kissed long fingers. "Please do."
The deliberation that followed showed an incriminating lack of further material. Apparently, the Emperor hadn't thought this far ahead. A trap of his own making. Perhaps he thought Kronnis would throw himself into his tentacles after a few creative compliments. "More than… the firmament of the Glimmersea."
Expectant expression hungry on his face, Kronnis remained motionless, waiting to see how much further he could push this.
The prolonged hesitation before the illithid's next response signaled the end of his game. "…More awe-inspiring than the meteor rain that created the Sea of Fallen Stars?"
"You know that's just a legend," Kronnis laughed.
"It makes for an impressive visual." The Emperor's retort sounded very defensive.
"It does," he agreed. "Maybe one day I'll learn Meteor Swarm and then I'll live up to it. I could create a sea of my own and gift it to my better half, to sail until the end of time." Balancing his hands on the Emperor's shoulders, Kronnis leaned down to press his lips against the sensitive skin where the roots of tentacles parted. "But I need to become a more powerful sorcerer first. We'll probably need to kill a lot more spiders."
The Emperor chuckled in his head, tentacles reaching up to caress Kronnis' body, a soft display of affection to compensate for a lack of gentle lips to reciprocate with. "I have already agreed, there is no need to bribe me."
Kronnis bade his partner to wait, brushing off the appendages tightening around him. A shuffle followed, more awkward and dangerous than it would usually be. He settled with his head and back to his partner's chest – arms holding him captive to prevent a lethal fall, and tentacles draped around his neck and shoulders like a scarf. His staff was abandoned to float in the air beside them, now a cumbersome obstruction. Comfortable and warm, shared body heat protecting him from the chill of the night air, he stared up at the same stars that the Emperor had compared him to. "Maybe we should have gone to astronomy class. These are all so unfamiliar to me."
"We can create our own constellations. Those over there," a long arm entered Kronnis' vision, pointing to the right where a circular formation sparkled, "could be a beholder."
Kronnis hummed in agreement, gesturing to a larger cluster elsewhere in the night sky. "I was looking at these ones, they kind of reminded me of Halsin's owlbear form. And over there," he said with a laugh on his lips, "those four in a square could be a gelatinous cube."
"Very creative," the Emperor drawled, clearly dazzled by his imagination. "I noticed something much more impressive. Up there, a bit to the left, I see a magnificent octopus, proud tentacles flaunting its strength."
"Where?" Kronnis demanded, skeptical of this claim.
A hand gently grasped his own, manipulating his fingers to point into the air above them. "There, see? The body," his hand was moved in a circle, and then guided to follow curls of stars, "and the tentacles spread out so."
Face flushing, Kronnis' next words were goading in tone. "I see. He's very handsome, perhaps I'll have to have a conversation with him sometime, from one creature of beautiful starlight to another."
"What would you say to him?"
"I'd tell him that I think he has the most alluring tentacles I've ever seen," Kronnis began, reaching up to stroke the coils around his shoulders. "And then I'd ask him if he's a projection imagined by a very conceited illithid I happen to know."
"I think he might be a bit insulted at that." Heavily muscled appendages constricted teasingly around his neck, catching his wandering hand. Kronnis' blood threatened to race elsewhere as he realized that he was completely helpless. Suspended hundreds of feet in the air and sapped of magical power, he was at the Emperor's mercy – even more so than usual. "If you are not careful, he might steal you away and squeeze and twist and crush," each slow word was punctuated by a tightening of tentacles, "until you can never escape him."
With his last breath, Kronnis gasped out a response. "I'd call him a cuddlefish."
"What?" In the Emperor's confusion he released his grip on Kronnis' throat.
Hysteric laughter shook them both as the returning rush of oxygen and blood made him deliriously lightheaded. "A cuddlefish!"
"That is not – oh." A huff of warm breath tickled Kronnis' scalp. Sour that his metaphor had been interrupted, the Emperor only let the faintest hint of his amusement trickle through their connection.
"But he's not just a cuddlefish – he's also my starlit guardian, sentinel of my dreams and mind. The shield to my sword- to my knight." Kronnis grinned, satisfied that his wordplay had more weight to it than the Emperor's earlier compliments had. "When we met, you saved me from falling. Now you raise me up, above everyone and everything else. High enough to touch the stars, and one day I'll make them my own."
A warmth enveloped his mind. The Emperor's pride and contentment, wordlessly vowing aid to achieve lofty goals.
Anonymous against the infinity of the night sky, they let a companionable peace engulf them. Fleeting conversations only briefly interrupted the journey of the moon.
"Have you ever even been to the Glimmersea?"
"…No."
"Ha! You thought you'd get away with that?"
"I did."
"I think I'd like to go. Sometimes… I miss the Underdark."
"You need to remember to forget about gravity."
"That makes no sense!"
"It does. You are thinking too much about what is holding you down. You need to let go. Rely on the instincts that I know are buried somewhere in your brain."
"I don't understand why this was so much easier before."
"I swear I saw something down there."
"The waves are playing tricks on you, how could something that large live in a lake?"
"You just don't want to believe that there's something here with bigger tentacles with you."
Bright light invaded Kronnis' eyes. He scrunched his face, rolling it further into his pillow when that didn't help. Barely conscious, dragged out of a mixture of meditation and slumber, the hooting of owls now registered to his ears. With a long-suffering groan, he tilted his head back, opening an eye to investigate.
Four owls perched on various surfaces in their bedroom. Two on the dresser, one on a chair, and one on a bedpost. Their eyes stared into his soul, knowing that he was now aware of them. As he watched, a fifth swooped in through the open window, starting a brief fight with the one on the chair as they argued over space. Its disturbance in the air had rustled papers on the desk – work carelessly abandoned by the Emperor in the middle of the night.
The squawking was insufferable. Kronnis reached up to wrap the pillow around his head, pulling at the tangle of limbs that were wrapped around him.
A voice complained, thick with sleep and missing words. His body was hauled back into position, a clawed hand draping over his chest and a leg entangling itself with his own.
"You left the window open," Kronnis mumbled into the pillow he'd managed to keep hold of.
Finally, a full sentence graced his mind. "No, you were supposed to close it."
"Well, I can't get up now, can I?"
With quite a bit more bellyaching than Kronnis thought was necessary, the Emperor wearily raised his head, releasing Kronnis' chest to twitch a hand in the air and rip letters from owls with more force than the action should have required. The birds, sensing their presence was unwelcome, swiftly left through the window, which was slammed shut behind them. Telekinesis was briefly abused one last time to pull the blanket back into order.
Eyeing the new workload waiting for them, envelopes torn at the edges, Kronnis made one last comment as he threaded his fingers with the hand that had run appreciatively over his body on its return journey to his chest. "I need at least one more hour of rest. Maybe two."
Been affectionately calling this chapter 'date night' for months.