Chapter Text
Kyrexas visits you the day before the deadline. Your apartment is grimy, tables crowded with unwashed dishes and snack wrappers. You haven't cleaned in so long. It's hard to find the point, when soon all of it will be taken from you.
Hearing it knock politely at your door, you feel acute shame. Then you think, those bastards, they're taking all this from me. If it wasn't for them—
Then the shame rises up again. Kyrexas is your friend. It's one of the few people you know, and you know it well. Not its fault the elder brain's been on a paranoid streak. Not the fault of anyone you know. You've heard the news same as the others—distant rebellions, entire cities burned down. You've seen videos of nautiloids falling from the sky. But it's all a faraway matter, for people who live on relevant planets, on relevant planes. Here, you're far from everything. You thought none of it would affect you.
Then the decree came.
You've been taking care of yourself, I see, Kyrexas says, as it glides past the piles of junk. Dust everywhere. Dirty clothes heaped in piles. You sit on an old couch, ratty thing you got at a second-hand shop, and stare at nothing.
"Look, what do you want?" you ask it.
Well. What do you think? Its tendrils curl inquisitively. It could, of course, simply rip the answer from your mind—it could do a lot of things—but it's always respected the sanctity of your thoughts. It's one of the good ones. Not that you know many illithids in the first place.
I'm here because the deadline is tomorrow, Kyrexas adds, when you don't respond. It floats down next to you, settling gently on the carpet. If you don't choose, they will choose for you.
"Yeah," you say.
Is that all you have to say? Gently, it places a tendril on your arm. I am warning you: the others of my kind can be horrifically cruel. Chances are they will be. They do terrible things to their thralls.
"And you wouldn't?"
It shrugs. A human mannerism picked up from somewhere. It was always unusual for an illithid, preferring to lounge around human cafes and bars, away from its alien kin. We've known each other for a long time, haven't we?
There are a lot of things you could say now: I didn't sleep last night. I stayed up thinking about my options. I stayed up thinking about you. I'm afraid. But in the end, you haul yourself out of the seat. "I still have some tea left. Let's talk it over."
Kyrexas sits with you on the couch. You've drained a cup of mint tea, a food completely devoid of nutritional value, which is why it's one of the few things left in your pantry. Its own beverage was a blend of brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid you bought a while ago, for when it comes over. More frequently than not, these days.
You've discussed your options. You don't have many. You could leave the city, but you've lived here your whole life, and it's not like things are much better outside. In the end, the logic is simple: Only thralls are allowed to stay. To stay, you must become a thrall.
"I can't leave," you say.
Then we both know what comes next, don't we?
You shrink into yourself, curling up on the seat. The aftertaste of mint on your tongue feels bitter. You think about how you could have gone with the other humans, back when the decree was first announced. You could have gone as people were starting to leave the city, as the crowds you passed on the streets became more and more illithid and thrall, independents fleeing in droves. But you waited, and you waited.
What were you waiting for?
You know me. I won't be cruel to you, Kyrexas says. I promise.
"I know."
It won't hurt if you don't struggle.
"I know."
You made your choice a while ago. You could flee now, and I would help you, but I don't think you want to. You are simply anxious about what must happen.
Wordlessly, you nod.
Do you trust Kyrexas? Despite everything, you do. You like it, and you like living here, and you don't want to lose that. You don't want to lose yourself. You are afraid.
You'll be happy, Kyrexas murmurs. Kind. It has always been kind.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
"Do it," you say. "It's now or never. Just make it quick, will you?"
Kyrexas's tendrils flutter with something that might be delight. Thank you, it says. A pulse of gratitude. You won't regret this.
Because I won't be able to, you think, and then its tendrils are brushing your skull, and it is upon you.
The sensation is like being plunged into water. You flinch. It feels so foreign, so instinctively wrong, to have something probing around your mind. Don't struggle, Kyrexas reminds you, sending a burst of reassurance. You close your eyes and try to keep still, to let it happen. Fragments of yourself are passing by too quickly to identify, and you know it is searching through you, discarding everything it does not need. Adjusting mental weights, rearranging connections. It floods your synapses, your thoughts.
You are doing well, it murmurs, and at those words you feel something bloom within you—joy. You want to be good. You want to make it happy. These thoughts are new, foreign, but becoming rapidly less foreign by the second. It is natural to listen, to obey. You clutch at your head and Kryexas soothes you with a wave of calm, running tendrils down your skin, murmuring, It's alright. Relax.
You let yourself relax. You go limp, unresisting. Rapidly the flurry of new sensations, new desires, is overwhelming you. Kyrexas was right. It doesn't hurt, now that you have stopped struggling. It feels almost comfortable, in a way, a dreamy placidity floating through you while it freely alters your mind. Vague hallucinations of color and light and joy and so many other things, good and bad, seep through your consciousness.
You feel your personality being adjusted, the facets of your self changing by small degrees. Desires, urges, instincts. It does not change your memories. You have seen thralls who lack memory, who are little more than automatons made to execute orders, but it lets you keep your past, and for that you are grateful.
Even that is fading. It is becoming difficult to imagine Kyrexas doing anything wrong.
True to its word, the process is quick. Soon the deluge of sensation dies down. In its place you feel pristine, purified. A new need has been burned into you—the need to follow Kyrexas's command. You exist to obey its orders. It is a fact as simple as other facts of life, like your need to breathe. A truth greater than any other.
My thrall, Kyrexas says, comforting. You had never noticed before how wonderful it sounded, how wonderful it was in every respect. You can't imagine not wanting to stay by its side, forever.
What were you afraid of?
"I love you," you whisper, leaning against it. You let it wrap its tendrils around your shoulders. You feel happier than you have been for a long time. As if a fog has lifted—every cell within you singing joy and purpose. The fear is gone.
You know that you are not the same person you were before, but you no longer care.
Kyrexas embraces you. Its proximity infuses you with an almost helpless bliss. You want to stay here forever, held in its grip, but eventually it pulls away. Once the decree comes into effect, you will no longer be able to live on your own, it says. You must pack your belongings. That is your first task—to decide what you want to keep, and what you want to discard.
The prospect of making decisions on your own seems daunting, somehow. "What about you? Is there anything you want?"
I want you to practice acting independently. It can be difficult, in your state, to maintain free will. Without routine exercise, you will lose the capacity to act on your own. It tilts its head. I know you no longer care, but your past self would have wanted this.
And this means Kyrexas wants it, and now you want everything it wants. How lucky you are, to belong to someone who cares for you so much.
You get to work.