"Very well." Professor Trainer eventually agreed. "This colony will support this project of yours. But the Elder Brain is worried, you must report back to us regularly on your progress and as soon as possible you must find a hidden place that we can send an inquisition too to back you up as needed."
Harry winced at these requirements. It meant he wouldn't completely get away from this place, they would be watching him. He would have to do something about this one day. He couldn't do anything about this now but he couldn't allow a place this evil to reach out and affect his world, endanger his friends and hound his future.
But for now he agreed to what he had to, to be gone from this place.
With that business done the Ulitharid offered to let Harry rest and refresh himself before returning back home. But Harry made his excuses citing his eagerness to get started and soon was excused to leave. Professor Trainer took Harry to a room above the great chamber he had passed through earlier where he saw the Elder Brain.
Harry had been overwhelmed for most of his time in this unearthly place and so hadn't had time to really think about what he expected something called an Elder Brain to be. Whatever he might have imagined would've been completely destroyed by the actual sight that greeted him. In a tank of briney fluid that filled most of the room floated a gigantic brain, several times the size of Harry's whole body.
When Harry entered the room the Elder Brain lifted itself from its chemical bath and hovered over the green and slimy water. Many long black tentacles reached out and caressed Harry gently. It would have been revolting to Harry but all his thoughts had been scattered from his mind as the thing spoke.
The Elder Brain's voice resounded in his mind, vast, overpowering and beyond reason. But it was also gentle and oddly intimate. It was commanding and irresistible but not unreasonable or dominating. It thought of Harry as its own possession, tool and minion, but also as its treasure, the child it was proud of, and its future.
The Elder Brain praised Harry for his bravery and cleverness. It spoke highly of the glory of the empire that was to come and how it would bring order to the chaos of the world.
It warned him against taking unnecessary risks and promised him that the colony would be here for him to come back to should this prove too dangerous. It was on the whole oddly touching and comforting.
After the Elder Brain had spoken its piece, Professor Trainer offered Harry an odd staff to take with him. The staff was long, made up of many segments and curved like a spine. On one side it ended in a spike and the other it had a wide hand like claw that looked articulated, able to pierce and grasp with some considerable force. When Harry took it he felt it resonate with both his new psionic power and his magic. Once he had taken it, two Illithids focused their power on a spot behind him and a doorway opened in the air showing a small forest that lay just beyond Little Whinging back home. Harry quickly stepped through it and returned home.
Harry made it about fifty feet through the portal and into the woods around him. Then he glanced back the way he had come and confirmed the portal was closed and nothing had come through after him. Satisfied that he was alone, Harry turned back to face a fallen tree and promptly collapsed over it and began to vomit.
Well he tried to vomit, but his stomach was completely empty and so the best he could manage was just dry heaving over and over again until what little bile was in his stomach had come out and been spat onto the ground.
Once Harry was done the shakes began to hit him as he came down from the adrenaline high he had been on since he had regained awareness. He felt deeply disgusted by his own cowardice that he hadn't even tried to help out any of the people that had been captured by the Illithids.
He was angry that in his own eagerness to escape he had let them know that it would be easy to kidnap more people from the world. And he was frustrated that he didn't dare tell anyone what had happened to warn them.
Who would possibly believe him after all? He was just a kid who was basically claiming that he had been abducted by aliens. The only proof he could possibly offer was that if anyone took the time to vivisect his brain they might find its construction alien enough to justify investigating further. But even then people were more likely to assume that he was just some kind of mutant freak and then they would be satisfied with just turning him into a science experiment.
The most Harry could do was send back enough progress reports to the colony to convince the Elder Brain that work on this world was on going, making progress and trying to snatch anyone else from this world for the colony would endanger Harry's mission. Then maybe he could buy himself enough time to think of a way to destroy the colony and protect the world from other Illithids.
As Harry's panic slowly died down his confidence returned. He had managed to bluff his way out the colony. The Elder Brain had no idea what British wizardry was capable of. And if nothing else, he had gained some interesting new powers from the experience. He could do this.
He had faced down a basilisk, thought his ways through the worst traps and challenges some of the greatest magical minds in Britain could think up and survived three encounters with the most dangerous dark Lord the world had seen in a hundred years. He would bring down this Illithid colony, nothing could stop him if he put his mind to it. Speaking of his mind.
"You're that Illithid tadpole, thing aren't you?" Harry asked the new voice within his mind.