It was another slow night, and they sent half the staff home early while the owners felt sorry for themselves. Tim stared dismally at the accounting books. Monkey had actually swung by, for once, but that the brothel expenses were higher than he liked compelled him to only hang out. Monkey had rather absolved himself of having anything to do with the Traveler’s Club. His name was on the deed more as a courtesy than anything else.
Eilora shifted in her seat, then said, “There’s some issue at the City of the Dead.”
“There’s always an issue there,” Monkey said.
“We’re pretty sure it’s a necromancer,” she said slowly.
Deekin frowned. “We?”
“Well, they.” Eilora fidgeted. She was hiding something, but Aestith didn’t really care as to what.
Kairon lifted his head. “Oh, the undead problem? Yeah, the guard has been talking about that for a while. There’s a bounty out for each undead slain.”
Dee frowned. “How do you account for it?”
“Take their left hands. If they don’t have one, you’re shit out of luck.” He shrugged. “Is there a bounty on the necromancer?”
She shifted. “A reward. Not a lot. Like 200 gold, but the Temple of Kelemvor would be indebted to us.”
Deekin drummed a hand on the table. “How much is the bounty, Kairon?”
“Twenty per hand.”
“Could make a fair bit of coin,” Monkey offered.
Tim said, “Well, we’re barely in the black.”
“How about we do it and put the money into our expenses?” Aestith offered.
“Not my share!” Monkey exclaimed.
“Fine, Monkey gets his share.” Aestith looked at the others. They slowly agreed to leave in the morning.
Aestith was almost unsurprised when Zanisernix came by. Aestith made little pretense of not leaving with him, and they stopped a short distance away in an alley.
“A couple of weeks ago, we sent a spy into the City of the Dead. He hasn’t come back,” Zanisernix said.
Aestith frowned. “Go on.”
“We’d like him neutralized.”
The young drow nodded. “Not rescued?”
“I don’t imagine that would be possible, but if he’s been captured, he would probably be compromised in some way.”
Aestith sighed. “I’m headed into the City of the Dead tomorrow anyway. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Excellent. His name is Dalzek.” He gave Aestith a map. “Dalzek was mapping the region, but it is obviously incomplete.”
The drow parted ways with scarcely a goodbye. No one at the brothel mentioned the meeting, perhaps knowing better than to ask. They set out in the morning. For some reason, Deekin had insisted that going to the City of the Dead to kill a necromancer would be “educational” for Gil. The others took a carriage and Kairon rode on Franklin.
After only some minor convincing, the guard at the gate let them into the City of the Dead and escorted them into the problem area, where he unlocked a second gate and let them inside. He locked it behind them. They had to leave Franklin behind.
The undead were mostly wandering at the bottom of the hill, and had yet to notice the group.
Kairon and Aestith, almost wordlessly, took off in front of the others. As they approached, Eilora and Monkey took potshots at the zombies. Tim and Dee sniped the ones that got too close, Kairon and Aestith parted to draw out more of the creatures. Aestith struck mostly with his sword as they converged. They clawed and tried to bite. Brittle teeth broke against his shield. Blackened fingernails splintered on his armor.
A power surged inside him and split open. It poured from him like a sac of spider eggs torn to release the spiders. The undead turned and fled from him. As they scattered, they became easier to hunt down individually. The party moved into the crypt. Gil neither lagged nor loudly complained. Seeing the undead seemed to have frightened him to a blessed silence.
Aestith consulted his map on occasion. Eilora started to ask him why he would have something like that, but at his blank stare, she thought better of it.
They found the odd shambling skeleton and dispatched it quickly, all the while hunting for some source of power, some necromancer. Aestith checked every room for magic. After several run-ins with many undead, they holed up in a room and took turns at the only door to stand watch while the others rested. Aestith pocketed a single black candle next to one of the desiccated skeletons. He said nothing about it, but it was a candle of invocation, though he wasn’t certain of what god it might be to. Certainly not Lolth.
He sat down to meditate. Lolth consumed his thoughts, to the exclusion of all else. He barely noticed when his hands felt slightly cooler.
“Shit!” someone yelled. He heard a brief scuffle, some yelling. Aestith opened his eyes, and blanched.
He grabbed his gauntlets from the floor. The imp--that damned imp from the farm--twitched and sputtered its last breath onto the floor, an arrow stuck through it. He jammed the gauntlets back on his hand.
Kairon’s brow furrowed. “Hey, wasn’t that the imp you stole the gauntlets from?”
Aestith snorted. “Of course it was.”
He frowned. “So what is it doing here?”
Monkey’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit, is this necromancer connected to that too?”
“It’s more likely the imp just followed us and saw a chance,” Aestith said blandly.
Dee considered. “But wouldn’t it have had an easier time trying to steal it while you were bathing or something?”
They looked at one another, suddenly uneasy as they remembered the fight with the possessed scythe. Tim reminded everyone, “We can always turn back.”
This was seriously debated for several minutes, and ultimately decided against. They moved on, taking the time to clear another room, then wandered down some more ever-sloping hallways. Aestith, leading the group, stopped suddenly. The others nearly ran into him. They grumbled and bitched behind him. He said, “Someone up ahead.” He could tell by their heat signature that they were alive.
They braced themselves, reaching for weapons. Dee dismissed her cantrip and they were swallowed in darkness.
In the total darkness, Aestith could better see the shape of the other four, and recognized the way they were moving as Undercommon.
He waved to them and signed, Are you looking for Dalzek?
The four of them relaxed their grip on their weapons and wandered toward them. Aestith told the others, “It’s fine.”
As the four came into the light, the others at his back bristled. The four were undisguised drow, all of them male. Half of them had gray hair, another long and tied back. The youngest wore his white hair cropped short.
“Aestith, who are they?”
Aestith shrugged. “I suppose introductions are in order.” He waved vaguely to each group. “You all have names, you get the idea.”
The drow seemed amused, the others less so. Introductions were had. Deekin asked them what they were doing.
Bingath, who seemed to be the oldest of them, replied, “Someone we know got lost down here, so we’re trying to find them.”
“That’s nice of you,” Tim said, obliviously. The four drow interspersed among the party.
Aestith was almost annoyed. Did they want to send him four minders to make sure he behaved himself? Or to make sure he didn’t ask the other any questions before he killed him? Or they didn’t think he could do it. Regardless of the reason, he was irritated.
Tim said, “That talking with your body silently. That’s neat. I’d like to learn it.”
“I can teach you a bit,” the youngest of them said, his face unreadable. “This is a greeting.” He signed, I eat shit.
Tim practiced a bit as he walked until Ryze praised his “natural abilities”. Bingath rolled his eyes. The two were clearly brothers. Aestith found himself terribly jealous of them. He missed his sisters.
Despite Aestith’s initial resentment of the four drow, he craved being near other drow, people who thought more like he did, who didn’t question why he might do or say something.
Eilora leaned slightly closer to Eiranish than necessary, inhaled, and wrinkled her nose. She straightened. He turned and scowled at her. She commented, “I guess only female drow smell like peppermint. I thought you all did.”
Each of the four drow looked at Aestith. The cleric sighed. “One could have the assumption that all wood elf hair is uniformly green and they keep honey badgers as companions, Eilora.”
“Well, I do,” she said. Aestith gave up.
As they continued, the skeletons became slightly more aggressive, some of them even wielding weapons. They must have walked for hours, and Gil looked like he might have wanted to complain, but was afraid to, so he learned to be quiet.
They pushed on anyway. Sometimes, they sent Monkey, Dee, or Eilora to explore ahead. On one such occasion, Dee screamed, and did not come running back.
Kairon charged in after her, quickly followed by Eilora. Monkey ran down the hall next, Tim close at his heels. The hallway was narrow, and already quite full. Aestith watched from the connecting passage as the others filled the hallway. Occasionally, he glimpsed what they were fighting. An undead beholder.
He swore, casting from a distance, but he couldn’t see it to hit it with anything. He had to rely on the others. The other drow couldn’t get a decent shot with their crossbows either, and Deekin was almost blind in the dark.
It seemed a difficult, pitched battle, but Aestith only caught glimpses of it, before the fighting stopped. Dee came running back, panting. She was spooked, a little hurt, but no worse for wear.
They continued on after a brief regrouping. They went down a staircase to an antechamber and through a series of corridors. Heavy iron doors had been installed on some of them, and they took it as a sign that they were getting closer. One such door opened to a circular chamber with a raised pillar in the center. A glowing orb sat on top of it. Staring at the orb, unmoving, were five undead. The fifth raised its head and looked at the open door. It would have roared a battle cry, but the undead minotaur no longer had a throat with which to do it. It charged at them. Kairon shoved his way forward to meet it.
It was almost comical--this giant, stinking minotaur and the armored tiefling who refused to back down or give ground. Aestith worked at thinning down the skeletons, but they would fall and then randomly revive. Eilora took shots at the ones that got back up. Monkey moved to flank the minotaur. Tim and Dee poured into the room on either side of the door. The four drow pelted the undead with crossbow bolts. Cakecake threw itself at the minotaur. Gil stayed behind Deekin and tried not to get hurt while Deekin played a battle ballad and cast spells.
The minotaur went down hard and at heavy cost. The skeletons more easily. After some examination, Aestith and Kairon confirmed that the orb was some kind of beacon, and the likely source of the current undead problems. Despite that it seemed useful and costly, it was detrimental to have it active when it would take them hours to reach the surface again; they broke it and collected the pieces as evidence--and the hands they needed for the bounty. They had quite a collection at this point.
“And still no necromancer,” Monkey complained.
Eilora shook her head. “There were plenty of passages we didn’t explore.”
Gil fought back a yawn. Deekin said, “We’re all exhausted. We should find somewhere and setup camp.”
There was some grumbling, and they walked back out, in search of a more defensible chamber. Eilora drew to a sudden halt and shushed the others. “There’s something coming.”
“What?”
She frowned, listening intently. “A lot of undead, I think. Armed?”
“Coming this way?”
They could try to run toward where they knew the exit was, or go deeper into the catacombs to escape it, but they were in no shape to keep fighting. Aestith clasped his hands in a brief, silent prayer. He hadn’t expected an answer, merely an opportunity to briefly meditate on a solution.
His vision filled with spiderwebs. He broke from the group and marched after the webs. He called, “This way.” The four drow were already following him. He didn’t know if they sensed what he could so clearly see. He was barely aware of what he passed, or what he saw. The dark corridor was filled with spiderwebs, as if he were traveling through a funnel-web spider’s home. He walked through it as if it were his own and the webs did not catch. He followed the path they took, and scarcely saw any other passage or intersecting corridor. They guided him.
He stopped at a wall, and the vision ended.
“Well, where to now?” Eiranish’s words held a faint hint of a sneer.
Aestith contemplated the benefits of hitting him and instead looked at the wall. There had to be something here, but it wasn’t magical.
The others caught up to them. “I think they’re gaining.”
“It’s a dead end.”
As panic set in, Tim’s imp finally had enough of their nonsense and flew to one of the bricks on the wall. Using its entire body, it pressed against a brick and it sunk inwards. Something clicked and the wall swung back with an ancient groan.
Aestith moved into the new section. The others came after and shut the gate, looked for the switch to shut it behind them. It was more obvious from this side, now that they knew what to look for. This area was covered in a fine layer of dust and all the footprints seemed to be their own. Old, rancid bottles of wine sat untouched in a rack against one wall.
“My friend Nick says you should always know where your bottle is.” Tim plucked a bottle from the shelf. “I drank mine.”
“Good advice,” Kairon said and selected his own bottle. Brass Monkey already had two.
Feinrekt peered at a door for a moment, seemed to consider, then worked at opening the lock. It sprang open with little resistance to an equally dusty hallway. He stepped aside for the party to go first.
Tim and Monkey chatted amiably as they walked down the hallway. Aestith grabbed one of the bottles too. Cobwebs broke and fell apart at the disturbance. He dropped it into his bag.
At the end of the hallway was a ladder. Kairon went up it first, with the reasoning that if it supported Kairon and his armor, it would support all of them, and if they were to open it to a face full of arrows, Kairon was most likely to survive.
He climbed up it, found it locked, and decided to bang on it. There were some noises from above like shifting furniture and against all possible odds, it lifted.
Kairon blinked up at a shadow and light. There was an exchange of a few short words, and Kairon climbed out of sight, disappearing over the lip of the trapdoor. One by one, the others followed. They were standing in probably the seediest bar Aestith had ever seen, the grease sunk in so deep the wood was oily. Old stains marred the barman’s simple clothing and the tiefling’s broken horn had long-since been ground down to remove the jagged edges. No two tables were alike and the chairs were patchworked. Scattered throughout the bar were a few grubby humans and, strangely, two male drow. It was dark beyond the windows, the bar badly lit. It shouldn’t have been so dark, but it was possible that they had lost track of time.
“I didn’t think anyone was still using that passage,” the barman commented, shoving the trapdoor closed again.
“Where are the docks?” Kairon said.
The barman gestured vaguely out the door. The group filed out into the street. Cakecake shuffled beside Eilora. He tried to lick the doorway, but Eilora clicked her tongue and he followed.
Aestith’s gaze flicked upwards, at first surprised that his eyes didn’t hurt, then strangely delighted. There was no sky, nor wind.
The city was mostly wood and hewn stone, the streets creaky planks built in layers, one on top of the other. The buildings sprang out of the wood as if some mad carpenter had decided that the buildings should slant perpendicular to the street with little to no distinction between what was street and what was wall, beyond a misshapen window or the placement of a warped door. Any attempt at paint would have only implied that the owner of the residence had enough money to waste on it. Most of the windows had damaged shutters, but some had glass; the glass was bubbled and poorly made or fixed together with glue or patches of tar when it wasn’t broken. What trash had accumulated on the streets was only what held so little value that a pauper would have no use for it. Toward the center of the city, on the roof of the huge cavern, was a carved spider.
A deep inhale, despite the smell of the city, made Aestith shiver. It had been so long since he had felt faerzress, he had almost forgotten the pull of it, the way it made him feel home.
“It’s the Port of Shadows,” Feinrekt commented dryly, in Undercommon.
Aestith commented, “Seems a rather formal name for a place like this.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “It’s a local nickname.”
“What’s that? Not everyone can understand you,” Kairon said.
“It’s the Port of Shadows,” Aestith translated. To Feinrekt, he said in Undercommon, “What is its true name?”
“Skullport.”
Aestith stilled. Somewhere in this city was where his sisters did business. He should attempt to contact them while he was here.
Gil’s eyes were wide with wonder, but at least he was quiet. Eilora looked around, as if suddenly conscious that, for the first time in her life, she was the one who didn’t fit in. She touched her pet for reassurance. “We should find somewhere to rest for a while.”
A group of bugbears looked the group over. While each of the party were armed and armored, those things had come at a cost that might be worth a fight. Monkey grinned at the bugbears until they moved away. Deekin said, “We could find an inn maybe.”
Aestith sighed. Finding a place that could accommodate their number would be a futile exercise in a place like this. Feinrekt said, “Sister, we could take refuge in House Tanor’thal.” He inclined his head toward the ceiling.
He hesitated. They still thought of him as female, and no drow could really trust one another. They had a common goal, and they knew Aestith was a cleric. It may be enough to trust them not to backstab him for the moment. He almost declined, but then Tim said, “Hey, Aestith, why are you the only female drow we’ve ever seen?”
Aestith looked back at the four males. “Sounds great.”
“That’s a good question,” Dee said. “Do drow women just tend to stay at home?”
Ryze grinned, and had an expression on his face as if he had some choice comments, but a cleric was present. Aestith raised an eyebrow. He said in their native tongue, “Something you’d like to share, Ryze?”
His eyes slid towards Aestith, not quite looking at his face, but they were the same height so it was difficult to easily avoid. “No.”
Bingath smacked him in the back of the head anyway and turned to go.
They walked through the city until they had reached an area just under the abandoned manor. It had to be levitated to. Eiranish seemed the most familiar with the place, and arrived at the door first. He stepped off and reached a hand out to Aestith, almost automatically. Aestith took it, the cold metal of the gauntlets keeping him from the warmth of the other’s hand. The gauntlets also hid how small Aestith’s wrists were.
It amused him that traits so common as feminine or masculine in drow were quite reversed in every other race. It made males of other species look far too feminine to him--too hairy often as much besides. And the females looked masculine. It was grotesque, and he reminded himself that if he found that repulsive, everyone else would find him repulsive if they knew. Arcedi just didn’t know any better.
The house had been ransacked so many times that all that was left was an empty husk of its former grandeur. Anything that could be stolen had been. Anything that couldn’t be was torn apart in search of things that could be. It had been looted, graffitied, and forgotten. The dust and cobwebs seemed mostly undisturbed, as if whatever local drow were here had long-since lost interest in the place.
Aestith was inclined to wander a bit, but did not stray far, and knew better than to poke around the giant spider’s webs. He was unconcerned that they might bother him. Some drow societies forbid the destruction of a web, but Enainsi allowed it under particular circumstances.
The faerzress wormed around him and sunk into his skin. It felt unreasonably pleasant, like he could just sink into it.
A central hall, a chapel, had the highest concentration of it. The statues there had long since been pulled down by some blasphemers, lying in pieces in corners, though from the looks of another one and a skeleton nearby, that one had animated at some point. Perhaps the others had been smashed in fear that they might, or might have had jewels or gilding to pull apart.
He approached where the altar was and turned to look back at the chapel, trying to picture it in its prime. There was no ambient light in the room. The braziers were long-since pillaged for scrap metal but glowing mushrooms and lichen had not yet reached the place.
In such a place of complete darkness, Aestith’s eyes gave off the faintest of red lights as he saw the world in shades of warmth and coolness, a world as vibrant and colorful as any on the surface.
The shadows in the room seemed to yawn and stretch and covered the warmth and the cold. He barely had time to gasp. His muscles tensed to run, but the door was at the other side. He spied a side passage and darted toward it. He flung it open and pitched forward without looking.
His boots clicked over the broken stone, then thudded onto something soft. Utterly dark. His eyes went wide, looking back. The chapel felt far, far away, growing dimmer in his vision.
Whatever trap he had fallen into, he was alone and didn’t know how to fight against it.
A voice made his head swing toward the dark. He strained to hear it. “Into the darkness, Aestith’Rix. Into the Abyss.”
The voice was masculine and he thought, somewhere in the dark, he saw an outline of a figure, some flash of warmth, but couldn’t tell. He strained and reached back, back for the chapel, fleeing from the voice, from this test he did not understand. He ran. The ground sometimes stuck to his boots and he realized it was a giant web. He felt caught in it like a fly. WIth sheer force of will, he pried himself loose each time, clawing his way up, toward the door. He plunged back through the door and fell to the floor of the chapel, panting.
He looked back at the door.
It opened to a hallway, no more the Abyss than the chapel. He shook himself.
It must have been some trick of the mind, some remnant of magic to keep out invaders, to strike the fear of Lolth into them or ensnare them until the house guards could seize them. He had just stumbled into it was all.
Shaken, he rose and dusted himself off. He could never admit he had fallen for such a deception, that a cleric would ever become prey to something meant to ensnare their lessers.
A trickle of doubt ran through him. Why should he ever fear the Abyss? It was Lolth’s domain, was it not? If there was ever a place for a drow cleric, it was the Abyss. So why did it frighten him so?
He resolved that it was the voice. Some effect of the spell. No servant of Lolth would have such a distinctly masculine voice. No, it was some conjuration of fear, showing him his biggest fear—Lolth’s disapproval. He almost laughed out of his own nervousness. That was all it was.
But he wanted to be away from the chapel all the same. He forced himself to walk slowly and to meander back to the others. He resolved to think no further on it, to calm his racing heart before they saw him and spotted it for fear and thus weakness.
It gave him some time alone to consider what he would say to Amalette. I’m in Skullport. Where is the contact point?
The reply took a few minutes. It changes. We won’t be there for several turns.
He swore and pinched the bridge of his nose as he thought. He unfurled his map and made a mark where the entrance was. Dalzek had found the corridor, but not the entrance, from the map. Aestith would know how to get back here from the crypt. He could think of little reason to stay and wait like a well-trained pet. He rolled the map back up. If they took out the necromancer, it should only be a matter of walking down the right passages.
He went back and the others had moved broken furniture around enough to make space on the floor, or use tattered cushions as seats. Aestith did likewise, occasionally interjecting with a sarcastic comment to the others’ jokes and retorts.
He found himself complaining about Emerick, then mentioned that what he should do is use a spell to just send him a long string of fart noises. Ryze, of course, egged Aestith on.
“You shouldn’t listen to him,” Eiranish said, lips pulled into a lopsided grin. He had a dimple when he smiled. “But do it anyway.”
Bingath rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that a cleric has better things to do with her power than—”
“It’s done,” Aestith interjected.
All of them laughed. As Aestith grew more comfortable, he pried himself out of the gauntlets. There was some brief debate on whether or not to light the brazier because no one wanted the light, but everyone wanted food. Feinrekt assumed that he would be cooking, but Aestith helped, at first, then ended up doing most of it. It was simple camp food, and easy enough to make, but it was better than jerky and hard biscuits.
Aestith stopped suddenly and laughed at Emerick’s response. He said, “Emerick replied.”
“Well, leave us in suspense,” Ryze complained, and dodged a smack from Bingath.
Aestith cleared his throat, began, then shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t imitate his voice very well, but I’ll do my best.” Then, in Common, “‘Who the hell is this? What the fuck do you think you’re doing? When I find out who you are, I’m gonna fucking kill you—’” Aestith switched to Undercommon, “And then I presume that he ran out of words.” They laughed. Aestith added, “The nature of the spell even tells the recipient who it is from. The idiot somehow couldn’t piece it together.”
“Humans,” Feinrekt said with a shrug.
After dinner and clean up, Aestith picked up his pack and wandered off to an adjacent room, one with a still-functional door. He returned comfortably out of his breastplate. His hair hung loose, no longer pulled back in tight braids.
Aestith opened the bottle of rancid wine and sampled it. He cringed at the taste. “You know, I never thought something could taste this bad.” He took another sip. “Just as bad the second time.” He offered it.
Ryze took the bottle, blanched at the taste, and took another drink. He handed it to his brother and slowly the awful wine was passed until the bottle emptied.
Once the coals in the brazier had warmed the room, his leather and silk riding dress felt too warm. If Aestith ignored it long enough, the fabric would breathe and the temperature would even, but with the drink in his veins, he fidgeted. He started to push up the sleeves, stopped and turned the motion upwards. He gathered his hair and idly braided it as one of the other drow spoke. The bottle was empty, sitting somewhere to the side where it would gather dust in years to come.
Aestith actually liked the place. It was forgotten and neglected, incredibly lonely and hollow--and maybe he liked it because he saw so much of himself in it.
Everything about today had gone wrong at first, then Lolth had shown him the way out. He was closer to the Underdark than he had been in years, even if these upper levels of it didn’t feel like the real thing. He was happily away from the sun and the surface. He could read and understand the facial expressions and body language of the other drow without second-guessing himself. What they spoke about was logical and made sense. Aestith rarely had to ask their meaning or wonder what they meant or intended.
Feinrekt was pontificating on how he ended up on the surface--but they all had a similar theme of escape. The other four knew bits and pieces of the other’s stories, maybe more or less than what they told Aestith, and maybe it was only to hear of Aestith’s past. As far as they knew, Aestith was an exceptionally young female cleric on the surface, and that was a curious thing. So was the truth. Though they had so far said nothing, perhaps assuming it would be better not to know. Knowledge wasn’t always power; knowledge could be dangerous.
Stories--in Enainsi, they didn’t write them down or record them, but they still told them. It may be an oral tale instead of a written one, which was more personal and could change over time and more easily be edited, but it was still a story. Drow lost nothing by not writing things down. They might forget things over time, but books burned and decayed, and the closeness of listening to someone else’s tale was lost over ink.
Feinrekt studied him, then looked away. Aestith wondered when the last time any of them had seen a female drow was. Most of the drow on the surface were male. Aestith was only partway an exception.
He hesitated. “I witnessed two of my older sisters try to murder each other. I thought it best I make myself scarce.” He tilted his head. “And I have no sense of direction, so of course I got lost,” he added.
Aestith commented that the first time he had seen the ocean and the horizon that he had had a panic attack and vomited. This began a slew of comments to similar effect, mostly about the sky and that awful horizon line, how bright the sun was at sea or snow, which began a list of complaints about weather, except from Eiranish, who had been born on the surface. He said, “You’ve been on the surface for years--get over it.” Ryze threw a knife at him. Eiranish caught it and they laughed.
After a while, the drink wore off and they quieted. They needed to Trance, which was done in rotating shifts. At the end of his shift, Aestith felt more restless than ever, and knew why. He tried to ignore it, but there was nothing to take his mind off of it. He had one book with him, which was some fascinating insight into the human psyche at some times, and smut throughout the rest of it. He attempted to read it anyway, laying on his bedroll on his stomach, a dancing light above him casting light enough to read, which the others disliked, but voiced no complaint.
“What are you reading?” Ryze asked, maybe just to fill in the silence.
“Some human smut literature,” Aestith confessed. “I am convinced that most of these are all the same story, in which some human male abducts some beautiful human female, and seduces her into loving him against her will--which is a totally bizarre phenomenon and seems to run counterintuitive with everything humans say and do.”
A shrug. “It’s someone’s fantasy, isn’t it? Reality doesn’t have much to do with it.”
“I suspect that is the correct way to look at it.”
He stared at the page a long while. One of the many graphic scenes in the book. Somehow, the characters kept morphing into something more to Aestith’s taste, and something infuriatingly close at hand. He stared at the blank spaces between the letters and thought about anything that wasn’t arousing.
The stiffness went away slowly, but not the desire. He tried to ignore that, too.
#
A piece moved in to threaten one of hers.
A smile drew across her opponent’s face.
#
Eilora contacted Aestith some time later, after everyone had rested, and asked him to meet at the tavern where they had parted. Aestith relayed this to the others and they headed back down. They took their time getting there. The others were sitting around a table over the greasy remains of what looked to have been a sad meal that mostly Cakecake ate. A mangy-looking cat sat in Eilora’s lap. Tim had acquired a fire beetle on a leash, and they had somehow accumulated a high elf.
The four drow observed the situation briefly, then turned to a corner table where a group of humans sat. Bingath flipped their table onto its side. The humans rose in an angry unison and each group stared at one another. Slowly, the humans grumbled and departed, making some noises about how there were better taverns anyway. One of them righted the table and they slunk into the freshly vacated seats.
Dee frowned and gestured around the room. “Do they know that there are other tables?”
Kairon shook his head and called to the drow, “You know we’re trying to be inconspicuous, right?”
Tim signed what he believed was “hello” to them. Ryze grinned and waved. The other three held expressions of strained tolerance for Ryze.
Aestith stopped in front of their table and glowered. “What’s this?”
“Bugsy,” Tim answered.
Cool gray eyes fixed on the high elf. Her clothes were once fine and perfectly tailored to her form, but had worn around the edges and paled with use. “Not that one.”
When she smiled, Aestith was reminded of the way an animal bared its fangs. “Lady Tirowan Silastre. Charmed, I’m sure.”
Aestith could almost feel the distaste in the other drow even from several feet away, and he imagined it was just as plain to her, and just as reciprocated. “How nice to make your acquaintance. I’m Aestith'Rix.” If the tension between them could be applied to a cord, it would have snapped. Aestith glanced at the others and noticed that they were short an underage human, a pirate, and the dragonborn. “Did we trade Deekin and Monkey for her?”
Eilora sighed. “No. We found a wizard who could teleport us home. Deekin decided to take Gil home and Brass Monkey… I guess went too? He was gone when we got up.”
He nodded. “That sounds like him.” He frowned. “What did I miss?”
Tim said, “We had best friend bonding.”
Kairon made a face. “We went around from tavern to tavern, looking for rooms, eventually came right back to where we started--where Tim sent his imp to light a fire, by the way, so no more Impy because someone shot it. Then in the morn--after we rested, we found a pet shop. Eilora adopted a cat, and we picked up Tirowan. She wants to come to the surface with us.”
“And she’s our newest courtesan,” Tim added.
Tirowan’s eyes seemed to sparkle. “I look forward to it.”
Aestith chose to ignore any obvious barbed comments that came to mind and said, “Are we going back into the crypts?”
Eilora shrugged. “Do we have a choice?”
“The teleporting wizard?” Aestith said as he dragged a chair over to the table. He moved Dee’s chair to one side, as the lightest one, and inserted his chair into the spot between her and Tim. Dee seemed annoyed, but not enough to comment.
By the looks on their faces, this was not an option, which was almost relieving because he still had not found that drow. “We could keep running through the catacombs,” Dee suggested with some reluctance.
This was met with a long discussion of the logistics of such a plan. Aestith said, “If we’re not going to teleport out, I suggest we run this gauntlet until we grow tired of it or find what we are after, then we can return to Waterdeep.”
They debated this briefly, and Dee pointed out that the alternatives would be fighting their way back out the way they came, or trying to weed through the catacombs and keep regrouping in the Port of Shadows, which no one liked. Then there was always teleporting out.
“Let’s just go through one more time then,” Kairon sighed.
They got up, paid their tab, and headed toward the trapdoor. The drow followed down the hole. They had to fight their way on occasion, and went off down a few different directions exploring, but Aestith noticed that, as they went, the four of them were more comfortable. They had taken orders from him before, and had surrounded him in a battle to protect him, but the tension was eased.
He would have felt similarly, in their place; it was impossible to say what one might expect from a drow cleric. He didn’t blame them for the tension. The use of spells on innocuous things, simply talking, and the bad jokes had been the likely cause. It wasn’t enough to simply be in a position over someone, even in a theocratic state. That wouldn’t inspire them or convince them to follow you. Common goals served well enough, but you needed something else. With drow, Aestith knew that any trust he could place in any one of them was like building a house on ice; it might be solid now, but it wouldn’t last. They needed something.
Aestith wondered if the surface drow could ever need him. How many clerics were anywhere near the surface? How long had it been since they had taken part in something that was so central to their culture?
They went down a set of stairs that looked traveled and stopped at an iron gate. Beyond the gate, were a set of dark cells.
They had a rushed, hurried discussion about breaking into them when Eilora said that she saw someone in them. Aestith was in favor of going in, and the others seemed to know that Aestith would stay behind to get into it if they wouldn’t. and they were somewhat unwilling to leave Aestith to his own devices.
Dee worked at opening the lock on the gate and removed the chain. There were a total of six cells. In the first was what Aestith initially thought was a child, but by Dee’s mannerisms and the language they both spoke, he assumed it was a Halfling like herself. Eilora stopped at a cell to speak with the scared group of humans clustered inside it. He listened long enough to understand that someone was keeping them down here for experiments.
The next cell was empty, the one across from it also empty. The last cell on the right held a drow, but not the one he was looking for. Aestith grinned at her. She stared blankly at him, her chin high and her back straight with good breeding, despite that she was barefoot and in prisoner’s rags. “What are you doing in there?” he asked in Undercommon.
Her lips curved into a disdainful grimace. She answered in kind, “So they’ve sent someone to mock me now?”
Aestith leaned against the iron gate. “Oh, you’ve got the wrong idea, love. I’m no friend to whatever put you in here. Are you enjoying your little cage, or would you like me to let you out?”
Her lips pressed tightly together. “I will not beg your mercy.” Each noun held a measure of distaste and sarcasm.
Aestith’s grin widened. “I wouldn’t ask you to. Tell me only why you ended up here.”
She paused. “I was here with someone. We were both captured by the necromancer.”
“With who?”
“Elrixen.”
“And your name?”
A silence, then, “Seija’ket.”
Aestith recognized neither of them. He detected no magic from her, however, and she seemed tired and half-starved. He glanced at the lock and reached for his own lockpicking tools, then considered. He looked back at the four drow. “Hey, a hand here.”
Feinrekt strode toward him, and stopped the moment he saw the woman. He seemed to bristle and stepped back, out of her sight. He signed, Sister, are you certain?
Aestith walked over to him. What is the most she could do? She is certainly no friend of this necromancer, and if she escapes and draws attention elsewhere, perhaps it will take attention from us. Unless you can tell me a good reason to leave her.
The male looked toward the cell. His fingers clenched and his jaw set as if he wanted to argue, but knew he didn’t have a cogent basis for it. He walked past Aestith, deliberately ignoring Seija’ket. He worked the lock open and shoved the door aside. The two stared at one another like a cobra and a mongoose. A mongoose, even an injured and half-starved one, posed a threat to a snake.
Slowly, Feinrekt reached behind his back and drew a shortsword from his spine sheath. He tossed it two feet in front of him with a resounding clang of metal on stone. They stared at one another. Like a dog watching a wolf, he stepped aside for her to pass. She picked up the sword and wordlessly walked past Aestith, past the other three, who bristled when they saw her.
He wasn’t certain if they had known who she was, or if their reactions weren’t merely to seeing a female drow. But then, they didn’t react that way to Aestith. Did they know? No, he didn’t think so. Maybe it was only that they were working together.
The last cage had a sleeping ogre, and they let that one alone and slipped out, closing and locking the gate behind them. The halfling had run off. To the humans, Eilora gave some instruction on how to get out, but insisted that they were going to go into more dangerous areas, so they couldn’t go with them.
Seija’ket was long gone.
The main corridor led up another stair, through a hall with stone pillars and old graffiti. There was another animated skeleton, but they made short work of it. They sent Eilora ahead down one hall and Dee into the other to scout, leaving Cakecake behind. They returned and sketched a quick outline of the next room, telling them numbers, how many undead were there, how they were positioned. There were three doors in the hall the undead were, and the second, adjacent hallway connected to the same room.
Aestith’s eyes lit up with a plan.
Minutes later, Eilora, Tirowan, and Dee moved up the second hallway. The others went down the first, each group with a sending stone. When both were in position, Feinrekt cast Faerie Fire. Eilora, Tim, Dee, and the other three drow fired. Kairon and Aestith ran forward. Kairon held Bugsy behind his shield. Aestith hung slightly behind the tiefling. As Kairon moved in to attack, he grabbed the fire beetle’s leash and dangled it perilously over his shield. He slammed the shield into the nearest undead. Aestith ducked behind the tiefling.
He squinted against the inferno of light and fire. Heat blazed all around him as if he had been shoved into an oven. The stench of long-dead bodies scorching filled his nostrils. As the creatures converged, Aestith shivered and let his power spread from him. Some of the undead crumbled and others ran from him. A few continued toward them and were met with a second volley of arrows and magic. Cakecake broke the legs of one with a brutal snap of his jaws.
Two doors opened. Fleshless feet shambled and old armor clanged and scraped against bone. Aestith and Kairon stood their ground. The others did their best damage control. Aestith turned more of the undead and Kairon felled them one after another, for another to take their place. Tirowan yelled for the cleric and paladin to duck, and a second inferno fell upon the horde. Charred and brittle bones snapped.
They dispatched the remaining and surveyed the damage. Kairon had taken several blows, and Aestith felt drained. Both the warlocks had been hit in melee, and Tirowan had waded into it as well. It hadn’t been a bad plan overall, but it could have gone better.
Tim looked down one hallway, eyes widened, and he slammed the door closed.
“Crawling claws! A lot of them,” he yelped.
“Ew, they’re so creepy,” Dee complained.
“You know, I’d love to have one.”
“Now is your chance,” Kairon said, poking around the bodies.
“Not like this,” he said. “I want to be mentally linked to it.”
Tirowan sniffed. “How droll.”
“It’s important to have dreams, even if they’re stupid,” Aestith muttered. He opened one of the other doors, pleased to find another cell. Behind the bars, a naked male drow sat bound to a chair with leather straps. A fly walked across a fresh cut on his skin. Unattended gashes festered. His heather skin had darkened and yellowed with old bruising, raised welts dotted his flesh. Dried blood flaked from where fingernails had been. His head was tilted at an angle, and at first, Aestith presumed he was dead.
“Hey,” he called to the other drow. “This your friend?”
The four of them ceased their picking over the corpses and trotted over to Aestith. After a brief glance, Bingath shook his head. “No.”
Aestith nodded and grabbed his hand crossbow. He shot the unconscious drow in the chest and the man stiffened, and slumped, dead. It was practically a mercy. The other door next to the cell opened to the sort of storage room he might have expected to find at home; the kind used to store instruments of torture. They were not well-cleaned or maintained.
His sisters had all had various favorite ways to hurt a body. Some had kept their instruments in a similar state, but others had liked them clean, for their own benefit and a sort of pride in their work if nothing more. Only Haeltania didn’t have her own--she preferred to force some concoction down a victim’s throat and let her alchemical fluids do the rest.
The crawling claw door, Aestith passed, and opened the last door. Three excavated cavities in the rock with a set of iron bars created holding cells. A stone desk occupied a corner. One ragged human hunched in the cell in a fitful sleep. Aestith told the others and let them deal with it. On the desk, there was a piece of parchment with nothing but scribbled dates on it, but he detected something magical in one of the drawers. He called to Dee to get it open. Tim wandered in with her and looked at the sparse bookshelf. He picked up one of the volumes. Aestith glanced at the book, then his eyes widened. He reached around Tim and yanked it from his hand.
“You’re too young for this,” Aestith said.
Tim frowned. “I thought Eilora said you were a kid?”
“I’m older than you.”
Behind them, a drawer slid open. “What’s that?” Then Dee spied the cover and added, “You know what, I’m sorry I asked.” She handed the item in the drawer to Aestith and tried the other drawer, but it was stuck. She went to the human in the cell. Feinrekt and Eiranish, apparently bored, wandered in.
Feinrekt looked at the book. He said in Undercommon, “What do you have?” Aestith flipped the cover toward him. He lifted it from Aestith’s hand, careful not to actually touch Aestith. He leafed through the pages. “This is rather detailed.”
“Right? Just lying around in here.”
He smiled lazily and handed the book back to Aestith. “Adding it to your collection?”
The book was a rather graphic, expertly illustrated volume of what amounted to drow pornography. “I’d say this one is a bit better than the others.” He dropped it into his pack. He raised an eyebrow. “Though what makes you think I collect these?”
He blinked. “Well, the book from earlier.”
Aestith raised an eyebrow. Had Feinrekt been the one sneaking into the brothel?
Eiranish tried to open the remaining drawer, but muttered something in Undercommon about Dee ruining the lock.
Aestith looked the small satchel over. It was a deep purple with a thin black spiderweb pattern. The leather was soft and pliable--he guessed brain-tanned and it felt like a deep rothe calf hide, something he had not felt in a long time. He stuffed it into a pocket.
The human had been a member of the Waterdavian Watch, which made Dee and all the drow uncomfortable. Eilora insisted they bring the Watchman along with them. She gave him a bit of food and water. One of the skeletons had a serviceable sword, and the man seemed well enough to handle it after the meal.
They briefly discussed their course, but no one was looking better than they had a moment ago, and there seemed to be little to gain in staying. A necromancer wandered the halls and there were enough undead to cause concern.
Aestith glanced at the four drow. “Sorry. I think we’ll have to leave Dalzek.”
Bingath nodded, as if he had been expecting this. “It wasn’t supposed to take this long. We did suspect it would be dangerous, but it is bordering on foolhardy.”
There were a few minor skirmishes on the way back. Between all of them, they remembered the twisting path back to the surface. The drow immediately parted when they reached the sunlight, and Aestith stayed with the others. He was almost sad to see them go.
Tirowan breathed deeply and exalted in the surface air; she had apparently been away from it for some time. It would be how Aestith felt if he were to truly return to the Underdark. Eilora’s cat seemed just as horrified at the sky and wind as Aestith had been when he had first seen it; the creature stared and tried to hide until she dropped the cat into her backpack, where it contentedly hid in a closeted darkness that it understood. The guard at the gate seemed surprised to see the captured guardsman, and directed them to the Watchhouse.
Dee and Aestith waited outside, away from Tim who was attempting to summon a new imp in a nearby brazier. Dee took some time to identify Aestith’s satchel while Aestith observed Tim trying to explain himself to the guard. Amusingly, he genuinely didn’t seem to understand what he was doing wrong.
Dee told Aestith that the satchel was like a small bag of holding. She handed it back to Aestith. Aestith wandered into a nearby alley, checked that it was empty, and upturned the bag. A single keg plopped onto the ground. A brief inspection proved it had smoke powder in it. Aestith dropped it back into the satchel, then dropped his own pack into it too. Tim received a citation.
Eilora and Kairon seemed more annoyed coming out of the Watchhouse than they had been going in. Tirowan was unruffled, down to her somehow unwrinkled gown. Eilora complained, “They don’t believe us about all the captives, even when we brought the guard back.”
“How?” Dee demanded.
Tirowan sighed. “Well, darling, the watchman left before our report--poor dear was exhausted--and the man who took our report insisted that if that many people were disappearing from the streets, they would have heard about it before now.” She left unsaid that all those missing people remained unaccounted for; they had not made it back.
Kairon grinned. “But I got the gold.” The former guild members set aside a portion for Monkey and they left to collect the secondary bounty. They divided a portion of that, and all the rest went into funding their failing business.
When Aestith unpinned his hair in the candlelight, before a full length mirror, his left foot slid over the carpet, exposing his long leg. He thought they were one of his best features. The silk slip hiked above mid thigh, exposing a white spiderweb around his thigh like a garter. They said that Lolth’s markings enhanced one’s natural beauty.
It was as good as Lolth’s endorsement. Whatever he was doing, she approved.