The Labyrinth of Eyes: “There’s no traps here, people”
The Briny Maze: “It’s a fancy fork set”
Denizens of the Maze: “There is, in general, a preponderance of eyes”

---

The Labyrinth of Eyes

The company emerged from the portal into a dark corridor, illuminated by a strange silver-and-grey light. The moist stone walls, almost twenty feet high, were covered with dozens of staring eyes that twitch and blink, following every move.

Not surprisingly, everyone had the strange sensation they were being watched.

As the company oriented, the portal shrank down to a pinprick and vanished with a faint pop.

“That’s the same ‘pop’ that happens when I do this,” Sifer said as he jammed his dagger into the nearest eye. It withered and closed in an instant before blinking out of existence. “Magic?”

“Or freaky,” Uthar shrugged.

“It will take time, but are we going to puncture all these eyes?” Sifer said, daggering a few more for good measure.

“It’s the Lord’s work.”

Eli had not time for that. He walked ahead, following the north corridor.

“I notice we no longer check for traps?” Sifer said. Pop.

“There’s no traps here, people,” Eli called over his shoulder.

“Are we ready, mentally, for this?” Three said tiredly. “Walking down a corridor covered with eyes without Marko checking seems a bit lackadaisical.”

“It is.” Pop.

Eli found himself facing a very long corridor that led to darkness, with another corridor leading south at the midpoint. “This place is huge,” he called over his shoulder.

Uthar took the other passage, seeing Eli ahead once he rounded the corner. The company followed, Three examining the floor but seeing it was too damp for tracks. There were however spores floating in the humid air, so he covered his face as a precaution.

Sifer looked to Eli standing at the further junction. “If you go around that corner I’m just going to let you go,” he shrugged.

“Sifer you don’t let me do anything. I’m not answerable to you.” None the less he waited for Uthar and his aura. The eyes followed the company accusingly with every step.

The small corridor to the south was truncated at a large circular hole, eight-foot across, surrounded by a reddish-purple ring like an iris around a pupil. “Mister Marko do you want to stealth ahead to see what’s down there?”

Marko nodded and shifted down to the opening. A semi-circular, constructed groove lay in the floor and ceiling above. Both were covered in a vivid lime slime, as were the walls that line either side. “Dwarven work, perhaps,” he reported. he peered into the ‘eyehole’ and saw a circular tunnel continued ahead. He poked the rapier into the green goop, drawing a sample level with his eyeline. He smelled it carefully, studying it for poison. “Smells like a naturally occurring slime, not poison,” he called, “Come to me.”

The company gathered at the strange opening. Water had pooled in the floor tracks, like run off that might explain the goop. Marko flew inside, checking carefully. The rounded walls made it feel like the inside of a sewer or pipe. He landed on the floor and continued ahead, following the corridor around in a right angled bend. “Follow, it’s safe.”

“What are these corridors here for?” Eli asked as he climbed inside. “What was the point of the corridor we came from?”

Marko looked around the corner to see a large heap of broken glass that sparkled in a variety of colours. Another circular opening, with the same slime-covered grooves, lay before the piles of glass. He approached, finding the small room ahead was a dead end. “Decorative I think, not just smashed bottles,” he said picking up shards. On the walls he noticed small alcoves and some mounting points, perhaps for shelving now removed or destroyed. He tried to piece together a selection of same-coloured glass but quickly realised it was a fruitless task.

Three joined Marko, his steps crunching underfoot as he entered the room. He too looked closely at the glass, and his background made him sure of what he saw. “I think we’re walking through a museum, or gallery. This was a fine vase,” he said holding a semi-intact piece aloft.

Idris remained behind, trying to make sense of the slime in the groove. Whilst it was natural, it was different to the ooze covering the eye-laden walls. More like lubrication…

---

“Marko? These tracks look like a circular arc. I think this thing we’re in rotates?” Idris said.

“I do too. Look at the crack in the wall at each of the entrances around the tracks.”

“Then we need to take great care because if this piece turns and we don’t know how to unturn it then we’ll be trapped.”

“But why is it like this?” Three said, “Why the eyeballs?”

“No idea, you’re asking the wrong eyeball.”

“Should we look around the non-swivelling part of this maze before we attempt to swivel this part?” Eli suggested.

“That sounds wise,” Idris said.

“I agree,” Three said.

“Thank you for your support, master,” Eli smiled.

Idris nodded, despite Eli’s eyes being firmly trained on Three.

Pop. Pop. Sifer continued his eye destroying ways as the company retreated.

“You’re going to pay a price for that,” Three groaned.

“Interestingly some of the ones from the entrance have started to respawn,” Sifer said glancing back along the corridor where fresh eyes were emerging.

Marko led the way opposite, clearing the floors for traps. Eli followed close behind, impatient to get ahead. At the end of the corridor Marko stopped and held his hand up. “I hear…crying?” he whispered, confused.

“Is it Eli?” Three whispered back to a stifled laugh. Eli waved Three away and stepped around the corner into a large chamber divided by thin stone walls, with smashed tables and tools filling shallow alcoves. “Like the glass—smashed in anger not just looted,” Eli muttered to Uthar.

“I hear the sobs too,” Uthar said quietly as he stepped south. Eli nodded, taking the northern path to circle toward the sound. Uthar stepped ahead toward the sighs and tears and stumbled to a halt when he saw the source of all this misery.

---

A slimy conglomeration of tear-rimmed eyes in many sizes and shapes floated in the corridor ahead. As Uthar appeared all the eyes turned on him.

“Why do you disturb Goculus’s misery? Is it not enough that I am stripped of my reason to exist?” From the depths of melancholy the creature bellowed out a heaving sob, a wave of crushing despair that sent Three and Marko into a fit of sympathetic wallowing.

Eli, seeing Marko suddenly bawling, sprinted past but took the wrong turn. He skidded to a stop on seeing Three also collapsed to his knees, deep anguish etched upon his ruined face. Eli dropped too, wrapping his arms around a grateful Three. “Devourer! What has happened?”

Three looked up to meet Eli’s concerned gaze, then his eyes lowered to something over Eli’s shoulder. There were no tears, just gasps of barely contained despair. Eli turned his head and startled on seeing Goculus. He sprung to his feet and drew his sword, ready to defend his mentor.

Further back, Sifer shrugged the sadness away. He couldn’t see the threat, but he guessed: he reached into his pocket and jammed two globs of well-used wax into his ears, then ran down the corridor to join Eli. He grabbed the incapacitated Three and pulled him to safety.

Last to arrive on the scene was Idris, who was the only one to remain unshaken on seeing the monstrosity ahead. He was curious about what this creature could be, and why it was so disturbed. He probed what he hoped was the mind behind the eyes, detecting the thoughts that lay within. The surface level was obvious: Goculus was drowning in misery. It had been transformed from something far more powerful into this new form, a useless, worthless, nothing. A bundle of eyes stripped of all worth. Idris probed again, looking for what this thing was prior to this regretful transformation. He found a hidden path the led deeper, and followed it. Goculus was right: it was once a dreaded and dreadful beholder, with a towering ego and every trapping of power and success. This maze was its lair and it ruled supreme, before a troupe of uppity mind-flayers blasted the beholder’s sanity and transformed it into a miserable, obsessive shell of its former self. Only one thing remained of Goculus’s ego: an abiding and deep hatred of mind-flayers.

“Just like me,” Idris muttered to himself. He knew beholders were all total assholes, but Goculus was no longer that. He turned to Uthar. “This used to be a beholder before it was tortured by Ghaik,” he spat. He turned back to the creature. “Goculus, are the flayers still here?”

“They live! Theyyyy liivvee! They have tortured me, taken everything from me!!” Goculus cried with growing rage.

“Where?”

“Everywhere. They’re everywhere!!”

“It’s insane,” Idris said softly.

Uthar was shocked to here empathy in Idris’s tone. Just look at that thing. He wasn’t going to wait to find out if Idris was right. He jumped ahead and sliced his sword through the soft flesh of Goculus, who let out a writhing howl.

“You will pay the price that they did not!” Goculus cried with a sob. Every eye opened wide to release a withering glare, scarlet energy sweeping the room ahead. Eli was directly in the path, bombarded, whilst the rest of the company variously avoided most of the impact. Two pseudopods reached out from the blob of eyes and wrapped themselves around Uthar and Eli; Uthar fought it off, but Eli felt the dreadful contact and rocked back to the psychic flash, resisting the accompanying urge to flee but barely. “You feel my pain, you know my pain!” Goculus bellowed.

Sifer watched the eyes on the wall, wondering if they would respond to Goculus. But they were all focussed on the fight, nothing more sinister. A surveillance system, he thought. He stepped out and lined up Goculus; it was an easy target. He loaded up with all he had and unleashed three precise shots. POP POP. Rather more satisfying than the eyes on the walls. The third shot caused Uthar to duck his head as it shattered into the wall by his side.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Idris joined the fray. He had tried, but now it was time to finish this—his sorcerer’s burst sent Goculus further into insanity. “It’s a mercy killing,” he muttered. Uthar swung, but such was the flood of offal and eye viscera that he failed with both attempts.

Sifer hauled Three to his feet, bolstering him with an encouraging slap across the shoulders. Three took a breath and walked forward toward the chaotic scene, praying. He opened his eyes, made direct contact, and held his hands aloft: “Go to sleep!” A burst of radiance shone forth and sent Goculus to the death it so deeply deserved.

---

“Master, can a thing like that even find heaven?” Eli said, toeing the mass of flesh and mucus.

“I think Goculus was already in hell,” Three said before Idris could answer.

“Then you have done great work.”

“We all have. It was living in a misery.”

“So should we kill hobos then?”

“Think on it, Eli,” Three frowned.

“And master, I don’t like to put myself ahead of others, but I am losing a fair amount of blood?”

Three nodded and fixed that situation, rather weakly (had Goculus’s sorrow impacted his healing magic?). He sighed and started rifling through the detritus in the room. There was very little of worth, but a few items stood out: a set of jeweller’s tools, three rubies carved to look like eyeballs. Marko uncovered a statue that he showed triumphantly—a statuette of a beholder with emeralds at the ends of the eyestalks and a huge diamond for a central eye.

“He did have a big ego,” Idris smirked on seeing the self-portrait. “There is no more path,” he added having followed the various turns in Goculus’s lair.

“So we all need to gather on the rotating circle,” Eli said. “How did that floating ball of eyes use it?”

“The same way I do,” Idris said. “With their minds.”

“So you know these guys?”

“I know of them, but I’ve never seen one—thankfully. I hear they’re not pleasant.”

“I don’t know that anyone has seen whatever that was,” Three said.

“Three, that was a beholder. It was changed by mind flayers.”

“I hope it’s not mind flayers, plural. Because I know from my reading, and you know from reality, they are—”

“We’ve killed two!” Idris protested.

“Yes but not ones ready to go to war. You know that.”

“I’m familiar,” Idris deadpanned.

“The eyeballs have all regenerated,” Sifer noted as the company returned to the middle of the maze. “They’re not to do with the assailant, they’re to do with the jailer. The mind flayers.”

Eli stood before the circular central chamber. “Can I make a suggestion? Surely, if that room were to rotate, the controls would be within it. So that someone who stepped inside could rotate it themselves?”

This made good sense given there had been no sign of an external control. But despite a thorough search, no mechanism could be found. “We could shut down all their eyes?” Sifer said hopefully, to shakes of ‘no’. Idris tried speaking in Deep Speech inside the centre, trying variations on ‘turn’, ‘rotate’, and the like, with no luck. Telepathy was no better.

“What about if it just needs a push?” Uthar said to the stumped company. “Maybe we just need to physically rotate it?”

“But there’s no leverage point?” Sifer sighed.

“If you stand and push against the outside wall?” Eli said, “One of us in one entrance, one in the other?” He and Idris positioned themselves before both had the same thought: once the walls move will there be no further purchase? If not the company would be trapped inside.

Sifer had a sudden flash. “You know what we need? An immovable bar. You put it in position and haul away! And as luck would have it I believe Acererak left us one,” he grinned.

“Of course! You’re a genius!” Idris cried as Marko pulled the said object out of his sack.

It was a very strange thing. The holder could position the rod in empty space and it would lock into place with no support. One of the simplest but most powerful demonstrations of magic, often used to entertain children and vaudeville shows. But Marko, on finding it, had known just how useful it was.

Uthar, strongest of the company, set the rod in place in the midpoint of the internal corridor. He gripped it and hauled with all his strength.

The entire centre of the maze started to shift anticlockwise, making the corridor beyond slowly disappear as it turned. “It moves far more easily that I would expect,” Uthar said happily. He released the rod and repositioned it, repeating the trick. Idris ran his hand along the revealed inner wall, finding it heavily greased, near impossible to grip or get a hand hold. “And this is why we had to be careful,” he said.

---

After several moves, a new corridor leading west was revealed. Uthar grinned, wiping the sweat from his brow.

Marko stepped out, finding the same dank atmosphere and eternally watching eyes. He led the company ahead, turning south until a smallish chamber was revealed to the east. “Get up there Uthar before Marko walks in there on his own,” Sifer urged.

“Would you mind, Mister Marko, if we put a—long, not short—but a longish leash you on?” Eli asked innocently.

Marko turned back. “Yes I would mind. Would you mind if you got stabbed in the eye accidentally?”

“Well to be fair, Marko,” Idris said, “In the Tomb you did that to yourself!”

“Stabbed himself in the eye?” Uthar asked, wracking his memory.

“No—he roped himself onto a leash!”

“That was a Tomb. Of horrors,” Marko frowned and stepped into the room. On the far end of the room, ten stone rods protruded from the wall. One ended at a cup the size of an eyeball, while the others all had jagged ends. The stone floor beneath the rods was stained a sickly pink colour. Marko flew to the intact rod and hovered before it. It was obvious that the cup was designed for resting an eye against to look inside the rod. “The pink stain on the floor—blood I guess—is old. Dried and cracked,” he reported.

Sifer walked up behind Marko and rested a hand on his shoulder. He motioned to the eye-cup. “Look inside,” he suggested.

Marko wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. He did a careful check but could find no trap or obvious danger. “Maybe step away, just in case?”

“I was going to protect you if something happened, but ok.”

Marko leaned into the cup. It sealed over his eye with a soft slurp. He saw a hideous pool of grotesque brine, miles-deep and swirling slowly with murky dim green light that welled up from the depths. The sight filled Marko with an existential dread like a psychic sliver inserted into his mind. At the pool’s bottom he saw a tiny, dark hole and somehow knew it to be a powerful gate to a place deep in the Far Realm.

As the knowledge flooded Marko’s conscious mind, his unconscious mind started to collapse. So wrong was what he was seeing that it could no longer function, and the horror quickly overwhelmed his every sense. His mind blanked and his every motivation disappeared. The last thing he saw before insanity took him was a dark shadow flittering through the murky depths.

Marko’s head dropped, breaking the seal, as he stood swaying softly. “Marko?” Sifer called. Marko turned, blank faced, though there was a hint of recognition.

“It’s just like what happened to Eli in the Tomb,” Three groaned, “I can restore him.” He prayed for Kelemvor to return Marko’s intelligence, and moments later Marko’s glance sharpened as he looked around. “I saw something I wish I hadn’t seen it I…I…it was a pool it was green there was something in it and it was deep and it was long and—”

Marko’s usual florid and rapid speech was a dull, monotonous monologue. “I’ll have to do more,” Three said, and added a second more powerful prayer into the mix.

“—There was no end to it. Until there was! At the very foot of the pool: a gateway, a tiny hole. And that hole led somewhere that I instinctively knew, without knowing why,” Marko said dramatically, his vim fully returned. “The Far Realm…”

“Oh he’s actually saying something,” Sifer laughed. “I thought he was just dribbling.”

“I wasn’t listening, I couldn’t stand it,” Eli nodded.

Marko turned to Three. “Thank you!”

“Did you say you saw the Far Realm?” Idris said cautiously.

“Yes—what is it?”

Idris looked around the company. “It’s a place that exists outside our reality, where eldritch gods of insane and unknown provenance dwell.”

“What??” Marko gasped.

“And it’s the place from which spawn many things that would be categorised as aberrant and unnatural. Like beholders…and mind flayers. I know of warlocks that have treated with these powers to get their abilities.”

Marko’s thoughts drifted to Donald, his old companion and trusted accountant of Stormwatch. Surely not? “Why would you?”

“They offer a great ability to influence others,” Idris said simply. “Every warlock makes their own bargain.”

Phew. Not Donald, Marko nodded to himself, relieved.

“That was a terrible thing for you to go through, Marko, it’s not meant to be seen.”

“It was horrific,” Marko confirmed.

“Does it bring us any insights?” Sifer asked.

“And what is the purpose of this room?” Eli added.

“Communication with the Far Realm perhaps?”

“Why are nine of the ten rods broken?”

“Because it’s obviously a bit hard to communicate with them,” Sifer snorted, glancing at Marko.

“So should we smash this last one?”

“No because we don’t know if one of us is going to have to do something with it later,” Idris said.

Three held a mirror to the eye-cup, hoping to see something of what Marko did. But all he could see was an echo, a sworl of sickly green and nothing more.

---

Marko led on. Idris, watching Sifer’s continued eye-popping, nicked one off the wall intact. The second it detached it too blinked out of existence. He studied the connectors to see if they may form one networked presence, but they all seemed individual, a theory supported by their respawn. “Things like this are on brand for the Far Realm,” he muttered to Sifer. “As is something like Goculus.”

“I don’t want to have to go there,” Eli said, overhearing.

“The more we move down this corridor the closer we get to it,” Sifer shrugged. “We’ve got a job to do—let’s keep moving, people.”

The winding passages led to a long, wider chamber. One the southern wall a green-and-silver rift roiled and throbbed on the wall, and fleshy tendrils reached out toward others on the opposite side that surrounded several much larger wall eyes. As Marko drew close he found he could see through the rift: beyond it lay a greyish-pink tunnel that resembles the folds of a titanic brain.

“That should be our last resort,” Idris pointed to the rift.

“It looks like a one-way trip,” Sifer agreed. “Let’s continue ahead.”

Eli led the way now, convinced there were no traps to worry about. Marko kept checking, but Eli wasn’t stopping. He was proven right, eventually finding himself at another of the rotation points. It was blocked, as the central chamber was locked to the opposite passage.

Uthar went to work to rotate until an access point was revealed. Everyone stepped inside, and again Uthar shifted the chamber. A new exit was revealed, to the south this time. A short corridor led south before twisting back north. At the end of the dead end a withered corpse dressed in leather armour lay slumped into a corner.

Uthar approached carefully. The leather armour was so dried out that it was cracked and peeling in strips. “It’s a—”

“Gith,” Idris finished. He crouched down before the corpse. Blackened marks covered the chest, as if the victim had been struck by a beam of energy. A cracked leather belt held four small, crystal daggers, obviously ornamental—perhaps kill trophies. Three arrived by Idris’s side to examine the remains.

“There’s something different about the limbs,” Idris pointed. “The torso and head are withered away, but the legs and arms are almost still intact, even fat?”

Before Three could speak Idris reached forward and, very gently, lifted the dead gith’s head.

WHOMP!

The corpse exploded. Idris and Three were thrown back, the rest of the company more sheltered but still covered in the remains. “Kelemvor,” Three said, near reflexively, quickly healing everyone.

“Apologies,” Idris said to Three, wiping the goop away. “That was very unexpected.”

“Apologies for what?”

“I should have been more careful with the corpse.”

“Do the corpses of your dead normally do that?” Eli asked.

“No. I’m wondering if this was residual or if the body was trapped.”

“The limbs were swollen,” Three said, wiping his face with the filthy corpse cloth he carried for just such a purpose. “I would guess a necrotic build up that was triggered with the slightest touch—not a trap, just unlucky. Those black marks on the chest looked like burns, or energy.”

“It was chased into a corner and zapped by a beam,” Sifer explained. “Probably Goculus before he was neutered.”

Idris reached down and retrieved the daggers, the belt disintegrating in his hands. He said something softly in gith, a blessing of farewell.

---

The company returned to the glowing portal. Eli stood before it thoughtfully. “I have two questions. First; do we think this gate through to wherever-the-hell, and I’m not being figurative, is Goculus’s front door back to wherever-the-hell? And second question: how the hell did the beholder rotate the centre of this maze?”

“It didn’t,” Idris said flatly.

“It was like a prisoner,” Three said wrongly.

“This was his lair! And then he became a prisoner,” Eli corrected.

“Oh, you’re right. Well then it would have used telekinesis,” Idris explained. “It would have moved the stone with its mind.”

“Seemed slightly unnecessary.”

“They don’t have hands, Eli.”

“No I mean it seems unnecessary to have this structure within its home.”

“It’s like you trying to explain why an ant builds its colony in the way it does,” Idris said in all earnestness. “The intelligence of things like beholders is as different to you and me as how you and a worm think.”

“Got it,” Eli nodded, despite the mixed metaphor.

“It’s lucky we’re so similar to the gith that we can communicate,” Sifer added.

Three raised an eyebrow. “From the river to the sea, Sifer, we’re all people.”

“You’re lucky that I’m a gith that wants to communicate with you, Sifer,” Idris growled. “Most of them don’t.”

“Well. There’s only one way left for us to go,” Three said, pointing to the rift dubiously.

“You have to remember, people,” Sifer said, “Everything always gets worse. That’s where we’re going: always a descent.”

“Is that true, master?” Eli asked. Idris turned, before realising it was Three Eli was addressing.

“I believe so,” Three nodded.

“There is a possibility that this is not going to be good,” Sifer repeated. “Let’s give it a moment’s thought before we all dive in.”

After two seconds of thoughtful silence, Idris nodded to Uthar and stepped through.

---

The Briny Maze

The company emerged into a humid chamber with swooping, wrinkled, pinkish-grey organic passages leading away left and right. Every surface was coated with a thin sheen of moisture and the air smelled slightly spoiled. An eerie, violet light emanated from no particular source.

Marko tested the ground underfoot. He stomped it with his boot finding it gave only a very little. Poking his rapier bent the blade, and pressing harder only pierced an inch. The material was as tough as stone. He pulled the blade free, watching the pink floor seal over in an instant.

---

“There are two faint sets of tracks,” he pointed. “Several left, and a different set more recently to the right.”

“How fresh?” Eli said.

“Maybe a few days. All humanoid, wearing boots, and more went left than right.”

“This feels like we are in the Astral Plane—there are no cardinal directions. No north, south, up, down,” Idris observed. “But this is not the Astral.”

Three ran a finger through one of the oozing seams between the bulging walls. He smelled it (foul) then lifted it to his mouth and licked (bitter). “This is cerebral spinal brain fluid—it cushions and holds the two meninges. And unlike any I’ve sampled.”

“Is it off?” Eli said, doing his best not to picture Three’s other experiences sampling brain fluid.

“It smells slightly spoiled, likely due to exposure to the air in here. Marko? Which way?”

“Let’s follow the tracks right. Or what I think is right—Idris is right, my direction sense is confused. I think there are three, maybe four, different footprints.” Marko was feeling rattled by his earlier vision, and feared that this place was the source. He hid behind Uthar and followed, trying to quell his doubt.

Uthar led, stepping cautiously over the greasy floor. The passage wound around itself, and at the intersection he stopped and held up a hand in warning. Five human corpses slumped against the chamber’s wide, rounded wall. They merged seamlessly with the wrinkled grey walls and floor as though melted into them. Only their upper torsos and heads remained free, each lifeless face frozen in a scream.

Three ignored Uthar’s caution, captivated. He strode toward the wall, Eli hastening behind. “Horrific but amazing,” Three muttered, “It appears they are being absorbed into the wall.”

“Do you think their souls can still be saved?” Eli whispered.

“I…don’t know. Fascinating—imagine if we could save them, because they are obviously in hell.”

“I hope so,” Eli nodded.

Three stepped closer and suddenly the dead eyes of every face sprung open.

“I don’t think they can be saved!” Eli cried as flaming skulls burst free of the rotting bodies and flew toward the company.

---

Eli raced forward and struck the closest skull. His second swing felt right but at the last moment the skull swept out of the path of the blow…and into the path of two brutal fists. The skull exploded in a flurry of bone, Eli smashing the shards into the floor. “Yehhwwwooooaaaaah!” Eli cried, casting the detritus and turning his attention to his next victim.

“KELEMVOR!” Three boomed, dropping to one knee and holding his hands aloft. A wave of sacred power swelled forth, Turning the remaining four skulls in an instant. Rattled by Kelemvor’s righteous rejection, they raced away from Three and disappeared around the corner of the maze ahead. One was caught by Sifer’s rapid fire from the rear, splitting into component parts with the third arrow.

Eli sprinted after them, travelling further than seemed orcishly possible. Such was his speed that his strike was badly timed, stumbling as his sword caught a stray brain strand. The skull moved away and out of sight.

Job done, Three examined the bodies still embedded in the wall. “Wizards,” he observed as he tried to determine if they had wanted to be absorbed—some kind of self-sacrifice for a greater god? Recalling the frozen screams on the now shattered faces, he guessed not, and there was no evidence to contradict that theory. They were forced into it.

Having witnessed the flameskull retreat, Uthar followed, rather more cautiously than Eli. Marko shadowed his every step, the exploding heads not helping his nerves. At the next corer several fleshy lumps in the floor rose like stalagmites to heights of two or three feet. Above one, a ball of viscera two feet across was pinned to a wide, flat wall with a large sword. A puddle of slime had leaked down the wall and onto the floor beneath the entrails.

Idris searched the wizard bodies, found nothing, then moved toward Uthar to study the viscera. “That’s a githyanki sword,” he gasped. It was silver with elaborate design-work and quite obviously out of place. He tilted his head, trying to work out how the sword managed to get where it was. “Someone attacked whatever that lump is,” he guessed. “But a githyanki would never willingly leave their weapon behind.”

“How long ago?” Sifer called.

Three stepped toward the pinned viscera. “It’s too foreign for me to know. But that isn’t a scab, it’s a dead creature. Killed by your sword wielder, I assume. If you want I can try and open it to see what it is?” he said, flicking a scalpel free. Idris nodded. Three stepped forward and started slicing around the blade to try and free the dead creature. His scalpel had no difficulty slicing through the remains, the dead flesh no match for the finely-honed blade.

As he worked a cackling laughter sounded and the three remaining flameskulls came racing back from their fear.

Three, having forgotten all about them, turned to look. He saw Eli and Sifer drawing their weapons, so turned back to finish his work, satisfied his martial companions had the skulls in hand.

A mistake, as it turned out.

The eyes of the leading skull glowed red and a pinprick of light appeared in the midst of the company. An instant later it exploded into a ball of expanding flame. A moment later a second fireball exploded, then a third. The skulls laughed in riotous triumph as their targets writhed under the flaming assault.

“That’s on me,” Three apologised quickly, seeing the carnage but safely out of range.

Uthar, tired of being a spectator, sprinted as far as he could manage then angrily threw his hammer toward the nearest skull. He groaned as it flew well past, missing by a good several feet. Hammer hurling was not his forte. Marko, hovering behind, fired his tiny bow but he too shot wide. The still smouldering flames didn’t help his aim.

Sifer too was fed up. Unlike Three, he had anticipated the flameskull’s return, but their magic had trumped the speed of his bow. He was in some considerable pain from the burns as a result, and wanted to deal similar in return. Two sharp shots did so, but to his disappointment two missed wide.

“Stay back,” Idris muttered, rising smouldering and irritable.

Eli ignored this entirely, pouncing forward. His blade missed but once again his fists were unavoidable. He hurled it to the floor, shattering the bone, then Idris’s message sunk home: Stay back… He turned and ran back toward Idris who was preparing some undoubtedly hideous spell.

Moments later that spell landed square in the midst of the remaining flameskulls. Two tiny motes flew up the corridor and a thunderball was released. The puny bone stood no chance against the quaking explosion, each vibrating themselves to a final death.

Three finished removing the goopy jelly which dropped to the floor, hauled the sword free and passed it over his shoulder pommel first to Idris’s hot and waiting hand. He crouched to study the viscera now collected on the floor, noting the puddle it lay in was different to the beast itself. “Brain fluid,” he realised, glancing up at the spot where the sword had stood. A wound was rapidly healing now the sword had been removed. “Whatever that sword is can harm this thing we stand within,” he said without turning.

Idris hoisted the weapon. It was a sergeant’s greatsword, Astral-alloy but otherwise nothing special. “Was it a tumour they killed, or something else?”

“Something different—not part of the brain. Whereas those growths on the floor do look more like tumours,” Three said observing the nodules. “There was a creature, the sword went through the creature fixing it to the wall, metamorphosising it into some gloop and piercing the wall. The pool was from the brain material, not the creature.”

“The damage to the brain could have been either the sword of the body connecting to the wall,” Sifer said. “We’ve now seen two sets of bodies affixed. One way to tell would be to put your sword through a tumour, though that might lead to other unintended consequences.”

Three approached the closest flesh stalagmite and sliced it with his scalpel. “Like cutting through muscle. Very tough.” He wiped the scalpel clean. “May I have the sword for a moment, Idris?” He made an incision, finding it harder work than his medical tool. “Interesting. The sword is less effective. But my hunch is right—it’s a tumour growing out of the brain.”

Idris unfurled his storage hole and placed the sword carefully inside.

“What would happen if we all had a short rest in that hole?” Eli asked, brushing char from his armour.

“It would be a little cramped,” Idris shrugged.

“When you say cramped, you mean snuggly?”

“Very snuggly.”

“Well if not in there shall we have one in any case? I’m burnt and half of you are too,” Sifer observed.

“I’m more wounded than you,” Eli said, adding you coward with his eyes.

“That’s not strategically intelligent,” Sifer muttered under his breath.

“It’s not just strategic intelligence I lack,” Eli muttered back.

---

Uthar led on, approaching the doorway through which the skulls had retreated and returned. Opposite the entrance was a crevice that narrowed into pitch black. Uthar stepped toward it and was surprised to hear…panpipes? Playing an eerie melody that grew louder as he approached. Shadows shifted rhythmically over the swollen walls as if mimicking a simple tune. “There’s a darkness down here,” he called softly. At his feet, Marko stuffed wax into his ears.

Before anyone could respond, a cry came from through the doorway behind. “Ahh! Idris!” Eli’s voice called urgently.

Sifer, closest, arrived a moment later. Three githyanki stood, weapons raised, prepared to defend themselves. The closest and most heavily armoured spat on the ground. “Stay back!”

---

Sifer raised his hands, mimicking Eli, and spoke carefully: “We have your sword.”

“What do you mean you have my sword?” the leader snarled, stepping forward.

“Is that not yours stuck in the wall?”

“Show it to me.”

“Our companion has it, he’s coming now,” Sifer said.

“How many of you are there?”

“Six.”

The three gith stepped back again, weapons raised, as Idris finally sprinted through the entrance. He quickly surmised the situation: one knight, a woman, and two support. The knight held only a dagger while the others were fully armed with longswords.

“Give me my weapon,” the frontwoman demanded.

“Now, Idris,” Eli whispered.

“Why are you here?” Idris asked, not moving a step and switching to Gith.

“I could ask the same of you.”

“You could, but I have your sword.”

“I expect an answer,” the knight demanded.

“You’ll get one when you answer. I’m not arguing about it.”

“Oh no. It doesn’t work like that; I am the leader here and you will follow my orders.”

“You’re not my leader.”

Sensing if not understanding the escalating tension, Eli leant in to Sifer. “Maybe we shouldn’t have called Idris?” he whispered to a soft chuckle.

“And I do not answer to you,” the woman grunted. “Where is my weapon?”

“I have it,” Idris conceded.

“Give it to me.”

“No!”

The knight growled and took a step forward. “What do you mean, ‘no’? It is not yours, it is mine. Are you a nought but a thief?.”

“How do I know it’s yours?” Idris scoffed.

One of the knight’s seconds, standing well back, answered with a sigh. “It’s hers. You found it jammed in the wall, right?”

Idris turned his eyes to the speaker, noting with surprise that there was a sense of resignation and embarrassment in her words. As if slightly ashamed of the leader’s actions—which made sense to Idris; a githyanki never relinquished their weapons. Death was preferred. In deference to his companions, he switched back to Common. “What were you attacking that was left on the wall?”

“An intellect snare,” the leader snapped. “They are deadly and there are many more of them.”

The third gith shook his head. “They’re aren’t,” he said softly.

“And the slime it leaves is equally dangerous.”

“It’s not,” the second woman muttered.

“Quiet!” the knight hissed, adding a githyanki curse that Idris chose not to hear. He was shocked at the insubordination of the two warriors.

Eli, relieved to be able to join the conversation, did so. “Tell me what do these intellect snares look like so we can be wary?”

“A floating bundle of tentacled viscera.”

Eli turned to the back guard. “And you’ve only seen the one?”

“So far, but there are many more,” the leader answered, but the man and woman’s eyes said otherwise. “If you do find one,” the woman volunteered tiredly, “Their tentacles will incapacitate you, siphoning your thoughts. It is an unpleasant occurrence.”

“A little bit like a conversation with Idris,” Eli mumbled. “Very well. And is your presence here an incursion, or are you based here as part of a guard?”

“We are here to hunt the Ghaik,” she spat.

“You’ve been here in this…nodule…for some time?” Eli said, glancing around at the bedrolls and detritus tucked inside the alcove behind them.

“We were, perhaps, reckless. We followed a tenuous set of clues to arrive here. We do not know where this is, but we do know that there are Ghaik here and we will slaughter them when we find them.”

“And when was the last time you saw one?”

“We haven’t,” the man at the back said, eyes down.

“Riiight,” Eli said, glancing at Sifer with some amusement.

“They know nothing,” Sifer stage-whispered to Idris. “I think they lost their way,” Eli added. Idris didn’t take his eyes off the trio.

Sifer shrugged and stepped back, pointing ahead to another entrance through the brain. “What’s through there?”

“A mad musician who makes music, you may have heard it,” the second woman said to a slow nod from Uthar and Marko. “We overheard him speak of a trio of Ghaik but we have not seen them.”

“Can I ask one question, and make one observation?” Eli said to the gith. “Would that be ok with you people?” There was no answer, so Eli continued. “Um. The question, first of all: what is this place?”

“We do not know. It is part of the Far Realm, but we do not know where or what,” the man replied. Marko felt his knees go weak at the mention of the Far Realm, clutching Uthar for support.

“Is your halfling ok?” the leader smirked. Eli hissed, and Idris frowned. “He’s not your concern.”

“The F-f-far Realm? Did I hear you right?” Marko said softly.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“No. Explain?”

“Tell your friend to explain,” she said.

Idris sighed. “It’s a very long explanation.”

“This is the place nightmares come from?” Eli tried.

“Sure. The best description is that it is everything that we know…is not,” Idris said, realising this was anything but clear.

“B-b-but this is a b-b-brain, isn’t it? No?” Marko stammered.

“So it would appear,” the female gith nodded.

“Ok. So if we kill the brain do we kill the Far Realm?” Marko said, hope swelling.

It was dashed as the gith all scoffed cruelly.

“No, Marko,” Idris said kindly, seeing Marko’s despair.

“Why not!?” Marko snapped, drawing his rapier and stabbed it into the floor. He pulled his dagger and jammed it hard, once, twice.

Both gith lifted their weapons and stepped forward on seeing Marko’s drawn before stopping when they saw what he was doing. “That won’t work,” the woman said flatly.

“What about fire?”

“Nothing will work.”

Eli coughed to get the gith trio’s attention back. “Now. My observation is that it looks like you could do with assistance on your quest, and we are nothing if not completely benevolent, and would help you. Because I understand from my companion here,” he said slapping Idris on the back, “That we have no love for the…?”

“Ghaik,” Idris said with a sharp-toothed grin.

“Ghaik, thank you. We have no love for the Ghaik either.”

The leader turned her attention from Eli back to Idris. “I will trust you if you will give me my weapon.”

Three had been studying the gith, noting their orange-green skin was in stack contrast to Idris’s pallid grey. “Before we do that,” he said, “Why is your skin a different colour to our friend?”

“That is a question for your friend,” the man said with some suspicion. “I would be wary of him.”

“We are,” Eli smiled innocently. “But we are here to help.”

“We trust him; we have just met you,” Three shrugged.

The leader shook her head. “I am not asking you to trust us. I am asking you for my weapon.” She stepped forward again to stand face to face with Idris. “My name is Varakkta,” she said through gritted teeth. “And I would appreciate it if you would return to me my sword.”

“Give the woman her sword,” Eli urged.

“Why did you leave it?” Sifer called from afar.

“As I have said, the intellect snares are dangerous and we did not wish to tangle with it any further,” Varakkta snapped as her companions exchanged a quick look. Idris frowned. It was quite clear that Varakkta was in over her head, unable to stand as a gith should.

Sifer too, knowing a good military leader from bad, had heard enough. “Give back the sword. They can follow us,” he said, an order rather than suggestion. To his surprise, the knight nodded to him respectfully; the martial tone of Sifer’s words suiting her nature.

“Listen to your sergeant,” Varakkta glared at Idris, “We are here to hunt Ghaik—you should know that. Or have you forgotten your kind the same way you have forgotten—”

Idris put his hand up to stop her words. Varakkta paffed it aside contemptuously. Idris growled and telekinetically shoved her back—or tried to. “Enough! How dare you!” she swore, pushing through the force.

“Oh oh,” Three said quietly as Eli quickly dropped to a combat stance. Sifer pulled his bow free as the two lower-ranked Gith readied their blades.

“Step away or I will kill you,” Idris snarled stepping close so he was nose-to-nose with Varakkta. Uthar glanced with surprise; Idris meant every word.

“Varakkta. Leave it,” the woman spoke from behind.

“Are you a coward?!” Varakkta replied, not breaking Iris’s glare. “He has my weapon! His every word an insult!”

“You left your weapon. I do not need to explain to you what that means,” Idris hissed. “Step away or I will kill you. You have three seconds. Three…”

“You are a thief!”

“Two…”

“A traitor!”

“One…”

At the last possible moment Three stepped forward, hand to Idris’s shoulder, hoping for a moment of clarity to stop the looming catastrophe. “Idris, just give her the sword,” he said softly.

“You are surrounded by people more intelligent than you, ‘Idris',” Varakkta taunted.

Idris laughed heartily. “You are a feckless toddler out of your depth. You lost your weapon! You are the one that needs to see sense. As soon as you step back I’ll think about giving it back to you,” he grinned evilly through sharpened teeth. It was enough, but he couldn’t resist more. He lent in until their faces were all but touching. “And the next time you speak to me in that manner will be the last time. Am I clear?”

Varakkta held Idris’s gaze, a snarl on her face. She spat on the floor, then vanished. A curse sounded from her two companions, and both also vanished.

Three gasped as he saw Varakkta reappear behind Idris, her jewelled dagger poised to be buried deep in his neck. He flung out a spell designed to freeze her in place, but she shook it off with ease. “Another failed attempt! Your life is forfeit!” she grinned as she slammed the dagger home…but the blow deflected off Idris’s armour, drawing a foul curse from Varakkta. The second woman gith appeared on Idris’s other flank and swung her sword, but she too missed as she recovered her equilibrium.

Marko, knees recovered, pierced Varakkta with his rapier, following up with a flash from his dagger. Sifer lined her up and his first shot struck true, but both follow ups were lost in the melange of the melee—complicated further as the third gith appeared to swing toward Idris but also missed.

Seeing all the failed assassination attempts, Eli wondered idly if Idris was somehow blessed as he leapt forward and pummelled the female gith with his fists. “Stop it!” he cried. “I will die before I stop,” she snapped back. Eli, thinking back to Idris’s words, intuited that once battle was enacted it was unlikely a gith would step down.

Uthar, somewhat reluctantly for the subordinates had clearly wanted to avoid this, stepped into the fray and finished off the wounded warrior. “We die for nothing,” she gasped as she fell. Uthar uttered a silent penance, and was surprised to find Three had dropped to his knees beside him, offering a blessing—Kelemvor—to the corpse sending his soul to rest. He wanted no part in the killing.

Idris decided to follow the gith lead, bampfing out of the tangle and appearing in the clear. Six tiny missiles shot from his outstretched fingers and buried into Varakkta. “Just her!” he cried to his companions.

Varakkta stepped again through the mists to stand directly before Idris. “It is not for nothing that he died,” she snarled, ramming her dagger twice into his chest. Her second strike would have taken his heart but a shimmer of shield appeared at the last instant and deflected the blow. “Last chance!” Idris hissed.

“I need no second chance!” Varakkta cried with a curse.

Marko didn’t make the same mistake with the male gith. He rammed his rapier into his abdomen, then his dagger into his solar plexus. The gith staggered but managed to remain on his feet, out of pride more than anything.

“Don’t kill them Sifer!” Eli cried as he saw the sharpshooter line up Varakkta. “Don’t kill any of them!”

“Kill her,” Idris corrected sharply.

“Kill ‘em all!'” Marko yelled, blood running. “Let Kelemvor sort them out!”

“Kelevmor will,” Three intoned formally, surprised at Marko’s sudden piety.

Sifer found himself agreeing with Idris. Varakkta shuddered as the bolt sunk into her breast, staggering forward and grabbing Idris to stop her self from the shame of falling at his feet. It left only a small target for Sifer but he made no mistake.

“I know what you are, Ghaik!” Varakkta gasped as she collapsed dead.

Idris spun to the last remaining gith. “Your duty is fulfilled! Stop now!” he cried with deadly seriousness.

The man vanished mid-word and reappeared with his weapon held high over Idris’s head, swinging it down toward the exposed neck as Idris’s cry rang out. Eyes wide he froze his swing only inches away. He looked down at the fallen figure of Varakkta at his feet, breathed out, and slowly, carefully, lowered his weapon. “What a waste,” he said softly, stepping back.

“I understand,” Idris said cautiously.

“You are partly to blame; you provoked her. This didn’t have to happen.”

“Each of us is responsible for our own actions,” Eli interjected. “Idris made it clear what would happen. She was a fool.”

The man growled deep from his throat. “It only reached that moment because he would not give Varakkta her weapon. A weapon that was rightfully hers. It is shameful that it has ended with this slaughter.”

“Heal him, Three,” Sifer said, an offering of peace.

“I do not want your healing,” the man snarled at Three, “For you are not men of honour.”

He turned his back on the company, knowing his death was only a single blow away. He collected his belongings and walked away toward the entryway.

Idris, meanwhile, had retrieved the sword from his hold. “Warrior!” he called.

The man turned to see Idris proffering Varakkta’s sword. “Too late. They are dead because of you.”

“You know where this belongs. You should take it to her home.”

“I am not taking anything from you. You are a thief,” he spat, holding Idris’s gaze for a moment, then turning and walking out of sight.

---

Marko was bouncing around, shaking off all the nervous energy he had accumulated. “This place isn’t so bad, this ‘Far Dark’,” he grinned. “It’s alright, pretty safe, I feel better. That was good,” he said moving to the fallen bodies and smiling widely.

Three, feeling rather less celebratory, added Varakkta to his blessings, and healed the company of their lingering wounds. Finishing up her turned to Idris. “Should we search their bodies? Their belongings?”

“Gith who die on hunts, their accoutrements go back. So we collect everything personal—house insignia, armour, weapons, anything of note. I will collect it and return it when I can.” He set about doing so, assisted by Marko and a willing Uthar who felt relieved to be able to further honour the dead. Varakkta’s dagger was unusual but the rest was standard issue and stored in the hole.

At the rear of the nook Three noticed two blackened metal rods, three foot apart and each a foot long, extending from the brain-wall. They looked different to the brain; hard metal not flesh and weathered. He also found a small chest and called Marko forth. “Not trapped, but locked,” he reported, making short work of it.

“What’s in there?” Three asked.

“There’s teeth, gems, a music box. And another box.”

“The teeth are trophies,” Idris called. Three hurried over and asked for the teeth which Marko handed over gladly. Idris examined them with Three, naming every single one accurately, to Three’s surprise. “Humans, a Ghaik, this is an orc and that could be a Drow canine.”

“Can I have them?” Three asked with childish glee. Idris nodded; Three was an odd one.

Marko meanwhile held the music box aloft and wound it very carefully. A sweet melody sounded, elvish perhaps, though Marko found it slightly difficult to hear. Three, nearby, had no such trouble. “Quiet, Marko, we don’t know what is listening,” he suggested. Marko shrugged and passed it to Three (who passed it to Sifer), turning his attention to the other box. It was rectangular, six inches long by three tall, and very narrow. “Trapped,” he warned, “Idris can you open it with your magic hand?”

Idris did so, nonplussed when the box opened quite safely with no trap. He walked over to find eight fine, silver, six-pronged forks resting in velvet cushioning. He lifted the box and displayed it to the company. “It’s a fancy fork set,” he announced with a grimace.

“There’s something weird about them,” Three noted. “Forks don’t have six tines. Tuning forks perhaps?”

Eli found himself suddenly overwhelmed by events. “This is your problem?! We finally find some of Idris’s people and we murder them, and you are worried about the forks!?”

“We did just have to give the sword back and we would have had three guides,” Three conceded.

“What he said!” Eli yelled, flopping onto floor.

“We have to remember there’s a reason he hangs around with us,” Sifer smirked.

Idris drew himself up. “These githyanki were very different to those we met on the boat in the Astral Plane.”

“Yeah these ones are assholes,” Marko inserted, rewriting history as only the victors can.

---

Denizens of the Maze

“You know this feels less like a brain and more like a bowel?” Eli asked apropos of nothing as he studied the two rods. They weren’t corroded and there was no fresh wound in the briny wall from which they poked. Each was twisted like black liquorice and hard as iron—manufactured, not natural.

Three clutched his gut in subconscious sympathy. “Idris—are these rods something the gith do at their camps, or is it just coincidence that they hunkered down here?”

“A mining tool, perhaps?” Eli added.

Idris looked thoughtful. “In answer to you, Three, no we don’t, and they’re not mining tools that I know of…but there’s something familiar about them. Something uncomfortable. I’ve seen them before but I can’t remember.” The ends of each rod looked slightly smoothed, perhaps from hands gripping them. He tried twisting one to unwind the spiral from the wall but it didn’t budge.

“When you say you’ve seen them before,” Three asked, “Do you mean this is of your people, or do you mean just in your travels?”

“No, not of the gith. I just know they’re not good but my memory fails.”

“And yet it clearly didn’t worry the other gith,” Three said. “They made their camp here and didn’t avoid them.”

“Could they have been inserted from outside the brain?” Uther posited.

“Maybe but the tips aren’t sharp like you would expect,” Eli noted. “But Idris, just trying to jog your memory, could these be the quills of some kind of giant porcupine monster?”

“No. I’ve never encountered a giant porcupine monster.”

“Sound like giant porcupines are about the only thing you don’t encounter on the Astral Plane.”

Idris stared at Eli, then took the flat of his short-sword and tanged it against each rod. It clunked more than sung, nothing special. “It might come to me later,” he sighed, frustrated he could not place them.

“Maybe the musical fiend they spoke of can shed some light on them,” Three shrugged.

“That reminds me,” Uthar said, “There was music from an alcove behind us—panpipes? The gith interrupted us before we could explore it.”

The company retreated to Uthar’s alcove, a short corridor that narrowed into an unnatural and utter darkness. A melody played on, yes, panpipes, echoed from the darkness, and shadows shifted rhythmically on the sticky walls.

Idris tossed a glowing coin into the darkness. It vanished into the black and landed with a soft thup. “That’s magical darkness, and of an uncommon kind.”

“I could dispel it,” Three offered.

“We could just run our hand along the wall and follow it, it might not be dark for long,” Idris countered.

“That sounds like a recipe for falling into a brain hole.”

“We can get Marko do to it,” Eli suggested with faith in Marko’s prowess.

“Just follow me—Uthar, hand on my shoulder,” Idris said. He placed his hand on the wall, not enjoying sensation as he ran his hand through the slime. The corridor narrowed to a point, the music still playing softly. “Is anyone…here?” he said softly. There was no answer.

Idris turned and traced the opposite wall back, emerging into the light before long. “It narrows in about thirty feet, no-one down there and the music didn’t get any louder the further we travelled.”

“A good place to rest?” Eli suggested.

“It’s not comfortable to be in. I don’t know if any of you have been light-deprived for long periods of time?”

“My uncle Funglemunchkin used to lock me in the cellar when I was bad.”

“I don’t like the idea,” Three said, raising an eyebrow toward Eli.

“There’s a perfectly good encampment just up there,” Idris said pointing toward the gith camp.

“You’re right. Let’s head north and see what’s up there before we do that.”

---

Uthar led the way, followed closely by Eli. At the next junction both stopped as they heard someone, or something, humming. It was accompanied by the sound of digging, and the hum seemed designed to match the work.

It reminded Eli happily of how his people would sing as they worked the fields. He stealthed forward as best he could to look for the source.

Standing above a shallow pit ringed with black ridges like necrotized flesh was a man, with too many eyes in the wrong places, vigorously digging with a rusted trowel. He hummed his merry song, surprisingly tuneful given the environment in which he worked.

---

“We’re close, Jitter, we’re close!” he exclaimed as he removed a tiny chunk of flesh from the floor. “I can feel it! ♪ Close, close close, the harder we dig the closer we get ♫”

The man stepped back to admire his work, then looked up to the ceiling. “Jitterjaws? Your turn!”

Eli turned his gaze to the ceiling just as an enormous lump of sewn-together flesh dropped from above into the ‘hole’, gnawing the rim with multiple mouths of razor-sharp teeth. Moments later it leapt back into position above, dripping saliva as the man clapped enthusiastically and started his singing and digging once more. “One or two more strikes and we’re through to the dragon, Jitters! ♪ One-two one-two and through-and-through! ♫”

---

Eli looked back to the company, drew a finger over his throat, drew his weapon and charged into the room. “Stand to and prepare to be sent back to thy maker! Whoever that was,” he added staring up at Jitterjaws.

All Jitterjaws’ tentacles twisted to face Eli, slavering in anticipation of a meal rather better than that of the floor. The digger spun too, holding his garden-spade aloft. “What is the meaning of this?!” he demaned. “You’re interrupting important work!”

Three jogged up to Eli and placed a hand on his shoulder, holding him back for a moment. “Let’s talk, for once,” he whispered.

“Master it is an abomination and must die!”

“Okay but let’s talk first,” Three stressed.

“There’s only one person who will die here and it won’t be me if you don’t get out of my way,” the many-eyed man threatened. “Unless that sword for digging not killing?”

“We are sorry to interrupt, sir, but we found a music box not far from here,” Three said. “Then we heard your wonderful singing and thought perhaps it’s yours?”

“Ah! Not mine, but it holds a wonderful melody indeed,” the man beamed, then sung the tune from the music box in question, note for note. “Do you also know this one?” he added, then hummed the music from the dark shrouded corridor.

“We do—”

“And did you like my composition?” the man interrupted, narrowing all his eyes keenly.

“Of course we did—amazing!” Three assured, “Particularly in such an exceptional landscape. And what is your name sir?”

“My name is Shalfi,” he said, brushing his filthy clothes proudly, “And we are digging for a dragon!”

Three paled. “A dragon?”

Ignoring the question, Shalfi turned back to his pit and started digging. “And if you will all help we’ll get there all the sooner! ♪ I get by with a little help from my friends, oo I get by ♫”

Three scratched his head. “We are a little bit concerned that were we to help that your…pet?…would maybe confuse things?”

“Jitterjaws? Won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt him—or me. But enough talk; if you could stop talking and help?”

“Can we just ask one more question?”

“Ask while you dig,” Shalfi said, exasperated. “And put that sword away unless you’re going to use it to dig.”

Eli turned to Three. “Master. What are you afraid of? Are these not evil beings?”

“They are but we are in desperate need of information.”

Idris, overhearing, held his hand up. “Eli—aberrant and evil are not the same thing,” he said softly. “Things are changed by the Far Realm, often beyond their control. They appear in a visage that is antithetical to their true self, and not necessarily evil.”

“Again I say: are they not evil?” Eli said, first to Three then turning to Uthar.

“Well it’s not looking good,” Uthar observed, his evil radar pinging wildly. “But perhaps we should ask just a couple more questions, just to be sure.”

“Yes, for we must determine: do they have evil intent?” Three added wisely.

A shluuuupppp from behind announced Jitterjaws was once more on the floor and working the pit, one head continuing to stare hungrily at Eli.

“That sight is not helping my cause,” Uthar conceded. As Jitterjaws rose once more to the ceiling, it was clear that the pit was only an inch deep at most. It almost seemed to be healing over even as Shalfi went back to work.

“Do we negotiate with ev—” Eli started.

“I will help you dig,” Three interrupted glancing knowingly at his companions. As he walked toward the hole, looking warily up at Jitterjaws, he drew the music box forth and wound it.

“Lovely, just lovely,” Shalfi said approvingly, then started to harmonise with the melody. “Do you know that Dwarves cannot hear that? They don’t know what they missing.”

“How long have you been here?” Three tried.

“You talk a lot but you don’t dig. Get to work! ♪ Work, work, work, work, everybody loves work ♫”

Three pulled his dagger free and ‘dug’, though it was more a pantomime.

“Good, good!” Shalfi enthused. “Cut that necrosis off! Step back, step back!”

Shluuuupppp

Shalfi examined Jitterjaw’s work. “Progress, definite progress! I can hear the dragon, I can smell the dragon!”

“What type of dragon?”

“A large one! And you know what dragons have?”

“Gold?”

“Gold!”

“And is that all you want? Just gold?”

“We’ll take whatever he has!”

“And you came here to get this dragon?”

“Oh, no, but once we got here we found it was down there, and the only way through is digging.”

“How do you know it’s down there,” Eli scowled.

“Well it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Not to us. How did you get here?” Three said, poking at the flesh pit.

“Not really sure. But it is of no matter—now that we are here, fortune awaits! ♪ Blue eyes, dragon’s got blue eyes, like a deep, blue sea ♫” he sung sonorously.

“Can you play that lute?” Three asked.

“Of course!” He swivelled the lute around to his front and somehow managed to continue to pick out his song even as he shovelled, the rhythm of both in keen syncopation. Despite all appearances, his lute barely held together and clothing threadbare, he was very good, the beauty of his song perhaps supporting Idris’s earlier supposition.

“Master Shalfi, may I ask a brief question?” Idris said.

“If you dig you can ask,” Shalfi beamed.

Idris groaned, crouched, and started trimming with his dagger. “Did you happen to come across three others of my kind?”

“You mean githyanki? Yes I saw them—they ignored me and I ignored them after they wouldn’t help. I let them live.”

“We can’t say the same,” Eli muttered.

Idris worked his way around the hole, putting his back in a little more as he did. “You’re a strong one,” Shalfi admired. He glanced over to Uthar. “But you look a lot stronger! And you with the sword, young orc,” he nodded sternly at Eli. “Come over and help! I’ll setup a rhythmic beat which will help us all work. First you, red fellow, then you big orc, then everyone! ♪ Hi ho, hi ho! ♫”

To keep things on an even keel, Uthar started digging. He glanced down the only concealed section of the chamber, hoping to see what lay ahead, but was disappointed to see only a dead end. He glanced at Idris who had noticed the same thing; there was nowhere further to go. Uther tilted his head back toward the gith encampment and Idris nodded. He stood, stretching, and turned to Shalfi. “Master Shalfi, we shall undoubtedly see you very soon, but one of our companions has summoned us. We will take our leave for now, but best of luck.”

“Well, if you must. If you can convince those gith to come and help, with you six that will make…nine? Plus we two—it will only be a matter of days and we’ll be through!”

Three nodded enthusiastically. “Let’s go talk to them, Idris, and see if they’re interested.” He turned on his heel and walked briskly away. “I’m going to go and see them now!” Idris bowed to Shalfi and followed.

Shalfi glared at Eli who glared back. “You didn’t help at all,” Shalfi scowled. “We will remember that and expect better behaviour next time—understood?”

Eli considered his options, reluctantly deciding the lessons of his betters should be followed. He turned and jogged after Three.

“Ha! We scared him off, Jitters, we scared him off! ♪ Run—run—run! I’m coming to get you! ♫”

---

“Master I’m sorry that had the appearance of cowardice,” Eli said drawing up to Three, “But I could not respond without dying.”

“Always remember, Eli, what is our mission?”

“We must get the rod.”

“Yes. And if that means we don’t have a combat here, with a madman and his monster, who’s not harming anyone because they’re stuck in hell anyway, then we get to move on and hopefully make progress towards our actual goal. Come on, let’s go.”

“Are you saying we should allow evil to walk the land for the sake of the greater good?”

“Normally I would not; I would strike them down. If they were in a populous city or near people that needed protection. But they’re not. They are actually suffering more here than they would be dead.”

“So sometimes we allow evil—”

“If it is quarantined,” Three interrupted.

Eli paused, pondering. “Where is that written?”

“Some things are not written on parchment—they are written on our souls and we know it for a truth.”

“I don’t…I don’t know that for a truth,” Eli said softly, eyes downcast.

“Some things you just have to take on faith, Eli,” Uthar comforted.

Idris nodded. “Eli you know that good and evil aren’t necessarily of massive importance to the keeper of the dead. Kelemvor’s job is to ensure everyone goes where they are supposed to go.”

“I didn’t know, but I do know I had never heard the name Kelemvor until I heard Brother Cooper speak it,” Eli confessed.

“Well it is my understanding this his remit is that all pass on to their destined end, whether that be a good place or bad.”

“‘Shepherd’ is the word you are looking for,” Three added.

“If you’re looking for a deity that is doing good things for being good, all the time,” Idris said nodding to Uthar, “Then that’s where you should seek.”

Eli looked confused, eyes flitting between the speakers. “It’s apparent that everybody has a lesson for Brother Eli,” he said stridently, reverting oddly to third person. “But the lessons of his parents somehow would be diminished. Thank you for your wisdom; I will keep in in mind.”

“I’m not intending it as a lesson, Eli,” Idris said not quite apologetically.

Uthar rounded the next corner and found a filthy bedroll and small cask tucked into the back corner of a dead-end alcove. “A snapped lute string,” he pointed out, solving the question of who laired here before it could be asked.

A quick search of the grotty detritus revealed nothing of interest, other than that the cask had a solid gold stopper. Three picked the cask up and shook it, hearing it still contained liquid. He sighed, turned, and popped the stopper. An aroma of weak ale wafted forth; Three was surprised—why such a fancy stopper for such nondescript drink? He returned the cask to the bedroll. “Nothing of interest,” he announced. “How did Shalfi live here—how is he still alive?”

“My knowledge of the Far Realm is very sporadic,” Idris said, “But it isn’t necessarily lethal. But if this places borders the Realm we probably don’t want to stay here longer than we need to. He probably didn’t start out with eyes in his neck and forehead.”

“There is, in general, a preponderance of eyes,” Eli agreed.

---

Marko pointed to the second set of tracks back at the entryway. “Six, maybe seven, went this way, booted all. Months old I would guess.”

“If these ones are evil can we kill them?” Eli said loudly and somewhat sullenly.

“Sure,” Three nodded.

More of the fleshy nodules emerged from the floor ahead, and amongst them lay four corpses that had been rent asunder. “Would these match the tracks, Master Marko?” Eli asked quietly.

“They would.”

Three walked to the corpses, unafraid. “Duergar, warriors. Dead for some time.” He was careful not to touch them, recalling Idris’s recent misadventure, but he studied them closely. Their bodies were drained of life and faces etched in terror

Eli wandered forward and glanced around the bend of the corridor. The wide space ahead was filled with diaphanous web strands, the webbing thicker on the far side of the room. Something unseen scuttled inside the webbing, drawing Eli’s eyes: hanging entangled in the web, dripping fresh blood, was the third gith, now dead. “Spiders,” he called back in warning.

“These warriors weren’t killed by spiders,” Three said pensively. “Their wounds were caused by magic—shards of stone are embedded in their chests. And there’s worse: all of them have post-mortem head wounds. Their skulls have been torn open after they died. Something has eaten their brains,” he said looking to Idris.

Idris crouched by one of the dead. “Not Ghaik. They don’t eat dead brains; they are sustained only by live ones.”

“This one has a very nice cape,” Marko said pulling it free. He held it aloft, showing off the silver-threaded runes along the hem of the greyish-purple outfit. It was Duergar-sized, a little large for Marko but otherwise a good fit. Before donning it, and much to everyone’s surprise, he bit down on the cleanest section of the dirty cape. It didn’t react, so he slipped it on, pleased with silhouette it created. He strutted over to Uthar, noting the cloak flowed beautifully as he moved.

Eli stood fixated watching the webs, following the movement of something hidden in the far corners. A large, brilliantly ice-blue spider appeared suddenly, carefully wrapping the corpse of the gith.

---

“Uthar!” Eli hissed.

Uther stood stock still, for once reluctant to approach as the spider caressed the body and lifted it into the webbing.

“Is that evil enough?” Eli stage-whispered.

“Fireball that thing,” Three encouraged Idris, who needed none. A tiny flame flickered on his fingertip. “The best thing about webs is they go up like a tinderbox,” Idris grinned.

And indeed it did. The fireball melted the huge web in an instant. The spider was killed instantly, dropping to the ground with legs aloft, but the lack of webbing revealed two howling, hooded Duergar who leapt from the flames.

---

The Duergar hollered something unintelligible, which Idris translated quickly. “‘Ilvaash’s betrayal shall become ours’, apparently.”

“Kelemvor!” Three cried, and from his open mouth a plague of insects swarmed forth, surrounding the Duergar who swatted futilely at the flood. Eli made a mental note to reassess all of his values at the sight of Three’s living vomit. Perhaps it was all the flies Three had swallowed in his time at the cemetery?

Eli sprinted into the swarm, striking the nearest Duergar with ease with blade and fist. Alas a lone strand of webbing drifed down and caught his fist before it could drop the fiend. As he cursed his ill luck, Eli caught something moving out of the corner of his eye. “Another spider!”

As he cried out a crown of jagged spectral crystals materialised around his head. “Ahhh!” he cried, before suddenly realising he wanted to apologise to the psionicist he had attacked of late. “Sorry,” he whispered, rummaging for a potion to help his new friend.

The other Duergar flung two necrotic shards of stone—“That’s what killed the others!” Three cried—which skimmed past Marko and pinged off the wall instead. Two more shards also missed Uthar. With a guttural curse the Duergar started to shimmer a second crown around Uthar, but the holy warrior had no trouble fending it off with his faith.

Idris decided to retaliate in kind. A distorted crack in reality rent the air and a huge slaad stepped through to stand behind Eli’s friend. “Eli! That’s mine!” Idris cried as the slaad struck hard, missing as it too was tangled by the webbing.

The second spider blinked on top of Uthar, who recoiled, terror etched on his face. It bit down on the hardened steel of his helm, doing no damage but cowering Uthar none-the-less. Three stepped up and tolled the death of the spider, who shuddered, its gelatinous body falling away. Uthar gritted his teeth and struck with his blade, once, twice, killing it and shoving it away, relief flooding his body.

Marko silently made his way to the Duergar, slaughtering Eli’s friend with one strike. Eli considered a truth revealed: that the Duergar’s soul was as worthy as any other. He whispered a little prayer reflecting such, then turned to the other Duergar. “And you should join him,” he said as he punched and fulfilled that promise, mumbling another prayer. Finally he looked to the slaad, who’s open maw snapped closed as it trudged away toward Idris. “It’s with us, Eli,” Idris repeated, for the benefit of all, as Eli, still full of adrenalin, sprinted away out of sight.

“How long will that be with us?” Three asked.

“About an hour?”

“Hm.”

“It’s here, we may as well take advantage of it.”

An uncomfortable silence met this declaration.

Three searched the Duergar bodies, finding nothing, and gave absolution to the charred body of the dead gith (after Idris and his slaad stripped the body), asking Kelemvor to allow it to pass on. “This is an odd place to find Duergar,” he said. “In cahoots with spiders. Why? And why did they kill their kind?”

The questions were left hanging as the company moved on toward Eli, who stood with his spear set against an imagined oncoming charge.

---

Uther rounded the next nodule to find an short alcove. A spherical creature with eyestalks hovered at the back of the chamber, ignoring the company.

---

In front of the creature a large, open book rested on a three-foot-high lump of sickly, organic material that rose naturally from the floor. The fiend appeared to be reading from the book, carefully enunciating each word: “The inward facing mind must con-cen-trate…no, no, that’s not it…The inward facing mind must concen-trate…”

Eli looked at his companions with the same question he had asked earlier clearly etched on his face. Are we seriously not going to kill this?

Three shook his head quickly. “I know that phrase,” he said. “From a famed tome, The Truth of the Inward Facing Mind. A book no-one has ever managed to successfully understand or translate.” He was stunned it could be here, now, in this place.

The creature continued reading, restarting the same phrase, each time with slightly different intonation and emphasis.

“He’s reading the opening line again and again,” Eli scowled.

Three stepped forward. “Excuse me…sir?”

One of the tentacled eyes swung toward Three and blinked. “Yes?” it answered after finishing the phrase once more.

“May I ask what you are doing here? Are you just reading?”

“You may. Ask what I am doing. Here. It is a good. Question. I am…reading, yes. Thank you.” The creature spoke in broken phrases, thoughtful before each word.

“What is your name?”

“My name. Is Jomlus. My task is to. Read.”

“Anything?”

“Only this tome. For it holds. Alllll knowledge. If only we. I. Can speak it correctly. Clearly.”

“Have you got past the first paragraph?” Three asked.

“We have not. The secrets remain. Hidden from us. As they were hidden from. Master Kamven.”

“Master who?”

“Master Klaudel Kamven,” Jomlus said with some reverence. “You may know. Him. A great scholar, sadly. Now passed into this chapel. Absorbed into the living. Flesh.”

“Do you know what else is around here?”

“There are many strange. Creatures in this chapel. They leave me. For they. Believe me to be a beholder. But I am. Not.” The many eyes seemed to smile at this realisation. “I am Jomlus! And I read.”

“Well, Jomlus, good luck with The Truth of the Inward Facing Mind,” Three said kindly. “It is quite a challenge.”

“You have heard of. It?”

“Oh, I have ready it,” Three assured.

“You have?” Jomlus seemed astonished. “Would you assist. Me in reading?”

“Unfortunately the rules of reading that book mean that you cannot be assisted, for then you would forfeit the wisdom.”

“But. But. Surely. I assisted Master Kamven…is that why we failed?!”

“Probably. It is a strictly solo endeavour. Or it was for me.”

“Your wisdom. Is a great blessing to me. I will redouble my efforts to read. To understand. To reveal to the multiverse the knowledge! It contains!”

“Well…yes, that sometimes happens. Not always,” Three warned. “We’re leaving, but we might talk to you later.”

“Master Three I did not know you had read that book?” Eli observed quietly.

“I have read many books,” Three said walking away.

As the company departed Jomlus started once more on his endless task, the words grating and tickling the back of the listeners minds. “The inwardfacing mindmust concentrate…”

---

The next chamber revealed yet another floating horror. Slime coated the walls and floor of a nook lying dead ahead, in which an enormous creature shaped like a brain hovered above a puddle of goo while four fleshy nuggets bounced nearby.

---

Uthar pointed and sighed.

“Well that’s not good,” Idris groaned.

Marko didn’t wait for conversation, firing his shortbow into the bulbous creature. Eli clapped eyes upon the beast and, without intending so, a bolt of fire shot from the scar on his face and exploded in the nook. Goop sizzled and the brain floated forth down the corridor.

“Bring it on, disgusting gloop monster!” Eli cried in orcish, not understanding a word he spoke. Several of the smaller things followed their leader forth.

“Are those baby beholders?” Eli yelled with disgust.

Three dropped to one knee and cried, “KELEMVOR!” A pillar of flame struck down from heaven itself, every sinew of Three’s being pulling the holy punishment forth. The ‘brain’ was engulfed, emerging worse-for-wear but alive.

Not seeing Three’s action from behind him, Eli gaped, impressed and somewhat taken aback at the delayed effectiveness of his face-flame. Uthar leapt into the combat, satisfied with two heavy schlooping blows from his blade. One of the smaller fiends tried to avenge the blows, four tiny tentacles pulling back and shooting forth. Uthar ducked away with ease.

A moment later he was warmed by an explosion as Idris dropped a patented precision fireball into the corridor beyond. All the creatures were singed and flung, but surprisingly none fell. The slaad didn’t seem pleased with that, slashing out at the floating brain. It retaliated, choosing Uthar as it bludgeoned him with a psychic slam which knocked him off his feet. A gemmule latched itself over his face as he fell, sinking psychic tethers into his mind.

Marko dived forward to protect Uthar, burying his short blade into the nerve centre of the brain. It exploded into horrible goo, covering the fallen Uthar who was none-the-less thankful.

Eli pounded one of the little buggers, killing it quickly and efficiently, bursting over and spraying both Eli and Uther, again. Eli let out a blood-curdling cry of pure joy, using his momentum to near punch the lights out of another floater.

Another tried to latch itself to Three, who instead caught the incoming creature in his bare hands in a display of incredible dexterity. He laughed triumphantly, and ripped the creature in two as a bolt of radiance shredded the tiny floater. “Kelemvor!” Three cried as light exploded.

Eli, once again, missed Kelemvor’s might, facing the opposite way as he was. Uthar, by his side, ripped his own leech free, leaping to his feet and holding the creature away. Idris instantly shot a barrage of magical missiles into the gemmule, exploding it as his slaad killed the remaining floater.

---

Eli stepped around the next corner to find shreds of flesh and broken bones scattered around the room beyond. An enormous double door made of the same spongy material as the rest of the maze stood firmly shut at the far side of the chamber. “The remnants of combatants,” he reported back, “And a door.” He stood poised for action as he waited for the inevitable debate.

“We need to rest,” Three groaned, wiping his hands clean of the remains of his gemmule. He walked into the nook of the brain creature, finding a cluster of unbroken eggs in the fetid pool inside. “We might want to finish these first.”

Idris did so, quickly toasting everything within. The resulting stench was horrendous. “I would suggest, gentlemen, that if we’re going to rest we should do it before we venture beyond those door.”

“I agree, the doors present a new challenge,” Uthar nodded.

“Back at the githyanki camp?” Three suggested.

“We need to kill the reader first,” Eli scowled.

“There’s no need to kill him,” Three explained. “He’s just read—”

“BY WHAT BOOK!?” Eli yelled.

“The Truth of the Inward Facing Mind,” Three sighed.

“BY WHAT BOOK do you declare that WE DO NOT HAVE TO KILL THAT PATENTLY EVIL CREATURE?!” Eli continued.

“Is he patently evil? He’s no threat and we have bigger fish to fry.”

“I didn’t know those were the parameters under which we operate,” Eli said angrily as he stormed off.

Three rolled his eyes and followed.

---

Session played February 9, 23, March 9, 30 2025

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