"By the black gods," Abdel muttered, "she's been.. half.. eaten."
Imoen's eyes stared up at the darkness above them in mute, twitching agony. Jaheira's voice lifted in a songlike prayer, and Abdel thought he could see a thin, blue-gray glow around the fingers of the hand she now pressed hard into the wound. Another wave of pain made him stagger backward. Jaheira didn't look up at him. He stepped back, then fell back and rolled away from the women. In the darkness no more than a few paces from him, rockworms began to gather.
Jaheira pulled her hand up suddenly with a shouted last word and her prayer was over, Imoen pulled in one rattling, deep breath and made to sit up. Jaheira, her hand covered in the girl's blood, gently pushed her back down.
"You'll need to rest," Jaheira told her.
Imoen rested her head on a smooth stone and smiled. Jaheira returned her smile, then looked at Abdel and said, "Well have to stay here for at least a few hours," she said, "but by Mielikki's never-ending grace, she'll… Abdel?"
She spun, realizing in a wave of nauseous dread that she'd lost sight of him in the darkness.
"Abdel?" she called again.
She was answered by an inhuman roar that echoed deafeningly in the confines of the cavern and made the half-elf throw her hands up to her gently pointed ears to keep them from bursting.
"Abdel!" Jaheira screamed, her voice drowned out not only by the ringing in her ears but by the clatter of rockworms—all around her—moving in fast for the kill.
She saw Imoen mouth, "It's happening again."
Everything that was the essence of Abdel Adrian disappeared into a roiling vortex of rage, bloodlust, and wild, kill-frenzied mania. His body contorted—he could feel that, and it hurt. He was changing again. He didn't know exactly what was happening to him, how it was happening to him, or why it was happening to him. He could feel it and experience it only for the first few moments, then any greater consciousness was replaced by the pure murderous impulses of the Bhaalspawned demon he had become.
He could see the rockworms clearly now when all there had been before was darkness. His perspective had shifted decidedly upward, though he didn't have the capacity to understand why. He grabbed for one of the creatures, all thoughts of something as puny and ineffectual as a broadsword forgotten, and held it easily in one huge, firm grip. When he squeezed he could feel the rocklike skin puncture, and the thing's blood bathed him. He roared in idiot pleasure and turned his attention to another rockworm, then another.
He tore through their stony bodies as if they were made of tissue paper. When some of them turned to flee in the face of prey that had turned predator, the Abdel-thing moved quickly behind them. He grabbed one by the tip of its tail and spun it into the others. The rock-worms started biting at him, but their teeth just tickled around the edges of what used to be his thighs but were now closer to his ankles.
He killed them for the pure joy of it and let not one single rockworm escape alive.
When the last one lay twitching at his transformed feet, pouring its charcoal blood onto the cold floor of the cavern, Abdel screamed again.
This time, his voice sounded more like his own, real, human voice, and his body convulsed through a single body-tightening cramp that made his vision blur and flash yellow again. He fell to the floor of the cavern, and his eyes cleared enough to see his hand, and it was starting to look human again. He tried to call out for Jaheira, but his throat was tightening, changing back to something with human vocal chords. He sputtered a ragged cough.
"Abdel!" he heard Jaheira call, her voice echoing from quite a distance.
He looked up, and with tears streaming down his face, he saw the dull blotch of Imoen's torchlight. It took him several minutes to stand on shaking, cramping legs, but he eventually made his way back to the light.
Worms made of rock, giant beetles, and the things that looked like stalactites that occasionally tried to drop on them from the ceiling of the tunnel aside, Abdel couldn't imagine how any thinking being was able to live in the Underdark. There was no passage of time, save for the rhythmic drips of water or the occasional fall of pebbles. Abdel had no idea how long they'd been down there. They'd made torches from the hard stalks of giant mushrooms and scraps from their own dwindling clothes. They would stop to rest and occasionally sleep. As soon as one of them awakened, he or she would rouse the others, and they'd start moving again. It was a blind existence, and the toll it took on all of them was intense.
The nature-worshiping Jaheira just seemed tired all the time. She prayed to Mielikki, and her prayers were answered, though it was an unlikely place to feel the touch of the Lady of the Forest. Still, Jaheira was as moody and quiet as Abdel, and though they walked side by side for mile after endless mile, they hardly spoke.
Imoen was as uncomfortable underground as any surface dweller. Even before she was nearly killed by the rockworm, she was always looking over her shoulder, sensitive to every random noise or shift in the cool subterranean breeze.
They rested again, and Imoen, who had been able to walk only with the help of either Abdel or Jaheira, had fallen into a deep sleep. Jaheira gathered mushrooms. Only she had some idea which might be edible and which deadly poison. Abdel scoured the area for signs of the rockworms or any other unpleasant denizens of the Underdark. He saw a few pinpoint reflections in the darkness. Abdel took them to be the eyes of the ever-present rats that always kept out of the pool of torchlight. He took some odd comfort from the presence of the furry scavengers. Rats he knew what to do with.
When he came back to the big stalagmite Jaheira had told them not to move Imoen away from, he saw that the half-elf had collected a good sampling of the native fungus. Abdel grimaced at the collection of gray mushrooms and thought for the hundredth time about trying to kill one of the big rats. Jaheira held a mushroom out to him with a weary but understanding smile, and he waved it off.
"I can't live on those damned things much longer," he told her.
She shrugged, took a bite of the mushroom, and chewed it with an uninterested expression.
"That necromancer—or whatever he is—did something to me," Abdel said. "I'd be happy to let him go wherever he's going in peace—at least if it meant I could climb out of this hole once and for all—but he—"
"He has plans for you," Jaheira told him with obvious certainty. "He must have plans for you both. If he's going to attack Suldanessellar for some reason, maybe he intends to use you as a kind of weapon."
"But you said he couldn't control us, me and Imoen," Abdel said, nodding at the sleeping girl. "What does he mean to do … get me to go there, then get me angry? Let me ravage the place in the form of some … whatever it is?"
Jaheira shrugged, her face a dark mask of fear. "That could be enough." She shuddered visibly and added, "You couldn't believe what..»
Abdel forced a smile and said, "My father's legacy again, I guess."
Jaheira nodded.
Abdel sighed and took a reluctant bite from a mushroom. "Why Imoen?" he asked. "And how? If this. . thing, this force or whatever it is, is in me already, I guess I have to understand and believe that, knowing what I know about myself, but Imoen?"
"You may have to accept that Imoen shares that blood with you, Abdel," Jaheira said quietly.