Zaltys sighed. “In that case we’d better be going, and quickly. I was holding onto a sunrod when I fell over the waterfall, but I lost it when I hit the water, and for obvious reasons, I couldn’t swim down to retrieve it. Sunrods are remarkable devices. Did you know they go right on glowing even when they’re submerged in water?”
Julen whistled. “Creatures down here seem to be fairly sensitive to light.”
“Yes. We’ve left a handy beacon for any fishfolk that come swimming by, which will lead them to a trio of their murdered kinsmen.” She put her booted foot on the back of one kuo-toa’s neck, grasped her arrow, and pulled it free, shaking the slimy tissue off the arrowhead before putting it in her nearly-empty quiver. She retrieved the other two arrows, humming tunelessly as she worked.
Julen counted. “Do you really only have nine arrows left?”
“Yes. I do have extra bolts for these horrid little hand crossbows, but I ran into a little trouble and spent several arrows I couldn’t recover.” She nudged a kuo-toa with her foot. “Shame none of this lot were archers. I’d take their harpoons, but I don’t know how to use them, and I’m already clattering when I walk from carrying all this excess ordnance.” She yawned. “Now that we’re together, we’d better find a place to eat and take turns getting a little sleep before we try to find the slaves. I imagine it’s daylight up above by now, and this running around all night is starting to wear on me. And I could do with drying out-this magic armor sheds water nicely, but I’m soaking otherwise. I need to get this stuff off me and air out my skin a bit.”
Julen, distracted by the thought of Zaltys removing her armor and, ah, the things she wore underneath, swallowed hard.
“I don’t suppose we dare to build a fire. The smoke would choke us anyway.” She sighed.
“At least it’s not cold. Or hot either. The Underdark has that advantage over the jungle. I napped a bit while I was being dragged. Very refreshing. So once we find a nice bolt-hole, I’ll take first watch.” They moved away from the pool, their way lit faintly by the glowing crystalline structures on the walls, picking their way around tumbled heaps of rocks, moving along the slight but discernible downward slope.
Zaltys produced Julen’s piece of chalk with a grin and handed it over. Every hundred yards or so he left a mark on a stone or stalagmite so they could find their way back. Although, come to think of it, there wasn’t much point. They couldn’t very well climb up the waterfall. They’d have to find another way to the surface. Presumably the derro went up and down all the time, so they could hunt for slaves. Perhaps they’d put up some useful signposts. “Thank you for saving me,” Julen said, more seriously than he usually spoke to his cousin. “I thought I was done for. Several times.”
“Finding you was my only priority,” Zaltys said, patting him on the shoulder in a depressingly sisterly sort of way. “But now that I have, and you haven’t had bits of yourself lopped off for a derro stewpot, it’s back to my original mission. I’m happy to have your help.”
Julen pointed at a ribbon or curling whiteness in the cavern. “Look at that snake. It’s almost like it’s walking along with us.”
“How in the world,” Zaltys said, and then swore, rather inventively. “The damn thing’s not even wet!”
She’s a strange one, Julen thought, but it’s all right. She’s stolen my heart, and I owe her my life, so she can be as strange as she likes. I’m all sewn up.
Krailash woke with a gasp from a terrible dream. He’d been in the Underdark, all his men massacred by a creature from a treacherous race, Alaia without a proper defense-
Ah. Yes. That was all true. Alaia stroked his scaly brow and said, “Shh, it’s all right.” She paused. “Actually, it’s all terrible. We’re trapped miles below the surface and I have no idea where my daughter is. But you’re not going to die.”
“My injuries …” He sat up, noting his armor piled in a rather disorderly heap against the far wall of the small, low-ceilinged cavern. The only light came from the faintly glowing body of the spectral boar, but it was enough to see by. He touched his arms and legs, and though they were sore, the skin red with raised welts and crusted with dried blood, there were no gaping wounds, no shattered bones.
“I am a shaman,” she said. “I couldn’t do much for the dead men we had to leave behind, but I was certainly capable of treating the worst of your wounds. You won’t die right away, at any rate. The hardest part was getting you into this side tunnel-the boar helped me drag you-and we’re still too close to the swordwings’ lair for my comfort, but at least I can’t hear buzzing. I doubt we’re safe, but we’re probably in less danger than we would be out in the open on the Causeway.” She yawned hugely. “And now that you’re awake, I’m going to get some sleep. I have no idea if it’s even day or night, but it’s well past time I got some rest. While I’m out you can formulate a brilliant plan to rescue my daughter and my nephew and get us out of this place alive.” Alaia curled up on her side with her cloak bundled for a pillow, and promptly began to snore.
Krailash stood up and tested his body, moving through a battle kata that used nearly every muscle he had, but only going at half-speed. There were a variety of new aches and pains complementing the old familiar twinges and injuries from long ago, but he was still in relatively sound working order for a dragonborn two-thirds of the way through a life of adventuring. These past few decades serving Alaia and her family had made him soft, but he hadn’t forgotten all his training and experience. The derro’s betrayal had surprised him. Most intelligent creatures would try to save their own lives, unless they were particularly honor bound or fanatical, but these mad slave-takers couldn’t even be counted upon to act in their own self-interest.
Krailash sat and brooded over the dark turn the journey underground had taken while Alaia got her rest. Because doing useful work was the best medicine, he scouted down the corridor. He could understand why Alaia had ducked into the first safe-looking side tunnel, but he disliked being backed into a place with only a single exit. About fifty yards down the corridor, it took a sharp left turn before returning to the Causeway.
A figure robed and cloaked in dusty gray-black cloth sat cross-legged before the entryway to the tunnel. His-her? its? — face was obscured by an equally dark hood, and it held a squirming rat the size of a pheasant in its hands. With a deft twist, the figure snapped the rat’s neck in its gloved hands, then pressed the rat into the shadow where its face should have been. Krailash expected horrible sounds of chewing and slurping and cracking bones, but there was only silence, which was somehow worse-as if the intruder had eaten the rat whole in a single swallow.
“Enjoying your stay?” the figure asked, and the voice was male, Krailash supposed-though it was mostly just whispers and a rasp like a dagger on stone. “I have mixed feelings about this place, myself. I have a certain proprietary interest in darkness and treachery, which suit the Underdark, but there are other forces down here that are more or less inimical to me.”
“Who are you?” Krailash said. He’d encountered a god, once, or rather its avatar, while adventuring decades earlier, and though that had been a relatively benevolent being and this one struck him as rather more malevolent, he felt the same sense of outsized presence, as if the being before him were the fin of a shark protruding from the water, the true extent of his form hidden in unfathomable depths. “Are you the Slime King the derro mentioned?” Krailash didn’t think gods made a habit of directly smiting those who killed their subjects, but perhaps the deity of an insane race would be similarly unpredictable. He gripped his axe, though attacking a god with Thunder’s Edge would be as effective as attacking a great red dragon with a soup spoon.