When Yagra had been a preteen, she had briefly lived in a tent in the Field Ward. The entire living area had taken about three paces to cross in any direction. Not that either Yagra or her uncle–both of whom lived in the space together–could actually straighten up to take those paces beneath the low, angled cloth of the roof. They had to store all of their meager belongings, mainly weapons and camping gear, exactly where they slept. Things which truly could not be kept on the ground were hung in a haversack which dangled from the central tentpole. Her uncle was never overly fussed with neatness and Yagra herself was a preteen, so neither had ever made their “beds”, simply living with a mess and tangle of blankets on the floor at all times. She had essentially been living like a rat in a nest of chewed-up bedding and stolen treasures. Countless days had been spent sitting exactly where she had woken up and then going to sleep in that exact space without ever moving, when she had first arrived and was too scared to brave the other inhabitants of the Field Ward. The same clothes, too. On the road to Waterdeep and the Field Ward, Yagra’s uncle had often taken advantage of when it rained to strip to his underwear and use the weather as a bath. At that time, Yagra had joined him. In the Field Ward, she had been strictly forbidden to continue this practice and given no alternative, and so the small space always stank of unwashed adolescence.

At that time in her life, she couldn’t have imagined a mansion like this one. She couldn’t have dreamed there were buildings which contained first a foyer larger than her old tent, and then a parlor three times that size. In this parlor, three paces would take Yagra from the couch she sat upon past the table to a second couch. It would take a further six or seven paces to get to the double doors which led to the foyer they had come in through, ushered by a human butler. Those two sofas weren’t the only places to sit, either. There was a cluster of plush, velvet-upholstered armchairs in front of a marble fireplace as well. The only things on the floor were thick, wooly rugs and ceramic pots containing decorative plants. The only weapons were a pair of decorative scimitars stuck through a round, enameled shield and hung on the wall. The space smelled of cedar wood and the faintest whiff of spring pollen.

The Yawning Portal’s taproom was larger, sure, and Yagra had been living in a far tidier and cleaner room in it than she had in her youth. She was a long time removed from her time in the Field Ward. Even so, this place made her feel like that grimy preteen once again. Back then, what she’d felt hadn’t exactly been shame. It was impossible to feel shame for living the same way as her uncle and so many of their neighbors. It was more like she’d felt… stalled. Frustrated. Like she’d done everything she needed to do in order to light a fire, but it just wouldn’t produce sparks. She may have wanted to be clean and to have a bed that wasn’t stained with mud from where her uncle had stepped on it, but she hadn’t been allowed to. She hadn’t done anything wrong. It was just their bad luck.

The emotion she was experiencing right now was pretty close to shame. She was heavily aware of the way the walk to the Castle Ward had caused her to sweat, and of the way that her hair was lank and leaving smears of grease on her cheek when she turned her head. Also of the way she had a black snake wrapped around her shoulders. She perched on the very edge of the seat cushion, afraid of letting too much of her own body touch it. It bothered her like a deep itch, the idea that one of the fancy men living here might comment on her.

Luckily, the fancy men living here had bigger things to concern themselves with. Yagra wasn’t even a thorn in their eye.

The butler had not turned a hair upon opening the door to find Renaer Neverember on the threshold, though Yagra was given to understand that this was not actually his mansion. It was a huge, hexagonal-shaped building with towers at four of its six corners which stood at the junction between Coin Alley and Tarnished Silver Alley. The owner of this place was a man named Mirt. Yagra was sure that he must have had a surname to go along with all of this accumulated wealth as well, but his name was so well-known that apparently all Renaer felt the need to tell them was the first one. They’d been ushered right in and left to wait while the master of the house made time to visit them.

Jeremiah explained in a low voice, “Mirt the Wolf is the worst-kept secret in Waterdeep. Everyone knows he’s one of the Masked Lords. Most know he’s involved in the Harpers too. He used to run with Durnan during his adventuring days; that’s when he made all this money.”

“Lord Mirt,” the butler called out from the doorway. He sidestepped to reveal the generous outline of the lord, who bustled loudly into the living room.

Mirt was a large man in every direction. He had a full head of flaming red hair and a fluffy mustache to match. His clothes were simply bedecked in jewels, mainly gold and emeralds which matched the spring-green silk of his tunic. His hose was spotlessly white and his buckled shoes flawlessly polished. Upon his head, he wore a folded green hat which trailed a long, scarlet plume behind him. At his waist was belted a slim rapier whose basket handle twinkled with gems. The man’s florid face was already beaming as he thundered in, hands outstretched towards Renaer.

“My boy, it’s so good to see you safe! When your housekeeper reported you had not been home for two days, I was beside myself!”

Renaer pressed the man’s hands together and smiled back. “I am whole, thanks to these adventurers. But my companion Floon remains in peril.”

“Well, by thunder, you lot have the gratitude of the Harpers, then! No small thing!” Mirt rounded on the rest of them, almost threateningly friendly. Yagra couldn’t help but notice that though the twinkle in the man’s blue eyes could be read as friendly, it reminded her of nothing more than a shrewd merchant sizing up a haggler.

“How gold is that gratitude?” Doc said. He was promptly shushed from four directions.

Mirt didn’t take it amiss. He chuckled in a friendly manner and ushered everyone into various seats around the room. The butler slid back in through the door to disseminate trays of tea and biscuits. Yagra crunched down on a handful of the flimsy things while Renear began speaking rapidly.

“The situation as it stands, Mirt, is that Floon and I were first abducted by the Black Network, then Floon was further taken by the Xanathar Guild while I escaped. These ladies and gentlemen were hired by Master von Geddarm to find and rescue Floon but found me instead. As far as we can tell, the Xanathar have had Floon in their power for a full night. We believe their overall goal may have been to interrogate me on the whereabouts of my father’s rumored treasure hoard. If they are under the impression that Floon is me, I fear what he must have suffered this night…”

“Do you have any information about the Xanathar agents who took him? Names or descriptions?” Mirt’s twinkling eyes remained sharp in his otherwise jovial face.

“They seemed to be a squad of kenku,” Jeremiah put in. “At least the ones they left behind.”

“That’s not much to go on.” Mirt rubbed a hand over his mustache.

“Do you know of any Xanathar hideouts in the city?” Ramona asked.

“Not as such. I can ask some of our spies to keep an eye out.” Absently, Mirt leaned over to scribble something onto a scrap of paper, which his butler appeared to spirit out of the room as if summoned by magic. “It will take some time for them to get back to us, so why don’t you tell me about yourselves? How did such a group as you end up working for Master von Geddarm?”

“Well…” the group shared a startled look, none of them quite prepared to suddenly be talking about their personal lives. It was Ramona who rallied the best, offering a performative smile and a tilt of her head. “...I was born in Waterdeep. My family didn’t approve of music as a career choice, so I had to make it on my own. I’m currently employed at The Yawning Portal, where Mister Volo approached us.”

“What kind of music?”

Ramona’s eyes lit up. “I do a lot of experimenting with dissonance, actually. You know, the foundation of bardic magic is the conversion of mechanical energy into magical energy, but I found a way to convert it into what I call vibrant energy. Vibrant energy can’t actually even be heard unless I’m projecting it magically as well, but the interaction between the two means that I can add distortion or reverb to the sounds. Dissonance, an unstable chord, I think can actually add to the harmony of music in the same way that you add salt to cookies to make them sweeter! I call the genre “elemental”; like the creatures. I assign different songs different elemental types they’re meant to invoke; lately, my inspiration has been rock and metal elementals.”

Mirt cleared his throat. “...A lady of vision, I see. New horizons! Exciting stuff.”

“You should hear her music. It’s something else entirely,” Renear put in.

“I’ve no doubt. And you, my boy?” Mirt moved his attention to Jeremiah.

The young man flashed a careless grin paired with a dismissive flick of the fingertips. “Similar story. Waterdavian born, family was not best pleased with my choice of career. I spent many years at sea before finding my fortune, as it were. Now I’m back with the Sea Maiden’s Faire, bringing smiles and joy to the people. The name is Jeremiah Vane, Lord Mirt.”

“I see, I see. A regular band of misfits! I’m afraid I don’t know any family by the name of Vane here in the North Ward.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t,” was all Jeremiah said, tapping his nose in a way that invited Mirt into the conspiracy rather than scorning him. After a moment’s delay, Jeremiah snorted in laughter as if at some unheard joke. “The both of us have our friend Dingo to thank for that.”

Surprised to be called upon, Dingo straightened. Alone among the group, he looked almost as uncomfortable as Yagra felt. The tip of his tiefling tail was twitching like an agitated cat’s. “Mm-hmm!”

Jeremiah clapped him on the shoulder. “Our friend here is a smuggler by trade. Knows how to move a cargo unseen! At one time, that cargo was myself and Miss Ramona, seeking a life away from our restrictive families!”

“It was an unusual way to meet friends,” Ramona remarked, half-covering her smile. “But I suppose you could say we were just kindred spirits. After Jeremiah left the city, Dingo and I stayed in touch.”

“Quite impressive! I mean that sincerely,” Mirt congratulated Dingo. “The Harpers espouse the importance of all people being allowed to live their lives as they wish; free and without fear! I salute you for making that possible for these fine folk and for my friend Renaer as well. I’ve worked with one or two professional smugglers myself. Perhaps you’ll find yourself more, ah, officially in Harper company soon enough?”

Dingo laughed nervously. “Haha, maybe!” He shot a look sideways at Doc, a rim of white showing in a clear half-moon around his irises.

“And yourself?” Mirt moved on to Doc.

Implacable as ever, Doc said, “I’m a mercenary. One of the Zhentarim. Doom Raider faction. Been in the Silver Marches for ten years. That’s about it about me. About. Hey, Yagra, what’s your story?”

Yagra stiffened. Somehow, she had not expected to be included in this little sharing session. “What, that’s it? Were you born here?”

“I was never born. You?”

Yagra barked a laugh. “Born? Yeah, sure was, pal. Not in Waterdeep. Came here when I was a kid with my uncle. Now I’m the bodyguard of Davil Starsong at the Yawning Portal.”

“Hang on,” Ramona broke in. “Does he live there? Do you both?”

“Yeah, Davil rents a suite upstairs on a permanent basis.”

“And you share this room?” she pressed.

“Uh, yeah. Davil and my uncle were partners, like, business partners, so when we came to Waterdeep he put me up while my uncle went to work. And, you know, I say bodyguard but it’s not like I’m getting paid; it’s just that Davil takes care of living expenses for us both. And my uncle, when he’s around.” Yagra had the strangest feeling as she explained this. It was a feeling like saying something awkward or inappropriate during a dinner conversation. A feeling a lot like approaching this massive building with actual towers while sweaty and wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing all tenday. She had no idea how to read the expressions crossing everyone else’s faces, but they didn’t seem positive.

“You’re homeless,” Doc summarized.

His words were like a solid punch to the gut. She opened her mouth. “I… live in the Yawning Portal, I just said.”

“You said you’re crashing in someone else’s hotel room…” Doc began.

Dingo attempted to speak over him: “Not that there’s anything wrong—We would never judge you for that—!”

He was unable to drown out the masked man’s voice. “...and that you aren’t being paid for your work…”

“—A few of us are between places at the moment, it’s not only you—”

“...so you’re homeless and unemployed,” Doc finished, mercilessly.

For a long, awkward moment, everybody avoided each others’ eyes.

“He’s not… taking advantage of you in any way, is he?” Ramona ventured.

Yagra wholeheartedly wished for death. Through gritted teeth, she said, “We can move on.”

Mirt cleared his throat. “Quite.”

With divine timing, the door inched open to admit the butler from earlier, who slipped in and silently passed an envelope to Mirt. The door swung back shut behind him, the only noise indicating the brief presence of the butler at all being the quiet click of its latch catching. Mirt examined the contents of the envelope down the length of his florid nose. Plump and rosy-cheeked as he was, the man gave off an unfortunately strong resemblance to a hamster examining a seedcase which it shortly intended to chew open. In hardly any more time than it had taken for him to be handed the note, Mirt had absorbed the message. He inhaled deeply and returned his attention to the stricken-silent room.

“Our agents have informed me that the majority of Xanathar hideouts are located within the sewers of Waterdeep. Unfortunately, where exactly within those sewers they are changes frequently, as they move between compromised hideouts. Members are led to active locations by signs left within the sewers.”

“Oh, very helpful,” Doc groused.

“They don’t have a more specific location for us?” Jeremiah pressed.

Mirt shook his head. “Our information is not quite that up-to-date. The last hideout we had our eye on is abandoned now.”

“So what, where does that leave us, then?” Doc threw up his hands. “I can’t even feckin’ believe this! How is it that there is a gang war in this city and none of the feckin’ gangs know where the others are?! Seriously! The Doom Raiders can’t find ‘em, the Harpers can’t find ‘em, the City Watch can’t find ‘em… Between just those three you’d think there would be some clue but I guess all the best minds in the city have joined up with the mysterious, disappearing Xanathar Guild! And they took all the bloodhounds and people who can scry with them! How how how do you lose track of the largest threat to the city within that same city, I ask you! Why the hell do we keep going to people for advice who can’t even advise us?”

What friendliness had remained in Mirt’s face had drained over the course of this outburst. He was no less florid and no less pouch-cheeked, but a hardness had come over his countenance which hinted at the kind of man who in his youth might have earned the moniker “the Wolf”. He stroked his mustache slowly. “Our spies will continue to look for more detailed information on Floon’s possible whereabouts. In the meantime, if you are dissatisfied, you may search yourselves or wait here for further news.”

Renaer climbed to his feet, face as flinty as his mentor’s. “I will not sit around waiting. I will search the sewers as long as I have to, for Floon.”

“Big words from the reason he’s there in the first place!”

For a second time, Doc’s words utterly silenced the room. Yagra heard both Mirt and Ramona suck in hard breaths of shock. Renaer’s hand shot to his hip and clenched into a white-knuckled ball on the handle of his rapier. His eyes seemed to be attempting to do the job of stabbing Doc in place of the sword.

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“Explain yourself, sir,” he hissed.

“Doc!” Ramona snapped in urgent warning.

Heedless, the white-cloaked man said loudly, “It’s entirely your fault he was grabbed when they were looking for you to begin with, then you escaped without him to boot! What more needs explaining? Now you are expecting us to go save your friend for you and you can’t even tell us where to look! What good are the feckin’ Harpers, then? Might as well call the City Watch! We did their job for them too, earlier!”

“Too much, mate!” Jeremiah’s voice came out uncommonly harshly.

It was far too late. The damage was done. Renaer said, “No need to trouble yourself, then. I won’t ask you to do a thing. I shall go and save Floon myself.” Without further conversation, straight-backed and crackling with fury, Renaer Neverember strode out of the parlor. The door clicked shut behind him with no more emphasis than it had in the wake of the butler.

Mirt watched this performance silently. He no longer looked as steely as Renaer had. Mostly, he looked… sad. A sigh seemed to bubble up from the depths of his considerable gut. “That’s that, then. We’ve no more information for you, so I suppose you are free to do with it as you will. I must go make sure that damn fool boy doesn’t find a knife in his gut in an open sewer.”

“Yeah, we’ll go just take care of it for him!” Doc got in one last parting shot, while the others sprang to their feet and bunched up to hustle the huge man out of the room. Thankfully, at the moment Dingo was in one of his taller and stronger bodies, meaning that between him, stout Yagra, and lanky Jeremiah, they actually stood a chance of manhandling the guy. Yagra knew for sure that there had to be steel armor beneath those tattered white clothes and cloak, but she was also beginning to suspect the man’s bones were made of lead, too. Both of her hands, clamped around his arm, dug only into unyielding metal no matter the angle. Even the elbow joint felt as hard and lumpy as a door-hinge. He was incredibly heavy for his size, requiring actual effort to push along. Between the three of them (Ramona took up the rear, both hands planted in the small of Doc’s back but not exerting much if any pressure), they frog-marched Doc out of the parlor, across the foyer, and onto the front walk of Mirt’s magnificent mansion.

As soon as they were outside, the shouting began.

“What the bloody hell was that?!” Dingo demanded.

“Everything I said was true!” Doc shot back.

“That doesn’t mean you have to say it!”

“We have burned some bridges in there for sure,” Jeremiah noted.

“Renaer was going to help us save Floon,” Ramona scolded. “You didn’t have to blame him for his own kidnapping!”

“Nobody was going to help us do shit,” Doc countered. “We still don’t know where to even look.”

“He said the sewers.”

“What, just anywhere? Or should Dingo just take us to his living room?”

Dingo, Yagra, and Doc all stopped walking at the same time. Jeremiah was jerked backwards half a pace as he attempted to continue, while Ramona trod on the hem of Doc’s cloak. A moment later, everyone in the group was taking their own pace backwards, the hairs on their necks standing straight up. There was a sudden aura of tension which each could feel like a cold breeze on the skin. Ramona wrung her hands together at the base of her throat, her eyes darting between Doc and Dingo. Jeremiah folded his arms and tilted his head as if to listen carefully. Dingo was sweating, his tiefling tail lashing behind him. Doc loomed, fingers flexing open and closed in apparent frustration.

For her own part, Yagra was burning. From her feet all the way up through her throat. She had walked into that mansion covered in shame like a clinging, gritty oil. Even the slightest lick of temper set her alight like a candle flame touched to lamp fuel. Her cheeks were so flushed they were probably a deep indigo, hot as coals. Every muscle in her back and neck was as tense as a string on Ramona’s guitar. She had just been inside of the fanciest building she had ever set foot in in her life, the kind of place that a young Yagra living in a tent with her uncle couldn’t have even dreamed of. And thanks to Doc’s temper, she’d had to all but flee it in disgrace.

Just her luck, wasn’t it? She’d thought she was fortunate to have met this group. Brave, funny, competent. Willing to bring her in and even let her take a cut of the pay. Yagra’s own family didn’t give her a chance like that. They just stuck her in the Yawning Portal and gave her make-work and pretended she was earning her keep. She wasn’t. This group had burned up the veil of illusion around her, too. She didn’t have money or a job, she didn’t have a home, she didn’t have an actual family or friends, and as soon as she tried to get any of those they were snatched away from her by a careless word. Just Yagra’s luck.

And now, that cryptic comment was the last spark needed. She was a conflagration.

“What,” she growled, “the hell does that mean? Dingo’s living room?”

Dingo glared bloody murder in Doc’s direction. “He’s talking nonsense.”

“Can you lead us to the hideout in the sewers or not?” Doc said, flatly.

“Why would Dingo be able to do that?” Yagra demanded. Her voice rose to a shout. “You people might have just blown the only paying job I’ve found in months so how about you clue me in about, I don’t know, who the fuck you people even are to be mouthing off to a goddamn Masked Lord?”

The way Doc’s head tilted made it extremely clear that he did put any stock in who he yelled at. Doc’s face was about as capable of showing remorse, Yagra thought, as his heart was of feeling it.

“Oh my god,” Dingo groaned. “Maybe this form is also a loss. You yelled at a Masked Lord, mate. I’m goin’ through ‘em.”

At this point, it was pretty clear that nobody was going to answer her question. Yagra decided to elevate and apply pressure. She stepped forward, both arms striking to seize a double handful of Dingo’s blue tunic. That was the plan, anyway. As it turned out, spine was an optional quality for the changeling in both a figurative and literal sense. Perhaps he could shapeshift them to the form of noodles at will. Somehow, the big, gray tiefling eeled easily away from her grasp, dancing along the path with both hands up as if to call a timeout.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Can we talk a second?!”

“You can start talking any second!” Yagra snarled. “Why would you know where to find the Xanathar?”

“Okay, look–There’s a reason.”

For a long, tense moment, Yagra and Dingo simply breathed hard at each other. At last, she prompted, “Uh-huh?”

“There’s a reason! Which is that I know the Xanathar Guild in a professional capacity.”

Ramona gasped. Jeremiah grimly said, “I think so,” as if the gasp had been a question he was confirming. Or as if he had been anticipating Yagra’s next utterance, which was a wordless noise of confusion. Grimly, he added, “You’re working for them.”

Yagra reached again to try to grab the little shit, who continued to evade her grasp. They did a furious, awkward two-step across the mansion path until Doc interposed his bulk between them. Yagra snarled up at his expressionless mask, so close that she could see her breath puff a cloud of condensation across it.

“All this time? All along, you’ve been working with a fucking Xanathar agent?” Just her luck for sure. Then, looking at the way Doc alone was sheltering Dingo while Ramona and Jeremiah stared, she realized something else. “And you knew it?”

Doc nodded. “Yeah. I knew. I’ve known Dingo since he was really young. Before I left for the Silver Marches.”

“So, when you got me away from my family…” Ramona began. “And Jeremiah too… You were working for Xanathar then?”

Dingo squirmed, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “I was.” Then, vehemently, “But that’s why I called you all together the other day! I want out!”

“You expect me to just believe that?” Yagra returned.

“He did ask us to meet him at the Yawning Portal yesterday. He said something about how we all owed him a favor. The scrum and then the troll interrupted before he could get to the point,” Jeremiah confirmed.

“I was going to ask you guys to help me get away from them,” Dingo insisted. “I joined up when I was a kid. I was also just trying to get away from my family, I don’t know, it was a rebellious phase. But for my initiation, they asked me to kidnap and ransom a child and after that how was I supposed to ask for help? Then they got worse, every year, more violent. People killing each other for disloyalty to Xanathar and Zhentarim targeting us for killing their members… I never wanted to be part of this kind of thing!”

Yagra’s first, furious thought was, What? Did you join a gang for the health benefits? But a second later, she realized how hypocritical saying such a thing would be. After all, as her new “friends'' had so tactfully pointed out earlier, Yagra was completely dependent on her gang for basic life necessities. She was hardly even a member of the Zhentarim; she was their pet. The difference was that Yagra was related to a member of the Doom Raiders. If she had happened to be born into any other family, she assuredly would not have had the opportunity to even be a pet of the Zhentarim. She’d have been in the same boat as Dingo.

Then again, from the sounds of it, Dingo had left his family to end up in that boat in what he called a fit of rebellion. He didn’t have to be living in a gutter like Yagra was. He’d chosen to. And he’d chosen not to join the Zhentarim or the Harpers or even one of those fringe organizations like the Emerald Enclave or the Order of the Gauntlet. He’d chosen the worst, most brutal gang in the city. He’d directly contributed to the violence and disorder plaguing the streets.

Then again, he clearly regretted that choice and was struggling to make it right now. If what he was saying could be believed.

Her body was still burning with the heat of anger and humiliation. That familiar resentment… Why did things keep going wrong if Yagra was doing everything right? How was it that things never got better for her even by coincidence, only worse? Even a flipped coin would sometimes land face-up. Yagra only ever landed on her face.

She took a deep breath in through her nose, trying to reduce the fire to a smolder. “Do the rest of you believe that?”

“Of course,” Doc said, immediately.

“Sure,” Jeremiah agreed.

“I think so,” Ramona finished. “Dingo, you’ve only ever been kind to us. I’ll help you if what you want is to get away from the Xanathar Guild.”

That seemed to settle that. The tension in the air slowly slackened, leaving everybody as exhausted as if they had endured a battle rather than a few minutes of argument. Yagra was left feeling somewhat helpless. She supposed it had been naive to think that this random group of people she’d met fighting a troll yesterday in a tavern wouldn’t have skeletons or secrets. It was stupid to be standing around wallowing in self-pity because of it. All she could do now was move forward with what she had. What did she have? She had a job: Find and save Floon Blaagmar for Volothamp Geddarm. She had allies, however trustworthy: Jeremiah, Ramona, Dingo, and Doc. And she had an enemy: the Xanathar Guild who were holding Floon in their sewer hideout.

“So…” Jeremiah drawled into the silence. “Dingo, can you lead us to your hideout?”

Dingo shuffled in place. The fearsome horns and muscles on this tiefling body made the sheepish set of his frame look out of place. It made him look younger. Come to think of that, Dingo could change his face. How old even was he? “Yeah, reckon I can. Don’t know which one has Floon, though.”

“Do you report to somebody?” Ramona wondered.

Dingo nodded. “Guild Boss Grumshar.”

“Maybe you can ask him where Floon is.”

“Uh, maybe.”

“Let’s move in that direction and talk about our plan,” Doc suggested. “Lead on, kiddo.”

The first few steps Dingo took were a cautious slink, like a cat trying to get past someone they weren’t sure wouldn’t try to touch them. He kept his eyes fixed sidelong on Yagra the whole time. She met the look with a glare of her own, not quite ready yet to forgive his association with her enemies. As soon as he was past her, he picked up the pace to a swift trot that took them down the street in the direction of the Dock Ward. The rest fell into step behind him in uneasy silence.

The golden glow of evening was filtered and muted by the blanket of fog which still rested across the majority of the city. With the day approaching a close, the fog was finally thinned to the point of transparency. The not-so-distant peak of Waterdeep Mountain was obscured by soupy clouds, but you could at least see across the street.

Naturally, the ruthless Xanathar Guild agent who smuggled people for a living and had once robbed a child from their own family used this increased visibility to rescue a stray cat. He spotted it slinking along the curb, belly all but glued to the ground, flinching every time a carriage or a pedestrian passed, making creeping, halting progress. The animal was a skinny little scrap of black fur despite the ribbon-collar indicating it had once been a pet. It, she, went limp the instant Dingo’s hands closed around her. The broad-shouldered, bull-horned tiefling cradled the little cat in his arms and cooed at her. He insisted that Yagra duck into the Yawning Portal as they passed in order to leave the cat with someone who would take care of her. Dazed by the constant, rapid changes in her perception of Dingo, she could only comply. The cat was somewhat less happy to be held by Yagra, though she had no idea if that was due to her handling technique or the proximity of her quiescent snake. Regardless, she held onto it and went in.

Just inside the door, the first person she encountered was Bonnie.

“Hey, everything alright?” the waitress chirped.

Yagra thrust forward the little black cat. “Can you watch a cat for me?”

Bonnie blinked. “Uh, yeah? I can leave her up in yours and Davil’s room, I guess. I’ll put out some water and food for her.”

“Dingo’s gonna try to find her owner later.” The cat was transferred with minimal fuss. Despite having been found half-starved on the street, she really did act like a pet. She snuggled into Bonnie’s arms and purred furiously. Bonnie melted instantly, petting and cooing at it just like Dingo had. Just as Yagra was turning away, ready to get back to their actual job, Bonnie pulled herself together enough to ask her to wait.

“Um, Dingo. That’s the… tiefling guy you were here with earlier, right?”

“Yeah.” As well as the elf woman and the half-elf woman, not that Yagra pointed that out.

“Do you think you could, like, pass on a message for me?”

This was unexpected. “Sure, I guess.”

“Great, thank you so much! Just let him know that I get off work at 8, okay? Like, let him know that he can swing by around then if he’s willing to?” Bonnie bit her lower lip, clearly trying to contain the wide smile which was threatening to escape across her whole face. She looked… excited, for some reason.

Yagra didn’t waste time trying to figure out what was happening here. “I’ll tell him. See you later.”

“Bye!”

Detour completed, Yagra caught back up to the rest. They made it to the Dock Ward without further incident. Dingo led them with sure steps to an unremarkable alley which ran behind a street lined with businesses. It was the kind of place which saw carts unloading deliveries in the morning and little other traffic. A sewer entrance capped by a round, iron cover sat in the exact center of the alley’s street.

The lot of them stood at the corner of the alley’s entrance, watching that iron cover as if it was going to spring up and attack them. Despite all intentions, they hadn’t actually discussed a plan on the walk there.

“Alright,” said Dingo. When Yagra looked over, he was no longer a bulky gray tiefling, but a nondescript human man with shaggy brown hair and unshaven stubble. “What’s our entrance?”

“You… walk in and ask?” Ramona said, hesitantly.

“Sure but what do I say if they ask why I want to know?”

“That you… have information for them?”

“That you have prisoners for them,” Jeremiah put in. He grinned crookedly, gesturing at the rest of them. “Us.”

“Um. Mate, I don’t know if it’s believable for me to have caught all of you.”

“Also, they don’t want us,” Ramona pointed out.

“They want me and Yagra,” Doc corrected. “Xanathar’s at war with Zhentarim.”

Ramona protested, “But that’s not a fake prisoner exchange, that’s a real one! How does it help us to turn Doc and Yagra over to the Xanathar?”

Doc seemed to subside into thought as he chewed that over. Jeremiah, however, became excited.

“No, that’s it! Dingo goes in pretending to have caught Doc and Yagra and tells the Guild Boss they were involved in snatching Floon to begin with. Asks where Floon is being questioned so that he can bring them over, too. Ramona and I wait here and as soon as Dingo knows where to go, you three take off and send the snake to let us know where to meet you!”

Ramona added, “We can tie you up so that it looks like you’re captured but you can actually get out if things get hot.”

Abruptly, Doc said, “Not Yagra. No way. Just me.”

Yagra looked at him. “Why the hell not?”

Doc gestured at Jeremiah and Ramona. “Leave these two spellcasters alone? Send in all of our fighters? What if there’s trouble? They need a heavy hitter with them.”

Unexpectedly, Yagra felt her face warm once more but this time with a blush. She stuttered, completely caught off guard. She hadn’t even taken any of the kenku down in their last fight at the warehouse. Why did this guy keep complimenting her? She was still mad at him, godsdamnit!

“Good idea,” Dingo supported it. “Yagra, Jeremiah, and Ramona wait out here. Alright with everyone?”

There were various noises of assent. Ramona and Dingo worked together to untangle a length of rope and loop it artistically around a patient Doc’s gloved wrists. There was a brief but passionate debate about whether or not Dingo ought to carry in his shield and mace so that he could reach them if they had to fight. In the end, both were handed off to Yagra. She strapped the shield across her back and hung the mace next to hers. That done, she reached up to unwind the winged snake laying across her shoulders. She held it out uncertainly, first to Doc, then Dingo.

“How, uh…”

“I can’t walk in carrying it,” Dingo realized. It was a symbol of the Zhentarim. They’d recognize it immediately.

“I’ll take it,” Doc said. “I can hide it in my cloak.”

A smile of pure, undiluted mischief crossed Ramona’s face. Her voice emerged in a singsong. “Orrrrrr… You do have a stomach, don’t you, Doc? A hollow one?”

This seemed to Yagra like the most inane question anyone could ask anybody. Did he have a stomach?! Doc did not seem to share her bafflement. In fact, he immediately let out a groan indicating he both understood and disapproved.

“...Oh my Gond. Seriously? You seriously want me to–”

“Eat,” Ramona said, “the snake. Eat. The. Snake. Eat! The! Snake!”

Jeremiah joined in. “Eat! The! Snake!”

“Eat! The! Snake!”

“Eat! The! Snake!”

Yagra watched, her mouth open, as Doc grudgingly took the offered snake from her hands with his bound ones. He hitched up a shoulder to shift his mask askew. For the first time, Yagra got the smallest glimpse of what might lie behind its golden surface. She did not, however, understand what she was seeing. The slice of chin and mouth she could see was mostly dark gray or brown in color though rippled with variations in shade. Despite this odd color, it was strangely… smooth in texture. She couldn’t even make out any kind of chin cleft or the curve of a lip, just a featureless oval with a dark slash of an opening which he stretched wide enough to jam the head of the snake into. In one long slide, without the slightest gag, Doc swallowed the winged snake while Ramona and Jeremiah cheered.

Absolutely no part of that at all should have been hot, so it wasn’t. It wasn’t. What the hell. Yagra was so fucking confused. And still mad at him.

“Is that thing gonna be okay?” she got out, apparently the only one concerned that Doc had just swallowed a live animal.

He re-adjusted his mask, removing that brief glimpse of the face beneath, and shrugged. “I don’t digest things. It’ll just stay in there until I take it out.”

“Wh. Wh–”

“Ready, partner?” Dingo chirped.

“When you are,” Doc agreed.

Ignoring Yagra’s bewildered noises, the two stepped forward. Even with his hands bound, it was clearly no struggle for Doc to pry up the iron cover and heave it to the side. Step by step, Dingo and Doc descended into the darkness.

Silence fell over the misty corner.

“Either of you bring a pack of cards?” Ramona asked, brightly.