In the spring, the Sword Coast was veiled in mist. At night, it rolled off the ocean like the breath of some great, sea-dwelling dragon, wreathing the countryside in its humid embrace. Daylight would burn this fog off in the morning, but only if that daylight could be seen between the plump spring clouds which grew fat on the warming air. Many days, the fog could linger well past noon, sheltered by the shade of these gray-wooled clouds, holding the world in between in a limbo of damp shade. 

The city of Waterdeep, hugging the coast, was no exception to this springtime pattern. The mountain which stuck up between the center of the city and the coast to the west only sheltered the parts of the city which were just beneath it, often slicing through storms and rains coming in off the ocean like the prow of a ship cutting through seafoam. It was no wonder that the seats of government and justice were crowded together in the shadow of Waterdeep Mountain, protected from the violence of spring thunderstorms. The poorer wards to the north and south of the mountain were left to fend for themselves against storm and sea alike. Even the mountain’s shadow, however, couldn’t protect against the fog.

This veil of mist and rain would eventually nourish a far more delicate and colorful veil across the city, as wildflowers and crops bloomed. For now, however, the best description for the city of Waterdeep was “dank”. 

Waterdeep sprawled in an oblong shape along the coast, bending around the base of the mountain which separated its heart from the sea. The city was divided into seven wards, according to general purpose and location. Along the coast north of the mountain was the Sea Ward, glittering and resplendent with holy temples, lush parks, and expansive villas, while touching the coast to the south was the Dock Ward. The contents of this ward were in diametric opposition to the grandeur of its northern counterpart; the Dock Ward opened onto Waterdeep Harbor, where trade vessels of all descriptions crowded around and the bustle of sailors and dockhands never ceased except at deepest midnight. The rough buildings here were mainly warehouses, alehouses, tacky souvenir shops, and disreputable businesses which catered to the myriad of traveling sailors. Cradled in between these at the mountain’s foot was the Castle Ward, seat of government, and the Trade Ward where the majority of commerce was located. At the eastern, inland edge of Waterdeep was the walled-off City of the Dead, which divided the North Ward from the Southern Ward. The city’s walls embraced a ramshackle tent city to the north which was known as the Field Ward, having begun its life as the killing field in which Waterdeep would lure and then slaughter invading armies. 

The city was not a new sight for Zardoz Zord. He had traveled up and down the Sword Coast for years now, plying his business. He had seen Waterdeep in all seasons. Spring was one of the more unpleasant times of year, and yet, it was also his favorite. The very wildness of the weather reminded him of the storm-lashed shores of his home, igniting the deeply buried part of his heart that longed for the open sea instead of following the scent of money up and down the coast. The stinking salt air which filled his nose was fragrant with the scent of possibility, and even the ugly dampness of the weather had its own beauty.

Turning towards afternoon overhead, the sun sank gratefully into the soft embrace of thick, steel-gray clouds. Its last rays sparkled along the raindrops which came down in brisk, businesslike drops across the city. The effect was almost dazzling, especially in the Dock Ward, where the sun glittered across the surface of the water even as it began to dimple. Bright and fresh, the visual was a bit of a contrast to the briny, fishy, ale-and-vomit stink which permeated the area.

Another visual in direct contrast with the grimy surroundings of the docks was the parade currently filtering along the piers. The raindrops and light provided their natural beauty, yes, but here was the beauty which Zardoz Zord brought with him. Men and women of all races dressed in colorful leotards, rhinestones, and feathers laughed and chatted with punchy fervor as they disassembled wheeled floats and passed the pieces aboard one of three ships docked in a row. Ornate lettering along the hulls labeled these ships as the Hellraiser, the Heartbreaker, and the Eyecatcher. Hands led horses adorned with glittering bridles and plumes of feathers aboard. Not only horses, but zebras, camels, and giant salamanders picked their way up the gangplanks. Birdcages full of pixies, almirajs, and faerie dragons were passed over the rails, while others loaded their equipment and costumes into crates to be carried below. Two by two, clowns piled their discarded stilts and bundled them together. Two gnomes poured over a stringed instrument, trying to locate the source of an odd sound when plucked, only to drop it with a clang as a nearby dwarf accidentally stepped on the end of a firecracker string. The string of popping beads writhed like a snake around his ankles as the clumsy performer was loudly scolded by the owners of the now-dented instrument. A zebra on-deck screamed and plunged, briefly seeming to clip through its own set of striped wings before the enchantment dissolved in a shower of sparks, handler losing concentration as he fought with the panicking beast. The normal works of the docks were stalled or entirely tangled up in the cheerful confusion of the parade’s disassembly. 

Up on the forecastle of the Eyecatcher, Zardoz leaned against the rail as he watched all of this chaos below. He was dressed in a tight, red silk outfit which opened up to the navel, showing off a bounty of dark chest hair. His black ringlets hung over his shoulders, spilling from beneath a wide hat bedecked in long, colorful feathers. His legs, encased in thigh-high boots, were long and slim and crossed at the ankle. Though he was clearly a man plunging rapidly towards the wrong side of middle age, his whole attitude exuded a charm and rakishness that younger men would be hard-pressed to match. The web of creases appearing at the corners of his eyes and mouth, partially hidden behind his trimmed-short black beard and mustache, so far only served to make him look as if he was constantly holding back a secret smile twinkling in his amber eyes. They did the opposite of aging his face. 

The stew of activity on the deck below was one which Zardoz had seen a hundred times, yet never tired of. He watched his performers pack up with a satisfied glow in his chest that scintillated like the afternoon sun off the crystal raindrops. Bystanders thronged the docks and the shore, watching just as Zardoz was, seeing exactly what he wanted them to see. He tipped his hat to a more appealing angle, stretching luxuriously beneath the weight of their attention. Keep watching me, Waterdeep, his heart sang. I have so much more to show you!

Through the middle of the organized chaos on deck below, a plain-clothed figure cut through like a prow through seafoam. Zardoz’s eye was caught by this disharmony in the pattern. A tall, rangy man with tanned skin and wide linen sleeves, he trudged along with the gait of a lifelong seaman. His scalp was shaved except for a stripe down the center which drooped softly at the tips, the silver-blond color of sand. Across one cheek was the puckered furrow of a scar, tracing a vertical line from eye-corner to jaw, bisected in two places by shorter horizontal slashes at nostril and lip. Despite the slightly fearsome appearance of a man with his build, hair, and scars, his sauntering gait gave off the air of a friendly dog passing through the crowds. He greeted many performers as he passed with a clap of the shoulder or a shouted comment, a smile playing around his lips and brightening his brown eyes. 

This, Zardoz knew, was Jeremiah Vane. A stray they had picked up last year, fleeing a life at sea. He was no acrobat or magician, but he was a cheerful worker with a small magical talent, a good sense of drama, and a better sense when to keep things to himself. Zardoz was fond of the boy, when he remembered he existed. There was a certain potential there, despite the obvious barriers. A certain attitude that reminded Zardoz of himself, when younger. He was only waiting to see if that potential grew into itself before the young man got himself into something beyond his current depth.

At the moment, it seemed the young man had changed out of his work clothes and was making for the docks. Zardoz let out a sharp whistle, smiling at the way it brought the boy’s head around exactly like that friendly dog he’d pictured earlier.

“Jeremiah!” Zardoz called, in a surprisingly deep voice for his lanky frame. “You checked with Fel’rekt before clocking out?”

Jeremiah offered a lopsided smile of his own which tugged at his scars. “Cap’n, I scheduled the night off tendays ago! Ask anyone!” His voice, rising over the noise and confusion, was bright and affable.

“Alright, lad.” Captain Zardoz Zord waved a hand. “Go on, then. Any exciting plans?”

“I’m meeting up with some old friends!” With a final, cheerful wave of his own, Jeremiah descended the gangplank. Zardoz watched him go with amusement. Crossing the pier was an acrobatic performance all on its own, hopping over coils of rope, dodging a clump of elven jugglers trying to recapture their lost balls, and ducking beneath two goliaths carrying either end of a colorful banner which read The Sea Maiden’s Faire. Once through the faire, he disappeared into the packed walkways full of disgruntled or gawping sailors watching the chaos. 

Behind him, coming up on silent feet, a low, slinky voice asked, “You want I should watch him, Captain?”

Zardoz favored the owner of this voice with a mysterious smile over his shoulder. “D’you really think that’s necessary, Soluun?” The man’s slight lisp on sibilants turned the name into “Sholuun”. To say nothing of what it did to the word “necessary”.

Soluun, the owner of the slinky voice, was a spindly human man with the aura of a long-legged spider. Unlike most performers on the Sea Maiden’s Faire, he wore an outfit that was entirely skin-tight and black, covering him from wrist to ankle to throat. His skin, where it could be seen, was almost as pale as the colorless sweep of hair which covered one heavy-lidded, colorless eye. In contrast to his twinkle-eyed Captain, Soluun looked as if he had never smiled a day in his life. In fact, if he did so, the skin of his face might crack like a sheet of porcelain. 

Soluun shrugged. “Just asking.”

“No harm for now in the lad taking some shore time,” Zardoz turned back to the rail as he spoke. “Something got you on-edge, mate?”

“Fel’rekt says he talks to himself sometimes, when he thinks everyone else is asleep. Complained it wakes him up.” Fel’rekt, among Zardoz’s lieutenants, frequently ended up sleeping in the crew bunks instead of his own stateroom, usually because he’d stayed there drinking or gaming with them and fallen asleep right where he was sitting.

“Oh? Anything interesting?”

“He never thought to listen. Only throws pillows at him.” A sour note entered Soluun’s whispery voice.

Zardoz chuckled. Sometimes, his lieutenants all seemed so young to him, so eager to spring into action based on the slightest whisper, so afire with curiosity. Even cool and collected Soluun, normally the mature one, was champing at the bit at the first sign of a mysterious stranger.

Not that Zardoz could blame them. That storm, when they’d first picked up the lad… Zardoz had never seen anything like it in all his years at sea. He didn’t doubt that there was more to Jeremiah Vane than first met the eye. And there was nothing Zardoz himself liked more than an interesting man with a good secret.

He waved a careless hand. “Do as you will, my friend. Just remember he’s still one of ours, for now. Oh, and Soluun?”

The spindly man had almost already vanished down the stairs by the time this call pulled him up shortly, looking back to meet Zardoz’s unsmiling eyes. 

“Our friend Jeremiah isn’t the only one who needs to exercise discretion. See to it that you’re back on board before midnight tonight.”

Soluun gave the barest hint of a nod before vanishing into the swirl of activity on deck, wraithlike. Zardoz hummed in the back of his throat. Soluun’s hobby had so far been reckless, but no threat to their business. If that changed, he’d have to take action, as much as he loved his lieutenant. For now, he continued to keep an eye on the Sea Maiden’s Faire from above.

Soluun, meanwhile, slipped through the crowds. Any who saw him disembark the Eyecatcher would be hard-pressed to recognize the figure who emerged from the other side of the press of people. The only part of his bare skin still showing, his face, had been covered by a featureless, white porcelain mask and his pale hair had vanished beneath a cavalier hat with the felt brim pinned up on one side. A scimitar hung off of one hip. His feet made no sound as they skimmed across the cobblestones, deftly avoiding puddles and refuse. He made a swift and unerring pursuit of his target, the lanky form of Jeremiah who was shambling up the road ahead, oblivious to the man slipping through the shadows behind him. With his face so totally covered, it was impossible to tell what Soluun might have been feeling as he watched Jeremiah’s progress.

He watched as, at last emerging into the relative quiet of the Dock Ward, Jeremiah turned his face up to the refreshing drizzle and breathed in deep through his nose. This was a slight mistake, as the stink actually got worse the further into the Dock Ward you got. Soluun’s mask watched, impassive as the moon, as the man’s sandy hair bounced with the force of his cough.

The mask tilted forward as if in interest, however, when the man paused in place after his sneeze, rubbing beneath his nose and looking up as if hearing some call. The streets here all but rang with silence, after the bustle of the docks. Not another soul was in sight, and no voice could be discerned from the distant noise of the people behind them. Even so, Jeremiah’s face suggested he had just been addressed by the silence.

“Castle Ward,” Jeremiah said aloud, drumming his fingers on his belt. “Tavern called The Yawning Portal.”

Had he only been trying to remember the name of his destination? Soluun didn’t have time to relax before the man spoke again, a fond chuckle in his voice.

“Aye, I’m sure we’ll find more than enough trouble for you, love.”

Now that was a comment that seemed unlikely to be directed at himself. Not impossible, Soluun supposed, but unlikely. Apparently even the most annoying little cockerel on earth sometimes actually crowed when it was dawn, he reflected, thinking on Fel’rekt’s abysmal spycraft. Not that this proved anything at all. The man clearly had no material components in his hands and had cast no spells, so his comment couldn’t have been a magical communication. There was a limited number of possibilities, and they did still include simple boredom. Or insanity.

Done with his half-inaudible conversation, Jeremiah’s long strides carried him swiftly north, along the narrow lanes leading north. Soluun followed at a good distance, sticking to the shadows. The ground sloped beneath their boots as they marched towards higher ground, carrying them above and away from the stink of the harbor. It wasn’t long until Soluun was emerging onto a broad west-east thoroughfare called Waterdeep Way. The road led west all the way to the foot of the mountain; on a clearer day, without the sun behind it, he might have been able to make out a glimpse of the Palace of Waterdeep between the buildings. Even at this time, he could discern the silhouette of Castle Waterdeep where it crouched on a mountainous bluff above the roofline of the city. A few circling specks in the skies looked like birds, but were more than likely griffon cavalry on patrol over the ward. 

The traffic here was bustling. Humanoid beings of all descriptions wove around each other, pouring onto and off of Waterdeep Way by way of the six boulevards leading north through the Castle Ward to the circle of the market. Many pulled up hoods and jackets as the rain came down in earnest, picking up the pace to dart through the clogged streets. In the center of the road, all forms of carriages rolled by, slowed by the cross-traffic of pedestrians. Drays, those horse-drawn, double-layered constructions of wood and glass which were unique to the city of Waterdeep, rattled heavily past. A man in the open-air seating atop the dray shook loose an ember from his cigar, which fell like a star to the shining pavement. 

Jeremiah crushed this ember beneath his boot as he stepped into the street. His goal was just a bit offset south from Waterdeep Way: a two-story affair with welcome yellow-lit windows and a sign above the door bearing the words The Yawning Portal. His eyes fixed on this sign, Jeremiah clearly didn’t see the other figure also making for the doorway. Soluun, lingering a few doors down, was close enough to hear the solid thwack of Jeremiah’s nose meeting the other figure’s chest at full speed. His mask hid the way his lips twitched upwards, watching Jeremiah stagger back two full steps, yelping and clutching his face.

“Oi, mate! Watch where… you’re…” his voice trailed off as his angry gaze traveled up and up and up to find the face of his adversary. Jeremiah was not a short man; six feet if he was an inch. Even so, this person towered over him. They were swathed head to toe in a white hooded cloak which only hinted at the solid frame beneath. Soluun wasn’t at the right angle or close enough to catch a glimpse of the face beneath the hood, but whatever Jeremiah was seeing was certainly putting an odd look on his face, a contortion midway between alarm and anger.

A booming, echoing voice with a hint of growling accent replied, “How about you watch it, little man?” It easily carried over to where Soluun lurked.

“Uh, right you are.” Jeremiah, evidently no fool, stepped back smartly. “Going in to the tavern? After you.”

With a last look from beneath the hood that somehow managed to convey scorn through angle alone, the massive cloaked figure swept through the door into the tavern. Jeremiah stood in the rain for a few heartbeats, apparently processing whatever he’d seen beneath that hood. Or maybe having another half-silent conversation. Then, with a quick shake of his head that sent his hair flopping, Jeremiah hurried out of the rain and into The Yawning Portal.

Soluun wasted no more time turning on his heel and heading back towards the docks. He was more than familiar with The Yawning Portal. He’d spent a few weeks now scoping it out, actually, trying to figure out how to pry the pearl from within its oyster. No luck so far. The place played host to far too many powerful figures for Soluun to accomplish such a thing quietly. He’d known even before his Captain’s warning that if his hobby created such a ruckus as infiltrating this tavern would cause, Soluun would be on his own. He’d never betray his brothers like that, never betray his captain, no matter how satisfying it would be. 

Someday, though, his target would have to come out. Soluun would be waiting for that night. Until then, best if he made himself scarce for the night. Captain’s orders. 

----------------------------------------

“But you’re sure it’s solid?” the twitchy wizard asked again. His hand had worried one end of his silver mustache into a frizzing mess, compared to the sleek waxed point on the other side. 

Bonnie smiled through the desire to roll her eyes. She lightly kicked one of the massive bolts at the corner of the man-sized winch beside her. The spool was wound around with hemp rope which held a core of steel cable, the whole thing thicker around than the waist of an ogre. The dull, greased gears around the housing featured a prominent, half-flattened lever at ankle-height, just below the crooked wooden handle level with her waist. The kick flung out the hem of her green linen dress as well as the apron tied over it, revealing dainty leather slippers. Her smile dimpled her cheeks beneath a spray of ginger freckles, the same red-gold color as the hair caught in a tail over one shoulder.

“The locking mechanism clamps it here. When I lower it, that’ll hold you in place in between each revolution. So, like, when you’re feeling yourself go down, that’s actually when I won’t be turning the spool. Get it?”

“You’re sure it can hold the whole platform’s weight?” the wizard persisted.

Bonnie’s eyes were caught by something over his shoulder. On the other side of the taproom, some kind of altercation was briefly visible through the ajar door before the entire frame was filled by a massive figure. He practically had to duck his head to even enter. Bonnie watched, brows arching, as the figure stomped with heavy treads directly for the nearest fireplace. Naturally, on a damp spring evening, the area around even the smaller fire was crowded with people. The white-cloaked giant stomped through as if utterly unable to perceive the bodies in his path, finally coming to a stop inches away from the grate. There, he sank into a crouch, white fabric pooling all around him. Steam was visibly rising off of the damp fabric. 

“Miss? You’re sure?” 

Bonnie’s attention was dragged back. She smiled. “I’ve never seen it fail, Mister Wizard. It was built by the House of Wonders.” She kept half an eye on the strange newcomer, no stranger to conflict breaking out over contested seating. This was a tavern, after all. If the displaced men did make something of it, it would probably be up to Durnan to handle it this time. The bartender was behind the bar as usual, but he was on the side closer to the small fireplace. Bonnie herself was on the wrong side of the pit.

The first thing any first-time visitor to The Yawning Portal would notice was the massive pit which took up one-third of the floorspace before the bar, which ran perpendicular to the front door. The edges were bound by waist-high wooden walls, the sides apparently smooth stone where they vanished into the darkness deeper than any eye could penetrate. All told, the pit must have been forty-two feet across. Set in one part of the barrier which surrounded it was a massive winch, a mechanical wonder of copper and iron which held up a small platform by the corners. At the moment, this winch—and Bonnie—was surrounded by a small group of heavily-armed and armored individuals. While Bonnie chatted with their wizard, the rest were checking their bags and equipment, making sure weapons were secured, and climbing over the barrier to stand on the platform. Beyond the adventurers, barflies gathered around, cheering and commenting. An elf woman who Bonnie knew as a regular gave one warrior a peck on the cheek, leaning in to tie a pink-flowered handkerchief around his bicep. He shot her a wink before hopping over the barrier onto the platform.

Around the edges of the pit, the taproom was crowded with tables and chairs. The south and west walls were lined with half-walled booths, except for a private area near the back door which was curtained with red drapes. There were two fireplaces, a large one in the south wall, and the smaller one in the north wall just to the right of the door. The smaller fire was now blocked by the broad, steaming shoulders of the giant man in the white cloak. Beside the larger fire on this side of the pit, a crowd had gathered on the hearth rug where a bard stood, providing the music which underscored the clamor of conversation. 

The bard was a familiar sight to Bonnie. A half-orc woman, a head and a half taller than the petite waitress, with powder-blue skin and a cascade of silky dark hair. Her clothes were well-made and embellished, but not as ostentatious as many of her trade wore. Her top was a dark leather jacket tooled and painted with silver decorations around the collar and hem. Her trousers tucked into heavy boots were navy plaid wool. The instrument in her hands was a guitar which produced a steely sound when strummed that might have sounded discordant in any other hands. Accompanied by the contralto purr of her voice, it provided a music that no other tavern in Waterdeep could match, and a perfect resolute, heart-racing anthem for the would-be heroes descending into the pit. Her name was Ramona. 

Bonnie had little enough time to take stock of the room. The adventurers were finally ready for her, assembled on the platform with their weapons in hand. She seized the handle of the great winch in both square, short-fingered hands. Each turn required a flex of her whole body, the lever forcing her almost onto tiptoe at the apex of its circumference. As she had told the nervous wizard, the cable was held tightly in place with each crank, letting loose only when she began a new revolution, the lever dropping to release the clamp. A fizzing hiss as the cable was finally allowed to slip through the eyelet, and the platform began its creaking, stuttering descent into the portal. 

Bonnie turned the crank until sweat stood out at her temple. The platform gradually vanished into darkness below, the light of their cleric’s staff dwindling like a dying flame until it could no longer be seen. And still Bonnie turned the winch. Clank-fzzzzz. Clank-fzzzzz. She knew exactly how many revolutions it took until the platform would come to rest at the bottom. She had to crank for a full minute before the rope’s brisk slither through the eyelet slowed to a crawl, the tension falling slack. She stepped back, to the thunderous roars of the watching patrons. Ramona added a reverberating chord to her musical accompaniment. 

Bonnie only took a moment to wipe her face on the hem of her apron before setting off for the bar. She still had a job to do, after all. 

At the bar, Durnan watched her approach with a wry smirk beneath his black mustache. Without a word, he nodded to a few trays of drinks laid out on the bar, each marked with a wax-pencil number on the glossy surface. Bonnie flashed her own weary smile and gathered them up, heading out to distribute each tray to the correct table. She had hardly gotten a few steps away from the bar before a hand caught her by the elbow. It was only long practice evading grabbing hands that allowed Bonnie to eel sideways at the barest touch of fingers, the drinks on her trays wobbling with a musical cascade of clinks. 

“Can I help you?” Bonnie snapped at the culprit.

The culprit grimaced in apology. She was a slim, androgynous half-elf woman with smooth brown hair and a baggy, blue linen tunic beneath a black vest. Her heart-shaped face was youthful, even for an ageless half-elf, with a puckish little chin and rosy red lips, a slender nose and eyebrows just a hair too thick for elven sensibilities. It was not a face Bonnie had ever seen in her life.

“Sorry, sorry! Just wanted to order a round of ale for me and my mates.” The half-elf’s voice was deep and rich like honey, with a nasal accent that chopped the middle or end out of every other word. Like the rest of her, it was a voice which did not immediately give away the owner’s gender, seeming just a tad too deep for the body it was coming out of.

Bonnie gave the half-elf woman a hard look, then gave the empty booth behind her a harder one. She was ensconced in the corner booth, tucked almost behind the bar itself, between it and the curtained private area. A small half-wall kept the patrons there invisible from Durnan and those at the bar. 

The half-elf offered a sheepish grin. “Ah, I mean, to send a round to them?”

“Um, okay. Who?” Bonnie accepted this. Sending drinks was nothing unusual, though she’d never really encountered someone bold enough to do it en masse. This woman had guts.

To Bonnie’s further perplexity, the first person the half-elf pointed to was Ramona the bard. The second was a lanky, sandy-haired man with a scarred cheek lounging at the bar. Both attractive enough people, but the situation was made even weirder when the third person indicated was the strange, giant man squatting in front of the fire.

“But for him, do you mind just taking over an empty tankard?”

…It wasn’t Bonnie’s place to judge this woman’s tastes, she supposed, but she sure as hell could judge the woman’s use of Bonnie’s time. “An empty tankard?”

“Yes, please.” The woman at least looked aware of how strange a request this was. Bonnie relented beneath the pleading of her eyes.

“Um, sure? Two shards, then, hon. You don’t have to pay for the empty cup.”

The half-elf deposited five silver shards directly into the pocket on Bonnie’s belt, given that her hands were occupied with trays. The half-elf woman shrank back. “Keep the change!”

“If you say so.” Bonnie moved away, through trying to fathom what was going on here. She delivered the trays in her grasp before returning to the bar to fill up two tankards of ale. The first was easy enough to slide across the bar to the man with the scarred cheek.

“Compliments of the lady in the corner,” Bonnie said, winking conspiratorially, as she always did when asked to send over a drink. The man followed her gesture, meeting the eyes of the half-elf woman, who was leaning backwards out of the corner booth to see him around the wall. The half-elf waved. 

The man gave Bonnie a wink in return, finishing off his previous drink before accepting his new one. “Better go see what she wants, then.” He got up and sauntered for the corner booth. 

That had gone better than expected. Bonnie wondered what would happen if the other two also accepted, now. Ramona was selective, but she was known to accept gifts if the sender tickled her fancy. The giant man in the corner was harder to guess… and was also going to be receiving an empty cup, for some reason. Bonnie wondered if she was being used to get back at an ex.

Deciding to go the long way around, Bonnie approached the larger, southern fireplace first. The listeners shifted aside to allow her to reach Ramona, who paused after a verse but continued playing with her hands until Bonnie held out the ale.

“Compliments of the lady in the corner.” This time, the wink was sororal. 

“Oh?” Ramona seemed surprised. Like before, she immediately looked for her benefactor, meeting the eyes of the half-elf now draped over the table to lean out of the corner booth from the other side. The sandy-haired man was also craning towards them, grinning. To Bonnie’s surprise, Ramona instantly lit up with warm recognition. “I’m going on break, then.”

“Get it, girl,” Bonnie said, watching the half-orc carry her new drink towards that same booth. One left, then. Bonnie circled the portal around to the smaller, northern fireplace. Here, she didn’t have to step over or around anybody to reach her target. The people who had been crowded around this fire before had fled like sharks before a minnow, leaving only that large man in the white cloak behind. He had stopped steaming at some point as the fabric had dried in the heat. Even squatting, he was almost as tall as Bonnie was standing up. She took a breath and stepped around him.

The first thing she noticed was that, beneath the white cloak, this man was clad mainly in a thousand ragged white strips which clung haphazardly to his body in an equally-concealing, if more form-fitting manner to the cloak. Not an inch of bare skin could be seen, even as he tipped his face up to look at her. The reason for that was that his face was entirely covered by a golden mask.

This mask was full-faced, delicately shaped to create the outline of a man’s face with angular features and heavy brows ever-so-slightly furrowed as if in annoyance or deep thought. There was no opening for mouth or nose, and the sockets which ought to have revealed the eyes instead contained two glittering blue sapphires. 

The sight shocked the words out of her for a too-long moment. Bonnie spent a single, dizzy moment wondering if she’d somehow encountered a Masked Lord. But no, that was ridiculous. They wouldn’t be going to the tavern masked. The rulers of Waterdeep met in mask in order to prevent their members from being bribed or assassinated, aside of course from the Open Lord. Going into a tavern just next to the Dock Ward in full regalia was the opposite of preventing oneself from getting assassinated. Not to mention that no lord Bonnie knew of would pop a squat in front of a fire when it was surrounded by chairs.

The masked man made no move to break the silence, simply waiting for Bonnie to speak. Frazzled, she thrust the empty tankard forward.

“Uh, compliments of the lady in the corner booth,” she said, flatly, without a wink. 

The man accepted the cup, mask tilting as if peering inside with those two sapphires. Then, like the others, he turned his face towards the corner booth, finding the half-elf woman all but dangling over the wall, waving furiously, Ramona and the sandy-haired man beside her.

Without looking back at her, the masked man fished something out of his cloak, dropping it into Bonnie’s now-empty hand before rising smoothly to his feet. Bonnie blinked in confusion at the gold dragon now in her palm. 

“Wait, she already paid for--”

“Keep it,” the man growled in a deep voice, with the hint of an accent. He stalked for the booth like a storm rolling in off the coast. The whole tavern heard the BANG as his empty tankard was slammed onto the surface of the booth table. The chatter briefly subsided, so that it was equally audible when the man roared, “Is this some kind o’ joke?!”

Instantly, reflexively, Bonnie was looking at Durnan. The proprietor’s flinty gaze was fixed in that direction, even as he continued to serve those at the bar at an unhurried pace. He wasn’t looking back at her, nor was he making a move to contact any of the other regulars who functioned as de-facto bouncers for The Yawning Portal. She hurried over to the bar nevertheless, ready at a single grunt from him to flee for help, mentally composing her list of priorities. If only she’d saved up enough for that sending stone by now… Not that she imagined the guys would be able to get here in good time. They were probably already asleep, even. Of the options here, Jalester and Yagra didn’t seem to be in tonight, but Obaya was, and Master Starsong should be upstairs in his room…

By the time she got behind the bar with Durnan, the other patrons had resumed their usual clamor. She could just make out the rumbles of conversation from the other side of the wall.

The voice of the half-elf woman was chuckling, awkwardly. “—thought, that since you can’t drink, it might be rude to…”

“Rude? Rude like not includin’ someone? Might have felt nice to be treated like anybody else, actually!”

Immediately, she was backpedaling. “Oh, no, yes, of course. Sorry, Doc! Just give me a—” Bonnie jumped with a squeak when a hand shot over the wall and waved wildly in her direction. A voice caroled, “‘Scuse meeeee!”

Cautiously, Bonnie approached and looked into the booth. The massive, masked man—Doc—had evidently crowded onto the bench with the half-elf woman, who was all but draped across his lap in order to aim a hangdog look at Bonnie. Ramona perched elegantly on the other bench next to the sandy-haired man, both seeming to be silently laughing over the rims of their tankards at the misery of their companion.

“Yes?”

“‘Scuse me, can I have that third ale after all?”

Bonnie regarded the assembled people at the table with great skepticism. “Um, like, in the same cup you asked me to deliver empty before?”

“Beaut! That’ll do.” The tankard was offered in her direction.

“...Alright.” The situation had progressed beyond questions. All Bonnie could do was accept it. And eavesdrop as hard as she could, so she could tell the guys later. The waitress gathered up the empty tankard and trudged slowly back to the bar. Behind her, as she went, she heard the voice of the sandy-haired man ask,

“Dingo, that is you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” the half-elf woman replied, from her position in her companion’s lap. The masked man seized her by the back of the tunic and levered her upright with the air of a mother cat rearranging her kittens. A few steps away at the bar, Bonnie continued listening as she opened the tap of the ale barrel. “Ahem. You must be wondering why I’ve gathered you all here toda—”

All three at the table cut her off with loud, derisive groans. 

“Just get to it!” the masked man slapped his hand on the table, to no lesser a sound than when he’d done it with his tankard earlier. “Haven’t seen you in ten bleedin’ years and it’s all jokes!”

“Yes, well.” Dingo took a sip of her own ale, from the sounds of it. “It’s complicated. Ah, you all know me. Ramona, Jeremiah, this is Doc.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Ramona said.

“A delight,” Jeremiah, who must have been the sandy-haired man, echoed. 

“Sure, I guess,” Doc grumped in reply.

“How is it you know Dingo?” Jeremiah persevered through the man’s abruptness. 

“I’m a very old friend.”

“And I met him a long time ago, too,” Dingo added. 

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

The tankard full, Bonnie stepped around the half-wall in time to see Doc give the half-elf a push which rocked her entire body in place. She set the tankard down in front of him. Without even looking down at it, the man slid it across the table in front of Jeremiah. Jeremiah blinked at the third drink, shrugged, and quaffed his second drink faster.

“Actually, it’s a funny story,” Dingo was continuing, in the typical way of patrons mid-conversation, refusing to let the waitress’s presence interrupt them. “I was just a little nipper then, and I was in the Sea Ward when—”

“Dingo,” Ramona cut in. “Please, what is this about? Your note sounded tense.”

The half-elf deflated slightly, smile sliding off her lips. She buried her nose back in her tankard, avoiding eye contact with everyone. Ramona, Jeremiah, and Doc, however, all made fleeting eye contact with Bonnie, who took the hint and stepped away from the booth.

Naturally, though, she only stepped back to the bar where she continued to listen intently. Dingo eventually plucked up the nerve to speak. “...I’ve helped everybody at this table before, yeah?”

“Of course,” Ramona answered. “It’s how we met.”

“I owe my career to you, mate,” Jeremiah said. “I know Ramona does, too. Not sure about our new old friend but if he’s a friend of yours I’m sure you’ve helped him as much as you have the rest of us. We don’t see each other often, but I like to think of us as friends.” Despite the whirling thoughts in Bonnie’s head about polycules and bitter exes and blind matchmaking, she could hear real fondness in the man’s voice. Not the kind of skeezy, too-affectionate-too-quick flirting she’d heard a million times in this bar, but a genuine depth of feeling. Whatever was going on here it, sadly, didn’t actually seem to have a lot to do with romance or hook-ups.

The intrigue burned in Bonnie’s chest. She pressed her lips together while she passed Durnan a bottle of vodka, sternly telling herself that eavesdropping was breaking these strangers’ privacy enough. Durnan gave her a look as he took the bottle that let her know he knew exactly why she was lingering around this end of the bar, and he was laughing at her for it in that Durnan way which didn’t touch his lips at all. 

“Uh, thanks,” Dingo said. “Me too. I guess what I’m trying to say is…” Here, she lowered her voice to a whisper that was barely audible over the noise of the tavern, even where Bonnie stood only feet away. “...You lot owe me.”

Bonnie barely suppressed a gasp.

“What was that?” Doc’s voice, annoyed.

“You! Owe! Me!” Dingo’s, louder.

“What are you saying?” Ramona’s, worried.

“Are you extorting us, mate?” Jeremiah’s, baffled.

“No, no, no!” There was a muffled click, a shifting of cloth. Bonnie pictured Dingo with a thumbnail in her mouth, gnawing anxiously, distorting her defense. “It’s not extortion, it’s just… You heard what’s going on lately in the underground?”

“Absolutely not,” Doc said. “I’ve been in the Silver Marches for ten years.”

The other two shared a silence which had the air of helplessness to it. Bonnie knew that Ramona was comfortably employed here in the Castle Ward, where underground elements tended to keep themselves scarce. Metaphorically, that was, she amended, with a glance at the pit. She’d incidentally even seen the half-orc woman’s residence, once, a few years back. Ramona was what you’d call middle class. Not the type to be deeply involved in gang politics. Jeremiah, Bonnie knew nothing about, but he’d mentioned a career and he looked like a sailor. While the Dock Ward was certainly the kind of place where underground elements abounded, he’d also implied he didn’t make port here very often. It was entirely likely neither of them knew anything about the current situation in Waterdeep.

Bonnie envied them. She herself was painfully aware. 

At their silence, Dingo grumbled under her breath. “Look, it’s like this—”

A sudden shout across the room cut off Bonnie’s ability to eavesdrop. Her attention snapped to the tables across the pit.  

“You pig! Like killing me mates, do you?!”

There was a meaty thwack and the sound of a chair clattering across the floor. At once, the surrounding crowd let out a collective noise of surprise, followed by a chorus of scraping as the people closest to the scene pulled back, allowing Bonnie to see what was going on.

Halfway around the pit, near the front door, a group of five men were standing. Four wore concealing cloaks, but the fifth had his hood thrown back to reveal a shaved head covered in tattoos of eyes. His black beard bristled with fury, his fist clenched before him. At his feet was the sprawled body of a half-orc woman. As everyone in the taproom watched, the woman picked herself slowly off the floor, wrist swiping at the blood pouring from her nose. She looked at the blood on the back of her hand, then looked at the bald man. With a flat, businesslike air, she threw her shoulder at his gut, taking him down to the floor in a tangle of limbs. 

Oh. So Yagra was here tonight after all.

The man and his friends let out a combined roar of rage which was echoed by the excitement of the watching crowd. Bonnie lost sight of the scrum as patrons came running from all corners of the taproom in order to rubberneck at the fight. Many cheered the fighters on, gulping their ale like this was a dinner show. 

Two bodies sprang out from behind the half-wall, thundering past Bonnie to join the mass of people. A slender half-elf and a tall human—Dingo and Jeremiah. Doc followed a second later, something resigned in the set of his shoulders. 

“Uh, guys? What are you… Why are you going closer?” Ramona yelped, now alone at the table. 

Bonnie cast another desperate look at Durnan. “Should we…?”

Durnan shook his head, face grim. “Not yet.”

Bonnie bit her lip. This was definitely gang business. If they made the wrong move against the wrong person, the whole Yawning Portal could pay for it. Durnan was well-connected, but that was a curse in its own way. Waterdeep was dealing with enough gang wars without Durnan’s friends declaring war, too. Bonnie couldn’t risk the guys’ safety for this, either. All she could do was watch.

Dingo slipped into the crowd like a knife between ribs. Bonnie watched her snag a chair out from beneath a patron who’d stood up for a better view and drag it a pace away so she could settle on it in the attitude of a casual observer. What Dingo’s eyes were clearly fixed on, however, was not the violence of the fight occurring in front of her, as the half-orc woman knelt on her assaulter’s chest and hammered blow after blow into his face. What Dingo was looking at were the pockets and purses on the hips of the cloaked men trying to pull her off of their bald leader. 

It wasn’t long before the man with the eye tattoos fell limp beneath the repeated punches of the half-orc. His eyes rolled senselessly in his head, showing only whites. Blood splattered her knuckles and the parquet floor beneath them. 

The woman attempted to stand, only to be knocked back to her knees by a kick from the still-standing thugs in cloaks. Another kick landed and another, the four of them surrounding her and aiming heavy kicks at every part of her they could reach. A knee slammed into her jaw with a crack before she hunkered down, trying to protect her face and head with her arms, still straddling the body of the unconscious leader. She was given no opportunity to rise as the hits continued to fall. The watchers let out boos mixed in with scattered calls of encouragement. They pressed in closer, almost obscuring Bonnie’s view.

Her view of Dingo, however, was clear as day. Dingo leaned forward as if absorbed in the fight, passing one hand around the waist of a nearby spectator. The man didn’t even hear a jingle as his purse was transferred from his belt to the half-elf’s. Bonnie snorted.

Just then, Jeremiah shouldered his way to the front of the crowd through main force, shoving people aside until he got to Dingo’s side. Bonnie read his lips from a distance, unable to hear a thing. “Using this?” He asked, patting the half-elf’s chair.

“No worries.” Dingo stood, allowing the man to scoop the chair up by the top bar and carry it with him as he continued to shoulder his way forward. Bonnie could track his progress through the crowd as people recoiled from the protruding legs of the chair. Reaching the edge of the ring that surrounded the fighters, Jeremiah paused to heft the chair up and onto his shoulder, gripping it two-handed by the back.

With a grunt, he let it fly across the back and shoulders of the nearest cloaked thug.

If Bonnie had been drinking, she’d have choked. The watchers fell silent with shocked hisses.

The thug grunted, staggering in place. The chair clattered loudly to the floor next to him. He whirled. Behind him stood Jeremiah Vane, three ales to the wind, with both fists raised and an inviting grin. 

“It’s a bar fight, isn’t it?” he called, apparently to no one in particular. “Told you we’d find trouble, love.”

Without further conversation, the two men engaged, trading bare-knuckled punches back and forth. The other three kept their focus on their half-orc target. 

From nearby, a chord rang out. Then another. Before long, the fight was set to a rolicking tune that filled the taproom. Bonnie glanced over, seeing Ramona with her instrument in hands.

Doc moved up behind Dingo. He had no moving lips to read, but his powerful voice could be heard even over the scrum. “Are we fighting?”

“Uh, Jeremiah is, anyway.”

The man’s whole frame shook with the force of his exasperated sigh. “This is feckin’ stupid.” One long arm reached around Dingo to seize one of the thugs by a handful of cloak hood. With the ease of someone plucking a daisy from the earth, the thug’s whole body was lifted by this grip, sailing over the heads of the onlookers and disappearing over the lip of the pit.

Beside her, Durnan actually hissed a swear word. Bonnie gaped, frozen. 

“Doc!” Dingo hollered, lunging after the falling thug. Her grasping fingers caught something, the weight of the man reeling her forward until she hung by the waist from the barrier surrounding the pit. Both of her hands clung to handfuls of cloak and tunic, just barely preventing the terrified thug from falling into the depths below. “Doc! It’s a bar fight! We’re not killing them!” The words emerged with great effort from between clenched teeth. 

“What? There’s a bottom, ain’t there?”

“It’s miles down! This goes to the Undermountain!”

“Well, you should’ve said that.”

Who the hell didn’t know the pit in The Yawning Portal led to the Undermountain? Bonnie wondered.

Dingo, toes barely scraping the floor, attempted to lever the thug up and out of the pit. For a breathless second, Bonnie thought she was about to overbalance and topple in after him. Both of her boots fully left the parquet floor, her stomach scraping over the edge until her panicked flail of the legs caught something that stabilized her. There she hung, in a limbo between solid ground and endless abyss, unable to move in either direction.

“Uh, help! Help us, anyone!”

Jeremiah, a purple bruise rising across his unscarred cheek, glanced over his shoulder and paused. He signaled “peace” to his interlocutor, backing up.

“Hang on, hang on, take a pause, mate, we got a man overboard.”

The thug let him go, faintly baffled, as the man leaned down beside Dingo. He gripped the thug by the shirt and hauled upwards. The tendons in his arm and neck stood out like halyards as the man was raised up and out of the pit. With a thud, both thug and Dingo collapsed on the right side of the pit wall. The half-elf lay stunned for a moment, gasping for breath as the blood flooded her strained shoulders in prickling waves. The thug beside her was all but in a trance, lying motionless, breathing in wheezing gasps. His hood had fallen back during the rescue, revealing an unremarkable human man with a crooked nose and a combover. Bonnie’s eyes darted across his features, absently noting them by habit, before her eyes caught on a dark shape branded into the side of his neck, below his closest ear.

It was a tattoo in the shape of a circle surrounded by ten equidistant spokes.

The eyes on the first man’s scalp had been a clue, but this was conclusive proof. These thugs worked for the Xanathar Guild.

Dingo had clearly also noticed the tattoo, lying far closer to it than Bonnie was. The blood drained from her face, one hand coming up to clutch at the outside of her right shoulder as if she’d wrenched it. “Bugger all.”

“Y’alright, Dingo?” Doc called from the other side of the scrum. With one hand, he scruffed another of the thugs like a kitten and tossed him almost gently to the ground this time. Another thug threw a punch at Doc, only for his fist to crunch against something hard as steel beneath the white cloak, drawing his fist back with a startled oath. Jeremiah, meanwhile, had gone back to trading rabbit punches with his own attacker. 

“Right as… rain…!”

It was at this moment that something large moved in Bonnie’s periphery, again clearly also seen by the closer Dingo. Both of their attentions snapped to it, expecting the fight to have moved closer or maybe for Doc to be belatedly coming over. 

The motion, however, was on the wrong side. Coming from the pit, not the fight in front of it.

Four gnarled, filthy fingers curled over the top of the wall around the pit, each one the length of Bonnie’s forearm. 

Transfixed in horror, Dingo kicked backward, scooting along the floor like a fish, only to fetch up against the legs of a table which prevented further escape. She lay on her back, mouth and eyes forming identical round shapes as first a lump of greasy, tangled hair appeared over the edge of the pit, then two long, tattered ears, then a pair of tiny bloodshot eyes on either side of a long, lumpy nose, then a rubbery-lipped mouth full of yellow teeth…

From between those teeth, a human arm hung limp. It had a flowered handkerchief tied around the bicep. 

Of course Bonnie recognized it. She saw it all the time on the neck of a regular. Most recently, she had seen it descend into the Undermountain on an arm attached to a whole, living adventurer.

“...Troll…!” Dingo wheezed. “Guys…!”

She wasn’t the only one to notice. From nearby, shouts began to rise.

“Troll from the Undermountain!”

“Look! Look!”

“Get away from the pit!”

This was hardly the first monster attack The Yawning Portal had seen. Those panicking were mainly occasional patrons. The regulars were already moving before Durnan barked with grim brevity, “Scatter!”

The patrons obeyed. 

In an instant, Dingo was left lying in the center of a cleared area of parquet flooring. Bonnie would have worried about her being trampled by the fleeing crowd if only she hadn’t been directly in the troll’s proximity. Nobody was going to run closer to the pit. Two of the cloaked thugs who had been beating on the half-orc woman joined the panicking patrons without a thought, fleeing for the door. Dozens of people doing the same created a wall of bodies, impenetrable and churning. 

At last, the upper half of the troll emerged above the wall. It was a huge creature, stinking of blood and filth, with matted hair that hung in greasy tangled to the waist. The tattered remains of a leather cuirass and loincloth clung to its body, which was lumped and streaked with blood as well as half a dozen dark tumors that baffled Bonnie for a few seconds. Then, three of them detached with a sucking, squealing noise, taking flight on leathery wings. Stirges. The troll was covered in bloodsucking stirges. 

The troll let out a belching roar, letting go of the pit with one hand in order to swipe its yellowed, cracking claws.

Directly at Dingo.

What saved the half-elf was angle, in the end. Lying flat on her back, the troll couldn’t quite reach far enough to eviscerate her as it could have if she’d been standing. Even so, the claws traced deep furrows through the meat of her shoulder and left pectoral before lifting away, dripping blood. 

In an instant, the towering, white-shrouded body of Doc was standing between her and the pit. Another swipe from the troll produced a sound like nails on a chalkboard, sending tatters of dirty white cloth fluttering down with not even a drop of blood to stain them. Metal armor glinted in between the tears as the figure lifted his cloak, reaching for the steel mace at his hip. Weapon in hand, he swung a warning arc which caused the troll to jerk back, the severed arm tumbling from its lips to thud to the floor. 

Dingo followed suit, scrabbling to release the rapier at her hip as she fumbled upright. She aimed a quick stab over the lip of the barrier, sinking four inches of steel into the creature’s thigh. 

In the meantime, the stirges which had released from the troll flew around the room, causing the clientele to shriek and duck and scramble beneath furnishings. Bonnie reached out, helping to heave one, two, three desperate bodies lurching for the safety behind the bar. Durnan was doing the same, further down.

One of the stirges made a dive towards Ramona, whose head was down, ostensibly focusing on coaxing the music from her instrument. Bonnie could only let out a wordless shriek of warning.

It was three inches away from her when the tip of Ramona’s rapier emerged from its back between the shoulders. She flicked the dead stirge off of her blade with a casual motion.

Unfortunately, this meant that Bonnie wasn’t looking at the other stirges. The first that she knew she was under attack was an explosion of pain where her neck met her shoulder, the warm splatter of her own blood up the side of her face, mixing with the flecks of her freckles. Leathery wings battered her face, claws scrambling to tangle themselves into her hair and dress to keep the creature anchored. Bonnie’s hands, instinctively coming up to claw at it, were whipped away by the thrashing tail. She stumbled back, shoulders slamming painfully into the lids of the barrels stacked behind the bar, a tap jabbing mercilessly into her hip. 

It hurt, it hurt, it hurt! Bonnie couldn’t tell if she was screaming. It felt like she was hardly able to breathe, even though nothing was actually blocking her mouth. She tried to think of anybody who could help, anybody hardy enough to withstand this kind of assault. Her head was swimming already… It was so hard to think… She couldn’t picture anybody clearly enough…!

Something little and sharp scratched across Bonnie’s temple, followed by a rough, orcish curse. Ramona was there, one knee up on the bar, wild-eyed as she tried to stab the stirge latched onto Bonnie’s neck. It was flailing too much. Bonnie was twisting too much, but she couldn’t stop. The bard couldn’t get a clear aim on the stirge, not without stabbing her too. 

Bonnie felt her knees give out, sending her sliding down the barrels to the floor like a broken doll. She was too dizzy to stand up. She was in so much pain, but she was so tired…

Durnan was there, suddenly, pressing his hands to her neck. That hurt. Why was he hurting her? The man had never had a very expressive face, but the light in his eyes right now was frantic. 

Her last thought, before losing consciousness, was to hope that Durnan wouldn’t be too upset, when he saw her dead. He’d been a better father to her than her real one. Not a difficult bar, considering she’d actually met Durnan and shared a cordial word with him once or twice. She’d never meant to upset him…

The guys were going to be so mad at her…

----------------------------------------

The blood was pounding in Yagra’s eye, swollen shut by the impact of a fist. It was pulsing in spots all over her torso, arms, and legs, like she was a fucking leopard of pain. Or something. She prodded a molar with her tongue, grimacing to find it loose. At least it wasn’t either of her tusks. Her nose felt like it was the size of a watermelon, tender and yes, also pounding with the pulse of pain. 

She let the blood-soaked saliva in her mouth spill to the shiny, wood floor before pushing herself up onto her knees. Tangled, cobalt-blue hair fell across her face until she reached up to push it back. The face beneath was usually slate gray, but was currently mottled in all shades of blue, black, and violet. Bloodshot blue eyes glared out from the swollen skin, taking in the situation.

This would teach her to go for a drink alone. Common sense alone couldn’t combat her exceptionally poor luck. Yagra had never before worried about being jumped in the Castle Ward, even in a tavern. Didn’t these idiots know that the Hall of Justice was only a few streets away? The magisters didn’t give a shit about gang-related grudges; they’d just as soon throw everyone here in jail together. Be Yagra’s luck to be among them, too.

Talk about being shot while lying down. Yagra had known as soon as that lumbering brute with the eye tattoos had thrown a punch that he was with the Xanathar Guild. Since she had never in her life seen the man, she could only assume that he had been running around looking for the first Zhent he saw in order to exact revenge for his dead “mates”. Maybe that kind of blind rage was also blinding him to the dangers of doing this right under the nose of Durnan and his backers. Everybody knew the Harpers would come down hard on anyone who fucked with their leader’s old friend. Not to mention, like she’d said, the magistrates just down the road. 

Of course, none of that mattered anymore. Now, there was a troll sticking out of the pit and clawing wildly at the few people gathered there to hold it at bay. There was a skinny little half-elf woman, some giant man in a white cloak, and, surprisingly, one of the Xanathar thugs. That one had drawn a shortsword and was hacking with wild eyes, seeming backed into a desperate corner by a stirge hovering closely above.

Well, at least he hadn’t taken that sword out when he’d been whaling on Yagra a minute ago. Maybe he just hadn’t gotten to it, yet.

A body beside her suddenly moved. Yagra jerked around, ready to field another blow, only to find a lanky young human man who wasn’t even looking at her. He had a prominent, cross-hatched scar on his closer cheek. His eyes were fixed on something happening at the bar across the room. 

As Yagra watched, the man lifted his hands, swirling them as if drawing something up out of deep water. A briny-smelling mist seemed to emerge from somewhere on his body, curling along in the wake of the motion. The scar on his cheek distorted with the motion of his teeth, bared in a fearsome smile, as he said, “Peaceful sleep is ever there!” and flung out the tips of all ten fingers. From his palms, the mist seemed to fly out in a flurry like bubbles, and a shape in the center of them arced across the taproom towards the bar. It was a ghostly, skeletal fish. The phantom fish swam past the woman half-atop the bar to sink a maw full of sharp teeth into the body of a stirge feeding on Bonnie the barmaid. The batlike monster popped in a gory shower of blood like a burst balloon, absolutely soaking Bonnie, Durnan, and the woman on the bar. She looked over her shoulder at the spellcaster.

“Thanks, Jeremiah!”

“Sure, love!” 

In the meantime, the half-elf woman and the giant man in white were still trading blows with the troll, swords and claws screeching off of each other with noises almost as horrible as the gurgling roars produced by the troll. 

Over the cacophony, the half-elf woman shouted, “Mates! It’s self-healing!” Sure enough, the blows which she had already dealt to the troll were visibly closing over into scabs. Within minutes, the wounds would be gone entirely. 

So what Yagra was hearing was that they needed to hit it harder.

Loosing the mace from her belt, she charged forward with a roar. Once, she brought her weapon down on the troll’s skull. Twice. Each blow threw up a gush of blood, the troll letting out crackling screams as each blow distended the shape of its scalp. The troll whipped around to let loose a bellow of rage and pain, spittle and the smell of hot, wet meat rolling over Yagra. As if a creature like this could be anything Yagra feared. She opened her own mouth to bellow right back, her own hair and spit flying from between bared tusks. 

From behind, what looked like the glowing red end of a cigarette floated over to land as lightly as a snowflake on the troll’s shoulder. That little red mote immediately flared up in a crackling line, ratty armor and loincloth catching fire and smoldering. The troll lashed out, enraged and squealing with the pain, catching the half-elf woman in the temple with a backhand. Her body spun to the ground limp as a rag.

“Motherfucker!” The white-cloaked man roared. He let off a final, furious swipe of his mace before darting to his companion’s side. A gloved hand reached down to touch the half-elf’s temple, and pale sapphire light seemed to stain all the white fabric with a tinge of blue. As if between clenched teeth, the man snarled, “Immortal beings were not born to waste their time in bed, you dumb fuck!”

The livid bruising drained off of the half-elf’s skin like an emptying glass of juice. Her eyes fluttered open, briefly all whites before her dark irises rolled back into place. 

“Thanks, Doc.”

Doc didn’t have time to respond. Distracted and half-bent over, he was unable to dodge as the troll reached out with both hands, briefly trusting its entire weight to the balance of its abdomen over the half-wall. All ten claws raked down the white-clothed man’s body from shoulders to hips. The noise it made was like pins being dragged across slate, echoing right into the root of Yagra’s skull. Shredded cloth flew, but no blood. 

The man collapsed backwards, hitting the floor with a crash. He didn’t move. 

The half-elf immediately panicked. “Shit! Shit! Doc! Can anyone else heal?” She cast an imploring look at Jeremiah, who mutely shook his head, sandy hair flopping. 

Yagra was distracted from their byplay by a sudden screeching just next to her head. She jerked back, her vision filled with flashing teeth and flapping wings. The third stirge, having abandoned the remaining thug, was diving at her. Yagra jerked away, trying to snatch at the thing with her free hand. There was no way to bring her mace to bear while it was in her face!

Stupid and small as it was, this was how the stirge hunted. While Yagra was jerking around, she exposed her neck above her collar, a stretch of slate-blue skin. The stirge sank its circular maw right in, blood gushing. With the thing still, Yagra would normally have been able to seize it at last and yank it off. 

Except that the stirge wasn’t the only thing attacking.

A glancing swipe from the troll blindsided her, slashing across her side. Her leather armor blunted the beast’s claws, but the impact against her already-bruised ribs made lights flash in front of Yagra’s eyes. Half-blind, maddened with pain, Yagra screamed and moved both hands to the haft of her mace. She swung wildly over the edge of the pit, not caring enough to aim at any particular part of the troll. Between the flailing, smoldering creature before her and the squirming, gnawing creature on her torso, Yagra’s vision was a haze of blood and pain. For some time, she lost herself in the burn and ache of her body, swinging blindly again and again and again. 

She didn’t know how long it was before with a slip and an incongruously soft groan, the troll plummeted back into the pit and out of sight. It hadn’t been her mace which had knocked it down, but a precise slither of the half-elf’s rapier between the troll’s ribs. A cloud of stirges surrounded it as those dark tumors detached, allowing the bloodless troll to fall away from them. Luckily, for once, the stirges, satisfied with their glut, descended after the corpse rather than returning up to the taproom. 

Yagra let the mace fall from her cramped, aching fingers and reached up to seize the fat, replete stirge still hanging from her neck. It was the work of a moment to yank it free in a burst of pain and fling it to the floor, where her boot put a squelching end to the creature. At last, breath coming in bursts, blood coursing down her arm and shoulder, Yagra could take in the condition of the room.

There was a pressing crowd around the front door, not everyone having been able to flee through in time. Typical for Waterdavians in general and patrons of The Yawning Portal in particular, many were already flaking off of this crowd to return to their tables, righting chairs which had been upended in their rush and picking up their discarded drinks. Others were emerging from where they had ducked behind the bar for cover. Already, chatter was beginning to fill the air once again. Yagra, herself a twenty-year veteran of the city, rolled her aching neck and considered whether to get another drink or to go find Davil and report the Xanathar attack. 

Things weren’t quite over just, yet, though. Yagra wasn’t that lucky.

The half-elf woman briefly stooped to scoop a handful of dropped copper off the ground, abstractly, as if not noticing she was even doing it. She made her way quickly over to the heap of white cloth that was her unconscious friend. It clearly took a great effort to even shift him enough for her to see his face, though that face was hidden from Yagra by the hood which was still pulled up. The half-elf’s hands fluttered over his head and torso like nervous hummingbirds, unable to decide where to land.

“Uh, there any clerics in this room?” she shouted.

The curt voice of Durnan called out from behind the bar, strain in every syllable, “Obaya, you here? Bonnie, too.”

A scraping sound heralded the appearance of a woman who had ducked beneath her table for shelter. This was another woman Yagra had seen around The Yawning Portal more than a few times in her twenty years. Her skin was a brassy umber, rich brown with warm earth-yellow undertones, visible in her face and her hands as they rose up to adjust the white cloth wrapped around her head and hair. This hijab was fastened above her forehead with the golden coin symbol of the goddess Waukeen, and a necklace of similar coins hung within the folds of her voluminous white robes. She didn’t hesitate to hurry over to the collapsed Doc’s side, her hands swooped down with the sure purpose of stooping hawks, going to neck and chest to assess vitals. A frown pursed her terracotta lips. 

“What is…?” she murmured.

“Oh, uh, he’s not—He’s just a—” the half-elf stammered. Before she could finish any kind of explanation, Obaya had reached beneath the hood and seemed to run her fingers lightly across the man’s face. Now her lips parted in a gasp. She bent her head over whatever she had discovered, her fingertips beginning to glow amber-gold where they rested on face and chest, and whispered, “Who else shall I sing with?”

Yagra, curious beyond anything, took a step forward, angling so that she could see whatever had so surprised Obaya about the face beneath that hood. She stepped into place just in time to see two blue stars come to life in a golden face. For a breathless moment, Yagra and Doc stared at one another. Yagra, taking in the sculpted golden mask and dual sapphires sparkling with light behind the sockets of the mask. Doc, taking in a disheveled half-orc woman with deep violet bruising across her face like a constellation of ill-omen stars. 

A voice emerged from behind Doc’s golden mask, unusually reedy, “...Good fighting.”

Yagra smiled despite the ache. “You, too.”

“I’m Doc.”

“Yagra Stonefist.”

While this exchange occurred, Yagra noticed out of the corner of her eye that the one remaining Xanathar thug—the one who had been swordfighting a stirge and the troll—was hauling his half-conscious, tattooed companion towards the door. She idly wondered if she shouldn’t finish the job and kill both of them right here. They already couldn’t tell the difference between her and whatever “Zhentarim” had actually killed their friends. Not to mention the way this little gang clearly didn’t care whether they pissed off the law or the Harpers or anybody. If she let them go, she might cause problems for herself later when they came back with a fresh set. 

On the other hand, Yagra hadn’t killed their friends. Not because she had any affection for those scum in the Xanathar Guild; she didn’t. But neither did she have any loyalty for these so-called Zhentarim running around Waterdeep lately. In fact, she had a strong aversion to being seen as associated with them in any way. Lately, Davil and the others had been in the holding pattern of lying low and waiting to see which one wiped out the others first. Yagra was no great tactician, but even she knew that killing two Xanathar men right in the Castle Ward was bound to come back to bite her either through the law or through dragging her into that gang war mess.

Then again, what were the odds she hadn’t just been dragged in anyway?

Hesitating, indecisive, Yagra let them scramble awkwardly through the door. She made no move to attack or follow.

In the meantime, Obaya had moved to the bar, where Durnan was applying pressure to his swooning barmaid’s wounds. The cleric recited her incantation once more, pressing ten points of golden light into the girl’s temples. Bonnie’s eyes fluttered open, briefly seeming to be pure white with no pupil or iris. 

A high-pitched shriek tore from the girl’s throat. Her leg jerked, slamming her knee into the base of Obaya’s throat. The cleric reeled back, coughing, as Bonnie’s eyes settled into full awareness, taking in what was happening.

“Um, oopsie. My bad,” Bonnie said, falling calm as she registered the lack of danger. Obaya coughed again and waved away the apology. Durnan assisted Bonnie in standing back up.

At last, the tavern seemed restored to normal. There was still somewhat of a hush in the conversation, and a few tables with less-brave or less-native patrons now stood abandoned, but a lively air was already returning. Bonnie wiped off her neck with a cloth and wordlessly passed her serving tray to Durnan, switching positions so that he was now bussing the tables while she prepared drinks behind the bar. All signs that there had been an incursion from the Undermountain were being quickly swept away.

Yagra was surprised when Obaya appeared before her, holding up five firefly fingers. She flinched back, briefly uncertain.

“Allow me to help you,” Obaya said. “As the saying goes: A child of an elephant should not shirk.”

Yagra settled down. Her ribs really did hurt, and she had lost blood to that stirge. She didn’t relish sitting with this ache in her body all night. She leaned in and allowed those fireflies to land on her temples and wash warm wellness into her bones. When her eyes cleared up again, Yagra found herself in the shadow of tall, metal-masked Doc who was standing strangely close to her.

“Can we talk?”

----------------------------------------

Volo felt hope for the first time in the last forty-eight hours. The last ten minutes, specifically, had been a low point, emotionally speaking, starting from the moment Volo had become aware of the screaming. He wasn’t able to immediately tell what was causing such a commotion, being that he was seated in his usual curtained-off private booth by the fire in The Yawning Portal. The thin, red cloth did very little to block off the noise of the taproom, but they were fully opaque enough to block off his view of it. Volo habitually sat in this booth when he was trying to write as opposed to people-watching. He found the noise here, though not lesser in volume, lesser in disturbance. It cost a silver to reserve the booth, of course, but he justified to himself that an expenditure in service of getting his next manuscript to the presses would come out even, once his royalties started coming in. One couldn’t cook an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and one couldn’t write a best-selling treatise on ghosts and specters without purchasing a few glasses of wine, either. All of this to say that Volo was in a deep trance, pen in hand and notebook before him, ensconced in his curtained booth, when the screaming had begun. He had cautiously peeked only his head through the gap in the curtains and witnessed a most extraordinary sight. 

Not the troll. The troll was fairly pedestrian, especially for The Yawning Portal. That pit connected them directly to the Undermountain; it wasn’t as if this was the first beastie to climb their way out. No, the extraordinary sight which had restored hope to Volo’s heart had been the five brave people who dispatched that troll. The feeling sat, unfamiliar in his throat. It was a buzzing feeling like little bees bumping into the lining of his esophagus again and again, leaving their vibrating imprint behind. Or perhaps that was due to the not-inconsiderable amount of wine he had imbibed in that same timeframe, attempting to drown out his worries. That particular feeling felt much the same, but bladed. Every minute that passed with no solution in sight was like another blade in his throat. A swarm of them, buzzing. 

That was quite good. Perhaps he could use that in one of his books later.

But now! His targets were even now convening for some kind of after-action debriefing on the other side of the pit. Volo had only dared to peek his head out through the gap in the curtains while the fight had been in progress, but now he emerged fully and hot-footed his way across the parquet floor, desperate to reach the little knot of people before it dispersed. Luck was with him! They began to move before he had reached them, but they were moving towards their own booth, evidently intending to sit back down together. Consternation flashed in every face when their way was blocked by Volo, practically hopping from foot to foot in excitement. He didn’t hesitate to snatch up one hand from the half-elf and one from the human man in each of his own, pumping them furiously and beaming all over his face. 

“Good evening, my friends,” Volo enthused. The man before them was of impressive breadth but less impressive height. He wore an extravagant emerald tunic over a white lawn shirt and white silk hose, his cloak pinned with a gem-studded, golden chain. Upon his head was a slightly squashed green beret and upon his face was a beaming smile capped by rosy apple cheeks on either side. His hair, sideburns, and mustache curled like the fur of a brown poodle. One of the hands locked in such an enthusiastic shake was splotched with irregular black spots. “Splendid performance! Utterly top-notch! My sincerest congratulations on your triumph here tonight!” His booming voice and appearance alike both spoke of the grooming of an upper-class upbringing here in the Castle Ward. 

“Thanks…?” the half-elf woman drew the word out, confused.

“Oh, where are my manners, my apologies? My name is Volothamp Geddarm, you may have heard of me…?” Volo looked from blank face to blank face before clearing his throat. “No matter about myself. You would be…?” Introductions were made, which Volo waited out with cheerful impatience. Jeremiah, Ramona, Dingo, Doc, and Yagra. Those were the names of the champions who would save him in this hour of need. “Marvelous. I have been on the search for capable people such as yourselves who might help me out with a problem. A missing person I would like found. There’s a reward in it, if you’re interested?”

“I’m always interested in rewards,” Jeremiah agreed. “Lead on, Mr. Geddarm.”

“Oh, please, Volo will suffice. Come, come, my booth is private…”

He led them towards the curtained-off booth beside the larger fire. Behind the frame and the hanging folds of red cloth, there was a table large enough to seat eight and chairs to match. Only one place was set with utensils, as well as a discarded notebook, quill pen, and inkwell. Volo was all at once aware of the way the ink had splattered across the tabletop when the commotion had begun, as well as the way the page beneath the blots was bare of even a single word. He self-consciously hurried to close the notebook and dabbed at the spill with his napkin while his guests arranged themselves in seats around him. At last, all was settled, and Volo was able to take a fortifying sip of wine before diving into the heart of the matter.

“The fact is, a friend of mine has been missing for the last forty-eight hours now. Floon Blagmaar is his name. I last saw him at the Skewered Dragon down in the Dock Ward, around sunset.”

Jeremiah’s eyes lit up in recognition. Ramona’s remained dark.

“The Skewered Dragon?”

“A dive, my dear,” Jeremiah explained. “Very sketchy location. I’m not surprised.”

“You were there with him?”

“Ah, yes.” Volo felt a blush warm his cheeks. He took another fortifying sip. “Looking for inspiration for my next manuscript, you know.” Though the spirits they served at the Skewered Dragon weren’t the type he was cataloging for his next book. 

Dingo’s question cut him therefore right to the heart. “You were drinking, though, yeah?”

“A bit. Mainly, we were gambling.”

“Who with?”

“Us two and some regulars. A dwarf named Solomil Silverfingers.”

“Any big losses?” Ramona guessed.

“Not as such. We were both well-pleased enough. When I eventually left, it was because of the hour. He seemed not a bit bothered at that time; I assumed he would follow shortly. When I came to call on him the next morning, his home was dark and his housemaid said she’d not seen him return all night. It’s been a day since and still no sign of him.”

“And yet… here you are, drinking wine in a tavern?” Doc leaned back, folding his arms, scorn in every inch of his body despite the mask which covered his face. “Don’t seem that concerned about your friend to me.”

“I’m no fighter, my lad,” Volo protested. Frankly, it was a testament to how much he did care for Floon that he was even continuing this conversation. Volo had had contact with many adventurers and knew that they tended towards the brusque, but this group was tending towards downright rude. “I’d do Floon no good barging into a mess and getting killed myself. I was on the lookout for the hardy adventuring type that always come by Durnan’s place. And here you are! Now, you said you were interested…”

“In a reward.” So said, the masked man turned his face away, as if completely dismissing the conversation.

Volo persevered. “Well, naturally, I promised a reward.” He thought rapidly, calculating how much money he had on his person at the moment. Enough for a small advance, at least, though it would just about clean him out. They surely wouldn’t undertake a task of this kind of risk for that, though. He’d have to sweeten the deal afterwards. He had however long it took them to save Floon to come up with a more appropriate reward. Until then… “I have here ten dragons for each of you,” he bluffed, “and I can promise ten times that once Floon is safe!” The figure was thrown out with abandon, made up on the spot. 

The group exchanged surprised looks, then leaned forward as one. 

“Ten times that, each?” Ramona asked.

“Or ten times that, total, to split?” Jeremiah added.

“Wait, ten times the total?” Dingo rapidly counted the people seated around the table. “Ten times fifty or ten times ten?”

“Ten times fifty each?” Ramona persisted. 

With each question, another drop of cold sweat rolled down Volo’s back. They drove the number higher with each excited question until Volo’s reward was equal to a legendary dragon’s hoard. He had to stop this madness. “No, I mean to say… I meant ten times the initial ten… That would be a thousand…”

“A thousand each? Deal,” Dingo proclaimed.

“Ten times ten is a hundred,” Doc cut in. 

“Yes, that!” Volo seized onto this lesser number with both hands, like a drowning man to a rope. “I meant a hundred total to split between all of you!”

As one, the group leaned back into their seats, their imagined riches slipping through their fingers. 

Jeremiah alone remained poised, elbows on the table, fingers steepled and a charming smile on his face. “That’s all as may be, but you’ve given us very little to go on. We may need funds to search for information, not least if we’ll be visiting The Skewered Dragon. Is there any chance of a little more up front, to grease our way?”

In the face of the others’ glowers, Volo gratefully negotiated with the friendly, handsome spellcaster. “Why, I suppose, yes, I might add five more dragons, would that suffice?”

“Splendid! I knew the author of Volo’s Guide to Monsters was a reasonable man.”

“The what?” Doc asked.

“Our employer is a famous author,” Jeremiah explained to his uncultured companions. “He quite literally wrote the book on monsters.”

“For a reader, I am always delighted to provide!” Volo’s smile came easier now. He’d just talk to Jeremiah, then, for now. Mr. Vane was far less intimidating than his friends. Volo bent over the pouch at his hip, pulling out the little velvet bags he had prepared in advance to entice any willing to look for his friend. Each was filled with ten shining, golden dragons. He passed these out to everyone at the table except for Jeremiah, then retrieved his own personal purse in other to laboriously fish out an extra five dragons. For many minutes, the only sound was the clink and shift of coins as Volo’s thick, ink-stained fingers prodded through them, searching for any glint of gold. From their angle, he supposed they were unable to see that the noise was mainly created by a heap of copper nibs, sprinkled with the odd silver shard. By the time he had finished, even Jeremiah’s smile had grown strained with the awkwardness of the pause. Volo passed over the fat velvet bag with a relieved smile. 

“There we are. Now, I take it you accept the job?”

“We gladly do,” Jeremiah assured him.

“Uh, hey.” The wrap-up was interrupted by the less-coiffed of their two lady half-orcs, a big brute of a woman with leather armor who had introduced herself as Yagra Stonefist. She was holding her own little velvet bag as if offering it before her, eyes roving from person to person. “Do you mean me, too?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Doc said, whipping to face her with his arms still crossed, as if daring her to decline.

“If you’re alright with it,” Dingo added, slapping her companion on the bicep. “We’d love for you to come along. You’d be an asset.”

Still mildly uncomfortable, Yagra shrugged. “Yeah, alright.”

“We can talk on the way,” Ramona put in, with a pointed glance at Dingo.

Though the half-elf swallowed visibly, she didn’t protest as the group of them rose from the table. Volo at last breathed deeply through the buzzing hope in his throat.

You’ll soon be safe, my friend, he hoped desperately.