In the night, the fog rolled over Waterdeep harbor once more, blanketing the city in damp wool as the warm wind was cooled by the deep harbor. The mountain stuck out from the cloud cover like a burr stuck in the fibers. Of course, that was only visible if you were a member of the griffon cavalry. Most of the people on the ground couldn’t see much further than five feet around themselves in any direction. Even from the perspective of the cavaliers, the world was a confusion of clouds below and clouds above with hardly a sliver of clear, gray sky in between. The poor visibility combined with the muffling effect of the water vapor made it so that even in the crowded, lively Dock Ward, one felt isolated. In addition to this blinding and deafening effect, anyone out and walking around would soon find it hard to breathe through the oppressive, warm humidity.

Just another joy of living in Waterdeep, Fel’rekt Krebbyg thought to himself, looking out over exactly three feet of steel-colored water visible before the wall of fog. Fucking seasons. Variety sure was the spice of life, but seasons were spice blends that always had one or two awful tastes to go with the good ones. The warmth of summer was blindingly bright and caused wicked sunburns. The beauty of spring was only admirable in between the rain and sleet storms. The lovely chill of autumn was almost as wet as the spring. As for winter… Fel’rekt saw nothing to recommend it at all. Miserable watches on an ice-slick deck, trying desperately to maintain equipment against frost, the short rations thanks to absolutely nobody knowing how to grow food without light around here…

Compared to that, spring wasn’t so bad, really. A seagull cried out hoarsely from somewhere in the mist, sounding like an omen of death.

It was also possible that Fel’rekt was just tired. He’d stayed up all night long, ears pricked for any signs of mischief afoot. Bad enough that strangers had been let on the ship, but they’d gotten him scolded by the Captain, too! Fel’rekt would not let any funny business slip by on his watch. Never mind that his watch had ended at midnight, handed over to Drosrin along with his lantern. That was just his deck-watch. It was only natural that he’d slunk into the crew bunks instead of his own stateroom in order to huddle in the corner, alert as a broody hen, to continue his real watch over the interlopers.

He’d mostly just seen them snoring. Even Vane hadn’t made any more suspicious comments. Still, who knows what kind of sabotage they might have pulled if Fel’rekt hadn’t been keeping an eye on them. The only reason Fel’rekt had left them alone now was because he couldn’t possibly be expected to guard against sabotage on an empty stomach. He would need his energy.

Eventually, the performers began to stir and trickle out onto the deck along with the crew. They knew better than to sleep in if they wanted anything other than stone-cold, gloopy porridge. Their “guests” emerged among this group, minus the bowls of porridge. Good. Bad enough to waste the Captain’s time without stealing their crew’s food, too. They milled around, chatting casually. There was an expression of wonder and awe on the faces of the elf and half-orc women, neither one apparently used to seafaring vessels. They chattered to each other excitedly, pointing out various features of the ship. Of particular interest to the elf woman was the mainmast and the crow’s nest swaying high atop it.

“...climb it?” her voice drifted over.

Vane chuckled. “I don’t see why not, as long as we let the captain know.”

Ears pricking at the sound of the word “captain”, Fel’rekt stood to approach. He hadn’t gotten more than a step before the man himself, Captain Zord, appeared in the door of the stateroom. He was already dressed in full for the day, feathered hat in place and sword at his hip. He paused for a moment in the open doorframe, hands on hips, surveying his bustling crew and performers with laugh-creased eyes. The sight of his own mother in that doorway could not have been as reassuring to Fel’rekt. Never mind that Fel’rekt’s mother would likely have been bearing down on him with a whip at this exact moment.

The young man immediately changed courses, reaching Captain Zord at the same time as Vane and his hangers-on.

“Good morning,” Vane was greeting the captain. “My friend Dingo here is new to sailing ships… she was wondering if it would bother anybody if she took a quick climb up to the crow’s nest.”

Captain Zord stroked the hair on his chin, eyebrows lifting. “I don’t see what the harm would be. By all means.”

With a huge grin, the elf woman immediately sprinted for the mainmast. From below, Vane called out one or two pieces of advice as the elf ascended in great, swinging leaps. Watching a wood elf climb was something like witnessing a triton in the water; the woman moved with breathtaking ease, as if moving vertically was as simple for her as moving horizontally. A creature in its natural habitat. Fel’rekt, despite a twelve-hour-running determination to distrust and hate these people, thought to himself as he always did when faced with beauty, You were wrong about absolutely everything, Mother.

His breathless appreciation soured immediately when the wood elf paused, dangling from a shroud with her spine bent into a full crescent moon shape, to throw a wink at Captain Zord.

Captain Zord blew a kiss back.

“Il--!” Fel’rekt choked back his outraged squawk just in time. “Captain!”

“Nothing more refreshing than seeing a young one gain an appreciation for the sea,” Captain Zord replied, peaceably. “You were one of those once, Felinci.”

That served to shut Fel’rekt up. He subsided, folding his arms across his chest and simply watching his captain continue to cozy up to these outsiders. Above them, the elf had reached her destination of the crow’s nest. She flipped up onto the railing and began doing excited laps like, Fel’rekt thought uncharitably, a little yappy dog, heedless of the sixty-foot drop between herself and the deck.

Meanwhile, closer to the deck, the half-orc woman was sidling up to Vane, murmuring and casting looks in the captain’s direction. At last, the man cleared his throat.

“Ah, Captain, I think I was a bit remiss last night in making introductions. My companion having fun on the yardams is Dingo, my big, silent friend here is Doc, and beside me is the incomparable Ramona of the Yawning Portal.”

Ramona smiled in such a way that her lower tusks dimpled her red lips in a charming, sultry manner. The decorations on her leather jacket twinkled even in the filtered, misty morning light as she stretched out a hand and purred, “A pleasure to meet you, Captain.”

Captain Zord took her slender, ice-blue hand into his own chapped and roughened one. He bowed over it, lowering his lips to barely graze the knuckles. From beneath the brim of his feathered hat, he peered upwards, eyes creased with laughter.

Very nearby, there was a scream that cut off in a splash.

Everybody on deck paused, taken off-guard by the abrupt noises, brains struggling to catch up with what had happened. Vane, Captain Zord, Ramona, Doc, and Fel’rekt stood in a cluster on deck, unharmed. No performers or crew members going about their business on deck seem to be in distress. It took a full three seconds for the sound of the splash to register with them as having a location on the other side of the railing where they all stood.

Vane recovered first. “Man overboard!” he called out, briskly and without alarm. Thud, thud, he shed his boots one after the other. Without any evident hesitation, he vaulted the railing and created his own splash.

Fel’rekt rushed after him, leaning over to peer at the steel-gray water ten feet below. He could make out a limp, starfish shape bobbing on the water’s surface. Jeremiah was expertly slicing through the water with a side stroke in its direction. After a second, Fel’rekt parsed the shape as the wood elf woman named Dingo.

His brain churned, working backwards. Shape in the water… a scream and a splash… the sight of her scampering around the crow’s nest…

Fel’rekt’s whole body sprang an inch into the air at the sound of an explosive curse just next to his ear. He whipped around, startled to find that the large, pale body of Doc was leaning over the railing with him.

“What was she thinking?” the masked man growled. “That was a seventy-foot drop!”

“Did she slip?” Fel’rekt offered.

“I was watching. Damn fool jumped.”

Below, Jeremiah was backstroking towards the docks, Dingo lying limp across his torso. It was evident that the collision with the water had knocked her out cold. They were rapidly blurring into a single, misshapen lump among the fog, though the shore was not much more than ten feet away.

Behind him, Fel’rekt heard Ramona sigh daintily, then ask, “Does this kind of thing happen often on sailing ships?”

Solemnly, Captain Zord answered, “More often than you’d think, lassie.”

“C’mon, let’s go get the bleedin’ idiot,” Doc growled, beginning to stomp in the gangplank’s direction.

“Can you fix her?” Ramona asked, hurrying after him.

“I can, but then she won’t learn anything. Why should I waste my spells on stupidity?”

“So… what will we do?”

“See if Obaya Uday is an early riser, I guess.”

Fel’rekt could just barely make out the reunion on the shore. Vane, visible like a wraith among the mist, bent over his unconscious companion, messing around with her chest and mouth presumably to check for swallowed water. When the other two joined, they conversed in low voices for a few minutes. The sound was deadened to a numb, distant sensation, indistinguishable. In the end, the giant figure of Doc stooped to gather his diminutive elven friend into his arms. Then, all three faded first into the mist and then into the Dock Ward of Waterdeep beyond. Fel’rekt sank his chin onto his folded arms on the railing, watching every dip and swirl and dark spot in the fog as if one would be Vane’s party returning.

“What on earth was that about?” he wondered aloud.

The fog held no answers.

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

It was a little early in the day for drinking, not that that usually stopped Yagra. She supposed that other races’ weak constitutions were the source of that kind of common wisdom. She couldn’t imagine what that must be like. For her, a strong beer or two in the morning was bracing and refreshing. The most it could do was warm her extremities a little. In the evening, it would take at least a dozen of the things to loosen her up. Fewer if they were brewed by half-orcs or goliaths.

All of this to say that the cold, bitter taste of beer flowed over her tongue in between bites of dark, crusty bread. The hops mixed with the grain taste of the bread in a delightful, savory way. Yagra alternated between tearing off bites from a half-loaf and taking swigs from her pewter stein. Across from her, Davil Starsong picked delicately at a bowl of mushroom and vegetable broth.

The man was slender and petite as most sun elves were, with skin that was naturally a rich, camel tan. Yagra knew better than most that her employer sure hadn’t gotten that color from time spent out of doors. She was pretty sure the man hadn’t left the Yawning Portal in approaching a month, for all he looked as if he had just returned from a summer on the sea. His tawny golden hair fell in a long tail down the back of his turquoise velvet tunic. Trimmed with thread of gold, sapphires, and foamy white lace, the elf’s whole body evoked the sun sparkling on the surface of clear, blue water. Based solely on his appearance, most people would have guessed Davil Starsong to be a nobleman rather than a mercenary. And certainly, looking at his mild, friendly face, most people would not guess him to be a founding member of the most widespread, successful mercenary group in Faerun. All he was missing was a pair of half-moon spectacles to look like a classroom teacher.

Especially with the stern look he was aiming at Yagra across the table.

Somewhat abashed, she paused to swipe the side of her hand across her lips, wiping up crumbs and flecks of beer foam. Davil inhaled lightly through his nose and took another sip of broth.

“I’m glad to see you going out more,” he commented at last. “I never meant for you to be trapped in here with me for so long.”

Yagra shrugged one shoulder and avoided his gaze. “I always knew Zhiraj was just trying to get me out of the way. Hardly anyone would attack you here.”

“After last night, I don’t think that’s a claim we can continue to comfortably make.” They both sat in uneasy silence as the truth of this settled over them. Yagra had to admit that she’d gotten complacent with her mediocre run of luck these last few years. Aside from boredom, she’d had little to complain about. A secure job, a safe place to sleep, and a family in the form of the Doom Raiders. It was about time things took a turn for the difficult again.

“Well. Good thing neither of us is claustrophobic.” Yagra waved her stein ironically at the huge taproom around them. She and Davil were seated in a wooden booth on the opposite side of the pit from the bar, within sight of the flight of stairs which led upwards to Davil’s and Yagra’s room. For once, the place was silent of everything except muted chatter and the lively bounce of Bonnie’s voice, their bard being occupied.

Ramona’s arrival was heralded by the crash of the front door being kicked open by eight feet of ragged white cloth. The massive bulk of Doc entered the taproom with a stocky, tattooed wood elf cradled in his arms. Both he and his burden were splattered in sickly, yellow-brown stains which stood out starkly on the white of his clothing. The elf, Yagra assumed, must have been Dingo. Following in their wake were a nonchalant Ramona and Jeremiah, each thankfully clean of mystery stains. Their eyes scanned all over the room, lighting up once they landed on Yagra. The foursome made a beeline for the booth, crowding in.

Yagra wrinkled her nose at the palpable stench which accompanied the press of Dingo and Doc shoving her further into the booth. Ramona and Jeremiah made the wise decision to scoot in beside Davil, who obligingly moved down the bench to make room. This meant the three of them were in no danger of touching the awful, sticky stains which covered the other two. No one, however, was safe from the stench. She hadn’t smelled anything this awful since her time in the Field Ward.

“What the hell happened to you?” Yagra asked.

Sapphires met her gaze squarely from beneath sculpted, golden, furrowed brows and the peak of a white hood. “Fought an ogre,” Doc said.

Yagra looked at his stained, white clothing. Then she looked at the unconscious Dingo in his lap, currently in the body of an oaky-skinned wood elf. Aside from the stains, neither appeared to have sustained so much as a scrape. And that stench, the longer she sat with it, resembled excrement more and more strongly.

“Sure,” she smirked.

Across the table, Ramona cupped a hand around her lips and mouthed, Sewage leak. Fell in.

Fantastic. The smirk evaporated. Yagra’s arm was pressed against Doc’s side. She could feel the clammy dampness. She leaned back against the corner as far as she could, cramming herself into it and holding her stein defensively in front of her chest with both hands.

“Anyway, have you seen that cleric of Waukeen around today?” Doc bounced Dingo’s limp body, causing her head to loll rhythmically. “I didn’t want to waste a spell.”

Davil, whose pale eyebrows had been inching farther and farther up his forehead since the group had come in, cleared his throat. “I may be able to help, there.” His eyes sparkled like deep water as he began to hum. After a few seconds of picking out a simple melody, his lips parted in song. “Wake now, my merry lads! Wake and hear me calling! Warm now be heart and limb! The cold stone is fallen.”

Dingo’s eyelashes fluttered. Her nose scrunched up. “What…” she croaked, before she was properly awake, “...is that smell?”

“You had a stroke,” Doc said.

Davil changed his tune, idly tapping his spoon on the rim of his clay soup bowl to add a lively beat. “O! Water cold we may pour at need down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed; but better is beer if drink we lack, and water hot poured down the back!”

The awful stains on Doc, Dingo, and Yagra evaporated with the tiniest hisses into wisps of white steam which floated up and away from them. The stench lingered for just a moment before it too dissipated into the normal fragrance of bodies and beer and the damp mold smell of the pit.

“Everyone’s a bard,” Doc grumbled.

“He means thanks, probably,” Jeremiah put in. He whistled sharply, the sound cutting across the tavern. The auburn head of Bonnie turned from where she was stationed by the bar, apparently chatting with Durnan. Meeting her eyes, he held up four fingers, pointing at the group around his table with the other hand, then mimed a quick drinking and eating gesture.

Dingo finally came to full awareness. Her eyes darted around the table with frantic desperation.

“You saw…?!” she croaked. Then, even higher, “He saw…?!”

Doc nodded. Dingo made a noise that could only be likened to the sound of all the air being squeezed out of a goose by an iron vise. For the first time, Yagra was looking when it happened. The features of the oaky-skinned wood elf bulged in some places, sank in others, pushed out and in as if invisible hands were molding softest clay. It was more organic-looking than a magical transformation. Yagra watched as the broad nose pulled out as if pinched by two fingers at the bridge, then wiggled as if adjusting the way it sat, inching up and down until it found exactly the right spot among the shifting bone structure of the face. A strong, slightly hooked nose. A square jaw and high cheekbones. Poofy dark hair straightened and fell in flyaway wisps around the long face. Broad shoulders and heavy biceps. A set of thick horns which jutted out at right angles from the temples. A snaky tail which crept out from beneath the hem of a blue linen tunic which was suddenly straining at the seams across a broad chest, pulled several inches over bare abdomen.

The whole thing took the space of a single breath. Lying in Doc’s lap was now a gray-skinned, muscular tiefling man with pure black eyes. The tiefling pulled himself onto the bench, then thumped his head down against the surface of the table with a resounding BANG of horns on wood.

“I can never be that elf again,” Dingo moaned. “She’s out of the rotation. No more. Tell Captain Zardoz that she died on impact.” As usual for his larger, more masculine forms, the gentle nasal tones of his voice gave an otherwise intimidating figure a more friendly air.

Yagra was starting to put the picture together here. “Tried to show off, huh?” she said.

Dingo groaned wordlessly.

“Don’t worry, you’ll catch someone’s eye soon who appreciates you.” Yagra reached around Doc to thump Dingo on the shoulder. Her own shoulder pressed against the man’s strangely-rigid side, his cloak brushing her cheek. There was a noise from somewhere nearby like a sheet of tin warping in the oven. Yagra jerked back to find Doc’s sapphire mask-eyes staring steadily at the top of her head from inches away.

“Uh, you too, probably.” Yagra gently thumped Doc on the chest. The gesture jarred her hand as if she had punched a steel shield.

“SO YOU’RE DAVIL?” the masked man replied at volume.

Across the table, Davil put down his spoon, steepled his fingers, and smiled. “Davil Starsong, Doom Raider and one of the founders of the Black Network, at your service. I understand you’re one of our brothers?”

Doc fished out his Zhentarim pendant from his neckline and let it spin between them for a second. “Call me Doc,” he grunted.

The others put in their own names with varying levels of enthusiasm. While they were doing so, Bonnie came by laden with trays down either arm. With the dexterity of a juggler, she deposited a simple breakfast of bread and soup in front of the newly-arrived four and a tankard of water each. For a moment before she departed, Bonnie paused and scanned Yagra’s bench, looking at Yagra, Doc, and Dingo carefully one by one. In the end, she didn’t say whatever was on her mind and simply left with a cheery wave to answer the call of another booth.

Once they were alone, Davil continued, “Yagra explained to me that you four are looking into the disappearance of a Floon Blaagmar, correct?”

“Yeah. Kidnapped him lately?” Doc asked.

Beneath the table, there was the clunk of a heavy boot impacting a steel-hard leg. Jeremiah smiled through a wince. “What my mate here means is that our investigations turned up some Zhentarim agents who may have been involved.”

“Yes. I looked into who, exactly, you may have seen at the Skewered Dragon that night and I found that descriptions matched a known member of this… Zhentarim faction that’s causing trouble in the city right now. His name is Urstul Floxin. He’s in something of a leadership position among the splinter faction.”

“Well, that’s certainly convenient,” Ramona said, in carefully neutral tones.

“I assure you, I certainly have no interest in abducting such a… well-connected individual as Mr. Blaagmar,” Davil replied in the same tone.

Yagra bristled. “Davil would have told me if it was us,” she put in. “He doesn’t keep secrets from me, I’m his personal guard.” Not to mention the strange, half-familial relationship she collectively shared with the Doom Raiders as a whole, hovering somewhere between apprentice and niece to all of them. They looked out for her, but they had never sheltered her. If there had been some plan, some reason to abduct Floon, Davil would have told her to back off and take her new friends with her. He wouldn’t be pretending not to be involved at all. What would that accomplish? Protecting his reputation in her eyes? Yagra already knew what kind of work the Doom Raiders did. She couldn’t admire a leopard for pretending it had no spots.

“Alright, so basically what I’m confused about here…” Doc put his hands on the table, voice lowering. “...Is how you’ve allowed this splinter faction to exist in Waterdeep at all.”

The tension around the table ratcheted up several notches.

“I beg your pardon?” Davil said.

“It’s your reputation they’re throwing shite all over! Why aren’t you doing anything about it?”

“What the hell do you know?!” Yagra snapped.

Davil put up a hand, cutting off any further outrage. He returned his fingers to their steeple, face inscrutable. “I’m unsure as to why you think we are doing nothing. You may be a… legacy member of our group, but you’ve been gone from Waterdeep for a long while. Even if you hadn’t, in the normal course of things a Wolf would not be privy to every move made by a Dread Lord. Since you are so concerned, I can assure you that I manage a network of spies who report back to me whatever they can find about Zhentarim splinter faction leadership and alliances. I know that Urstul Floxin has been coordinating Zhentarim movements from the Gralhund Villa, and I know that he has made use of a warehouse in Candle Alley–in the Dock Ward–marked with a winged wyrm symbol on the door. Putting together his movements from a few nights ago, I find it entirely plausible that Floxin has abducted your Mr. Blaagmar and possibly his associate as well using this nearby hideout. I would suggest you search this warehouse for any sign of recent habitation. I would further suggest that you assume that all members of the Doom Raiders are committed to preserving the reputation of the true Zhentarim and are working towards that goal, whether we report our progress to you or not.”

Yagra worked to keep a cringe off of her face. The whole time, Davil’s voice had remained mild and pleasant while he delivered verbal cut after verbal cut. It was so much worse than watching someone lose a fistfight. It was hard to explain. She obviously knew that Davil Starsong was powerful, despite his slender build and his affinity for magic, but it was somehow twice as embarrassing to watch someone else figure that out the hard way.

Doc, for his part, couldn’t show much in the way of emotion through his mask. He matched Davil stare for stare until the other three were shuffling uncomfortably in their seats.

“So what you’re saying is you knew about the warehouse and you just let it be? You know where he’s living and you’re just… letting him be?” Doc finally replied.

“I suppose we’re doing something about the warehouse now, aren’t we? I’ll tell you what: You clear the place of any false Zhentarim and my operatives will take over from there.”

Jeremiah broke in. “Hold on a moment, so we do the hard work and you just move in afterwards?”

“The point of this is less to make a profit than to make a point. How about this: Anything else you find in that warehouse you can clear out as well, no matter how valuable. All I’m looking for is control of the empty building afterwards. How does that sound?”

Jeremiah sat back and took a big, satisfied slurp of soup. “That’ll do marvelously.”

Dingo and Ramona voiced their approval as well. Doc remained stoic.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Yagra cleared her throat. “Thanks, Davil.”

“My pleasure. Before you go…” The elf extended a hand towards Yagra across the table. From within the cuff of his shirt came slithering a thin, black snake. The head emerged, then several inches of spine, before two bulging shapes squeezed out as well. Freed from their confinement, two black-feathered wings each the size of a palm spread out and flapped, propelling the snake across the gap between Davil’s wrist and Yagra’s shoulder. About three feet of snake followed, trailing like a ribbon through the air to come to rest curled around Yagra’s neck like a scarf. She didn’t flinch, used to being a climbing frame for Davil’s pets. “...Use her to send me a message if you run into trouble, or to let me know when everything is finished. Good luck, Yagra.”

A lopsided, tusked smirk. “When’s that ever been the case?” She pushed to her feet, waving off any reply he might have made and then waving Dingo and Doc ahead of her. The other two bid their farewells and followed, Jeremiah wolfing down the remaining bites in his bowl even as he straightened up.

On the way to the Dock Ward, they encountered few obstacles outside of their own attention span. Hailed by a shady peddler on the street, Doc and Jeremiah made best use of their charms to fleece the gnome out of four healing potions for a quarter of the asking price. Yagra simply watched this performance and wondered if either of them realized the potions were almost certainly stolen. She just hoped it wasn’t from a gang. Later, they passed a purple-painted building which was leaking purple-hued smoke from its ajar entrance. Ramona stopped dead to marvel, taking a big whiff of the lavender-scented cloud and cooing over the stuffed beholder in the window. It took several minutes of promising to come back to the place in the future for Dingo and Jeremiah to convince her to move on.

At last, they came to Candle Alley.

All the while they had conducted their meeting and hiked through the streets, the dense fog had not let up even a bit. Even on the main roads, which they were far from, the dray traffic had hardly dispersed the vapor at all. In this tucked-away corner of the ward, Candle Alley was a study in faded silhouettes curtained by swirling white. The buildings here were serviceable, undecorated white plaster held up by timber frames. It was hard to say whether the buildings which formed the mouth of this alley were also warehouses or storefronts, given that both were locked up tight and showed not a glimmer of life. While the main streets of Waterdeep were lit by municipal lampposts, the Dock Ward had always been a rougher neighborhood. Nearly all of the lamps had been smashed and their candles stolen, never to be replaced by the lamplighters who serviced the rest of Waterdeep. This meant that in darkness or low visibility, it wasn’t unusual for street signs or shop signs to be completely unreadable.

Candle Alley, however, was lit. Halfway down the little alley was the warm, yellow glow of candlelight. In the fog, it was reduced to a flat disk of color like a painted saint’s halo. It couldn’t illuminate even the building across from it, much less the other end of the alley. All that could be made out was the first few feet of cobblestones and the vaguest outline of a gate. There was no way to know what was waiting for them if they set foot into that misty alley.

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

This was hardly the first time that Lord Neverember had caused misfortune for a citizen of Waterdeep. It wasn’t even the first time he’d done so for the particular citizen currently crouched within this small, dark closet: a young, human man of noble bearing. No, the first misfortune he had caused for that citizen had probably been his conception. It was so old hat that the young nobleman had almost given up feeling bitter about it.

Almost, but not quite.

Bitterness had been the primary feeling two nights ago, when the sack had slipped over his head from behind. The young nobleman was no stranger to abduction attempts, street brawls, or any manner of urban danger. People tended to think of him as a soft-palmed son of wealth, not realizing exactly how harsh a place the city could be when you were related to an unpopular politician. Political and financial ransom had been the young nobleman’s familiar enemies for all his life. He had long since learned to fight in a way other than the ceremonial.

That was, when he wasn’t being ambushed in the wee hours of the morning after a night of drinking with friends. The rapier he had brought for protection banged uselessly against his hip as he struggled to strike back at the bodies trying to gain control of his arms. Nearby, he could hear an awful caterwauling.

Floon. His friend, whom he had met with for drinks and was walking home. From the sound of it, Floon was receiving the same sack-and-grapple treatment the young nobleman was currently enjoying. Whoever was doing this was taking both of them.

The panic of this thought motivated him to fight harder. He managed a kick which knocked away one of the men piled on him, allowing him the freedom to twist and jab his elbow into the gut of another. He had no warning that someone was aiming a return blow at his temple, only an explosion of pain that sent him reeling into the cradle of many unfriendly hands. In a twinkling, he found his hands immobilized by itchy, hempen rope. The sack around his head was suddenly cinched at the neck by a drawstring which drew tight around his throat. His breath stalled, the pain and the nausea and the alcohol all boiling up through the young nobleman’s gut towards a blocked exit. For a few long, panic-stricken minutes, he was only able to focus on relaxing his gag reflex, positive that if he attempted to vomit now he would drown himself. By the time the danger of gagging had passed and sensations from the rest of his body could filter in, he found himself being borne along by his elbows, the toes of his boots skimming and knocking over cobblestones at a rapid pace. From nearby, the young nobleman could hear breathless pleas for air that could only be from Floon. Still alive, at least, and still with him.

With these realizations came clarity. They were being moved, bodily. The rapier on his hip and the purse on his belt hadn’t been touched. This wasn’t a robbery. That much was obvious. Both Floon and the young nobleman were being targeted for a specific reason. For the young nobleman, there were many reasons which could lead someone to abduct him. For Floon, except money, there were precious few. Whatever was happening was something far more sinister than a ransoming.

The young nobleman was carried along for a surprisingly short time. If he hadn’t been so distracted in those first, crucial minutes by the pain and the nausea, it would have been easy to figure out where they were. As it was, all he could say for certain was that they had to still be in the Dock Ward. Beneath his boots, the ground changed from cobblestone to sparse grass and dirt. The sound of a gate clanged shut behind them. A few hurried, crunching steps brought them across the yard and over the threshold of a building. Around his blinded head, the air pressure changed palpably. No longer did little spits of rain fall down on his neck, no more was the little air finding its way inside the hot, humid sack cloying with the scent of rotting fish. They had moved indoors.

With a rough, perfunctory motion, he was released. Given no warning, his knees failed to lock in time, sending him crashing down painfully onto his face. He could only be grateful that the angle of the fall meant that his chin and cheekbone took the pain of the fall, shielding his nose from becoming flattened.

The relief was short-lived.

There was another thump as a body presumably belonging to Floon was dropped next to him. Then, without so much as a word, a boot was stomped onto the nape of his neck, pinning him on his belly with his hands trapped beneath his body. Hands fumbled for a moment at the sack, briefly loosening the constricting drawstring. He was able to suck in a single, grateful full breath.

Then, to his horror, the drawstring was yanked tighter than ever. The cords dug into the flesh of his neck with a sharp pain like a cut on top of the blunt-pressure pain of his pinched trachea beneath. What little air had been getting through before was no more. Helplessly, his body jerked against the foot pinning him down, the toes of his boots scrambling against the floor beneath. The foot on the back of his head stomped with crushing force, knocking his temple into the floorboards once, twice, thrice. His stomach convulsed, his whole body spasmed, and all consciousness fled.

Consciousness returned timidly, in fits and starts over a long period of time. Sometimes, when the young nobleman came to awareness, he could hear voices arguing. Never clearly enough for him to identify the voices or even the words. Sometimes, he would regain awareness beneath the rough kick of a boot to the shoulder or abdomen. In those moments, he got the feeling the words were being directed at him, but he still couldn’t identify them or reply. He tried, but it felt as if there was something still blocking his throat, something preventing his vocal chords from flexing properly. Once or twice, he heard a voice crying his name hoarsely, pleadingly.

“Renaer…! Renaer…!”

It was impossible to say how much time was passing. It felt simultaneously as if no time was passing and as if each second was a thousand-year nightmare. Everything was pain, sickness, confusion, and draining thirst.

Then, consciousness returned a final time, slinking across the young nobleman with a gift in its mouth like a skittish cat. That gift, dropped gently onto his head, was awareness. For once, Renaer could not only tell where he was, he could even feel his body. He was sprawled on his side, throbbing hands still bound in front of him, his head freed from the bag which had once confined it. His tongue, the roof of his mouth, and all the way down his throat felt as if they were coated in a layer of crushed glass.

Through bleary eyes, Renaer could just barely see another shape lying in a heap on the other side of the room. The room itself was extremely large and open, stacked with random stalagmites of wooden crates. It wasn’t just his weakened eyes failing him–the room was completely unlit. There were windows, but hardly any light came through them at all, making them simply charcoal-colored squares in a black field. Every now and then, a darker shape moved in front of these squares as the kidnappers moved around the large space.

The first Renaer knew of danger was when one of those kidnappers fell headlong to the floor. He hit one of the stacks of crates on the way down, causing a tremendous crash. Silence didn’t fall afterwards, either. The fallen man thrashed his legs through the debris, rattling the crate and its fallen contents, choking and hacking as if drowning. Vile curses erupted from the darkness where the other kidnappers lurked. From somewhere beyond the walls of this building, there was an eerie yipping sound like that of stalking coyotes. Gentle and slow as a landing butterfly, an arrow buried itself in the floor just next to Renaer’s leg. He stared at it, struggling to focus on the pale blur of the shaft only inches away. A muffled, logical part of his brain was telling him that arrows meant danger and enemies. That people falling over meant fighting. That the worst place to be was lying on the ground, not moving, tied up and sick. But his emotions weren’t processing the knowledge. No urgency was making itself known in his body.

Not until there was the sound of a crash. The sound was mainly splintering wood rather than shattering glass, but it did herald the arrival of something large and heavy through the charcoal-black square of the window. There were shrieks. Some of very human alarm, some of very inhuman intimidation. Those shrieks jolted the movement back into Renaer’s heavy, numb body.

Slow, dreamy, he wiggled up onto his knees. He found himself looking down at the sprawled body of one of his kidnappers, still among a pile of flinders and a pool of black blood, an arrow through his throat. A beam of moonlight was coming in through the window to illuminate the scene, now no longer coal-dark, having been smashed open. Shapes were locked in furious struggle back and forth across the huge, open space of this room. Some, the human kidnappers, swore and shouted. Whatever was attacking them, small dark shapes that moved far too fast and not at all like humans, yapped and screeched back, burying blades in throats and abdomens. Blood splattered across the floor. A fleck caught Renear on the temple. He stumbled back on his knees, reeling away from the violence until his back thumped against a wall.

“Bring him back here!” one of the yammering, inhuman attackers suddenly cried in a guttural, humanoid voice.

“Grab the pretty boy!” another called back, in a strangely high, flat voice.

Renaer, still scrabbling to get away without rising and making a target of himself, knocked his elbow and shoulder into the wall as he scooted along the baseboard towards the stairs. There was no way he could get up them on his knees, quietly, but it was the largest and most permanent structure on this floor. The crates were being knocked around and used as cover by the inhuman attackers; if Renaer tried to hide behind one of those, he’d surely be caught. His only thought was to take shelter beneath the stairs.

As he went, his eyes darted in all directions, trying to make anything recognizable out through the darkness and the chaos. Floon. Where was Floon? Was he the “pretty boy” these new horrors were here to grab? Was Renaer simply collateral damage after all? They’d kept asking… What had they asked? What had Floon said? Renaer. His name. They’d asked them both about Renaer. Floon wasn’t the one they were here for.

Quite by accident, his shoulder hit something that swung free beneath it. With a choked, painful grunt of surprise, Renaer collapsed sideways. His head lightly struck something on the way down, and his hip something else. The involuntary noise caused a flare of pain in Renaer’s throat which eclipsed both of these minor hurts. Rather than cough, he breathlessly retched for a few moments before catching some semblance of a breath.

He found himself lying half-through a doorway. His hip was jammed up against the doorframe, and his head against the door itself. The ceiling above him was a regular zigzag of tiered risers. Every wheeze which escaped his lips sent up a flurry of dust and cobwebs. He was beneath the stairs, in some kind of storage closet.

The shrieks behind him spurred him to struggle once more to his knees. Quick as he could, Renaer scooted into the closet and nudged at the door with his shoulder. It swung shut too fast, bouncing off the frame until Renear threw his body against the door and held it there while it held him up. The rough wood abraded his cheek and temple. He leaned there, tasting saliva and blood clogging his throat, as the sounds of shrieks and voices quickly died down.

Softer noises followed. Clucking, whistling, scratching. They went on and on. It didn’t sound like the humans who had kidnapped him. Those men were probably all dead. It sounded as if the attackers were searching throughout this warehouse for something. Renear waited in an agony of anticipation for someone to approach the closet.

He waited for so long that a gray haze descended. For some time, he drifted, just listening. Nobody came near. The noises outside were birdlike. It almost sounded as if a flock of chickens were pecking around out there. Chickens didn’t use arrows. Aracokra or kenku did. But aracokra spoke like humans. Kenku, then. Renaer didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t know any kenku. Why would they be looking for him?

Assassination guilds used kenku agents, frequently. To prevent talking in the event of capture. Was this an assassination? Why couldn’t he hear Floon? Was Floon already dead? Was it only Renaer left?

The noises never stopped. The gray haze grew thicker. Renear’s eyes burned with exhaustion even while closed. He drifted there for hours, too alert to truly sleep. Hours or days.

The next time he came to awareness was the sound of a nearby crash. It sounded as if someone had dropped an armful of iron cookware in the courtyard outside. Closer, within the warehouse, there was a birdlike croak and a scrambling of claws on wood. Renear roused, stirring against the door, his sweaty face slipping along the wood. His mouth and tongue felt like they were made of cracked, dried leather. The sensation of breathing was less cool relief, and more like a spasm of pure pain. He’d have stopped entirely except that his body was doing it involuntarily, desperately, like an animal caught in a trap unable to stop thrashing.

For a long moment, this was the only sound. Then, another wooden crash.

The warehouse beyond the door came to life. Avian squawks and the thrum of arrows filled the air. New panic burned like fresh air down Renaer’s throat. Another attack. A third group, come to slaughter for something in this warehouse. Him, perhaps.

This time, the noises the attackers were making were… less inhuman. Renaer swore he heard the sound of a tinny, metallic kind of stringed instrument. It was like nothing he had heard before, all at once tuned to perfection and yet distorted so that each note rang oddly sour underneath. A female voice hummed along with it for a few moments before calling out, “Four-and-twenty blackbirds sat upon a branch… and not a single one has hit me once!”

One of the kenku in the warehouse responded with a crude noise clearly copied from a worker down at the docks. A few others added their jeers. The music cut off with a discordant twang as if the instrument had been dropped, and then a thud as if the one playing it had. The razzing broke up a second later into a chorus of startled squawks as some sort of spell or projectile was aimed back among them.

A moment later, there was a series of pounding, approaching footsteps. Each one made the wooden floor creak and shake as if beneath the hooves of a stampeding ox. There was a roaring, orcish cry and the sound of heavy metal chopping through the air. A kenku whooped. Hard on the heels of the first was a second set of charging feet, and an even heavier swoosh of swinging metal. The whoop cut off into a bloody gurgle.

A male voice, just on the other side of the door, said, “I like the way you kill birds.”

A female voice responded, quiet, bewildered, “But I didn’t kill any of them. You did.”

Farther away, probably nearer the doorway, the music returned. Reverberating strums filled the air, and a smooth contralto crooned. “Four-and-twenty blackbirds, come and join the pie!”

Another voice shouted, “Peaceful sleep is ever there!”

The air was filled with the pained screeches of birds. Before too long, the screeches had died into soft croaks. Then, nothing at all.

In the tight confines of the closet, Renaer was uncomfortably aware of the sound of his own breath. Ragged, far too loud, each breath sounding torn out of his throat against his own will. The more he tried to will it calm, the less control he had. He was sure that it could be heard from anywhere in the building. Anyone just had to listen and they would be led right to him.

Luckily, it didn’t seem as if anybody was. Renaer himself focused all his attention on trying to listen past the racket of his own breathing, helplessly trying to pinpoint the source of the sounds beyond the closet door. The thump of footsteps was obvious. A single pair which ascended the stairs that formed the ceiling of this little closet space. Whoever it was made a lap around the upper floor, scattering the much-softer sound of mice skittering along the floorboards. None of Renaer’s captors had gone up there, he didn’t think. It was still bold enough for a lone stranger to scout out the place in the total dark. Maybe he was a member of one of those races who could see in pitch darkness. That had to be it.

“Anything up there?” The contralto woman’s voice called out from near the bottom of the stairs.

Faintly, from the second story, a carefree male voice. “Some papers in a desk and not much else, love.”

“I want to see what’s in these crates. Doc, help me out,” another voice called out. This one had a light, nasal accent.

“Comin’.” A few heavy thumps and then the almighty crack of splintering wood. “...The feck is this?”

“Clothes?”

“Jeremiah! Open up a crate up there!”

Whatever Jeremiah did was too quiet to hear, but a moment later his voice came clearly from above, as if he was leaning over the railing into the open space between the floors. “This one’s olive oil.”

“Like, good stuff?” The mid-range, nasal voice sounded interested. “Olive oil can be expensive.”

“Not this stuff. It’s rancid.”

A disappointed noise. “Yagra? Finding anything on the bodies?”

“Yeah. Zhentarim tattoos on the ones who were dead when we got here,” said the rough, female voice which had admitted to lacking kills. Yagra. There was a thump as if she had kicked one of the bodies in question. “You check out the birds, Dingo.”

“Alright.” A sound of rustling. Something heavy being shifted, scraping across the floorboards. “Well. Ah, feathers, you know. Not easy to tattoo.”

“Look at their gear.” The deep voice was briefly undercut by a startled yelp as its owner apparently appeared unexpectedly beside Dingo. “That circle with ten spokes around it. That’s gotta be a gang badge.”

Yagra spat. “Xanathar Guild.”

“Oh,” Dingo squeaked. “So. He’s with the Xanathar Guild? Floon? Our guy?”

“I suppose he was abducted from his abductors,” the lighter female voice speculated.

“So we’ll have to go after Xanathar next?” Doc sighed.

“Hahaha! Ohhh no…” Dingo continued to make increasingly distressed and incoherent squeaking noises.

Renaer was hardly listening. In the time he’d spent eavesdropping, his breathing had naturally calmed somewhat. It was still ragged, but no longer quite as desperate as before. More of his thoughts could be heard behind it. Floon. They had said Floon. Referred to him as “our guy”.

These people were here for Floon?

“Well, I guess it’s back to Davil to report this,” the unknown woman summarized.

“Back and fuckin’ forth…” the deep voice groaned.

“I don’t think there’s anything worth taking,” Jeremiah put in, skipping lightly down the stairs. “Might as well let the Doom Raiders have the lot.”

“Maybe Davil will know where to start looking for the Xanathar Guild…”

Footsteps shuffled towards the door. In another few minutes, Renaer would be alone in the warehouse. If he stayed quiet, they would leave none the wiser. Renear would be left to stumble, sick and injured and still tied up, through who knew what part of the city until he found somewhere familiar. If he was in the Dock Ward as he suspected, he’d be lucky to make it a block before some other upstanding citizen of his father’s former city decided to take advantage of his situation. The only worse place in Waterdeep to be this vulnerable was the Field Ward. But if he stayed quiet and let these people leave, he might be letting slip his only allies in finding and saving his unfortunate friend.

Of course, if he spoke up, he had no idea if these individuals would treat him any better than the hypothetical angry Dock Warders. Maybe this was simply another faction vying for control of whatever the Zhentarim and Xanathar thugs had hoped to get out of Renaer.

He only had seconds to decide.

Raspy, painful, he called out, “Did you say Floon? Floon Blaagmar?”

The footsteps came to a stop. There was the distinct sound of at least one weapon clearing a sheath. Renaer leaned his shoulder against the wall, using the leverage to struggle to his feet. By the time he was upright, the closet door was being flung open.

In front was a gray-skinned tiefling with a heavy set of ox-like horns. Behind him, a white-cloaked man with a golden mask, two blue-skinned half-orcs in leather who could not have looked less like one another beyond these similarities, and a brown-skinned man with a stripe of silvery blond hair.

“Whoa,” said the tiefling. It was the voice Renear knew to be “Dingo’s”. This muscular man in a tight blue tunic was somehow not what Renear had expected the owner of that voice to look like. “You alright, mate?” As soon as the question was out, Dingo winced, clearly answering it himself. The others all took a second to take in the grimy, disheveled picture he must have presented.

Renear twisted his mouth. “I have been better.”

The better-groomed of the half-orcs made as if to step forward, only to be forestalled by the white-cloaked man. His voice, when it emerged, was the voice with the bass twang.

“Who the hell are you and how did you get here?”

“Re…” Renear paused to cough. His throat, put to more use than he’d asked of it in days, had decided to constrict in protest. Every word came out like a needle being drawn across the flesh of his esophagus. “Renaer Neverember is my name. I was abducted.” He lifted his bound hands in demonstration.

The sandy-haired man who must have been Jeremiah gulped, his mouth dropping open in shock. “Neverember? The Lord of Neverwinter?”

“My father. Dagon.”

“What?” Dingo whipped between the two of them. “Lord of Neverwinter? What?”

“Lord Neverember was the Open Lord of Waterdeep for years before Laeral Silverhand,” Jeremiah explained to his baffled companions. “After he was ousted, he moved to Neverwinter and took over there. As far as I know, he’s still ruling.”

Realization dawned at last over the coiffed half-orc’s face. “He’s the Open Lord who…” She glanced at Renaer and bit her lip, stopping there.

“Embezzled, yes.” Renaer’s raspy voice only added to the dryness of his response.

“Hang on,” the masked man put up a stalling hand. “None of that’s got to do with what’s going on here.”

“I suspect it rather does,” Renaer shrugged, winced. “Floon… was most likely only taken because they mistook him for me. Both times.”

“What does that mean, ‘both’?”

“Hold on.” The coiffed half-orc stepped up, without anybody stopping her this time. “Let me see that, poor thing.” She ran cool fingertips across the sensitive, florid bruises which covered Renaer’s throat. He flinched instinctively, only for his eyes to flutter shut as she began to croon. “My lonely lavender bones… Tell me how to hurt for fun, tie me up and come undone… I can cover it up, I can cover it!”

The feeling of a touched-bruise ache spread somehow beyond the woman’s actual fingertips, stretching across the whole circumference of the bruise around Renaer’s neck. Even the bruises elsewhere on his body flared up with a feeling of being pressed on–his knees, shoulder, spine, hip… Then, all at the same time, the feeling faded. The next breath Renaer took came with significantly less pain. Not none, because he was still parched and exhausted, but at least the swelling had gone down. Renear felt well enough to try on a charming smile.

“My thanks, Miss.”

“Miss Ramona,” she introduced herself. “This is Doc, Dingo, Jeremiah, and Yagra.”

“Charmed. Renaer Neverember, at your service. I am in your debt. Especially if you all seek to rescue my poor friend Floon.”

“Right. Tell us what happened,” Doc demanded. “How did you end up in this closet?”

“Are you the friend who met up with Floon at the Skewered Dragon?” Jeremiah asked.

Renaer had to confess to some surprise. This group had actually found someone in that dive who’d talked to them? Wonders would never cease. “Ah, yes, I believe so. I met him there… I’m not sure how long it’s been. A night ago?”

“Two,” Dingo corrected.

“That goes a long way towards explaining how awful I feel. In any case, I met up with Floon and we left the bar together. I suppose we were seen. Not far outside it, we were accosted from behind. A group of them. They covered our heads and took us both to this place, wherever it is. I assume the Dock Ward, still. After that, well…” Renaer trailed off, trying to sort through his confused recollections. Trying to make narrative sense of everything that had come after his initial loss of consciousness. “...I rather lost the thread a bit. If I had to guess… they didn’t actually want both of us, but they weren’t sure which was which.”

“Wait, what?” Dingo frowned.

“Oh my god,” Ramona groaned. “We didn’t ask what Floon looked like, did we?”

“I’m guessing… like that?” the other half-orc pointed at Renaer.

“Similar enough to confuse,” Renaer shrugged. “Floon and I share a somewhat rare hair color and a similar enough build. We’ve been mistaken for relatives when out drinking before.” They’d laughed about it, a time or two. Floon was the rare kind of friend whom Renaer had made in his adulthood; they hadn’t actually grown up in the same circles, for all that they lived down the street from one another today. Floon’s money was a bit more, ah, recently acquired. Except for that, Renaer may have wondered if Floon was another example of Renaer’s father making life difficult for his child, this time by leaving products of his affairs scattered around the North Ward.

The biggest similarity had to be the hair. Among the human race, red was the rarest naturally-occurring color. Magic and dyes could achieve the effect, but both Renaer and Floon had been born with vivid, strawberry-blond hair. Who could say for Floon, but for Renaer it was a family trait.

“So what you’re saying is they got the wrong man,” Doc put together in a slow growl. “Which one was the right man?”

“I can’t be certain, but odds are the one they wanted was me. I just can’t think of any reason for two underground factions to be after Floon.” Unless his benefactor had run out of money, anyway. Even then, it would make no sense to hire both Zhentarim and Xanathar assassins to remove a single man with no fighting or magic skills.

“Is there a reason they’d be after you?” Doc pressed.

Renaer shrugged again, somewhat rueful. Of course there was: His father. Always his father. It was as galling as ever to admit, though. “There has long been a persistent rumor… As I said, Dagon Neverember, my father, was removed from his position due to his embezzling an amazing sum of gold from the City of Waterdeep. Something to the tune of a million dragons. Well, his removal was somewhat violent and as the rumor goes, he was forced to flee and leave that massive cache of dragons behind somewhere in the city. Hidden. Enterprising treasure-hunters have sought it ever since his removal, and many seem to believe that I would have some idea as to its location.”

The group before him exchanged wide-eyed looks. (Minus Doc, whose sapphire eyes remained as inscrutable as ever.) This was pretty clearly the first time any of them had heard of this particular Waterdavian legend. The first tingles of unease crept up Renaer’s spine as he watched their faces. Dingo’s wide eyes were soon matched by a widening smile, revealing pointed fangs like a fox’s. The unnamed half-orc woman’s eyebrows crept up beneath her tangled hairline as an interested spark kindled to life in her blue eyes. Jeremiah’s eyes glazed over as he seemed to become lost in some faraway vision. All of these were expressions that Renaer had come to know… and to dread… on the faces of those seeking his father’s lost treasure. Greed, accumulating in the creases of their skin like desert dust packing the corners of an abandoned monument, impossibly difficult to scrub clean. It added shadows to the bright planes of their lively, friendly faces. It didn’t mean anything terrible yet. Anyone would fantasize about an amount of money that large, especially if they lived the kinds of hardscrabble lives implied by their mercenary profession. They hadn’t done anything yet. Renear had no reason to judge them harshly.

Of course, the next words out of anybody’s mouth was: “And… do you?” It was from the tiefling with the nasal accent, Dingo.

Renaer replied categorically. “I don’t. I don’t even know if it’s true. I haven’t spoken to the man in over ten years.” The statement didn’t clear their expressions as well as Renaer might have hoped.

“So what you’re saying is that the Zhentarim and the Xanathar are both after Lord Neverember’s hidden treasure hoard, and they tried to kidnap you to get directions but ended up with Floon instead,” Doc summarized. “How does the closet come into it again?”

Renaer had to admit the truth. “When the Xanathar Guild attacked, I… crawled in to protect myself. I didn’t see what happened to Floon. If he isn’t here, he must have been taken somewhere by them.”

Involuntarily, all eyes shot towards the far wall. Renaer followed their gazes towards a line of shapes that at first made little sense to him. After a few seconds, he recognized them as bodies. Unmoving, splashed with black blood. Corpses.

He took a lurching step in that direction, only for his elbow to be caught by Ramona. “He’s not there,” she assured him. “We looked. They’re the Zhentarim splinter members who kidnapped you.”

“And a couple of Xanathar kenku,” Dingo added. “Doubt Floon’s one of them, if you get mistaken for him.”

A little bit of tension left Renaer’s shoulders. He rolled them and his neck, trying to calm down. “Very well. Thank you. I… I need to go. My contacts in the Harpers can help me find and save Floon.”

“We’re working on that ourselves,” Jeremiah put in. “Mostly on behalf of Master Geddarm, also a bit on behalf of the Doom Raiders. I was thinking of escorting you back to our employers at The Yawning Portal.”

Renaer frowned. “I’m not opposed to working together, but I very much need to let Mirt know that both the Zhentarim and the Xanathar are actively seeking out the hidden cache. The Harpers will need to take action.”

“Well, let’s not take the bloke somewhere he doesn’t want to go,” Dingo temporized. “We can let Davil know with the snake and we can bring him back to his friends at the same time. I’m not opposed to working together either.”

Jeremiah shrugged. “As long as we get paid.”

“Can you even imagine,” Yagra said. Her tone was dreamy, but Renear heard it as funereal. “What would you do with a million dragons?”