PART TWO
***
Siobhan was exploring the city at a leisurely pace, wondering how Entreri was faring, when she saw a tavern with a familiar wooden sign: The Yawning Portal.
"That leads to Undermountain!" she said excitedly to herself, and went in the door.
Business was hopping inside the tavern. All of the tables were full, leaving knots of people standing between them, drinking and chatting loudly. At the bar, a crowd of about fifteen people had converged on one spot, leaning in and jostling each other to get a better view of whatever entertainment was on display.
Accustomed to traversing mosh pits, Siobhan elbowed and shouldered her way through the crowd, taking amusement in the way the burly, ham-fisted men she displaced always looked right past her when they turned, scowling, in their search for the culprit.
Finally she came close enough to see the reason for the gathering. A wizard had a dark crystal through which flitted the image of a fight between two men. Siobhan could just make out their shapes from where she was standing, but the graceful movement of the swordsman as he leapt out to dodge a roaring jet of flame seemed puzzlingly familiar to her.
***
Entreri savored the look of surprise on the priest's face when he turned around and saw that the assassin had followed him through the mirror. With his cellphone-teleporter, he didn't normally fear being stranded, but when he saw the pillars of a Banite temple stretching high above him—higher than any building inspector in Waterdeep would ever allow—he began to get an uneasy suspicion. If this was part of Undermountain, the teleporter probably wouldn't function.
Goerik hadn't taken the time to tend to his bleeding stump; his left arm lay uselessly clutched to his chest, while the other wove the beginning gestures of a spell as he leaned heavily against a tank of some steamy, acidic smelling liquid. Entreri knew well how to differentiate a defensive gesture from an offensive one, and concluded that this one was of the latter category. He tumbled back behind a pillar as a column of flame struck down upon the spot where he had been standing just a half second earlier. The heat still singed his face and set his cloak smoking, but the assassin came up in a defensive roll, otherwise unhurt.
"Come to me, my minions!" came the dreadmaster's nasal command.
***
It was Entreri. It had to be. How his battle with the priest had become a source of entertainment for the patrons of the Yawning Portal, she had no idea—but there they were, intently trying to kill one another, to the amusement of the crowd.
"Hey," she said, getting the attention of a passing barmaid. "Where are they looking into, do you know?"
"Undermountain," the girl replied in a hushed tone, and hurried away with a tray of drinks in her hand.
"I thought you couldn't scry into Undermountain," Siobhan said to no one in particular, loud enough to catch the interest of a young blonde nobleman sitting with a group of friends at the bar. Together, they wore enough layers of silk and velvet to make a hot air balloon, and looking at them, so smug and dandyish in their finery, Siobhan found that to be a strangely appropriate analogy.
"You are well learned, dear lady," said the blonde, who was wearing green velvet breeches, green leather boots, a green silk shirt, and a green brocade jacket. "And well traveled, I do not doubt." He eyed her ripped up black jeans and old gray T-shirt curiously.
"What?" Siobhan demanded, suddenly self-conscious. "Yeah, I travel. What do _you_ do, sit out in the sun all day and photosynthesize?"
"Please, my dear," the nobleman drawled, "I get that enough from my uncle. I keep trying to tell him I've turned over a new leaf."
"Clever," Siobhan said, rolling her eyes. "Tell me, did the repartee come with the silly outfit, or did you have to buy it separately?"
The nobleman put a hand to his heart in an overly theatrical gesture. "Silly? My fair, cruel maiden, this color is the height of spring fashion in Waterdeep. Though, alas, your arrival in the city will surely spell the market-wide depreciation of such viridescent textiles."
Siobhan gave him a long, skeptical look. "Okay, you got me," she admitted. "Why is that?"
"Why, no dyer could possibly compete with the exquisite shade of your lovely green eyes," he replied, completely straight-faced.
"Riiight. Well, Lucky, I hope you know more about this crystal than you do about coming up with convincing pick-up lines."
The nobleman stretched languidly. "Believe what you will," he said. "The crystal? It's one of the few created by Halaster Blackcloak himself, endowed with the ability to pierce through the stone workings of his own design."
"Voyeurism," Siobhan murmured, peering into the crystal ball. "An excellent use of such a rare device."
The nobleman shrugged a bit sheepishly.
"Does Durnan still keep the Well of Entry open for a gold piece?" she asked in a clear voice, at the exact moment at which all conversation in the room seemed to stop. Heads turned to regard her condescendingly.
"He does, but you can't be thinking of going down there without a weapon," said one of the blonde man's companions, his voice ringing with alarm.
"My dear fellow," replied the green-bedecked fop, "a woman armed with her beauty and caustic wit is never truly without weapons."
Around her, several men laughed, and one drunkard regaled her with a brief parable about a stupid woman who had dared to go down the Well of Entry. The story concluded with her severed head washing up on the beach.
"I've got a better one for you," replied Siobhan. "Once, there was this drunkard in New Orleans who woke up in a tub full of ice..."
She slapped a gold piece down on the counter, still not quite feeling like the experience was really _real_, that at any moment she might wake up from a dream. Well, she was determined to see Undermountain before she did, if only to take a few pictures and get out.
"It can't be that much worse than the New York subway," she rationalized.
***
Entreri sprang forward, leading with Charon's Claw. Goerik backpedaled frantically, raising a mace at the last instant to parry the weapon. "The Black Hand shall crush you in its iron fist!" the priest proclaimed, somewhat absurdly, considering how tenuous his career as an intermediary despot had suddenly become.
The assassin stepped back and withdrew a familiar severed appendage from his jacket, holding it out with all the fingers except the middle one pressed against the palm. "You mean this one?" he asked, and threw the still-darkened hand into the vat of acid.
Goerik threw down his mace and made a futile attempt to cast another spell, but Entreri was too fast. His sword tore through the links of the cleric's mail and into his heart, as the glow of an intended healing spell dissipated from his fingertips. Goerik hit the floor at the same time the temple doors were flung open, revealing a troupe of six skeletal warriors.
They marched out into the room with swords drawn and raised, then stopped as each flung an unerring volley of glowing pink missiles from their left hands. Entreri came forward, unconcerned as he felt the missiles hit and bounce off an unseen force shielding his body. He reminded himself to thank Jarlaxle for the handy little brooch he'd given him.
The undead resumed their march, undeterred. Entreri met them head on; he'd never met a skeleton that could parry. These ones were no exception, though one practiced a rather effective evasive maneuver, suddenly blinking away from his striking sword and reappearing several feet away.
Entreri cleaved the one next to it instead. Bones shattered and scattered. The rest came on without hesitation but soon discovered, to their ultimate demise, that their little blinking trick couldn't get them far enough away from the battle-crazed assassin when his blade turned their way.
Entreri turned into a cuisinart of destruction, pulverizing the rest of the skeletons in the span of about six seconds. Then he looted the corpse of the Banite priest. He found nothing of value but an ornate ruby ring, and slipped it on his finger.
***
A long tunnel stretched out before her, curving up from the flat floor into a high vault. All was quiet and dark beyond the range of her flashlight.
Siobhan shined the light on the wall and saw that it was covered in writing. Most of it was so old and faded as to be rendered illegible, but it was clearly some sort of graffiti, and she couldn't resist leaving some sort of mark in the lightless depths of Faerûn's most infamous dungeon.
Pulling out a Sharpie from her bag, she found an empty space and wrote...
ELMINSTER IS A SCABBY KOBOLD.
No sooner had she put the cap back on when she heard rattling and the shuffling of booted footsteps coming from down the tunnel, out of her circle of light. In the darkness she heard a strange voice, old and cracked, muttering some obscure phrase. Straining to listen, she caught a few words.
"...anelli, bucatini, cannelloni, cochiglie..."
Siobhan clicked off her light. Then she reconsidered the drawbacks of not being able to see anything, and turned it back on.
"...eliche, farfalle, fettuccine, fusilli..."
"Noodles?" she muttered to herself.
"...gemelli, lasagna, linguini, lumache..."
The figure that came out of the shadows was tall but bent, with wild gray hair and tattered black garments accented by old, dried-out chicken skulls and finger bones. He pointed at the wall where Siobhan had left her intended calumny with a digit that bore more than a passing resemblance to one of his grisly ornaments. A round of mad chortling ensued.
Siobhan cringed, waiting for something horrible thing to happen, like get turned into a dish of pasta primavera or the Waterdhavian equivalent.
"Few know what the Old Sage keeps a closely guarded secret," the old man cackled. "Just him, me, you, and his lying toady Greenwood. Shhh!" He shuffled away, still chuckling to himself. "Noodles!" she heard him call out under his breath, long after the shape of his back faded out of sight.
Could it be true? Could Elmonster really be a kobold? Would the Mad Master of the Labyrinth—for Siobhan could think of no other graybeard who would be wandering around Undermountain, rambling on nonsensically about processed flour paste—have spared her life if it wasn't so? It was a definitely food for thought (no pun intended).
Siobhan continued walking. What could be more dangerous than Halaster Blackcloak, after all?
***
"This is absurd," Entreri muttered to himself after disarming the fifth trap he'd discovered, only to find himself back where he'd began after a random teleporter whisked him away. He ducked into an empty room and pulled out his phone to dial Jarlaxle's number, comforted to hear it ringing.
"Guess where I am," he said tetchily when the mercenary answered.
"In Lady Laeral's closets? No," Jarlaxle corrected himself. "Let me think. You're in the Vatican, right? By Lloth's hairy shanks, man, I told you to kill one insignificant priest of Bane, not go after the Pope himself."
Jarlaxle had never actually told him to kill Goerik, but Entreri decided to let the obvious gaff slide.
"Jarlaxle," he said, in a patient tone people normally reserved for very small children and halfwits, "I'm in Undermountain. Did Siobhan bring any information on Undermountain?"
"Hmm." He could hear Jarlaxle rummaging through Siobhan's stack of books and boxes. Giving a low whistle, he remarked, "She's got some stuff here that would be worth a small fortune to the right disreputable sage...What's this? 'Volo's Guide to Waterdeep'?" He heard the book smack against stone. "That guy is such a putz. Ever read his travel memoirs?" Jarlaxle made a disgusted sound. "Let's see, Undermountain...She said some of this is out of date, but—ah!" The sound of paper crinkling and unfolding. "Maps!"
"If I describe my surroundings, can you pinpoint my location and guide me out of here?"
Jarlaxle snickered. "Are you asking me for directions? I thought real men didn't ask for directions," he said.
"I am a pragmatist," Entreri huffed defensively.
"Of course," came the mercenary's conciliatory reply.
From Entreri's compulsively precise descriptions ("I'm in a 20-foot by 30- foot rectangular room with six 1-foot-diameter marble pillars arranged in a trapezoidal configuration symmetrically bisecting the chamber along its longitudinal axis"), Jarlaxle figured out where he was and began leading him toward the Well of Entry. Several twists and turns later, Entreri was describing a battle with a group of xvarts that had taken up residence in the tunnels.
"Eeeeeeeeeeeee!" came the impassioned war cries of the diminutive gang, followed by the clashing of swords and the inevitable splat of body parts hitting the wall. "There's another one," Entreri was saying into the mouthpiece of his cell phone as he dismembered a squealing xvart. "Two more up ahead—oh wait, they're running away."
As the last sounds of battle faded away, a sudden hush filled the corridors. Entreri continued on, consulting his companion less and less as he began to map out the dungeon in his mind. Jarlaxle seemed a bit distracted, too; the assassin wondered what he was up to.
"Alright, this doorway up ahead is marked as trapped," the mercenary said some time later, after Entreri described an area with two successive doorways leading into a large circular room. "Simple crossbow trap. Shouldn't be a problem."
Entreri searched around the doorframes, checking the corridor preceding it and the vestibule between the two entrances. "There's nothing here," he said after awhile.
"The key says..." Jarlaxle began.
"The key is wrong. If there is a trap here, it's not a simple mechanical one." Entreri kept searching anyway, but eventually had to give up. He stepped through the second doorway, or rather, tried to. He was bounced back into the vestibule by some invisible force, and when he tried to retreat the other way, found the first entrance blocked in the same way. Suddenly, the floor started moving, spinning his prison 90 degrees counter- clockwise. What had been a stone wall to his left disappeared, leaving Entreri with one exit—into another circular chamber with a doorway on the other side, currently inhabited by a six-armed woman with the tail of a snake and about fifty of her minions: squat, vicious little things that appeared to be all teeth and no brains.
"I think I'm going to have to call you back," he told Jarlaxle.
***
Far above, in a well-lit tavern, a green-clad nobleman was wagering with a hooded, mysterious stranger.
"500 gold on the marilith and her dretches," offered the nobleman, to which the hooded stranger shook his head.
"Your sword for the defeat of the demon," he replied. "Nothing less."
The nobleman raised an eyebrow. "This one?" he gestured to the well- crafted rapier peace-knotted to his side. "I'm rather fond of it, actually. It plays all of my favorite tunes, you see. You would have to offer something of similar value for me to even consider the risk of parting with it."
"I think I can accommodate you," said the stranger, reaching into his cloak.
Behind him, another man chuckled. "Not a wager I'd make, myself. Zaphinea's never lost a fight in all the years she's been 'testing' the fools that wander down into her lair."
The stranger ignored him and withdrew an odd, nearly flat squarish device, hooked by a cord to what looked to the nobleman like earmuffs. "Try these on," the stranger said, handing him the muffs.
He took them gingerly, placing them over his ears, then started in surprise as the stranger pushed some buttons on the attached device. He started bobbing his head, as if entranced. The stranger watched him for about thirty seconds, then hit another button. The nobleman took off the muffs.
"Who are these extraordinary bards? I'm sure I've never heard them before."
"Pink Floyd," replied the stranger, tucking the device back into his cloak. "That would be Dark Side of the Moon."
"Is there more?"
"Much more," the stranger assured him with a smile from underneath his hood.
"My sword for your songs?" the nobleman reiterated, leaning over to peer into the crystal ball. Apparently liking what he saw, he nodded. "It's a deal."
***
Siobhan was exploring the city at a leisurely pace, wondering how Entreri was faring, when she saw a tavern with a familiar wooden sign: The Yawning Portal.
"That leads to Undermountain!" she said excitedly to herself, and went in the door.
Business was hopping inside the tavern. All of the tables were full, leaving knots of people standing between them, drinking and chatting loudly. At the bar, a crowd of about fifteen people had converged on one spot, leaning in and jostling each other to get a better view of whatever entertainment was on display.
Accustomed to traversing mosh pits, Siobhan elbowed and shouldered her way through the crowd, taking amusement in the way the burly, ham-fisted men she displaced always looked right past her when they turned, scowling, in their search for the culprit.
Finally she came close enough to see the reason for the gathering. A wizard had a dark crystal through which flitted the image of a fight between two men. Siobhan could just make out their shapes from where she was standing, but the graceful movement of the swordsman as he leapt out to dodge a roaring jet of flame seemed puzzlingly familiar to her.
***
Entreri savored the look of surprise on the priest's face when he turned around and saw that the assassin had followed him through the mirror. With his cellphone-teleporter, he didn't normally fear being stranded, but when he saw the pillars of a Banite temple stretching high above him—higher than any building inspector in Waterdeep would ever allow—he began to get an uneasy suspicion. If this was part of Undermountain, the teleporter probably wouldn't function.
Goerik hadn't taken the time to tend to his bleeding stump; his left arm lay uselessly clutched to his chest, while the other wove the beginning gestures of a spell as he leaned heavily against a tank of some steamy, acidic smelling liquid. Entreri knew well how to differentiate a defensive gesture from an offensive one, and concluded that this one was of the latter category. He tumbled back behind a pillar as a column of flame struck down upon the spot where he had been standing just a half second earlier. The heat still singed his face and set his cloak smoking, but the assassin came up in a defensive roll, otherwise unhurt.
"Come to me, my minions!" came the dreadmaster's nasal command.
***
It was Entreri. It had to be. How his battle with the priest had become a source of entertainment for the patrons of the Yawning Portal, she had no idea—but there they were, intently trying to kill one another, to the amusement of the crowd.
"Hey," she said, getting the attention of a passing barmaid. "Where are they looking into, do you know?"
"Undermountain," the girl replied in a hushed tone, and hurried away with a tray of drinks in her hand.
"I thought you couldn't scry into Undermountain," Siobhan said to no one in particular, loud enough to catch the interest of a young blonde nobleman sitting with a group of friends at the bar. Together, they wore enough layers of silk and velvet to make a hot air balloon, and looking at them, so smug and dandyish in their finery, Siobhan found that to be a strangely appropriate analogy.
"You are well learned, dear lady," said the blonde, who was wearing green velvet breeches, green leather boots, a green silk shirt, and a green brocade jacket. "And well traveled, I do not doubt." He eyed her ripped up black jeans and old gray T-shirt curiously.
"What?" Siobhan demanded, suddenly self-conscious. "Yeah, I travel. What do _you_ do, sit out in the sun all day and photosynthesize?"
"Please, my dear," the nobleman drawled, "I get that enough from my uncle. I keep trying to tell him I've turned over a new leaf."
"Clever," Siobhan said, rolling her eyes. "Tell me, did the repartee come with the silly outfit, or did you have to buy it separately?"
The nobleman put a hand to his heart in an overly theatrical gesture. "Silly? My fair, cruel maiden, this color is the height of spring fashion in Waterdeep. Though, alas, your arrival in the city will surely spell the market-wide depreciation of such viridescent textiles."
Siobhan gave him a long, skeptical look. "Okay, you got me," she admitted. "Why is that?"
"Why, no dyer could possibly compete with the exquisite shade of your lovely green eyes," he replied, completely straight-faced.
"Riiight. Well, Lucky, I hope you know more about this crystal than you do about coming up with convincing pick-up lines."
The nobleman stretched languidly. "Believe what you will," he said. "The crystal? It's one of the few created by Halaster Blackcloak himself, endowed with the ability to pierce through the stone workings of his own design."
"Voyeurism," Siobhan murmured, peering into the crystal ball. "An excellent use of such a rare device."
The nobleman shrugged a bit sheepishly.
"Does Durnan still keep the Well of Entry open for a gold piece?" she asked in a clear voice, at the exact moment at which all conversation in the room seemed to stop. Heads turned to regard her condescendingly.
"He does, but you can't be thinking of going down there without a weapon," said one of the blonde man's companions, his voice ringing with alarm.
"My dear fellow," replied the green-bedecked fop, "a woman armed with her beauty and caustic wit is never truly without weapons."
Around her, several men laughed, and one drunkard regaled her with a brief parable about a stupid woman who had dared to go down the Well of Entry. The story concluded with her severed head washing up on the beach.
"I've got a better one for you," replied Siobhan. "Once, there was this drunkard in New Orleans who woke up in a tub full of ice..."
She slapped a gold piece down on the counter, still not quite feeling like the experience was really _real_, that at any moment she might wake up from a dream. Well, she was determined to see Undermountain before she did, if only to take a few pictures and get out.
"It can't be that much worse than the New York subway," she rationalized.
***
Entreri sprang forward, leading with Charon's Claw. Goerik backpedaled frantically, raising a mace at the last instant to parry the weapon. "The Black Hand shall crush you in its iron fist!" the priest proclaimed, somewhat absurdly, considering how tenuous his career as an intermediary despot had suddenly become.
The assassin stepped back and withdrew a familiar severed appendage from his jacket, holding it out with all the fingers except the middle one pressed against the palm. "You mean this one?" he asked, and threw the still-darkened hand into the vat of acid.
Goerik threw down his mace and made a futile attempt to cast another spell, but Entreri was too fast. His sword tore through the links of the cleric's mail and into his heart, as the glow of an intended healing spell dissipated from his fingertips. Goerik hit the floor at the same time the temple doors were flung open, revealing a troupe of six skeletal warriors.
They marched out into the room with swords drawn and raised, then stopped as each flung an unerring volley of glowing pink missiles from their left hands. Entreri came forward, unconcerned as he felt the missiles hit and bounce off an unseen force shielding his body. He reminded himself to thank Jarlaxle for the handy little brooch he'd given him.
The undead resumed their march, undeterred. Entreri met them head on; he'd never met a skeleton that could parry. These ones were no exception, though one practiced a rather effective evasive maneuver, suddenly blinking away from his striking sword and reappearing several feet away.
Entreri cleaved the one next to it instead. Bones shattered and scattered. The rest came on without hesitation but soon discovered, to their ultimate demise, that their little blinking trick couldn't get them far enough away from the battle-crazed assassin when his blade turned their way.
Entreri turned into a cuisinart of destruction, pulverizing the rest of the skeletons in the span of about six seconds. Then he looted the corpse of the Banite priest. He found nothing of value but an ornate ruby ring, and slipped it on his finger.
***
A long tunnel stretched out before her, curving up from the flat floor into a high vault. All was quiet and dark beyond the range of her flashlight.
Siobhan shined the light on the wall and saw that it was covered in writing. Most of it was so old and faded as to be rendered illegible, but it was clearly some sort of graffiti, and she couldn't resist leaving some sort of mark in the lightless depths of Faerûn's most infamous dungeon.
Pulling out a Sharpie from her bag, she found an empty space and wrote...
ELMINSTER IS A SCABBY KOBOLD.
No sooner had she put the cap back on when she heard rattling and the shuffling of booted footsteps coming from down the tunnel, out of her circle of light. In the darkness she heard a strange voice, old and cracked, muttering some obscure phrase. Straining to listen, she caught a few words.
"...anelli, bucatini, cannelloni, cochiglie..."
Siobhan clicked off her light. Then she reconsidered the drawbacks of not being able to see anything, and turned it back on.
"...eliche, farfalle, fettuccine, fusilli..."
"Noodles?" she muttered to herself.
"...gemelli, lasagna, linguini, lumache..."
The figure that came out of the shadows was tall but bent, with wild gray hair and tattered black garments accented by old, dried-out chicken skulls and finger bones. He pointed at the wall where Siobhan had left her intended calumny with a digit that bore more than a passing resemblance to one of his grisly ornaments. A round of mad chortling ensued.
Siobhan cringed, waiting for something horrible thing to happen, like get turned into a dish of pasta primavera or the Waterdhavian equivalent.
"Few know what the Old Sage keeps a closely guarded secret," the old man cackled. "Just him, me, you, and his lying toady Greenwood. Shhh!" He shuffled away, still chuckling to himself. "Noodles!" she heard him call out under his breath, long after the shape of his back faded out of sight.
Could it be true? Could Elmonster really be a kobold? Would the Mad Master of the Labyrinth—for Siobhan could think of no other graybeard who would be wandering around Undermountain, rambling on nonsensically about processed flour paste—have spared her life if it wasn't so? It was a definitely food for thought (no pun intended).
Siobhan continued walking. What could be more dangerous than Halaster Blackcloak, after all?
***
"This is absurd," Entreri muttered to himself after disarming the fifth trap he'd discovered, only to find himself back where he'd began after a random teleporter whisked him away. He ducked into an empty room and pulled out his phone to dial Jarlaxle's number, comforted to hear it ringing.
"Guess where I am," he said tetchily when the mercenary answered.
"In Lady Laeral's closets? No," Jarlaxle corrected himself. "Let me think. You're in the Vatican, right? By Lloth's hairy shanks, man, I told you to kill one insignificant priest of Bane, not go after the Pope himself."
Jarlaxle had never actually told him to kill Goerik, but Entreri decided to let the obvious gaff slide.
"Jarlaxle," he said, in a patient tone people normally reserved for very small children and halfwits, "I'm in Undermountain. Did Siobhan bring any information on Undermountain?"
"Hmm." He could hear Jarlaxle rummaging through Siobhan's stack of books and boxes. Giving a low whistle, he remarked, "She's got some stuff here that would be worth a small fortune to the right disreputable sage...What's this? 'Volo's Guide to Waterdeep'?" He heard the book smack against stone. "That guy is such a putz. Ever read his travel memoirs?" Jarlaxle made a disgusted sound. "Let's see, Undermountain...She said some of this is out of date, but—ah!" The sound of paper crinkling and unfolding. "Maps!"
"If I describe my surroundings, can you pinpoint my location and guide me out of here?"
Jarlaxle snickered. "Are you asking me for directions? I thought real men didn't ask for directions," he said.
"I am a pragmatist," Entreri huffed defensively.
"Of course," came the mercenary's conciliatory reply.
From Entreri's compulsively precise descriptions ("I'm in a 20-foot by 30- foot rectangular room with six 1-foot-diameter marble pillars arranged in a trapezoidal configuration symmetrically bisecting the chamber along its longitudinal axis"), Jarlaxle figured out where he was and began leading him toward the Well of Entry. Several twists and turns later, Entreri was describing a battle with a group of xvarts that had taken up residence in the tunnels.
"Eeeeeeeeeeeee!" came the impassioned war cries of the diminutive gang, followed by the clashing of swords and the inevitable splat of body parts hitting the wall. "There's another one," Entreri was saying into the mouthpiece of his cell phone as he dismembered a squealing xvart. "Two more up ahead—oh wait, they're running away."
As the last sounds of battle faded away, a sudden hush filled the corridors. Entreri continued on, consulting his companion less and less as he began to map out the dungeon in his mind. Jarlaxle seemed a bit distracted, too; the assassin wondered what he was up to.
"Alright, this doorway up ahead is marked as trapped," the mercenary said some time later, after Entreri described an area with two successive doorways leading into a large circular room. "Simple crossbow trap. Shouldn't be a problem."
Entreri searched around the doorframes, checking the corridor preceding it and the vestibule between the two entrances. "There's nothing here," he said after awhile.
"The key says..." Jarlaxle began.
"The key is wrong. If there is a trap here, it's not a simple mechanical one." Entreri kept searching anyway, but eventually had to give up. He stepped through the second doorway, or rather, tried to. He was bounced back into the vestibule by some invisible force, and when he tried to retreat the other way, found the first entrance blocked in the same way. Suddenly, the floor started moving, spinning his prison 90 degrees counter- clockwise. What had been a stone wall to his left disappeared, leaving Entreri with one exit—into another circular chamber with a doorway on the other side, currently inhabited by a six-armed woman with the tail of a snake and about fifty of her minions: squat, vicious little things that appeared to be all teeth and no brains.
"I think I'm going to have to call you back," he told Jarlaxle.
***
Far above, in a well-lit tavern, a green-clad nobleman was wagering with a hooded, mysterious stranger.
"500 gold on the marilith and her dretches," offered the nobleman, to which the hooded stranger shook his head.
"Your sword for the defeat of the demon," he replied. "Nothing less."
The nobleman raised an eyebrow. "This one?" he gestured to the well- crafted rapier peace-knotted to his side. "I'm rather fond of it, actually. It plays all of my favorite tunes, you see. You would have to offer something of similar value for me to even consider the risk of parting with it."
"I think I can accommodate you," said the stranger, reaching into his cloak.
Behind him, another man chuckled. "Not a wager I'd make, myself. Zaphinea's never lost a fight in all the years she's been 'testing' the fools that wander down into her lair."
The stranger ignored him and withdrew an odd, nearly flat squarish device, hooked by a cord to what looked to the nobleman like earmuffs. "Try these on," the stranger said, handing him the muffs.
He took them gingerly, placing them over his ears, then started in surprise as the stranger pushed some buttons on the attached device. He started bobbing his head, as if entranced. The stranger watched him for about thirty seconds, then hit another button. The nobleman took off the muffs.
"Who are these extraordinary bards? I'm sure I've never heard them before."
"Pink Floyd," replied the stranger, tucking the device back into his cloak. "That would be Dark Side of the Moon."
"Is there more?"
"Much more," the stranger assured him with a smile from underneath his hood.
"My sword for your songs?" the nobleman reiterated, leaning over to peer into the crystal ball. Apparently liking what he saw, he nodded. "It's a deal."