Lidia stared down at the body, shuffling a bit closer. This was a fresh kill, from the look of it. The broken skull was completely hollow and carefully cleaned inside and out. The rest of the body was a barely recognizable mess; its torso, arms, and legs had been gnawed and chewed.
She heard a noise behind her, outside the tunnel, and turned towards it.
Five of the escapees were stumbling forward, coughing heavily. One was pulling herself forward on her hands and knees. Several shouts echoed. The rest of the group was drifting towards her. Four others - from this distance, it looked like Minsc, Anomen, Sebire, and Hendak - were trying in vain to stop them.
She moved the light stone from her palm to her fingertips and raised it high, illuminating the mouth of the tunnel. A void lay ahead. She couldn't tell from here how far the tunnel still went.
A noise issued from the darkness: something like a frog croak, but more raspy and much louder. She looked towards the darkness, lowered her head, and focused on the noise.
Her left arm twanged and shook, settling down again after a few moments.
At the edge of the light, something slithered.
A deep, stern voice resounded inside her mind: "You are not of the Enlightened Ones. Why do you seek me?"
Lidia shouted, "Let them go!"
She felt a sense of unease and puzzlement, but not from within herself. Then a blow from inside her own skull. She wavered for a moment on her feet, nearly falling backwards into the mud, but the blow passed and died, doing no more harm than a knock on the door.
A creature wearing a threadbare black robe, as tall and upright as a human, floated atop the mud and stopped two paces away. It peered at her, its milky white eyes flicking here and there. Its eight long, clawed fingers, its bald mouthless head, and the four arm-length tentacles on its face were all mottled mauve, their skin's texture like a naked shellfish.
The light blazed brighter in Lidia's hand, as though her will were fueling it. She held it directly in front of her. The creature flinched, shading its eyes with its narrow fingers. Through the tenuous foothold it held in her mind, she sensed it was in pain.
She said, "No tricks. Release them."
The same voice spoke again in her mind. "You see me as I am."
"If you're actually a mind flayer, then yes."
"I cannot let you see me and live."
The raspy croaks from the darkness grew closer and louder.
"Too much talking. Time to kill someone already!" the sword said.
The mind flayer retreated, turning away from the light and floating away. The voice in her mind spoke again. She clearly pictured it this time as having a wry smile. "Farewell, fool. It was not I who called them."
Lidia had no idea what lay beyond in the shadows, but she suspected she'd need to muster everything to survive the next few minutes.
She shut her eyes for a moment. Within herself, she went to a place that her mind's eye had pictured as a bottomless well. She stared down into the void, daring to ignore what stared back. And reached.
Immediately a new burst of strength filled her body. She fell back to the harder ground near the edge of the cave, moving much more easily through the mud than she did before.
A second creature emerged into the light.
Lidia would later describe this creature as a giant lobster, but that wasn't entirely true. Lobsters usually scuttled along the ocean floor and minded their own business unless they encountered a rolling boil and some butter. This monster, called a chuul by the denizens of the Underdark, raised itself upon four strong legs that easily waded through the muck. Its two front limbs were a pair of massive pincers, lined on the inside with extremely sharp-looking spikes. Nearly every inch was armored in a hard, greenish-yellow chitin. And instead of antennae on its hard, domed head, a mass of red tentacles came from its mouth.
A different will was pounding upon the outside of her mind now, this one feral and incoherent, full of rage and with only one desire: to eat its prey. As it focused upon her, a change came over the prisoners trying to approach. Most were now beating a hasty retreat. The one closest to her had collapsed altogether, too sick even to move.
Lidia let both the sword and the light stone fall. Her arms went slack, but she kept a steady grip on both.
"You need to wield me with two hands, boss!" the sword said.
She didn't reply. She looked into the chuul's eyes, two little black beads on the side of its head. It was commanding her to come closer, but she stayed put. This was already dangerous enough without moving into a confined space that had a tendency to trap her feet.
They warily stared each other down for a moment.
She bent double, racking her lungs with coughs, and slowly slumped to the ground, her body lying face up as the breath in her lungs died away. The light continued shining.
The chuul moved forward, its long-toed feet making squelches in the mud. It tilted its head to one side and brushed its massive claw against the limp body, the shell scratching the concrete.
The suddenness of this fall seemed to puzzle it, but it moved forward nonetheless. The chuul bent its long forelegs and lowered its red tentacles towards the body, ready to paralyze its prey and feast.
Lidia sprang up, shoving the light stone towards its eyes.
The chuul was unaccustomed to this brightness, but it was a creature of swamps and estuaries. It recovered much more quickly than the mind flayer could.
But not quickly enough.
This sword really should have been wielded with two hands, but she couldn't fight in the dark. She held the stone aloft. Even though she was more than strong enough to use the sword, the length of its blade and hilt were still unwieldy. She'd just have to do her best.
With one hand, she slashed at the creature's tentacles. Three fell to the ground, wriggled, and fell still.
She slashed again. Six more tentacle ends joined them, all shining with mucus in the dim light.
The chuul sprang up with a terrible shriek, raised and opened one of its massive claws. It lunged forward, looking to trap her in its massive spiked pincers.
The claw snapped closed. She leapt backwards, missing it by inches.
She shouted a challenge. If she could get it further outside its lair -
Instead, it issued another shriek, retreating into the darkness. For this creature, and probably for the mind flayer as well, meals came to them with much less effort than this one had already taken. Likely it would go back to its muddy, dark cavern to nurse its wounds.
Lidia now had a choice: to follow the chuul inside and finish it off, or try to save the prisoner that still remained.
It felt wrong to leave the chuul and the mind flayer there, to simply let them go on their way and take more victims. But she would have to go in alone, and the only thing she'd accomplish alone would be giving them one, possibly two free meals.
She turned aside from the tunnel and knelt next to the prisoner, turning her over to her front.
This one was a slight, amber-skinned young woman who seemed little older than Celyce, though it was possible that long years of mistreatment had pared her close to the bone. Her dark eyes were red and running, blinking listlessly and rapidly, her words tumbling over themselves.
Immediately, Lidia hooked her arms under her armpits, pulled herself up, and started dragging the woman down the smooth concrete of the tunnel. She kept a weather eye out for any sign of further trouble, stopping only to shine the light forward.
Lidia's extra burst of strength faded as she dragged her along, but the weight was little trouble regardless. She didn't stop until they reached the intersection. Everyone else had left, probably as soon as the chuul's influence was broken. All was silent except for running water, faint echoes, and the sound of her breath.
She had hoped that moving to better air would help the woman's condition, but little changed. She laid her out and knelt next to her again. Her hand hovered over the woman's neck. She closed her eyes and went back to the well.
When the power stopped flowing, Lidia opened her eyes again. She sat back for a moment to compose herself, ruefully noting that everything between her belt and the soles of her feet was splashed with foul-smelling mud.
She had drawn power from the dark well twice now. Each time, and every time before that, was a wresting and a turning. Not only was the effort exhausting, it made her vulnerable to imaginings about what lay in the shadows. She used this power only when necessary to heal, fortify, and strengthen herself and others. That was not what it wanted.
The poison had stopped its work upon the woman. She breathed more easily, but didn't stir except to cough.
Lidia leaned over, took her hand into hers, and focused her thoughts on a desire to help her. This time, she was not drawing dark strength from the well, but was instead like a stone buried beneath a river. The power flowed from outside herself and through herself, and it felt bright and clean as it passed.
The woman sat up and looked about her, eyes blinking in the faint white light. "What happened? Where are we?"
"You're safe for now, but we need to leave." Lidia helped her to her feet.
"Where are the others?"
"Here," Sebire said, striding towards them, hand shining bright. "We all went further down except for Hendak. He turned back, saying he could help you."
Lidia's brow furrowed. "I never saw him."
"He can't be lost. If anyone deserves an escape, it is he." Sebire turned aside for a moment, then sharply glanced at Lidia. "Still, we must go forward."
"Agreed. The only other way he could have gone was there." Lidia pointed back to where the tunnel continued in a straight line. "The others will go with you, and I can retrace our steps and try to find any sign of him. He can't have gone far." She never liked splitting the party if she could help it, but it seemed better to keep everyone else together.
Sebire and her charge disappeared into the darkness, and again Lidia was alone.
She started walking the other direction, leaving the intersection behind her, her feet keeping an automatic pace as her mind worked.
"You said we were going to kill something!" the sword protested.
"Change of plans."
"I bet that big beefy guy would have killed it."
She wondered which one he meant, then decided it didn't matter. "He'd be dead, too."
She recalled the route that Sebire had taken, and tried to remember whether any other tunnels led from that way into different directions, wondering where Hendak would have gone. And, more importantly, why he'd left. He'd begged Lidia to free him, assisted Sebire, fallen into line, and tried to stop others from coming closer to the chuul. Besides, as far as she knew, all he had was the dagger, the torch, and the key to the portal at the Coronet.
Unless he was in fact lost, there was something dearer to him than freedom that required a way back in.
She started running.