A small stone room. The drow chanting a healing spell over his skull. His hands still black as charcoal, the mad mage looking like drow the same. Weapons and armour and coinpouches gone. Cramped by them in the cell were Solaufein the drow and that female fighter.
"We have been captured and enslaved by devourers," Viconia said. "Do you still have all the pieces of your mind, slave?"
"Think I do." He rubbed his head and glared at the fool pair of drow sitting across. Mebbe they'd been the ones to pull the squidfolk after them, it was his stunt with that piece Phaere.
"You were the ones who killed the yochlol in the Female Fighter Society, weren't you?" Solaufein's female said.
No point to denying it. "Yeah," Montaron said. "And that much shows we could do worse to ye bare-handed—"
"Thank you, fellow heretics," the male drow said, "for we believe they were sent for us. There is no use to hide it now: Qilue and I serve Eilistraee."
"The naked one?" Montaron blurted out, for she was most famous for heated tales of drow women prancing skyclad under the moon.
"And that is one of the reasons why I did not turn to her," Viconia said under her breath.
"The drow goddess who chose exile with us despite being absolved of all crimes against the Seldarine; the Lady of the Dance who preaches kindness, song, skilled swordwork—and the freedom of the body," Solaufein said. "What strange things have you heard of her, brother? Qilue and I served a place in coordinating her worship within Ust Natha, and then we were ordered to pursue you. We had thought of fleeing the city ourselves but not like this." He glanced up and down at the solid-seeming walls of the cell. "We intended to aid the silver dragon and prevent Ardulace and Phaere from sacrificing her eggs. Perhaps Veldrin will still be clever enough to find the false eggs within my quarters and deceive the Matron. If the red-robed wizardess does not try to gain power or spell components..." Solaufein sighed.
"And d' ye expect the lizard'll lift a claw for ye in return?" Montaron said. "Just asking."
Solaufein shook his head. "The Silver Lady's concern is her eggs held for ransom and even she would likely be unable to breach the psionic protections of these devourers. For surely if she could she would have already destroyed these creatures, though I know her only through an imp intermediary."
"Lucky bastard," Montaron muttered.
"Whom do you serve?" the drow called Qilue asked straight out, fixing them with light purple eyes that would've seemed watery if the way she held her head hadn't been so close to Mazzy Fentan.
"I will not deny it. My lady Shar," Viconia said, sketching a dark circle in the air and defying the other drow to object. They didn't.
"That's a surface deity, isn't she?" Solaufein said. "We are here together and there is no barrier to our alliance to lay plans to escape these devourers, friends. At least I no longer must put effort to feigning what I am in drow society any longer." He smiled a touch weakly—as if, of course, the fool really did think he was do'Urden striving for peace and love and all that crap.
"And I will fight as hard as I can," Qilue said. "The aberrant devourers will not take me by surprise a second time."
Montaron stepped up and tested the door, legs still limp. They'd managed to seize even his best-hidden lockpicks from him, left him in breeches and undershirt without even a belt to pick apart. Thick walls, and a low buzzing that didn't change when he moved his head; that meant it was spelled, echoing straight to their heads. The cell fastened and had hinges on the outside of it—ye'd be surprised how many prisons made the mistake of the opposite way—and there wasn't a way to get at the flange-tongue holding it. Floor-stones were metallic and he suspected inspecting them would do no more good than the dark seamless joinings of the ceiling.
"Yes, they're buzzing in our heads, Mont—Maungrin," the mad wizard said, holding his knuckles pressed to his mouth and chewing on them. "A—constant state of psionic blanking that wears the victims down like water torture, discourages thoughts of escape or harm against the captors, and disrupts the concentration for most arcane or priestly magic. Healing you worked; blasting open the cell door would... It might start to hurt to think of it." The mad mage stared vacantly around and kept biting at himself.
"He sums it up well enough," Solaufein said. "I cannot use my magics, still less sans my book; they have confiscated Qilue's sword and mine; —and I wonder, for what purpose do they hold us? To resell as slaves; to sacrifice to whatever strange deity they worship; to use for pleasure?"
"You, Solaufein, perhaps, or Veldriss; but those two males are hardly pleasure slaves," Qilue said, staring with the same lack of shame as any other drow female.
"Or to use us for our minds," the mad wizard said, breaking off his fidgeting once again. "They're mindflayers. They take a mind and flay it. Don't you know what a back looks like with lots of strips of skin hanging open over it?"
"I've inflicted it," Viconia said. "And that would be called a whipping, not a flaying; flayings are worse. I have heard larger forms than us moving about this prison complex. Other slaves to the devourers, perhaps. Powerful slaves." She inclined her head to the left. "Arena combat is my guess. I hope they will allow the use of my priestess' powers in the ring, for I am no common fighter. Slave, I have said before that I thought you would be surprisingly talented as a gladiator."
—
They wheeled out carts with all their weapons on them to take out to the arena, not so much as an empty potion-bottle missing; and that more than anything else suggested things might be hopeless, for the devourers to be that confident. A giant collared ogre spoke up on how things were meant to be.
"If you kill me, more will come to defend the masters," he said, thumping his chest. "I only their creature. I serve the master brains."
Ye'd get lost in the warren of cells and be worse off than when you started, Montaron thought, and then figured it had something to do with the buzzing in their heads. Make their prisoners forget of escape before it even started. And then in the end, 'pending on what ye were facing in the arena, lose the mind even to amuse them. The mad mage and the drow mage went for their spellbooks first, then Solaufein took up his swords. Qilue favoured what would've been a one-hander for a human but a two-hander for a drow, a balanced adamant thing with a wicked tip. Montaron gathered up his crossbow and thought of sinking its bolts into whatever spectators gathered to watch. He took note of the route they followed, second turn left and third right, the same metallic stones at the bottom patterned in freak designs he'd not seen before. Other cells were set up and other poor bastards banged inside them. Or not. He'd no sympathy to spare for what might try to kill them the next moment.
When the space for them widened it felt like they ought to have stepped out into skies above in place of the endless underground. He wasn't able to stop himself from looking up, but only another black ceiling lined the place, glittering with harsh false purple lights. A force-bubble of a sort covered the field, plain grey sand below their boots. Indistinct shapes lay beyond it, gathered and waiting. The orc-guards pushed them forward with spears, and then the metallic shards of the arena sands started to bubble in front of them. The buzzing in their heads went down and the casters started talking. Umber hulks came rising up.
"Confusions—stay back, mages, at least one of you is mad enough already," Viconia ordered. She cast something like a protection for their heads, and he and Qilue stood out in the front lines. The beasts, maybe half-starved or tortured into going rabid, came down on them.
Squidmouths. Squidmouths behind there, watching them for entertainment. Montaron cleaned sword blade on a dead chitin hide from standard reflex. The collared ogre guards came out again to drive them back. He drew the crossbow anyway, and aimed a bolt at the bubble-shell. It bounced off as easy as a scrap of paper. Get Xzar to do a grease spell on it or spray umber guts all over it, block their sight for petty revenge— An ogre spear clubbed him on the side of the head, but the creature was laughing.
Umber hulks first. Then a bunch of ankhegs, then minotaurs. Then they massacred a small group of svirfneblin, captured from that village. Next was more challenging, a pair of Calishite djinn who flung fireballs and ice and had the nasty habit of melting to nothing when ye got close. Had to draw them out into an attack and then stab them so that it'd last. Couldn't tell how long they'd been there, no light and with moments in the cell where against their will they'd all pass out for hours after a fight. Their clothes had started to stink enough that even he could notice it. Didn't even seem to be regular times set apart for meals and cell-cleanings, unless that was a squidmouth trick to make ye think it wasn't.
Gladiators in Zhentil Keep got wine and women, or at least 'till they died. Made sense to stand up in the cell and take fake swings at the Eilistraeeans' faces for the sake of moving in the arena fighting fit; made sense to watch the mad mage silently shaking in the corner and disappearing into his craziness. They'd fought an eye tyrant, a healthy one not like that blind thing, and beaten it by being fast enough with blades while the casters laid on spells from behind. Shar still listened to Viconia's prayers in the times when the bubble set them free of the humming in their heads. The blood smelled thick on the sands and the creatures died in pain.
"We could subvert them somehow," Solaufein said. "We know their cravings for emotion and excitement. That is why they force us to kill." The drow-mage looked down his long nose in the cell.
"I hope you're not going to suggest an orgy, Solaufein," Qilue said. "There's none of you that I would much wish to bed."
"And I would not bed you against your will, nor any of the other three against mine. I do not believe the five of us would be friends had we met elsewhere," Solaufein said, looking down like he thought he was a damn paladin in place of the drow he was. "You kill too easily."
"Sure. We're not inclined to take our kit off and go flapping it all in the moonlight either," Montaron said. It'd been the deep gnomes or them, and the two squeamish drow had joined in the end.
"You're very un-drowlike," Solaufein said. "Very odd...but never—"
"Monty's really a halfling," the mad mage said all of a sudden from his corner, making it too late to shut him up by hitting him. "I'm really a human, but Viconia DeVir's really an exiled drow from Menzoberranzan. Lady Adalon enchanted us as mercenaries. Benrulon—Veldrin—Benrulon is really a half-human son of Bhaal, the ironically dead surface god of murder. Most likely he'll find the cold empty mage and manage to have his revenge on him sooner or later. The demon mirror would have shown that much." Two lines of blood dripped down his chin from either side of his mouth while he talked, as if he'd managed to bite his own tongue again.
"That clears it all up considerably," Qilue said coldly. "The disgraced House of DeVir! Very well, then. I had wondered if you males were Viconia's surface-born sons, I admit, which would have explained some of your conduct."
"—No. No, we ain't related at all." Montaron shuddered; Viconia looked enraged.
"If emotion be the key of our captivity then there are ones above the fight," Solaufein Bloody Do'Urden said. "Qilue's and my love for Lady Silverhair; for the night skies bedecked with silver we have never seen. But wait," he said, "because you are surfacers you must have spent your lives gazing upon the pale moon's face and the distant crowning loveliness of the stars—"
"Go stand in a puddle in the middle of some black clouds pissing down all night and then go tell what ye think of the wonderment of the silver spheres and all that crap," Montaron said.
"The moon is abomination by the tenets of my faith," Viconia said.
"As you will," Qilue said. "I came to Eilistraee over long decades. The first of her name I heard was on the lips of a drow peasant female I slew for a priestess. I thought it only the babbling of the weak. I am drow, and drow female at that; I have done enough to earn that name. I know how to kill swiftly. I began to learn other ways. A priestess of that faith found me wounded in deep tunnels, and healed me though she feared I would slay her. I have Solaufein for a friendship upon other than ambition, and I have faith in Eilistraee's light above. Even if it is a lie I would rather serve a noble lie than ugly truths. That is stronger than murdering small gnomes for the chance to live another day."
"But ye still did," Montaron reminded her.
"And I am a stronger warrior than you, surfacer," she said. "What gives you the reason to escape above fighting false battles?"
It was the mad mage who answered that one first, his mouth still bleeding as if he'd turned vampire.
"Magic. I study magic. Living people always leave you, or do worse. Weave-threads and cold motion of the dead stay and need to be understood while you breathe. Everything that is and everything that might be. But," he said, "Monty and Miss DeVir are my friends, and I don't have many of those. You can't study if you're locked up; and I don't want them to be locked up. I need to know."
He spat something on the floor that came out in a tide of blood from his mouth, thinned as if by water. The jagged-edged square was small, silver, and very sharp.
"It's a fragment of the demon mirror they kept for us," Xzar said. "I bit a piece off; I marinated it in scleral fluid from one of the beholder's eyestalks—"
Montaron thought that exactly how the mad mage'd done that over the past few days of him not talking would be better not to know.
"See the truth. The reflection, the bubble, and were the reflection enough for what might be—say, drow mage, what are your spells to ensnare and enchant the illithid? You pulled them from their psychic plane and held them steady and shielded. Share the runes."
"They're in my head. I have studied the spellbook; I could apply them against devourers—if they dared show their face beyond their foul shield." Solaufein said. "But how could I share them, human?"
"Oh, by Bane's hairy-toothed buttocks, must I explain every single step? The illithids shake the mind like a stirred egg white, I'll admit." The mad wizard brought the inner side of his forearm up to his mouth—and ripped open a deep cut with his teeth. He spat out more blood along with skin. "Write the runes on the cell wall in blood. Classic necromancer's stratagem. Though it's very strongly overrated as ink, I'll admit."
"They are attempting to fight," Viconia said, the mages drawing dark red designs on the cell walls. "How useful for male slaves to motivate themselves to survive. They're correct. One will not lie down to be buried. One cannot lie down and allow oneself to be buried. Though, come to think of it—if it ends up you or me to live from the devourers, male...I will choose myself. You know that."
She was cold as ice and harsh as stone, and inside himself he'd do the same if the choice came down to it. She peeled layers from him with a glance, and for all she covered what she was deep down with more complications and stirring folk up in their heads as best she could, she'd claw herself out of a grave and worse to get through what was thrown at her, and let every other fool fall to the abyss if they liked. He did not look away.
"Same here," Montaron said. Slowly, awkwardly, he patted her shoulder.
—