It felt as if she fell forever, but it was only a few seconds before Violet plunged into a body of ice-cold water feet first. She kicked for the surface, but her skirts wrapped around her legs and hampered her. The weight of the material kept dragging her down even as she struggled. Her lungs burned for air and she started to panic.

A strong hand grabbed a handful of her bodice and pulled her upwards until her head broke the surface and she gasped, filling her lungs.

"Can you swim?" Reed called out over the sound of the waterfall without letting go of her.

"Yeah, my skirts are a problem, that's all," she yelled back.

"Hold on to me, and I'll try to find the shore."

Reed didn't release her until she had a good grip on his shirt, then he started swimming.

"Do you know which way to go?" she asked.

"Not really."

That wasn't good. It was pitch black around them. Even though she knew Reed was just an arms-length away, she couldn't see him at all.

"Hold on," she yelled.

He stopped swimming, "what?"

"Give me a second." She took a breath and focused on her intent, "èist soillsich."

Light flared above them, illuminating the area around them.

"Handy trick," Reed said.

"Not really," Violet said in frustration. "Look."

Even though her spell lit a large area centered on them, they still couldn't see anything around them but water with no shore in sight.

"Damn, I guess we just swim until we reach land," he said with a sigh.

"No, wait," she stopped him. "I've got one more trick up my sleeve."

"You need to hurry," he urged, "before we get too cold and drown."

He was right. She was having to clench her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering and her hands felt like bricks. Painful bricks. She knew she still had a hold of his shirt, but she could no longer feel it.

Concentrating, she called out with her mind, "Nori! I need you!" She had never tried summoning her familiar before; she had always been content to let Nori come and go as the fae pleased. She always seemed to know when Violet needed her, anyway, so there had never been a need to summon her.

Nothing happened immediately.

"Violet," Reed said, "we really need to do something."

"Alright," Violet could barely speak with her shivering, "pick a direction and go."

Reed started swimming and Violet paddled along beside him as best she could with one hand and her skirts tangled around her legs.

Over their heads, a purple figure appeared with an excited chitter.

"Nori!" Violet called, relieved. "You came."

Nori chirped in response.

"What is that?" Reed had stopped swimming again and was looking at the fae with alarm.

"That's my familiar," Violet told him. "Nori, we need to get out of this water quickly. Which way to the shore?"

Nori disappeared for a heartbeat then reappeared. She chirped and moved at a ninety-degree angle from the direction they had been swimming.

"Follow her," she told Reed. "She'll lead us to the shore."

Reed didn't argue. He swam after the fae, but his strokes were getting weaker by the moment. Violet couldn't feel her legs anymore and wasn't sure if she was even kicking. An eternity seemed to pass as they struggled through the frigid water. Finally, Reed announced he could feel the bottom and soon he was dragging Violet out of the water and up on a rocky bank.

They both collapsed and lay gasping and shivering. Nori hovered over them and yowled plaintively. When Violet didn't respond, the fae landed on her chest and dug her claws in with a screech.

"Ow!" Violet yelled, sitting up to push Nori away. She reached out and shook Reed. "Reed, we can't lay here. We're going hypothermic. We have to get up and move around to get warm."

The only response she got was a low groan. Pushing herself unsteadily to her feet, she looked around. Up the bank from them, at the very edge of the light from her spell, she could see a jumble of driftwood that had been deposited by the underground river. At some point, it flowed above ground and had carried the debris deep under the surface.

Violet picked her way unsteadily through the rocks that littered the bank to the pile of wood. The pieces that were closest to the water's edge were a little damp, but the rest appeared to be dry. Unfortunately, her carnelian stone charged with a spell to start a fire was sitting in her dresser back in Highmoon. But she did know the incantation for it. Maybe she could use it without the stone.

She hesitated, remembering what happened up in the tunnels above. Did she want to take a chance of something like that happening again? Would she shrink more? Would something else, something worse, happen this time. Shivers racked her body, making her legs spasm, almost giving out on her, and she realized she had no choice, they would both die if they didn't get warm soon.

"Èist lasadh!" she said with as much strength as she could muster.

To her eternal relief, the wood in front of her flared up as it caught fire. Within seconds, it was blazing with flames reaching high over her head. Stumbling over the rocks, she hurried back to Reed.

"Reed!" she shook him hard. "Reed, wake up!"

He moaned and opened his eyes to stared blearily at her, "is it time to go?"

"Come on soldier!" she shook him again. "Get your ass up and get moving," she yelled.

Reed sat up slowly and looked around, "this isn't Highmoon."

"No, but Highmoon needs you," she told him desperately. "We need to go now!"

"Highmoon needs me?"

"Yes! Come on corporal, get moving before the captain gets here!"

"Sir, yes sir," he answered as he stood.

Turning, he stumbled away from her fire and she grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him back. At some point, he had shed his chainmail. Probably in the lake so he wouldn't get drug down by its weight.

"This way corporal."

Prodding and cajoling him the entire way, she finally got him close enough to the fire for him to feel the heat.

His eyes widened in alarm at the sight of the blaze, "Highmoon's burning!"

"No!" Violet assured him quickly. "It's a victory bonfire. We're celebrating."

"Celebrating?" his bushy red brows came together. "We won?"

"Yes," she cried.

"Highmoon's safe?"

"Yes. You can rest now," she told him, tugging on his shirt to get him to sit down.

"Yes, I need to rest," he said slowly. Then his eyes closed, and he flopped back on the ground.

"Oh, thank the goddess," Violet breathed. "Nori, I need you to watch over us while we rest. Can you do that?"

Nori chirped and spun in a circle in the air.

"Good," she said as she stretched out beside the corporal. "I just need to close my eyes for a little bit."

Waking up to the embers of her fire, Violet sat up and frantically looked around, searching for danger as the echoes of her vivid dreams slowly faded. In one, a graceful lady in a gown woven from the night sky and wearing a crown of stars stood at the shore of the lake with Nori in her arms. She stroked Violet's familiar with her pale hands and spoke into Nori's ears. Though she whispered to the fae, Violet could hear her words clearly.

"Guard your mistress and do not leave her side. There will come a time when her life will depend upon you. Do not fail me, Nabeora."

Her hand gripped Nori and twisted cruelly, eliciting a yowl of protest, then she faded into the blackness that surrounded them.

In another dream, Violet was being pursued through a labyrinth of tunnels by a large man babbling incoherently at times and at other times uncannily sane. His hair and beard were wild and unkept and shrieking shadow creatures accompanied him as he hunted her. She ran, casting spell after spell behind her to no avail. He and his minions were almost upon her when she woke, her heart beating furiously in her chest.

A merrrow and headbutt from Nori helped to ground and calm her. Beside her, Reed groaned and blinked blearily at her.

"I had the worst dream," he started.

"Maybe you should look around before you decide it was a dream," she told him grimly.

The corporal sat up beside her and blew out a disgusted breath after surveying their surroundings. "Well, I thought it was a dream."

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

He shrugged, "like I jumped down a waterfall and nearly froze to death."

She looked at him in surprise, "you jumped?"

"What else was I supposed to do? He shook his head vigorously. "I've never had a girl jump off a cliff to escape my attentions."

Violet giggled when he wagged his eyebrows at her, "stop it!" Her laughter died, "I bet the others are worried about us."

"Yeah, they don't even know where we went. For all they know, we were taken."

Violet looked at Nori. "I think I have a way to let them know." She called the fae over. "Nori, I need you to find Milya and let her know what happened and where we are. Tell her we are okay for now. Can you do that?"

Nori stared at her unblinking for several seconds, her tail flicking in agitation, then she chirped and disappeared.

"That's handy," Reed commented. "There isn't any way she can take us with her, is there?"

Violet shook her head, "I don't think so."

"It was worth a shot, I guess."

She bumped him with her shoulder, "come on. Let's see if we can find a way out of here."

Violet cast another light spell as they searched the rocky shore for anything they might be able to use and exits. Scattered amongst the organic debris and rocks were odds and ends from the world above: a ragged strip of leather, a frayed length of rope, a shoe, a purse with three copper coins still inside. At the waterline they found fragments of metal and a few coins. A waterlogged stump held a hand axe buried in its wood that Reed pulled free with some difficulty.

The guardsman had shed his weapons belt and chainmail armor in the lake to keep from being dragged under by them. Now he was unarmed and unprotected. The hand axe wasn't the best weapon, but it was better than coming up against a monster empty handed.

As they wandered the water's edge, moving farther away from the waterfall, the lake became placid even though the noise of the water still echoed loudly through the cavern. The lake was larger than Violet had first thought, stretching dozens, if not hundreds of yards across. Curving gently between the lake and the arching wall of cavern, the shore came to an end along the edge of a still inlet, blocked by an ancient cave-in of the wall. Here, the washed-up logs and timber were fewer in number, but the smaller debris from the sentient races of Faerun abounded.

With a jubilant shout, Reed held up a piece of armor, "look!" He had wandered farther away from the water.

"That's great!" she called back.

"And here's another," he stooped to pick up another piece. "They have all their straps intact too." He paused, looking around at the ground around his feet, "by all the great gods, would you look at that?" He dropped to his knees and started picking up objects off the ground.

Relieved that he would have some armor to protect him, she redoubled her effort, hoping to help him find more. Spying something reflective a few feet away, she hurried over to it. When she picked it up, she saw that it was a silver ring with a brilliant blue stone that flashed in the light cast by her magic. She slid it on her finger and was pleased that it fit.

"That will be a nice souvenir," she told herself.

Turning in a circle to search for more, she stepped on a white stick that snapped under her weight. Looking down, she saw that the area she stood in was littered with them. Violet bent and picked one up to examine, then gasped and dropped it.

It was a bone.

She looked at the others scattered over the ground around her. Now that she knew what she was looking at, she recognized ribs, femurs, scapula, and others. Her blood ran cold. This was a graveyard. Taking a step backwards, she stumbled over a rock and nearly fell. Only it wasn't a rock. It was a skull. Slightly larger than a human skull with thicker bones and long, tusk-like teeth protruding from the lower jaw, its cranium was cracked and broken, leaving a large hole.

"Reed," she called out urgently.

"Hold on, I see something here."

Looking over at him, she saw that he was edging out onto the fall of boulders that blocked the beach, reaching for something near the waterline.

"Reed, I don't think that's…," her warning was cut off as something gripped her boot and yanked her feet out from under her.

"Reed!" she screamed as she was dragged towards the lake.

"I got it!" Reed held up a long sword triumphantly.

"Reed!"

"Oh, shit!" he yelled when he saw what was happening. "Hold on!"

Violet wasn't paying attention to him at the moment, though. She was focused on getting free. A clear blue-grey tentacle was wrapped around her ankle and she kicked at it with her free foot while grabbing at boulders to stop her progress. She managed to get her arms around one and held on for dear life as Reed raced towards her. The pressure on her ankle increased as the creature fought to pull her into the lake and her boot began to slip off her foot. Using her other foot, she helped it along until it slid free and was pulled into the water.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she looked over her shoulder, but all she could see was the dark water of the lake, though now it was disturbed, bulging, and rippling near the shore. Relaxing her grip on the boulder, she started to get to her feet.

A second tentacle snaked out of the water towards her, and she scrambled backwards to get away from it.

"MEEEwr!" Nori screeched as she dived towards the tentacle with her claws unsheathed.

The tentacle swatted the fae, connecting with a wet slap. Nori tumbled into the water and disappeared under its waves.

"Nori!" Violet screamed.

Before Violet could escape, the second tentacle wrapped itself around her bare ankle and up her calf nearly to her knee, then pulled her down the shore to the water.

Reed darted into her line of sight and hacked at the tentacle with his newly acquired sword. The blade passed through the appendage as if it wasn't there, doing nothing to it. It continued to relentlessly pull Violet's ankle.

A burning sensation on her chest cut through Violet's panic. At first, she thought it was another attack on her person, but she quickly realized it was the fae pendant. Looking at Reed as he chopped at the tentacle ineffectively, she waved him off.

"I have an idea," she panted. "Just hold onto me and don't let it drag me in."

The corporal paused uncertainly, then dropped the useless sword and went to knell behind Violet. Wrapping his arms around her under her arms, he locked his hands together in front of her and dug his feet in, slowing her progress to the water.

Violet breathed in a deep breath and focused on the pendant.

"Èist fiadhaich ionnsaigh!"

The tentacle released her ankle as a wall of force hit the creature beneath the surface of the water and flung it across the lake. In the gloom, it was hard to make sense of what she saw. The creature appeared to be made from the water of the lake, with a central mass surrounded by numerous tentacles like an octopus.

"Let's go!" she cried, getting to her feet, and stumbling away from the water, oblivious to her one bare foot.

Reed stayed by her side for a few steps before turning and hurrying back to the water.

"What are you doing?" she called frantically after him. "I don't know if I killed it or not."

Reed waded into the water and retrieved her sodden boot then grabbed his sword before rejoining her.

"Can't have you running through the underdark barefooted," he grinned lopsidedly at her before taking her by the elbow and leading her as far from the water as they could get.

"Nori!" Violet called, praying that her familiar would come. She knew that she would have felt it if the fae had perished, but what if she was hurt?

Nori appeared with purple flash and an irritated mrrrow. Violet snatched her out of the air in a tight hug that earned her a chirp of protest and a lick across the cheek by a raspy tongue.

"Well, that was fun," Reed quipped beside her.

Violet looked at him over Nori's head, "really? Why don't you go for a swim?"

"Not THAT much fun," he grinned. "Can I get one of those hugs?" he stepped towards her with his arms held out.

Nori twisted her head and hissed at him.

"Or not," he stepped back, dropping his hands to his sides.

"Now what?" Violet asked, ignoring the exchange.

Reed held out her wet boot, "now we get out of here."