The group settled back into marching order as they made their way through the caves. Taylor could feel the owlbear's child hiding from them, but she didn't alert the others; it would barely be a challenge for any one of them alone, and it seemed to clearly know that. The owlbear had been a necessity, and in fact had attacked first. But Taylor just didn't have it in her to kill a little baby, especially for no reason. It was still nearly the size of a black bear, it would be fine! Probably!
After several minutes, the tunnels got narrower and curvier, twisting this way and that. Wyll pulled out a compass at some point, to make sure they were still traveling in approximately the right direction; Taylor could've told them she was keeping track of it, but the fact remained the end of the twisting was still beyond her range, and she didn't want to overpromise on a guess. If she was blatantly wrong like that, she'd lose the goodwill she'd built up with Lae'zel. Occasionally, one of the others would ask if there was anything lurking up ahead, but the answer was always no. Taylor wasn't exactly surprised; assuming this had another exit, one end had an active town on top, and the other had an owlbear the size of a car...or it used to, anyway. She felt another pang in her heart, but suppressed it.
It was another several minutes before she finally felt a change.
"Potentially good news," she spoke up, and immediately all attention was on her. "End of the tunnel's maybe a thousand feet that way, as the crow flies-" she points straight into the wall, away from where they'd come from, "-and there's a big crack in the wall. There's stone tiles on the other side. I think that's far enough that it's under the town."
It was another several minutes before Taylor felt something interesting. There were presences within her range she could control. But they weren't normal creepy-crawlies. They were spiders, but quite odd: they were enormous, at least the size of that owlbear cub, and much smarter than anything else within her range. They weren't sapient, but they were close - closer than she was comfortable with, in all honesty. But still, their bodies moved as she commanded. And there was an extra sense they had available, like echolocation reflecting off things that weren't there. And when she pulled on that sense - they flickered. They disappeared - not from her power, she could still feel them - but now the world reflected in their echolocation was solid and real, and what Taylor viewed as the real world was immaterial and fake and could be bypassed with ease. [Phase spiders,] the phrase crept through her mind, and it felt like a good name.
That's not to say it was all good news: whether it was their size, their intelligence, their flickering phasing, or some combination of the three, but her headaches were back with a vengeance. She could just about hold the lot of them in-phase doing nothing without losing track of her surroundings, but she couldn't do much else without at least pulling them back into normal space. The others had noticed, and stopped asking her for updates.
The crack was...not nearly so wide or tall as Taylor had initially thought. She was still getting the hang of perspective and scale from an insect's point of view. Luckily, her companions weren't exactly helpless. Wyll gestured for everyone to back up, before he started blasting the walls with red lasers that hit like sledgehammers. It only took a minute or so before the hole was wide enough for everyone to get through.
They'd broken into a large hall. To the left was a spiral staircase carved from stone. To the right, rows upon rows of books, going to the ceiling. The bound leather covers were worn and damaged, by insect bites as often as not from the looks of it, and the pages were yellowed and flaking. Lining the walls at floor level were coffins, maybe 20 in total. At the far end of the hall opposite the stairs lay the true points of interest: first and most obvious was the giant statue, maybe 30 ft tall. At its feet lay a coffin, larger and more ornate than the rest. A tome bound in what looked like gold lay on top of what looked like a pedestal built directly into the lid.
Shadowheart let out a low whistle. "That's Jergal, scribe of the dead. If all this dust is any indication, this place might be untouched." There was a note in her voice Taylor couldn't quite place.
The others seemed to pick up on it, though. "I don't suppose anyone brought a pry bar?" Astarion joked.
His words were like a splash of cold water. "Grave robbing? Really?" Taylor's anger turned to confusion as everyone turned to eye her questioningly.
After a few seconds, Gale spoke up: "Taylor...you're rather far from home, aren't you? You're unfamiliar with magic, deities-"
"Current events," Astarion added.
Gale's eyes flicked to him briefly. "...and now basic delving rights. You're not from here. Faerûn. Toril. You're from another world, across the blue veil, beyond the Phlogiston."
Taylor grit her teeth. There wasn't really anything wrong with telling them, exactly. She wasn't sure why she hesitated, beyond the vague notion that she wasn't sure who she could trust. Was it just reflex? That after almost two years of learning to flinch away from everything, she couldn't relax despite being literally a world away? She was a bit mad that Astarion had apparently tricked her without her noticing, but that didn't mean he'd actually betrayed her. She took a deep, steadying breath. "Yes. Or I think so, I've not heard of either of those things. I'm from...well we call it Earth Bet. Government made contact with a number of other worlds, including one disturbingly similar to our own. Travel is heavily restricted, partly to cut down on diseases"
At that, Shadowheart spoke up. "That should already be covered, unless mind flayers are complete fools. All - most methods of planar travel include an acclimation effect, that eliminates diseases too foreign to the world being arrived in, while safely exposing the foreign body to diseases it's never seen before. It's not perfect, but it gets you close enough to normal levels of resistance that keeping close to a healer will cover the rest."
Durge nodded. "There's another potential problem, but it's one I would expect illithid to cover better than most other methods: memetic concepts, contagious ideas. Not a concern for most planar travel since ideas transmit more easily than diseases, but for a world as distant and different as yours seems, who knows what ideological nonsense might be swimming around in your head waiting to infect us...or vice versa, for that matter. But I think nautiloids would have to be more resilient against that vector of attack."
Taylor nodded, unsure what to say to that. There weren't many methods of traveling to or from Aleph back home, but she'd never heard of anything like either of those defenses. She'd never even heard of a memetic concept. "I couldn't tell you what all happened when the nautiloid came to my world. I wasn't in...the best vantage point at the time." The memory of the stench was almost too real. She suppressed a shudder and continued. "No idea if anyone else got taken, let alone survived. No idea how to get back. But that's second priority right now. Finding a way back doesn't do me any good if I'm dead. Or worse." She took a deep breath, and then looked at Gale. "I know you must have questions, but mine first. Delver's rights?"
He grimaced. "Well, were I to briefly summarize to avoid a lengthy lecture where every other thing warrants it's own miniature lecture...Toril has experienced the end of the world multiple times. The upheaval of everything that came before it. Netheril was a utopia, before Karsus' Folly tore the Weave apart in an attempt at killing Mystra and stealing her godly domain over magic. That was almost two millennia ago, and the world has never recovered to anything even remotely resembling those peaks. The only mythal that still stands is the dragonward around Waterdeep. Efficient means of creating powerful magic items have long since been lost to time."
He glances around the chamber. "It's not a unique story, merely the most significant one. The world is littered with the remnants of fallen kingdoms and empires. And like it or not, most houses are built with stones stolen from the castles that serve as tombstones for entire civilizations. In days long since gone, it was common or even encouraged to adorn loved one's graves with items of value both sentimental and magical. It was common because the meagerest items flowed like copper back then. You could afford to leave a magic ring at your grandfather's grave because everyone in the family already had one with the same effect, and this one had his wife's initials etched in."
"We cannot afford the same luxury. That's not my opinion either - it's the learned opinion of most every government on the continent. There's just too many such items hidden away in long-long tombs and gravesites to just leave them lying around doing nothing for anybody. If you make it illegal to collect such things, all that happens is they all wind up in the hands of those that flaunt the law."
Unbidden images floated to the surface of Taylor's mind. A zombie apocalypse movie, a small group of survivors moving through an abandoned town. Finding a floor safe in a torn-apart house. They money, useless. The canned food, worth more than its weight in gold. The first aid kit, potentially life-saving. You would never leave any of it behind. You couldn't. [If you were the kind of person who couldn't bear the thought of robbing the dead, you would join them soon enough.] The thought echoed uncomfortably in her skull.
But she could see the point, and now she could place Shadowheart's tone. It hadn't been greed, but desperate hope. There could be tinkertech here, sitting for centuries without the need for maintenance, ready to be used. "I...suppose that makes sense. Waste not, want not." It didn't quite fit the situation, but the situation was so beyond anything she'd ever experienced. There'd been no apocalypse on her world - no zombie plague, no nuclear warfare, no asteroid strike. Her city had never even experienced an Endbringer attack. "Let's see what all we can find."
Taylor's doubts crept back in the longer they searched. She hadn't stopped understanding what Gale had conveyed, per se. It was more that their graverobbing was...consistently worthwhile. Suspiciously so. For starters, each of the coffin's lids moved with no trouble, as if designed to open at the lightest touch. And it must've been magic, since no grease or mechanism would still be so intact after all this time. Within them were skeletons draped in faded, tattered priest robes. Each one bore a single item of great power, no more no less.
Astarion's prize was a fancy belt that produced illusory copies of the wearer, similar to what Shadowheart had done aboard the nautiloid. Astarion regarded his own countenance closely without a word.
The coffin Lae'zel had opens contained a simple metal helmet. It's purpose was unclear until a moment's inspection by Gale, who said it enhanced the adrenal system; should combat start up, she would be faster and stronger and tougher, at least for a short period of time. She seemed satisfied, at least. Taylor couldn't help but notice the helmet slotted onto her head perfectly.
Wyll received an amulet that, when tapped, gave him the approximate position of every nearby tadpole, like a mental map of perfect awareness of a very particular thing. The similarity to Taylor's own power did not go unnoticed by her.
Shadowheart pulled out an enormous shield painted a dark dark blue. She placed it down on the ground and crouched behind it to hide her body from view, and she and it vanished into thin air. After a moment, she returned (prompting a sigh of relief from Taylor) and informed them she hadn't been transported, merely invisible.
Durge pulled out a small box fastened to a loop of leather, which Gale identified as something called a Phylactery Of Faithfulness. After spending a few moments pondering it, Durge ended up securing one end of the loop beneath their scaly chin, wearing the box like a little hat nestled among their horns. After that, the big lizard went quiet.
Gale pulled out a far more impressive hat, a thing of twinkling stars that befitted a wizard such as himself. He didn't specify what it did, merely gave it quick once-over before donning it cheerfully. And as he put it on, Taylor once more noted that it so happened to be neither too big nor too small for him.
Taylor's own coffin (not that she appreciated thinking about it that way) creaked open at her touch, and within was a handheld mirror. She picked it up, and regarded her reflection. Her hair was unkempt from a day and half mostly spent on the road. Her armor was loose and ill-fitted. Her glasses were dirty and her eyes had bags beneath them. She looked sick. She felt sick.
Gale analyzed it quickly, and suddenly seemed almost as concerned as she felt. He informed her it was a viewing mirror, that it could show her anyone in the world - maybe further, even. A quick test showed her father, sitting in the waiting room of the Rig, filling out forms. A powerful urge gripped her to throw the thing away for tormenting her with what was beyond her reach, but the rest of her gripped it so hard she feared it might break. Her relationship with her father had been deteriorating for a long time - since before Emma turned on her, although that bullying campaign had certainly widened the rift. But now, even lacking that bare minimum acknowledgement of each other in the morning was a hole in her heart she was only just starting to realize was there.
She eyed the last coffin, and moved to open it. The skeleton within wore a belt that was cold to the touch - painfully cold. Her fingers twitched away from it in the same way they would from a hot stove. Gale's analysis indicated it was a fire suppression belt and would keep the wearer cool walking through anything short of maybe lava...but since it couldn't really be turned off, it would feel positively arctic any other time. He spirited the belt away into his pack, to the complaint of noone.
And then the only one left was the main one. Unlike all the previous coffins, this time the lid seemed resolutely stuck in place. Lae'zel and Durge struggled against it. Astarion and Shadowheart leant a hand each but it refused to budge. When Gale joined in, it began to loosen, but they couldn't quite lift it off. With a growing feeling in her gut that this was wrong and she shouldn't be here, Taylor walked forward and added her strength to the rest. The lid inched higher and higher, until there was barely enough room for a finger to squeeze through...and quite suddenly, several did. A hand emerged from within the coffin, gripping the lid and tossing it away from them with all the carelessness of someone pushing away a blanket.
The lot of them stumbled back, having lost their balance when the object they'd struggled with flew away. Above them, a skeletal figure rose from the coffin, unsupported by anything but magic. It was not a skeleton proper - more like a well-preserved body, a mummified corpse missing its bandages. The skin and muscle seemed entirely too flat, as if they were a paper mockup draped over the bones as a thin disguise. Dark eyes peered at them from sunken eye sockets. Taylor's feelings of dread rose when she realized he had no song, no melody of being. Every person, every animal, every tree, every insect sung the song of life. The strongest evidence against Astarion being a daywalker was that he too had a tune playing in his soul. But this thing was silent as the grave. At least within her mind, anyway.
"What a curious way to awaken," it spoke in a gravelly tone. It regarded them each, one by one. Taylor met its gaze and couldn't help the shiver going down her spine. "I have a question for thee," it spoke once more, directed at Durge. "What is the worth of a single mortal life?"
It was several seconds before Durge replied. "Priceless."
The skeletal figure cocked its head to one side. "And thus is balance achieved." A pause, as its gaze swept the room once more. "...we have met, and I know thy face. We shall meet again...in the proper time and place." The rhyme might've seemed quaint in any other setting, but here in a crypt it was...foreboding. As if it had spoken a prophecy of their deaths.
It then began to walk, directly towards Taylor. She was rooted to the spot, and before long was staring up into those eyes, unable to look away. It regarded her, and its eyes held a plaintive note. "Child from beyond the veil. I bear tidings of weal and woe to thee. Should you perish within this sphere, Ao shall ensure you are bound to it, and retire to whichever afterlife you deserve. Such is his blessing - and curse - for all strangers in strange lands."
A confirmed afterlife, a safety cushion for if she died. A limited afterlife, never able to see her mother or father in the great beyond. Horror crept up her throat but could not escape. The skeletal figure nodded sadly, before continuing to make his way out of the crypt.
The room was quiet for several seconds, save for the sound of bare feet on stone as it exited. Eventually, Shadowheart spoke. "Whatever misgivings you have about all this business...that's no mere servant of the Final Scribe, you only get preserved like that if you were quite highly-ranked. He awoke to find us wearing stolen items and walked away. That's as close to an endorsement from the church of Jergal as it's possible for us to get."
Everything after that was a bit of a blur. There was a bit of an argument about whether to continue forward with slaughtering the camp in the dark of night, or to rest up so that nobody was going into battle with anything less than their full capabilities. In the end, a vote was called, and making camp within the tomb for the night won out.
Gale, as promised and expected, had a million questions, some of which Taylor could even answer. He didn't seem to mind her lack of technical knowledge on most subjects; just hearing the concepts that had been dreamed up on Earth seemed to satisfy his thirst for knowledge. Taylor sent the phase spiders into the twisting caves they'd come from, and instilled in them commands of roaming behavior, patrolling back and forth in the Material Plane so that nobody could get the drop on them from that direction. She forced down some food and settled in for sleep. The day had been physically and emotionally exhausting, and she wanted nothing more than a nice peaceful sleep...
She awoke once more on the fingerbone of a giant floating through space above a distant crystal moon. The last time she'd been here, her true body had been drowning, and everything had been sluggish and surreal. Now, she was fully lucid. She should be dreaming, and instead she was here. The phrase "memetic infection" echoed through her mind for some reason, making her tense all over.
A cough behind her made her spin around. An older man, with graying hair and a thin beard regarded her coolly. His song mirrored her own, like a record played backwards, and it was everywhere around her.
"You are a problem with no easy solution," he said coldly.
"I don't know who you are, but get the hell out of my head." She sent a spike of pain towards his mind, the biggest she could muster.
He didn't even flinch. He seemed bored. "No." His reply was spoken as a simple statement of fact. "No, that wouldn't work, I'm afraid. I'd certainly be rid of you, but an illithid would remain with all your memories. That's even worse than leaving you as-is. Barely worse, but even so."
She started to reply, to bite back with her words, but he interrupted her. "I'm going to save you a great deal of time by explaining what is beyond your current knowledge, and laying out your options. You're almost two days into an illithid transformation, and showing no symptoms. You're welcome. That's the only reason I'm in your mind, despite your paranoid delusions. Believe it, don't, it doesn't matter."
"So you're just poking around in my-"
"We're not at your options quite yet," he said, interrupting her again. "The gith device and the fey will be of no help. These tadpoles are going to be...particularly stubborn. The only way to take them out will be to destroy their source. A task impossibly beyond most people. But this group...we have a chance. But only if you're not holding us back. Weighing us down. Dragging us into mediocrity with another's world's moral compass."
She didn't bother responding this time. He was just going to talk over her regardless. "You have great potential, enormous untapped power. You remind me of myself when I was your age." He didn't make it sound like a compliment. "That's because it wasn't one." She stiffened. "Yes, I can read your mind. You could read mine too, if you were willing to exert yourself, explore your new abilities to the fullest."
He paused, long enough for her to find her voice again. "You're not making sense. I'm a problem because I'm too powerful? Or because I'm too unwilling to wield that power?"
"Neither," he replied. "You're a problem because you lack flexibility. The only way your power would be turned against our mutual foe is if I explained the situation to you - and the second I do that, reveal myself, you would dig in your heels. If you had to choose between a life you were Mastered into and a death fully resulting from your own choices, you'd drown in denial long enough to follow through on the latter. You're going to get yourself killed to spite me even though I want nothing more than to help us all succeed."
"Every hour, I am assaulted by those that seek to tear your protection from my grasp. Every hour, I fend them off, all without losing concentration on said protection. Every hour, I wonder if it would be easier if there were fewer to maintain. And you make a solid argument that there's at least one headache I could do without."
"So I'm going with blunt, transparent honesty. Something softer would be kinder, but nowhere near as effective. Three options! First, you can become an illithid. All that power, all your memories, will be turned against your new friends. I'm sure you've been eagerly awaiting your turn on that side of things. Second, you can die. Tadpoles don't work on corpses. Third option: accept my presence in your mind. I shan't influence you, not in any of the ways you fear, but there's nothing I can say to convince you of that while I've got my fingers in your wrinkles. Not unless I make it a lie." He offered her his hand, nothing but earnestness in his eyes.
Taylor pondered her choices.