Waterdeep does not greet newcomers with banners or blessings. It greets them with paperwork, iron bars, and the sound of boots in the mud.

The City, in Profile

Doc’s first sight of the City of Splendors is not its towers or walls, but the inside of a cart.

The wagon is narrow, four feet wide, eight feet deep, with barred windows set too high to look out of properly. The doors are solid wood banded in iron, each with a small, barred slit like an afterthought, and they slam shut with the dull finality of habit. He has been searched, disarmed, and shoved inside with little ceremony. Outside, voices argue about paperwork. Somewhere nearby, a bell rings.

Doc does what Doc always does when confined: he kicks.

His boot slams into the door with everything he has behind it, and the door swings open.

Unlocked.

Momentum carries him forward, out of the wagon and straight into the mud. He lands hard, splattered and breathless, the wind knocked out of him as shouts erupt from the Watch. Someone swears. Someone laughs. Someone hauls him back to his feet.

Waterdeep does not punish him for his anger. It barely notices.

As the guards regroup and Doc scrambles upright, the noise of the city presses in from every direction: carts rattling, voices calling, iron-shod boots on stone. Somewhere beyond the confusion, the city continues exactly as it always has.

And inside one of its oldest taverns, steel is already being drawn.

No Time for Words

The cut is abrupt.

One moment Doc is wiping mud from his face. The next, the Yawning Portal is in chaos.

There is no careful exchange of threats. Initiative is already being rolled as Krentz and his Zhentarim goons crash into Davil Starsong’s corner of the tavern, weapons out and tempers high. Chairs scrape backward. Tankards shatter on the floor. Someone yells for Durnan.

Doc is not here. Steel is.

It is Kiril, Raven, and Maple who meet the charge, with Fluffy darting low and fast at their heels. From the far corner of the bar, a patron, just another face in the crowd, abandons his drink and surges forward to join the fray without a word.

Krentz does not bother with speeches. He does not explain himself, and he does not educate anyone on grand conspiracies. His accusation is blunt and public, leveled squarely at Davil: you have something you shouldn’t, and I’ve come to collect, or remind you what happens if you don’t.

This is not a duel. It is a warning delivered in front of witnesses.

The Well Becomes Personal

The fight is fast and messy.

In the chaos, Fluffy vanishes.

A blow lands poorly, a body stumbles, and the small, fierce shape is knocked from sight, over the edge of the yawning pit at the tavern’s center. Shouts echo. Someone calls Fluffy’s name. The well is no longer just a hole in the floor.

The Yawning Portal stops being a landmark. It becomes a question.

On the third exchange, Krentz smiles.

Then he is gone.

A shimmer near the front door, a sudden cold ripple in the air, and the Zhentarim lieutenant vanishes into nothing. By the time anyone reacts, the door is swinging shut behind him. His goons are left scrambling, leaderless, and the fight collapses in on itself.

Krentz has not been beaten.

He has made his point.

Listening to the Dark

When the last of the immediate danger subsides, Raven moves without hesitation to the edge of the well.

She leans over the rope, peering into the darkness, listening. The pit swallows light and sound alike. Somewhere below, something shifts. Or maybe it doesn’t. Raven calls softly, straining to hear anything: scratching, movement, a whine.

From across the tavern, a chant begins.

“DIP! DIP! DIP!”

Laughter rises with it. Rhythm. The thump of boots on wood. Raven’s focus fractures as the noise swells, drowning out the subtler sounds she’s searching for.

The city does not pause for worry. It chants.

Davil Reconsiders

Back at the table, Davil Starsong has gone quiet.

Where he was dismissive before, brushing off rumors and smiling through danger, there is caution now. Krentz’s accusation, public, pointed, has changed the temperature of the room. Davil chooses his words carefully when he finally speaks, eyes flicking toward the door Krentz escaped through, then back to the party.

He may know more than he’s said.

He opens his mouth to continue.

And the chant crescendos.

“DIP! DIP! DIP!”

The crowd parts easily for the young tiefling woman making her way to the bar, grin wide and steps unsteady with drink. This is not her first time, and it won’t be her last, if the odds favor her.

She slaps gold onto the bar. Durnan nods, expression unreadable, and produces a small bell. Armor comes off. Weapons are set aside. Bets are shouted as the rope is lowered, its loop dangling over the dark.

The tiefling takes one last swig, drops her tankard into the well to mark the depth, and steps onto the rope.

The descent is smooth. Controlled.

When the rope goes slack, the tavern grows quiet in that strange way crowds do when they think the danger has passed. Coins change hands. Someone groans at a lost bet.

A minute passes.

Then another.

Just before the third minute ends, the faint sound of a bell rings up from the darkness.

Cheers erupt.

Something Comes Back Up

The rope begins to rise.

Two red points of light appear first, glowing faintly in the gloom. For a heartbeat, relief surges as recognition follows. The tiefling’s eyes, shining with triumph as she clings to the rope, tankard raised high.

Then there is movement beneath her.

Skeletal wings unfold from the dark. A long, barbed tail coils into view. The cheers turn to screams too late to matter.

The bone devil erupts from the well in a rush of cold air and horror, claws closing around the tiefling woman as it hauls itself onto the platform. Her scream cuts off as her body is snapped and flung aside like refuse.

And on the creature’s shoulders…

Fluffy.

Claws buried deep, teeth tearing into dead flesh, the small creature rides the devil up out of the pit, snarling and relentless. For a brief, impossible moment, the tavern sees not just a monster rising, but resistance.

The devil thrashes, roaring, and flings Fluffy aside. They sail across the tavern and hits the floor hard, but alive.

Fluffy didn’t fall and wait. They climbed onto a devil and went to work.

The cheer that erupts is raw and immediate, a surge of relief that breaks through the terror for just a moment.

It does not last.

Steel, Finally

Durnan is already moving.

The greatsword comes free from beneath the bar as he vaults over it in one smooth motion, landing hard and shouting orders that cut through the panic. Patrons scatter or draw steel as instinct takes over.

And then Doc arrives.

He bursts into the Yawning Portal mid-fight, mud-streaked and wide-eyed, just in time to see the aftermath of the creature’s emergence and the blood on the floor. There is no time for questions. No time for explanations.

Only more shapes moving in the dark.

The Well Is Not Finished

Hissing rises from below.

Two serpentine forms of bleached bone coil up from the pit’s edge, their movements deliberate, intelligent. They speak, not in screams, but in words, their voices cold and ancient as they address the room.

Then smoke pours from the well, thick and acrid, and smaller shapes crawl free, cackling as they scatter into the fray.

The fight widens. The danger multiplies.

The Yawning Portal, a place built around the promise of controlled risk, finally loses control entirely.

The well, ancient and patient, remains open.

The battle is far from over.