The last goblin fell hard against the sewer stone. 

Pinned, wounded, and scrambling for escape, it barely had time to raise its blade before Renaer stepped forward out of the shadows. His scimitar flashed once in the torchlight, clean and decisive, and the creature collapsed into the fetid water with a final, rattling breath. For a moment, no one spoke. The echo of steel faded, and the tunnels went still. 

It was over. 

Renaer stood there a heartbeat longer than necessary, breathing hard, the weight of the strike settling in. This was not a duel, not a noble skirmish aboveground, it was a killing in the dark, and he had ended it. Whatever doubts he carried with him into the sewers, they had not stopped his hand. 

Then the silence changed. 

Not relief, attention. The kind that lingers after violence, as if the tunnels themselves were listening. Somewhere ahead, Floon was still alive. Somewhere behind them, retreat had already stopped being an option. 

They pressed on. 

“This was not a duel, not a noble skirmish aboveground, it was a killing in the dark.” 

Into the Darkness 

The sewers did not welcome them. 

Stone walls sweated in the torchlight, slick with mildew and rot, the air heavy with stagnant water and the sour bite of decay. Footfalls echoed strangely here, too far, too late; each sound swallowed and returned just wrong enough to set nerves on edge. This place felt less like a passage and more like a throat, slowly closing. 

It was there that Renaer finally spoke again. “I can’t see anything down here.” 

The admission came quietly, without drama, but it carried weight. After a brief pause, he turned toward Raven and asked if she could see. When she answered yes, he fell in beside her without another word, trusting her to guide him through the blackness. 

“I can’t see anything down here.” 

It was a small thing. And it mattered. 

The Room Behind the Door 

Kiril slipped ahead, silent as the sewer water itself. A half-open door revealed voices inside, sharp, panicked, arguing. 

Krentz was there. The Zhentarim thug from the Yawning Portal, stripped now of bravado and barking orders with growing desperation. He was frantically stacking broken furniture against a northeast door, while a gray-skinned dwarf sneered at the effort, insisting it wouldn’t hold. 

Kiril listened longer. 

“Behind the barricaded door, something wet scraped against stone.” 

It seems that a black ooze had seeped into the hideout. Uncontrolled, corrosive, hungry, barely held at bay by wood and prayer. Krentz, rattled and unraveling, was convinced the situation could still be salvaged. When Kiril stepped into the room disguised as a goblin sentry, Krentz didn’t question it for a second. He just shouted orders. 

“Get mattresses. Stuff the cracks.” 

Kiril nodded, played the part, and withdrew. 

When he returned to the others, the plan formed quickly and cleanly. If Krentz wanted mattresses delivered, they would bring them. And when the time came, they would stop pretending. 

The Ambush 

Kiril led the way back in; mattress slung over one shoulder. Behind him came Doc, then Raven guiding Renaer by voice and by touch. Maple and Clover followed. Krentz barely looked at them, too focused on the barricade and the unseen pressure behind it. The Duergar glowered, suspicious but impatient. 

The moment stretched. Then it snapped. 

The moment stretched. Then it snapped. 

Weapons flashed as the ruse dropped. Zemk, the Duergar, roared and swelled to monstrous size, stone groaning under his sudden weight as he brought his weapon down in brutal arcs. Krentz fought dirty and desperate, hurling himself at Doc with snarling defiance. The room became chaos, splintering wood, shouted orders, and the wet echo of steel on flesh. 

Raven and Doc held the line while Maple, Clover, and Kiril struck where they could. Renaer fought close, staying near Raven’s voice, swinging blind but determined. 

It was ugly. It was exhausting. 

At last, Zemk fell beneath the combined assault. Krentz, bloodied and beaten, was disarmed and bound rather than slain. His fury giving way to panic as the reality of his situation set in. 

A Choice Made Quietly 

Krentz begged. 

He swore he could be useful. Claimed he had information. Promised allegiance to anyone who would listen. Doc loomed over him in silence while Kiril shifted between mockery and menace. Raven’s presence alone seemed to darken the air. 

Under pressure, Krentz broke. 

He confirmed what the party already suspected: the hideout belonged to the Xanathar Guild. Kenku and thugs ran its tunnels. And Floon had been taken by mistake; abducted because the Guild believed they’d captured Renaer instead. 

Floon was alive. That was enough. 

Floon was alive. That was enough. 

When the party moved on, Krentz was left bound near the barricaded door. No one said aloud what would happen when the wood finally failed. No one needed to. His whimpers echoed behind them as the wet sound returned, closer now. 

“No one said aloud what would happen when the wood finally failed.” 

The choice had been made without ceremony. 

Raven’s Curiosity 

Before they left the chamber entirely, Raven lingered. 

Against the protests of the others, and the clear unease written across Renaer’s face, she approached the barricaded door. With careful precision, she drew a glass vial and scraped a sliver of the black ooze inside. 

The vial held. 

For a moment, everyone held their breath. 

The vial held. 

Raven smiled, cradling her new prize as though it were a pet. The others exchanged glances, unsettled by what she’d just done, and by how easily she’d done it. 

They moved on quickly after that. 

The Long Hall 

The passage ahead narrowed, water trickling along its base as the tunnel stretched forward. Faint sounds carried from beyond, movement, breath, something alive. 

Then the space opened. 

A broad chamber lay ahead, fifty feet long and fifteen wide; its stone walls hung with rotting curtains. At the far end rose a dais, twin staircases flanking a crude throne carved from stone. 

Upon it sat something nightmarish. A hooded, tentacled horror, black robes draped over its rubbery purple form; white lidless eyes staring, unblinking. In its arms it cradled a twitching, clawed mass of exposed gray matter, stroking it with unsettling tenderness. 

“Mind Flayer,” Clover whispered. 

Closer to the dais stood a half-orc enforcer, flames licking along his arm as he loomed over a battered captive. Even through blood and bruises, the shock of red hair was unmistakable. 

Floon Blagmaar. 

The True Power Revealed 

The Mind Flayer rose. 

Pain exploded behind the party’s eyes as a psychic wave tore through the chamber, thoughts buckling under alien pressure. Hands flew to temples. Knees buckled. For a heartbeat, it felt as though the room itself might collapse inward. 

Then, without a word, the creature turned, placed its pet lovingly upon the throne, and glided away through a western door. 

The Mind Flayer did not run. It did not hurry. 

“The Mind Flayer did not run. It did not hurry.” 

It left because it wished to. 

Cliffhanger 

The psychic echo lingered as the chamber fell silent once more. 

Floon lay broken at the half-orc’s feet, barely breathing. Flames still danced along the enforcer’s arm as he raised it to strike. The party stood battered and worn, staring down a fight they could not avoid, while their true enemy slipped deeper into the dark. 

The session ended there. 

“It left because it wished to.” 

On the brink of violence. With Floon’s life hanging by a thread. And with the terrible certainty that whatever had just walked away would not forget them.