Chapter II: The Cave Beneath the Road
Wherein torches flicker, minds unravel, and one wizard catches a child mid-portal like a stage magician pulling fire from his sleeve.
The rain had stopped—but only in the way a tax collector stops knocking after you open the door. The clouds hung thick and low, muttering threats, and the road had turned into something between a soup and a suggestion. The wagon loomed ahead, half-swallowed by mud, and the guards surrounding it stood stiff as scarecrows, faces blank, torches unlit. Their mouths frothed like bad ale.
"Right," Rigg whispered. "That’s new."
"Possession," Valen murmured, peering out from under his dripping hat. "Psionic. Likely Illithid."
"Mind flayers?" High Jinks hissed. “I hate mind flayers. They’re like librarians if librarians wanted to eat your overdue books and your skull.”
The Githyanki said nothing, but his eyes narrowed. “Quaggoths are near. I smell them.”
"You know," Rigg said, "I’m starting to worry you enjoy this kind of thing."
"I enjoy surviving," he replied.
"Well," Lagerick grunted, “let’s earn our fifty gold before someone’s face explodes.”
High Jinks raised her hand and whispered a spell. A thunderous roar erupted from the cart—an illusory lion’s bellow, somewhere between reality and nightmare. The guards twitched. One stumbled. The cart shuddered violently.
Then the gate flew open like a drunk flinging a saloon door.
Two Quaggoths hurled themselves into the mud. They were monstrous—seven feet of snarling fur, jagged claws, and wet fury. One shrieked with unnatural rage, charging blindly. The guards behind them jerked like puppets on tangled strings, eyes rolling back as they began to advance.
Rigg moved first, because of course he did. His wrench arced through the mist and struck a guard full in the helmet. The clang rang like a temple bell, and the poor man dropped—whether from unconsciousness or embarrassment was unclear.
"Still got it," Rigg muttered.
The Quaggoth was on him before the next breath. It bellowed and slashed, claws tearing through the air with a wildness born of something deeper than rage. Rigg ducked, barely, and rolled into a puddle that might’ve once been a road.
"Less got it," he coughed, spitting mud.
Valen raised one gloved hand, and fire answered. With a flick of his fingers, a streak of flame shot forward and punched into the beast’s side. It howled as its fur ignited, the fire burning with the righteous fury of a man who really needed a dry cloak.
"Next time," Valen muttered, “I wear oilcloth.”
To the right, the Githyanki struck. He was a blur—a whirling dervish of planar steel and terrifying calm. His blade whispered through the air, slicing deep into the second Quaggoth’s thigh. Blood sprayed across the mud. The beast retaliated, but its claws met empty space as the Githyanki sidestepped like a grim shadow.
"Could someone please get this thing off me!" High Jinks shouted. She danced backward as a frothing guard lunged for her, claws out.
"No touching the merchandise!" she snapped, and let loose a pair of eldritch blasts. The first seared a black line across the guard’s chest. The second sent him sailing into the cart, which promptly collapsed on top of him in a soggy heap.
Lagerick stood calmly amid the chaos, humming an old dwarven hymn and slapping one hand onto his holy symbol. Light blazed around him, and a bolt of golden fire lanced downward from the heavens, striking the wounded Quaggoth in the back. It screamed—a sound that echoed too long for comfort—and crumpled to the earth, steaming and very, very dead.
The last beast turned and roared, charging straight at Valen.
He didn’t flinch.
Instead, he extended one hand, palm open, and whispered: “Fall.”
A thunderous blast of force erupted from his fingers. The Quaggoth lifted off its feet, crashed into a tree with a sickening crunch, and didn’t get back up.
Silence fell. Only the rain and the smell of scorched fur remained.
"Everyone still got their limbs?" Rigg asked.
High Jinks glanced at her tail. “Define ‘still.’”
They found the trail easily—drag marks, torn fabric, and muddy prints leading off the road and down a slope to a cave mouth so hidden it might as well have been embarrassed about existing.
It exhaled foul air. Wet stone. Mold. And something underneath, like... thought that didn’t belong to you.
“This smells like a trap,” said Rigg.
“Everything is a trap,” the Githyanki replied.
“True,” Lagerick added, stepping in anyway.
Inside, the cave pulsed. That was the worst part. It wasn’t the unnatural blue glow. It wasn’t the twisting walls that looked like they’d been grown, not carved. It was that they breathed.
“Anyone else feel like we’re in the digestive tract of something smarter than us?” High Jinks whispered.
“That’s because we are,” Valen said grimly.
Then they saw it.
A chamber opened ahead, lit with pale psychic light. At its center floated a child—levitating, unmoving, suspended by violet tendrils of psionic energy. Below it, an Illithid. The Mind Flayer turned slowly as if it knew they had arrived. Its tentacles writhed with hunger.
“Nope,” Rigg whispered. “No thank you. I’m out.”
Jinks leapt forward without hesitation. “Drop the kid, you octo-nerd!”
The Mind Flayer twitched a finger. A portal opened behind it, swirling and bright.
Then everything exploded.
The first Quaggoth came from the left—screeching, fangs bared. The Githyanki intercepted it mid-lunge, driving his sword through the creature’s shoulder. It shrieked and swung wildly, claws scraping off armor, drawing blood.
To the right, a second beast emerged—this one faster, meaner. It collided with Lagerick, who braced himself like a stone wall. The dwarf grunted as claws raked down his shield, then responded by bashing the Quaggoth in the snout and calling down divine wrath. Golden flame engulfed the monster, searing its eyes.
Meanwhile, the Mind Flayer began to chant.
“Uh oh,” Jinks muttered, and launched herself toward the floating child. She skidded under a beam of psychic energy and let loose a blast at the flayer’s feet, kicking up dust and distortion.
“Valen!” she shouted.
The wizard was already in motion.
Time slowed. Or perhaps it didn’t—perhaps Valen simply ignored it.
He sprinted across the room, boots slamming into the psionically carved floor. The portal began to shimmer. The child started to vanish. And then—
CRACK.
Valen leapt, coat billowing behind him, and snatched the child from mid-air a heartbeat before the portal snapped shut. He landed hard, cradling the boy, eyes smoldering.
“Got you,” he whispered.
Behind him, Rigg took the opportunity to do what he did best: hit something very hard with a wrench.
The last Quaggoth dropped.
The Mind Flayer, snarling in alien rage, vanished into the darkness—its spell unfinished, its prey lost.
They found the others in the back tunnels—eight villagers, bound and dazed, their eyes flickering with latent magic. One child clung to Jinks and whispered things in her mind that made her fur stand on end.
“We were going to be fed to something,” one muttered. “They said we had ‘potential.’”
The elf from the lighthouse met them at the edge of the road, breath catching at the sight of survivors.
“You actually came back,” he said.
“With bonus villagers,” Rigg replied. “That’ll cost extra.”
“I suspect this isn’t over,” the elf said grimly. “Not if the flayers are involved.”
High Jinks stretched. “Oh good. I was worried we’d run out of eldritch horrors.”
Valen remained silent, cradling the wand the Mind Flayer had dropped. It pulsed faintly in his grip.
Overhead, the stars blinked into view—alien, watchful, waiting.