Ch. 7: Mirror

VALEN

Valen was having a strange dream. He could see himself in a peculiar reflection as he'd never been - a bright-eyed hopeful warrior in shining green mithral - and yet he could look down and see what he'd always been - an animal. There was carnage at his feet, behind him, before him - dismembered limbs and heads, oozing ichors and fountains of blood staining the ground black as he cut swaths through his enemies out of the sheer, obsessive need to survive. Someone somewhere was calling his name, Valen, calling him awake, and just as he became certain of this he awoke in a fright. No, it was more than mere fright that set his heart pounding - it was something more akin to . . . rage. Something he swore he'd never feel again after he came to Zorvak'Mur.

He breathed through it. Calming down was much easier than it used to be. It helped that he had given up fighting; the very last thing that he wanted was to lose sight of his identity, after all. I am Valen, he reminded himself. Not the animal, not the killer. Just Valen. 

Sufficiently soothed, he went about the motions of his morning routine, whistling absently to himself as he did the work of opening up another day at the city's sole bakery. He carefully prepared and kneaded the dough for the morning rush, shout-singing orders to his fellow employee and co-owner, Rusty the golem. After getting Rusty to bring in a crate of supplies, Valen lovingly placed the final additions on his pastries by painting them with his special herbal glaze.

Finally ready to face the day, he washed his hands and walked to the front of the shop to flip over the 'open' sign. Within moments, people were streaming in for a bit of breakfast or bread to start off their mornings. Half his stock was nearly gone by the time the police arrived. Later than usual, a group of policemen led by their perennially unpleasant Chief Sharwyn waltzed in and seemed content to drink tea and wait on further pastries to come out of the oven.

"Didja hear?" The Police Chief called over to him. Valen turned his gaze to meet the woman's, her long hair a few shades darker than his own and tied back in a severe bun. He thought she would be quite pretty if she didn't wear a permanent scowl.

"Excuse me?" He politely asked, not knowing if this was one of her temperamental mornings or not.

"There's a new candidate," she informed him to his surprise. "As of yesterday. A drow, of all things." She said this with a modicum of disdain.

He hadn't known many drow, but something in him told him that this was unwelcome news. "You know me," he told her instead, "I keep my head down."

"Good," she said curtly. "I like you, Valen. Head down is where we should all stay for this one. Heard he's a Baneite."

A chill ran up Valen's spine at this announcement. A Baneite running for mayor? In his city? Unthinkable. "I don't think the city would elect a Baneite," Valen said dubiously. "Postmaster General would oppose it for sure."

"You never know what could happen," Chief Sharwyn bit out. "We live in a crazy world. Some people are ready for a crazy change."

"Our town has always been quiet," Valen said.

"No, V, it's just that you're the quiet type and keep your head down," Sharwyn corrected.

"Well, that's why you like me," he added with a smile.

"Don't get cocky," she snapped, and that was the end of the conversation.

He had Rusty man the front while he kneaded more dough in the back, preferring as always to work behind the scenes rather than man the counter. Rusty's sole commandment in life seemed to have always simply been - keep the shop clean. Rusty the golem, ironically, was more personable than Valen was despite not technically being a person. Perhaps it's just that people make me nervous, he thought.

Mid-kneading, he found the most peculiar thing inside his dough - a shiny, broken piece of what appeared to be a mirror. Curious and concerned as to how it had ended up in his food, he checked the rest of the dough thoroughly and pocketed the shiny piece. It was too large to have simply wound up there, and too shiny to be an ordinary mirror - it's reflection was pristine, to the point of wonder. Finding no other shards, he put the piece out of his mind and went back to work, tucking it into his apron and nearly forgetting about it.

Aside from his strange dream, his day turned out to be nice and normal - much like every day that had passed before it, and everyone should be since. Once the morning rush was over and things drummed down to a lull, he picked up a piece of bread for his lunch and munched on it as he went to go check the mail, having spotted the friendly neighborhood illithid delivery service at the post office box.

The illithid gave him a happy wave with his tentacles and a pleased mental nudge. Valen smiled and picked up the package that had been dropped off, whistling a pleasant tune to himself that he couldn't remember where or when he'd learned. With one hand around the package and the other holding his bread, he was defenseless to the sudden assault that happened.

Barreling around the corner of the side-street his bakery was located at, a colorful flying thing slammed right into him and knocked him onto the ground. Valen had no time to process what happened as an explosion of glitter assaulted his senses and caused him to begin to uncontrollably sneeze. "Me sorry!" Said a squeaky voice.

The next thing Valen knew, he was sitting up on the ground in a daze, his package undamaged, but his bread and the shard he'd had in his pocket were gone. Around the bend, he caught the tail end of his shiny flying assailant fluttering away on what appeared to be butterfly wings mounted on a rainbow-colored lizard's body.

Bewildered, Valen went back inside his bakery and thought about the turn his morning had taken. Realizing that the creature had stolen his lunch was more concerning than the shard of the mirror that he'd found - that had just been some garbage he'd found in the dough. "Rusty," Valen announced when he came in, "you wouldn't steal someone's food unless you were desperately hungry, right?"

Rusty paused before answering behind the re-purposed bar, "I was not instructed to steal, or feel hunger."

"Oh, right. Well, I remember being young and hungry enough to steal food. I think . . . Hey, pass me some of the leftover pastries from the rush, would you, Rusty?"

"As you instruct."

And so Valen, with a gift of food wrapped up in a bundle under his arm, marched off to find the colorful thief with a peace offering.

Initially he wasn't sure how he would go about finding the trail of a flying creature, but as it turned out the colorful thief left a trail of glitter behind him that made him relatively easy to track. Valen followed the shiny path of iridescent shedding as it wove in-between buildings, stepping around people's yards and stopping ever so often to ask for directions - if anyone had seen a shiny flying nuisance about - until finally he found part of the glittering path that led away from the city.

Now feeling a little anxious, he followed with more trepidation than before toward a small cave situated near the entrance of Zorvak'Mur's mage-lit cavern, just a little to the east of the main gate. Knowing it was the furthest he'd been since he came to the city, part of Valen had to pause as he doubted the validity of that thought. Had he ever been anywhere except Zorvak'Mur?

Shaking himself of those annoying thoughts, he followed the trail into the cave and called out in greeting. "Hello?" His own voice echoed back. "Is anyone there?"

". . . No?" A squeaky voice called back, questioningly.

Amused, Valen stepped further into the cave. "I brought food," he called out, hoping that would appease the thief.

With a tinkle and a fluttering of wings, a pseudodragon popped out of invisibility right in front of Valen's nose, startling him. He leapt back in surprise and let out a yelp, which startled the pseudodragon who mimicked him in the opposite direction. Both equally flustered, they sized each other up in the dim light of the cavern.

"Who is it?" A crabby voice barked from the back of the cave, this one feminine and strangely familiar to Valen's ears for a reason he couldn't identify but would later recognize this as the influence of the mirror's spell beginning to fail.

"It be the baker goat-man!" The pseudodragon squeaked out.

Valen flushed and reflexively touched his horns as his tail whipped back and forth in irritation. The iridescent pseudodragon fluttered a bit backward just as another form stepped into the light.

She was at least as tall as him, perhaps taller if you counted the height her horns added that curved around her head, pointing up toward the back with the left side having a broken notch near the tip. Her midnight-colored hair fell messily and carelessly to the tip of her pauldrons, and her skin was a russet red with eyes of glowing amber. A chord of familiarity rang in Valen for the second time that day as he took in her deep red adamantine-scaled form with wide eyes. She, too, might have been beautiful if it were not for the unpleasant scowl on her face and the sheer aura of irritation that oozed off of her.

"You're a cambion," he realized out loud.

"And you have eyes," she snapped. "Congratulations, perceiver of obvious things."

"I'm sorry," he reflexively apologized. "I came with some bread, but I didn't realize he wasn't alone or I would've come with more."

"Give it to me," she suddenly demanded with a hand outstretched. He found himself unable to refuse her command and deposited the wrapped bread into her waiting, black-clawed grip. Without a word, she tore off the cloth wrapping and bit down into the bread with obvious hunger and eagerness. He made a mental note to bring more by tomorrow, since the pseudodragon was stealing for two.

"Scaly just bringing by food for Brainy, see," the pseudodragon bafflingly explained.

"Uh, what?" Valen blurted.

"I be Scaly," Scaly the pseudodragon patiently explained, hovering in a bit closer and giving Valen a good sniff. "She be Brainy."

"S'what he calls me," Brainy the cambion answered around a mouthful of bread. "Names are fleeting attempts to categorize reality into chartable aspects. I am beyond names. And for some reason, extremely hungry. I've never been hungry before, and the feeling was very unpleasant."

"Oh. I'm Valen," Valen introduced politely. "I run the local bakery. Scaly here ran into me and took off with my lunch, so I thought I'd follow him and bring more food in case he was hungry."

"That be kind of you," Scaly said. "You be nice, goat-man. Scaly like you." Scaly hovered in a quick circle around the tiefling, buzzing contentedly.

Brainy just grunted around another mouthful of bread.

Though she didn't appear malnourished at a glance, there were deep circles under her eyes suggesting a lack of sleep for some time. Just who she was and why she was hiding out on the outskirts of the city with a pseudodragon as her only living companion in a cave, of all things, was beyond Valen and stirred his curiosity. He didn't want to be rude, however.

"Well, I'd better go—" he started, but Brainy stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Wait," she said, and then swallowed to articulate, "you're the one he took the shard from, aren't you?"

Valen pictured the mirrored piece he'd found in his dough and wondered once again just how it had gotten there and what its significance was. "Yes, I found it in the dough this morning," he answered. "Why?"

Brainy stared at him for a few seconds, contemplating. Something stirred in her eyes that culminated in frustration. "If only I weren't stuck in this miserable flesh," she grumbled, "I could just pry the information right from you . . . ! You must've recognized it, yes?"

He felt like he had, though how Brainy had guessed this was beyond him. Thinking back on it was like remembering a dream, only a distant recollection of half-remembered events; he was sure there was something about the mirrored piece that had struck him as familiar, but what it was, was intangible. He nodded to Brainy uncertainly.

She nodded back, like she'd expected this answer. "Yes. You were there when it was broken, after all. You must remember some of it. I've collected four so far, with the addition of yours. Mine is the largest collection in the city."

This only confused him further. "Look, I don't know anything about broken mirrors. I've heard they're bad luck. I just run a bakery. I should get back . . ."

"There is no going back," she said mysteriously with a crazed gleam in her eyes, "not from this, Valen Shadowbreath. You cannot hide from the inevitable in your mundanity. On some level, you know what you are. You cannot escape your very identity."

His mind, against his will, flashed back to the dream he'd had this morning and he valiantly repressed the mental image of the animal - the killer - inside. A thousand violent images passed behind his eyelids as he closed his eyes, shook his head, and backed away. "I have to go," he blurted, and practically ran for the entrance.

"Bye-bye, nice goat-man!" Scaly cried out, echoing behind him.

He did his best to forget about the strange encounter, but Valen's mind kept drifting back to the mirror shards. He had another strange dream that night, of flesh and gore on the plains of the Hells as a mighty flail at his side cut a path in front of him. He operated on instinct, and nothing could stand before him - everything was brought down in his rage. He had to calm himself down when he awoke again and did his best to forget. He wondered if he'd ever stop dreaming about it.

That afternoon, when he bumped into Brainy and Scaly in the Zorvak'Mur marketplace, he was damn sure that the dream was no coincidence. "You've started to remember," Brainy said instead of greeting him. Her golden eyes seemed to see right through him.

"Hello goat-man!" Scaly greeted cheerily. He fluttered in place near Brainy's shoulder.

"Hello Scaly," he greeted back pleasantly. "And, uh, Brainy? What is your actual name?"

"It matters not," Brainy spat out. "Now help us find more shards!"

"Uh, what?"

"That's what we're here for," she explained tiredly. "I need more for my . . . Collection. I'm almost complete. There can't be more than three or four left in this place."

"But, but they're garbage," Valen objected, unable to understand her attachment to the mysterious glass pieces. "You should just sell them. Oh, before I forget, I was going to bring you by more food later—" as he extended his offer, there was a commotion on the other side of the marketplace that drew their attention.

As Valen peered through the crowd to find the source of the disturbance, he was reminded of his conversation with Chief Sharwyn the previous morning. There stood on a podium a drow man with short white hair shaven along the sides of his head, ears pierced to the tip, trussed in adamantine armor eerily similar to Brainy's after drow fashion. On a chain around his neck dangled a coin with the small image of a closed mailed fist, and the sight of this gave Valen an uncomfortable chill. Here was the Baneite that was running for mayor, causing a clamor in the market for attention. There were several thugs in heavy armor and faceless helms at his side that pushed against the crowd, striking out at anyone who got too close. He couldn't hear what the drow was saying over the commotion but knew instinctively that it was nothing good.

"I should've never left my bed this morning," Valen realized, feeling uneasy.

"Ah," Brainy lit up in recognition and stood on the tip of her toes to get a look at the Baneite. "I was wondering what had become of him. This is . . . An interesting element."

"We should go," Valen urged. Scaly landed on his shoulder and made a whimpering noise.

"It seems I have some competition," Brainy went on nonsensically. "Valen! Get us a closer look."

"Did you not hear me? We need to go!" Valen found himself snapping, and then winced at his tone. That isn't like me. "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap."

"I care not," Brainy dismissed, and looked at him insistently. When Valen refused to budge, she hissed between her teeth and swiped at Scaly who flew off of his shoulder with a startled yip. "Go, get a closer look!" She commanded.

Scaly didn't question her and obeyed instinctively, which made Valen wince. With a flash of color, Scaly became invisible and flew up overhead with a gust of air and was gone from sight. Valen tried to grab at him mid-air, but his hands closed on nothing.

"What's he saying?" Valen overheard people nearby trying to make sense of the commotion.

He spied Chief Sharwyn and her men up ahead, closing in a circle around the Baneite and his followers. The drow man pointed a finger straight at her and cried, "Submit to Bane!" loudly, over the din. She seemed wholly unimpressed. This was met with derision, and before Valen knew it, someone had thrown a punch at the police and a fight broke out.

Screams erupted around the marketplace. Brainy was jostled in place and slammed nearly horns-first right into Valen's head, giving him a sudden splicing headache. Scaly dispersed out of invisibility right at that moment and collided with Valen's chest, leaving the tiefling to catch him in numb fingers as the pseudodragon panted with the exertion. "Baneite demanding town's submission to Bane!" Scaly reported.

"That's going to speed things up considerably," Brainy commented clinically. "Bane's always been a predictable sort."

"You're both mad," Valen declared, and grabbed Brainy by the hand. "Come on, it'll be safe in my shop!"

"It's not going to be safe anywhere," Brainy disagreed nonchalantly in stark contrast to the chaotic devolution of society all around them, but nonetheless followed him after she tore her hand from his grip. "Your hands are sweaty!" She complained.

"Rusty, lock the doors!" Valen ordered as they barreled into his bakery. The golem slowly trudged over to obey the command, and Valen was left with the confused and alarmed stares of his noontime customers. "Uh, there's a riot in the marketplace," he struggled to explain. A few eyebrows were raised and people crept over to the windows to get a look outside, but no one made any attempt to escape. "We'll be safe in here," he decided.

Brainy appraised her surroundings with distaste. "I knew I should've had this building torn down," she muttered.

"You act like you used to run the town, but you live in a cave," Valen pointed out.

She glared at him fiercely with her angry amber eyes. "When I'm out of this body, I will make all of you eat your words," she promised. "Literally."

Suddenly, the clamor from the market seemed to draw nearer, and before Valen really knew it the windows to his bakery were being smashed apart and Baneites were crawling in. The drow from the market was outside, crying 'SUBMIT TO BANE' and charged at Rusty, who wasn't programmed for self-defense and allowed himself to be calmly carved up, piece by clamoring piece. People in the shop began to run and scream for cover, some being cut down, others being spared when they knelt and surrendered. Valen could only watch in horror as his only friend in Zorvak'Mur was torn apart and his livelihood was destroyed. Scaly began whimpering in Valen's arms.

"Do not forget we are trapped in fragile meat! The spell won't stop him from killing us! We have to get out of here," Brainy reminded him, somehow maintaining a level head.

Valen nodded. "Back door," he whispered, and led them behind the counter and out the back through the employees' only entrance.

"The cave!" Brainy suggested as they booked it out the door and left the chaos and screams behind them. "Scaly, scout a route ahead free of enemies," she commanded. Scaly popped into invisibility again and disappeared for a time, before swiftly reappearing and leading them along a circumlocutious route toward the cave on the outskirts of the town that Valen had originally found the duo in.

"What we do now?" Scaly wondered in a tremulous voice.

"We wait," Brainy declared definitively. "And then we see who is in charge once things have calmed down."

"My shop is gone," Valen realized aloud.

"You were built for war, not baking," Brainy told him with the utmost derision. He wondered if she was psychic and could see into his dreams, for a brief moment. "You could have easily handled those men back there if you'd had your weapon."

"My weapon? I don't use weapons," Valen corrected her.

She glared at him again, fiercer than last time. "No?" She disagreed in a questioning tone. "You're saying you wouldn't feel more like yourself with a particular flail in your hand?"

The thought of him with such a weapon of destruction disturbed him for reasons Valen couldn't identify. It's as if his instincts and logic were at war. Initially, he assumed it was horror, but upon a moment's consideration he realized he had such a flail, back when he was used as a weapon in the Blood Wars. He never wanted to use it again. That had been the whole point of Zorvak'Mur, hadn't it? A place where he could be free of that? "I came here because I didn't want to fight anymore," he shot back.

"You came here because destruction is in your blood, tiefling," Brainy said. "I told you before, you can't escape your identity. I hate repeating myself. I wouldn't have to if I weren't trapped in an insipid meat sack. Then I could just carve my words right into your psyche in a place you'd never forget them."

Valen had his doubts on this subject but didn't want to voice them for fear that Brainy would challenge them and force him to dig even further into his past self or keep rambling about things he was starting to suspect he didn't want to know about. She had a way of getting into his head, under his skin, and he didn't like it. He insisted upon keeping watch outside the cave first and woke Brainy for her watch four hours into it. No Baneites stirred in their direction, though he could hear the rioting in the town for several hours, it seemed to have calmed down by the time it came for Brainy's shift.

He slept fitfully, and it took some time before his mind would calm down enough to let him rest. He was still reeling from the rapid destruction of his life over the course of a few small hours, and he knew somehow, instinctively, that it was all the mirror shards' fault. Everything had been strange since the morning he discovered his . . . But now there was a small part of him, thanks in large part to Brainy's prodding, that doubted this too. Had things ever been 'normal' in their small town? When had he fled from the Blood Wars? When had he arrived there, in Zorvak'Mur? Who was he?

In his dreams, he was someone else entirely. Once more he was that warrior he'd never been, clad in that shining armor, and experienced a strange vision of Brainy dying in his arms as he pressed down on a profusely bleeding wound in her side. 'Freckles,' she incongruously said and tapped his nose, just as he woke up to Brainy kicking him in the shin.

"Wake up," the cambion commanded impatiently. Valen groaned awake and sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes. His back ached from the cold, hard ground, which had irritated old wounds. "We need to go to the market again to look for more shards," she said at his questioning gaze.

"Market's the last place we should be after what happened yesterday," Valen disagreed.

"We have no other option," she said without really explaining anything. "I either collect all the shards, or the Baneite does. Do you have any idea what a Hand of Bane would do with those shards? I'm sure you have an imagination, trapped and suffocating somewhere in that neglected, obtuse mind of yours."

"What do they even do? They're just broken pieces of garbage," Valen tried to get her to see reason.

Brainy scowled deeply at him. "Your ability to ignore basic deductive reasoning astounds me. Why do they even call you General? Is it as a joke?"

"I'm not a General," he disagreed, feeling confused - although this was so far a normal feeling to have when interacting at all with Brainy.

"That's right, you're just a baker," she said snidely. "Still, I expect you to defend me if we run into the Baneites again. I can't have them assembling the shards on their own, and I haven't learned how to access this body's eldritch power yet. The consequences would be disastrous for everyone, but most importantly for me."

"I'll help if you tell me why they're so important."

She said nothing, and instead chose to wake up the snoozing pseudodragon. Scaly yipped when he was awakened, surprised to see Brainy's looming face over his own. "You need to sniff out more shards for me," she demanded.

"Oooh, Scaly tired," Scaly complained, fluttering up and landing on Brainy's horns.

"As for why they're important," Brainy finally answered turning back to him, "they're magical in nature, obviously, and that's all you need to know."

For whatever reason, Valen was unable to refuse her. Perhaps it was that he had nowhere else to go, or perhaps he simply didn't trust Brainy and Scaly not to get themselves killed, but he knew he'd rather fight than watch them die. The mental image from his dream again resurfaced of Brainy dying in his arms, of his bare hands clamping down on that bleeding side wound, and he felt like it was a prophecy.

The three of them trudged to the market again, on Valen's part feeling like he was on a funereal march. Things were significantly quieter then than they were the previous day. He spied at a distance his bakery, but it was in ruins and was that smoke coming from the windows? - and a part of Valen's heart broke at the sight of it. All that work, his life and livelihood, wrecked in a day by riotous Baneites. The tone was significantly subdued from the previous hustle and bustle, and only the illithid deliverymen seemed entirely unaffected by the mood. They continued floating along news and packages, unbothered by the quiet and suspiciously shuffling masses around them.

Valen wasn't sure what Brainy's plan was exactly and was unsurprised to see that she didn't seem to know what her plan was either. It started by Scaly fluttering around everyone's heads and making a nuisance of himself, while he loomed over her shoulder as she stared people down and asked them directly if they had any mirror shards in their possession.

It also didn't surprise Valen that when the police chief showed up, she singled him out of the crowd for a lecture. "V!" Chief Sharwyn cried out, getting his attention. He turned around to face her stern, tight-bunned visage.

"Yes, chief?" He asked politely.

"Just what in the hells do you think you're doing?" She demanded.

Brainy turned around to glance at the angry woman who glared at her profusely, before turning back to Valen to fix her glare on him. "He's performing a service for me," Brainy answered for him, unperturbed. "Scaly!" She barked, and the pseudodragon fluttered back over to fix himself on top of her horns. "Is she clean?" She demanded.

"Scaly not smelling anything but scared people," Scaly reported. "No mirror shards yet, Brainy."

"Hmm. Disappointing," Brainy remarked, and turned away from the furious police chief in disinterest.

"I don't know what you've gotten yourself involved in," Sharwyn barked, addressing Valen, "but you best stay out of the market from now on, V. The last thing I want is seeing you caught up in all this nonsense."

"How do you mean?"

She motioned for him to come closer, as if she had something to share in confidence. In a faint voice she said, "they've been here before, asking about those shards," she said, motioning toward Brainy and Scaly behind him. "And so has that Baneite, Solaufein. They're both obsessed with them. Keep your nose clean, V. You don't want to be mixed up with those types, they're nothing but troublemakers," she promised.

"Thanks for the warning," he offered, "but I can handle myself."

Sharwyn seemed dubious as she marched away back toward the other policemen. Valen turned to Brainy and Scaly. "I take it you've done this before?" He wondered aloud.

"Scaly may have robbed people in the market who hads the shinies Brainy needs," Scaly said dubiously. Brainy had no defense and simply 'harrumphed' and continued staring daggers into passerbys' backs.

"Wonderful," Valen muttered, "not only is my shop destroyed, but I'm being labeled as a criminal by association."

"There he is again," Brainy commented suddenly, drawing his attention. Her long clawed finger pointed in the distance toward a figure that was marching toward the market from the city center, accompanied at his side and back by people holding weapons or signs that said 'Bane for Mayor' in fearsome looking armor and marching alongside what appeared to be members of the postal service. They didn't have the look of the friendly neighborhood illithid, however, and wore different and darker robes rather than the plain brown uniform of the delivery service. These, Valen had no doubt, were renegade illithid - the most dangerous kind, who could pry your very thoughts from your head without twitching a tentacle, who could steal your mind and puppet you like a marionette without resistance. Something primal in Valen rose up at the sight of this force, and for a fleeting moment he met the eyes of the Hand of Bane marching at the mob's head - Solaufein - and something in him stopped. A moment of invisible, deep, yet fleeting recognition passed between them. I know this person, he realized as he met those wine-red eyes. He recognized it as the feeling he'd had when he'd met both Brainy and Scaly.

As the mob entered the market, everyone stopped doing what they were doing and began to back away and make room - some people even running for cover or fleeing with terrified screams. The only beings that moved not a muscle were Brainy, Scaly, Valen, and of all things - the street-sweeping golem Janitor, who had escaped Valen's notice until that very moment. The quiet golem continued in its ministrations, sweeping away broken glass and sand from the floors of the cobblestone marketplace, paying no one any mind as it mindlessly completed its task. Valen stared at the iron golem's imposing back for a moment before subtly grabbing Brainy's arm and moving them behind the golem, to hopefully escape the notice of the crowd of Baneites.

The drow drew a black, wicked looking sword from his hip and raised it in the air to gather attention. With a rasping, sinuous voice, he spoke in a manner that arrested attention to the small crowd of people that had gathered in the market that day. "People of Zorvak'Mur!" He announced in accented Common. "As the sole living candidate running for mayor, I have been elected by default! That makes me the sole ruler of this town. The first order of business - Bane demands a SACRIFICE!"

There were mixed reactions from onlookers.

"Must've murdered the other candidate—"

"We'll all be killed—"

"The Postmaster General won't stand for this!"

"Think he'll sacrifice my neighbor? I hate that guy—"

"Are you kidding? Look at all the illithid he has on his side!"

"I mean it, I really hate him! He's always borrowing tools and never bringing them back—"

"Postmaster may as well have endorsed him—"

"We're all gonna die!"

"Will you shut up?"

"I got your sacrifice right here—"

Valen could still picture all the people in his bakery, bowing or being cut down before the might of Bane. He knew in his heart that there was no way to escape this without bloodshed, one way or another. He started to stand up and out, to volunteer himself as a sacrifice - or perhaps just to get close enough to the Baneite to do something that would stop this from happening - anything - but abruptly, he was pushed down.

Valen looked up into the empty, sculpted metal orbs of the iron golem in front of him, the Janitor, who stared down at him with a blank mask of secrets. The Janitor golem's hand was upon his head, pushing him behind the golem's chassis protectively. Confused, he watched as the golem stepped forward, getting the drow's attention.

"I am an exarch," announced Solaufein. "Bane has spoken to me and demanded of Zorvak'Mur a sacrifice in his name. Either someone must offer themselves, or I will choose them."

The animal inside Valen stirred, rearing its head as he stepped forward from behind the golem, only to be startled into stopping as he saw the golem stand forward, as if to offer itself.

Solaufein regarded the Janitor golem with utter contempt. "Kill it," he commanded of his followers without blinking.

One of them approached the iron golem as several of his armored cohorts stepped forward and all simultaneously drew their weapons.

"Stay out of this, Valen," Brainy advised quietly.

The Janitor looked calmly down at the approaching armored mob and raised a foot, neatly and quickly stepping on the closest one of them and swatting away another with one mighty iron hand. There was an outcry as they all charged.

The crowd started to flee, pushing Valen, Brainy, and Scaly back against their will and jostling them. Valen found himself getting hit right in the nose with one woman's elbow and being forced to shove people off of them as he struggled to see what was happening.

The Janitor had instigated a battle with the exarch that it was losing. Initially the drow refused to participate, regarding the fight that unfolded before him with a mixture of displeasure and contempt, but then the golem began to do massive damage to his followers, throwing them into the distance and squashing heads like they were grapes. Valen had the peculiar sensation of living in one of his dreams as he watched the chaos unfold and found himself drawn into the conflict by nature when the drow finally joined the fray.

The Janitor golem had already lost one of its arms to Solaufein's wicked blade before Valen distracted the elf by chucking rocks at him, against Brainy's wishes who hissed her displeasure at his involvement to him. There was nothing she could do about it, however, as Valen became the new target of the drow's unfolding wrath.

As Solaufein advanced on him, Valen found himself oddly unafraid as the black sword came swinging near his head. He ducked under the obsidian blade easily and landed an uppercut with his left hand that sent Solaufein's jaw reeling. The drow drew back, tasting his own blood, and seemed to regard Valen with new eyes. "You will make a worthy sacrifice," Solaufein promised warmly as he advanced on the tiefling.

Valen picked up the nearest object he could find that he could use as a weapon - a discarded piece of metal in the form of the golem's arm that had been ripped off and used it to defend himself from another blow from the drow. The exarch seemed surprised and even a little bit pleased at the sudden challenge Valen presented, as the mob gave way to let them fight.

The tiefling found himself on the defensive, as Solaufein struck blow after blow, but landed none. Valen easily parried and blocked with the discarded golem arm - it was an unwieldy makeshift club but functioned for its intended purpose. He wondered absently how the golem felt, watching him use part of its body as a weapon.

The drow was skilled, but Valen knew he'd faced better - even better exarchs. He had never felt closer to his old self than he did in that moment in the market, facing down an enemy for the first time since he had given up fighting. After seeing the defenseless Rusty get cut down by Solaufein and the Janitor golem nearly face the same fate, something in Valen simply . . . Snapped.

His eyes flashed red, and the rage poured forth. The tone of the battle shifted as Solaufein found himself suddenly forced on the defensive, when Valen executed a back-hand with the golem arm that sent the drow reeling and tasting his own blood again. With a roar that ripped out of his throat instinctively, Valen used the arm as a club and railed at Solaufein with it. The drow barely had the wherewithal to dodge - one blow he attempted to parry with his sword, only for it to get wrested from his grip and sent flying back into his own mob.

The exarch seemed startled at the sudden shift, and Valen didn't waste any time in clobbering him over the head with the arm until he was unconscious. His rage spent, he stared down at his fallen foe dispassionately.

Valen could not find it in him to end another life. His mind reached back to the hundreds that had fallen before his flail in the Blood Wars, and something in him churned at the thought of revisiting that carnage. He had changed since he came to Zorvak'Mur - he was no longer that animal - and his eyes faded back to blue as he regarded the fallen drow before him. The angry mob of men and illithid closed in with waving tentacles and weapons, advancing on him. He could feel the snaking of their thoughts reaching toward his own like cold worms in his skull.

Abruptly, there was a flash of multicolored light, and suddenly he was back in the cave. His eyes blinked at the sudden adjustment. "Scaly not know he could do that!" Scaly cried out, swimming through the air in circles over his head.

"Oh, you're still alive," Brainy commented in a dry tone, standing only a few feet away from him with her arms crossed.

Valen stared down at the golem's discarded arm in his hands and looked to his left and saw the Janitor golem seated on the cave floor. The golem looked just as confused as he felt. "What just happened?" The tiefling wondered aloud.

"Scaly teleport you to safety!" The pseudodragon reported. "Just in time, too. Goat-man look like he was in losing fight."

"Did you kill him?" Brainy wondered clinically.

Valen shook his head. "I couldn't," he admitted. She grunted in response, seeming to expect this despite being disappointed by it.

The golem stretched out its one attached arm toward Valen, who deposited the discarded arm in its hand with a moment's hesitation. He watched in morbid fascination as the golem reattached its arm to its side, by simply sticking the ripped and cut end into its arm socket. There was no flesh to re-knit, but the metal seemed to mold itself over, resulting in a thin line that looked like a scar being the only evidence that the wound had happened at all.

"This has increased our timetable significantly," Brainy reported, pacing back and forth and scratching at her horns. "Who knows how many mirror pieces he has? It would have been better if you had killed him."

"I . . . Couldn't," Valen admitted. "And the mob would've killed me anyway, if I did."

"He'll be looking for us now," Brainy cautioned. Scaly swooped in and settled on her horns again. "And we won't get far, with a mortal exarch on our tail."

"Thanks for your help back there," Valen told the golem, who was still sitting and seemed to be processing its surroundings with its blank visage.

Janitor stared at him. "You are . . . Valen," it stated.

The tiefling blinked. "Er, yes," he babbled uneasily, "that's me. I'm afraid I don't know your name. Everyone just calls you . . . Janitor, because you do all the sweeping in the market, but it now occurs to me that it might be rude to just call you 'Janitor' all the time and I've never asked you for your name."

"I do not possess a current designation," Janitor stated blandly. "My purpose is . . . Was . . . To clean. To mend."

"I told you, names are irrelevant," Brainy snapped. "The point is that now we have a golem minion to help collect more shards. Scaly?"

Scaly sniffed the air experimentally. "Scaly not smelling anything over unhygienic cave," he complained. Brainy scoffed.

"Have you ever had a designation?" Valen wondered, drawing the golem's attention back to him. "Or maybe chosen one for yourself?"

Janitor didn't answer at first and seemed lost in thought. It was an unusual expression for a golem to have. "I had one once," it confirmed. "It is difficult to recall. I know the purpose of the mirror pieces, and that it must be kept out of the hands of Bane's followers."

"Is that why you helped us in the square?" Valen asked. It had been an uncharacteristic thing for a golem to do, out of nowhere. The Janitor golem nodded. "So what's so important about the shards, anyway?" He wondered.

"I told you, they're magical in nature, and that's all you need to know," Brainy cut in.

The golem stared at her. "Great misfortune will befall the world, if the exarch is allowed to reconstruct it," it confirmed.

"That didn't really answer my question," Valen complained. "How are we supposed to keep him from getting the pieces, then?"

"We hide," Brainy told him with finality. "And if necessary, we fight."

Brainy soon announced that she was too exhausted to put another foot forward and needed time to rest and think, so Valen took the first watch at the mouth of the cave while she and Scaly slept on a pile of discarded beddings. The golem soon joined him outside and sat down next to him and seemed contemplative. Eventually the Janitor golem offered to take over his watch so Valen could get some rest, for which he was grateful. He was hungry and tired from the fight earlier and wasn't sure how long he could keep going on the run. The enormity of their task overwhelmed him; the future seemed bleak and remote. A strange part of Valen felt comfortable in his current circumstances, though - the same part of him that lived for the moment in the Blood Wars. He felt his identity as the baker fade to the background, as the shining warrior stepped forward.

When he awoke from a thankfully dreamless sleep, Scaly had fallen asleep by his head, and Brainy had disappeared. Scaly was just as baffled by her absence as he was. More worrisome was that Scaly reported all the 'shinies' had gone missing, meaning Brainy was very likely out in Zorvak'Mur on her own with all the shards she had collected on her person, while an exarch of Bane was running amok hunting for them.

"We need to find her," Valen announced. "Scaly, do you have any idea where she might've gone?"

Scaly made a whining noise and curled in misery mid-air. "Scaly go everywhere with Brainy, since she finds Scaly," he said. "Why she not take Scaly with her?"

"Maybe she thought it would be too dangerous for you," he tried to comfort the pseudodragon.

"She left two hours previous," the golem reported from the floor, where it had barely moved since it had taken over Valen's watch.

"And you didn't stop her?" Valen wondered irritably.

"Was I supposed to?" Janitor threw back. "She told me plainly that I was not to attempt to stop her from leaving. I did not try."

"Why didn't you wake us to tell us what was going on? Never mind," he decided, "it doesn't matter. We need to find her."

"Leaving the cave with no direction would be unwise," the golem advised.

"It's better than sitting around doing nothing," Valen argued.

The golem then reached inside its chest - its hand passed through the metal as if it were water - and when it pulled out a mirror shard from its chassis, Valen wasn't surprised. The metal of its chassis reformed seamlessly as the Janitor golem presented the shard to him. "She did not collect all of them," Janitor reported.

Valen eyed the golem suspiciously. "Do you know what these are for or what they're capable of?" He asked pointedly.

"I cannot be certain," the golem answered, "but the Postmaster General knows. We must get to it. That is my estimation of Brainy's location."

"Why?"

"It is the only being powerful enough to stand up to the exarch of Bane, who has the remainder of the shards."

"I knocked him out in a fight, he's not that powerful," Valen disagreed. "But, fine, alright. We'll go to the Postmaster. You coming?"

The golem seemed to consider this as Scaly swooped in a slow circle over the golem's head. Finally, after some consideration, it placed the shard back into its chassis and nodded. "Yes. I will help you. That is my purpose."

The post office was located at the center of Zorvak'Mur, its vital beating heart as the only source of news in the town. The route to the Postmaster General was through its employees - the illithid - who had been elected to run the place and possessed a choke-hold on all the information in the town. No one had ever really met the PMG before, as the illithid guarded their top mind securely and carefully, though everyone read the newsletters and agreed that Zorvak'Mur was a nice enough town (at least until the Baneites had showed up and ruined it). It wasn't uncommon to see messages in the newsletters such as 'start your life over in Zorvak'Mur' or 'fresh beginnings' and such; the town advertised itself as a safe haven for those seeking a fresh start, such as Valen. However, it was now clear to him that this was propaganda designed to keep people in, and unquestioning of their circumstances.

They met fearful gazes and averted stares as the threesome made their way through the emptied streets of the city, past the market and towards the central tower that housed the post office. Rumor had it that the Postmaster General was on the top floor of the black stone spiral tower, surrounded by illithid attendants. How exactly they were going to get to that office was a little beyond Valen, but he figured that between the teleporting pseudodragon, the golem, and himself, they could figure it out. Finding Brainy was the priority; just how she'd expected to get to the top office looking the way she did was another question worth answering.

"Halt!" A voice cried out, grabbing their attention. It was Chief Sharwyn, surrounded by five members of the police in smatterings of armor with drawn swords at their sides. Valen stiffened at the delay.

"I'll handle this," he told the Janitor and Scaly in a deep voice. "You two, keep going. I'll catch up."

"Be careful, goat-man," Scaly said as he fluttered over the golem's metallic head and landed on its shoulder. The janitorial golem hesitated only for a moment before marching on.

"What do you think you're doing?" Sharwyn demanded authoritatively as she caught up to him, hands on her hips. Her cohorts had drawn their weapons, although her double-bladed sword remained strapped to her back.

"Nothing important," he lied. "Just going for a walk. Why, is that illegal?"

"For you? Yes," she snapped. "You're wanted for questioning after that display yesterday."

That was the moment Valen realized there was no way of getting out of this situation peacefully. "Then it's a good thing you didn't see me walking around," he said carefully.

Sharwyn's eyes narrowed. "Don't make me do this, V," she said in a low, even voice. "The Mayor wants you. Come quietly, and it'll be painless."

"Painless?" He scoffed. "He wants to 'sacrifice' me to Bane. I'm not coming quietly. Or, at all."

"Then you leave me no choice," she intoned regretfully, and drew her weapon. "Valen, you're under arrest."

Valen moved quicker than Sharwyn had time to process. Now that he'd done it before, it was as easy as flipping a switch in his head - he went from passive baker to warrior in the flicker of an instant and ducked low and dived forward and up to head-butt her under the jaw, horns-first. He knew it would cause damage, but it wouldn't be irreparable - it would be enough to disorient her and hopefully take her out of the fight with the force he'd put behind the blow. She was knocked flat on the ground and out cold.

One of the men at her side reacted first and slashed down at Valen clumsily with his sword, which the tiefling easily dodged and aimed an elbow at the man's face, hitting him right in the nose and knocking him back into one of his cohorts who struggled to hold him upright. From behind him, Valen could hear the scuffle of feet and dodged forward and away to avoid getting skewered by another of the police.

He grabbed Sharwyn's weapon that had fallen on the ground when she did and batted away any swords that came near him. Just as they began to encircle him, a troupe of Baneites showed up.

They marched in single-file, carrying torches and weapons at their sides of all shapes, types, and sizes. There were at least ten of them. The only thing that significantly differentiated them from the police was the adamantine armor they wore, the sigil of Bane's clenched fist they wore about their necks, and their faceless helmets.

At first there was laughter from the police, as they expected that they'd be backed up in their fight against Valen, but after a few moments it became clear that the Baneites weren't there to back anybody up. They were only there for blood. Their leader at the front of the line issued a barking command, and simultaneously the line of men fanned out around the street.

"What do you think you're doing?!" One of the policemen cried out. It was a useless gesture.

"Take them all!" The Baneite leader crowed and a three-way fight between Valen, the police, and the Baneites suddenly broke out.

Valen managed to escape the scrape before it became too violent and bolted after Scaly and the golem, but not before issuing an apology behind him directed towards Chief Sharwyn as he did so. He knew she was probably unconscious and couldn't hear him, but he kept her double-edged sword with him just in case he needed a weapon and carried on. The apology made him feel a little better. She was, after all, just doing her job.

Valen was surprised to encounter so little resistance as he wound his way up to the spire, running as though his life depended on it. The ulitharid valet manning the platform that rose into the levitating spire of the post office barely glanced at him before hitting the operating runestone with its hand-tentacle.

Going up? It asked him, and Valen nodded. He spared a moment to glance at the chaos he'd left behind him. It was a painfully slow ride to the top, given the massive hurry Valen was in.

The ulitharid waved half-heartedly after him as the platform rose to a stop, and Valen took off like a bullet loose from a sling. The illithid in the black and winding spire gave way before him as he rushed through, waving irritated tentacles after him due to his rush.

He finally caught up with Janitor and Scaly, noting their passage by the shedding of iridescence from Scaly's wings. "You're alive," the golem seemed surprised.

"Scaly knew baker-man be alive! He never doubted."

Valen paused a moment to catch his breath. "The Baneites are coming. If they give chase . . ."

"We must reach the Overmind before they do," the golem intoned, and continued marching forward.

Valen stared at its head. "The what?"

It paused a moment. "The one you call the Postmaster General. It is the Overmind of the illithid."

"Oh." While he hadn't known that, it made sense that the Postmaster would be housed in the illithid spire, if it was the illithid in charge of all the others. He experienced the strange feeling of déjà vu as he followed behind the golem and watched more of the illithid give way to their passage, until they finally reached—

The inner ring - the sanctum of the Overmind, the Elder Brain. The doors were wide open. Valen, the golem, and Scaly stepped forward into the chamber with trepidation as something cold and ugly settled in Valen's gut at the sight of it. It was the most repulsive thing he'd ever seen - a massive brain in a greenish vat, teeming with tentacles and attended to by mindless kneading slaves. No other illithid were present, but a strange message whipped across his mind - VALEN? IS THAT YOU? - in surprise, the giant brain seemed to recognize him. The feeling wasn't mutual.

He staggered back, just as the reality of what he was actually seeing seeped into his awareness. There was Solaufein, barely fifty feet away, pulling his black sword from the fallen Brainy's gut. He was pocketing the shards she'd kept on her person as she died, hyperventilating to a vicious stop on the ground.

"No . . . !" Valen blurted and clenched at his weapon at the sight. He felt his dreams were prophetic, and his rage stirred. He only spared a moment to regret not killing the drow in the first place. Everything had been for nothing; after all, they were only all there because of her.

Solaufein seemed mildly surprised. "L'or'shanse! Zexen'uma k'jakr rena usstan elgg'dos," he addressed his would-be sacrifice. He pointed his weapon at Valen, and grinned a white-toothed, sinister smile.

Valen brandished his double-sword and prepared for a fight.

That was when Scaly popped out of invisibility right over Solaufein's head and sneezed out glitter. The glitter cloud enveloped Solaufein's head, dazing him and causing the drow to drop his cruel black sword with a clang and fall over with a thud into a giggling heap.

Overall, it was very anti-climactic, such that Valen didn't entirely know what to do with himself for a few seconds and just stood there with the double-bladed sword in hand, watching the drow fall over and laugh.

"Scaly not know he could do that!" Scaly announced cheerily and flew in lazy circles over Valen's head.

The golem seemed to have more wherewithal than Valen and ambled over to the fallen drow who was muttering to himself in his delirium. Valen kicked the black-bladed sword away with a clatter, and the golem started to ransack the drow's body for the mirror shards.

Valen knelt down next to Brainy's corpse and sighed, feeling useless. "Why did you run off on your own . . .?" He wondered. Out of a lack of anything better to do, he closed her eyes and arranged her body in a more dignified position.

"I have the shards," the golem reported, and displayed the five shards in his hands - one from the drow's own keeping, and four from Brainy's. "Shall we kill him?" The golem wondered, looking down at the Hand of Bane.

- WAIT - cried out the Postmaster General psychically. Valen rubbed his brows as the message throbbed in his head. - DO NOT HURT HIM - The Elder Brain pleaded.

Valen only regretted not killing the drow in the first place - then, Brainy would still have been alive. "Why?" He asked aloud, looking to the massive pulsing gray brain in a vat and feeling a little ridiculous about what his life had come to. "Killing him earlier would have solved a lot of our problems," he noted.

- YOU MUST NOT HURT HIM. VALEN, SURELY YOU REMEMBER - and with this message came a host of strange images - of himself as the mithral clad warrior, fighting side-by-side with Solaufein against other drow, mowing down enemies in a righteous swath. He saw his old flail in his hands, back where it had always belonged. To his other side, was Brainy streaming hellfire from her fingers at his foes, eyes gleaming with the same battle lust that reflected his own.

Then, Scaly landed on his shoulder, snapping him out of the fantastical memory. "Goat-man? Is . . . Brainy be dead?"

He looked down at her too-real corpse and numbly nodded. As he thought back on his interactions with her, and looked at the Elder Brain, the great being they called the Overmind, a few pieces of a strange puzzle fell into place. "You're . . . You're not really the illithid's Elder Brain, are you?" The mind that touched his did so tentatively, even fearfully.

"No, that be what Brainy calls herself," Scaly said, very slowly, like he was speaking to a child. "Scaly just call her Brainy for shorts. This be Postmaster General," the pseudodragon further reminded, causing Valen to pinch is nose in a desperate attempt to grant himself more patience, for fear he was about to slap a fairy dragon down. "I know the difference can be hard to understand, but it be helpful that one be a very large brain in a vat, and the other a goat-lady."

"Jatha'la nempori ak'nen . . ." The drow muttered from the ground in-between breathless laughs.

"We are missing the frame," the golem interrupted. It had arranged, very carefully with its large fingers the fragments of a small vanity mirror.

There was a clatter somewhere behind them, as something splashed out of the brain's juicy vat and wetly clanged onto the floor next to Brainy's feet. - IT'S BEEN HERE. THIS TIME, I WAS THE FOOL, EVEN THOUGH I WAS THE ONE WHO BROKE IT - the brain admitted, sending the vivid image to his mind of a strange hobbling winged elf in obnoxiously colored clothes with disturbingly clear and emotive eyes of blue.

Valen walked over to the object on the ground, noting its circular shape but possessed no desire to get his hands on the brain's fluids covering it. "Why was it in your vat? You know what, never mind," he cut himself off as he banished the thought, neither caring nor wanting to know just what stroke of luck or deranged fate had landed him here. He picked up the mirror's frame with a stubborn grimace and handed it off to the unflinching janitorial golem.

"You never did tell me your name," he said, drawing the golem's impassive gaze as he rearranged the pieces delicately into the frame.

"I cannot remember it. Perhaps that will change when the mirror has been repaired. In any case, I am glad that we met. Are you ready?" The golem held the last piece and looked to him.

Valen took the piece out of the golem's hands and put it into its proper place, and everything he thought he knew changed.

It was a subtle difference now that he'd thought about it. He could accept that the baker had been a bafflingly enormous and elaborate lie. The spell hadn't altered all of his memories, it had simply suppressed a few and . . . Added new ones. Not like Nathyrra, who was poised in the golem's place with the mirror in hands, staring down at her reflection in mute surprise - or Deekin who flopped off of Valen's suddenly pauldroned shoulder onto the ground with a loud and nearly deafening yelp as he no longer had the wings to support himself.

Really, nothing about their positions had changed, and they were still stuck in the chamber with a very tentacled and well-massaged Elder Brain who was still pulsing malevolently, only this time seeming more sincere about it. Brainy - no, not Brainy, he self-reprimanded - Binne was still and cold on the ground, unchanged.

He'd never seen someone move so quickly - perhaps due to the enchantment on Solaufein's boots as the drow, now in full awareness, practically skidded across the ground toward a strangely silent Enserric and swept him up with both hands. He bounded past Valen and leapt onto and over the glass of the Elder Brain's vat and took a flying leap with the sword in hand right at the giant brain in the gray matter. Green, blue, and gray fluids began to sluggishly spill out right around Enserric's entry point, and the sword suddenly came to life as its vampiric enchantment no doubt activated. "AUGH!" The sword cried. "I enjoy the finest nap of my tenure as a sword and wake up to this nonsense? You're feeding me brains?! I'll never be clean again!"

The tiefling General became suddenly aware of his flail in his hand and held onto it like a lifeline as he followed Solaufein's example and leapt over the glass and landed between two of the mindless slaves massaging the brain's pulsing gray matter. He pushed them away, turning and hitting the shocked Elder Brain with everything he had. He was hit with the disruptive thought that it felt no different to him than kneading dough.

He could feel the Elder Brain's psychic lashes and see them as hallucinations - shadows and visions of the past that had no sway over him. Each time he struck, they stopped, so he kept striking. It had no physical defense against him, which made it a rather simple killing as far as these things went. It was over in the span of a few minutes of frenzied smashing and stabbing, until both he and Solaufein were covered in goo the nature of which he had no desire to learn, and the room was splattered with gray brain matter. Some of the mindless slaves had wandered into the gore once it was done and attempted to massage the broken parts, or piece them back together, but there was nothing to be done for them. The spell hadn't even been able to affect their minds, being absent of them.

"I think it is dead," Nathyrra finally spoke up as he and Solaufein locked eyes with each other, nodded once in the silently eloquent gesture that conveyed both forgiveness, acceptance, and promised a sparring match later to sort it all out between them in that way only they seemed to be able to do.

Deekin was digging through his seemingly bottomless bag of holding and emerged with a twisting braided wooden rod, and whapped Binne straight over the horns with it. Two tense seconds later, there was a flash of light and Binne awoke sitting upright and taking a few panicked, gasping breaths. She calmed down quickly when she saw Deekin by her head and looked around her with confusion. "Sune's fiery crotch," she swore in disgust. "Do I even want to know what happened in here?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" Nathyrra cut in.

Binne looked down at the mirror in Nathyrra's hands with a guilty look. "I remember . . . Breaking the mirror, when we got in here and the Elder Brain tried trapping us in all those illusions," she recalled.

"Then you know who you are, and where you are. This is excellent. The rest of the story is unnecessary - the mirror is back in one piece, and everything is as it was. The Elder Brain is dead," Nathyrra reported clinically.

Binne stared around at all the pieces of brain everywhere, and eyed Solaufein cleaning off the grumpy Enserric. "Yes, I can see that," she noted dryly. "I suppose this means negotiations have totally broken down. Has anyone seen my scythe?"

Valen spied it on the ground nearby and threw the warscythe to her after she stood up. She caught it in both hands and tested it weight with familiarity. As if she had suddenly remembered something, Binne looked up brightly, and then around herself in confusion. "Where'd the Ladybard go?" She wondered.

Valen saw Sharwyn's double-bladed sword on the ground by his feet and swore. "Fuck! I left her unconscious, with no weapon, surrounded by Baneites!"

"Well, we should probably check up on her then," Binne said nervously when everyone took a moment to digest this information.

He picked up the bard's weapon and made for the door, only for Solaufein to beat him in his enchanted boots and bolt out ahead of him in a black and ruby blur with Enserric still complaining about being unclean the entire time. Nathyrra kept pace with him, handing off the mirror to Deekin, as she held a similar enchantment on her short sword.

Battle erupted ahead of Valen, but he caught up and helped tear a path through the illithid that had gathered in the halls. He watched as Nathyrra ransacked the body of an ulitharid that had stood guard out in the halls and took back the green-stoned circlet that had shielded her thoughts when they were posing as slave-owners. He was glad to finally let the disgusting disguise drop and do what he was born to do instead.

The mind-flayers scattered before them, just in time for Binne to cause more chaos by throwing eldritch fire into their midst. Behind him he briefly heard Deekin's cymbals clanging before seven more Deekins of various translucent colors trailed right past him screaming following the fire toward the dispersing crowd, causing even more chaos.

A spell spilled from Nathyrra's fingers, beaming out as a trail of crimson light ahead of them that erupted into a low-hanging ochre fog of noxious, deadly fumes which even at a distance made Valen's nose and tail curl and caused Binne to curse. A few illithid escaped by shadow doors, at least one by the tell-tale blur of a well-timed time-stop, but most just . . . Melted. He inwardly swore to himself in that moment that he would never, if he could help it, get into a fight with Nathyrra.

"Well, go ahead and take all the fun out of it, why don't you," Enserric criticized.

Solaufein sighed. "Elgg uns'aa."

"I do love the taste of drow blood, so piquant, like how I imagine a spiced wine must be," the sword offered generously.

"Deekin, do you have a spell to summon air?" Nathyrra looked down at the kobold.

Deekin thought about it before reciting a badly mangled arcane phrase and then - pop - an air elder air elemental in full regalia floated gently next to him.

Nathyrra grinned. "Perfect. Now we can push the air ahead of us, until it disperses."

"You're an evil genius," Binne complimented.

With some careful instruction, the air elemental was able to use small gusts of wind from its hands to push forward the wilting gas that had tinged the air rust orange. By the time it managed to disperse, the bodies it had left behind told the tale of a gruesome, pitiless massacre.

"Why is it everywhere we go we seem to leave a trail of terribly mangled corpses on fire behind us?" Binne wondered aloud.

"It is our, what is the word, idiom," Solaufein said. "Though I fault Halaster entirely for all of this."

"Bloody barmy wizard," she agreed.

They finally reached the old ulitharid valet on the platform, who was still poised in its position and looking rather panicked about everything. Its tentacles flailed in fright as they approached, but it did not move. "Wait," Nathyrra instructed, and stepped forward, he circlet glimmering in the faint light. The ulitharid's tentacles waved in the air for a moment before she turned back to them and reported, "he does not wish to fight. He says he will lower us into the city if we promise to leave."

"That is our intention, once we find Sharwyn," Solaufein agreed, even though he was eying the tall monster with a clenched hand over Enserric's hilt.

They stepped onto the platform and it shuddered into motion briefly before gently lowering them down from the spire toward the city of Zorvak'Mur, the entire population of which, as they discovered when they arrived, was engaged in an all-out riot. It was illithids versus former slaves who, with their memories of the falsely peaceful town, had discovered a common will.

And then, there was their leader, strumming a battle-hymn that had roused that common purpose and formed it into a crowd only the way a performer can, whom was the woman Valen had head-butted not over an hour or so ago. The progress must have ensued since the time of the spell's reversal; Valen thought it remarkable that things has escalated so quickly.

Sharwyn was at the head of the mob, being carried by the crowd even as she howled out a song and strummed her lute. Valen's nose twitch as the heady scent of powerful bardic magic washed over him - even he felt the urge to join them all in the call to battle, to rip and smash and maim and kill.

"I suppose we didn't need to rescue her after all," Binne laughed.

"Ladybard can take care of herself," Deekin said with surety, but then seemed to doubt his own statement as he added, "though she sure died in Undermountain fast."

The former police, formerly gladiators, had refused to turn back to the pits they'd been spelled out of and were taking their vengeance upon their captors. Sharwyn's bardic song seemed to have the effect of inspiring or enraging the crowd even more than they'd already been, rendering the illithid's powers of mind control essentially useless against the torrent of rage they were trying to stem.

A group of mind-flayers attempted to flee in the group's direction, back toward the tower, only to be met by Valen's flail, Solaufein's sword, Deekin's crossbow, Binne's scythe, and Nathyrra's spell that chained lightning between their enemies and physically stunned three of them, making the other three easy work for the warriors.

One of their psionic blasts hit Binne, however, and she unexpectedly turned on Valen with a dazed smile. "Freckles," she laughed and swung her scythe toward his head.

He ducked under it and growled in annoyance. She began to single-mindedly attack him at the illithid's bidding, who began to use her as its last line of defense in keeping Solaufein and Nathyrra at bay with hellfire from Binne's claws. It was clear that none of them had any desire to hurt her, but Valen alone seemed unafraid of at least giving her a couple of bruises and keeping her occupied. He treated it like a spar and did his best to keep her attention away from the illithid, who quickly died without its mindless confused slave defending it under Enserric's edge, but the spell of confusion remained over Binne and she began to manically (while cackling) chase Valen at scythe-point. He ran, figuring the spell would soon snap - he knew that if he turned around and attempted to disarm her, he could very well face an eldritch blast or hellfire to the face or worse. His only response would have to be something incapacitating, that would wound her.

So he ran away from Binne's attacks, growing steadily more annoyed, until the clattering of cymbals and the strumming of a lute behind him alerted him to Sharwyn and Deekin's presence. "DOOM doom doom, doomy doom DOOM!" Deekin cried out the Doom song, and oh, Valen would have never in his wildest dreams imagined hearing that song in relief, with Sharwyn strumming accompaniment even as the mob behind her continued to riot, smashing windows, breaking doors, and lighting fires.

Binne immediately snapped out of her stupor and sneezed. "Oi, how'd I get over here?"

"You're back to your senses. Good," he snapped. "We need to stay in a group - come on."

"Hey, it's the baker!" One of the former townspeople called out. "You're the one who smashed that—"

"It's the Baneite!" One of them shrieked in fear, pointing toward Solaufein.

They began to brandish their weapons, closing in on the group.

"We're here to help you," Valen tried to reassure them.

"They are not our enemies!" Sharwyn cried out, drawing everyone's attention in a commanding voice. He'd forgotten for a moment that she was the one leading the mob, after all. "They were under the same spell that we all were - that I was too - and they are here to free you from your slave masters!" The was an uproarious cheer after she said this, and she started to hum and sing her battle hymn again as the crowd picked up a chant.

'Kill the mind-flayers, kill the mind-flayers,' became the former gladiators' and slaves' litany.

The mob spread a little further up the street leaving carnage and property damage in its wake. Sharwyn was able to break apart from them for a moment and greeted them all with a bright grin despite her cuts and bruises. Valen felt particularly responsible for the deep purple one on the edge of her jawline, where he'd head-butted her. "Hello, V," she greeted him first with a bright smile, and then turned it on everyone else. "It's wonderful we've all sur—"

"You're the demon who robbed me!" One of the ex-slaves former-townspeople had broken away from the mob, this one wielding a torch but no weapon, and was pointing her finger right at Binne. She was a half-elf judging by appearance, blond and gray-eyed and was entirely out of place in the Underdark. It did not appear she'd taken to slavery well, judging from the strange fluids her makeshift armor and clothes were saturated with. They all turned to face her.

Binne looked taken aback. "I would never! Probably!"

"Yeah, it was you and that dragon-thing," the half-elf swore.

"What? Only dragon I've ever seen nearly landed on me!" Binne defended, strangely.

"Oops, that be Deekin," Deekin spoke up, drawing the half-elf's wide eyes. "Yeah, that be long story, elf-lady. You sure you want to hear that now? Or maybe waits until everyone escapes this place and gets to safety?"

"Ha! What's safety?" The woman let out a hollow, bark of a laugh. "We're in the Underdark, if you haven't noticed."

"I did, indeed notice," Solaufein spoke up, startling her. "He is Deekin, I am Solaufein. This is Nathyrra, Binne, Valen, and Sharwyn. We are not your enemies."

"Weren't you the guy going around trying to sacrifice people to Bane?" She asked, somewhat rhetorically. "I'm Celia, by the way."

"Celia," Nathyrra said, "the spell that made you want to live here affected all of us. You were in possession of a strange, mirrored piece, correct?"

"I was, 'til she stole it," Celia confirmed, looking at Binne who was nonplussed. "I'm not mad about it, it was just a piece of garbage I found, but it struck me as happening right before everything fell apart. 'Course, things weren't looking up for me either way. The illithid I was sold to was up in the tower, where I heard the first massacre happened."

"You're welcome," said Binne. "Though that was mostly Nathyrra's genius."

"So what, the spell made you a Baneite?" Celia looked at Solaufein in distrust.

"Nathyrra and I are Eilistraeens," Solaufein corrected.

"Does it always have to be about religion with elves? I swear it's like having Linu here again," Sharwyn chuckled. "We're adventurers," she further corrected.

"Famous adventurers!" Deekin added. "That not be so important though, right nows."

"Deekin has a point," Binne conceded, and addressed Celia. "You. Are there other people like you in this crowd? We need to convince everyone that they have to leave Zorvak'Mur, or risk getting more people needlessly killed. We know a place they'll be . . . Safer. Relatively."

Celia blinked. "Probably. I can try to spread the word. Can't say people want to listen. A lot of them just . . . Want to kill everything that moves and burn it all down."

"Great, more corpses on fire. Because I needed to be reminded of that smell," Binne complained.

The word of a 'relatively' safe place outside of Zorvak'Mur spread like the fires of Zorvak'Mur - initially in small, isolated pockets before engulfing the entire town in a localized wildfire. The group spread out one-by-one to try and reach as many people as they could but were largely met with derision and even outright contempt. The few that decided to follow them for the promise of a better life in the Seer's encampment gathered in the market at the center of town - they were a mixture of slaves and gladiators from all diverse kinds of races and languages, though more of the former than the latter. Sharwyn brought back the most, still strumming her lute and singing, and Deekin and Binne perhaps the least, as people - even ex-slaves - proved they were less than willing to listen to reason when it came from the mouth of a cambion or a kobold, no matter how smart they were.

When they were gathered, a murmuring arose. Celia alone stepped forward. "What's the plan?" She demanded of them.

Everyone looked to Solaufein almost subconsciously. He didn't seem to notice and told her calmly in accented Common, and then repeated in flawless Undercommon, "to leave this place and gather in the city of Lith My'athar, where a commune of Eilistraeens will help you, and heal you. If you choose to follow us, that is."

The murmuring got louder, but eventually it seemed a consensus was reached. When they made to leave, Celia was the first to follow them, followed by most of the rest of the crowd numbering perhaps a score, with a few remaining behind to continue looting the city and kill any remaining mind flayers. Valen silently wished them luck, but knew it was no good; some form of reinforcement from a neighboring mind flayer pod, or from the Valsharess, would return here once they left and reclaim the place, enslaving or killing anyone who was left. Still, he could not fault them - they had a right to choice.

There were no illithid to stop them on the way out, even as they stepped over squishy piles of cloth and invertebrate tissue here and there. Valen wondered if they were perhaps all dead save for the ulitharid valet they'd left behind on the spire.

Once they passed through the illusory waterfall, past the cave they'd been hiding in before, Nathyrra took point for the way back toward Lith My'athar. Her infrared eyes expertly scanned the dark and found the path of least resistance for their troupe to follow.

While stopped for a moment and watching their column of escaped slaves stumble their way through the dark, Valen only hoped and prayed to any god that was listening that they made it through without encountering any enemies en-route.

"Well, I'm not really sure what happened here," Binne unexpectedly spoke up from beside him, "but I think we can all agree that was fucked."

"I will tell you the entire story another day," Solaufein promised her.

"I'm not actually sure I want to know," she said dubiously. "Apparently I died. Again. And we somehow upended an entire illithid pod and killed their Elder Brain and wound up with a small army of slaves. We have a way about us that turns cities on their heads."

"It's our idiom," Valen said with a smile.

Drow-to-Common Dictionary:

L'or'shanse! Zexen . . . Hey, my sacrifice! Hold still so I can kill you.