RETURN TO THE SEVEN MASKS THEATER
They didn’t have a lot of time to do everything they suddenly needed to take care of before infiltrating Xanathar’s that night, so they grabbed a carriage and rode to the Seven Masks Theater.
Arriving at the theater, they found it under guard. Suspicious looking thugs were watching the front door from across the street, and a couple more were loitering around the side entrance. The thugs looked human, but… They shrugged and headed down the alley, passing by posters still advertising performances of Sapphiria’s Booty and identifying themselves to the thugs. “We’re here to meet with Rongquan. Is he in?”
The thugs knocked on the side entrance. A moment later Rongquan cracked open the door and peeked out. He broke into a big grin. “Big five!”
The Trollskulls, recognizing the anti-doppelganger code they had set up with him, answered with smiles of their own as they were ushered into his office.
“How can I help you?” Rongquan asked. “Can I get you a drink?”
“That’s all right,” Kittisoth demurred. “What’s with all the guys outside?”
Rongquan, having grabbed a drink of his own, flirtatiously laid his hand over Kittisoth’s own. Kittisoth resisted the urge to roll her eyes out of her head… mostly. “To tell you the truth… it’s a cover story!”
“Really?!” Kittisoth said with faux adulation and naivete. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not really sure,” Rongquan said. “Some very secretive business with the investors. I’m not even allowed to leave my office!”
“Could we speak with the investors?” Kittisoth said, batting her eyes. (The others barely concealed their laughter.)
“Well… I suppose!” Rongquan knocked on the inner door of his office and spoke with some people on the other side. A few minutes later another knock came, Rongquan excused himself, and a dark elf entered. They were surprised to see it wasn’t Jarlaxle.
“Is Mr. J here?” Theren asked.
“No,” the dark elf said. “No he’s not.” He flopped down into a chair and kicked his boots up onto Rongquan’s desk. “Elves,” he muttered. “It’s always elves…”
Theren frowned. “You are an elf.”
“Don’t insult me,” the dark elf said.
“We need to speak with him,” Edana said.
“He has plans this evening,” the dark elf said. “But you could leave a message for him.”
“Where are his plans taking him this evening?”
“If I told you that, I don’t think ‘Mr. J’ would be very happy with me.”
“Well, Mister… What was your name?” Pashar asked.
“Soluun.”
“Well, Mister Soluun, give Fel’Rekt our best, and when you hear back from Mr. J, if you could be so kind as to—”
“If you have a message, I’ll take it,” Soluun said bluntly. “And then get out.”
Kittisoth fumed. “Excuse me? Do you have better things to do? Because—”
Edana restrained her. “Just let him know that we have a concern. About a neighborhood matter.”
“All right,” Soluun said. “I’ll pass it along.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Kora said. “We’re here about the kid.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” Edana said. “And I’m sure that if any harm comes to that kid, it will not be in Mr. J’s best interests.”
“I don’t know who this kid is,” Soluun said. “But I’m sure he’s somewhere safe.” He gave a little smile… and Edana was certain that he kid was here, in the theater somewhere.
But there didn’t seem to be anything they could do about it. They’d played their little dance, but now the music was coming to an end. They stalked out of the office and back to their carriage.
THE HARPER CACHE
It wasn’t hard to identify the warehouse Dain had been talking about. It was, in fact, backed directly against Yellowspire Tower. Approaching it from the court north of Turnback Court, they found that its windows were boarded up and there was a big padlock on the front door that Edana made quick work of.
The interior of the warehouse was one big space, with various stacks of crates and boxes here and there. Everything had a thick layer of dust on it. The place was clearly ill-used.
“Everyone take your Harper pins off,” Kora said. She slipped their pins into a bag of holding, removing them from this plane of existence, and then cast locate object and zeroed in on a Harper pin underneath a nearby crate.
With a shrug, Kittisoth lifted the crate out of the way, revealing a trap door with a heavy iron pull ring. Hauling the trap door open revealed stairs down to a small basement room. Kora redistributed their Harper pins as they went down the stairs.
At the bottom, they found an empty room. It only took Edana a few moments, however, to find an illusory patch of the wall concealing a small indentation. Following a hunch, she pressed her Harper pin into the indentation: The wall slid back silently, revealing the supply cache. It was packed with useful stuff. There was a rack of swords, shelves filled with iron rations, a small box of Harper pins, several chains shirts, a number of potions, and fourteen bags, each containing a hundred gold dragons.
They rapidly emptied all of it into a bag of holding and reversed their tracks, replacing the crate and the padlock on the front door as they left.
Now they were out of time. They needed to head to the fights.
THE XANATHAR RAID
It was back to the beginning. They returned to the warehouse where Floon and Renaer had been held by the Zhentarim and slipped through the same sewer grate they had dropped through so many weeks (and what seemed like a lifetime) ago.
The Xanatharians had apparently destroyed the chalk marks which had guided them originally, but Theren remembered the path they had taken through the sewers and led them back to the hideout. As he drew near, he motioned the others to silence and slid up towards the intersection.
He knew there were four arrow slits looking out over this intersection from the last time they’d been here. Observing them carefully now, he ascertained that there were two goblins behind each. He waved Edana up and she cast a spell to put them to sleep.
They hugged the wall of the sewer (metaphorically speaking) and came up to the lair’s secret door. Theren slipped through it first. As he approached the landing leading down into to the chamber with the teleportation totem, however, he heard the distinctive buzz-humming of stirge wings ahead.
Peeking around the corner, he saw a goblin leaning up against the teleportation totem with a pair of stirges buzzing around his head. The goblin absentmindedly reached up and patted one of the stirges affectionately on the head.
Stepping out into landing, Theren put an arrow through the goblin’s skull, sending a spray of blood across the stone floor. The stirges immediately swooped down into the pool and began slurping up the blood, but two more arrows left them dead in the midst of their “feast.”
Edana slid across the landing and through another door into the guard chamber where the other goblins were still snoring. She efficiently slit their throats and then returned to the others, who had gathered around the totem. They clasped each others’ arms and Edana slid the teleportal key into the totem. She twisted the key and…
…they were elsewhere.
They had appeared standing in the middle of a large, fifty-foot long chamber with vaulted ceilings. They were standing between four large stone pillars that ran from the floor to the ceiling. The key was inside a depression in one of the pillars, one of several identical depressions which ran around the circumference of that pillar and the others.
There were several halls and a stairway leading out of the chamber. At the far end of the hall directly in front of them they could see two burly men wearing studded leather armor, thankfully facing away from them and looking out into a crowded hallway. The sounds of a party washed over them — people talking, glassware clinking, merry laughter.
Edana and Theren quickly shoved the others behind one of the pillars, where the guards couldn’t see them. Edana peeked out. They hadn’t been noticed.
Kora took the moment to cast locate object, searching the last of the Eyes. She quickly had a vector: It was on the same level they were, roughly in the direction of the guards (“Of course,” Kittisoth said), but somewhat off to the left.
“Which way do we go?”
They’d prefer not to have to try to sneak past the guards. The staircase, even though it led down, was roughly in the right direction. “There might a way down and around,” Edana suggested. “So that we could come up behind or even right on top of the Eye.”
The others agreed and they slipped over to and down the stairs, which curved down to a T-intersection. Edana peeked around the corner: Thirty feet to her left was a door. Fifty feet to her right was another T-intersection. It was a maze down here. And, worse yet, between her and the other T-intersection, hanging down from the ceiling, was a spectral eyestalk.
“I don’t like that,” she muttered and headed back to the others.
Neither Kora nor Pashar had any idea what the ghostly eyestalk might be. “If it’s magic, I could dispel it,” Kora suggested. “But that might just alert Xanathar that we’re down here.”
“What about an illusion?” Theren suggested. “Make it look like the hallway is empty?”
Edana agreed and raised the illusion. Cloaked by the vision of the “empty” hallway, she slipped over to the door at the end of the hall. From the far side of the door she could hear metal clashing against metal… and the smell of something cooking. She came back to the others. “Do you think we can slip through the kitchens?”
“This hall isn’t going the right way,” Theren said. “We’ve gotten twisted around coming down the stairs. I think we should go back up to the main level?”
The others agreed and headed back up the stairs, re-entering the teleportation chamber.
They spread out to check the other hallways, to see if they could figure out a better way of circling around the guards. Unfortunately, the other hallways all went in basically exactly the wrong direction. As they considered their options, however, the sounds of several people shouting came from the direction of the party. Theren darted over to one of the pillars and glanced out. The two guards had turned towards the raised voices… and they were moving away!
“Let’s do it!” Kittisoth declared and stepped forward. But Theren grabbed her and yanked her back behind the pillar. Just moments after the guards vacated their post, three figures — looking back over their shoulders towards the party — had rounded the corner into the hall and were heading their way.
The figures headed towards the stairs. Theren slid to the other side of the pillar and tracked them. As they reached the top of the stairs, a beam of light caught them and he could see their faces plainly: They were drow.
“Jarlaxle’s men,” Kittisoth murmured.
The drow disappeared down the stairs. The Trollskulls darted out, down the hallway the drow had just left, and into the party.
The party filled a grand promenade nearly thirty feet across that curved out of sight to both the right and left. Down the middle of the hall were pillars carved with eyes which seemed to track those who passed nearby. At the moment, those eyes were darting back and forth, as the entire hall was filled with an eclectic, cosmopolitan crowd of ritzy elites rubbing shoulders with scarred gangsters while servants bearing trays of food and drink passed between them.
Off to their left they could still hear the raised voices and confusion of whatever altercation had distracted the guards. Off to their right, they could see other hallways with guards posted on them. Directly ahead, however, a ten-foot-wide circular door led to a smaller passage. The party spilled down this hall and into a larger chamber beyond: That was more or less the direction Kora was detecting the Eye from.
They slid through the crowd. No one seemed to give them a second glance as they passed through the stone door and came to the top of a short flight of stairs led down to the floor of a forty-foot-high dome that was at least eighty feet across. The floor was tiled in black marble, inset with in gold with the circle-and-eyestalk sigil of Xanathar. Jutting from the ceiling was bell-shaped protuberance. On the far side of the dome, directly across from them, an identical set of stairs led up to another open, circular door, this one with two guards flanking it. Off to their left, directly in line with Kora’s vector to the Eye, was another circular door — this one shut, but also with two guards. Small clusters of people were happily chatting here and there throughout the dome.
They walked across the room. Kora pulled out the rod of rulership they had taken from Victoro Cassalanter when they arrested him and discreetly waved it in the direction of the guards. “Would you be so kind as to let me and my friends in?”
The guards came to sharp attention. “Yes, sir!”
They pushed open the stone slab of the door and the Trollskulls strode through it. As they went, Kittisoth glanced nervously over her shoulder to see if anyone was paying undue attention to the exchange. No one was. But at just that moment Jarlaxle walked into the dome, accompanied by two men.
Kittisoth cursed and darted in after the others. It didn’t look like Jarlaxle had noticed them, though. Instead, he seemed to be focusing his attention on the two guards on the other side of the room, albeit while attempting to disguise his interest.
The Trollskulls found themselves in Xanathar’s sanctum. The room was magically lit with a bluish light. Luminous violet particles drifted through the air like mist. A twenty-foot-wide fishbowl dominated the center of the room. Filled with water it also contained a small coral reef, a miniature shipwreck, and a sunken treasure chest. On a small table next to this huge fishbowl they saw a smaller fishbowl, this one containing a single goldfish: Sylgar. On one wall of the room hung a huge mirror with the word XOBLOB carved into its silver frame. In a small chamber beyond an arch in the other wall of the room they could see a huge device of twisted crystal.
“Where is it?” Edana asked.
“There,” Kora said, pointing at the large fishbowl. “In the goddamn treasure chest.”
Kittisoth had fetched up just inside the door and was watching the dome outside. Several Xanatharian guards came rushing out of the door on the far side of the dome — the one Jarlaxle was still keeping one eye constantly fixed on. These guards spoke with a quick but quiet urgency to the two guards stationed there, and then all of the guards there rushed back through the door. No one else in the room seemed to take any note of this, but Jarlaxle, of course, immediately put his drink down and, with his men, beelined to and through the door.
Kittisoth stepped back from the door. “I’m not sure where Jarlaxle is going, but—”
Pashar suddenly dropped to his knees and began babbling incoherently in the Tongue of the Beholders… or at least what he thought was the Tongue of Beholders. It was really just nonsense.
“Dammit,” Edana cursed. “We need to get out of there. Maybe I could use mage hand to try to clear the treasure chest out? It’ll take me forever to sift through it, but I need to see the Eye before I can actually grab it telekinetically, though.”
“I’ll go in,” Kittisoth said. “I’ll just climb up on this table and try to– Wait. I can fly. Devil’s breath, I am so stressed out!” She leapt and flew and dived down to the chest.
Kora, meanwhile, used a quick spell to purge whatever poison had gripped Pashar’s mind.
“I’ve got it!” Kittisoth declared, splashing out of the top of the fishbowl.
Edana snatched it and thrust it into her bag of holding, removing it from the Material Plane.
“Go! Now!”
They walked out of the room. “Close the door, please,” Kora said to the guards. “And kindly escort us to the teleportation pillars?”
“Yes, sir!”
The guards stepped away from the door and took them across the dome, through the door, and into the promenade. The disturbance they had heard earlier had apparently come to an end and they could see that the guards had returned to their posts. But it didn’t matter: Kora’s guards escorted them right through the checkpoint and into the pillar room.
Behind them they heard a gruff voice call out: “Someone has broken into the master’s sanctum! Seal the lair! Find them immediately!”
But they were at the pillar. Edana thrust the teleportation key into the pillar.
They were out.
THE THREE EYES
They would have cheered, but as they reappeared in the sewer hideout, they found four goblins kneeling over the corpse of their dead friend. Reacting instinctively, the Trollskulls lashed out with their swords and cut them down before the goblins even realized they were among them. Then they rushed out through the secret door, back through the sewers, and emerged into the clean, exhilarating air of Waterdeep.
They’d done it!
Kora sent a magical message to the Blackstaff: “We have all of the Eyes and the Stone of Golorr. We believe that the Enigma is located beneath Brandath Crypts. Going there now.”
A moment later, Vajra sent a reply: “Good luck!”
They jumped in a carriage and headed across Waterdeep, racing the sunset to the City of the Dead. Passing through the gates before they were closed for the night, they made their way quickly to the Brandath Crypts, through Lady Alethea’s tomb, into the secret crypts, and down the long, ancient passage to the vault doors.
Standing there, atop the bronze sunburst and facing the dwarven-carved doors of adamantium, Edana drew out the blinded Stone of Golorr and placed it in the palm of her left hand. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the first of the Eyes into the Stone.
A warmth spread through the palm of her hand and she heard a voice murmur in the back of her mind: “Oh… I have returned.”
She took the second Eye and pushed it into its socket.
“You have the Eyes! Unblind me, mortal!”
The voice seemed stronger now.
“Will you give me the knowledge I seek?” Edana said aloud.
“Yes,” replied the voice. “That is my purpose.”
“Wait… what?” Pashar said. Instinctively, he reached out and touched Edana’s shoulder. The other’s, following his example, also reflexively reached out; not certain whether they were warding their friend, seeking to stop her, or volunteering to ride with her into whatever danger she might face. Only knowing that they needed to be together in this moment.
Edana pushed the third Eye in.
