Realms of the Arcane - Brian M. Thomsen [44]
Just a skull at that point, I drifted in the brine for a while and soon lost the last bits of my flesh to the local eels. Then the merpeople who live in the harbor found me and kindly took me to a duty-wizard of the Water-deep Watch, one Thandalon Holmeir.
Thandalon was a nice enough fellow, and he set me to keeping watch over his spell library. Only, soon after, thieves broke in, and instead of stealing Thandalon's spellbooks, they stole me, then fled into the deepest sewers beneath Waterdeep. I never saw the thing that got them. It was big, and dark, and didn't rise fully from the foul water, but it sucked each of them under and crunched them to bits.
In turn, the current swept me away. I tumbled down a drain, and fell deeper and deeper until finally I found myself here, in these endless tunnels far beneath Mount Waterdeep. Undermountain. Maze of the Mad Wizard, Halaster Blackcloak. And here I've been ever since.
The cockatrice gave a gurgling hiss. I think it was supposed to be an affectionate sound, but if I'd still had skin, it no doubt would have crawled. The creature spread its leathery bat wings and started to lower its scaly backside onto my cranium. Maybe I didn't have flesh anymore, but I still had teeth. I bit its rump. Hard.
The thing let out a squawk that would have made a banshee wince, then sprang away. I started to laugh in satisfaction, but one of the fleeing creature's wings struck me and batted me backward. Before I knew it, I was rolling.
That's another problem with being just a skull. Once you're rolling, it's extremely difficult to stop.
"Wait!" I shouted to the cockatrice. "Come back!"
The thing only glared with its beady eyes. Apparently it had decided I was not a very nice egg.
I rolled out the door of the chamber in which I had been minding my own business until the cockatrice came along, then tumbled down the steep incline of a rough passage. A moment later I hit the staircase.
Yes, skulls do bounce. However, we do not enjoy it.
Each time I struck one of the hard stone steps, it was like an explosion. Then the staircase ended, and I was rolling again. A second later I saw it, yawning like a toothy mouth: a crack ran across the corridor from side to side. It wasn't very large. A living man could have easily stepped over it. But it was just wide enough to accommodate a runaway skull.
Down, I have learned over the years, is the one direction in Undermountain you don't want to go. The deeper you go in this maze, the nastier things get. And going back up is always a hundred times harder. I clattered down the narrow crevice and clenched my jaw. What would I strike at the bottom? A bubbling black pudding, ready to dissolve me? A blazing circle of fire newts? The crushing mandibles of a carrion crawler?
All at once the crevice ended. For a moment I fell through dark air, then I landed on something…
… cushiony and warm?
"Oh!" a soft voice gasped.
I couldn't see anything, just darkness. All at once two hands lifted me up. Something had captured me, had me in its clutches! But what? Some slavering beast, ready to grind me to bone meal? Then the hands turned me-gently-around. I clacked my teeth in surprise.
She was a half-elf, that much I saw right away. The fine cheekbones, the tilted brown eyes, the ever-so-slightly pointed ears were all giveaways. Clad in a patched tunic, she sat on the stone floor of a shadowy chamber, her back to the wall. I had fallen into her lap, and it occurred to me then that I couldn't have imagined a better place to crash land.
Her smooth forehead crinkled in a frown as she studied me. "Now where did this come from?" she asked aloud.
"From up there!" I said cheerily. "Thanks for breaking my fall!"
Often when I first speak to people, they react strangely. It's as if they've never met a talking skull before. All right, I'll grant you, most of them likely never have. Still, it would be nice if they would at least feign a polite hello before they flung me down and ran away screaming. However, she did neither of these things, though her tilted eyes went