After finishing off the remaining goblins within the main chamber of the selunite temple, the group took the time to swig down a series of health potions.
Gulp!
With a deep, shuddering gulp, William drank deeply, feeling a wave of healing warmth course through his body. Then, his gaze settled once more on the slumped, unconscious body of Priestess Gut, and with a final kick that lacked any respect for either her or her patron god, he turned away.
Karlach suddenly appeared at his side, her face smeared with blood from both the goblins and her own body, and she gently patted him on the shoulder.
"I like the way you kill things, soldier!" She let out a hot, steam-filled breath as her rage state began to dissolve and her normal cheery attitude returned.
William winked playfully at Karlach before using the dead priestess's robes to clean the blood off of his fist.
As he did so, his expression was a mixture of curiosity and concern, as he pondered about the nature of the attack and wondered if he would be able to repeat it.
He looked at his now clean fist and reimagined the feeling of power as he punched clean through Priestess Gut's abdomen.
However, no matter how much he tried to conjure it up in his mind, he was simply unable to fully grasp or comprehend the sheer, raw power of the psionic energies he was just starting to unlock.
"Dier..." A voice echoed across his thoughts, but he was still lost within them.
Only when Karlach's fierce and unnaturally hot hand grasped his shoulder, pulling him fully from his thoughts with a feeling not unlike a rubber band breaking, did he finally emerge.
"Soldier..?" He looked up to see Karlach with a slightly concerned expression, his eyes met hers and he felt a strange desire building within him.
Something he had never felt before in either the world of his origin or the world of Faerun.
His heart began to beat like a drum as he and Karlach stared into each other's eyes.
Before either of them could even muster the words to start breaking the ice, Lae'zel stepped in between them and forcefully parted them, all while glaring down at them with a low growl.
"Sleep with each other later, when this is all over. We're too busy right now, and we can't afford to take our eyes off our surroundings, in case someone tries to attack us from the shadows. You'd better remember that, I shant be repeating myself!"
Gale in the background was giving William a thumbs up while Astarion was making a lewd gesture.
Halsin was pinching the bridge of his nose in exacerbation, feeling a sense of embarrassment towards the other two.
Standing alone, deep in thought, Wyll grappled with the immense pressure he felt before William's powerful punch ripped through the Priestess's abdomen.
"What power was that?" he muttered to himself, before rejoining the rest, shaking the ambient thoughts from his mind as he focused on the task at hand.
The group did not linger.
They moved as a single, practiced unit, slipping deeper into the Selûnite temple's wounded guts, boots crunching over shattered stone and drying blood.
The deeper they went, the older the place felt.
Carved arches gave way to rough-hewn tunnels, sacred geometry dissolving into raw rock where the temple had been clawed straight from the mountain itself.
The cult had tried to slow them.
It did not work.
A pressure plate clicked beneath Lae'zel's boot. She froze instantly.
"Trap," she hissed.
Astarion was already moving, sliding past her with a dancer's ease, eyes flicking over the stone.
"Oh, that's charming," he murmured, crouching. "Poison darts. Amateur work."
A flick of his dagger, a soft snip, and the tension vanished.
The darts fired harmlessly into the wall, their venom sizzling uselessly against ancient stone.
Further on, goblins tried ambush.
They died quietly.
An arrow never left its bow before Wyll's blade took the archer through the throat.
Gale froze another mid-leap with a sharp word of power, leaving Halsin to shatter the creature with a single, brutal blow.
Karlach hit like a runaway furnace, smashing bodies into walls so hard they left goblin-shaped stains behind.
William did not speak.
He moved with a focused calm that unsettled even himself, senses stretched taut, that strange psionic hum still echoing faintly beneath his thoughts like a storm waiting to break again.
Then the passage widened.
The tunnel spilled into a vast cavern carved clean out of the living rock, the ceiling vanishing into darkness far above.
The air changed immediately, growing colder, heavier, as if the stone itself were holding its breath.
At the center of it all yawned a chasm.
It was not merely deep.
It was wrong.
The gulf plunged downward into absolute blackness, so deep that even the torchlight died long before reaching the bottom.
Sound vanished when a loose pebble fell, swallowed whole by the void without echo or protest.
A single bridge spanned the gap.
And on the far side, she waited.
Minthara.
She stood at the bridge's end with regal stillness, posture straight, armor immaculate despite the carnage behind them.
Moon-pale, almost purple skin caught the flicker of torchlight, and her crimson eyes burned with cold, measured intelligence rather than fanatic frenzy.
Around her gathered a host.
Rows upon rows of goblins packed the far platform.
Warriors with shields and jagged blades.
Archers lining the edges, bows already raised.
A sea of yellowed teeth, scarred skin, and eager malice, murmuring with barely restrained bloodlust.
A small army.
Hovering above them all drifted a single, floating eye.
It was not goblin-made.
The orb rotated slowly, its surface slick and glossy like living glass, a pupil at its center dilating as it turned toward the party.
Arcane sigils crawled along its surface, pulsing faintly, and with every rotation William felt pressure press against his thoughts.
Not a voice.
A presence.
Watching.
Judging.
Gale inhaled sharply. "That," he said quietly, "is very bad."
Minthara lifted her chin slightly, her gaze locking onto William first, then sweeping across the rest of them with open appraisal, as if they were already dead and merely didn't know it yet.
"So," she said, her voice carrying effortlessly across the chasm, smooth and disdainful. "The intruders finally show themselves."
Her eyes lingered on Karlach, on Lae'zel, on William's bloodstained hands.
"A pity," Minthara continued. "You've slain my lesser allies, disrupted sacred rites, and yet you still walked here willingly."
She gestured lazily with one gauntleted hand.
Behind her, goblins snarled and stamped their feet, bows creaking as they drew.
"There is nowhere left to run."
The floating eye rotated, its pupil widening.
William felt something inside his skull tighten, like invisible fingers brushing the edges of his mind.
And as the strange invisible fingers touch his mind he hears someone within his mind, a voice that sounds old and tired yet held an immense vitality.
I SEE YOU[1]...
Suddenly, the fingers became sharp tendrils that attempted to pierce through his mind like bird talons grasping prey, and suddenly William began to cry out in pain as he spasmed in place before falling to his hands and knees, blood beginning to leak from his eyes and ears.
Karlach's face twisted into a snarling expression as she witnessed this sight, her eyes blazing with the infernal heat that emanated directly from her core. Without hesitation, she raised her axe, her gaze unwavering, despite the obvious disadvantage in numbers, preparing to strike.
Lae'zel and Halsin reached out to hold her back, hissing in pain at the sheer heat radiating from her core but despite the pain they held on.
Will and Gale, their faces etched with expressions of concern and anxiety, drew magical sigils around Gale's hands as he performed a series of gestures.
Yet, regardless of the magic he poured into his spells, William remained on the cold stone floor, his body convulsing.
Blood continued to ooze from his eyes and mouth, staining the path around him.
Astarion slithered into the darkness with an arrow already knocked and aimed directly at the glassy orb, which now seemed to be glaring back at William with the intensity of a skilled entomologist studying an interesting and potentially dangerous insect.
The arrow cracked with the sound of shifting icebergs and the air around it began to mist as the cold met the ambient heat.
"Watch this, you shiny glass bastard!" He let out the arrow, and it flew straight towards the glass eye, striking it with a chilling finality.
WHOOSH!!!
CRACK!!!
The arrow struck true in the pupil of the glass eye with a satisfying crack of shattered glass before the magic energy in the arrowhead began to react.
BOOM!!!
With a blinding flash, a miniature blizzard erupted, engulfing the ice magic in its icy grip. The glass orb shattered into nothingness, its fragile form unable to withstand the searing chill that immediately enveloped the goblins surrounding it.
"Ahhhhh!"
"Nooooo!"
"Absolute save me please..."
A large number of goblins, who were previously positioned all around the glass eye, cried out in terror before they were transformed into frozen statues.
They were the lucky ones.
Those who were present in the area where the cold was actively engaged in its battle against the surrounding ambient heat found that whichever limb had been directly facing the point of the explosion was instantly frozen solid, and the agonizing wails they were forced to let out shook the entire cavern.
William's convulsions ceased completely the moment the glass eye finally stopped functioning.
Not gradually.
Not mercifully.
One heartbeat he was drowning in talons and pressure, his skull a cracked bell still ringing from the strike.
The next, the presence was gone.
The cavern felt… emptier.
William sucked in a ragged breath that tore at his lungs, blood dripping from his chin onto the stone below.
His vision was a kaleidoscope, colors swirling and bleeding into each other at the edges, but the crushing weight that had been pinning his thoughts in place, holding them like a blade withdrawn at the last possible moment, had vanished completely, leaving him free to stand again despite his shaking legs.
Wyll was there immediately, arm hooking under William's shoulder.
"Easy," he muttered, voice tight. "I've got you."
Gale joined him on the other side, fingers glowing faintly as he murmured stabilizing cantrips, not healing, just enough to keep William upright.
With their help, he stood.
Despite his legs trembling and his knees feeling on the verge of buckling, he managed to straighten them out, his boots making a scraping sound against the rough stone as he dragged himself fully upright.
The cavern seemed to tilt for a moment before settling, the chasm yawning at his side like it was waiting for him to fall in.
Across the bridge, Minthara stared.
The shattered pieces of the scrying eye were still swirling around her, their remnants drifting into the air and evaporating into a misty haze of glittering ice crystals.
For a heartbeat, her expression was perfectly still.
Then it broke.
Her lips peeled back, not in a snarl, but something colder.
Something offended.
"You dare," she said, her voice no longer smooth, no longer measured.
It cracked like drawn steel. "You dare destroy my master's sight."
Her crimson gaze snapped to Astarion first, then to William, burning with naked fury.
"SLAUGHTER THEM!"
The word rang through the cavern like a commandment carved into stone.
The goblins obeyed.
A roar surged from the far platform as dozens of bodies rushed forward at once.
The Warriors, their shields clashing against one another with a deafening roar, were joined by the archers who screamed as they ran across the bridge, their boots making a thunderous sound with each heavy step.
The entire scene was a chaotic eruption of sound and motion.
The bridge groaned.
Planks beneath the sudden and reckless weight bowed dangerously, the ropes groaning as the structure swayed violently precariously over the abyss.
Karlach, with a desperate cry, tore free from the grasp of both Halsin and Lae'zel, her body radiating a searing heat that could be seen in visible waves.
Her axe, now blazing with infernal energy, ignited, and she immediately took her position at the very front of the battle line.
"GOOD!" she exclaimed, her voice firm yet filled with a strange, almost manic energy. "LET THEM COME TO US."
Astarion melted back into the darkness that clung to the cavern's edge, already moving with a practiced ease.
Another arrow was already in place, its flight path carefully aimed.
Wyll raised his blade, his off-hand crackling with Eldritch energy.
Gale's hands, imbued with an arcane, fiery glow, began to spin rapidly, intricate sigils forming in the air as he took a deep breath.
His gaze was fixed on the choking mass of figures rushing directly towards them, his eyes blazing with a focused intensity.
William straightened fully.
The pain remained, a deep, aching throb behind his eyes, but beneath it, something else was beginning to stir.
Not the crushing presence from before.
Something quieter.
Hotter.
He wiped a smear of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, and then, planting himself firmly in the middle of the group, took a decisive step forward.
The first goblins were now approaching the halfway point of the bridge.
Weapons rose.
Magic flared.
The bridge screamed in protest.
And the battle crashed toward them like a breaking wave.
[1] Yes a LOTR reference, sue me 😂