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The tension that had filled Sargauth to the brim the last time she and her friends had walked through was absent. Or, perhaps, it was just tension of a different kind. It was quiet, too quiet, and Trifle kept wondering when something would jump out at them.
She knew, on some level, that it had been months, as much as it had felt like barely more than a week or two for her. Who knew how the brewing conflict had erupted in Sargauth in that time, who knew who had won. The tension may have changed, but Trifle felt the uncertainty of it in every step. But the pull in her chest drew them towards their destination, a new spell she’d tried to keep them on track. The sooner they got out of the Undermountain, the better. Trifle was done being sidetracked, done putting her friends at risk and wasting their lives when they could just leave.
Of course, even with the directions clear in her heart and mind, even with her resolve hardened, Trifle couldn’t help but be distracted when she saw a familiar script. She stopped in her tracks, and therefore stopped everyone else. Lua’niira looked at her questioningly, but Trifle just pointed at a sign on a rundown, ramshackle building.
Krek, it said.
It was good that the message was so simple, because Trifle barely knew how to read Goblin despite being one. Krek was essentially this or that, or, more specifically, trade. She’d seen it enough during her time at Cragmaw to recognize it, those symbols reawakening old memories.
“I’m going to go check,” she told her friends quietly. It was obvious to her why it was her and not someone sneakier like Travis or Lua’niira. She was the one who could blend in, for once, not the other way around. No one argued with her, and Karash just nodded.
Of course, when she entered, it was clear there was no one to blend in with. There were piles of junk and well worn adventuring gear strewn throughout the hovel. At the table was a man with blue skin and long scraggly black hair lying face down on it. Make that a corpse, Trifle corrected in her mind, spotting multiple crossbow bolts poking out of its back. She traced her fingers along the place where the bolt met skin, and recognized the poison in the wound for what it was - drow.
Trifle said the words of passing over the body anyways.
She began picking through what had been left behind, looking for anything useful, or any clue to what else was happening in this nearly abandoned level of the Undermountain. She found rusty old swords that had seen better days, chain links that had once belonged to armor, and crusty, stale pieces of bread. She had to climb on the table to reach a pair of jars on a tall shelf. When Trifle opened them, she paused.
Trifle couldn’t immediately tell what was inside. It was a mess of twisted green objects. It was only when she saw the fingernails, the knuckles, and the toes, that she knew .
She looked at her own hands, holding the jar. They had started to shake. The hands in the jar were smaller than hers, but she remembered when they’d looked the same, when she had been the same. Trifle sucked in a gulp of air, but it felt like it wasn’t reaching her lungs.
When she tried to place the jar on the table to reach for the other, she almost dropped it. “Shit,” she whispered, and she could feel from the way her nose itched that she was on the verge of tears. Trifle reached up for the next jar, and saw the same. “Shit,” she repeated, even quieter.
Inside the jars were the arms and legs of goblins. Not just goblins, but goblin children - maybe even goblin babies.
Trifle didn’t know what to do. She sat down on the table, the second jar in her lap. She could dimly hear the soft murmur of the voices of her friends, the only sound in an otherwise soundless cavern. Well, other than the sound of her breathing, of her heartbeat, which seemed to be filling her ears more than normal.
She took off both the lids, and for a long moment just stared at the contents blankly. Trifle didn’t want to cry, but the tears fell anyway, uncaring.
If there was something to do, at least that would’ve helped, but there was nothing . They were dead, and so were their tormentors, and there was no one to save and no one to get revenge on. There were just their arms and their legs, their hands and their feet, their fingers and their toes. She knew nothing else about them, would never get a chance to find out, to find out who they could have grown to be.
The loss wrenched her. But there was one thing she could do, there was one thing she always did. She opened up the bag of holding she kept on her back and slowly began transferring each severed limb into it. Trifle held them reverently, like this removal was holy. It was.
“Trifle?” she heard Travis whisper from the doorway.
Her back was turned. “Just one minute,” she said over her shoulder, her voice cracking on the words. Travis had enough sense not to ask why.
Eventually they were all safe in that small pocket dimension. Not stored like trophies, not held for later (for eating or what, Trifle didn’t want to imagine), but kept, safe, sound, held like they were precious.
Trifle clambered off the table and stared at the blue-skinned man with new eyes. She found, for the first time, she regretted saying the words of passing over him. She wished she could take them back. Trifle wasn’t sure what Kelemvor would think of that, and she found, for the first time, that maybe she didn’t care.
Trifle rubbed the tears away from her eyes and forced herself to walk out and meet the others. A few of them looked at her questioningly, Lua’niira and Karash, maybe even Glyster. But Trifle didn’t explain. “Let’s go and get this over with, I just want to get out of here,” Trifle huffed, trying to use her genuine annoyance and displeasure to disguise every other emotion roiling in her. Trifle had enough insight to know it didn’t work.