Here he usually muttered a few queer words, and after that I would be distracted for a while as I hopped in circles and beat at the patches of flame that danced on my robes. By the time I put the fires out, Gillar was always gone. There was nothing to do but wander back to my humble hovel, mend my garb, and wait until the next morning.
Then one day, in a vision I'm certain was sent by my god, it came to me.
The next morning I shook away the toads and, as usual, followed after Gillar. This time when the flames appeared on my robe, they flickered for a moment, then vanished in tiny puffs of steam. I had soaked my robe in a bucket of water before donning it that day, and it was still sopping wet. Pleased with my own cleverness, I closed in on my quarry.
'If you make amends now, you needn't fear dying, Gillar,' I told him in righteous glee.
His eyes narrowed. 'And you are not afraid to die?'
I shook my head fervently. 'Not at all. I know that in death I will find peace in the company of Lathandar.'
'Truly?' he sneered. 'Is that what you believe?'
'Yes,' I said with perfect confidence.
All at once he laughed. It was a chilling sound. 'We shall see,' he said. 'We shall see.' Then he wiggled his fingers and muttered queer words. I braced my shoulders, expecting something unpleasant to fall on me, but nothing did. All I felt was an odd tingling, then nothing at all.
'Enjoy your afterlife, Muragh Brilstagg,' he said, and that didn't make sense. I don't mean the second part, since Muragh Brilstagg was indeed my name, but the first. Why would he wish me a happy afterlife? Then it hit me. Maybe I was getting to him, maybe he was starting to believe in the goodness of Lathandar as I did. I decided this was more than enough progress for one day, and I smiled as I watched Gillar walk away.
My confidence bolstered by what I had interpreted as my victory over Gillar, that evening I decided to take my mission to a local tavern and spread the word of Lathandar there. The Sign of the Bent Nail was a rough and unsavory place. But if I could get my message through to an evil wizard like Gillar, certainly I could convert a few ne'er-do-wells and drunkards.
I approached a likely looking fellow at the bar, a very large man with very small eyes.
'Good evening,' I said in my most cheerful voice.
'Did you know that carousing and drinking will consign your spirit to everlasting torture in the Abyss?'
He bared his filed-down teeth in a grin. 'No,' he said. 'Did you know that my dagger is sticking in your heart?'
'No,' I said. 'Thanks for letting me know.'
That was when I died.
It was a strange sensation. I had always thought death would be black and silent at first, and then there would be a great light, and I would find myself in a spring garden at dawn, the abode of my god, Lathandar. Instead I found myself being hauled out the back door of the tavern, into a stinking alley, and thrown atop a garbage heap.
There had been a moment of bright pain when I looked down and saw the dagger protruding from my chest, but that had passed quickly enough. Now I felt only a numbness that was somehow more disturbing than any pain. I was aware of the heavy weight of my body, but I could not feel it, could not move it. It seemed that my eyes no longer worked as they had, and yet somehow I could still sense my surroundings. Unable to do anything else, I lay there while my corpse cooled and stiffened. It was not long before I heard the first scrabbling sounds in the rubbish. Then the rats found me.
It was at that moment I finally realized the truth of Gillar's odd words, and the implication of the spell he had cast upon me. No, not spell, but curse. Even though I was dead, my spirit had not been allowed to fly from my body. I would never see dawn in the garden of my god. Instead I was doomed to dwell, conscious, in the lifeless husk of my mortal body. Forever. I would have cried then, but dead men can't shed tears.
I won't tire you with all the tedious details of my decomposition. For nearly a week I lay on the garbage heap. It did not hurt when the rats gnawed at me. Yet all the same it filled me with a sensation so vile that, had I been alive, I certainly would have never stopped puking.
As it turned out, the rats actually did me a service. For I found that, once my bones were free of the decomposing flesh, I was able to move my jaw and even speak aloud, though my voice, once warm with life, was now thin and reedy. Had Gillar planned this? Somehow I didn't think so. His magic must have had effects even he did not guess. New hope filled me then.
'Help!' I called out. 'Please! Somebody help me!'
Little did I know it, but that was the beginning of my journey into Undermountain.
Before long, a drunken soldier heard my call for aid. Unfortunately, soldiers are a notoriously superstitious lot, and he mistook me for the ghost of someone he had killed in war, come back to torment him. He hacked my head from my body and tossed it into Waterdeep Harbor.
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.
