Mairi looks at him strangely, about to ask him how he could possibly know that. She never gave him her name, much less any details of what she's about to say, and as far as she knows, he's from a world where Waterdeep doesn't even exist.

But instead, she's drawn to speak.

When I set out with Red's Rovers for the first time, I thought I knew what "adventuring" was. I'd been on the road for almost a year at that point, travelling Faerun in search of... something. Gods? Answers? Myself? I guess all of the above. So by the time I met with Red-Handed Robin, Dorin Ironfist, and Jack Page in the Copper Cup Fest Hall in Waterdeep, and they asked me to travel with them to assist with their quest to settle the Ordning of Giants, I thought it'd be more of the same but with a little more... direction. A little more destiny. I don't regret going with them, in hindsight, even if it did get me killed, but if someone had told me what we'd be doing on that first quest, I might have thought better of it.

It was afternoon when we were approached by a man in search of his missing partner. I don't really remember his name, the one who recruited us, that all seems like a lifetime ago. But in the grand scheme of things, as much as I hate to say this about a person's name, it... wasn't really important. I do remember that his partner's name was Reimi, a fair-skinned human man in his 60's with white hair. I remember that not because of how many times we talked about it, but because it would become so relevant later. We spent a good bit of the day running around the backstreets of Waterdeep, asking questions in shady bars and back alleys, trying to figure out where he'd gone. Eventually, we figured out we'd need to go below the city, into the sewer system. So... down we went.

I'll spare the details about the crab monster. It was nothing special. In hindsight, it almost feels like a warmup for what was to come. A messy, rancid-smelling warmup, but uneventful. I'd fought hostile giant animals before, so it's not like the fetid water down there made this fight particularly life-changing. No, that's what came after.

We trudged through the narrow sewage tunnels toward what we hoped was a rescue mission, following tiny symbols etched into the wall. There were tiny walkways where you could walk outside the water if you crouched, but--- Well, I don't know about the boys, but as far as I was concerned, I was already caked in filth. I wasn't going to risk a sore back during a bigger fight to get out of it. And it was around this time that Jack started to get sick. Like--- really sick. One minute we were wading through foul water, joking dryly about when the real adventure was supposed to start, and the next we're stopping every few minutes because our wizard can't stop violently throwing up. It seems like that was the first sign that we might have been out of our depth. At the very least, it was the first sign that Jack was about to have a really, really awful day. Not that the rest of us would be having any better luck.

As we reached the end of the tunnel, we came upon a junction between yet another slimy, filthy sewer tunnel full of a horrible sludge that could supposedly be called water, and the first dry passage we'd seen since the stairs. It looked like the dry tunnel may have once had the symbol we were advised to follow for directions, but Red, our ranger, pulled us aside and expressed that he might like to check out the opposite tunnel before going in, partially in the interest of being thorough, and partly for strategy. As is the way with these things, we were expecting enemies, and finding a way to flank or pincer them was going to be useful for keeping us alive. I stayed out of the conversation, mostly. I was pretty new to genuine combat, especially in tight quarters like this, so I left it to the experts. Ultimately we decided not to split up, at least not yet, and follow Red's leadership down the first tunnel. Eventually, the darkened hallway lead us to a wooden bridge, a little aged but sturdy. Clearly someone was taking pains to take care of the infrastructure, but I doubt it was the city. Regardless I was glad that the bridge was steady--- it led over a chasm separating two of the sewage pipes that dropped off into dark oblivion, carrying it's disgusting cargo out of the bowels of the city and off to... someplace else. It's funny how you don't really think about what happens to your water after you use it and dump it. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Easy to forget. Seeing it felt like becoming privy to a nasty secret. But even here, in the guts of Waterdeep, the lifeblood of the world which we abused with our own gross bodies still flowed off to destinations unknown.

Across the bridge, there was another junction, this time a T-split, and we decided this was the point where we ought to break into teams. Dorin, the muscle of the group, recruited me to go with him. He was a dwarven man, an old soldier and a blacksmith, dark-skinned with a dark brown braid running down to his knees. He was small, even for a dwarf, but sometimes it seemed like that only made him more dense. He hit as hard as anything, and I felt... well, not necessarily safe, but as safe as I could be with him. Jack and Red went the other direction. Red complained, but considering Jack's condition, I didn't feel like the reasons I was being squabbled over were anything to do with me.

Dorin and I turn left, taking the route into a dark, wide room with straw-stuffed mattresses. Someone was living down there, and it didn't take them long to make their presence known. A man and a woman rose from two of their beds at our entry, looking for all the world like--- Well, no, it was clear that they were dead. Undead, rather. But not the sort of half-skeletal undead you find in catacombs and graveyards. These people distinctly looked drowned.

Chaos erupted. Down the hall, we could hear Jack and Red getting into their own fight as Dorin and I were waylaid by these sagging, drowned people. I panicked. At the time, I still wasn't used to fighting things that look like people, and even though they're already dead, the idea of using the kind of burning, crunching, rending attacks that Jack, Red, and Dorin use to fight still turned my stomach. On instinct, I cast a spell called Hold Person. It's--- cowardly. I can admit that now. Even as I was quipping at Jack to actually do something useful for once, I was casting a stunning spell and leaving the real work to Dorin while I ran off to see what Red and Jack were doing. But before I could get too far, a confused Dorin stammers out a question. Should we kill them, or should we leave them? I... had no answer for him. My whole life, I'd been raised a pacifist. My family and I worshipped Eldath, the goddess of groves and rivers, and I grew up being taught to value peace and mercy above all else. But here I was, face to face with two creatures that I'd stunned, temporarily helpless but potentially mere moments from breaking loose and hacking me and my companion to chunks, and almost everything in me is screaming at me to just leave them so I don't have to face the reality of killing. It would be so much easier. But there's a part of me, an animal instinct, that wants them dead so I can stop feeling like prey. I gave Dorin a guilty look, and he made quick work of them. And I walked away, leaving him to it.

In the next room, Jack and Red were fighting this... horrible thing. A man, or what used to be one, whose skin is sort of a... soft... gel texture. Almost like a... Gods, I hate to say it, because it always ruins desserts for me for weeks after I think about it, but it almost looks like custard. Mushy and easily broken. Under the surface, there are things wriggling, moving the skin in squirms and jolts. They're large, fist sized foreign objects. I'm almost entranced by the horrible sight, before a familiar tabaxi comes barreling out and shouting at me not to look. The moment he's past me, he turns to me and fires his arrow directly at my face, and with a shriek I duck out of the way before realizing he's fired a seeking arrow, which careens through the hallways and lands in its target with a wet thud. Unfortunately this leaves an already struggling Jack a few paces behind.

Tentacles emerge from the creature, wrapping around Jack's face. He struggles, but it puts its mushy, bloated lips to his, and it grunts, and gags, as it pushes these slimy, squishy, white globs into Jack's mouth and forces them down his throat. Jack wretched, but more and more of them shove their way into his mouth, forcing him to swallow. I slipped, tentative and cautious, back toward him. Bum rushing the thing would have just earned me or one of the others the same fate. I was able to use a Guiding Bolt, but by then... it was too late.

With a coordinated effort, we were able to put down the monstrous thing, and we decide to rest and heal our wounds before we moved on. But Jack... He doesn't get anything out of the break. In fact, he honestly looks worse. See, he'd been using this armoring spell called Stone Skin. But sometime during the hour-ish we'd stopped to rest, the spell faded, and his veneer of marble coating vanished. And the moment this happened, all of him just... sags out. Like a bag full of pudding being set on the floor. And there's pockets of writhing growths all over his body, pressing in on him so that by the end of that hour, he was struggling to move. Even breathing looked hard. But we couldn't turn back. Not yet. As we move on, I quietly explained to him my family's tradition. A small ritual to offer passage into the next world whenever someone or something in our grove passed away. Jack knew what I was getting at, and grimly accepted.

In the next room, the energy in the halls... changed. So did the quality of the water. Where once there was filth and grime, this looked more like an underground lagoon. The water was still dark, but it took on a more natural sort of murky, like brackish water. Whatever we were looking for, we were most likely going to find it here. Jack took a potion of water-breathing and took to swimming through here, while Dorin and Red used Red's Water Walk spell to get a different vantage point. And in we went. And as we got closer to the center, the area where the water was the deepest, we started to see the bodies of men strewn about the shallows. All of them pale, human, white-haired. Whatever this thing was that took Reimi, it clearly had a profile. We had been expecting bandits, or assassins, but what met us in that lagoon was like nothing we'd ever seen before.

Water parted over the top of the creature, pale and hulking but somehow graceful, sliding off the steep slope of its face like silk falling away from a hard surface. A single dark eye opened as it broke the surface tension of the water. Jack and I ducked down below, trying to avoid its gaze, only to be met with more eyes. More and more. At least a half dozen just on its face, and a string of them down the side of its massive, lithe, pallid body, fins and tentacles hanging like ragged cloth off a dynamic, powerful, slender body. And in my head, I could hear a quiet voice speak to me in Common.

"I can hear the call of my spawn. The one who is spawning will die, but perhaps we can make a deal."

I'm not the only one to hear a voice, but there's little time to discuss it. Even as lazily as it drew toward us, we weren't about to take any chances, and we braced for combat. Before I could do anything, Jack reaches out a hand and touches my shoulder, casting Greater Invisibility on me as the thing draws forward to meet him. I felt so guilty for the amount of relief I felt in that moment, hating myself for scolding him for always running when his first instinct was to protect me, and for how grateful I was that it was more interested in Jack than me. Jack scrambled back out of the water to get away, climbing up onto the shallows to turn and fight, wand raised. I couldn't see Dorin or Red-- I think Dorin was looking at something on the shore, and Red must have seen the thing, because a bright arrow lined in spectral flame sailed into the water, striking the monster.

I can hardly describe the awe I felt, looking up at this... monstrous thing, all covered in eyes and shrouded in the dark murky water, as the ruby red spectral flame wraps around its silhouette like a sunburst, suddenly casting the whole thing and the lagoon around it into dancing, glittering scarlet light from Red's Faerie Fire. But in that moment I could truly see the creature before me, and something about it felt... primordial. As old as the world. As old as the stars. From my hidden, invisible corner of the water, I spoke out to it in Aquan, hoping against hope for answers. "Vath ertu?" The answer that came was in a voice so low and so guttural that it set my teeth on edge, but told me nothing, the even more ancient language incomprehensible to me. I had asked what it was, since I'd never heard of anything like this thing before. But it would only be much later that I'd learn this was an aboleth.

Then, the water began to turn and roil, churning like a stirred vat in a sucking, spiraling current to draw us to it. I just barely managed to get out of the water before being pulled in, but even in the shallows I nearly lost my footing from the intensity of the maelstrom. I was almost too busy trying to stay upright to see Jack drop, felled by this thing that had become so enamored with him. I blinked back into visibility, Jack's efforts dispelled as he fell unconscious, and I felt the creature's eyes turn on me.

The rest is a blur of commotion. It didn't take us long to realize that we couldn't fight this thing. We had to get Jack out of there. If the aboleth didn't get him, his condition as an incubator surely would. It was only by some incredible miracle that Dorin managed to find Reimi still clinging to life among the sea of discarded, similar-looking bodies. I almost didn't make it out either, swept up in another maelstrom as I tried to go for Jack. I am a very, very strong swimmer, but even with all my experience, I felt my strength fail me under that current. In the end, it was Red summoning another of his familiars that got Jack and I out of the water, and we fled into the night.

There's a sigh of relief as the compulsion of Jon's strange power finally, finally allows her stop speaking. Mairi swallows roughly, searching in vain for a glass of water she would not find. She hadn't been polite enough to her host to receive one. Not that he deserved it.