Empty Threats?

The Duergar outpost squatted at the lake’s edge like a rotten tooth in the Underdark’s jaw. Crumbling barracks hunched against the stone, their roofs half-collapsed under curtains of ancient webbing. A crooked watchtower leaned over black water that lapped softly at a splintered pier. The air sat thick with the dusty-sweet reek of old wood over damp rock and mineral brine. No lanterns burned. No voices growled. Only silence, and a faint violet shimmer of glowing crystal formations painting the area in sickly constellations.

I moved carefully, the girls falling in behind me without needing orders, our footsteps soft on the cracked ramp. At this point everything felt right. This encounter was burned into my memory—a gruesome ambush waiting inside: four invisible duergar, their leader a powerful necromancer.

“Looks like a trap,” I said, pitching my voice low. “Tight quarters, good sightlines. Let’s circle it and find an angle.”

We moved together, boots scraping lightly over stone. I let the sweep take time, eyes scanning beams and ledges as if reading fresh signs. At the first kill-spot I paused, then touched Karlach’s elbow. “Push with all your might right there.” I pointed at nothing just above a ladder, the exact place of the leader. “Send whatever is hiding there over the ledge.”

She stared at me for a curious second, then gave a single nod, her massive frame sliding into place with surprising care. Her engine stayed a calm casting a steady glow. I drifted onward, guiding Shadowheart up a short set of steps to the overlook. “You’ll have the high ground. Send a fireball right down by the pier.” I pointed to where I knew an invisible barbarian was hiding.

Her dark braid swung as she settled, fingers already curling in the first gestures of flame. Next I sent Lae’zel beneath the overhang with a tilt of my chin. “Someones in that corner. Slash them. Twice.” The githyanki ghosted into position, greatsword loose in her grip, yellow eyes narrowed on the specific corner I pointed at. Finally I pointed Kagha to the ladder’s shadow where the last duergar always were. “There. Quick thrusts in succession.”

She made her way there without sound. I took the center myself, Compelling Blasts ready at my fingertips. The corruption hummed in my veins, sweet and invasive, promising to pull any corpses my way before they could be reanimated.

I lifted four fingers where they could see, then dropped them one by one.

Three.

Two.

One.

We struck as one.

Shadowheart’s fireball plummeted straight down. Flame bloomed across the ground in a roaring sphere, heat rolling outward in a visible wave that scorched the nearest wood and webbing to brittle black threads and filled the chamber with the sharp stink of burning dust. Karlach lunged, both hands driving into empty air; the shove’s momentum nearly carried her own bulk over the ledge before she rocked back on her heels. Lae’zel’s greatsword carved a vicious arc through the high corner, edge whistling at the air. Kagha’s rapier flicked forward in a precise lunge just above the ladder rungs, blade slicing stale air before she drew it back untouched. My blasts lanced out—three pink bolts, seizing three very dead corpses and hurling them through the air toward me. They landed at my feet with a singular, anticlimactic splat.

The echoes faded.

Nothing.

No bodies crumpled. No invisible shapes flickered into view under the light of dying flame. No necromancer’s panicked incantation. Only the thick, dusty smell of a place that wished to be forgotten. The soft lap of lake water against the pier suddenly sounded loud.

The women turned toward me.

“…Tav?” Shadowheart’s voice was careful, the kind of careful that came with genuine concern rather than accusation. “What exactly were we attacking?”

Karlach straightened, one brow raised. “You good, Boss?”

Lae’zel lowered her sword. “T’chk. Explain.”

“Right,” I said, and heard my own voice come out a touch too smooth, the way it did when I was buying myself time to think. “That. Funny story, actually. A teambuilding exercise. Reflexes, positioning, that sort of thing.”

[Lae’zel: Approval -3]
[Shadowheart: Approval -3]
[Karlach: Approval -3]

Lae’zel’s frown deepened. “An EX-ER-CI-SE,” she tasted every syllable of the word.

“Mm-hm.” I straightened, brushing nonexistent dust from my sleeve, projecting a calm I did not feel even slightly. “Surprise drills. To keep everyone sharp. When else do we have time for training?”

Lae’zel gave a brief nod “Yes—Sweat during training saves blood in battle.” Seemingly accepting my word at face value.

[Lae’zel: Approval +2]

Karlach looked between me and the empty ledge, then back at me, her expression somewhere between amused and deeply unconvinced. “You just had me shove something off a cliff that wasn’t there.”

“And you did it perfectly,” I said.

Shadowheart gave me a look of honest concern. “Was that headband cursed in some way? Did it take some of your brain when you sold it? Maybe we should go get it back—”

“No!” I answered too quickly. “Besides, that dwarf couple is probably long gone now”

Kagha simply watched me, eyes soft with unquestioning patience. Teela’s tongue flicked once more, tasting my unease before the viper tucked her head beneath her mistress’s copper hair.

They accepted it. Or chose to. Internally, I was spiraling.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. The duergar were here. They were always here, every single time, waiting in their invisible little ambush spots like clockwork. I’d planned this. I’d planned this down to the footing. And there was nothing. Not a body, not a weapon, not a scrap of fabric.

Withers’s voice surfaced in my memory, dry and patient. "The threads of fate twist and unravel. Your path is no longer the only one that diverges."

Were they still here, somewhere, repositioned?
Had they simply packed up and left, returned to the main garrison across the lake, and if so, why?
Had something gotten to them first?

My stomach tightened; that last thought sat heavier than the others. Something that could clear an ambush position this thoroughly, without leaving a trace. What kind of monster would be capable of such a—

“Search the area,” I said, and this time my voice came out steadier, more like an order and less like a man covering for himself. “Anything. Tracks, blood, dropped gear, eggs.. anything at all.”

They spread out without complaint, weapons still half-readied, moving with a kind of care that came from not knowing what they were looking for. Shadowheart probed the water’s edge. Karlach searched crates with careful fingers, her heat making the wood pop and steam. Lae’zel swept the upper platforms with mechanical thoroughness, greatsword resting across her shoulders. Kagha drifted through the shadows below the ladder, fingers tracing the walls and floor with quiet focus.

It was Kagha who slowed first.

She crouched near the base of the ladder without a word, head tilting slightly. One finger extended and touched the stone beside the lowest rung. When she raised her hand, a fine strand of silk clung between her fingertip and the wall, catching the faint light like a thread of glass.

She looked at me.

I crossed to her and crouched beside her. The webbing was delicate, purposeful. It ran along the underside of the rung, across the floor in a thin pattern, up the wall beside the ladder in neat, parallel lines. Organized. Recent. Still tacky to the touch.

I stood slowly and looked around with new eyes.

It was everywhere once you knew to look for it. Fine strands along the crate edges Karlach had upended. A thin veil across the upper ledge where Lae’zel had swept her blade. Delicate threads strung between the support pillars where Shadowheart had stood, catching the residual heat of her fireball and curling at the edges. This was not the smothering blankets of an infestation. Just a quiet, hidden presence. A vibration network. Fuck.

“Spiders are common enough down here,” Shadowheart said slowly, following my gaze across the platforms. Her voice had lost its usual dryness. “But this feels different.”

“A sign of intelligence,” Kagha agreed, rising beside me. She held the strand between two fingers a moment longer before letting it drift free. “No blood. No sign that anyone ran or fought or had the chance to do either.” Her voice stayed serene, but she angled herself closer to me. “Whatever found them, found them very quickly.”

Lae’zel said nothing. She was staring at the webbing along the upper ledge with an expression I hadn’t quite seen before.

Karlach scratched the back of her neck. “Please say this is part of your drill.”

“It’s not,” I admitted.

I stood at the center of the outpost and felt the dread coil tighter, shifting from formless unease into realization. The duergar hadn’t retreated on their own. They’d been here, and then they hadn’t, and not one of them had managed to draw a blade. The ground said so. The silence said so. The way the fine strands ran across every ambush position with quiet precision said so most of all.

She’s been busy.

The Sensitivity Curse was still active. I had known that since the conversation with Graz’zt. What I hadn’t fully considered, until this exact moment, was what an apex predator with an enhanced literal spider sense might have become after weeks alone in the dark, with nothing but time and endless appetite.

Apparently something that could clear an invisible ambush without leaving a corpse.

My eyes darted to every corner, every shadow, flicking up toward the roof, searching for movement. She had to know we were here as well.

“Let’s get out of here. Now.”

Nobody argued. I think they could hear something in my voice that gave away my fear, but I didn’t have time to care.

The pier creaked under our weight as we descended. Luckily the boat was exactly as I remembered.

We pushed off. The lapping of water against the hull filled the silence, rhythmic and indifferent. Behind us the outpost shrank into shadow, its vacant platforms and fine-threaded walls watching us depart. Ahead the lake stretched vast and lightless, broken only by the faint red bleed of distant volcanic fissures along the far shore.

Karlach began humming an off-key tavern tune. Shadowheart’s soft prayers bled into the rythm. Lae’zel stayed silent, eyes drifting across the dark water. Kagha’s hand found a place to rest on my shoulder, a small, possessive gesture of trust and caution.

The far shore waited somewhere ahead, carrying questions the old playthroughs could no longer answer.