03/30/2026: In the Bathroom

Being in the bathroom of the Hag’s Arms has become, against all reasonable expectation, being part of a command center.

Thunk is the first to leave it. Fresh from his encounter with the succubi and still tasting the memory of whatever he has just vomited up, he shoulders his way through the crowd with the particular determination of someone who has decided that what he needs, more than anything, is a friend. He spots a table of bearded devils — heavily built, speaking in low tones, their beards moving in ways that beards should not — and makes directly for them.

“Hello, my hairy friends!” The bearded devils go quiet. Every head turns. Thunk, to his credit, does not flinch. He rolls his perception a half-second too late: those are not beards of hair. They are snakes.

“My scaly friends,” he corrects himself, without missing a beat. “How are we doing tonight?”

One of the devils regards him with the expression of something that Thurk doesn’t wish to consider. “What do you want?” it snarls.

“Just making conversation,” Thunk says warmly, but thinks to himself, “I failed at my first try, but I’m making at least one friend tonight.”

They slide a pitcher toward him. He peers at it. Given what happened to the last drink he attempted at this establishment, he approaches the liquid with caution.

“Is it mandatory to drink this to be your friend? Is that what we’re doing?”

“I’m just sharing,” the devil says.

Thunk accepts the glass. He takes a sip. It is, without question, the most surprising thing that has happened to him since entering the Hag’s Arms.

It is grape juice. Unfermented. The bearded devils, it emerges, are on duty.

“This is a lot less strong than I thought it was going to be,” Thunk says, with genuine gratitude. “Thank you.”

The devil who poured Thunk’s drink leans back in his chair and folds his enormous arms. “What brings you to our Malbolge? You must be either a liar or a traitor.”

Thunk considers his options. He is currently in Hell, debating about how much of the truth to share. “I’m a liar,” he says, “and I’m good at it.”

He is not, it transpires, particularly good at it. The claim lands ungracefully, and the bearded devils chuckle, not unkindly.

“When are they turning you into a worm?”

“A worm?” Thunk blinks. “I didn’t know that was an opportunity.”

“I can tell you still have your soul. Once they strip that from you and you become a larva—”

“Do I get to turn into a pretty butterfly afterwards?”

The devil pauses, and then — with the warm and entirely dishonest smile of a creature whose job it is to process the damned — says: “Yes. Yes, you do.” 

The devils exchange looks amongst themselves, but the excited Thunk fails to notice.

“You become a beautiful butterfly!” the devils chorus, and laugh with great feeling, and Thunk laughs along with them, because it is a good table and he is having a lovely time.

“Well,” Thunk says eventually, “that is so tempting, but sadly I am currently traveling with this big fellow — I forget his name — and I don’t think he’d be too happy if I turned into a worm before we saw Asmodeus.”

The devils exchange a glance. One whispers to the other. They both look back at Thunk.

“He thinks he’s going to see Asmodeus,” one of them says.

“What are we laughing about?” Thunk asks immediately. “I want to be included.”

“He’s so cute,” the other devil says. “Come on, let us take your soul. Please.”

Thunk declines, with warmth, and makes his way back to the bathroom.

⚔

Kiki slips out of the bathroom while Thunk is away at the bearded devils’ table. She crosses the tavern floor without ceremony, passing Jaquila’s position at the bar — the fallen angel catches her eye and raises a hand in greeting, easy and unhurried, as if they have met at some agreeable party rather than in the sixth layer of Hell after she has stolen his soul.

“Kiki,” she says. “The little artificer. How have you been?”

“Could be better,” Kiki says.

“Yes,” says Jaquila, “me too. Headed down, are we?”

“Actually,” Kiki says, “I’m looking for Glaysa.”

“Aren’t we all.” Jaquila’s smile does not quite reach her eyes, but it is a very convincing smile regardless. “My guess is she’s gone to see Daddy dearest. That is, after all, where he tends to be found.”

“The Ninth Level.” Kiki keeps her voice even. “Do you know any way we could get down there?”

Jaquila tilts her head. “Have you tried the Maze?”

“What maze?”

“To the east. Anyone wishing to descend to the next level must pass through it.” She examines her nails. “If you succeed, the Maze lets you pass. I wouldn’t dawdle.”

Kiki thanks her — neutrally, carefully — and returns to the bathroom.

⚔

The bathroom of the Hag’s Arms has become, improbably, more crowded.

Some time ago, a tall figure in a voluminous hooded cloak was slumped at the bar — the quasit called Fork, immune to poison but emphatically not immune to fire whiskey, sleeping off what has been a philosophically eventful evening. He regains consciousness in stages, and fortunately no one in the Hag’s Arm has recognized him as a demon. 

Something jogs Fork’s memory. He taps the lower portion of his coat, says “I got to puke,” and begins making his way toward the bathroom with the careful, swaying progress of a creature whose legs are not quite keeping up.

The bathroom door opens. Fork enters.

Reklaw, in a stroke of camaraderie, claps him on the back.

The coat comes apart.

What tumbles to the floor of the bathroom is, specifically: one very tall quasit called Fork, who has the longer horns and reeks of blood and sweat and the tears of his enemies. The other quasit is called Shovel: shorter, darker green, and carrying about him the particular smell of dirt and dead things. In a pouch at his hip is a half-eaten moldy spellbook. And one undead goat, who lands on the tile, gets its footing, and looks around at the assembled party with an expression that communicates very little.

There is a silence of the kind that tends to follow the discovery of two demons and a goat in a trench coat.

“Kiki,” Thunk says slowly. “Why are there two demons and a goat?”

“That’s a good question,” Kiki says.

Reklaw takes a step back. Waffle the pixie, fluttering in tight circles near the ceiling, produces a mint from somewhere unspecified and offers it to Fork. Shovel casts Find Familiar, and the group looks toward the stalls at the sound of clacking claws.

“Hi, friend,” Reklaw says. “Welcome to the bathroom.”

The group looks at the source of the clacking to see a  crab emerging from the commode. Shovel offers it a hand, and then gently strokes it along its back. He looks at the throw-up on the floor. He looks at the crowd of people.

“Sanctuary,” Borark offers.

⚔

It is at this point that Jaquila enters the bathroom.

She surveys the scene — the quasits, the goat, the crab, the pixie, the tiefling, the two bugbears, the monk in a stall, the throw-up — with the calm of someone who has fallen from grace and therefore retains very little capacity for surprise.

“You found the demons,” she says.

Kiki notes, rather obviously, “The demons were in a coat.”

Jaquila ignores this, instead changing the subject. “If I were you, I would take them with you. They would make a very lovely thing to trade in exchange for the Soul Anchor.”

The moment she says the words useful and trade in the same sentence, Fork, Shovel, and the goat all throw up in synchrony. The goat, unfortunately, gets Jaquila’s robe.

There is another silence.

Jaquila looks down. She looks at the goat. She casts Healing Touch on the goat, because it is sick and that is not its fault, and the goat glows with restoration and health. It gazes up at her with profound apology. She moves to the sink to wash her robes.

“You’d best get yourselves to The Maze,” she says, wringing out the hem with measured calm. “And your friend out there, disguised as a nightmare shepherd — many of the creatures in this establishment have truesight. I would not wait too long.”

She pauses at the door.

“Oh, and — good luck with that soul thing. I know you’re missing them.” A beat. “Tell Lula I say hi.”

Shovel pulls the goat close. “No,” he says. “Goat mine. I support dreams.”

Jaquila leaves.

⚔

Kiki, calculating the odds quietly, moves back to the bathroom door and opens it a crack. Reklaw hands the gap to Waffle, who drifts out into the tavern — invisible, furious, and now apparently in the jewelry business — and floats toward the nearest nightmare shepherd.

The necklace unclasps itself from behind the shepherd’s neck with the delicacy of a very small and very irritable professional. It begins to drift upward.

The nightmare shepherd’s hand goes to his throat.

Waffle makes it most of the way back to the bathroom before losing altitude in a moment of indecision and dropping the necklace directly onto Reklaw’s shoulder, through the gap in the stall door, in a location the nightmare shepherd cannot quite see from where he is standing.

Reklaw now has a gold necklace.

Arman, via the message bead, receives: Look out, pixie gonna steal — it’s okay. Don’t get thefted.

The nightmare shepherd follows the disturbance toward the bathroom.

⚔

The door opens. The shepherd steps in.

He is a large creature, professionally skeptical, and he takes in the large assembly of individuals in the bathroom of the Hag’s Arms with the expression of someone whose evening has just become significantly more complicated.

His gaze falls on Fork and Shovel.

“Quasits,” he says. “We LOVE demons in the Nine Hells.”

“Hello,” says Thunk.

“There’s a medal in it for both of us,” the shepherd says, to Arman, who has arrived in his wake in the guise of Lawrence, “if we take them. Especially the one with the crab on his head.”

Shovel pulls the crab closer. “No,” he says. “Crab friend.”

The bathroom has reached the point of critical mass. Borark, who has been engaged in a sustained and personal conflict with the eastern wall — enraged, he has struck at it, struck it repeatedly, barely denting it, and he declares it stupid, poorly located, and a boss of no one. Now he turns his attention to the more pressing matter of a nightmare shepherd attempting to make arrests. 

Vali decides it is time to leave. He casts Polymorph on himself, becomes a fly, locates the gap between the door and the frame. He is gone into the taproom of the Hag’s Arm.

“Lawrence and I,” the nightmare shepherd announces, “are going to arrest every one of you.”

Arman, in character, considers his options. His insight tells him something is off about the quasits. He does not know what. He does not know whose side they are on. He does know, with reasonable certainty, that his entire party is standing in a bathroom doing nothing alarming in particular, which is probably meaningful.

“I’ll take them with me,” he offers the shepherd. “I’ve already got them under arrest. You get the credit. I’ll handle the transport.”

The shepherd is not entirely convinced. He opens his mouth.

Borark hits him with the Drunkard’s Cudgel.

The nightmare shepherd sits down heavily on the bathroom floor, intoxicated, and begins to snore.

⚔

Out in the tavern, Vali has reconstituted himself in a quiet corner and found a seat at the bar. He asks Morda for the third strongest drink she has.

She pours him something that smells extraordinary, slides it over, and tells him, “That’ll be three gold.” Vali’s eyes widen at the price. Morda rests her chin on her clawed hands, waiting to watch him drink it.

Vali swirls it. He sniffs it. He takes a small and considered sip.

His tiefling tail, which has until this moment been a perfectly conventional pointed tiefling tail, develops a rattle.

He lifts it. He looks at it. He sets it on the bar.

“Why does it look like this?”

Morda considers the question, her brows raised. “Could be what you’re drinking.”

Vali takes another sip. Nothing further changes. The rattle is, apparently, the extent of it — temporary, the barmaid assures him, a day at most — and Vali decides this is acceptable, sets his tail back down, and turns to the contract devil seated beside him.

Vali’s father is a contract devil. Vali has always found them interesting company.

The contract devil bends his ear for the next two hours about the most boring piece of infernal paperwork imaginable. Vali listens with genuine attention. Outside, somewhere to the east, the Maze of Deserved Sorrows waits.