The derro waited for Wykar where they had agreed, toying silently with a long knife among the blue glow-fan fungi.

Wykar stopped and did not move a muscle after he eased around the entrance to the blue-lit cavern chamber and saw the derro. The hunched gnome warily embraced the chamber with his senses to discover if Geppo had unwisely brought friends along to the hidden garden of luminescent fungi, but he sensed nothing amiss. He nonetheless kept his gray hands free, ready to seize from his vest, belt, or boots whatever weapon was called for.

Geppo noticed the deep gnome after a few moments but did not seem startled. Head bowed in concentration on his knife, he peered up at the little intruder through his thick, pale eyebrows. A smile tugged at his thin lips. With skin as white and dirty as a toadstool cap, Geppo could easily pass for a true dwarfs corpse in his sleep. The orbs of his large, milky eyes each showed only a black dot for a pupil, little holes in moist white stones. His emaciated face was framed by long, matted hair of a filthy sulfur hue. An unkempt beard and mustache hid his sunken cheeks and narrow lower jaw.

Though Geppo was a head taller than the three-foot gnome, he seemed much the weaker of the two. The derro's skeletal frame had not fleshed out after his long, hard-lived enslavement by the drow. Except for a change of clothing and a few obviously scavenged tools and weapons now strapped to his person, he looked exactly the same as when Wykar had known him as a fellow prisoner. The faint blue light from the glowfan fungi added an air of unreality to the derro's presence, as if he had recently left his own grave.

Geppo wore a dark, muddy tunic of rough fabric, under which a darker outfit showed at the collar. Wykar guessed that leather or hide armor lay beneath. A finely tooled black belt bearing many small pockets and pouches was pulled tight at his thin waist. It looked like a drow's belt, but it was unlikely the derro had taken it from the bodies of their former masters. The Underdark held the remains of many failed plans and dreams, and one could get anything if one knew where to look.

After a long moment, Geppo's gaze dropped. He resumed scraping the edge of his long knife across the scar-crossed back of his right hand. "Late," he grunted, his voice as rough as a broken rock.

Wykar saw the butt of a weapon lying within reach of Geppo's left hand, almost hidden by the curled edge of a glowfan fungus. The bent gnome stepped closer, his movements relaxed and slow. The weapon looked like a crossbow, a little two-shot repeater type favored by the drow-a lucky find. When he was ten feet from Geppo, Wykar crouched on the balls of his boots and rested his elbows on his thighs, letting his thick hands dangle. "Long walk home," he replied.

Geppo snorted faintly, as if he recognized the lie. He lifted the knife blade, eyed its bright edge, then carefully slid it home in a crude sheath strapped to his belt. His thin arms then rested on his knees, hands limp. After a short glance around Wykar, he nodded. "Alone," he rasped approvingly.

"Alone," agreed Wykar. He detected no heat-glow but Geppo's, heard no sound but Geppo's breathing, smelled nothing other than the earthy scent of the glowing fungus and a sour, unwashed body odor that had to be the derro's. Didn't they ever bathe? It must be easy for Underdark predators to track them, little wonder most derro were so insanely paranoid.

Geppo nodded and seemed to relax. He reached over and gently broke a piece from a nearby glowfan. He popped the luminescent tidbit into his mouth and chewed.

Wykar saw disease-blackened teeth through the forest of filthy whiskers. The gnome swallowed and covered up his disgust. He never touched glowing fungus, much less ate it, many species of it were poisonous. Geppo seemed to enjoy fungus of any sort, though. The drow had fed him nothing else.

Wykar let it go. He inhaled slowly as he looked the derro over. "I was surprised to see you here," he said at last. "I didn't know if you would make it very far after…"

The derro smiled with the look of a wicked boy who is proud of something. "S'prise you, s'prise Geppo," he said. "You run much, walk much? You strong, hey. Geppo… mmm, no. Not strong." He held out his thin arms and turned them over, shaking his head and frowning in disapproval. "Not strong, hey? Sick much, sick much." He dropped his arms and shrugged, then leaned forward and stared into Wykar's cool gray eyes, a smirk on his ravaged face. "Hey," he whispered, his white eyes narrow. "Geppo sick much but"-his voice dropped further, as if telling a little secret-"laughing ones sick more now, hey?"

He pulled back before Wykar could reply. "Laughing ones sick more," he repeated with a quick nod. "Sick more than Geppo." The derro thumped his chest with a bony fist when he spoke his name.

Wykar's cheek twitched as he nodded in response, remembering. "Very sick," he said softly. He shivered, though he was not cold in the slightest.

Geppo's smirk faded. After a moment, he nodded and made a gesture of dismissal. "Laughing ones no laughing, all good. You say, see me here, then you run. You here now." He stopped, waiting.

The deep gnome looked into the derro's white eyes. This could work, he thought. He's still the same, or looks it. If he's the same old Geppo, this could really work.

Wykar swallowed. He sensed that he should speak only the truth at this point. Being caught in an important lie would lead straight to serious trouble, especially with a derro-even this one.

"When we… escaped, we left some unfinished business behind us," he said, making no pretense of talking down to the derro. Despite the derro's pidgin-talk, Geppo was intelligent and caught on to whatever was said to him. Some kind of innate derro trait, Wykar guessed. "I came here because I want to finish it. I need your help with things." Wykar swallowed, risking a small untruth. "I will ensure that you are well rewarded for whatever assistance you can give me."

The derro smiled again but did not look Wykar in the eye. "Ah," he said casually. He seemed to have anticipated the topic. He inhaled deeply as his left hand drifted up to his throat and gently rubbed the skin there. "Need Geppo's hel-" he began, but his voice suddenly broke before he could say more. He coughed and tried to clear his throat, then began coughing again, grimacing with pain.

Wykar could not see Geppo's neck through his rat's nest of a beard, but he doubted the derro's old wounds had healed yet. A fun-loving young drow had tried to strangle him as a joke, using a long, thin metal wire. The gnome waited for Geppo to recover his voice, wondering if the wounds had become infected from the filth that was encrusted over the derro's faded hair and skin. It would not be surprising.

The derro made a hand gesture of apology-something he had learned from Wykar during their captivity-then pointed at the gnome. "You," he wheezed faintly. Wykar's large ears could barely catch his tortured words. "You tell me what you do, hey?"

"Yes," said Wykar. It was time to face the issue and see what came next. He thought about the crystal-nosed darts just inside his vest, and the speed at which he would have to get to them if things went badly-if Geppo reverted to the derro norm, that is, and tried to threaten or kill him. "I came back because of that egg," he said. "I want to destroy it. I need someone to go along with me for protection. You can have whatever gold and gems they brought with them, but I want to see the egg destroyed. That's all I want." That and the death of every drow alive, but I can be reasonable, he thought.

The derro straightened and looked at Wykar in surprise. "Egg?" he said, his large eyes wider now. "You want big egg in chest, not-?" He shook his head with disbelief and stared at the gnome without further comment. Then he shrugged acceptance, and his eyes slowly narrowed, another topic obviously on his mind. He actually seemed to be considering the proposition then and there, with barely an argument. Several minutes passed. Wykar was patient but alert.