You push the sickness down. You lock your knees. You straighten your back until it pops. You will not throw up. You are a god.

You walk down the hall with a stride that eats the distance. The crushing gravity tries to fold you in half. You ignore it. The nausea spins in your gut like a whirlpool. You ignore it. To the outside world you look terrifyingly calm. You look like a statue that has decided to take a walk.

The two Monitors turn. Their beady eyes go wide.

You know these two. They are Gurgle-Thump and Splosh-Krack. They are the biggest warriors in the tribe. They usually guard the nursery or the food stores. Seeing them here means this door is important. They know the sickness that lives in this hallway. They have seen strong hunters vomit just by standing too close.

But you? You walk through the pressure like it is a gentle breeze.

The sight breaks them. They drop their heavy stone clubs. The weapons hit the floor with a loud thud. The two massive Kuo-toa fall to their knees. The splash echoes in the dark hall. They bow their heads so low that their chins scrape the wet floor. They are shaking. Not from fear. But from pure and overwhelming awe.

Gurgle-Thump speaks first. His voice is deep. It sounds like two boulders grinding together underwater.

"Oh Great One!" he rumbles into the floor. "You walk the Heavy Path! You do not wobble! You do not heave! You are stronger than the bad air! How may this unworthy meat serve You?"

Splosh-Krack peeks up with one eye. He looks terrified but also confused. He wrings his large webbed hands together as he tries to block the door with his kneeling body.

"But Great Shoog... Big Shoog... Sir," he stammers. "This is the No-Go Door. High Priest Blibdoolpoolp was very strict. He gave us the Big Order. He said 'Do not let the God in.' He said 'If the Great Shoog comes here you must stop Him.'"

He glances nervously at the closed stone door and then back at you. He looks like he is trying to come up with a better reason but failing.

"He said if we let You in... he would be very upset," Splosh-Krack continues, his voice trembling. "He said he would hit us with the Punishment Eel. The one with the teeth. But... You are already here. And You look very determined. So we are very confused."

During his time in slavery to the drow, Leo's mistresses had forced him to perform under much more unpleasant conditions that what the hallway was putting him through. All while expecting the same level of quality they expected from every other performance. As a result, it was simplicity itself for SHOOGBIMBHALD to continue maintaining a steely composure as Gurgle-Thump and Splosh-Krack prostrated themselves in awe at the sight of their god passing unhindered through the sickening effects of the hallway.

"Oh Great One!" Gurgle-Thump rumbled into the floor. "You walk the Heavy Path! You do not wobble! You do not heave! You are stronger than the bad air! How may this unworthy meat serve You?"

"I have business that I must tend to beyond the door you keep." SHOOGBIMBHALD declared. "Open it."

SHOOGBIMBHALD's words caused Splosh-Krack to look up with one eye in a mix of fear and confusion. "But Great Shoog... Big Shoog... Sir," Sploosh-Krack stammered. "This is the No-Go Door. High Priest Blibdoolpoolp was very strict. He gave us the Big Order. He said 'Do not let the God in.' He said 'If the Great Shoog comes here you must stop Him.'"

"Blibdoolpoolp said this?" SHOOGBIMBHALD said. "He gave you the Big Order?"

"He said if we let You in... he would be very upset," Splosh-Krack continued after struggling to find words for a time. "He said he would hit us with the Punishment Eel. The one with the teeth. But... You are already here. And You look very determined. So we are very confused."

"Then I will clear up this confusion." SHOOGBIMBHALD responded. "Blibdoolpoolp is only able to give you the Big Order because I, as the god of this place, allow him to. And as the god of this place, I get to give both the Big Order and the Biggest Order. And the Biggest Order must be followed above all other orders. So here is the Biggest Order, that you must now follow: You are to open this door and let me go through it. Blibdoolpoolp will not be allowed to punish you for following my Biggest Order over his Big Order. If he does, I will bring that same punishment down on him seven times worse upon my return."

The Monitors tremble. The sheer weight of your divine authority crushes their hesitation. A command of such magnitude cannot be ignored. The concept of the Biggest Order overrides every instinct of self-preservation they have.

"The Biggest Order..." Gurgle-Thump whispers. He sounds like a child who has just learned a terrible secret. "We obey. We obey the Biggest Order."

"Please do not tell the Eel," Splosh-Krack adds weakly.

Together they turn to the heavy stone door. They grip the iron rings with their massive hands. They heave. Muscles bulge beneath scarred scales. The stone grinds against stone with a sound like a mountain screaming in pain.

The door cracks open.

The smell hits you first. It is thick. It tastes of copper and old blood. It tastes of rot that has been sealed away for a very long time.

Water instantly rushes out. It swirls around your boots. It is cold and oily. But as the door swings fully open you see something impossible. The room beyond is flooded. The water level is waist high inside. By all laws of nature it should come crashing out into the hallway and sweep you away.

It does not.

The water hangs there. It bulges at the threshold like a wall of dark gelatin. It ripples and shimmers but refuses to drain. It is held in place by a pressure you can feel in your teeth.

You look inside.

The chamber is vast and circular. The water is black and still. It acts like a mirror for the horror above.

Floating in the center of the room is a statue. It hovers a few feet above the surface. It is carved from a strange material that gleams with a wet pearlescent salmon pink luster. It has the body of a woman. The curves are elegant. The posture is graceful. Her hands are clasped in prayer.

But the face is a nightmare.

Where a face should be the material has exploded outward. It looks like a flower made of bone and calcified flesh. Jagged plates of pink stone layer over one another in a chaotic blossoming pattern. It looks like a fungus that has burst from the skull. There are no eyes. There is no mouth. There is only this blind eruption that splits the head apart.



And beneath it the water is full of death.

Bodies of Kuo-toa float in the dark liquid. They are arranged in perfect concentric circles around the statue. The ones in the outer circle are fresh. They float face down. Their scales are dull.

But as your eyes move inward the horror grows.

The next circle of bodies is bloated and gray. Their skin has started to peel away. The circle after that is worse. The flesh has turned to sludge. Ribs stick out of the water like white cages.

And the bodies closest to the statue are nothing but loose bones and drifting scales held together by slime. They bob gently in the water. They bump against each other in silence.

The statue rotates slowly. It turns toward you. The exploded face seems to twitch.

The sickness hits you again.

It is not just nausea this time. It is a physical blow. The gravity in the room seems to double. The air is heavy with the taste of spores and death. That invisible force reaches out from the statue. It grabs you. It tries to wring the strength from your body like water from a rag. It wants to pull you into the circle. It wants you to join the floating dead.

"The Biggest Order..." Gurgle-Thump whispered as he moved to stand by the door. "We obey. We obey the Biggest Order."

"Please do not tell the Eel," Splosh-Krack added as he joined the other Monitor.

As they turned away from him to open the door, Leo crossed his fingers as he always did before doing something daunting. Whatever it was that was calling to him, it was likely something powerful and he was likely approaching an incredibly dangerous encounter. But it had to be done. He face what the kuo-toa dared not. He had to give fuel to the fire of their belief in him. If he didn't, he would never be strong enough to save his loved ones at best and the kuo-toa would eventually start doubting his divinity at worst.

Leo uncrossed his fingers as the door cracked open with a great deal of complaint and forced himself to show no hint of disgust as he was assailed by the sight and stench of death. He then took care to keep any sign of curiosity off his face when he saw that most of the water in the forbidden chamber was being contained within by magic.

Then he saw the floating statue in the middle of the room.

Leo was no stranger to this particular situation. The statue looked like a beautiful woman while she was facing away from him, but he knew enough stories to know that when she turned around, the statue would reveal itself to have some sort of horrifying visage. And sure enough he was right... Leo still found himself attracted to the statue even when he saw she had an exploding mushroom for a head though. Whoever had sculpted those curves had done an amazing job.

'Hey! No! None of that right now! Stay focused.' Leo's instincts kicked in as the distraction almost jeopardized his act.

Returning to the task at hand, Leo pondered what he beheld before him. At first he though the statue to be some representation of Zuggtmoy, the Demon Queen of Fungi. But as he considered all the dead kuo-toa around the statue, another idea came to him. The fish folk had been living in the cathedral for longer than Leo had been with them. And since their unwitting ability to manifest deities through sheer faith was a defense mechanism against the dangers of the Underdark, they had to have been revering something before he came along. Was this statue his predecessor? Was this statue the god the kuo-toa had bowed to before him? Had she called him here in some last ditch effort to win back the worship after losing it to him?

Leo's pondering was cut short then as the statue's face twitched, the sickness returned in force, the gravity doubled, and the call became a compulsion. Leo resisted all of this while continuing to act like it wasn't affecting him at all. And SHOOGBIMBHALD stared down the statue with an utterly unamused expression on His face. "This cathedral is mine now. The kuo-toa are mine now." He told the statue with a tone of total finality that would brook no argument. "All I leave to you is a simple decision." SHOOGBIMBHALD reacheda hand out to the statue. "You can pay homage, recognize me as your lord and master, and be permitted to persist under my power." He closed His outstretched hand into a fist then, the beginnings of an Eldritch Blast crackling across His knuckles as He continued. "Or you can resist, continue to defy my coming, and languish in the darkest recesses of my dominion until the day you finally fade. The choice is yours."

Your words hang in the damp air. You offer mercy. You offer a choice. You stand tall as the new god of this place.

The statue does not care.

It does not bow. It does not accept your terms. The heavy gravity in the room vanishes instantly. For a second you feel light. Then the pressure returns. But it is not on your shoulders this time. It is not trying to push you to the floor.

It is inside your head.

It feels like a giant hand has reached inside your skull. It closes around your brain and squeezes. The pain is blinding. It is white and sharp. It spikes behind your eyes like a hot needle. Your vision blurs. A sudden migraine throbs in time with your heartbeat.

You feel a warm wetness on your upper lip. It drips down to your chin. You taste copper. Your nose is bleeding.

The two Monitors scramble backward. Their massive feet slip on the wet stone. They press their bodies against the hallway walls. Their eyes are wide with absolute terror.

"Great Shoog!" Gurgle-Thump screams. "Stop! Do not speak the bad words! Do not disrespect the Mother of Pearl!"

"Her wrath is terrible!" Splosh-Krack cries out. He covers his face with his hands. "She is the Old Keeper! She will drink your thoughts! She will turn your head to soup!"

A voice speaks in your mind. It is not the vast deep voice from your dreams. It is not the voice of the ocean. This one is different. It is cold. It is sharp. It sounds like wet stones rubbing together. It echoes in the hollow space where the pain is strongest.

"Weak idol." the voice sneers inside your skull.

The statue pulses with a sickly pink light. The dead bodies in the water begin to drift faster. They bump against each other with soft wet thuds. The exploded face of the statue seems to bloom wider.

Even as the statue lashed out with a psychic attack that felt like someone had taken a maul to His mind, SHOOGBIMBHALD maintained the act. He refused to show any sign of feeling pain for even a moment. Even as His nose began to bleed. Even as the Monitors cried out in warning. Even as the Old Keeper mocked His weakness. But while SHOOGBIMBHALD stoically weathered the barrage on the outside, Leo was panicking on the inside. He had miscalculated just how much power the Mother of Pearl had left in her. And he had done so to disastrous effect. He stood no chance against her at his current level of power. But he couldn't just back down after giving the ultimatum he had just given. The kuo-toa were watching and he couldn't look weak in front of them.

Reinforcing His mind against further assault, SHOOGBIMBHALD looked to the Monitors then. "She's made her decision. I'm done here. Close the doors." He ordered before turning and walking away.