As far as plans go, it wasn’t the best one I had ever heard. But I will also say, so far so good with this group of adventurers. All told, you had done a pretty fair share of killing, looting, and general dungeon-crawling. So when Dorengar and Drogan–which sounded to me like a Greyhawk barrister’s office, but don’t ever tell their shades I said that–came up with the old “cast spider climb on everyone, and then the dwarf will jump onto the beholder and stab its eye out while I shoot it” plan, I didn’t say much about it. I probably should have.

The spider climb part worked fine: Treilor cast it on the dwarf and the half-orc and they climbed their way up the walls. The rest of us scattered around the cave, trying to keep out of the eye tyrant’s line of sight. I readied my trusty short sword, not because I thought I would engage in melee with the beholder, but to give my hands something to do; I knew that I couldn’t risk shooting at the floating mound of eye stalks for fear of hitting Dorengar. I found myself a convenient notch in the wall and waited for the dropping dwarf to signal the attack. Drop he did, but attack, not so much.

I saw him falling, sword in hand. Then I noticed one of the beholder’s eye stalks twitch, and Dorengar’s drop turned into a slow, almost floating, descent. What should have been a surprise blow to the center eye was now a feather being tossed on a zephyr. Before I could do anything more productive than start to move out of my hiding place, another two stalks twitched, almost in unison. I saw the magic user freeze in place, then violently move into the air, as if picked up by a unseen hand. A third stalk motioned, there was a bright light, a loud bang, and the magic user was scattered into hundreds of pieces. It was at this point that my halfling courage, which is generally stout, especially for a halfling, started to break.

I grabbed my sword and bow and started looking for other party members. Maybe if we made a tactical retreat, we would have a chance to make a better plan or at least one more sophisticated than jumping on the beholder. I saw the cleric hiding beneath an outcropping in the floor. I motioned to her, hoping that she would understand that my fervent hand gestures meant “let’s get out of here.” I noticed the smug paladin and Jindar had broken from their hiding places, only to draw the attention of the beholder. Another stalk vibrated: the ranger and the paladin stopped doing much of anything, gazing out at the hallway beyond the cave. Both proceeded to drop their weapons and start to unbuckle their armor. At this point, I stopped caring if the cleric saw me or not. I was getting out of here.

Or so that was my plan. As I scrambled to clear the cave, I guess I wasn’t as stealthy as I should have been. The tyrant sensed/heard/felt my footsteps and looked at me. I felt what courage I had left, admittedly quite little, and bolted for the exit. I knew that I would stop running at some point, but I wasn’t sure when. As long as I was well away from the horror with eleven eyes, I didn’t really care.

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