The Mind Flayers' "prison" was indeed nothing like a prison in the usual sense.
To Renato, it looked more like a laboratory-or, more precisely, a gallery displaying failed creations.
Cylindrical glass columns stood in neat rows, each over ten feet tall and filled with thick, ghostly green fluid.
Unimaginably twisted creatures floated inside. Some had three arms and a single eye; others had bodies like crumpled paper, or heads and tails growing at opposite ends from where they should have been. They drifted slowly through the fluid, bubbles occasionally escaping their malformed mouthparts.
After using the last of his sword oil, Renato took a bottle of Oil of Speed and a See Invisibility Potion from his Bag of Holding, pulled out the stoppers, and drank them one after the other.
The two bitter potions, each with a different taste, mixed in his stomach and made his abdomen cramp slightly.
A creature in one of the glass columns caught his eye.
It had two pairs of arms and a fishlike head. Patchy scales covered its body, some having fallen away to reveal pale flesh beneath.
Most unsettling were its dead fish eyes, dull yet constantly turning to follow Renato's movements.
His stomach grew even more unsettled.
"These are the failed products of the Elder Brain's various crossbreeding experiments." Klauthsura floated ahead, clearly familiar with the place. "Although the vast majority of subjects die of total organ failure when psionics forcibly alters their genetic material, many tenacious specimens are fortunate enough to survive."
Klauthsura paused briefly before an empty column containing no fluid.
"Many of these so-called failures actually have promising applications. Unfortunately, by the Elder Brain's definition, anything that fails to meet its requirements is a failure."
Around a corner, a Mind Flayer's corpse came into view. Its body had been