She nodded at them and touched the ceremonial dagger that hung against her chest. Then she sang a prayer: one that began softly, but that rose steadily to a crescendo with the power of a waterfall. At its conclusion, she chopped a hand through the air like a sword blade slicing down. Forced apart by her magic, the river split in a V-shaped trough that extended almost to its center. The depression widened, forcing the water back on either side. The remainder of the river rushed on swifter than before, compensating in speed for the narrowed space.

The gap in the river revealed an enormous mass of rusted iron, large enough to fill a small room. It lay, tipped sideways, on the river-smoothed blocks of stone from the original bridge. It was the statue of an enormous scorpion, its legs twisted beneath it and one pincer claw splayed out to the side. Its barbed tail had snagged the net.

The human stared at it through dark-lensed goggles that allowed her to see in the Underdark. "What is it?" she asked. "A statue from the first bridge?"

Leliana shook her head. She'd been assigned to the Promenade little more than a year and a half ago, but she'd made it her business to learn all she could about the temple since then. In the earliest days of the Promenade, when the first bridge was in ruins and the river impassable, a scorpion-shaped construct had been sighted, on occasion, in the caverns that opened onto the eastern banks of the Sargauth. When the Protectors extended their patrols into the caverns to the southeast a few years ago, they'd expected to run into it, but the construct had seemingly disappeared. It had, they surmised, either wandered away into some deeper corner of Undermountain or been summoned home by its maker.