"I believe we should not go exploring right now and should instead retire for the day. Now that we've found a suitable place for that."

"And our prisoners?"

"We release them, one at a time, from different locations so they have more trouble finding each other again. And we lock the doors and stand watch. I am an elf, so I can take a longer watch."

"Hmm. Acceptable."

"Glowing praise. Now, I will lead one of our prisoners out and then take this chance to wash myself in the nearby river. It has been a rather exhausting day."

First, thou shalt not drink the blood of thinking creatures. Cazador Szarr's rule for Astarion.

And here, away from his companions...

"I will release you here, but first you will do me a favour," he says to that prisoner.

And it turns out running water does in fact no longer hurt him.

"Let's move," says Lae'zel in the next morning, once they're all awake. "We have no time to waste."

"But I so wanted to explore these ruins some more..."

"We have no time to waste."

"It was a jest, sweetheart, I recognise that my curiosity notwithstanding we are on a time limit.

"Despite the lack of symptoms, that is. What should we have been expecting, exactly?"

"It starts with a fever and your hair falls out," she starts, gesticulating animatedly. "Then, you start to hallucinate. Your hair falls out and you bleed from every orifice. Your bones will change form, and your jaw will split to allow room for four great tentacles. All skin will turn to gore, and be shed to reveal new flesh underneath. Then, you have ceased to exist, and a mind flayer is born."

"So it's even more surprising that none of that has happened, hmm?"

"Everything about our situation is most unusual. All the more reason to visit the crèche; my people are experts in these matters, we have done battle to ghaik from time immemorial, ever since we escaped thralldom under them."

"You can always return here later to explore, after getting cured."

"Hmm, I suppose. We should probably lock this door again, then."

Placing the candle holder back where it was obligingly makes the door close again.

And Astarion can make sure to smush out their tracks here so others are less likely to find the lever and door.

Onwards to the northwest.

They don't run into any trouble. The nautiloid is mostly no longer burning and is now merely ugly and putrescent. They travel along beaten paths to the west and north a while as the sun climbs higher in the sky... until they hear shouting.

Time to eavesdrop.

"Open the bloody gate!" calls a human in front of, indeed, a gate. It's lightly camouflaged against the sheer rock face, covered in vines, but not that camouflaged, and the disguise is somewhat ruined by the obvious battlements above it.

    "Nobody gets in!" calls a tiefling from said battlement. "Zevlor's orders!"

"That pack of goblins will be on us any second!"

        "What's going on?" asks a second tiefling, arriving then.

"Goblins are on our tail. Open the gate, Zevlor. Now."

        "You fool! You led goblins here? Where's the druid?"

"Please! There's no time!"

There is indeed no time as a pack of goblins chooses this moment to arrive within earshot.

        "By the Nine Hells. Open the gate!" Another tiefling starts doing that but she is immediately shot by a goblin sharpshooter. "Kanon, no!"

"Shit. Form a line!" cries the human, turning around and unslinging his bow.

"Are you going to say we should spare these creatures too?"

"Gods, no. Slaughter away. —the goblins."

"Htak'a!"