James Ward: The Paladins

"Wait!" Aleena cried in a hushed voice. "Trandon's got a point. That sounds like an army of fiends in there."

Kern and Jacob groaned impatiently. Miltiades looked at her with an expression that reminded her that he used to be undead.

"Stop!" she hissed. "Look here. I've got a spell that'll let me look in that room and see what we're up against."

"I don't want to know the odds," whispered Kern.

"But intelligence can help us win the battle, or at least win it more quickly, with less casualties! That helps secure our mission. Remember? To save the princess?" She spat the last word with scorn.

"Shh!" cautioned Miltiades. "We waste time. Aleena cast your spell quickly and conduct your espionage. The rest of you prepare for the charge."

"And," added Kern, "she's not a princess."

Aleena took a deep breath to quell her rising irritation. As she released the air from her lungs, she reached into a narrow pocket at her hip and withdrew a bit of bat fur, which she ripped in half and placed into each palm. She rolled back her eyes and shut them, clenched her fists and touched the knuckles of her thumbs together, then pressed them against her full lips. She bowed her head and whispered into her closed hands. They began to glow red from the inside, as though each held a brilliantly illuminated pearl.

Without opening her eyes, Aleena looked down the corridor, toward the gate chamber. She briefly glanced down at her companions, who gazed at her face intently, unaware that she now looked upon them from above, with an invisible magical eye. Her sight turned back toward the rough, slightly curving corridor ahead and moved that way.

Aleena's eye paused at the entrance of the room, as she mentally gasped. The area would be dark but for the kaleidoscopic glow of the gate itself, at the far end of the chamber, which threw eerie light upon a room filled to the corners with fiends. She looked over a stormy sea of mindless, murderous manes. They crowded within the confines of the chamber, pushing, shoving and biting. Curiously, the manes refused to spill into the corridor, though no door or gate stood between them and her party. Obviously, some greater fiend kept them from stampeding into every available space.

Aleena turned her attention toward the gate and spied dark figures atop the pyramid, beside glowing tusks. A pair of tall silhouettes stood over a third creature, who lay at their feet. Slowly, she drifted closer, over the heads of the turbulent manes, penetrating the gloom, focusing upon the creatures by the gate. Her magical eye drifted higher and closer to them. At last she could make out the oily feathers, the scaly heads, the cruel beaks.

"Vrocks!" her lips pronounced, back in the corridor. "True tanar'ri! Some of the most powerful of fiends!"

"You flatter us, human scum-wizard," boomed Rejik's voice in her head, and both of the vulturelike fiends looked directly at her magical eye! "Except you should've said, The most powerful of fiends!'"

"Tell the worms of Tyr to come out of hiding and face us, if they dare!" cried Shaakat. Across the room, the manes began to chatter and churn with escalating blood lust.

As Aleena looked past the vrocks, at the third figure on the floor of the pyramid's flat top, one of the vrocks extended its pair of shriveled humanoid arms and gestured toward her invisible eye. Her enchantment shattered and dissolved with a shimmering rain of sparks. Back in the corridor, she unclasped her fists and slapped her hands over eyes, throwing back her head in pain. Miltiades caught her as she reeled. She drew her hands from her eyes and blinked until she could see normally again.

"They know we're here," she said. "There's a mass of manes just a few feet away, and two vrocks atop the pyramid, next to the gate."

"Then it's time for justice!" cried Jacob.

"Battle positions!" ordered Kern.

"Hold," countered Miltiades. He squinted down the hallway, toward the enemy, so close yet not coming any closer. "They're waiting for us, aren't they?"

"Yes," said Aleena. "And there's more."

The men turned and looked at her expectantly.

"Kastonoph's in there! They've got him tied up at the top of the pyramid, by the gate."

The men gasped. "I thought you said Noph was dead," said Miltiades, looking at Trandon.

"They're probably creating an illusion of him to fool us," suggested Jacob.

"Maybe I was wrong," sputtered Trandon. "Maybe they teleported him here to use against us." Miltiades stared hard at him. "Fiends teleport, don't they?"

"If Noph's in there, then there's no time to waste!" said Kern.

"Kern, if we launch a frontal assault, Noph won't live long," cautioned Aleena.

"If we don't destroy them immediately, Noph will die much too slowly," replied Miltiades evenly, turning to her. "But there's a trap awaiting us in there. I know fiends, and I know how they think. If they're just waiting for us when their hordes are only thirty feet away, with nothing physical to keep them from charging us, then it's obvious that they want us to enter and fight them there."

"What other choice do we have, Miltiades?" asked Kern. "The way is clear!"

"What about Noph?" asked Trandon.

"What about the ambush?" asked Aleena.

"Noph is their ambush," submitted Jacob. "They think we're vulnerable if they have a hostage, but Noph knew the risks when he came along. The quest is the only important thing."

Kern looked to Miltiades. "What'U we do?"

The elder paladin looked toward the gate chamber, teeming with fiends, then back toward the corridors from which they'd come. "One way or another, we've got to enter that chamber and take on those fiends. I think the only way to overcome the ambush, given the circumstances, is to charge straight through it."

"Yes!" cried Jacob. Kern moved to take the lead.

Miltiades reached out and caught his fellow paladin's muscular arm. "Not so fast…"

"Where are they?" whined Rejik. "I never met a Tyr-leech who could resist a challenge!"

"They're smart," answered Shaakat. "They're trying to come up with a plan to save our little human slave, here, but they'll soon realize the only option they have is to come in swinging. Just be ready with the warding circle."

Shaakat extended his wrinkled hands and whispered in his mind, "I call on ggatzshrHegk." Instantly, a shining obsidian javelin, covered from tip to tail with jagged scales, pierced the planar boundaries of the Abyss and flew to him, sizzling through the astral flow to the Prime Material, faster than time. With a black flash it appeared in his outstretched hands.

"The wizard is my first target," he thought, hefting the weapon for a throw. "The others will have to fight their way to us." The vrock mentally touched upon each of the bar-lgura, commanding them to wait upon his orders, while Rejik restrained the manes.

Another few minutes passed without the heroes' attack, and the fiendish troops again grew restless.

"Where are they?" repeated Rejik. "Why don't we just release the manes? Why don't we-"

At that moment, the resolute cry of human voices filled the cavern and three manes standing at the entrance squealed in agony, spinning violently from their feet as though struck by unseen fists. They tumbled limply to the ground with a spray of ichor and dissipated into thick black vapor. The fiends around them wailed in terror and began to crawl over each other in retreat. Four more screamed and split open with a vicious crush of invisible blows-they oozed upon the floor and began to smoke as well. Behind the advancing, invisible wall of slashing death, a bright flash briefly illuminated the shadowy profile of a humanoid before streaking like a comet to the center of the room and exploding in a massive ball of fire. The manes within the infernal blast shrieked horribly and collapsed into smoking puddles. Pandemonium erupted across the chamber. Acidic gases hung in the air where perhaps half or more of the manes had stood.