Paul Kidd - Descent into the Depths of the Earth

Escalla shot far ahead as they fled down the passageway. Something thundered in the tunnel far behind. Still invisible, Escalla looked behind her as she flew… and smacked straight into something hard.

Stunned, Escalla tumbled back and hit the ground. She half saw a gigantic figure towering over her invisible body-a big goblinoid creaturethat stank like a sewer. Confused, the monster staggered back and looked around for what had struck it. Squatting beside the first giant goblin was another, and another, and another…

A vast cavern opened beyond the monsters-a cavern that teemedwith troglodytes by the score. The lizards sat in their scores at the cave center, tearing at bleeding chunks of food. A dozen giant goblin guards cradling huge clubs loomed at the tunnel entrance. The first rubbed its skull where Escalla had crashed into it.

Beyond the other monsters, pack lizards and drow merchants knelt reverently before a sinister, robed figure at the far side of the hall. The whole image hung frozen in time as Escalla stared, and then she heard the pounding of boots behind her as Jus, Polk, and Henry arrived upon the scene.

A hundred monsters turned to stare. Over by the kneeling drow, the tall figure dressed in black robes turned and brushed its cowl back across its shoulders.

There was no face, only a rotting skull with mad, staring eyes. Escalla took one look at the thing, screamed in panic, and shot backward past Polk and the others.

“Lich! Run, boys! Ruuuuun!”

Used to instant obedience, Private Henry turned and did what he was told. More bull headed, Polk and Jus stopped to judge for themselves. They stood for one tiny split second, staring at the cavern with its horde of enemies.

The lich, an undead sorcerer of terrifying power, stood at the center of the hall. Rotted jaws screeched with laughter as the monster threw its arms open, summoning a spell. Jus and Polk turned and ran.

Too late. The lich gave a vile scream as magic blasted through the cavern and into the tunnel mouth. A blazing wall of force sealed the tunnel shut, blocking Jus and Polk from escape and locking Henry and Escalla away from their friends.

The giant goblins smashed at Jus with their huge clubs. The ranger spun into the first blow and wrenched the monster off balance while crashing his elbow into its jaw. A kick from his heavy boots sent another monster reeling back. Jus finished by disarming the first monster and smashing its skull with one blow of its own club. He turned as Cinders blasted flames into the onrushing monsters and sent six of them staggering away with their flesh aflame.

A gigantic goblin picked up Polk and tossed the helpless teamster against a wall. He fell, was lifted by the hair, and then punched unconscious by one of the goblinoids. With hell hound flame sheeting all about him, Jus fell back against the force wall as a dozen monsters surged toward him like a tidal wave.

They were too close-packed to fight with clubs and claws. Jus roared, his rage making the whole tunnel shake as he crashed his clenched fist down onto a giant goblins skull. His other hand crushed the windpipe of a troglodyte, the huge creature screaming and thrashing. The fangs of a fallen lizard snapped into Jus’ calf. He raised a boot, smashed the creature’s neck,then fell back to thud against the force wall as monsters climbed toward him in a swarm.

There must have been a hundred monsters, all surging into a screaming mob that choked the entrance to the cave.

Escalla fluttered madly above Private Henry on the other side of the magic wall. She fired a lightning bolt, the spell blasting into the wall without causing so much as a wrinkle in its shine. Two blasts from her frost wand stabbed into the wall and disappeared. The faerie saw Jus rock beneath the blow of a giant goblin’s fist, and she tried prying at the edges of the forcewall with her nails.

“Jus! Jus, I’m coming!”

“Go!” The Justicar bellowed at the faerie, wrenching a clawfrom around his throat and breaking a monsters elbow with one huge blow. “Escalla, go!”

“Jus!” Weeping helplessly, Escalla hammered uselessly at theedges of the force wall with her spells. “Jus!”

“GO!” Now almost buried under a wave of troglodytes, Jusroared as Cinders fired a last vicious blast of flames. “I order you to go! Saveyourself and the boy!”

Something lanced through the screaming, ravening horde of monsters-a gigantic disembodied fist that snatched up the Justicar and poundedhis head against the cavern ceiling. Unconscious, Jus was thrown to the floor, the huge hand hovering above. Linked to the lich by a tendril of force, the magic fist kept the other monsters at bay, shielding the fallen Justicar and Polk from harm. Escalla saw the lich turn to look right at her through her invisibility magic, saw the abomination lift up its hands to cast another spell-

With a helpless wail, the girl fired her favorite old stinking fog spell, filling the wide passageway with impenetrable clouds of murk. She snatched Henry by the scruff of his neck and dragged him fleeing back down the tunnel.

Behind her, the lich was laughing. Its wild cackle pursued Escalla into the caves long after the mere sound of it had faded and gone.

In a cavern somewhere near a rampaging beholder, Escallacrammed herself into a crevasse. With her fist jammed into her mouth, she wept in silence, her eyes wide and her face ashen, shivering in shock. Private Henry protected her, peering over the lip of the rock to watch for enemies. The boy was pale but behaving like a good soldier.

Escalla rocked back and forth, gripping her own skull as though it was about to blast apart. She had cast a shield against detection spells, and that was all that she could do. The lich was either coming after them or it wasn’t.

And Jus was either dead or alive.

“Oh man. Oh man, oh man, oh man. I really fouled it thistime.”

Impossible to believe that once, long ago, she had wanted nothing more in life than to blow Jus apart, she now felt like her innards had been frozen to ice. Escalla stared into the dark, while her soul jerked and fluttered like a wounded butterfly.

There was a careful slither in the gloom. With his eyes on the caves, Private Henry slid down to Escalla’s side.

“Miss? Um, my lady?” Private Henry swallowed, his crossbowpointing into the echoing caves. “Lady Escalla, I think that beholder is stillout there.”

Something howled deeper in the caves. It sounded like the beholder was once again on the prowl. Escalla’s heart sank. Henry looked at her,lost and oh-so-terribly young, so Escalla deliberately sat herself up, wiped her hair back from her face and discovered that it hurt like hell to talk.

“Do you think they killed him?”

“What?” Henry’s eyes blinked like an owl. “Mister Polk?”

“Yeah. Yeah, they got Polk, too.” Running her fingers throughsoiled hair, Escalla tried to force her mind to think. “The lich was keepingthem off him-the trogs and the big goblin things.”

“Bugbears.” Private Henry stared at shadows in the caves. “Isaw a drawing of one once.”

“Bugbears.” Staring at remembered horrors, Escalla slowlyshook her head. “There must have been a hundred of them.”

“But they’re alive!” Henry crept a little closer, anxious forreassurance. “You saw! You said the lich was keeping them alive.”

“Yeah. Yeah, so I did.” The faerie’s whole body felt likeice-numb, chilled, and insensible. She had to do something, takepositive action. Escalla shuddered and began making a plan.

A lich. Why did it have to be a lich? A sorcerer so powerful that it had spent an eternity rotting as its bones hardened with hate. It was probably the most savage monster in existence-intelligent, deadly, andapparently the master of a troglodyte tribe.