Paul Kidd - Descent into the Depths of the Earth

Henry dived, already streaking sideways to cover the faerie. He screamed and pulled the trigger of his crossbow. The machine kicked like a mad thing, blasting a dozen crossbow bolts straight into the monster’s flesh.The beast reeled but remained very much alive and angry. Henry dragged out his sword and flailed at its hide, driving the staggering monster back toward the tunnel mouth.

Seeing her pet guardian on the retreat, the drow flung up a hand and total darkness descended-a darkness obliterated a second later by Jus’magic light stone. The drow had already turned to run. Jus whip-cracked his enchanted rope, bringing the drow down in a screaming heap. The creature fumbled for its hand crossbow and fired a shot that was parried aside by a lightning-fast flicker of the Justicar’s sword. An instant later, the elf’s headfell to the ground.

The troll roared, its wounds already healing closed. The creature bashed at Henry, who blocked the monster’s claws with his sword even asthe barrage sent him to the ground. Jus reared up behind the troll, his sword held high and his face terrifying. The magic sword screamed in strange joy as it cleaved down through the troll’s shoulder and into the chest, sending itcrashing to the ground.

“Cinders!”

The monster had already begun to rise. Grinning gleefully, the hell hound blasted flame into the troll. Fire ripped the flesh off its bones, making the troll bubble like a torch as it finally died.

“Jus!” Escalla screamed.

Two hundred yards away, a female drow sat upon a huge lizard. The dark elf stared blankly at the adventurers, then turned and fled toward the towers. Escalla shot off in pursuit, only to see the drow spring into the air and turn into a flying manta. The sorceress flew hard and fast toward safety. Unable to catch the drow, Escalla sped back and helped Henry back to his feet.

“Boys, we’re gonna have company!”

The Justicar looked back toward the disappearing manta. With his hell hound over his back and his white blade gleaming, the big man turned, leaped over the burning troll, and sped down the spider tunnel. Escalla blinked then slapped Polk and Henry, shoving them in Jus’ wake.

A long tunnel sheathed in horrific bas relief wound through solid rock like a monstrous black gullet. With his magic sword sheeting light into the darkness, the Justicar ran fast and hard, Cinders streaming flames and smoke behind. Jus sped through tunnels and over a stream. The tunnel walls spread out to become a vile promenade a hundred yards wide. Scenes of slaughter and perversion were carved into the walls, blurring past like a nightmare as the ranger charged through, but so far, the tunnels remained strangely empty of drow.

The tunnel ran for a thousand yards, and then a thousand more. Thundering forward, Jus never slowed his pace. Far behind him, Private Henry and Polk fell behind, struggling forward and reeling in a daze of exhaustion.

The tunnel finally ended in a vile riot of sculpted spiders and orgiastic rites. Sitting at the tunnel mouth, a female drow had half risen to make a challenge when Jus smacked her in the guts with his sword, cutting the dark elf in half. A second elf turned to scream a warning to a vast temple building just beyond. Her head fell from her neck before she could even scream.

Jus erupted out of the tunnel and saw another drow staring at him from ten feet away. The magic rope snapped out. Jus jerked the drow toward him and broke the creatures neck with one vicious twist of his hands. His long-contained fury finally released, the Justicar was already on the move, tossing his prey aside as he sped into the cover of ornate gardens of fungi and bone.

“Whoa!”

Escalla flew out of the corridor, bypassed the three dead drow, and urged Polk and Henry onward to glory. The two humans collapsed, wheezing painfully and almost ready to vomit. Laden down with chainmail, Henry had almost killed himself on the one mile run, but he still carried his crossbow in his hands.

Panting hard, the party drew in the sight of a horrible new cave. Red light, thick as blood clots, spilled outward, hazing the cavern like a hideous living mist. It revealed a large cavern, perhaps a mile wide-a placethat seeped poison like a canker buried deep in the heart of the Flanaess. The place seethed with evil, a presence foul enough to stain and thick enough to cut.

Buildings stood nearby, vile colonnades of stone carved until it seemed the walls were made of flayed corpses, screaming skulls, and grasping claws. Far beyond, at the heart of the huge cavern, a trumpet’s call set thecavern shuddering. A sudden flash of light-dark purple like fluid from a severedvein-spurted upward from an unseen point at the center of the cave. With it camean ocean of terrified human screams.

Jus rose from cover, paused, and let Cinders glare at the terrain.

Spiders. Steel. Cooking smells. No drow.

“Right.” Jus flicked a glance at the buildings jutting outfrom the colonnade. “Military barracks, empty ones. Something’s going on.”

The group moved around the barracks, crouching low. Escalla faded to invisibility, lofting high to gaze farther into the awful cave. After a few moments, the group cleared the barracks, and Escalla’s voice came driftingdown from above.

“Oh crap.”

Dropping Polk and Henry into cover behind a ridge of glowing minerals, Jus looked sharply upward.

“What?”

“Guys, you know those missing Keolanders?” Escalla’s voiceseemed dazed. “I think we just found them.”

The mineral ridge looked down upon a vast purple pit that swirled and pulsed like blood. A stockade surrounded the pit, and chained in rows were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of screaming prisoners. There were humans from Keoland, elves and half-orcs, halflings and gnomes. Drow agents had spent months plundering the world above, seizing victims for a hellish feast of living blood.

A vast temple stood at the far end of the cave, a temple shaped like the egg of a titanic spider. Beside the temple doors, two drow blew upon huge horns. A thin, exquisite drow priestess came strolling from the temple, her naked body smeared with runes painted in sacrificial blood. A dozen priestesses followed her, accompanied by loping centaur creatures that were part drow and part spider. Perhaps a hundred drow gathered at the temple steps, screaming out a hideous hymn to their goddess.

Staring out over the struggling slaves, Jus felt Escalla’slittle hand upon his arm. “There! It’s a faerie!”

Escalla pointed across the valley. Flying from the temple came a tiny shape, a faerie masked and robed in white. Jus took one look at the creature and gave a cold growl. “That’s our target.”

Escalla cracked her knuckles, ready for action. “Yep. Gotit!”

The enemy faerie wore a stylized white mask, blank except for painted tears. White robes hid the faerie’s body.

Staring across the valley at the other faerie, the Justicar narrowed his eyes. “Who is it?”

“In that gear? Could be anybody.”

Escalla seemed far more interested in the preparations being made near the temple steps. A vast golden bowl had been set before an engraved slab of stone. A huge archway of bones had been raised beside the golden bowl, the structure braced by ropes and chains. Escalla took one look at the arrangements and swore.

“Damn!”

“What?”

“See that?” The girl pointed to the arch of bones where theenemy faerie hovered, painting runes with a small brush. “They’re making theirown gate! They can tap into the faerie gates and have Lolth retrieve the faerie key.”

Flat against the ground and almost invisible, the Justicar hissed as he weighed the scene below. “They can make their own gateways?”

“In theory, sure.” Escalla made a frustrated noise. “Hell ofa spell, though!” Almost all of the drow priestesses now flanked the archway,eyes closed and hands linked, their throats screaming terrible syllables. “See?Ha! It’s going to take every mage they’ve got to break into where they’re going.”