Gary Gygax - City of Hawks

As the last of the dog-faced monstrosities fell, Gord noticed glyphs inscribed upon the big boulder it had been standing next to. The shadowy letters and signs squirmed under the light, writhing as do blind slugs exposed to the sun when a rock is overturned. Then the sigils actually began to make a frizzling sound and send up little streamers of oily-looking smoke.

Despite all that activity, the sort that usually presaged the disappearance of such signs, the glyphs remained upon the stone, and Gord feared to touch them. Then he thought of something: The lamp had been found in the gloams’ stronghold, so that any wards magically placed here would certainly not be affected by its illumination. Wisely, the young thief suspected that when he saw the strange effects of the radiance upon the glyphs, what showed before his eyes was something to delude any who saw it, to lull an intruder into a false sense of security so that he would think the glyphs had been neutralized and then expose himself to the protective force they still held within.

Although he hated to touch the foul form, Gord lifted the carcass of the last ghulaz he had killed and leaned it against the boulder. Nothing happened, just as he had assumed; not enough force was being applied. Then Gord put his upper back against the slain thing’s stinking body and began to push, using the ghulaz as a cushion between himself and the glyphs upon the rock he had to displace.

Now the protective sigils were beginning to do their work. Gord felt bones in the ghulaz’s body snapping, muscles and flesh losing their rigidity-the body was actually decomposing, disintegrating, from contact with the magically protected boulder! The stench was so noisome that Gord was actually regurgitating as he continued his exertion.

After a few moments that seemed like an eternity under the conditions, the remains of the ghulaz were almost jellylike, but were still substantial enough for Gord to push against, sickening though it was to do this. He could not stop now, for he had felt the boulder move slightly. Then the big stone shifted abruptly, and the hole it guarded was unblocked.

Breathing through his mouth, Gord tried to clean himself as best he could by wiping hands and torso against the rock wall. Then he stooped and entered the space between wall and boulder, passing with a feeling of hope and dread into what he was sure was the lair of Imprimus.

“You must be eager for death,” a dry voice rustled, seemingly in his very ear, “to have overcome so many obstacles in order to embrace it.”

Gord spun quickly, his lamp casting odd, writhing shadows from his motion, his sword ready. Nothing. No one was near. The place was a high-ceilinged grotto, another natural cave of fair proportion. Here the stone was the counterpart of limestone on the material plane, for the grotto had shadowy stalactites hanging from above, thick stalagmites sticking upward from the floor, some of these two sorts of formations conjoined to make columns.

“It is a charming place, isn’t it?” The rustling voice spoke the question in a tone laden with mirth, as if it had a secret joke that could hardly be restrained. “Perhaps I’ll allow you to remain here as a special guardian,” it whispered.

“Imprimus? Where are you, you cringing coward?” Gord shouted his words, making the place come alive with echoes that trailed off, “coward… oward… ard… ard.”

“Heh, heh, eh, eh…” The sneering sound of a chuckle whispered throughout the stony space. It had no source, coming from no place and every place at once. “Be patient. I’ll greet you soon,” the voice rustled sinisterly.

Water dripped somewhere, shadow-water that made a plangent sound as it dropped into a shadow-pool in the underground lair of the vampiric lich. There was a faint hiss from the lamp’s burning, and the weird rays it sent out seemed almost to cause a susurration as they washed over the blackness of the grotto. No other sound could be heard. To leave both of his hands free, Gord put the lamp down on top of a thick, flat-topped stalagmite.

“Are you hiding, human?” the dry voice asked. This time, though, it was slightly louder, and there was no smugness in it. “You can’t escape; neither is there any place to hide. Wait quietly, and I will make it an easy thing for you.”

There was no reply, still no sound other than the hiss and the reverberating plunk of water droplet after water droplet. Gord looked and listened with ail the concentration he could muster. Did a darker shadow move within the cloaking gloom? Some shape, slide noiselessly through the dimness?

Then he could make out a faint rustling, coming from a place midway up the far wall of the cave, a spot some ten feet above the floor. There followed the whispering of cloth, the creaking of what might have been ancient joints, and a faint hum. Instantly thereafter, four small spheres j of dun-hued light winked into existence within the cave. These globes floated at waist height just before the opening that Gord had entered, but their sickly illumination revealed no trace of the young adventurer.

The four split in twain, one pair floating slowly toward the left, the other two moving languidly toward the right. The two sets of dimly glowing spheres circumscribed the grotto’s perimeter, making visible for a time anything that they passed near. Stone was all their dun radiance displayed.

A clawlike hand grasped the edge of a sarcophagus made of obsidian. The coffin rested on a ledge ten feet above the cave’s floor, and the hand belonged to its inhabitant. A horrible face leered above the taloned hand. The visage was as if a human skull had been distorted and misshapen by some hybridization with a monstrous bat, and then the awful result of the unnatural cross allowed to rot and desiccate in some demon-inspired crypt. It was the face of Im-primus, once human, now gloam, vampire, lich, wrought to true appearance by the weight of Snuff-dark upon the Plane of Shadow.

That the skeletal body that bore it could raise this gruesome visage thus, however, indicated that, the time of the great dark was waning. In a short span, perhaps mere minutes, the blackness would pass, and then the monster would once again command its full powers. The distended muzzle of the man-bat monstrosity opened to reveal massive fangs.

“So,” the dry voice rustled and whispered, “our little man has sought safety in flight after all.” Its bat-eared head tipped back to allow a hideous cackling to issue forth, but the sound died before it left the snaky throat. The thing’s corpselike eyes fixed upon a great clot of blackness above and suddenly glowed with putrid gray fire.

The snarling form of the young thief sprang down upon the monstrous creature in the sarcophagus. Instinctively, the thing recoiled from the ferocity of the assault. Twisting in mid-air, Gord used his gymnastic skill to direct his fall, and as his feet touched the edge of the casket of black stone, his legs flexed and his body hurtled past the vampiric lich into the alcove behind it.

The hideous face of the demonlike creature contorted in shock and rage at what had occurred. The human was a clever opponent, a foolishly daring one too. He not only dared to make threats, but even now was attempting to make free with that which the monster held most dear.

“Stop!” Imprimus meant the command to boom, but it croaked in dusty tones, for Snuffdark had not yet done with its gloom. Then the monster turned fully and saw what the impudent man was up to, and the glare of rage altered to an expression of concern.

“You are very clever and talented,” Imprimus said in its soughing voice. “You have earned my respect and approval. Come and pay me homage, and I shall accept you as one of mine own noble servants.”