Richard Baker: Forsaken House

Feeling somewhat better prepared for whatever he might find, he moved to the workshop door and carefully pulled it open, peeking out into the corridor outside. It was dimly lit by enchanted lamps at wide intervals, and showed no signs of enemies or friends. In the distance, some destructive spell rumbled menacingly, shaking the Tower, and Araevin caught the ring of steel on steel from far away.

Araevin set off at a trot, gliding swiftly and softly along the hallway. His workshop was high in a little-used tower. He quickly checked the rest of the floor, and descended a winding staircase to the level below. On the landing he found the first of the fallen-one of the Tower guards, savagely clawed or bitten around the face and throat. Araevin could do nothing for her, and so he and Ilsevele continued, following a long hallway to one of the Tower's libraries. The door stood ajar, with another guardsman lying unconscious at its foot. From the room beyond, Araevin caught the hiss and croak of sinister voices. He glanced at Ilsevele and gave her a steady nod. She set an arrow to her string, and nodded back.

Araevin kicked open the door and stormed inside. Two hulking hellspawned monsters, demons or devils or some such creature, crouched inside, pawing through the books and scrolls. They had chitinous bodies of deep red, and beaklike maws beneath green, multifaceted eyes. Their long arms ended in horrible talons that dangled below their knees. A third creature, almost human or elf in appearance except for his red, fine-scaled skin and sweeping batlike wings, stood across the chamber, examining tomes laid out on a great table beneath the windows.

A demon-elf? Araevin hesitated, certain his eyes had deceived him. The features were elf enough-narrow skull, subtly pointed ears, eyes gently inclined down at the inner corners-but hellish malice glowed in those green eyes, and the bared teeth were small, sharp fangs. His stomach twisted in horror as the monsters wheeled to face him, jaws clacking, while the winged one started to bark out the words to a spell.

From over Araevin's shoulder, a pair of silver arrows streaked out and took the first of the insect fiends in the jaw, vanishing up to the feathers in its foul mouth. It went to all fours, black blood gushing from the wound. Araevin leveled his wand at the others and snapped out the wand's activating word. A shrill, deafening sound split the air as a coruscating blue bolt sprang out from the wand. It blasted past the second insect creature, who ducked away from the blast and snatched up an iron trident, but it caught the winged demon-elf in the midst of his spell and hammered him into the other wall. Bookshelves splintered and heavy tomes cascaded down on the creature.

"Taksha! Erthog! Slay them!" the winged one cried out.

The insect fiend took two steps and hurled its heavy iron trident at Araevin, who yelped despite himself and twisted to one side. He stumbled out of the doorway as the weapon thudded into the door with enough force to bring all three of its points clear through the thick oak. Araevin scrambled to his feet to cast a spell, sending five streaking missiles into the hellborn monster attacking him. The creature came on undeterred, its great talons raking inch-deep furrows in the wall behind him.

"Araevin! What are these things?" Ilsevele called.

She darted into the room herself, circling behind a table and loosing more arrows at the hellspawn. One arrow shattered on the thick plates of the creature's shoulder, but another sank into the eye of the monster who already had two in its throat, and a third punched a hole through the membranous wing of the red-scaled sorcerer, just then picking himself up from the ground after Araevin's disrupting bolt.

"Mezzoloths!" Araevin answered.

He'd never encountered the things himself, but he had read of them in his researches-mercenaries of the lower planes, powerful fiends who served any master who could meet their price. The monster Ilsevele had shot crumpled to the ground and abruptly discorporated into black, stinking mist, returning back to whatever foul plane it had been summoned from.

Araevin danced back from his own adversary to gain himself room to use another spell. Having observed the damage wreaked in the library by his first disrupting bolt, he didn't want to use the wand again unless he had to. He started on a spell of dismissal, but the winged demon-elf beat him to the punch, hurling a brilliant white orb into the fray. The spinning white disk exploded into a blast of unearthly cold and razor-sharp splinters of ice, peppering both Araevin and Ilsevele, as well as the pursuing mezzoloth. Araevin grunted in pain, but he kept his feet.

Enough of this, he thought. No sense saving my spells if I let these creatures claw Ilsevele or me to death.

He allowed himself to slide away from the mezzoloth raking at him while carefully focusing his attention on a deadly spell. The insectile monster surged forward, seeking to overwhelm him before he could finish, but Araevin snapped out the last word just as the fiend's beak descended toward him. From his outstretched finger a brilliant emerald ray sprang, taking the mezzoloth full in the chest. The creature seemed to glow bright green, screeching in agony, and it discorporated into sparkling dust and streaming, foul smoke.

Araevin shifted his attention to the bat-winged sorcerer across the room. The demonspawn, hobbled by arrows in its hip and thigh, snarled out a vicious curse that wove a wall of darkness behind it as it ducked through the opposite door.

"Araevin! I can't see it!" Ilsevele cried. "It fled," Araevin said.

He quickly dispelled the darkness, and glanced at his betrothed. Ilsevele had an arrow on her string. Patches of frostburn gleamed along one arm and the side of her face, but her eyes were bright and hard.

"Are you hurt?" he asked her.

"It's nothing, just a touch of that ice spell the one with the wings threw," she replied. "You?"

"The same," Araevin said, then nodded at the other end of the library. "Come on, we'd better see if more of these things are still roaming around."

They hurried out of the library, but their adversary was nowhere in sight. This corridor was a grand hall, wide and tall, leading to the great hall itself, where Araevin had met with the high mages a tenday-and-a-half before. A furious battle had been fought in the corridor. The walls were scorched by fiery blasts and broken by lightning bolts, and a dozen more elf guards lay dead alongside three of the sinister winged sorcerers.

Araevin halted and stared at the scene in horror. He had known many of the dead guards for decades.

"By the Seldarine," he whispered. "What happened here?"

Violet light flared at the end of the hall, and an ear-splitting thunderbolt shook the Tower.

"Whatever it is, it is not over yet," Ilsevele said.

She and Araevin picked their way through the shattered corridor to the great doors at the end, splintered and hanging crookedly from their hinges. The great hall of Reilloch Domayr lay on the other side of the doorway. The two elves glided up to the smoking oaken doors and peered inside.

In the center of the room, a fierce band of mezzoloths and other hellborn monsters stood around a large iron hoop or ring lying on the marble floor. Elf mages and warriors sheltered behind the tall columns ringing the room, surrounding the creatures. The Tower's defenders hurled spell and arrow at the invaders, even as the yugoloths and their winged sorcerers blasted back at the elves with their own infernal magic, filling the great hall with scathing rays of fire and glowing magical darts. Dead and wounded elves littered the chamber. The iron ring glowed with a ruddy light, and half a dozen of the attackers who had been standing within its confines-including, Araevin noted, the wounded sorcerer who had escaped him in the library, as well as another mezzoloth bearing a large iron coffer-ghosted into nothingness.