Anthology - Untold Adventures - A Dungeons and Dragons Anthology

“Rorik,” Miriam said, as Gnarl helped her up, “you might consider thanking Gnarl for saving your life.”

“Bah!” Rorik snorted, glaring at Gnarl. “Rubbish! I would not have been here to sink in sinkholes if not for his theft, his deception-his foolish truck with tiefling warlocks!”

“He has a point,” Gnarl allowed. “Miriam, are you hurt?”

“Nothing broken. Rorik, if we are to proceed, let’s use what’s left of that hammer to prod the ground, find the way through.”

Using the hammer handle, they soon found a hidden shore, curving along the edge of the fen under the ferrous crust. They kept to the shoreline and at last found themselves standing on solid ground within the rusty spines and the leaning, red-crusted towers of the old fortress.

Gnarl decided he’d better keep them moving. He looked around for the landmark the warlock had described. “There’s supposed to be an entrance under the tower that leans farthest toward the horizon,” Gnarl said. “There it is!”

The half-fallen tower was like a great corroded sword two hundred feet high, thrusting up diagonally from the metallic sands at a sharp angle, pointing to their left. Gnarl led the way, almost excited about the quest again, wondering if he could really be close to triggering the creation of Glorysade.

Then he saw a crescent-shaped opening at the base of the swordlike tower. “There! Look, Miriam!” His destiny seemed to call to him-and he ran toward it, dimly aware of the others shouting for him to be more cautious. He stopped at the entrance. It was dim, but not truly dark within. Rusty sand had blown through the entrance, covering the floor. A muted reek of decay and alien musk wafted from somewhere inside.

There was no turning back. He stepped through the entrance, feeling a drumlike hollowness under the thin, rusty floor beneath his feet, before his upper arms were grabbed from above. He felt himself dragged upward, into the air. He looked up and felt ice where his heart should be. A vrock! His uncle had told him of these winged, vulturelike demons-and had given him nightmares with the telling. Now he was living the nightmare as he shouted and writhed in the vrock’s grasp. With his arms pinioned, he could not reach a weapon.

The vrock’s body was humanoid but with a raptor’s claws for feet, a vulturine head, and silvery eyes glittering with intelligence under stubby horns. The creature had a twenty-foot wingspan and a lean, muscular body far more powerful than Gnarl’s own. It squeaked at him. “Ceeeease to struuuuugle! I will lift you to my aerie and tear you to pieeeeces at my leisure-be pleeeeeased to feed your betters!” Gnarl struggled in its grip as it lifted him into the dimly lit interior of the high, narrowing, rusted shaft. He recoiled from the reeking tongue that issued from its snapping, fang-lined beak to taste his face.

“They like to eat the face first,” his uncle had said matter-of-factly.

“But why wait to rend, to tear,” the creature creaked as it flapped its great wings to lift him higher. “I shall pull you apart and watch as you feeeeel it all!”

And then he heard Miriam shout from beneath, “Stop moving, you fool! I can’t get a shot!”

He made himself go limp. The yellow beak gaped to encompass his face-and then an arrow swished from below, buried itself in the base of the vrock’s long neck. It squealed, the shrieking so close his ears ached with it, and his face was sprayed with rancid spittle. Black blood spurted about the fletch of the arrow-and more spurted about the second and third arrows shot from below, each shaft burying itself deeply. But something else issued from the beast, like motes into the air. Gnarl’s mind clouded, his limbs suddenly heavy from the spores, his thoughts veering wildly.

Thrashing in the air, the vrock squeezed him brutally, vindictive in its death throes, so he could hardly breathe-and then it gasped and its grip relaxed. He was slipping free, falling, plummeting toward the dusty floor of the chamber. He seemed to fall in slow motion.

He lost sight of the expiring demon as he crashed through the rust-eaten iron of the floor and into the subchamber beneath.

Sitting up on the dusty floor of the subchamber, Gnarl heard the demons stalking through the darkness toward him, but he found that he didn’t much care. A seductive numbness was upon him-the effects of the spores of madness. Lunatic thoughts flashed through his mind, tumbling his senses in hellish ecstasy; it was as if the Elemental Chaos occupied his skull. As laughing faces of fire lit his brain he found he could scarcely move; it was as if his arms and legs each weighed hundreds of pounds. Why not just lie here, and get it over with? It might be interesting to be torn to pieces.

Yes, why not? And he watched the skulking silhouettes of the approaching demons, recognizing them from his uncle’s grimoire; evistro, newly awakened by his intrusion. How long had they waited in dormancy here? He supposed someone had placed them to guard against the activation of the Glorysade device. He found it all very interesting, in an abstract sort of way.

Hunched over, clutching the air with their oversized, pawlike hands spread wide for tearing, the seven evistro approached him. They were hairless, thickly muscular crimson demons, their tooth-lined maws as oversized as their hands and three-toed feet. The grimoire had said the carnage demons usually came in larger numbers, swarming and rending-unless some wizard sent a group of them on a specific mission. It seemed that Sernos wasn’t the only sorcery worker concerned with Glorysade.

The seven demons encircled him, a couple of strides away, their mouths gaping in great slavering grimaces. Gnarl was captivated. Fascinating creatures, he thought. Wonder what it’ll be like to be eaten alive? Missed my chance with the vrock.

He heard Miriam in the chamber above, shouting at Rorik. “The vrock has struck him with spore madness! He’s paralyzed, he’s not in his right mind! We have to, Rorik!”

“But it stinks of demons down there! I hate demons!”

But just as the evistro reached for Gnarl, Rorik leaped down into the subchamber, swinging his hammer handle-braining one of the demons before he’d even touched the floor. The demon flailed, falling back, and the others retreated a few steps, squalling in confusion. An arrow whickered into the subchamber from above, and then another, and two demons fell writhing. But the other five slashed at Rorik with their clawed paws. He swung the handle of his hammer furiously, using it as a club to drive them back. He’s quite a little dynamo, thought Gnarl, sitting on the floor. It can’t go on, though. They’ll overwhelm him soon and we’ll both be eaten. How their jaws drip with saliva… intriguing.

Then he was aware that someone had dropped down behind him, was pressing a small circle of cold to the back of his neck, over his spine. A cleansing fire flashed through him, then a wave of nausea, swept away by a surge of energy. Miriam had used her healing gem to save him.

His head clearing, Gnarl jumped to his feet and plucked the glass ball from his cloak pocket, even as Miriam loosed two of her three remaining arrows. The demons were circling them, leaping, slashing-and her arrows missed their marks, striking one in the shoulder. The wounded demon screamed in fury and snapped at the dwarf, who was nearer. Rorik dashed some of its teeth out with his club.

Gnarl exposed the glass globe-and almost dropped it in his startlement as he saw the grisly face staring out at him: a lich vestige. The lich’s skullish face pressed eagerly against the curve of the little glass sphere, distorted and leering. “Release me!” hissed the diabolic face, bony jaws gnashing, empty eye sockets shining, “so that I may destroy all!”