Paul Kemp - Dawn of Night

The guide nodded.

"Let's move," Cale said.

Hurrying through the darkness, the four approached the scene of battle. Cale intensified the darkness around them slightly as they drew closer. From the tunnel ahead came the flash of fireballs and lightning. Metal rang on metal. Sounds echoed down the corridor: men shouting, beasts roaring, and stone cracking. It sounded as though the ceiling was falling down.

Stay out of it, Cale reminded them again, and all of them nodded, even Riven. Crouching low and hugging the wall, they hurried forward.

Before them opened a wide, open cavern. All around it, a battle roiled. Trolls, men, and duergar fought in pockets, fierce little battles of horrible violence. Hammers, swords, shouts, curses, and roars rose toward the ceiling. Corpses lay scattered across the cavern like so much driftwood.

The caravan's wagon lay on its side, burning. The pack lizard lay on its side too, still yoked to the wagon and hissing in pain, crossbow bolts protruding from its charred flesh. Magical energies arced across the cavern from the side tunnels, the casters hidden by darkness and distance. Duergar mages answered with shots from their wands or spells of their own. The amount of magic flying in the cavern caused the hairs on Cale's arms to stand. Weaveshear fairly hummed in his grasp, bleeding shadows.

"Follow me," Cale said.

He darted off to the side of the cavern a good distance away from the combat. There, Cale saw a protruding ledge of rock sticking out of the stone about eight paces up on the wall. It would offer a good view of the battle, and some small cover from the missile fire and spells.

"There," he said, pointing.

The others nodded and they raced to the wall and began to climb. Behind them, a troll roared in pain. A ricocheting lightning bolt ripped into the wall near them, sending splinters of stone spraying. They reached the ledge, breathing hard, and crouched low.

"Trickster's toes," Jak said. "This is chaos."

"Find the slaadi," Cale said, scouring the battlefield for any telltale sign of their quarry.

He saw only indistinguishable duergar, mercenaries, and trolls.

"I can't see well enough to find anything," Riven growled.

"There!" Jak said.

Cale followed the halfling's pointing finger and saw a large fat human and a duergar slipping toward the far side of the cavern.

Could be them, Magadon projected. I can confirm.

Cale replied, Do it.

Motes of light flared around the guide's head and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. For a moment, Magadon said nothing and Cale, Jak, and Riven waited in anticipation. Below them, the battle raged, reaching still greater heights of violence.

"It is Azriim," Magadon said.

"Stay with him," Cale said. "When they leave, we follow."

"Leave?" asked Jak.

Cale nodded. He thought he understood the slaadi's play.

"The slaadi engineered this entire battle," he said. "And now that it's going full on, they're backing out of it. It's a distraction."

"Who are they trying to distract?" Riven asked. "Us?"

Cale shrugged, but before he could form a reply, an orange luminescence formed at the mouth of the main tunnel that led back toward Skullport. It grew brighter and brighter, as if someone or something carrying a giant torch were moving closer to the cavern.

"What is that?" Jak asked.

"Find a hole," Riven said, "and stay low. This is bad."

Cale and Jak shared a look. Weaveshear fairly shook in Cale's hand. The shadows around the blade whirled as if in excitement.

The luminescence grew brighter still and the combatants in the chamber seemed to notice it for the first time. Duergar, troll, and human backed away from each other.

Weapons were lowered, and gazes turned toward the tunnel mouth.

Cale pulled down Magadon, who was still connected to Azriim, and willed the darkness around them to deepen.

A murmur of curiosity ran through the chamber, and quickly turned to one of concern, then fear. The combatants saw what was coming. Cale and his companions, off to the side of the tunnel mouth, could not yet see the source of the light.

Stay with Azriim, Cale projected to Magadon. No matter what occurs.

"Goddess," Magadon oathed.

Through Azriim's eyes, he too saw what was coming.

A voice louder than a thunderclap and deeper than the Moonsea shook stalactites from the ceiling as it pronounced, "Cease!"

Other than the moans of the wounded and dying, an eerie silence reigned.

"The Skulls," Riven said softly, as six glowing human skulls whizzed in through the tunnel and rapidly circled the battlefield.

All eyes followed Skullport's enigmatic guardians. Duergar, man, and troll visibly cowered under the inscrutable gaze of the Skulls. Finished with their flyover, the Skulls positioned themselves around the combatants, fencing most of them in. A nervous rustle ran through the chamber. Some of the casters and crossbowmen outside of the ring of Skulls began to back away down the side tunnels.

Cale and his companions were outside the circle. Cale sensed the power in the room, as did Weaveshear, to judge from its hungry vibrations. With six of the Skulls present in the chamber, and presuming that five or six of them were still lurking about in Skullport, as Cale thought typical, most all of the guardians were accounted for.

It was then that it hit him.

"Dark and empty," he whispered.

Azriim and the slaadi had arranged the battle for one purpose: to draw the Skulls away from the city, or away from something else. But what?

Again the booming voice: "Warfare in a main thoroughfare of the city of Skullport jeopardizes trade and is in direct contravention to our standing edict! Also, rat scales offer unique numerary opportunities! Most foul! Most foul, indeed!"

The Skull then went on for several more heartbeats in a language that Cale could not understand, though the tone was unmistakably hostile.

The combatants shared confused looks, but none dared move.

The Skull reverted back to Common, saying, "For all of the foregoing reasons, Ssarmn and the Xanathar shall be individually disciplined and each of you shall be exterminated."

It seemed to take a moment for the import of the pronouncement to settle in. When it did, the duergar and humans tentatively raised their weapons. The trolls snarled defiance.

And the Skulls began to kill.

As one, the six Skulls unleashed their awesome magical power. Arcane energies slammed indiscriminately into the encircled forces-fire, ice, lightning, and a hail of stones. Waves of warping magical force ran amok among the duergar. Bolts of amber energy pierced shield, armor, and finally flesh. Men screamed, twisted into shapeless forms, burned, froze, and died.

The mages and crossbowmen poured out of the side tunnels in a panic, like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Two Skulls pursued them. Somehow the city's guardians had ambushed the would-be ambushers. Cale finally counted a total of eight Skulls in the chamber.

In the smoke and flashing lights, Cale could no longer see Azriim and the other slaad.

"Mags?" Cale asked.

Riven grabbed Cale's cloak and said, "We need to get out of here, Cale. Now! No one is going to leave here alive."

Cale heard the urgency in Riven's voice but shook him off.

He looked at Magadon and asked, "Mags?"

"I've got him still," replied the guide. "He's taking out his teleportation rod."

Cale said, "Wherever they go, get a look and give it to me. I'm taking us after them."

Magadon nodded.

"We're leaving, Riven," said Cale. "Well enough?"

The assassin backed off and gave a soft nod, his single eye wide and staring at the Skulls.

In the cavern below, the combatants appeared to have put aside their differences and fought together to survive. Warhammers flew toward the Skulls, crossbow bolts, beams of energy, lightning bolts, and fireballs. The impact of weapons and spells jolted Skullport's guardians, but seemed to do little actual damage, until one of the Skulls fluttered in the air like a wounded bird and sank to the cavern floor. A duergar smashed it with his hammer. A cheer went up.