T Lain - The Sundered Arms

The thing was only two feet tall, with twisty horns and pustulant, green flesh. It was naked and unadorned but for a spiraling black tattoo that roamed from one gnarly shoulder across its thin chest and torso before ringing its opposite leg. The creature gripped the spider-eater’s reins in one slender hand and shook the long claws of its other hand at Devis.

“Got you, you little bastard!” cried Devis. Tordek looked up to see the bard dropping a scroll whose magic he had just discharged. Devis ducked back inside the passage in time to avoid another rush from the third hovering insect.

Tordek was loath to give up his axe, but he dropped it in favor of the longbow. The previously invisible rider screeched a command, and its mount rose farther away from Tordek. The other remaining insect swooped down from the secret passage to join its fellow.

Devis whooped a note so musical that Tordek thought at first he was singing. Instead, the bard leaped from his high vantage and fell with all his weight upon the retreating spider-eater. Together they plummeted toward the dwarf, Devis shouting, “Kill it, Tordek!”

At the same moment, the strange insect-rider shrieked. Tordek glimpsed its fall out of the corner of his eye. The tiny creature tumbled off its steed with a green-fletched arrow lodged in its knotty hide. It seemed more startled than injured.

Tordek’s attention was wrenched back to Devis when the bard and the other spider-eater crashed into the gravel at the cliff’s base. Devis rolled away from his unwilling steed onto the shore. The creature’s wings were broken and its carapace cracked, but its razor claws thrashed furiously in all directions. Tordek snatched up his axe and after slashing off the flailing limbs, set to work chopping the spider-eater to messy bits. The monstrous insect squirmed and chattered horridly until the blade cut it into dozens of sections.

Devis regained his feet as Tordek turned to face the third and final foe. Instead, he saw it disappear over the top of Jorgund Peak, followed by an erratically flapping bat he had not spied before. There was no sign of the little demon.

“We’d better hurry,” said Devis, beckoning him back to the rope. “When that giant bug returns to camp, they’ll send out a larger party.”

Tordek nodded, collecting his bow and shield. There was no time to send up his gear and climb unhindered, but he paused before climbing the rope to consider the bard.

“That jump off the cliff,” he said. “Not bad at all.”

“Well, thanks,” said Devis, “but when you tell the ladies, use the words ‘brave’ and ‘dashing,’ will you?”

Tordek pulled himself up the rope, guiding his ascent with his feet upon the cliff face. He grunted and said, “I’ll think about it.”

At Tordek’s suggestion, Lidda crept back to close and jam shut the secret door. While the halfling worked, the other three crawled more than twenty feet into the passage before finding a chamber large enough to shelter them all together. The smooth, regular lines of dwarven chisels gave way to a cool, damp chamber shaped by eons of trickling water. A natural passage continued to bore deeper into the mountain, but they paused to tend to injuries.

While he could see perfectly well, albeit in shades of black and white, Tordek drew his magical torch from the black cloth that hid its continual flame’s enchantment. Lidda had already struck a sunrod, filling the small cavern with golden light, but Tordek knew it always paid to have a second source of light. Even a few seconds of blindness could mean the difference between life and death in the subterranean world, especially one shared with fiends and gods-knew-what-else.

Vadania’s injury had swollen so horribly that she had to slit the side of her trousers lest it burst. The wound was scarlet against her white flesh, even after she cast a spell to cure the injury. The effort exhausted her strength, and her muscles were beginning to seize up in paralytic convulsions.

“It’s infected,” said Lidda. She drew a dagger and sighed. “That leg’s going to have to come off.”

“Keep her away from me,” said the elf.

“Some people!” said Lidda, sheathing her blade. “Try to raise their spirits with a little levity.”

“I thought it was funny,” said Devis.

“Yeah?” said Lidda, brightening as she sidled up to the half-elf. “I hear you were daring out there.”

“Stand back, both of you,” said Tordek. He knelt beside the injured druid.

He already regretted his earlier praise for Devis, and he suspected the bard had somehow tricked him into it. The scamp was already contaminating Lidda with his childishness. In the months she had spent with Tordek, the halfling rogue had never been a liability in a dangerous spot. She might make a snappy remark now and then, but she was never so easily distracted when there was serious work at hand. Now Tordek was beginning to wonder whether he could rely on either of them.

“Do you have anything for it?” He wished he had more than a cool splash of water to offer. Despite years in battle, he never learned more healing than the simple tasks of binding wounds and splinting broken limbs.

“Devis already tried one of his spells,” she said. “Here, take off this pack. Find the scrolls inside.”

Tordek did as she bade, digging through pouches of trail rations, leaves, little clay pots, a soft bag of some squishy substance, and other odds and ends before finding three leaves of parchment rolled around a sunrod. He showed them to her, and she chose one. Tordek held his torch up to illuminate the page as she intoned the healing magic. Together they watched as its soothing power ran through Vadania’s hand and into the festering wound. Instantly, the ruddy stain of poison faded, and the swollen flesh became smooth and healthy once again.

“Still hurt?” he asked.

“Not a bit,” she said, “but I feel a little stiff. Maybe you or Lidda should lead the way in.”

“You keep an eye on the bard,” said Tordek. “He’s liable to try something ‘daring.’”

Vadania smiled. When she saw that Tordek was still scowling, she wiped the expression from her face and nodded.

They followed the passage deeper into the bedrock, finding only scant clues that the place was ever inhabited. A few rusty torch clasps slowly crumbled away from their sockets in the limestone walls, and twice they walked through tunnels scarred by the chisels that opened them wide enough for dwarven shoulders to pass.

Patches of shelf fungus and fuzzy mold covered the damp stone here and there. As they descended below the river’s level the rocky floor gave way to great swathes of soft earth in which an increasing array of subterranean life flourished. There were tiny button mushrooms, mushrooms with bright red caps, mushrooms that grew over one another like ripples in a rain-spattered pond. Mushrooms grew underfoot, on the walls, and even on the ceiling in a few places. Some were squat and wide as lily pads, while a few rose taller than Lidda.

“Can we eat these?” she asked, crouching beneath one huge, pink and violet specimen as if it were a parasol.

“No,” replied Vadania. “If you stand there much longer, it might eat you.”

Lidda threw herself to the floor and rolled away in a hasty, graceless escape. She crouched there with her short sword drawn, watching for any sign that the giant mushroom might follow her.

“Just kidding,” said Vadania.

“What?” Lidda turned on the druid, yellow rage in her eyes.

“Some people,” Vadania said, not quite mimicking Lidda’s usually cheerful voice. “A little levity.”

Lidda stared at the druid, her expression twitching between real anger and surprise. She decided on pouting indignation when Tordek’s deep chuckle escaped the shelter of his big red beard.