by Paul Kidd
Turning pale, Escalla gripped her precious potions in her arms and screamed, "No-no-no-no! That's all the potions gone!"
Henry was confused. "So why do we need so many growth potions?"
"Be-be-because it's… it's… medicine! Yeah! Medicine!" The faerie hid a potion behind her back. "My medicine! Yes! I need it for a, uh, female complaint. You know! A girl thing!"
"Do you get it often?"
"Well, I'm sure planning to!" Escalla shoved the potion bag behind her back. "Go on! Scram! You can have three! Three, and that's all!"
The party portioned out bottles, ignoring Escalla entirely. She danced about trying to get attention.
"Hey! Giant size doesn't solve the problem! We still need tactics and stuff. Hello? Is anyone listening to me?"
"We're listening." The Justicar held up a potion bottle, peering through the glass thoughtfully. "We need to stop them from teleporting out. That means killing them by surprise or enraging them so they want to fight."
Irritated, Escalla said, "All right! The faerie has it under control! I'll get Jus and me in there first, then you two guys come in a minute later. We'll do a tanar'ri sandwich."
Henry looked surprised. "How?"
"Mist spell. Jus and I slip into the water and make like sharks, then you two guys charge. J-man and I hit them from behind after you two guys engage." The faerie shrugged. "Best I can do."
"Oh?" Henry looked suspicious. "No fireballs?"
"Oh, for the love of…! You blow a bunch of people up just once, and do they let you forget it?" The faerie lost her temper and headed for the door. "Just keep hold of the potions and let me worry about the magic!"
The faerie waited by the door, clicked her fingers imperiously, and the handle was turned by the Justicar. As the door opened just a teeny crack, Escalla leaked her mist spell into the room. She waved to Jus, crept silently forward, and the whole plan went straight to hell.
20
Thick fog spread over the water. The Justicar edged into the room behind Escalla. In one blinding moment, he whirled and hammered his brilliant white blade into the water. In the murk, the sword struck something that screamed and roared. Jus dived, his sword cleaving the water before him and crashing into a huge toadlike tanar'ri. The monster screamed and slashed at the Justicar with its claws.
On the surface, mist covered the front half of the room. Escalla coughed and waved the mist aside with her hands as splashes and roars filled the air.
"Jus? Jus!"
Enid and Henry chugged down their potions and charged into the room. They thundered along the bridge, shimmering as the magic took hold and enlarged them to four times their normal size. Twency-three feet high and waving a twenty-foot-long sword, Henry plunged into the water and grappled with a toad demon. He took a grip on the monster's head and wrenched, using the huge strength of a giant to tear the tanar'ri to bits. Behind him a titanic sphinx smashed her paws into the water, bucking and plunging until she ran another tanar'ri down.
Above them, Escalla waved her hands and tried to shout order into the chaos. "Guys? Guys!" The faerie fired a stream of her magic bees at a tanar'ri and watched the magic ricochet away. "Guys! A little discipline here!"
A demon sped through the water like a hungry crocodile-a bloated, fang-slathered demon angling straight for Henry's back. With a curse, Escalla unshipped her lich staff and sped into a maddened run along the bridge. She leaped into the air, landing on the tanar'ri's back and smacking it across the skull. Power flashed and detonated, blowing chunks of toad-monster across the water. The demon screamed, reared, then plunged deep into the water while Escalla clung like grim death. The faerie turned into a lamprey, attached her sucker jaws, and began burrowing madly into the demons stinking flesh.
Henry's victim blinked out of existence, reappearing behind, him and raking him with its claws. Henry staggered, then whipped about with a swordblow learned hour after painful hour from the Justicar. Driven by gigantic strength, the blow cut the tanar'ri in two, scattering the demon into the pond.
Jus reared from the water, twenty-five feet high, one hand holding a tanar'ri's head. He pulped the creature against the wall, crushing it like an ant. Enid worried her own monster to death, shaking her head to fling bits of it about the room.
The sounds of combat died out-all except for the screams of a single tanar'ri. The toad monster bucked and heaved, smashing its back against the walk-each blow being accompanied by a muffled squawk. A vile spray of fluids jetted from the tanar'ri's back, where a lamprey's tail could be seen slowly disappearing into the tanar'ri's guts. The monster was blind with rage and agony, trying to reach behind itself and blinking out of existence to reappear a few feet to one side. The lamprey was always with it, burrowing into its flesh in a frenzy and cursing all the while.
Henry slipped, surfaced, then ploughed to Escalla's aid.
"It's going to teleport!" Henry blundered forward, a behemoth in the water. "Justicar! Your silence spell."
Magic silence might stop the demon from speaking the syllables to cast its spell.
Instead, the scarred titan that was the Justicar rose, poised, and threw Benelux like a javelin. Twenty feet long, the huge blade whooped with glee as she flew and pierced the tanar'ri's shoulders. Heart and spine were severed, and Benelux thudded point first into the wall. The toad demon hung stone dead, its body twitching like a broken puppet. The gigantic Justicar waded through the chest-deep water, wrenched the bottom of the demon from its top, and retrieved his sword.
A lamprey head emerged from the guts of the demon, grew Escalla's face, and retched in agony.
"You almost killed me! That only missed me by an inch!"
"It missed you." The Justicar's bass rumble sounded larger than mountains, deeper than the Abyss. "You're fine."
"Oh, eeeew! That was the most disgusting, stupid thing I've ever done!" Escalla was violently sick, disgorging the bits of tanar'ri she'd packed into her lamprey gut.
"Are you all right?"
"Oh, ick! That thing did not taste like chicken! Well, except for some spiced chicken I once left lying in the sun all afternoon and ate for dinner. But this is not funny!" Escalla emerged from stinking demon guts and turned to her normal form. Jus obligingly held her in his palm and shook her rapidly back and forth in the water to clean her. Rattled like a dice in a cup, Escalla lost her temper.
"Enough! You guys are even worse gigantic than when you're all just huge!" The faerie fought her way out of Jus's palm and retrieved her staff and wand. "Cinders? Cinders, where are you?"
Here!
Left lying on the bridge when the Justicar dived into the water, the hell hound watched with his big grin. Polk was using the hell hound as a seat, intently writing down a blow-by-blow account of the fight, clucking his tongue and shaking his head.
A high-pitched whine came from the portable hole on Jus's belt. A little silver sphere-another one of Lolth's keys-rose up out of the hole and began to glow in the air over their heads. Escalla, still naked, looked at it and instantly leaped to her feet.
"No! My clothes! That mail was specially crafted!" Her black chain mail now lay somewhere on the bottom of the pool. "Those are my last clean clothes! Wait! Wait!"
Escalla shot into the water and turned into an angler fish, a light dangling from a rod atop her head. She had no sooner disappeared than a hum came from the little sphere. There was a blinding flash, and suddenly the giant sphinx, two titanic humans, a badger, a sentient hell hound pelt, and an enraged angler fish were all in a new, dry section of corridor. Escalla cursed and raved, while huge streams of water cascaded from her gigantic friends.
"How the hell is a girl supposed to adventure if she doesn't even own clean leather?" The faerie was drenched and furious. "Jus! Open the damned portable hole!"
Snarling and cursing, she disappeared within the hole. There was the sound of tearing cloth. Escalla reappeared wearing a strip of white fabric printed with big red dots.
"My clothes are wet an
d my wardrobe is full of demon guts and water!" She realized she was the center of a ring of derisive glances, and she straightened her new dress. "Oh, you can laugh! This was ripped out of a pair of Jus's shorts!"
Funny funny!
"Laugh it up, pooch. Next bath you have, I'm gonna tizz you up like a duchess's pet!"
There was nothing to wash out the taste of tanar'ri from her mouth-only a flask of river water. As she fussed and bothered, Henry rose, so high that his head stuck into the howling mists. His voice boomed into the air like a god.
"Um, how long do these potions keep us this way?"
Escalla was sorely put out. "Not long enough to do it twice."
"Huh?"
"Nothing." The girl kicked at a puddle of water on the ground.
"All right, big guys, which way down the path-left or right?"
"Left." The gigantic Justicar opened the wet map-now sadly smudged. "It's only a little way away."
"Great. Well, if we run, maybe we can save on potions." There was a flash, and everyone suddenly returned to normal size. "O-o-of course not!" With a sigh, the faerie led the way. "Come on, you bold spirits. Get moving!"
Back in place over Jus's back, Cinders sniggered at Escalla from behind. Hee hee. Love funny faerie!
Escalla looked sideways at the hell hound, managing to look lofty despite her attire, and said, "Keep laughing, pooch. Just keep laughing."
Converted once again into a slug, Escalla moved her tail slowly back and forth. Her eyestalks were peeking under a door-the next teleport room marked upon the map. Her mouth whispered back to her friends as she carefully surveyed the room beyond the door.
"Eh. Looks like more of the same-long path, big fires beside the path, then the rest of the room seems normal. Guess they want to do the same ol' plan. Hide, then use their power to try and tug us into the flames." The worm thrashed in contempt. "Real smart boys. They get one good idea in their entire lives and just have to keep using it again and again."
The Justicar squatted beside her, ready to intervene at the first hint of trouble.
"Where are they hiding?"
"Don't know. In the fires? If they're flame proof, I guess that's their best bet." Escalla's slug body stiffened in sudden suspicion. "Ah, now there's something. Anyone here know about tanar'ri?"
The Justicar raised one brow. "I thought you knew all about tanar'ri?"
"Hey, so some days I paid less than total attention!" Escalla pulled her head out from under the door.
Stiff and hurt by a demon's claws, Henry rubbed his eyes and looked at the closed door. "Um, Escalla? Why did you ask about tanar'ri?"
"Just wondering if they can change shape." The faerie sniffed at the edge of the portable hole, smelling the stink of fish. "Has anyone noticed any vermin around here? I mean, in this whole place-apart from giant spiders-has there been a fly, a rat, a cockroach… anything?"
There was a general moment of thinking and murmuring. No, no one had seen anything. The paths and rooms were so clean as to be sterile. The Justicar pondered it and shook his head.
"Empty. Why do you ask?"
"Because there's a bunch of mice sitting over in the far corner of that room."
Everyone gathered around. Cinders was eating the last of their supply of charcoaled troll, making noises of total rapture as he did so. The Justicar tried to borrow a piece of it to draw a map and Cinders petulantly closed his snout over the treat.
Yummy troll! Cinders keep!
"We'll get you something better in a minute."
Escalla leaned close to whisper in Jus's ear. "Don't worry. You hold his M-O-U-T-H, and I'll make the G-R-A-B."
Cinders thrashed his tail. G-R-A-B spells grab! The hell hound chewed and swallowed as fast as he could. No flakes! Troll all gone, see?
"You and your damned spelling lessons." The Justicar settled on a piece of scorched fish from their rations to serve him as a pencil. "Right. So the room has a path, like this-fire trenches. No other doors?"
"Nah. None I could see." Back in faerie form again, Escalla hitched her horrible makeshift dress about herself. "Mice are over in this corner. They're probably some kind of tanar'ri, shapeshifted to try to fool us."
"Not the smartest disguise." Looking at the map, Jus rubbed his tired face. "Right So we need to eliminate the tanar'ri. That seems to activate the teleport."
The company leaned over the crude map in thought. Her nose wrinkling prettily, Enid tapped at the map with one long claw and said, "We could have Escalla attack them with a spell. Even if they're resistant, one or two of them might drop dead."
"I'm out, hon. You wanna know what spells I've got left?" The faerie always became didactic when tired and bothered. "I can do you a grease, vampire touch, a fire shield, a cloud kill, my invulnerability globe, and a web spell. Real tanar'ri-shattering stuff."
"I was only asking!"
Holding up a hand, the Justicar imposed peace. He looked up at the mists overhead and stared at the half-seen shapes of a pathway overhead. Lolth's maze was doing its job, paring away their spells and magic, weakening them steadily before they could confront the Spider Queen herself.
Always take the unexpected path. Always attack with surprise. The Justicar looked up at the pathways overhead then rose up to his feet.
"We avoid this room."
The others all looked inquiringly at him, but the Justicar never spoke until his facts were all in place. He turned from the map to the mists then folded the chart away.
"If we skip one guard room, Lolth and Recca will have no way of knowing which level of the maze we are on. We will jump up one level, then find a place to rest. We need Escalla with her spells. We need Henry healed."
Enid switched her scorched tail from side to side.
"The other paths are forty feet above us. How do we reach that high?"
"Giant growth potions. Enid, Henry, and I take the potions, Enid and I make a ladder up to the next level. Henry carries Escalla and Polk up, then gives Enid and I a hand up after him."
The mere mention of drinking giant growth potions instantly threw Escalla into a fit of panic. She fluttered about like a mad moth in a bottle.
"No! No! Look-we can get past the mice! You know-talk our way out of it or something!" Everyone was looking at the map, trying to find the best overpass to climb. "Hey! Is anyone looking at me? Hello? Hey! I can get us past mice! Mice are my speciality, I swear! I could turn into a cat or something!"
Trying to be patient, the Justicar inclined his head toward her and said, "Escalla, tanar'ri are not going to be scared of a cat."
"Jus! Those potions are for our honeymoon!" Escalla tried to whisper, painfully aware that Cinders, Enid, and Benelux were all listening. "I've got about a hundred years of theory I wanna put into practice!"
"Escalla, we need the potions."
The faerie waved her hands. "Can't we just throw a rope or something? Why hasn't Polk got rope and grappling hooks and ten-foot poles anymore?"
"Because we used to give him so much grief about it."
"Well, when did he start listening to us?" Escalla gave in with poor grace. "All right! All right! Drink the damned potions!" She kicked the potion bag over to her friends. "You know, if I didn't have Lolth to blame for all of this, you people would get me in such a huff!"
It was a brief walk to the needed overpass. Paths crossed over and under each other like a puzzle knot, but the map showed every twist and turn with total accuracy. Potions were drunk, and the giant adventurers formed an awkward human ladder through the mists.
The fog tugged and shoved at them like a living force as they climbed. Faces screamed in the mists-horrific skeletal figures were blown apart in the currents, only to reform into horrible weeping shapes. The Justicar grimly ignored it all, getting on with the job at hand.
Enid proved to be the major obstacle. They managed to boost her up onto the overhead path with some very indelicate shoving and tugging that left Henry blushing and speechless. The giants collapsed
in a heap, panting and exhausted. Clambering out of the portable hole, Escalla and Polk walked over Jus's heaving chest. Polk looked about the empty pathways and gave an irritated scowl.
"Son! Are we there yet?"
"Not yet." Big as a titan, the Justicar raised his head to look at Polk. "Soon."
"Well, come on, son! We have to move. Keep the opposition off balance! Haven't you absorbed any of my tactical training?" Polk leaped to the ground. "The boy procrastinates. Hard thing to say, but the boy just lacks any get-up-and-go."
Surveying the panting wreck of her friends, Escalla frowned as she dragged Cinders from the portable hole and unrolled him on the floor.
"What's wrong with you guys?"
The Justicar sat up, towering vast and grim above the path, and replied, "Enid is bigger than we thought."
"Enid, lay off the stirges for a while, hon." Escalla hopped over to the blushing sphinx. "We have to keep you sleek."
There was a warning flash, the giants all looked up as the potions wore off, and suddenly everyone was back to their own natural sizes.
They unfolded the map, looking carefully up and down the new paths. According to the diagrams, this was the final, topmost level of the maze. Unfortunately, the area seemed identical to a dozen others. The Justicar carefully checked the floors for the slightest sign of use, then waved the others forward as he led the way.
As they walked down the screaming pathway, they drew nearer and nearer to an incongruous marble doorway. This time the door was ornately inscribed, jet black, and gleaming new. A wide, clear window at shoulder height gave a view of the room beyond.
The party ducked down out of sight of the window. In a drill honed carefully over their adventures, Jus and Cinders crept close and examined the area for traps. Cinders sniffed the door, and Escalla listened carefully against the wood with one pointed ear. Hearing nothing, Escalla threw off her clothes, lay on her belly and began to shimmer, changing into a slug so that she could peek beneath the door.
The shimmer of magic went jarringly off-color. Escalla changed shape into a bizarre multicolored slug with something shaped like a flower planted on her behind. Her eyestalks wrenched around to stare at herself in shock.