by Paul Kidd
Something was missing. Jus flicked a glance left and right and frowned. “Where’s Escalla?”
The faerie was nowhere to be seen. Jus made a weary noise, turned back to the door and opened it to find a nude, wet Escalla glaring at him from inside. The girl’s cheeks blazed pink with embarrassment.
“Don’t say it!”
Without another word, the girl flew back out of the room and snatched her clothes out of the ranger’s grasp. She dressed herself whilehovering in midair and casting a suspicious glance behind her to see if anyone had dared to watch.
Red eyes gleamed, and Escalla gave a sniff. “Whatta youlooking at, mutt?”
Faerie butt! The hell hound’s tail wagged. Neat!
“Hmph! Well at least you’ve got good taste.” The girl pulledon her long gloves. “All right crew, show’s over, trap’s solved. Let’s getmoving and find this damned wizard!”
They returned to the side passage that had led them astray. Escalla flipped herself invisible, peeked about the corner, and then led the way into the dark. Jus surged through the water just behind her, his sword out and his eyes searching everywhere. Above his helm, Cinders grinned like a mad piranha. The dog’s big white teeth were the only things clean in the entiredungeon.
The teamster gradually fell behind. Carefully drawing on his scrolls, the man looked up only when hailed from a great distance ahead. A small ball of light floated in the darkness behind Jus and the faerie.
Staring in irritation back at Polk, the Justicar growled and said, “What in the name of Zagyg are you doing?”
“Maps!” Polk refused to be disturbed at his task. “Achronicle has to have a map.”
“Right.” The ranger walked on down the passage. “Come on. Ifyou fall back too far, we won’t hear it if you get eaten by a monster.”
Polk blinked, looked behind himself, then sped hastily after Jus’ departing back, his feet splashing madly in the water. He made sure totread in the big man’s footsteps and stayed as close behind him as he dared.
The corridor ended in a plain wooden door. Escalla becamevisible as she neglected to concentrate on her magic and instead played at being a dungeoneer. With her wings whirring away, she made a careful inspection of the portal.
“Is this one teak?” The faerie made a face of mock distaste.“The last door was oak. These people ought to decorate according to some kind oftheme.” She carefully kept away from the moldy, slimy wood. “No traps, no runes,no ear borers, no guillotines.” Escalla motioned to the door. “Wood rot isreally bad for my complexion. Anyone want to listen at the thing?”
Jus made an irritated noise and simply kicked the door down. Rotten wood flew apart and fell bouncing all over the floor. With his sword ready, the Justicar advanced through the doorway and glared into the room beyond.
Magic light flooded harsh and bright into a large stone chamber. A single door stood opposite the entryway, and four huge, terrifying shapes stood hunched in the gloom. Huge creatures made of malformed flesh, eight feet tall and rippling with misshapen muscle, each seemed to have been badly stitched together out of spare parts from a mad doctor’s refuse bin.
The Justicar looked at the creatures and hefted his sword, ready to parry or run one through.
“Flesh golems.”
They stood in niches-four monsters with an empty niche besidethem. Each monster had a number burned into its chest: five, seven, eleven, and thirteen.
One of the monsters stirred. Its breath bubbled wetly as it turned foul, cold eyes upon the three interlopers and said, “One of us does notbelong with the others. If you can pick it out, it will serve you. If you pick the wrong one, we will kill you. You have sixty seconds.”
Frightened into visibility and hovering ahead of her two companions, Escalla looked at the numbers and blinked.
“Um, look, did some other guys come through here justbefore?”
“Fifty-five seconds.”
“Yeah, look, do you always ask the same question when peoplecome in, or do you change it?” The faerie nervously fluttered her wings.“Because if the other guys came through here and answered right, then the oddmonster out went with them.”
“Forty seconds.”
Escalla flitted in front of the door with anxiety. “Look! Ifthere was a fifth monster and he went along with the other guys, then he’sthe one who didn’t belong! So that’s your answer, yeah? It’s the missing guy!”
“Thirty seconds.”
The faerie fluttered madly back and forth, her voice pitched into a whine.
“But it’s not fair! You’re doin’ it all wrong!”Escalla began to go into a tantrum. “I can’t answer it if you don’t listen tome! Hello? Hey, fleshfreaks, pay attention to the faerie!”
The monsters turned toward Escalla and flexed fingertips hard enough to carve though stone.
“Ten seconds!”
“All right! All right! I can solve this!” The girl tried tohold Jus back. “There’s a solution, trust me. Brains over brawn.”
The Justicar turned, shoved Polk back down the corridor, then grabbed Escalla underneath one arm. The faerie’s eyes bugged, and she angrilykicked her little feet.
“Hey! No one touches the faerie!”
“Shut up and shoot!”
Escalla looked back into the room behind her to see all four monsters lumbering toward the door. She laughed and opened her hands, a swirling surge of energy whirling inside her grasp.
“Ha! Fireball!”
Jus tried to stop her. “For gods’ sake no!”
Too late. Escalla screeched with glee and punched the spell down the passageway. With a foul curse, the Justicar managed to tackle Polk and shove both the teamster and the faerie down into the mire. The ranger thudded on top of them, Cinders’ fur cloaking his back as a wild explosion blasted throughthe air.
The fireball was a spell far too large for such a tiny room. The room shook with explosive force, and then a roaring lance of flame came shooting down the corridor. It ripped above the Justicar, the heat of it licking steam from Cinders’ fireproof fur. Greasy sludge atop the water caught firewith horrid little flames, lighting the scene as Polk and Escalla fought up from the filth and coughed the muck out of their mouths.
They were suddenly alone. The air was filled with smoke and the stench of scorched muck. Dazed and almost drowned, Escalla peeled back her hair from her face. Polk half raised himself from the mire and looked around as though expecting a new blast of fire.
The Justicar’s magic light had disappeared.
Thrashing sounds came from the room as the massive creatures beat in a frenzy at the walls. Burned and furious, all four of the flesh golems came staggering through the doorway, caught sight of Polk and Escalla, and screamed in bloodcurdling hate. Escalla shrieked and instantly disappeared. Suddenly alone, Polk sat on his backside and began to skid rapidly backward through the mire.
All four monsters blundered toward him, when suddenly a dripping shape heaved upward from the water. Dripping mud, his hell hound skin outlined by fire, the Justicar rose and hacked his black sword straight into the trailing creature’s skull. The bone clove with a hideous crack, and theblack blade ripped free in a trail of blood.
The monster spun and staggered blindly against a wall, thrashing in the mud with an appalling unwillingness to die. A second monster whirled and flailed with its fist, catching Jus across the shoulder and smashing him against the wall, but the ranger rebounded and hacked through the creature’sarms. The golem shrieked in agony and rage, but the ranger wasted no time. Following through with his sword, he plunged over half the blade through his foe’s chest. The creature staggered and fell.
Burn! Burn!
Cinders sent a bolt of flame thundering into the corridor. One flesh-monster roared and screamed. Another simply put its hands over its eyes. The Justicar dodged a clumsy strike by one of the monsters, split one creature’s shoulder half from its body, then with a second chop almost rippedthe creature in two.
The las
t remaining abomination made a charge, blundering through the water. Jus hefted his sword and let loose a roar that shook the entire tunnel. Hurling himself into his enemy, the ranger met its punch with a swift slice of his blade. The monster’s arm fell, injured and bleeding. Itflailed the limb at him like a club, battering the Justicar’s shoulder so thatthe bone snapped with an audible crack.
Snarling as he shook away the pain, Jus staggered backward. The flesh monster clenched its fist and rose to smash him to the floor. The ranger kicked the creature in its crotch, and his boot making a sickening sound. The monster pitched forward, and the Justicar hacked his sword down one-handed with stunning force. The flesh monster’s head fell, almost severed from itsneck. Still fighting, it lurched around and punched a wall, shattering the stone. With blood spraying from its neck, the golem came around to make another devastating charge.
The water made footwork nightmarishly awkward. It was a place for blade work and not for dodging. Jus reversed his sword into a backhanded grip, holding it like a huge ice pick as the flesh golem charged. The ranger whipped the sword upward as the golem ripped at him with its remaining arm. The sword sliced, deflecting the monster’s blow and ripping its target from elbow toarmpit.
It all happened in a single fluid blur. Jus pivoted and swung, throwing his entire weight behind the sword. The blade ripped into the golem’s spine as it passed through, and the monster arched, its eyes going wide.Already dead, its momentum carried it forward. The black sword whirled back and hissed into the monsters neck on the uninjured side. Thick as a tree-trunk, the neck was finally sliced through. The golem struck the dungeon wall, and the impact shook the severed head free from its shoulders. Decapitated, the titanic torso struck the passageway, shattering stone blocks and spraying blood until it finally slid into the mire.
His sword dripping blood and his shoulder broken, the Justicar whirled on his companions in an apocalyptic rage.
“Who the hell told you to use a damned fireball?”
Escalla popped into view, hiding behind Polk.
“Sorry!” The girl took cover. “Girlish enthusiasm! The blastwas smaller last time I used it. I swear!”
“You almost killed us all!”
“Hey, don’t sweat it!” Escalla came happily out of hiding. “Iset them up for you. Four in, four down! They mess with us, and they get what’s coming!”
His head swimming, his shoulder broken, and one side of his body a livid bruise, the Justicar shot the girl a seething glance. Polk was looking at him and chewing his moustache.
The Justicar reacted with a growl. “Well?”
Retrieving the fallen slime bottle intact from the mud, the teamster shook his head in disappointment. “You should have fought them in thedoorway one at a time, son, man to monster flashing blades!” The teamster gave asigh. “Backstabbing…”
“…is just not done. Right.” The Justicar slumped againstthe wall and fought to stand. “How many of those damned healing potions do wehave?”
Escalla’s eyes opened wide, and an instant later she was atthe ranger’s side. She ran a hand across his face and asked, “Are you reallyhurt?”
“Maybe.” The man slid down the wall and ended up sitting inthe water. “Get me the healing potion, the big one.”
The barons only sliver of aid had been to provide each of his adventurers with a powerful magic medicine. Escalla pulled a potion from Polk’sload of equipment and grimaced as she heard the Justicar snap his own broken bones into place. She held the potion to his lips and tipped it up to make him drink, her wings fanning his brow delicately.
Pale, Escalla watched as the Justicar breathed hard and let the magic potion do its work.
“Hey, Jus?”
“Yeah?”
“Sorry, man. It seemed a good idea, you know?”
“I know.” The warrior gave a weary sigh. “Just be careful.”
“Sure.” The girl tossed away the empty potion bottle and saton Jus’ knee. She looked up at him for long, quiet moments, watching him inconcern.
“I didn’t know you could be hurt, man.” Escallaruefully wiped at the man’s face. “You’re like a juggernaut, big andindestructible and always there.”
“Take the pain and keep hitting.” Slowly, Jus began breathingmore easily. “First combat lesson worth learning.”
“Hey, that was some pretty sword stuff you were doing,though.” The faerie shook her head. “Great moves, J-man.”
“Thanks. I try.” The ranger opened his eyes and sat up,testing his newly healed shoulder. “Potion’s working.”
“Hoopy.”
The girl patted Cinders’ wet, soggy fur. “Hey, pooch. Youall right?”
All right.
It took few minutes of rest to get the Justicar back on his feet. He explored his shoulder slowly, shook his head, and used one of his few precious spells to heal the lingering damage.
The spell did the trick. Jus almost instantly felt as good as new. Swinging his arms in satisfaction, the big man trod on monster backs and marched into the fire-blackened room.
“Whoever came through here last, this wasn’t what they fledfrom. There’s still something nasty up ahead.”
The Justicar wrenched the exit door open. It showed signs of being scuffed and opened. Jus took a swift look up the newfound passageway and waved the others onward.
“Come on.”
Happily drawing his maps, Polk followed after the warrior.
Hovering anxiously back in the flesh-monsters’ room, Escallafluttered here and there, poking about for treasure. Finding nothing, she gave a frustrated little noise and hastened off after her colleagues.
The corridor wended onward into the darkness, but the dark now had a half-heard pulse and flow of steam. Stairs led a few steps upward out of the muck, and the rough stone walls became beaded with warm, sticky droplets of water. From far down the tunnel, a sudden blast and shudder shook the air. A prolonged hiss of steam echoed down the hall, followed by a ripple of heat washing through the air.
Above the stairs, a broken pile of metal junk half-filled the corridor. The Justicar shook his head and simply bent iron bars aside then picked his way forward along the hall. A growing stink of sulphur and the roar of steam made the going slower as they crept cautiously into the gloom.
A broken door opened upon a rough stone ledge. Beyond the ledge, great swirls of steam eddied inside a huge natural cave. Water dripped and spattered from a ceiling hundreds of feet above, while the floor seemed to be a seething sea of bubbling mud.
The reeking steam made the air almost unbreathable. Cinders wagged his bedraggled tail quite happily, but the remainder of the group shied back and shielded their faces from the heat as they crept forward onto the ledge to stare into the cave.
The walls glowed with sickly phosphorescent light, showing a hellish space of boiling water and bubbling mud. Far across the cave there lay another ledge, beyond which a new tunnel gaped in sinister black welcome.
The gulf between the ledges was at least a hundred feet wide. Between the two ledges, there hung long and slimy chains, the end of each one hanging a dozen feet above the boiling mud. Rotten fragments of wood showed that the chains might have once supported strips of wood-perhaps a bridge or walkwayof some sort, but there was no longer any way to tell.
Escalla looked about herself in wonder then lay down on her stomach to peer at the pools thirty feet below. She smiled, her eyes opening wide in sheer joy of discovery.
“Hey, guys, you should see this! It’s incredible. There’s acouple of geysers down here!”
A sudden shudder of force filled the air. The Justicar snatched Escalla back from the brink, whipping her backward by the heels as a huge jet of boiling water shot up past her perch and smacked into the ceiling above. Steam thundered up into the sky, smacking into the rock ceiling to make a boiling rain. The raw power of the blast made the entire dungeon shudder and filled the cavern with a swirling sulphurous fog.
Escalla sat in the Justica
r’s arms, blinking at the geyser.Jus held Escalla in the crook of one arm and brushed her hair back from her face.
“All right?”
“This had better be some damned treasure we find!” Thefaerie blew out a breath, shook her head, and took back to the air. “Thisdungeon is really getting on my hit list.”
The cave shook as multiple geyser blasts thundered lethal columns of boiling water into the air. Escalla hovered safely back, timing the geyser blasts and watching the mud pools with a frown. Fists planted on her hips, she set her willpower to work and came up with the only sensible plan.
“All right, you guys can’t climb the chains. One slip andyou’ll be broiled.” She gazed competently across the cave, measuring thedistance with her eyes. “I tell you what. I’ll fly over to the other ledge andtake a look down the new tunnel. If it looks like you guys will have to cross, we’ll try to figure something out. If not, there’s no point risking it.”
It seemed the only thing to do, but Jus didn’t like it. Hetucked the girl’s healing potion into her belt and helped her tie back herbedraggled hair.
“All right, but just look.” The Justicar ducked as yetanother titanic column of boiling water shot to the roof of the cave. “Get in,look, and get out. Don’t risk the geysers, and don’t touch anything!”
“You got it!” Escalla’s wings fluttered happily as shehovered. She waited for a second geyser blast and then darted forward. “Back infive minutes!”
Great scalding drops of water rained down from the roof as Escalla wove between the hanging chains. She looked upon the bubbling mud pools below and banked hard sideways as a big gush of hot water spurted upward from a geyser mouth. Weaving nimbly back and forth, she sailed past a geyser at the far edge of the cave just as a jet of steam shot up into the sky. The steam ripped across her rear, and Escalla squawked and flung herself madly down out of the way. She hit the ledge and ducked into a doorway just as a geyser exploded into life in the cave.
Unprotected by her leather clothes, the faerie’s left thighstung like wildfire.