Descent into the Depths of the Earth (greyhawk)

by Paul Kidd

  The tunnel ran for a thousand yards, and then a thousand more. Thundering forward, Jus never slowed his pace. Far behind him, Private Henry and Polk fell behind, struggling forward and reeling in a daze of exhaustion.

  The tunnel finally ended in a vile riot of sculpted spiders and orgiastic rites. Sitting at the tunnel mouth, a female drow had half risen to make a challenge when Jus smacked her in the guts with his sword, cutting the dark elf in half. A second elf turned to scream a warning to a vast temple building just beyond. Her head fell from her neck before she could even scream.

  Jus erupted out of the tunnel and saw another drow staring at him from ten feet away. The magic rope snapped out. Jus jerked the drow toward him and broke the creatures neck with one vicious twist of his hands. His long-contained fury finally released, the Justicar was already on the move, tossing his prey aside as he sped into the cover of ornate gardens of fungi and bone.

  “Whoa!”

  Escalla flew out of the corridor, bypassed the three dead drow, and urged Polk and Henry onward to glory. The two humans collapsed, wheezing painfully and almost ready to vomit. Laden down with chainmail, Henry had almost killed himself on the one mile run, but he still carried his crossbow in his hands.

  Panting hard, the party drew in the sight of a horrible new cave. Red light, thick as blood clots, spilled outward, hazing the cavern like a hideous living mist. It revealed a large cavern, perhaps a mile wide-a placethat seeped poison like a canker buried deep in the heart of the Flanaess. The place seethed with evil, a presence foul enough to stain and thick enough to cut.

  Buildings stood nearby, vile colonnades of stone carved until it seemed the walls were made of flayed corpses, screaming skulls, and grasping claws. Far beyond, at the heart of the huge cavern, a trumpet’s call set thecavern shuddering. A sudden flash of light-dark purple like fluid from a severedvein-spurted upward from an unseen point at the center of the cave. With it camean ocean of terrified human screams.

  Jus rose from cover, paused, and let Cinders glare at the terrain.

  Spiders. Steel. Cooking smells. No drow.

  “Right.” Jus flicked a glance at the buildings jutting outfrom the colonnade. “Military barracks, empty ones. Something’s going on.”

  The group moved around the barracks, crouching low. Escalla faded to invisibility, lofting high to gaze farther into the awful cave. After a few moments, the group cleared the barracks, and Escalla’s voice came driftingdown from above.

  “Oh crap.”

  Dropping Polk and Henry into cover behind a ridge of glowing minerals, Jus looked sharply upward.

  “What?”

  “Guys, you know those missing Keolanders?” Escalla’s voiceseemed dazed. “I think we just found them.”

  The mineral ridge looked down upon a vast purple pit that swirled and pulsed like blood. A stockade surrounded the pit, and chained in rows were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of screaming prisoners. There were humans from Keoland, elves and half-orcs, halflings and gnomes. Drow agents had spent months plundering the world above, seizing victims for a hellish feast of living blood.

  A vast temple stood at the far end of the cave, a temple shaped like the egg of a titanic spider. Beside the temple doors, two drow blew upon huge horns. A thin, exquisite drow priestess came strolling from the temple, her naked body smeared with runes painted in sacrificial blood. A dozen priestesses followed her, accompanied by loping centaur creatures that were part drow and part spider. Perhaps a hundred drow gathered at the temple steps, screaming out a hideous hymn to their goddess.

  Staring out over the struggling slaves, Jus felt Escalla’slittle hand upon his arm. “There! It’s a faerie!”

  Escalla pointed across the valley. Flying from the temple came a tiny shape, a faerie masked and robed in white. Jus took one look at the creature and gave a cold growl. “That’s our target.”

  Escalla cracked her knuckles, ready for action. “Yep. Gotit!”

  The enemy faerie wore a stylized white mask, blank except for painted tears. White robes hid the faerie’s body.

  Staring across the valley at the other faerie, the Justicar narrowed his eyes. “Who is it?”

  “In that gear? Could be anybody.”

  Escalla seemed far more interested in the preparations being made near the temple steps. A vast golden bowl had been set before an engraved slab of stone. A huge archway of bones had been raised beside the golden bowl, the structure braced by ropes and chains. Escalla took one look at the arrangements and swore.

  “Damn!”

  “What?”

  “See that?” The girl pointed to the arch of bones where theenemy faerie hovered, painting runes with a small brush. “They’re making theirown gate! They can tap into the faerie gates and have Lolth retrieve the faerie key.”

  Flat against the ground and almost invisible, the Justicar hissed as he weighed the scene below. “They can make their own gateways?”

  “In theory, sure.” Escalla made a frustrated noise. “Hell ofa spell, though!” Almost all of the drow priestesses now flanked the archway,eyes closed and hands linked, their throats screaming terrible syllables. “See?Ha! It’s going to take every mage they’ve got to break into where they’regoing.”

  Henry peeked over a clump of lichen, stared, and said, “Whereare they going?”

  “Don’t ask!” The girl had her eyes on the temple door. “Oh mygods! Get down!”

  From the gates of the drow temple, a sinister black light spilled forth. A visible cloud of evil stole slowly down the steps. The elves’chanting took on a dead, tinny sound, as though the music died as it crossed into another world.

  Lolth, Mistress of Spiders, had taken on a form of flesh to enter the mortal world. Probing slowly from the yawning temple doors came a long, hideous black leg, almost pencil thin, and then another, and another. Creeping forth with mincing steps, the demon queen of spiders moved out to survey her prey.

  The sheer evil of the creature struck like an icy knife. Black and gleaming, the gigantic spider loomed above the drow. Where a spider’sface should have been, the face of a beautiful dark elf woman peered forth, her face leering as she saw the slaves penned in their thousands at the temple gates. The captives tried to shrink away, the motion looking like a tide surging through a formless sea.

  And then the screaming began.

  Drow warriors dragged a captive to the temple steps and threw him across the obsidian altar. A priestess gave an orgiastic scream and sawed the prisoner’s head off slowly with a ceremonial knife. Blood spurted steaminginto the giant sacrificial bowl as the head was cast aside. The jerking corpse was strung up above the bow to drain its blood, while another prisoner was dragged swiftly into place and killed with savage speed. Fifty other screaming, fighting captives were dragged forward to await death in line, while the demon goddess cackled in laughter. Lolth dipped her face into the bowl and drank with manic thirst. The spider seemed to shimmer as hot blood filled her with its power.

  Escalla and Henry had frozen. Only Jus and Cinders reacted, the hell hound and master both giving a killing snarl. Jus tried to surge forward to take the white sword to Lolth, but Escalla hurtled into his path.

  “Stop! Jus, no! Not like this! Please!” The screams of thedoomed and dying ran hideous through the cave. Escalla ran her hands through her hair, trying to think. “All right, all right! Jus, this is not for you!” Ademon! A demon queen! The spider lady was swelling with power as she drank her hellish draught. One twitch from Lolth, and Escalla and her friends would be smears on the wall. “Jus, I’ll stop Lolth! You free the prisoners and try toclear the gate! The gate’s our only way out! I’ll come and help you when I can.”

  Screams and howls sounded as the obsidian knife sawed through victims. Lolth slurped and drank, consuming gallons of blood. Her head whirling in panic, Escalla tried to think of a scam, a trick, a brilliant ploy.

  Sudden inspiration struck. The faerie dived down, relieved Polk of a flask from his belt, then hovered
high.

  “Oh, I’m gonna regret this!” The girl took a big deep breath.“All right, people, plan resolves! Let’s get moving!”

  A distant hunting horn sounded down the tunnel that led to the main drow cave. The companions whipped their heads around to stare at the tunnel mouth nearby. There was a distant noise of movement, an echo of running feet as drow from the plateaus came to destroy the intruders who had violated the temple grounds.

  Rising, Henry stared toward the tunnel and licked his lips. He put his crossbow down and clumsily drew his sword.

  “You two deal with the demon,” the young soldier said. “Polkand… and I will hold the tunnel mouth.” The boy flicked a pleading looktoward Jus when the big man turned to stare. “You can’t free those people ifyou’re attacked from behind.”

  Jus gave the boy one long, searching look, then nodded and placed one hand upon the boy’s shoulder. Huge with anger, Jus spared one look atthe main temple with its shocking scenes of sacrifice, then waved the others to stay put as he flowed into the barracks and its colonnade. Red eyes gleaming, Cinders switched his ears left and right, leering in anticipation, then slowly let his black fur rise.

  The hell hound worked in perfect unison with his partner. Standing in the middle of the dark colonnade, Jus swirled. Flame whiplashed out of Cinders’ jaws, blasting into the huge black widow spiders that nested in theshadows. Big as melons, the foul creatures exploded and died even as they leapt straight at the Justicar’s face. Cinders snarled in glee, blasting the lastsurvivors as they lunged into the attack. Teeth bared, the hell hound watched his enemies burn and gave a feral growl.

  Aside from the smoldering spiders, the barracks were empty, but the supply rooms were not. Jus tossed aside baskets, threw jewels and treasures to the ground, uninterested in meaningless baubles. He found the tools he needed stacked box by box in a room filled with swords and shields. Crates of quarrels for the elves’ crossbows lay stacked beside a wall. Heaving two hugeboxes onto his shoulders, Jus stalked out of the flames and curling spider corpses toward his friends, then slammed his treasures to the ground.

  The big man threw open the ammunition boxes. Each one contained perhaps a hundred small crossbow quarrels, each one tipped with deadly poisons.

  The Justicar set the boxes in place and said, “Here are yourtools.”

  Henry threw himself into place opposite the tunnel mouth, cramming a handful of the small crossbow bolts into his magazine. Jus dragged rocks to fence the boy in with cover, made sure there was a line of retreat into more cover, then tore the lids away from the ammunition cases.

  “Polk! Polk, come here!”

  The teamster started forward in confusion. Jus grabbed the man and positioned him beside Henry.

  “Polk, you stay here and load for Henry. Whatever happens,you keep feeding crossbow bolts into that weapon. You hold them as long as you can, but if it gets too much, I want you both inside that portable hole!” TheJusticar wiped clean a streak of rusty earth to the front of their position, swiping it free of dirt. “Here’s a drow cloak. It’s flame proof. Keep that ironore deposit in front of you in case they fire a lightning bolt.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Henry.

  Jus squeezed the boy on the shoulder with one big hand, gave him a long, hard look of trust that made Henry feel ten feet tall. The boy lay flat over his sights, legs braced against a stone to fight the recoil, and readied himself to make his stand. Jus tucked a last few stones into place around Polk, slapped the little man on the back, then sped away toward the palisade and its horde of guards.

  The sacrifices shrieked and died. Escalla hovered, unwilling to leave the boy, then flew down to draw two magic symbols on the ground to either side of the tunnel mouth. She sped back, gave the boy a kiss, and threw a pinch of diamond dust into the air.

  “Here’s a stoneskin spell and a protection against charmspells. Good luck!” Escalla smacked Polk on the backside, then unsheathed hersinister lich staff and spread it out into a faerie-sized quarterstaff. Polk looked up at her, grim and pale, and gave her a wave. Escalla lifted her staff and began to fly away.

  “Polk! Fight the good fight, man!” The girl backpedaled inmidair, following after Jus. “Won’t be long! I’ll buy you a drink when we getback!”

  Polk and Henry lay in cover. Without Jus and Escalla nearby, the underdark suddenly seemed ominously still. The sound of feet pounded down the long, dark tunnel, hunting horns sounded, and still the shrieking, bloody sacrifice went on.

  22

  Sliced flesh made a sound like crisp, wet melon-a sound thatcarried even over the terror, the shrieks, and the screams of sacrifices. Leering over the palisade, a female drow laughed at the prisoners below. The woman watched Lolth feeding, adding her screeching voice to the hellish hymns. She babbled in excitement to two other guards beside her… then her entirebody suddenly fell in two.

  A second guard turned in shock an instant before four feet of white hot metal ploughed through his guts. Benelux screeched in fury as Jus kicked the corpse free of the blade and rammed the sword hilt backward to smash the wolf-skull pommel into the third elf’s face. The drow reeled backward, teethbroken. Jus kicked the creature’s knees, crashing the drow to the ground beforehacking its head off in one terrible blur of speed.

  The drow hymns continued, screaming and horrible. Horns bellowed, victims raved in fear, and the slaughter of the three guards went utterly unnoticed in the cacophony.

  Jus crouched amidst the spreading blood of his victims, the hell hound snarling from his helmet in a lusting feral glee. Escalla joined him as the man leaped the fence to sink down behind a surging mob of prisoners.

  Escalla clung hand in hand with the Justicar. At the altar, huge spider-centaurs cavorted around their queen. Lolth reared, foul and massive, her size growing as her bulk took on a hellish radiance. Giant black widow spiders the size of small dogs boiled all over the temple steps, climbing over shrieking prisoners near the altar stone. Lolth drank and drank from the giant bowl with a thirst that never slaked, surging with energy stolen from countless slaughtered lives.

  Hidden by hundreds of chained prisoners, Escalla went to work. The captives were all shackled by one single chain per row of twenty, the chain running through manacles fixed to their right ankles. Shivering in shock, the prisoners stared at the huge, blood-spattered man in the black hell hound skin that crouched amongst them-then gaped as Jus rose to hack a huge whitesword down into a passing drow. The drow screamed and died, unnoticed by his comrades amongst the chaos.

  The nearest prisoners were the kidnap victims from Sour Patch. A half-orc goggled as he recognized Escalla and the Justicar. Escalla saw a chained, pale figure gaping at her, the humans face smothered in pimples. Escalla clapped the man’s jaw shut as she passed him by.

  “Magic wishing weasel, son! Your wish is our command! Escapesfrom certain doom half price all this week.”

  Captives saw Jus standing over the butchered drow, and all of them instantly tried to surge pleading toward him.

  The huge warrior bellowed and shoved the nearest men down. “Still! Stay still! Don’t move!” One blow of his magic sword hacked through thenearest chain. “Drag the chain free, but stay where you damned-well are!”

  Another chain sprang free as Jus crashed the white blade down. Benelux pulsed and glowed with an excited stream of light.

  Oh, I so enjoy the way we work together!

  The prisoners stayed in place as the captives at the far end of the line began to drag the huge chain out of long line of manacles. Jus hacked lengths of chain into sections, passing them to prisoners to use as flails.

  “You have a choice: die like dogs on the altar, or kill thedrow!” The Justicar hurled lengths of chain to the eager half-orcs at his side.“We outnumber them twenty to one. Charge when I say charge, or just lie here anddie!”

  Overhead, the gate spell crashed into life, the arch of bone glowing and shimmering as a path was forced into another world.

  Escalla
looked at the black widows swarming up the temple steps.

  “When we get outta here, we’re going somewhere totally devoidof damned spiders!” Cursing, Escalla stripped herself naked right before theprisoners’ eyes. She tossed her scroll case to the Justicar and shouted, “Youidiots do what Jus tells you if you want to stay alive!”

  As Jus worked his way through dense packs of prisoners, freeing the rows one by one, the distant drow choirs increased the tempo of their maddened hymn. Escalla made a flash of light as she changed her shape into a big spider, making human captives cringe away from her in panic. The spider picked up the lich staff and Polk’s bottle in one clawed leg, then turned andsped toward the mistress of the drow.

  “Outta the way, people! Come on! Spider comin’ through.Move!”

  Escalla the spider scuttled through the ranks of prisoners nearest to the altar. Halflings were being dragged toward the altar stone by a dozen guards. The priestesses beside the bone gate finally unlinked their hands, drained by the effort of casting their spell. The white-robed faerie stood before the gate, arms open in a gesture of supreme triumph. Behind the faerie, Lolth plunged her whole head into the vast, deep bowl of blood, storing up life energy to allow her to seize the Nightshade key.

  Escalla the spider leaped onto a drow’s back, dodged a hordeof black widows who tried to drag her along in their dance, and leaped over to a spider-centaur’s back. Awkwardly clutching her bottle and staff, she tried tohide herself amongst the chaos. A halfling was flung on the altar and horribly killed, the death sawing right through Escalla’s bones. She paused, uncorkedPolk’s magic whiskey bottle, and then bellowed down into the open neck.

  “Faerie wine! Faerie wine! Vintage sixty-three!”

  The bottle began to gush with wine. Escalla joined a cluster of excited black widows that surged to the side of the blood bowl as the latest corpse was strung up above. Sixty corpses now lay in a heap beside the altar, the bodies sliding and tangling. Drow worked fast, killing, hanging, cutting free-a frenzy of activity. Escalla jumped onto the bowl’s rim, saw Lolth as themonster plunged her head deep and drank, then hurled the magic whiskey bottle into the blood. The enchanted wine spread through the blood in an invisible swirl.