Queen of the Demonweb Pits

by Paul Kidd - (ebook by Flandrel; Undead)

  “They’re demons, hon.” Escalla shrugged. “They get their jollies from other things.”

  “Oh.” The sphinx folded up her paws and frowned.

  The Justicar took a piece of charcoal saved for Cinders’ dinner and made a sketch of the room upon the floor.

  “Escalla? Are there enough skeletons to interfere with footing?”

  “Not too thick. I dunno—maybe a dozen dead guys.”

  “The bones on the floor are all broken?” The Justicar took on a meaningful look. “Like they’ve been dropped from a height?”

  Escalla sat back, looking displeased. “Telekinesis! These guys can lift weights with their minds. Crap!” The girl explained Jus’ point to Henry. “That’s the trap! Telekinesis. They use mind power to lift you up a hundred feet, then drop you to the floor. Simple.”

  Henry looked at the rough sketch of the room and blanched. “So how do we kill them, and do it fast? They’re a hundred feet above us!”

  Still naked but supremely confident, Escalla spread her arms and said, “Oh, tanar’ri? You want to see how I handle tanar’ri? Insanely bloodthirsty, outnumber me four to one, outweigh me by three hundred pounds. Watch this! A great mind is at work beneath the pretty face.”

  The Justicar sensed a stupid stunt about to happen. He leaped forward to stop her, but it was too late. Everyone scattered madly aside as the faerie danced over to the door and raucously knocked on the demons’ door.

  “Hey, you! Hello in there! Anyone here order a two-foot-tall goddess in a thong? Yoo-hoo! I’m too short to reach the handle! Open up!”

  The door gave a dick and swung open as if by magic—or as if by telekinesis. Escalla shoved it wide open and gave a happy cry. She fired a lightning bolt high into the ceiling of the chamber, blowing apart a ledge that a vulture demon was standing upon. The creature fell, and Escalla whooped as the tanar’ri spread its wings. She dashed into the room and fired a spell up into the ceiling, which immediately became clogged with a pretty pink fog that smelled of strawberry flowers. Outraged, all four tanar’ri howled in anger.

  Escalla turned herself into a huge limpet and stuck herself fast to the floor. A mouth tube stuck out from one side and showered abuse on the demons above.

  “Hey, vulture boys! Do you guys fight as bad as you smell? You call that telekinesis? Come on! Put your frontal lobes into it! Pull! Pull!”

  Escalla the limpet was having the time of her life.

  The tanar’ri abandoned all pretense at rational planning. Berserk with rage they fell on the limpet with their claws, pounding at its thick shell and trying to wrench it from the floor. Huge, stinking, with vulture heads and verminous bodies, the demons screamed in rage.

  “Is that all you’ve got? Hey, you! The one with the beak! Yeah, I’m talking to you!”

  The savage ring of Benelux smashing through tanar’ri flesh was pure music to Escalla’s ears. She grew an eyestalk and watched as one vulture monster staggered, the white blade protruding from its shoulder and into its chest. A kick of Jus’ boot freed his blade. A second blow, then a third smacked into the tanar’ri and killed it.

  Henry’s crossbow hammered five darts into a demon’s side. The monster spun, leaped to attack, and tripped as Enid pounced on it from behind.

  The melee spread, Jus furiously defending himself from a vulture’s talons with his sword. Henry whip-cracked the Justicar’s magic rope and sent a tanar’ri spinning to the ground, choking to death.

  Escalla whistled, turned back to her usual form, and dashed outside for her clothes. She fetched her lich staff, pelted up behind a tanar’ri, and took its leg off with a single well-placed blow. Demon claws ripped empty air as Escalla made a fantastic handspring onto a tanar’ri’s back and smote the monster upon its skull while Polk bit it in the rear. The last of the creatures staggered as Enid ripped it apart like a cat shredding a chair. Feathers flew, then Henry drove his sword into the last monster’s chest.

  The party had a mass of wounds and scratches, but nothing too severe. The Justicar issued his healing spells, while Escalla dusted off her hands.

  “A-a-and that’s how we do it in the bad side of the faerie forest!”

  Panting, wounded, and a little dazed, Henry leaned upon his sword and said, “Wow! You… fought tanar’ri… before?”

  “Who, me? Nah! I’m daddy’s little angel.” Escalla shrugged. “But you should have seen me in pillow fights!” The girl picked up her slowglass gem and scanned it about the room. “All right! Here we are in tanar’ri central, our heroes standing triumphant above piles of four vulture things!”

  The Justicar scowled. “Will you stop doing that?”

  “Hey! These are precious memories! In two weeks’ time we can watch all this and laugh!”

  The Justicar cleared his throat and murmured in Escalla’s ear. “Most of what we see will be a view down your cleavage.”

  “Oh, yeah.” The girl looked down at her bosom. “Well, we can put a bag over Henry’s head at those points. All right! Let’s look for treasure!”

  The promised cache never came. The tiny iron pyramid they’d found outside Lolth’s gates rose up out of Jus’ purse. It twirled, flared with light for a moment, and disappeared.

  With a blink, the dead tanar’ri, skeletons, and blood were gone, leaving the adventurers standing in a blank stretch of open path. Mists swirled. Ghosts moaned.

  Fastidiously washing her paws, Enid sat on her haunches and looked around. “Oh, I say! That was jolly well done. I do so dislike stairs.”

  Wide-eyed, Escalla looked around. “Hey! My treasure!”

  “Do vultures keep treasure?” Enid blew vulture fluff from her nose. “I thought they mostly liked decaying bits of bone?”

  “Maybe they had gold fillings or something! This is an adventure, damn it! I demand financial rewards for acts of homicide!”

  The Justicar sheathed his sword and knelt to examine their map. He pointed at two bends in the corridor and tapped the markings penciled down in red.

  “We’re here on the map. This corridor junction is a match. We just climbed up one level of the maze.” The big man flipped the map into a strip and put it through his belt. “We were given an accurate tool.”

  He moved away to stare down the paths. Behind him, Polk looked up from his notebooks with a quill pen quivering in his paw.

  “Wait, son! How do you spell ‘lissome’?”

  “E-S-C-A-L-L-A.” Dressing, the faerie leaned helpfully over Polk’s notebook. “And those things in my bottom are called dimples, not divets.”

  “Oh!” Polk crossed out a few words. “That’s all right. That’s fine! As long as the gist of it’s there! I can get the prose really purple when I edit it after the adventure!”

  The badger kept writing. Enid picked him up with her teeth and carried him down the corridor. They were deep into the Demonweb, and Polk still had half an empty notebook to go.

  They walked onward through half an hour of silent footfalls and sobbing ghosts. The only food they had was a few preserved fish, which they washed down with canteens of lukewarm river water. Time was of the essence. Lolth had to be caught before she could return to the Flanaess.

  And so the party ambled on, eating as they went.

  The food was not to Escalla’s liking. Dressed in her skin tight, silky smooth, and strangely see-through clothes of black elven chain mail, she glittered like a fish as she lolled on Enid’s furry back. The occasional sparkle of pixie dust drifted from her as she flicked her wings.

  Escalla had decided to bolster the party’s morale with a riddle game—a game at which Enid always did well. The sphinx had an endless memory for facts and figures, rhyme and poem, as well as a huge library of scrolls sealed in a watertight box inside the portable hole. Wagging her foot in thought, her slim arms behind her back, Escalla chewed her bottom lip and tried to concoct a rhyme.

  “All right, um… here!” The faerie composed on the fly.

  “Restless snake, ever stirring

/>   Never hissing—too much purring

  Proud e’en though it always bows.

  Sweeping paths where e’er it goes.”

  With an arch look over her shoulder, Enid smiled. “Simple. It’s my tail.”

  “Drat! One guess gets you three questions.” Escalla lounged happily upon her friend’s warm fur. “Fire away!”

  Velvet soft, golden brown, and girlishly sly, Enid cast a blushing glance at the Justicar and Henry up ahead. She motioned to Escalla, who came over and hung down so that Enid could whisper in her ear. Escalla stayed hanging over her friend’s shoulder, then scratched her chin when the sphinx had finished.

  “Hmm. That would be ‘ten’, ‘I doubt it’… and bipeds don’t bite necks, dear. Not unless you ask them nicely.”

  “Oh!” Enid again shot a furtive glance at Henry. “Not even a little?”

  “Well, there have been cases.”

  “Oh, good.” Enid nestled closer. “And does he really have dimples in his bottom?”

  The faerie shot up in glee. “Yeah! And it’s all furry right down where—”

  “Escalla!” Enid turned red.

  “Well it is!” The faerie sprawled over Enid’s back “Is Henry’s?”

  “No! It’s really perfectly…” The sphinx blushed a most remarkable pink and caught herself mid-sentence. “Um, no, not that I’m aware.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Escalla was enjoying herself. Henry cast wan looks in Enid’s direction as they marched, and Enid remained protectively close to Henry.

  Escalla lounged back on the sphinx’s furry back and continued the riddle game. “Two little birdies in a birdie tree…”

  K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

  “Thank you, Cinders!” Lying on her back, Escalla raised one finger to the sky. “You’re getting better at this spelling stuff!”

  Cinders clever!

  “So fetch a stick!”

  Cinders not that clever.

  “Wuss!” Escalla levered herself up on one elbow and saw that they were passing by another door. The Justicar glanced at the map and moved on.

  Escalla jumped from Enid’s back and pointed eagerly at the door. “Hey! What about in here? We didn’t look in here!”

  “It’s not part of the mission.” His hand always ready with his sword, his eyes always searching for danger, the Justicar kept the door in one corner of his eye. “We’re only interested in doors marked with teleport symbols on the map.”

  The faerie’s face fell, and she instantly turned petulant. “But Ju-us! What if there’s monsters in here? Ambushers? Evil? What if there’s something that’s going to follow after us once we’ve gone?”

  “You mean—what if there’s something valuable in there you can get your hands on?”

  “Sure! That, too!” The faerie lived a life free from guilt. “Hey! Taking from a demon queen isn’t stealing! If Lolth’s evil, then all her riches will be used for evil! And gold corrupts! This stuff is her tool. So by removing her gold, we’re diminishing evil.” Escalla rubbed her fist, keen to get cracking. “See? We have an honor-bound duty to rob this bitch blind! It’s the only socially responsible course of action!”

  The Justicar glowered at her. “Cute.”

  Persuaded by Escalla’s moral argument, Enid regarded the door. “We do have a wedding to pay for.”

  Polk immediately put his pen down. He had been doodling a picture for his chronicles, showing himself beheading a tanar’ri with one bite.

  “Come on, son! Where’s your sense of right? A hero shows superiority over evil by sappin’ it on the head and emptying evil’s pockets!”

  “Polk, shut up! Leave the door alone.” The Justicar waved to his companions, signaling them to move on. “We’re running out of time.”

  Escalla had already bustled over to the door. Polk stretched high, and Escalla used him as a ladder as she peered in through a perfectly ordinary key hole.

  “It’s empty. Just a big black room.”

  “So leave it alone.” The Justicar sighed in annoyance, turning back to deal with the delay. “Come on!”

  “Cool room, though!” Escalla turned the handle, opening the door. She jumped down from Polk and stood in the doorway. “See. There’s nothing in here. Just a big flat shiny wall made out of iron.”

  A loud hum came from the room. Escalla took on a funny look for one brief second, and then she shot into the room and slammed spread-eagled onto the middle of the iron wall. Suspended three feet off the ground, Escalla’s eyes bugged out. She tried to move, but her chainmail clothing was stuck fast to the wall.

  “Ow! Jus! Jus, get me offa this!”

  A roar erupted from the chamber as hidden doors slammed open all around the walls. Dozens of huge bugbears—stinking goblins, eight feet tall—raged into the room. All bore branches and wooden clubs.

  Jus and Henry ran into the room. Henry wailed and flew through the air, plastering himself to the iron wall inches from Escalla—his own elven mail stuck tight. Jus’ helmet broke its straps and flew through the air. Benelux screeched as she tumbled end over end to crash into the iron wall right beside Escalla’s head. The bugbears looked at their trapped victims and gave a scream of joy as they scrambled toward Escalla and Henry with clubs ready to smash and pound.

  Jerking like a fly on flypaper, Escalla squealed, “Jus! A little help here!”

  The ranger was already on the move. “Enid!”

  With Enid beside him, the Justicar flung himself into the room, and ten bugbears rampaged toward them. Jus caught a club bare-handed and spun into the blow, slamming the bugbear to the ground. A savage strike from his elbow broke the teeth of another bugbear behind. Jus caught another blow, then kicked a bugbear with enough force to break the monster’s knee. A club crashed against Jus’ shoulder, and Escalla’s stoneskin spell fended off the blow in a shower of little bees.

  Enid pounced into a knot of bugbears. Clubs lashed at her, and she took the head off a bugbear with one huge swipe of her paw.

  At the iron wall, Escalla found herself the focus of a dozen charging monsters. She shrieked, turned into a small pink blob, and flowed out of her clothes, which stayed stuck to the wall. Clubs crashed onto the wall, and the blob-faerie rose up, boiling with fury.

  “Bastards!”

  Bugbears slammed a blow onto Henry’s helmet, making the metal ring. An instant later, Escalla trilled a twisted scream, and the ground before Henry boiled with huge black tentacles. The black tentacles lashed out to crush and strangle half a dozen bugbears, shielding Henry from harm. Escalla-the-blob wiped her nonexistent nose and turned back to the fight, just in time to be hit by a club and go ricocheting from the walls like a rubber ball. She landed like a splat of pudding, shook herself in anger, and mottled herself polka-dot in rage.

  “That does it!”

  Power flashed, and a flaming point of searing heat appeared. Twisting a bugbear’s arm and breaking it, the Justicar took one appalled glance and dropped flat beneath Cinders’ fireproof hide.

  “Enid! Duck!”

  The sphinx wailed and leaped over a dozen bugbears, landing behind Escalla as the blob fired. A fireball flashed into the far side of the room and exploded with apocalyptic force. At the center of the blast, bugbears vaporized. Others flew in smoking chunks through the air. Ecalla-the-blob laughed in maniacal glee, then stared in shock as a wave of heat raced straight toward her.

  The force of the explosion bowled her and Enid back into one of the bugbears’ alcoves. Still stuck on the wall Henry screamed as the hedge of black tentacles in front of him vaporized. Scorched but alive, the boy opened his eyes and stared in dazed amazement at a room that smoked in total ruin. The only uncharred thing in view was Cinders’ gleaming teeth. The dog sniffed the breeze and happily thumped his tail.

  Big bada-boom! Funny!

  “Real funny.” The Justicar, scorched around the edges and extremely annoyed, rose from beneath Cinders. He kicked a flaming bugbear out of his way then stuck his head into the alcove
where Enid and Escalla staggered.

  Enid was totally devoid of fur and feathers, and the tuft of her tail was on fire. Escalla-the-blob was now charred black, her two eyes showing white, dazed shock. The Justicar staggered over to Enid and used his last healing spell to repair her burns and restore her dignity. The big man held Escalla by the scruff of her protoplasm and shook the blob free of soot.

  “I am now out of healing spells, and we have no healing potions. You personally have done more damage to us than the entire Abyss.”

  “Just me?” The faerie-blob coughed smoke rings. “H-hoopy! D-did we find any treasure?”

  A gem lay on the floor amidst a nest of rags. The Justicar swept it up and shoved it in Escalla’s mouth, planting her on the floor. He then returned to Henry and wrenched him free of the magnetized wall. Walking against the vast pull of the magnet, he wrestled Henry outside, then returned to retrieve Escalla’s clothing, his helmet, and Benelux.

  The magic sword cursed and babbled in absolute outrage. It won’t do, sir! It shall not do! I have never been so humiliated—not since the day that I was forged!

  Struggling to tow the sword out of the room, the Justicar merely growled.

  Warming to her tirade, Benelux’s voice rose like a matron-martyr. No, sir, it shall not do! I have been wielded by kings, sir! By demigods! Demigods! By heroes bold! The sword lacked lungs, and so had no need to pause for breath. That it should come to this—a victim of mere clumsiness. To be dropped in combat by a chosen warrior…

  The Justicar opened his hand, and the sword flew through the air to clang against the magnetized wall. Benelux squawked in shock and pain and then went into a magnificent sulk.

  Very well. We shall acknowledge that there may have been extenuating circumstances just this once.

  Not bothering to answer, the Justicar wrenched the sword off the wall and began towing her back outside.

  The sword squawked at her rough handling. Hmph! I bad thought that romance might mellow your attitude toward the social graces.

  “Nope.”

  I can see that.

  The party gathered out on the open path, dusting blackened armor, snuffing out flames, and trying to repair their gear. The Justicar—flameproof in his hell hound skin and dragon scales—looked at Escalla with an expectant air.