Depths of Madness
( The Dungeons - 1 )
Erik Scott De Bie
Erik Scott de Bie
Depths of Madness
PROLOGUE
When Galandra fell, a spear piercing her throat, Arandon knew they would all die.
His arms had never felt so tired. The warrior swept at the onslaught as ineffectually as a child bats at a swarm of gnats, his axe cutting back and forth as fast as he could swing it. The steel knocked a spear aside, then buried itself in a lizardman's chest. Arandon let go and snatched a pair of handaxes from his belt just in time to trap a hurled spear between them. He twisted and the shaft spun through the air, driving back a dozen of the creatures.
More took their places.
Scores upon scores of the things poured out of openings all around the black chamber. Their crimson eyes gleamed, as did the obsidian that tipped their weapons. Cords of muscle, serrate scale ridges, and clawed wings spoke of a heritage far removed from the human realms. Caustic green foam dripped from their fangs.
Galandra screamed, then gurgled. Arandon looked just in time to see the priestess fall. Her shield dropped to her side, letting half a dozen spears jab into her body, piercing her crimson mail. Quelin leaped to her defense, his hammer smashing back and forth, but it was too late.
Arandon cursed. "Do something, Davoren!"
An arc of flame cut in front of him, searing scales and flesh to cinders. The warlock was helping, he supposed, but it wasn't enough. The chains of flame had kept them alive thus far, wedging the horde against the walls, but without healing magic…
Arandon felt eyes watching him, but he knew no one was there.
"Lass?" he asked over his shoulder, not sparing the heartbeat it would take to look. A spear hit solidly and shattered on his buckler, numbing his arm.
The reply came in the form of an inhuman screech. Two lizardmen sank to the ground, clutching their throats. Arandon heard a contemptuous scoff meant for him. Despite his desperation, he smiled.
Five paces away, Telketh hacked with his sword, the blows driven home by raw strength. Arandon's axes skipped and slid off the lizardmen's slimy hides more often than they bit, but Quelin swung his hammer to good effect, dashing brains across the floor with every swipe.
"Forward!" Telketh shouted. Spears glanced off his shining armor, but he strode on, fearless. Arandon cut faster, courage burning in him.
Quelin smashed yet another lizardman, stepped forward to bat aside a spear that nearly struck Telketh's shoulder, and stepped back hard on a runic marking. A column of entropic energy flowed up and engulfed half the paladin's body, which writhed into dozens of forms at once. A heartbeat later, the man's scream became an agonized whistle, then a whining moan, then a wet gurgle as he fell, a quivering mass of flesh.
Arandon's heart sank. Now they were four: a sword, an axe, a caster, and a liar.
The scaly fiends were pushing them back toward a wall of black stone. The four fought hard, but without a priest or paladin, they were dead. He felt that invisible gaze again, focusing on him. Was he next?
"What's watching us?" he shouted as he hacked.
"Impossible," their captain said, fingering her sapphire amulet.
Then the lizardmen hesitated. Arandon and Telketh cut down two more. The lizardmen fell back, spears ready, and the four didn't pursue. Davoren let the fires die.
They heard a devil's bemused chuckle.
"What…?" Arandon started.
"It comes," Davoren said wryly.
A great roar ripped through the cavern, and all eyes turned to its source.
The creature that loomed out of the shadows stood twice as tall as even the hulking Telketh. It sprouted limbs of mad distortion-one arm long and gangly, the other thick and clawed, while one leg pulsed with wiry muscle and the other stomped like a boulder. It ran at Twilight, who stared, shocked. The lizardmen fled down dark passages.
"Twilight!" Arandon stumbled. He looked to his bitter rival, standing at her side. "Telketh, aid her!"
Telketh leveled his sword. "Lass!" He shoved her aside, just in time for the huge claws to close around him and snap him into several pieces, giant sword and all.
With an avenging cry, Arandon threw himself at the creature's thicker leg, but his axes shattered against the mottled scales. The beast clubbed Arandon aside with Telketh's ragged torso. His body slammed against the wall like a discarded bone, and everything went red.
He'd lost his limbs; whether they were attached or not, he could not feel them. Blood dribbled down his chin. Spears punctured his body. He thought he saw fire. He heard the screams of the dying and the jeers of the living.
A shadow flickered across his vision. A familiar face looked into his with bright eyes that seemed white in the dimming light. He prayed that his lover, at least, might escape.
"Go," he tried to say. Nothing.
She understood.
Arandon watched the elf vanish into the shadows and rebuked himself. If anyone survived, it would be her.
Tymora, I'm coming, he thought.
Then a pair of eyes opened before him in his mind-cold eyes devoid of humanity or passion.
No, a quiet voice said in his head. No, you aren't.
Arandon tried to scream.
CHAPTER ONE
A dull, half-hearted light leaked in from the torches burning in the hallway. The woman opened her eyes a crack.
She awoke cold and mostly naked in muddy darkness. Her splitting headache made the world thrash as she tried to comprehend what had happened. Little sniffling sounds, like deep breathing or perhaps growling, came to her ears. Every bit of her ached, and her mind was as bleary as her eyes. She saw, dimly, a scar on her right hand, and contemplated it as she awakened.
"Typical," Twilight murmured.
She wondered, for a moment, which cheap dive she had awakened in this time. The mustiness and the water dripping on her forehead reminded her of the Curling Asp in Westgate. The vaguely disturbing sounds brought back a certain guest chamber she had occupied on her one and only visit to the unsightly bowels of Zhentil Keep. The salty foulness in the air-a blend of spit, rot, and dried excrement-brought to mind a certain Haggling Harpy in Athkatla, which was ostensibly named for a local legend. Its name actually came from the technique that one needed to ply in order to procure a decent room.
The Fox-at-Twilight realized, though, that her cheek was stuck to cold stone that was far too comfortable to be one of the pallets at the Harpy. She peeled herself off and blinked. She detected a certain mixture of damp fur, mildew, and useless tears mixed with human foulness. She could practically hear the unanswered prayers from decades of prisoners.
"A cell," Twilight said as she rose to a sitting position, grateful that she could move. She sniffed and scowled. "Not as typical."
She focused on the sole source of light-a murky, pink-red radiance in the corridor. She padded to it on thick soles quite accustomed to a lack of boots. Twilight felt oddly light on her feet, a sensation much like being slightly tipsy on Calishite wine.
Ignoring the feeling, Twilight examined the exit. A series of blades and rods folded and fit together like a genius child's puzzle to make up the cell door. A lever, when shifted, would cause it to open in what Twilight could only guess would be a scintillating wonder of engineering. This door was highly sophisticated, magically wrought, and definitely something Twilight wouldn't expect outside of a dwarf citadel, the mage towers of Evermeet, or the mystic kingdom of Halruaa.
The lock, on the other hand, was a simple padlock that held the lever in place.
"Now that's juxtaposition," she mused. "But no sense turning down the Lady's kiss before it becomes a bite." She reached for her belt,
which was not there. She wore only the tattered remains of a once-white chemise. The musky air was chill on her skin.
Twilight groaned. Not that she objected to nudity out of principle-she had found it quite useful in a tight spot or three-but it meant that she had no picks when it mattered.
Her eyes scanned the hall. Shadows. Good. Twilight closed her eyes, relaxed her thoughts, and… instead of dancing into the shadows, nothing happened.
"By the Maid," she cursed. "A mage cell."
"You aren't going to find Tymora's favor with that portal."
Twilight whirled and slammed her back against the marvelous door. Again, her hand twitched toward her missing belt, this time to draw a nonexistent rapier.
How she'd failed to notice the young man in the shadows was beyond her, but there he sat, on a crude, stained cot. She could see little about him but for his mismatched eyes-one green, one gray-blue-which shone dully in the dim torchlight.
Many thanks, strange lad who offers sage but perfectly obvious advice at crucial junctures, she thought, but she kept silent. Such a quip would be unnecessarily rude, and Twilight was never unnecessary.
"I wouldn't stand there," her companion added. "Tlork upsets easily."
"Tlork," she repeated.
Instinct sent her springing just before a mass of iron slammed into the door. The bars creaked and bent inward under the impact of a warhammer with a head the size of an ale keg. Even from half a pace away, the concussion sent her stumbling.
She ended up headfirst in the lad's lap.
"But, uh… we've yet to be properly introduced!" he protested.
Ignoring him, Twilight scurried to her feet and stared up at the twisted creature that loomed in the corridor, and blurry memories started coming back.
It was a troll-or at least, it had been, once.
Both its original arms had been severed at the shoulders and replaced. Its left-holding the hammer-was long and wiry with half a dozen digits, and its right was a muscled limb three times as thick that ended in a clawed hand. A stumpy, elephantlike leg rooted it to the floor alongside a ganglier limb. It was balanced by a segmented, prehensile tail that looked like a scorpion's. Because of the oddly imbalanced limbs, the creature walked with a drunken sway. Half its skin had been replaced with the mottled pelts of demons: vrock, babau, and several she didn't recognize.
"Pretty elfy-not pretty when Tlork crush." It-he-made a twisted face.
Twilight remained crouched in the shadows until the troll left. She remembered exactly how heavy that hammer was, and exactly how fast that distorted body could move. Now she remembered how she'd come to the cell.
"He's gone, methinks," said the man. The troll had not seemed to notice him.
"My thanks again," Twilight murmured under her breath.
Then the implications of her situation hit her, and her hand darted up to her breastbone. The youth might have thought her frightened, but in reality she was searching. Her hand fell.
It was gone.
Twilight's blood ran a touch colder. How long? How long had she lain visible?
The youth stood and walked into the light. He wore a coarse tunic, dirt, and sweat. "Well met, Lady. I am Liet-Liet Sagrin of Harrowdale."
Twilight took his hand. It bore sword calluses, but was otherwise soft and limber. By human age, Twilight guessed this Liet could not have seen thirty winters.
Twilight smiled… and drove her knee up between his legs.
Liet yelped like a wounded puppy, eyes bugging. He seemed as if he would remain standing, so she kneed him again, this time in the stomach. He sagged, only to catch her backhand with his nose. Then Liet's only resistance was a moan-a moan of surprisingly high pitch.
Within a breath, Tlork was back, drooling greenish spittle that sizzled when it struck the floor. "What you do? You-you shut yourself up in there!" The words came out together awkwardly- the troll put them together with effort, it seemed.
No, Twilight thought with a whimsical grin, you shut me-self up in here.
Aloud, she gave no response, but put a bare heel-hard-into Liet's stomach, eliciting a breathless groan.
The troll fumbled with a huge key and opened the lock. Then, for all of the portal's intricate engineering, the troll wrenched it open like any other door, almost tearing it from its hinges. Tlork roared and leaped inside.
Just as the troll's claws were about to close around her head, Twilight ducked, dived, rolled between the mismatched legs, and darted out the door. A flick of her wrist clicked the padlock shut behind her.
By its dull, confused grunt, the troll was almost as stunned as the groaning Liet.
Twilight ran down the hall, her eyes darting back and forth for signs of an ambush. She felt unusually light on her feet and faster for it.
Good. Unarmed, she could not fight an attacker. Evasion, subtlety, and attention-her own, and not that of her enemies- were her three best allies for now. The shadows further comforted her, like the mother's caress she had long forsaken, or the arms of a loving god-if such a thing existed. Outside the confines of the mage cell, a brief shadowdance just might be possible.
The corridor, perhaps a spearcast in length, curved and snaked off to other cells. Some contained enough space for a dozen prisoners, some only enough for one or two.
For political prisoners, she guessed, or mages. She remembered the anti-magic field in her own cell. She hadn't been able to feel it, but that confirmed its presence.
Twilight had known many disciplinary facilities-what some called dungeons-in her day, but none shaped like this, with its twisting and curling corridors. What maniac had imagined such atrocious architecture? Most elves would have blamed a dwarf, but Twilight was not most elves. Who had built this place?
These questions made it easier-easier not to think about being alone, weaponless, and nearly naked in a dark prison, and when-if that troll caught her…
Twilight saw no other guards. Four small cells were shut, all of them dark-she guessed they held prisoners. Twilight passed them by. She had her priorities.
At the end of the corridor, she came to a chamber whose smell told her, beyond a doubt, that she had discovered the fiendish troll's lair. It had once been a torture room, she decided upon seeing the rusty knives, moldy rack, and pitted cauldron meant for boiling oil. The withered devices seemed relics of an ancient age.
"Years pass," she murmured, "methods of conversation remain the same."
She noticed a creature of darkness and dived behind the cauldron. She listened, tense, but the only sounds she heard were of a furious troll bashing on cell bars.
After a heartbeat, Twilight sniffed. An onyx griffin crouched in the center of the room. Its features appeared mad, making it all the more frightening, but it was only stone.
"Interesting taste," Twilight said.
A stout chest lay nestled under the onyx griffin's claws- locked, of course. Casting about for tools, Twilight wrenched a rusty blade from an unpleasant looking harness. Crude, but she had worked with worse. And if her guess about the chest's contents was correct, this was the only lock she would be picking with an iron shard.
Though really, she thought, what are the chances?
It didn't matter. She had to have the Shroud.
Twilight bent to work on the chest and her delicate ears picked up the jangling of keys-telltale sound of a troll getting smart. If she lingered a heartbeat longer, she would be caught, and it would almost be worth it. But she wasn't certain about the chest, so she made the logical decision.
It was not easy, though-she wasn't sure she didn't prefer death.
With a wince and an oath, Twilight left the chest and dived into the shadows. She concealed the rusty spike along her forearm-it might prove useful.
As soon as she reentered the curving corridor, Twilight grimaced. She saw the troll fumbling with a thick key ring to get the padlock open. She couldn't dance back into a room that forbade magic, and she would never slip past a cautious troll.
&nbs
p; Not without her other powers-powers he had taught her.
Though it twisted in her gut like a serrate blade, Twilight knew it was necessary. A creature of pragmatism, she could not let personal anger interfere with survival, no matter how much it vexed her.
But without the Shroud, it made her nervous.
"Chameleon watch my comings and my goings," she murmured. "Take my hand and guide me through the darkness."
With the words came a feeling the Fox-at-Twilight knew only too well. A cool mantle of power-like the shadows, but teasing her every nerve-settled over her. It would vanish in the anti-magic field, but she would make it in.
As always, a tiny, mocking laugh tickled the back of her consciousness, one she had long ago learned to ignore. It sounded too familiar to be real.
When she moved, Twilight may as well have vanished.
Tlork threw the door open and lumbered into the hall, hefting his massive hammer. Wherever the elf had gone, he would find her and crush her. No one made a fool of Tlork Thunderhead.
The troll paused and winced. It was happening again. Tlork was, painfully, thinking. Like a paralyzing plague, rationality settled upon Tlork's scrambled mind and forced the troll to a grinding halt.
A dim memory associated with the moniker Tlork Thunderhead struggled to assert itself. The troll's mind chugged along: That's not what the master calls me, not quite Th-underhead.
The thought rumbled through Tlork's head and departed, and the troll breathed a sigh of relief.
Then Tlork heard the cell door bang closed. He whirled, only to find the elf lounging on one of the pallets in the cell, swinging her legs idly.
The troll furrowed his brow. If he had been confused before, now Tlork tumbled entirely off reason's cliff into a mad, upside-down sea. When he last checked, she had run out, not in, and no one could have gone past him. Tlork growled at her through the bars.
"What you do there?" Tlork growled.
"You'd know better than I," the elf said. "I don't know why you put me in here."
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