"Shanny!" cried Javorik with obvious relief, face beaming in the torchlight. He came rushing up to Shandrilla and embraced her, tears running unabashedly down the sides of his white-bearded face. Shandrilla found herself crying too, big wracking sobs that left her short of breath. "I knew you'd come, I knew you would, I knew it," she repeated. She was vaguely aware of a sharp pain in her right hand, but ignored it as she hugged the little gnome's spare frame to her like a drowning woman grabbing onto a floating log.
But then she felt Javorik's body become insubstantial in her arms. She pulled back in fear, watching helplessly as he slowly faded away to nothingness, taking with him the surrounding light, leaving her in a darkness she knew was filled with twisted, evil monsters from her worst nightmares. "No, please, come back," she whimpered, "Don't leave me here with them...."
But it was too late. The brief dream was over, and Shandrilla awoke back in Hell.
Hell for her was a pit of unknown depth in a pitch black cavern somewhere deep under the earth. Hell was populated by demons, little scaled lizard-things that attacked her in the darkness.
[17] One was perched on her hand right now, digging its wicked little claws deep into her flesh, waking her from her sleeping dream and dragging her back into the worse nightmare of her life.
[18]
Shandrilla screamed in pain and yanked her hand away from the beast, which scampered back out of range. Cupping her wounded right hand in her left, she felt the warm trickle of blood pooling in her palm. And if that monster had been at her right hand, then the other one must be--
Sure enough, just as the thought hit her woozy brain, the other lizard-thing pounced upon her back and started ripping and tearing with its sharp claws, reopening the jagged gash across her back made by the chuul's serrated claw. Shandrilla cried out in pain and struck at the unseen creature, feeling her fingertips brush against its scales
[19] before it leapt once more out of range. This was a game she had long since grown weary of, but her tormentors seemed willing to continue it forever. One beast would attack her from one direction, and when she concentrated on that one it would back off and another would jump her from a different direction. Shandrilla wasn't sure how many creatures there were there in the pit with her, but there had to be at least two...make that three, for whenever she managed to grab hold of one of her tormentors she was struck with some sort of sonic wave that had to come from another of the beasts up above.
[20] The noise sent her body trembling out of control, and more times than not it sent her into blissful unconsciousness as well. That is, until she was awakened again by one of the little lizard-things scratching furrows into her flesh with its wicked claws....
She had tried climbing out of the pit, but that was no good either. Shandrilla had enough experience climbing walls and cliffs that she thought she should be able to climb up out of this subterranean hole, even in absolute darkness. The problem was, every time she started up the side she was hit by a wave of pain that sent her flesh crawling and made her bones feel like they were turning to rubber. After several times of that, she had learned her lesson - climbing out was not an option, at least not for now.
Escape was probably not an option either, she thought. Nor, if she was honest with herself, was survival, at least not for very much longer. She was weak and tired, and probably bleeding from a dozen different wounds now. Still, Shandrilla made a vow to herself there in the lightless pit:
If I die, I'm taking at least one of you lizard-things with me!
NOTES
17. When destrachans enter into melee combat, they attack at +9 with two sets of claws, each of which causes 1d6+4 points of damage. Destrachans rarely enter combat without "softening up" their victims with their disruptive harmonics first, though; claw attacks are usually used to perform the final, killing blow, or as an additional form of torment as seen here. Of course, since destrachans are immune to their own types of sonic attacks, they must rely upon their claws when battling others of their own race.
18. Destrachans use a wide assortment of torture on their victims, ranging from physical and sonic attacks to starvation and even sleep deprivation. Destrachans need little sleep themselves, remaining awake 20 hours out of any given 24.
19. A destrachan's scales do not overlap like lizards' scales do. Rather, they lay close together, side by side, forming a pattern like a jigsaw. Scale size varies depending upon location, with smaller scales on the underside and ever-larger ones closer to the dorsal plates that jut up from the creature's hunched spine. Scale coloration is also variable; destrachans are tan or greenish-gray, with vertical stripes of a darker color like a tiger. Such a color scheme helps the destrachan blend in against the underground environment; the creatures have 7 ranks in the Hide skill as a result.
20. Destrachans are immune to the sonic attacks of their own kind, so a mother has no qualms against firing her cone of flesh-disrupting (or subdual) harmonics at a victim if her young are also in the area of effect. This immunity also forces the mother to rely upon non-lethal physical attacks against her offspring as "negative reinforcement" when training them for life.