INTO THE WORMCRAWL FISSURE
Malchor Harpell sat behind his desk, fingers steepled under his chin as he bowed his head in thought. The members of the League sat or stood before him, having just completed their report of the events that transpired in Kongen-Thulnir.
“So at last we come to the end-game,” he said at length. “Dragotha by now knows of the fate of his phylactery and his emissaries. He will be on the move soon. You must stop him before that happens. You must go to the Wormcrawl Fissure.”
“The what?” Hawk asked.
“It is Dragotha’s home. This knowledge came to me, along with much else thought lost, after your discovery of the Library of Last Resort. It is a massive underground rift located at the far northeast reach of Skull Gorge.”
“What about Lashonna?” Havok asked. “We know that she is undead, and a silver dragon at that. Shouldn’t we deal with her first?”
“Lashonna’s motives and allegiances are unknown to us at this point,” the archmage replied. “Dragotha is very much a known factor. My advice to you is to deal with the devil you know.”
“Can you tell us the way?” Faust asked. Malchor smiled, “Yes, but alas I have never been their myself. Perhaps when you return, you can provide me with the details to add a new painting to my collection?”
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“I don’t believe this!” Faust shouted. “Again? Again we have to cater to these silly beliefs of yours?”
“These ‘silly’ beliefs, as you call them,” Grubber answered, unperturbed, “have saved your life and that of everyone here on more than one occasion.”
The League members stood on the rim of Skull Gorge, once more overlooking Kongen-Thulnir. The city seemed abandoned. Nothing living, save for carrion birds, moved through its ruined streets. The group had arrived with the intention of making use of another of Havok’s plethora of scrolls which would allow them to transform into substanceless air and travel with the speed of the wind to the far end of the gorge, which lay some hundred miles distant. That was until Grubber reminded them of Grumbar’s prohibitions against flying. To one side Mak rustled a pair of leathery, bat-like wings that had mysteriously sprouted from his back over night. They were a gift, he said, from Helm.
“Look,” Hawk said, stepping between the livid psion and the goliath, “this is nothing new, and Grubber has a point. We each have ideals that we hold dear, and none of us would relish being asked to compromise them.”
“Speak for yourself,” Faust snorted.
“Present company excluded,” Hawk snapped. “Be that as it may, we will have to find another way for Grubber to accompany us, and I think I have the solution. Grubber will wait here while we fly to the entry of the Wormcrawl Fissure. We should be able to make it within an hour or two. Once there, I will use the powers of the helm I took from the Ominous Fabler,” he rapped his headgear with one mailed fist, “to transport myself back here, and then the two of us will transport to the rest of you again.”
Though Faust continued to grumble about savages and superstitions, the group as a whole could find no flaw in the civilar’s plan. Havok unfurled his spell parchment, and in an instant Grubber watched his friends transformed to mist and be whisked away in a gust of wind. Silently, he asked Grumbar to forgive them, and watch over them.
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The gaping maw of the Wormcrawl Fissure was actually a chasm, stretching for miles in either direction, and descending into the depths of Skull Gorge. Still constrained by Grubber’s refusal to fly, and not knowing where exactly they where headed, or what they might find, the League members decided to travel on foot, or at least on elephant foot. Hawk summoned Big Alice from her extradimensional jungle home, and he, Giovanni and Grubber sat astride her, while Faust and Storm strolled briskly beside them, and Mak soared a few yards above, exulting in his new-found ability.
Hours passed as they descended endlessly along the steep, downward slope into the mists of the Wormcrawl depths. In time, even the nature of the ground and rock walls seemed to change, with the latter becoming encrusted with strange fungus, while the former began to feel spongy to the touch. Periodically, the group encountered strange effigies in the form of skeletons tied to wooden frames and wrapped with fake worms made of leather or wood. Giovanni recognized these as primitive warning symbols, encouraging those unfortunate enough to travel these depths to turn back.
After what seemed like an eternity of walking, the party reached what appeared to be a brackish lake. Its shore stretched away north and south beyond vision, and its far eastern shore could not be seen either. Faust volunteered to scout the way ahead, transforming his body into the substance of shadows, and literally running across the surface of the placid water. The far shore proved to be only a mile distant, and Storm was able to teleport those unable (or unwilling) to fly to the other side, including Alice. At that point, Giovanni suggested the group turn south. He argued that they were out in the open, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. If they could find one of the chasm walls, they could follow it and keep their bearings better. The others simply shrugged, and changed course. By the time they actually reached a wall, they had been traveling for over eight hours, forcing themselves to go on past the point of exhaustion in the hopes they would reach some…any…destination.
They followed the wall east, but in time, it began to curve away to the south again. Though Giovanni recommended continuing to follow its course, his companions were weary and irritable, and decided to proceed on due east. It was approximately an hour later when Grubber’s mind was invaded. A sudden rush of images swirled through his psyche. The first was of a mist-shrouded gorge, the floor a maze of rifts and pits in which immense vermin squirmed. The next image was of a towering worm, its head a tangle of eyes and its pale body shrouded in a haze of writhing filaments. As the immense creature lunged forward to consume the goliath, the vision faded, only to be replaced by a third. This last was a stately-looking man dressed in an explorer’s outfit, and sporting a distinctive high beard and moustache. Suddenly, his expression became one of abject horror as his flesh rotted away and a storm of green worms consumed him from within. As the final vision passed, Grubber spent a strange compulsion in his mind, almost an urge, compelling him to travel to the northeast. There was something there he had to find.
Reluctantly, the League agreed to follow Grubber on his quest, for they had no other real choice. An hour more they walked before finally reaching the entrance to a small canyon. Beyond, the ground fell away into a treacherous maze of smaller chasms and rifts. Mist filled the air. Grubber still felt the compulsion, guiding him through the labyrinth like a compass until he and his cohorts stood before the opening of a large cave.
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N’vesh-n’kar was jolted from his meditations by the silent alarm signal which sounded in his head. Someone or something had just crossed the threshold to his lair…and without his permission! Who would dare? Even the minions of Dragotha feared to disturb the Apostle without his leave, and the mindless creatures that wandered the Earthcancer gorge had long ago learned to stay away from the caves. It would seem that another lesson would have to be taught this day. He called out with his thoughts to his thralls, and he could feel their hunger and their eagerness as they began swarming towards his uninvited guests.20
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“Watch out!” Mak warned, just as Grubber and Hawk were about to blunder straight into a ravine. Thanks to the spell of True Seeing he had placed upon his eyes, the goliath was able to see through the illusion of a solid floor which covered the gorge. As he peered deeper into the gloom of the cave he saw that the large crack stretched as far as he could see. Periodically along its length, a cave opened on one side or the other.
“Thank you my brother,” Grumbar said. Now that his sibling had pointed out the deception, he found he could just make out the faint outlines of the gulf beneath the mirage.
“I suppose we’ll have to find another way around, since some of us are aerodynamically challenged,” Faust said snidely. “Gather round me. I’ll get us to that near opening.”
“Be careful,” Havok said as he drew near the psion. “I sense danger beyond.”
A moment later the group stood at the entrance to a large, bare cave, the gorge yawning directly behind them. Havok’s instincts proved accurate. Six gargantuan, pale green and white centipedes scuttled sinuously over the floor. Their dark green eyes peered above a nest of long antennae writhing on their faces. Tiny green worms dripped from their mouths and cracks in their chitonous armor, and where the creatures stood or touched the rock walls, the earth had turned gray and boiled into nasty, tumor-like growths of pale fungus. Almost immediately Storm and Faust found their stomachs rebelling against them as they began vomiting uncontrollably at the nauseating sight. Havok, who had been hovering several feet above the cancerous floor, was not similarly afflicted, and when the familiar warning of ‘undead’ filled his head, courtesy of his mail, he leaped into action. Twin walls of noxious green fire, filled with writhing worms, erupted from the floor, engulfing all but one of the giant vermin. The creatures shrieked, but as a unit, they scattered in all directions, some burrowing into the floor, only to appear moments later directly in front of the League members, while others simply scaled the walls to flank the group on both sides.
Hawk lunged towards the nearest bug, interposing himself between it and the still retching Storm. However, even as he struck, the sorceress heaved once more and then drew a deep breath, levitating herself above the bulging floor. As her stomach settled and her head cleared, she drew upon her magic, her hands crackling with electricity. A bolt of energy sprang from her palm to first one centipede, then another and another, until all but one were encompassed by it. The first one she struck collapsed into a smoldering heap. On the heels of this assault came a similar chain of emerald eldritch fire, this time from Havok. Another bug fell, and then two more as the warlock conjured a third wall of perilous flame. The remaining two centipedes closed in, but they were met head-on by the slashing blades of Mak and Hawk. In a matter of seconds the battle was ended.
“What where those things?” Mak asked to no one in particular. “Have any of you encountered their like before?”
Havok shook his head. “They are obviously Kyuss spawn, but not of a kind I have ever seen or read about. I can only wonder at the horrors and abominations that my ancestor has created and is preparing to unleash upon this world.”
On the far side of the gorge from where they stood was another cave opening. The one in which they stood proved to be a literal dead-end, and Havok prepared to transport the group across the chasm. Just as he drew upon his power, alarm bells went off inside his head once more, but not before he had already made the jump between dimensions.
No sooner had they appeared than a wave of magical power washed over Hawk. The civilar felt several of his protective magical wards being stripped from him. Before he could react, a bolt of black energy sizzled from the ceiling of the cave, striking him. Had it not been for the inherent defenses of his armor, Hawk knew that he would have been dead where he stood.
Havok could sense the magical trap immediately, but could not pinpoint its source. His sixth sense screamed at him in warning, and he knew the effect was about to be triggered again. Desperately he clawed one of his most powerful scrolls from his belt, ripping it open and uttering the words before he had time to think of the repercussions. A palpable concussion of force ripped through the air, and an instant later, the sensation of danger quieted.
“Are you crazy??” Faust shouted, for he knew exactly the nature of the spell the warlock had loosed. It was a Disjunction, the same magic Darl Quethos had used against them to devastating effect. If any of them had been caught in its area, it would have been catastrophic.
“I had no choice,” Havok said, a slight tremor in his voice as he thought of what might have happened had his aim been even slightly off. “That death trap would have kept hitting us until we were wholly defenseless. I had to stop it, or else whatever set it would have picked us off easily.” As if on cue, his head throbbed again, warning of danger approaching, this time from around a corner of the cave in which they stood.
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N’vesh-n’kar couldn’t feel emotions such as joy or satisfaction, only cold logic, and his logic told him that his defensive preparations had been effective, and had thus rendered his intruders easier prey. He could hear them approaching, and he rose silently into the air, thousands of rope-like tendrils spreading out from numerous pores in his bloated, pale skin. Below him, his mindkillers moved to greet his guests.
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Faust stepped around the corner and was momentarily rendered speechless at what he saw. An immense cave opened off of the one he stood in, and floating in mid-air there was an ulgurstasta…an Apostle of Kyuss! On the ground below it, and closing fast where a pair of hideous scorpions, each easily twenty feet in length, and jet black. Their chitonous armor was a tangle of cruel, hooked spikes and cracks that leaked ichor. They had three tails instead of one, and the tips of each tail sported several long, green, crystalline stingers and plates, looking like some sort of dangerous fanged flower. With the speed of thought, the psion unleashed a wave of fiery energy from his mind. It washed over both of the charging scorpions as well as the ulgurstasta, scorching all of their hides with deep burns.
N’vesh-n’kar could not feel rage either, but once more his logic told him that these were dangerous foes that he faced. As such, they would have to be dealt with quickly and decisively. The ulgurstasta had spent centuries studying the mysteries of the arcane, and he now drew upon that knowledge to smite his enemies. Around the members of the League the air went suddenly dry and stale, as if every bit of moisture had been suddenly sucked out of it. Then they felt the sweat on their skin begin to evaporate, and next the saliva in their mouth. Only Faust and Storm were unaffected by the wilting magic, the psion by virtue of a reflective ward he had woven about him, and the drow by her race’s innate resistance to magic in general. The others were not so lucky, and when the magic passed, they felt themselves physically drained, and parched as a desert.
At that moment, one of the scorpions rushed past Hawk, who stood in the forefront of his comrades, and seized Faust in one of its massive pincers. The psion tried to scream, but all the breath was crushed out of his lungs as the claw began to constrict around his chest. Farther back, Grubber struggled to regain his strength, but he managed to speak a prayer to Grumbar, and a storm of slashing shards erupted around his team mates and the attacking arachnids. At the same time, Mak rushed forward to Faust’s aid, but though the goliath’s blade pierced the armored hide of the scorpion, he suddenly felt his mind reel under a barrage of horrifying images as the crystal’s on its tail pulsed with dark enregy. He staggered back, clutching at his throbbing head.
Havok could see the ulgurstasta preparing to loose another spell upon them as its minions distracted his friends. The warlock’s tactic was almost becoming second nature. Time slowed as he pulled and read another scroll. Working calmly and unhurriedly, he prepared the undead behemoth’s demise. First he wreathed it in a net of silence, negating its ability to speak the words necessary for its magic. Next came solid fog, keeping it immobile within the absence of sound. Finally, a pair of flame walls, intersecting each other at right angles right in the midst of the fog bank. When time resumed, N’vesh-n’kar was roasted before he could even register what had transpired. His corpse floated slowly out of the cloud and to the ground below.
An arc of lightning sprang between the two scorpions, courtesy of Storm. Though Faust was trapped and incapable of movement or speech, his mind still worked just fine. A second blast of mental fire swept over his captor, and he was dropped in a heap as the beast died. Its cohort was only a moment behind in joining it in the afterlife as Hawk’s blade split its head in two.
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“It’s coming from there,” Grubber said, pointing at one of the large chests they had discovered deeper in the ulgurstasta’s lair. The mental pull that had led the goliath and his friends was now a steady pulse. Giovanni gently released the latch on the chest, and lifted the lid. Inside was only a simple, leather pouch. The warlock glanced curiously at Grubber, who only nodded. Giovanni leaned over and retrieved the purse. Suddenly, he felt a presence in his mind. It did not speak, and the warlock could not even be sure it was capable of doing so. It felt somehow…incomplete. What he did feel from it, however, was a thirst for knowledge. He felt his own vast store of information abruptly…expand, for lack of a better word. He knew things he never recalled studying. It was as if the information had always been there. Then there was something else. A pull at the back of his consciousness, telling him that he must go. He must travel to the south and west. There was something he had to find there. At that moment, the warlock’s eyes fell upon Faust, and he knew what he must do. Summoning all his will, he stretched out his hand to the psion, dropping the pouch into the hands of his friend.
“I think you will know best how to deal with this,” Giovanni said, tacitly acknowledging the élan’s centuries of accumulated lore. Faust smiled as he felt his own mind come in contact with the entity.
“This is going to be fun,” he said.
EPILOGUE
As the company departed Earthcancer Gorge, Storm stopped, and turned to them.
“This is where I leave you, my friends.”
“What??” they said, almost in unison.
“Leaving?” Hawk continued, a look of shock upon his face. “What are you talking about?”
Storm stared off into the middle distance. “I know you cannot sense it, but this place, the Wormcrawl Fissure, it is part of the Underdark. Granted, it is just at the surface, but it still bears the unmistakable taint of Faezress. I came to your world seeking answers, but I have found only more questions. It is time for me to go home. I cannot run from my past any longer. There are matters I have to put to rest once and for all. Perhaps our paths shall cross again. You have been as family to me, and for that you will never know the depths of my gratitude. I have faith in all of you that you will complete this task set before you, and goddess willing, I will be there with you, in spirit if not in flesh. Goodbye.” Before the others could protest, she spoke a few arcane words, and vanished.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
Thanks for the this journal entry!
