Shrring!
Weapons slide free of their scabbards. The beginning syllables of fantastically powerful dweomers spring to the lips of the spellcasters. Psychic energies begin to crackle around Sybele.
Glaisig studies the party silently for an instant. He is tall, ominous, a figure in service to Lucifer, Asmodeus’ predecessor- and sucessor.
“What do you want, devil?” Alcar demands threateningly, stepping towards him, mace held high.
“Peace,” Glaisig says soothingly,holding up his hands. “I mean you no harm. I come to help you.”
“I doubt that very much,” comments Chakar.
“This guy’s a devil?” asks JJ.
“One of the worst,” snarls Alcar. “We do not need your help, devil!” the angel thunders.
“Wait a minute,” protests Graz’zt/Veil. “We are not in a position to turn down any help right now.”
“Aren’t you on the side of Law?” Baron Lillamere asks, after mulling for a moment.
“What kind of help are you offering?” inquires Gerontius. “And what is ze price?”
Glaisig turns to Baron Lillamere. “Yes, of course I- and my Master- are Lawful. But remember: you aided us a great deal is striking down Asmodeus- who was the first Arrow of Law you defeated- and the others were his allies, and bear us no good will whatsoever. They are our enemies as well as yours.”
Our heroes study his face, but it betrays no expression. Even Gerontius cannot read him. There is no time for this, Lillamere realizes. We dare not let the forces of Law catch up to us. We can’t take the time for debate.
“What kind of help,” Lillamere repeats Gerontius’ question, “and what is the price?”
Glaisig answers calmly. “There is no price,” he assures the party. “We are willing to... dispatch our watchdog to aid you. She should prove to be a significant distraction to your foes. You must merely say my name thrice.” Then he smiles. “I understand that you have no time to waste. Do not tarry on my account.”
“The devil guy’s right,” Sybele pipes up.* “There will be Law forces incoming any moment.” There is no time to question the devil; grimly, our heroes move past him. Glaisig fades back into the shadows, his face once again inscrutable. Alcar glares and sneers at him, but Glaisig only nods, very slightly, in return.
Then our heroes are at the hedges, climbing over, and in the courtyard. Are we safe? wonders Gerontius. Or not until we are inside? I wish I understood this place better...
The drawbridge is down, but as they approach, Alcar- flying through the air- holds up a hand. “Wait!” he calls. “The drawbridge is an illusion!”
“I bet that whatever is in the moat is nasty,” Sybele opines. The party flies over the moat (which looks like it is filled with muddy water) without ill effect, and through a doorway that leads onto a white walkway that runs almost in a complete circle about halfway up the wall of a spherical chamber. A hole leads out of the lower half of the chamber.
“Wait a minute,” Alcar says. “Wait a minute. This room is usually full of water in the bottom part of the bowl.”
“Huh?” says Gerontius.
“It’s a giant toilet,” Alcar explains. “You get flushed down it.”
“That’s right,” Sybele exclaims. “I remember that!”
Chakar, very conscious of Pan Lo’s presence, winces.
“Well,” says Thrush, demonstrating his practical side, “we might as well get on with it.”
“Just be careful. Something weird is going on here.” Alcar is clearly concerned.
Our heroes descend and move through the tunnel. It twists upward in an S-shaped curve; near the top, a yucky smell warns our heroes that they are moving into an area full of feces. Indeed, the room is huge; most of them have seen it before. A great worm of feces traditionally awaits intruders, but this time the worm is dead, torn to bits.
“I don’t like it,” declares Alcar, “we usually have to fight that thing.”
“And you don’t like the fact that it’s dead?” Blaze asks dubiously.
“It’s not right. It doesn’t stay dead, or it shouldn’t.” The angel frowns fiercely.
The room bears a thick coating of sh-t over the floor and all the walls. The stink is terrific. One wall has been cleared to a significant extent, exposing a door that would otherwise be hidden by the fecal layer.
“Someone has been here before us,” remarks Chakar.
“Yep,” Sybele agrees. Again, our heroes draw out weapons. They open the door and find themselves at one end of a hallway with three doors out of it.
“I think we should open all three doors at once,” Jibber Junior says immediately.
“Left to live,” retorts Wankerman, reciting an off-spoken maxim of the party. (They nearly always take the leftmost path first.)
“Oh, come on!” urges JJ.
“I think we should just open ze closest one,” suggests Gerontius.
“Those two,” Mabrack rumbles with a gesture, “are equidistant from us.”
With a sigh, Chakar opens the door closest to him. There is a large monster behind it. It stands about 14’ high, and it has one arm that is much larger than the other. Before it can even move, Alcar hits it with a holy blast, maximized because of the incense of meditation that he had used when he prepared his spells. It gives a cry of pain. Lillamere, meanwhile, casts Marius’ double actions and then hits it with a seeker missile spell. It groans again as the baron’s argent savant powers of force explain just how Lillamere feels about big ugly monsters with big arms.
The creature rumbles in pain and attacks, swinging its huge arm at Chakar! The dwarven monk leaps aside, ducks and dodges, suffering a single grazing blow. Then he spins in, landing several punishing kicks and punches in a flurry of blows on the creature.
”Never mess with gnomes!” shouts Wankerman, mindful of the party’s magical disguise, and he spears the creature through the heart. It gasps, wheezes and slumps limply to the ground. Immediately, Chakar closes the door.
“Where exactly are we supposed to go in here?” asks Thrush.
Nobody answers.
After a moment, Lillamere says, “Well, we know we’re safe from Law in here.”
The opposite door contains a room full of food and drink. There is a single large bed, as well.
“Food?” Gerontius looks at it hopefully. “Hey Alcar, can you tell if zis is safe?”
Alcar quickly performs an augury. “I believe that you will be safe,” he says after a few moments. Gerontius happily begins to chow down, and a few others join him after a moment. After all, they should be protected from poisons by the heroes’ feast that they share almost every day.
“What else was in that room behind the monster?” queries Lillamere, as the halfling begins eating a slice of ham on a cracker with some cheese. Hmm, that looks good; Lillamere gets one himself, as he notes that Gerontius is happily snacking and nothing bad has happened to him.
“There might be loot,” Thrush muses. He sniffs at a pitcher, grunts and pours himself some wine.
“It looked like there was some sort of cage in there,” Chakar remarks.
“There’s also that other door, at the end of the hallway,” Blaze reminds the others.
“Let’s take a peek at it, and see what seems interesting,” Lillamere suggests.
Alcar says, “I don’t think that whatever preceeded us went through the big-armed creature. There may be something about it that prevents the guardians monsters from coming back.”
“Or they might just need some time to reset,” Blaze counters.
“Possibly,” concedes Alcar. But he is still worried.
The door at the far end of the hall opens onto a perpendicular hallway, wide and damaged. There are areas where it is clear that great force has been applied to the walls and floor; chunks have been torn out.
“Whoever it was, they came this way,” Alcar murmurs.
“But it’s just a hallway. And besides, we don’t really need any more trouble right now, do we?” Sybele says plaintively.
“Let’s check it out for a little ways,” suggests Alcar. The others agree, and the party advances for a while, eventually finding a side passage with more damage to it. Traveling through it, the group emerges in what appears to be a huge natural cavern mostly filled with an underground lake or sea. Gigantic mushrooms and strange fungi grow along the edge of the water. It soon becomes evident that the water has powerful intoxicating properties (Sybele, of course, is the one to test the succubus’ word on that). Our heroes move across the lake via various forms of flight or wind walking, and then find themselves at an area with a series of colored doors. Though they open two of the doors, both appear to be traps (the blue one allows a huge deluge of water to flow in, and the green one spews a massive wave of green slime). Thus, our heroes retreat from the colored doors and make their way back to the hallway from which they came.
Then they are back to the door that the big-armed guy had been behind. Our heroes prepare for the very real possibilty that they will have to fight him again, but fortunately, he remains dead- for the time being. They find a cage holding a succubus disguised as a helpless woman within it; their perceptiveness is far greater than her ability to disguise herself. To true sight, a polymorph is amateur stuff.
Even so, she pleads to be let free. “I know my way around this place,” she tells them. “I can show you a thing or two. I can give you pleasure...”
“No thanks, and don’t you offer that again!” chides Alcar, shaking his finger at her.
“But maybe a guide...” suggests Blaze.
“A guide to where?” points out Mabrack.
“Well, at least we can rest here.”
“I’m telling you, I can help you,” the succubus cries. “I don’t want to stay in this cage! He-he’s a brute!”
“We’ll think about it,” Lillamere says. “Show us a sign of your good faith. Is it safe to rest in the room across the hall?”
“Y-yes,” she stammers.
“Thanks.” The party files out. Wankerman is the last one out; winking at the caged succubus, he closes the door.
“Should we do it?” wonders Lillamere. “Rest? That gives them a chance to rest, too.”
“Time is not on our side,” says Mabrack. “They have Marius.”
“I kind of thought ze gods were going to ‘elp us,” complains Gerontius.
“Well, they gave us a safe retreat,” remarks Thrush.
Mabrack asks, “Well, what are we going to do with it?”
“That’s a very good question. Maybe there is someone who can help us.” Lillamere looks very thoughtful indeed.
***
It takes a few moments of debate to decide. Then, the party frees the succubus to use as a guide. But again, the question remains: a guide to where?
“Somewhere where we might find somebody helpful,” suggests Lillamere.
“Allies of the gods, you know, those ones that hang out here a lot,” Sybele adds.
“You said you could show us a secret passage,” prods JJ.
“Of course,” the succubus purrs. She leads them back into the well-appointed room. As she promised, the demon shows them a secret- for above the canopy of the bed, in the ceiling, is a concealed passage!
“What is up there?” demands Lillamere.
“Folk that might be helpful to you.”
“Don’t try to play with us,” warns Gerontius. “We killed Asmodeus.”
Our heroes ascend into the passage above.
Next Time: Who might be helpful to our heroes?
*Sybele cannot remember names; an unfortunate (but hilarious) effect of the touch of Chaos upon her.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
