Yeah, I think I'm kicking these guys around even more than my old Travels crew.
We're nearing the end of "Zenith Trajectory"...
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Chapter 128
The faint sound of cloth on stone went unheard as the dark shadow hanging from the ceiling above Zenna paced her, the faintest gleam from the daggers it held muted in the edges of the glow cast by Dannel’s shining staff.
A fat drop of green liquid gathered at the end of one of the knives, hung for a second, and then fell to splatter on the floor a half-pace behind Zenna’s booted right foot. Zenna, fixed on the far door like the rest of her companions, was not aware of the faint sound, but Mole, her sharp gnomish senses alert, turned.
“Did you hear...” Her eyes widened as she saw, too late, the dark form that leapt down from above. “Look out!”
Instinct augmented by the magical boost provided by her boots carried her forward, and she collided with Zenna a moment before the dark shadow landed in a catlike stance a foot behind where she’d been standing. The mage fell heavily to the side, an ugly sound of ripping cloth following her as the assassin’s dagger tore through her trailing cloak. The creature, amorphous in a dark, hooded garment that covered its body, snarled and turned its anger upon the gnome. Mole cried out as its knife dug deeply into her shoulder, and she spun about from the force of the blow, trying to regain her balance.
“Mole!” Zenna cried.
The assassin dropped the bloody dagger and drew out another from the row belted at its hip. Zenna could see that the new weapon glistened heavily with poison. Familiar yells indicated that the others had belatedly become aware of the ambush and were turning to attack, but the creature moved fast, too fast...
The power came almost instinctively, the blast of colors from her hand flying into the face of the assassin even as it lunged toward her with the deadly blade. The assassin staggered, only momentarily stunned by the color spray, but even those few seconds were time it suddenly did not have to spare.
Dannel let out an uncharacteristic roar of anger as he swept the iron-shod staff out in a low arc, taking the creature’s legs out from under it and knocking it roughly to the floor. Zenna crawled backward away from it as Arun and Hodge joined in the battle. Even prone and dazed, and by all appearances helpless, the creature seemed unnaturally quick, squirming out of the descending path of Arun’s hammer a split second before the weapon hit the floor with a heavy crash. But it could not avoid Hodge, who was coming around from the other side.
“All right Betsy, time for payback!” the dwarf yelled, striking the creature with a heavy blow to the side. Its robe tore open, revealing a layer of dark hide armor and the sickly mottled green flesh of a kuo-toa.
“’Nother goggler!” Hodge reported, raising his axe for another blow.
But the creature, even bleeding from the deep gash in its side, was quick to recover. In a sudden flurry of movement, it twisted back up to its feet. The others continued to strike at it, Dannel cracking one end of his staff into its shoulder, while Arun laid a more precise blow into its torso. The impact from the latter drove it roughly backward, but it managed to keep its footing, and used the opportunity to spin and dart for the still-open door behind them.
Only its first step carried it into Mole, who’d slipped around behind it.
The gnome held her ground with determination, and as the kuo-toa collided with her, both went down in a tangle of legs and blades. The assassin quickly slipped free, bringing one foot up with a snap into Mole’s face that knocked her roughly onto her back. Then it was up again, heading for the door and escape. Dannel nearly caught it before it could get up, but the blow from his staff narrowly missed it.
As it reached the door, however, a blast of fire from Zenna’s hand caught it squarely in the back. The searing ray drew a line of flames from the small of its back up to the base of its skull, ripping through robe, armor, and the flesh beneath. The kuo-toa tumbled forward, screaming. It tried to get up one last time, but this time the heavy iron-shot end of the staff came down once more on its spine, ending its struggles for good.
Dannel dragged it back into the room, and pushed the heavy door shut, while the others gathered around it. “Mole, are you all right?” Zenna asked.
The gnome looked pale. “There was poison on that blade, but I think I’ll survive. Gnomes are tougher than we look.” She shifted her arm to better get at the gash, and apply a bandage. “Ow, ow, ow,” she said, as Zenna knelt beside her to help clean and treat the wound.
“I’ll be able to help you more tomorrow,” Zenna promised, casting another minor healing osiron upon her friend to help staunch the bleeding.
“’Ow’d he get up there?” Hodge said, looking up at the ceiling.
“Magic, I’d guess,” Dannel said, examining the corpse. In addition to the poisoned daggers, which he gave a wide berth, he saw that the creature was wearing simple cloth slippers over its scaly feet—not a common sort of footgear in a place like this.
“If I’m not mistaken, I believe we’ll find that these are slippers of spider climbing,” he told them.
“A useful spell,” Zenna said. “I wasn’t aware that it was commonly placed into an item, but it makes sense.” She shuddered, thinking of what would have happened if Mole hadn’t come to her aid.
Mole had seemingly recovered some with the news of the magical slippers, her eyes gleaming as she no doubt considered the many possibilities offered by such an item.
“Dibs?” she said, looking up at Dannel.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to wear them over your magical boots, Mole,” the elf said.
“Oh, yeah,” Mole said, her face falling precipitously. The elf shot the others a covert grin over the gnome, as she clearly battled the conflicting desires in her mind. “Well, I guess you’d better take them, then.”
“They wouldn’t long survive the treatment I’ve been giving my boots in this place,” the elf said, placing the magical slippers in his pouch.
“If you’re quite finished, there’s still a mission awaiting our attention,” Arun said, turning back to the door.
As they set out again, Dannel turned to Zenna. “Have your skills grown more potent? I thought you could only cast the scorching ray once per day.”
“In anticipation of the battle with the dragon, I memorized another in place of my invisibility spell,” the tiefling explained. “I hope I don’t regret having used it.”
“Given... your current state... you’d better keep back.”
“I don’t think anywhere’s safe in this place,” she said, with a meaningful look back at the doorway where the body of the slain assassin lay.
They reached the double doors, and after another scan for traps by Mole, the dwarves pushed the heavy portals open. As they slid slowly apart, a knife of light from Dannel’s staff shone into the room beyond, widening until a long wedge of illumination formed through which they could make out the details of another chamber.
What greeted them was a sight out of a nightmare.
The room was spacious, easily thirty feet across and maybe twice that in depth. A twin row of pillars buttressed the ceiling, forming a corridor down the center of the room. Dangling from the ceiling between those pillars were several ranks of corpses secured to the ceiling by their ankles. The desiccated bodies were of various races, but all had had the tops of their heads sheared off, revealing gaping black holes in the interior of their skulls. Worst of all, the bodies seemed to shift slightly, as if there were some invisible breeze through the place, and a faint moan seemed to come from their ranks, as if the dead were whispering amongst themselves at the coming of the newcomers.
The central aisle culminated in a mighty throne, fashioned from what looked like stretched pelts, but which, given the disfigurement of the dangling corpses, might have been something far worse. The throne of scalps was flanked by a pair of standards, each bearing the image of an axe-bearing dwarf standing upside-down.
Seated in the throne was a dwarf, clad in full plate armor, and a helm that hung low over his eyes. A massive dwarvish waraxe sat close to his right hand, propped up against the throne, and in his left hand he clutched a small glass globe, in which a faint silvery light bounced. The dwarf did not stir at their entry, and only the slight shifting of his chest gave clue that he lived at all.
The companions had found Zenith Splintershield.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
