Chapter 333
Arun helped Dannel to his feet, as one of the injured women came forward, taking the children into her arms, sobbing in relief. The girl was crying, now, pointing toward the fissure, repeating the name she’d called out earlier. Beorna was tending to some of the unconscious victims they’d pulled out of the chasm before it had slammed shut, and her face was grim as she glanced back at the ridge formed where the sides of the fissure had buckled together. Hodge clambered forward, pulling at loose debris, but while steam continued to vent up from narrow cracks, the fissure had been well and truly shut by the inexorable movement of the earth beneath them.
“Fool girl,” Hodge cursed, but his voice was thick as he looked for what he knew would not be found.
Then there was a flash of smoke, just a few steps to his left. The dwarf started in surprise as the smoke dissipated to reveal Mole, kneeling bent over, coughing as she fought for a clean breath of air.
Hodge offered Mole his ubiquitous jug, but she shook her head. “I’m not that desperate,” she said, pulling herself, up, cradling her arms close against her chest.
“You just have to make it dramatic, don’t you,” Dannel said, moving around the ridge of the close fissure to join them. His tone was acerbic, but the relief was obvious on his face.
“Did we get everyone?” Arun asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” Mole said, opening her cloak to reveal what she’d been protecting. The little girl let out a shriek as a small form twisted in the gnome’s grasp, yapping; it was a blackened but otherwise hale puppy.
“Meeka!” the girl cried. Mole walked over to her, a wide smile on her face, and offered the child her pet.
“Thank you,” the woman, the child’s mother, said. “Thank you, all of you.”
“The city is being evacuated,” Arun said, his voice pitched to carry through the small crowd that had gathered around the drama of the rescue. “Stay together, move to the closest city gate as quickly as you can. Don’t stop, and don’t go into buildings.”
Beorna helped the last of the injured survivors to his feet. Her healing powers hadn’t fully restored all of them, but they were all ambulatory, and would have a better chance than some of escaping the increasingly deadly city. That fact was made clear a moment later as a sudden plume of white steam rose up from the Lava Avenue, just one street below them now, on the edges of the lake.
“The lake is overflowing its boundaries!” Dannel said.
“Let’s go,” Arun said. The companions gathered their gear, Mole quickly wrapping up the ropes in case they were needed again. The first connecting street was blocked by a collapsed building that had fallen inward across the sloping avenue. No one was evident, although fifty people might have been buried under that rubble as far as they could have known. Rather than essay the unstable barrier, they rushed down to the next block, and turned into a pedestrian walkway that led down a wide stone staircase that ran down between several buildings to the lowest of Cauldron’s four main boulevards.
Lava Avenue was relatively quiet, compared to the rest of the city. There were few residences here, on the edges of the lake; with the danger of flooding most people who could lived higher up along the rim of the caldera. There were a number of businesses and warehouses here, and several docks that had already been inundated by the rising waters. The lake was clearly in turmoil, steam rising from the waters brought to a boil by the release of superheated gasses from deep within the volcano. Angry waves five or more feet high rushed outward from the advancing rim of the lake, splashing out onto the avenue.
“Leave it, get to higher ground, out of the city!” Dannel yelled, yanking a man from where he’d been trying to load a wagon in front of a warehouse nearby. The elf drew his sword and cut the panicked horse at the lead of the wagon free, calming it enough for the man to take its lead reins.
“Greedy fools,” Beorna observed, as the man ran off, horse in tow. “They’d risk their lives for a few gold pieces in swag.”
“The livery stables!” Mole yelled, pointing down the street toward one of the long structures that abutted the lake, home to dozens of domesticated animals. Apparently some people had elected to depart without taking their property, and they could hear the panicked bray of trapped creatures from within the structure even from a hundred paces distant. The back of the stables were normally a good fifteen feet above the waters of the lake, but now the steaming waves were slamming hard against the wooden planks.
“Great, now I’m playin’ hero to a bunch o’ cattle,” Hodge grumbled, but he followed the others as they ran toward the stables. They passed a group of men staggering from the ruin of what had been an inn, several of them bloody and unconscious, helped by the others. Beorna and Arun paused to help them, while Dannel and Mole continued toward the stables.
But before either group could reach their destination, a roar from the lake drew their attention around. The already roiling waters had suddenly erupted in a surge focused maybe fifty yards out, not far from where the lake’s edge was normally situated. A fresh wave pulsed out onto Lava Avenue, forcing Dannel and Mole back to avoid being scaled. Even as they darted out of the way of the boiling water, the source of the disturbance became evident, as a... thing rose up out of the lake, borne up out of the water on a thrashing tangle of limbs. It had a vaguely humanoid look to it, not much larger than an adult human, although its alien features were more those of a fish than those of a man. Even from this distance they could see the markings of an unholy bloodline about it, and from the waist down its body terminated not in legs and feet, but in a number of thick tentacles that now slapped the water as it lifted its body up out above the waves, transforming the surface of the lake around it into a sea of steaming froth.
“Now what in the blasted blooming hells is THAT?” Hodge yelled, already fumbling with his heavy bow.
The creature let out a terrible roar from its inhuman jaws, a sound of blind rage and searing pain. It was clearly discomfited by the boiling water, and as its thrashings lifted it above the waves wings unfolded from its back, pounding the water as they furiously lifted the infernal monstrosity into the sky. Despite its terrible appearance, it looked to be intelligent, for as it ascended they could see that it wore gleaming bracers at its wrists, and it carried a slender wand in one hand.
“It has already been injured,” Arun said. “Perhaps it will just fly off, and leave this place.”
“Takin’ bets?” Hodge muttered, sliding a fat bolt into place and hefting his weapon.
And indeed, the creature, once it was clear from the lake and more or less stable in the air, rose above them over the flooded avenue. It looked down at them with a gaze that seethed with malevolence, and it sundered the air with a cry of pure hate.
“Begone from here, fiend!” Arun said, drawing his holy sword, letting its light shine out like a beacon as he lifted it above his head.
In response, the creature spoke a word of pure corruption, and in response the air around it rippled and seethed. For a moment the boundaries between realities were sundered, and through that opening a pair of filthy, scabarous vulture-things entered the world.
“Vrock demons,” Beorna said. She lifted her palm, and calling upon the power of Helm, extended a ray of searing light from her to the fish-man fiend.
The beam struck the creature, but instead of burning it, there was a flash and the energy blast returned back on its course, slamming into its caster’s chest. “Ah!” Beorna cried, as the holy power of her own patron stabbed a fist of pain through her body.
“Let’s see if it can reflect one o’ these!” Hodge said, lifting his bow to his shoulder. But even as he drew the trigger of his weapon, the fiend pointed at the trio of dwarves, and a wave of pain swept through each of them. The potent energies of a horrid wilting spell tore through their bodies mercilessly.
