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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 1113068" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 37Light spilled out over them, as the door swung open. The southern end of the Malachite Fortress was a single huge chamber, easily sixty feet across.  Four thick stone pillars supported the ceiling a good twenty feet above.  From their summits dangled four iron cages, each containing a captive fire beetle that shed a steady red glow that left deep shadows in numerous places about the edges of the room.  To their left, tall double doors likely connected with the rest of the fortress, in the direction of the rooms they’d explored earlier, while on the opposite wall another, single door provided an additional exit.  The southern end of the room, to their right, formed a platform raised five feet above the floor of the rest of the chamber, accessed by a broad stone staircase in the center of the room.  Though they could not see the entire span of the platform from the entry, as they entered they could hear laughter coming from that direction, a deep, throaty sound that somehow seemed cold and menacing.  That laugh was followed by a voice that made the laugh seem friendly by comparison.  “Ah, you drive a hard bargain, Pyllrak!  But as always, it’s a pleasure doing business with you, in the end.”Arun moved quickly forward, forcing Zenna to hurry to keep up.  The double doors to their left were guarded by a pair of armored hobgoblin sentries who quickly turned toward them and raised their javelins warily.   Once they saw that the newcomers were friends, not foes, they turned their attention back to the events transpiring at the summit of the stone steps.  Arun barely paid them any heed, striding forward with the others close behind.  As Zenna hurried along behind, Endercott pushed roughly past her, his javelin already up in a threatening posture, if not ready to cast.  She couldn’t see the half-elves, of course, but she hoped that they were adjusting with her, moving ahead into the room.  No plan survives contact with the enemy, she thought grimly, remembering something that Mole’s uncle had told her once before, during one of his tales of the adventures he and his companions had had in their travels across the western regions of Faerûn.  She glanced to her left, and saw that the two guards guarding the door had grown suspicious, although they had not yet moved from their vantage.  Arun stopped at the foot of the stairs, and as Zenna came up behind him she got her first good look at Kazmojen’s slave bazaar.The stairs culminated in a flat open space between two of the thick malachite pillars.  A short distance beyond, near the far wall, a shorter pillar of black stone was driven into the ground.  Attached to that pillar by heavy iron manacles were three wretched clumps that had to be the missing children.  Standing between them and the captives, however, at the top of the stairs, stood a squat, muscled monstrosity clad in black plate armor that could only be the half-dwarf Kazmojen.  In one hand he held a dwarven urgrosh, that bastard combination of axe and spear, and in the other, he held a short length of chain that was secured to a neck-manacle holding the fourth child-slave, a young boy.  The slaver was speaking with another dwarf, or at least part-dwarf, a man with skin the color of old ashes, clad in a simple robe with a fiery red beard that jutted from his face like a bed of needlethorns.  To Zenna’s eyes, there was something just... wrong with him, and suddenly she felt very cold inside as she realized that what she recognized was the same corruption that existed within herself.  The bearded man, Pyllrak, clutched a small white coffer and smiled as Kazmojen yanked the chain and held the struggling boy up for examination.  Her eyes wide in horror, Zenna’s attention was drawn to the side by a deep growl.  There, slinking out of the shadows behind one of the pillars a few paces behind Kazmojen, appeared a terror beyond even that presented by the warped appearance of the evil dwarves.  It had the look of a great hound, at first, but only for the first moment’s glance.  Then one could make out the snarling, skeletal face, with bulging jaws and fiery red pinpricks for eyes.  And instead of fur, long, wickedly barbed quills covered its body like a porcupine, shaking violently with every movement of the creature.    The creature’s growls had alerted Kazmojen to their presence, and he released the chain, dropping the boy to the ground with a metallic clatter.  “What is the meaning of this interruption?” he asked.  They couldn’t see his face, covered by the visor of his helm and lost in shadows, but the impatience was clear in his tone.   “We’ve come for those children, slaver,” Arun growled, hefting his hammer. “You’re too late,” Kazmojen replied.  “These are no longer for sale.”  He nodded to the fiery-bearded dwarf, who glared at them through narrowed eyes that gleamed with a sickly yellow light. Zenna glanced over her shoulder, and saw that one of the hobgoblins had opened the double doors, and two other guards were coming through to join the two already here.  She bit her lip, sensing that this was about to turn ugly real fast.  “Enough chatter!”  Endercott cried.  “Die, bastard!” The mercenary hefted and hurled his javelin at Kazmojen in a sudden motion.  The cast was true, but the dwarf almost casually lifted his urgrosh, deflecting the missile with the heavy axe-blade that tipped one end of the ungainly weapon.“Attack!” Zenna cried, knowing that the advantage of surprise was already lost.  She spun and fired her crossbow at the hobgoblins, but her shot missed wide and harmlessly shattered against the stone wall of the chamber.  A moment later, though, one staggered and crumpled, clutching at the feathered end of a bolt jutting from its side.   Mole, hiding in the shadows by the nearby pillar, had added her voice to the fray. The howler let out an unholy screech and bounded forward toward the stairs, but before it could charge a long javelin appeared out of thin air and caught it hard in the joint where its head met its shoulder.  Fario materialized at the base of the stairs even as the abyssal creature cried out in pain, caught off guard by the half-elf’s sneak attack.  Even as Fario’s missile struck an arrow shot out from a few paces distant toward Kazmojen, but was deflected by the slaver’s heavy armor of layered steel.  Fellian appeared behind his companion, cursing as he reached for another arrow. Arun let out a bellowing cry, and hurled one of his light hammers up the stairs at the same moment that the slaver hefted his urgrosh and roared a challenge.  The howler bit down on the javelin and tore it from the bloody wound in its neck, while the hobgoblin guards on the far side of the room hefted their own javelins or drew their swords.  The companions reached for weapons or reloaded their bows.  A raging battle was poised to explode.  Then the air above the stairs shimmered, and everything changed.</blockquote>

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