Horrors of the Dancing Gods

earthquakes and other similar phenomena.'

'You sure you're going in the right direction?' Irving asked him nervously. 'It's getting pretty dark.'

'I'm an Imir. Being in trouble in my natural forest element would be as unthinkable as it would be for, say, a wood nymph. Ah! See?'

It emerged right out of the ground, surrounded and even overgrown by the trees, but it was a large and very round-looking cave.

'Lava tube,' Poquah explained. 'There do appear to have been some limited eruptions in here, after all. Perhaps we can use that somehow.'

Irving looked at it nervously. 'You mean lava comes out of that thing? Forget it! No way I'm goin' in there!'

'It doesn't tend to happen twice. This was formed in the process; it's not a cannon. It appears perfect for us, and convenient. All of us can fit in there, it's not easy to spot, and there aren't a lot of nasty other things living in it.'

'I think I'd rather stay outside than be in there,' Larae commented, and Irving nodded.

'No telling what is in those trees after dark; you'd have no warning and no chance if something dropped on you,' Poquah pointed out. 'This might not be as comfortable, but there's rock and dirt all around you. There is no time when you need more protection than now, when we don't know what is here. Later, when we see what we are dealing with, we can adjust.'

Marge looked at it. 'No way I am crawling in there,' she told him, then chuckled. 'I don't think you'd want me in such close quarters. Let me see what I can see.'

'No! Not yet!' Poquah snapped. 'You more than anyone are vulnerable to them, since they are such raw emotion. I cannot afford to have you, engulfed by their power and go over to their side while you know all that we know!'

'You can't afford…! You can't stop me from doing anything I want to do. None of you can. It's already dark, and you're gonna have to set up by braille as it is, since even faerie sight isn't all that much use in that lava tube. I can see very well. You are all ground huggers. I can fly. You might not approve of my personality change, although I'm getting to like it more and more, but I know which side I'm on. You better watch that iron they're packing when you're all stuffed in there, Poquah. You're in more immediate danger from them than from whatever's out there.'

There was no reply for a while as Poquah's legendary control was tested to the hilt, but as he was about to say something, there came the sound of huge crowds and rhythmic chanting that seemed to emanate from farther inside the valley. The friction within their company was forgotten for the moment.

'That's from that structure they have been building,' Poquah said. 'It sounds like thousands of voices all gathered in some ritual.'

'I'm getting mighty curious about that structure,' Marge told them. 'I think I'm going to have a look at it from the air, from a spot where elevation will prevent me from having to get too close. Set up your camp. I'll be back!' And with that, she lifted off into the air and was soon lost beyond the treetops.

Irving gave a low whistle. 'She's sure changed. Cold and sexy at the same time, but dangerous-type sexy. The only thing I can see of the old Marge is the Texas accent.' Poquah thought a moment. 'I am inclined to move, since who knows what will happen if she's captured, but she is correct. We'd have to work our way through this in total darkness, and for all its sense of ancient power, it is not a true faerie wood.' He sighed. 'I warned Master Ruddygore that this would happen, but he dismissed it. Now we shall all have to hope that it works out.'

'What did she mean, none of us could stop her from doing anything?' Irving asked him, an odd thought occurring to him at that moment.

'No matter what we were originally or behaviorally, we are all sexually male,' the hair noted. 'With great concentration, skill, and magical protections, we may well be able to stave off the power of a Succubus and not succumb to her, but we could never hope to reverse it. We can defend but not attack. It would take a true woman to do that — beg your pardon, Larae, but you know that does not include you — and even then, she is not defenseless. The primary difference between a Kauri and a Succubus is that one cleans up small messes while the other is an out-and-out predator.'

'That's kinda what I thought she meant,' the boy replied. But he couldn't help wondering about that curse, that on-again, off-again curse that he had been assured by a true demon, minor or not, would work on all females who could and did cohabit with human males. That certainly would include a Succubus, a far more minor and elemental being under Hell's domain. If she could not resist him and he could not resist her, what would happen if they went head to head? He couldn't help but wonder — and hope that he didn't have to find out.

Marge broke above the treetops with effortless ease and looked around at the spectacular setting they had not been able to see on arrival. The menacing presence of Mount Doom loomed over all else, tall enough that it seemed to make its own weather at the top, including dense clouds that interacted with the hot steam and lava in the caldera to produce local thunder and lightning storms around the top of the mammoth structure.

It was in slow eruption from a flank volcano, but the lava stream was headed away from the valley and toward the ocean of the south coast not too far beyond. This valley was more on the inland side, which seemed at the moment to have least volcanic activity.

It did, however, have activity of a different kind. Over alone the far side of the valley the forest had been cleared away, and a well-built road cut into the heart of the forest, ending at that central structure.

It was a large rectangular affair, well lit by huge limelight arrays that bathed the central area as if it were daylight Startled, she realized that the two structures on either side were bench-type seats filled with living creatures and that they were moving in unison, one side and the other, but to different chants and in different rhythms, and that that was where the sounds were coming from.

If she didn't know better, she thought, frowning, she'd swear… No, that was ridiculous! She had to know more, and that meant getting close enough to see just what was actually going on down there. The skies were not safe or unguarded; large creatures with bat wings and lizard faces rode night gaunts around and around in lazy patterns, but they were few, far between, and regular, easy to avoid. They were looking for bigger game and more dangerous menaces than she would appear to them in any event, but they seemed pretty calm and almost bored. Clearly they did not expect anything there, not so close to their heart.

Slowly, cautiously, she approached; as she did, the chants from the two sides of the structure came to her in waves, and she was able to some extent to separate them.

'Id! Cthulhu! Block that kick!'

'Yd! Ed! Yog Sothoth! Hold that line!'

As Marge watched openmouthed, she saw denizens—creatures—lining up on one side of the field clearly defending a goal before an opposing line of even more loathsome things. They quivered, they gibbered, they dripped, and they slimed, but they moved forward against each other for the prize, a prize that was terrified and very much bloodied but alive.

One team seemed very much at a disadvantage; its creatures seemed to have oozed out of the sea and were very much off balance on land, lacking the coordination to battle the other side, whose own monstrosities appeared to be far more comfortable on land and in the immediate air. Just as defeat was staring them in the face, however, there was what could only have been a time-out, and when play resumed, the land-bound side was suddenly faced with a massive, countless horde of goatlike things chomping and slobbering their way forward almost in a wall.

'Shub Niggurah! Shub Niggurah!' the Cthulhu crowd chanted, apparently delighted at the appearance of an ally.

Marge turned away and decided to check out the rest of the valley while the creatures were preoccupied. How she was ever going to get the others to believe this, though, was something she didn't even want to think about.