pushed crystals out in front of them in swirling arrays, into tunnels of beautiful colors, where strange lichen glowed eerie colors. Into the Underdark.
Long after their lamp oils had been exhausted, long after their torches had burned away, Crommower Pwent got his fight.
It started when the myriad of color patterns revealed by heat— sensing dwarven infravision blurred to gray and then disappeared altogether in a cloud of inky blackness.
'Me king!' Crommower called out wildly. 'I've lost me sight!'
'As have I!' Gandalug assured the smelly battlerager, and, predictably, he heard the roar and the shuffle of anxious feet as Crommower sped off, looking for an enemy to skewer.
Gandalug ran in the noise of the battlerager's wake. He had seen enough magic to understand that some wizard or cleric had dropped a globe of darkness over them, and that, the old graybeard knew, was probably only the beginning of a more direct assault.
Crommower's grunts and crashes allowed Gandalug to get out of the darkened area with relatively few bruises. He caught a quick look at his adversary before yet another globe dropped over him.
'Drow, Crommower!' Gandalug cried, terror in his voice, for even back then, the reputation of the merciless dark elves sent shivers along the backbones of the hardiest surface dwellers.
'I seen 'em,' came Crommower's surprisingly easy reply. 'We oughtta kill about fifty o' the skinny things, lay 'em flat out with their hands above their heads, and use 'em for window blinds once they're stiffened!'
The sight of drow and the use of magic told Gandalug that he and the battlerager were in tight straits, but he laughed anyway, gaining confidence and strength from his friend's confident manner.
They came bouncing out of the second globe, and a third went over them, this one accompanied by the subtle clicking sound of hand-held crossbows firing.
'Will ye stop doing that?' Crommower complained to the mysterious enemies. 'How am I supp-Ow! Why ye dirty sneak-sters! — supposed to skewer ye if I can't see ye?'
When they came out the other side of this globe, into a wider tunnel strewn with tall stalagmite mounds and hanging stalac tites, Gandalug saw Crommower yanking a small dart from the side of his neck.
The two slid to a stop; no darkened globe fell over them and no draw were in sight, though both seasoned warriors understood the many hiding places the stalagmite mounds might offer their enemies.
'Was it poisoned?' Gandalug asked with grave concern, knowing the sinister reputation of drow darts.
Crommower looked at the small quarrel curiously, then put its tip to his lips and sucked hard, furrowing his bushy eyebrows contemplatively and smacking his lips as he studied the taste.
'Yup,' he announced and threw the dart over his shoulder.
'Our enemies are not far,' Gandalug said, glancing all around.
'Bah, they probably runned away,' snickered Crommower. 'Too bad, too. Me helm's getting rusty. Could use a bit o' skinny elf blood to grease it proper. Ow!' The battlerager growled suddenly and grasped at a new dart, this one sticking from his shoulder, following its up-angled line, Gandalug understood the trap-draw elves were not hiding among the stalagmites, but were up above, levitating among the stalactites!
'Separate!' the battlerager cried. He grabbed Gandalug and heaved him away. Normally, dwarves would have stayed together, fought back-to-back, but Gandalug understood and agreed with Crommower's reasoning. More than one friendly dwarf had taken a glove nail or a knee spike when wild Crom mower went into his fighting frenzy.
Several of the dark elves descended swiftly, weapons drawn, and Crommower Pwent, with typical battlerager intensity, went berserk. He hopped all around, slamming elves and stalag mites, skewering one drow in the belly with his helmet spike, then cursing his luck as the dying drow got stuck. Bent over as he was, Crommower took several slashing hits across his back, but he only roared in rage, flexed his considerable muscles and straightened, taking the unfortunate, impaled draw along for the ride.
With Crommower's insanity occupying most of the enemy force, Gandalug did well initially. He faced off against two drow females. The old dwarf was quite taken with how
beautiful these evil creatures were, their features angled, but not sharp, their hair more lustrous than a well-groomed dwarven lady's beard, and their eyes so very intense. That observation didn't slow Gandalug's desire to gash the skin off the drow faces, though, and he whipped his battle-axe back and forth, battering aside shields and blocking weapons alike, forcing the females back.
But then Gandalug grimaced in pain, once, again, and then a third time, as some unseen missiles scorched into his back. Mag ical energy slipped through his fine plate armor and bit at his skin. A moment later, the old graybeard heard Crommower growl in rage and sputter, 'Damn wizard!' He knew then that his friend had been similarly assaulted.
Crommower spotted the magic-thrower from under the dangling legs of the now-dead drow impaled on his helmet. 'I hates wizards,' he grumbled and began punching his way toward the distant drow.
The wizard said something in a language that Crommower could not understand, but he should have caught on when the six dark elves he was fighting suddenly parted ranks, opening a direct line between Crommower and the wizard.
Crommower was not in any rational state, though, consumed as he was by the battle rage, the bloodlust. Thinking to get a clear punch at the wizard, he charged ahead, the dead draw flopping atop his helm. The battlerager took no note of the wizard's chanting, no note of the metal rod the draw held out before him.
Then Crommower was flying, blinded by a sudden flash and hurled backward by the energy of a lightning bolt. He slammed a stalagmite hard and slid down to the seat of his pants.
'I hates wizards,' the dwarf muttered a second time, and he heaved the dead drow off his head, leaped up, and charged again, smoking and fuming.
He dipped his head, put his helmet spike in line, and thrust forward furiously, bouncing off mounds, his armor scraping and squealing. The other dark elves he had been fighting came in at his sides, slashing with fine swords, banging with enchanted maces as the battlerager plowed through the gauntlet, and blood ran freely from several wounds.
Crommower's single cry continued without interruption; if he felt the wounds at all, he did not show it. Rage, focused directly on the draw wizard, consumed him.
The wizard realized then that his warriors would not be able to stop the insane creature. He called on his innate magic, hoping that these outrageous dwarf-things couldn't fly, and began to levitate from the floor.
Gandalug heard the commotion behind him and winced every time it sounded as though Crommower took a hit. But the old graybeard could do little to help his friend. These drow females were surprisingly good fighters, working in perfect concert and parrying all his attacks, even managing to get in a few hits of their own, one slashing with a cruelly edged sword, the other whipping a fiercely glowing mace. Gandalug bled in several places, though none of the wounds was serious.
As the three settled into a dancing rhythm, the mace-wielder stepped back from the fight and began an incantation.
'No, ye don't,' Gandalug whispered, and he drove hard into the sword-wielder, forcing her into a clinch. The slender drow was no physical match for the tough dwarf's sheer strength, and Gandalug heaved her back, to collide with her companion and disrupt the spell.
On came the old graybeard, the First King of Mithril Hall, battering the two with his emblazoned shield, slamming them with the foaming mug standard of the clan he had founded.
Back down the corridor, Crommower turned to the side, virtually ran up a stalagmite, and leaped high, his helmet spike driving into the rising wizard's knee, splintering the kneecap and cutting right out the back of the leg.
The wizard screamed in agony. His levitation was strong enough to hold them both aloft, and in the blur of pain, the frightfully wounded drow couldn't think to release the spell. They hung weirdly in midair, the wizard clutching his leg, his hands weak with pain, and Crommower thrashing from side to side, destroying the leg and punching up with his glove nails. He smiled as he sank them deep into the drow's thighs.
A rain of warm blood descended over the battlerager, feeding his frenzy.
But the other drow were under Crommower, and he was not that high from the ground. He tried to tuck his legs under him as swords slashed his feet. He jerked then, and understood that this would be his final battle, as one drow produced a long lance and stuck it hard into the battlerager's kidney.
