Ratsis’s gaze darted from the cat to Dahlia to Jermander and Alegni’s man and back to the Shifter, who was shaking her head.
“I will expect my payment in full,” she said, and she hustled away into the shadows-and back to her homeworld.
Ratsis glanced around again. Three of his mercenary group lay dead, and the value of Dahlia had therefore increased to him personally. But caught between health and wallet, Ratsis soon enough realized the price he would almost surely pay if he tried to follow the enticing course of his greed.
He sent his remaining spider to intercept the cat, but held no reasonable hope that the arachnid would slow this powerful beast.
He glanced again at Dahlia, wrapped and ready for delivery.
So close.
But not now, Ratsis realized, and he was glad that he, too, had learned the difficult art of shadow- stepping.
“Alegni’s man!” Jermander yelled again, barely dodging a sword thrust that got past his own blade and almost took him in the hip.
“You keep saying that as if you know what it means,” Entreri teased and taunted.
“I know Alegni!”
“You know what he wishes you to know.” Across came the sword, taking Jermander’s blocking weapon aside, and in stepped the small killer with a halfturn and wide slash of his dagger, and then a backhanded stab back across which almost got Jermander in the face as he tried to counter.
“Effron employed me!” Jermander argued, and he tried to keep the panic out of his voice-though unsuccessfully, he realized by the grin on the face of Alegni’s champion.
“Effron employed me as well,” said his opponent, “to kill you.”
Jermander stared at him dumbfounded, but not before wisely backing out of reach.
“He is in love with Dahlia,” Entreri explained and leaped forward, leading with a wild, circular flurry of his long sword which had Jermander flailing all around to keep up.
And the small man tossed his dirk-he didn’t throw it at Jermander, but merely tossed it up before him, close enough for Jermander to snatch it from the air. The shade warrior almost did just that, but realized the diversion for what it was and protected against a sword thrust instead.
He should have protected from something else, though he couldn’t know it, for indeed Entreri came forward with the expected thrust, half-turning once more, but only, Jermander soon realized, so that he could hide the movement of his free hand, down to his belt buckle and suddenly forward.
At first, Jermander thought he had been punched in the chest, and he staggered back a few steps, working his sword defensively. Only when he realized that Entreri wasn’t pursuing, only when he noted the smug look on the small man’s face, did he begin to understand, and he glanced down at his chest to see a small knife buried up to its hilt.
He tried to speak out, but found that he had no air in his lungs.
Jermander fought against the dizziness and breathlessness. Strangely, he felt no pain. He steadied himself and assumed a posture to continue, but as he expanded his focus once more and looked to his opponent, he saw that the man had his dirk in hand once more-had he caught it before it had ever hit the ground? — and now cocked his arm, ready to throw.
Jermander tried to clutch up into a smaller target and readied his sword for a block.
Entreri pumped his arm and the warrior dodged, then dodged again with a second fake.
Each movement brought on more dizziness, waves of disorientation. Jermander told himself that it was time to flee, and he, too, started that shadowshift, to return to the other world, the Shadowfell.
But shadowshifting took concentration, and this time, Entreri didn’t fake.
Jermander felt the profound thud as the dirk plunged in beside the knife. He saw the man stalking in at him as his body went numb, and then a gray mist filled his vision.
For a moment, Jermander thought he was slipping away into the Shadowfell. The sensation and the view seemed much the same.
A blinding flash ended that thought, ended all thought, as a sword creased his skull.
THE GENDER OPPRESSED
Driders are not the quietest of creatures, particularly when a score of them, armed and armored and anxious for battle, scrabble along rocky cavern floors and walls.
Something was afoot, Yerrininae believed. He could feel it, and it was a tangible sensation, not just a gut instinct.
The air was colder-unnaturally colder.
The drider leader drove his charges on, rushing around blind bends in the corridor recklessly. He had sent two scouts up front, and he knew now-he just knew-that the pair were soon to encounter… something.
So focused was the large mutant that he nearly passed through a remarkable juncture in the otherwise unremarkable corridor.
Yerrininae skidded to a stop, his eight legs clacking and scraping on the stone. Behind him, several driders pulled up fast, frantic to avoid a collision with their merciless leader.
“What is it, my commander?” one dared ask, as the others wandered around in confusion.
Yerrininae continued to look to the wall instead of the open corridor ahead. He moved over slowly, almost reverently, and eased his great spear out wide with his left hand, the other reaching tentatively for a peculiar crease in the wall. A smile widened upon his face as the drider ran his fingers along that peculiar groove.
“My commander?” the other drider asked again.
“This is no natural crease in the stone,” Yerrininae explained. “This is a worked juncture-once, long ago, likely a portal… a door of some sort.”
The other drider dared move up, and on Yerrininae’s bidding, lifted his hand to also feel the straight lines of the worked stone. “What does it mean?” he asked.
Yerrininae straightened and looked all around, considering the caverns and corridors they had traversed that day. “It means that this was the outer waypoint.”
“Of?”
Yerrininae looked at the drider and grinned.
A shriek stole the moment, echoing off the stones, bouncing all around them as if a hundred drider warriors were suddenly under great duress. Yerrininae leaped sidelong down the corridor, legs working perfectly to spin him as he landed in full stride, charging along, spear at the ready.
Only a few bends later, they found their scouts, though the driders were only barely visible beneath a mound of flailing semi-translucent ghostly dwarves.
No, not ghostly, but actual spirits, Yerrininae realized, and he commanded his charges forward, into the morass.
The large drider led the way. Yerrininae was never one to view a battle from afar. He crashed into a small horde of the ghosts, his fine drow great spear stabbing and slashing every which way.
But to little effect, for these creatures were only partially bound to the material plane. He could barely hit them, with weapon or with appendage. Similarly, their reciprocating swings did not connect solidly.
When a dozen other ghosts leaped away from one of the unfortunate scouts to charge his direction, though, Yerrininae understood that those seemingly insubstantial attacks could surely combine to great effect, for that drider scout from which they had crawled slumped right to the floor, its face a ghastly mask of missing eyes and torn lips, its head all twisted around as if it had been squeezed between heavy stones. The creature lolled around, propped by the symmetry of its eight legs, but hardly alive.
“Close ranks!” the drider leader demanded.
As the valuable drider warriors fell back, Jearth ordered his shock troops past them and into the enemy.
Goblins, orcs, and bugbears surged forward along the corridor and into the wider cavern beyond, fighting
