Not hesitating a heartbeat, the goliath leaped forward and split one from fangs to tail. His engraved sword hissed as it burned the lizardman's flesh away like boiling water through sugar. The steel itself bled greenish acid. The hapless creature's companions gave startled squeals. They drew obsidian weapons.
The goliath's rush overturned the dry rotted table at which they had been playing, which promptly shattered on the stone floor. Gargan kicked the remains aside and carved another lizard in two, but the distraction gave the third time to hurl a cracked stool in his face. As Gargan reeled, the fourth hissed a war cry and lunged forward with a scimitar.
Then smoking blood spattered Gargan's face as Davoren's ruby blast blew a lizardman's head into a black and red abyss. The creature flopped headless to the floor with a disconsolate plop, and the flame arced from it to burn a hole through the stool-hurler. Both twitched, smoking.
As Gargan, Liet, and Slip fanned out to search for more of the creatures, the warlock stifled a yawn with one hand. 'That was interesting,' he said to Twilight. 'And you say you are afraid of an ambush?'
Twilight glared at him but said nothing.
The room was ten paces on a side, filled with the crumbling remains of furniture and decorated with filth. Arcane sigils in much worn and faded paint adorned the walls, though they were all defaced and defiled. It had likely been a casting chamber. The room was just as old and as strange of architecture as the corridor and first chamber, but smelled much fouler.
Twilight was glad the lizards had not bypassed the wards to enter the previous chamber-the smell had been contained.
No other fiendish lizards were found in the chamber, nor could they see any of the creatures down the next corridor.
'Must have left the main group,' said Davoren, 'for some rest and diversion.' He grinned. 'The rest theirs, the diversion ours.'
'Scouts, testing us,' said Twilight. 'We should still go back.'
The warlock groaned.
The door, however, ended that debate for them. With a scrape of stone on stone, the heavy portal swung back into place, despite their best efforts to restrain it. In place, it looked no different from the rest of the wall, and it had the appropriate lack of door handles, clasps, hooks, pulleys, and opening catches.
'I suppose you're all pleased,' said Twilight. 'I don't even know how to begin opening it. Probably a command phrase.' A mechanical thunk and rasp from the other side struck her ears. 'And that would be the locks sliding into place.' She folded her arms and looked away.
'All's well,' said Liet. He put a reassuring hand on Twilight's shoulder-an act no one but the oblivious halfling missed-and smiled gently. 'Be not afraid.'
'Only of those things that warrant it,' Twilight snapped. She shook Liet off roughly, hoping it would be an action none of the others would miss.
Slip, alert halfling that she was, remained completely oblivious. 'I know what'll lighten this up,' she said. 'Let's figure out the mystery!'
'Mystery?' Liet asked, turning from Twilight, who signaled that they might as well explore these rooms in greater detail.
'Of where we are, silly,' the halfling explained. 'Where lies this dungeon?'
'Please,' Davoren said with a dismissive wave. 'It's hardly a dungeon. Deserted ruins, more like it.' He gestured at the sloping, twisting, curving walls. 'The deserted ruins of some mad child's doll house.'
The image of a blood-soaked doll flashed through Twilight's mind.
'Speak louder, and we shall see how deserted it is,' promised Taslin.
'Can we not move on?' asked Twilight, tapping her foot nervously.
'Praise be to the Lord of the Hells,' said Davoren. 'The filliken offers a glorious suggestion.' He grinned at Taslin. 'We should listen, scarred one.'
'I am curious as to Slip's thoughts,' said Taslin. 'Say on, noble small one.'
It took Slip a moment to realize the priestess was addressing her. 'Well,' said Slip. 'I'm trying to figure out…'
Ignored by the others, Twilight pressed ahead, examining the darkened corridor. An exceptionally stout portal had once closed off the casting chamber from the hallway, exactly opposite the hall of prisoners, but it had since fallen into rubble. Probably aided, Twilight thought as she glided carefully through the darkness, by the fiendish lizards.
She deemed traps unlikely, since the lizards had gotten through unscathed, but there was no such thing as being too careful. She sensed multiple auras of magic, so she crept onward slowly, searching. At the other end, having walked the hall untouched, she waved the others forward.
'We stepped through a portal near Longsaddle,' Taslin was saying. 'And it did not lead where we thought it would.'
'Ah,' said Slip. 'Same with my band. Though not Longsaddle, but Dambrath.'
'Band?' Taslin asked.
'Aye! Four, originally. Me, a blue-haired girl, a thick dwarf, and Liet, of course.'
The youth squinted. 'I'm sorry? What-?'
Even as he chuckled, Davoren narrowed his fiendish eyes in confusion.
Slip blinked. 'Oh,' she said finally. 'I must be taking you for someone else.'
Twilight did not flinch. 'We should be silent,' she said. 'An ambush may await.'
'Oh, Belial's pisspot,' growled Davoren. 'An ambush like that of the lizards, perhaps? Some leader you are, always overestimating the danger.'
The shadowdancer narrowed her eyes but made no reply. She crossed into the next chamber, casting about for some foe, but she found nothing there to distract her.
The room in which they stood might once have been a monster's fighting arena, with stone floors that sloped gradually down to a pit at the center. The remains of sigils drawn in crimson paint around the pit indicated a ward of some kind, perhaps a summoning circle.
Four statues of rusted, broken armor stood at the corners of the room, two shattered beyond the faintest possibility of repair, and the others propped against the wall like inebriated knights set there by obedient squires and left to rust by those less loyal. Six doors led from this chamber.
'What do you suppose-?' Liet started.
In retrospect, Twilight should have seen it coming.
'Whee!' Slip exclaimed, sliding down the slope to the bottom of the shallow pit. She bounced and landed face down with a great 'oof!' and moved no more.
'Are you well?' shouted Liet.
'Oh aye!' Slip called back. 'My face broke my fall!'
'Pity,' Davoren murmured.
He might have said more, but there was a sudden creak of metal too long left to mold and dust. The two statues that still resembled upright people shuddered into motion.
Too late, Twilight understood the significance of the statues. Too late, she realized what would trigger their purpose: a creature at the center of the circle when the runes of protection were not operating. Wizards sometimes kept guardians for just such an occasion, particularly when they summoned creatures strongly resistant to magic.
'Slip!' she shouted. 'Run! The-!'
That was as far as she got before the first of the helmed horrors drew its rusty blade and lunged at her. The weapon burst into flames as the creature charged.
Everything seemed to happen at once, in that moment. Twilight rolled away from the one that swung at her, only to see Liet stumble into its path and be dashed to the ground. Gargan leaped upon one of the horrors as it loomed over Davoren and Taslin, his acid-coated sword smashing it. Slip blinked, transfixed by the statues' sudden movements, and screamed.
That doesn't help, thought Twilight as she dived between a pair of armored legs. With an upturned wrist and a dip, she thrust her rapier up through the monstrosity's breastplate, an angled strike that would have unmanned, disemboweled, and slain a living man, but had no such effect on the creature. Her sword did stab into the horror's
