of green stalks, knobby trees like heaps of flatcakes that wove from side to side with budding pink flowers up every inch.
How they grew in perfect darkness was beyond Liet.
'What is this place?' Liet asked. He started away from his echoing voice.
'We have arrived,' Davoren said. He held the scepter up and intoned deep, powerful words. A bolt of lightning arced from his hand, high into the air. It struck something like a steel rod and sizzled along it. In half a heartbeat, the bolt exploded out, illuminating the vast cavern in which the four found themselves. The great rod flickered, hissing at intervals like an unhappy dragon.
And occupying that cavern with them was a ruined, overgrown city.
'Negarath,' Davoren said with a glint in his evil eyes.
If they had thought the architecture of the sewers odd, nothing could have prepared them for what lay before them.
Negarath was a city of madness.
Buildings spread wider as they reached upward, almost as though built upside down. All around them, sprouting from the sides of buildings, coming up from the streets, were the strange flowers, some growing large enough to dwarf Gargan. There was not a single perpendicular edge in the place; all was a mixture of curves, waves, and obtuse or acute angles. Windows hung upside down and horizontally, as though the interiors of the buildings did not match the exteriors.
Most of the doors to the varying buildings were of odd shapes-circular, triangular, hexagonal, octagonal- anything but rectangular. Only one building seemed even remotely normal-a central tower that narrowed toward the middle, like a pyramid, but widened again as it rose toward the cavern ceiling. There, the tower hooked and curled, spiraling under itself. It looked as though they could stand atop it.
'The designers of this place must have been madmen,' said Davoren.
'Or geniuses.' The others stared, and Liet laughed nervously. 'Art-heh.'
Gargan shook his head.
Slip beamed. 'Magnificent,' she said.
The others looked at her this time.
'Well, it is,' she asserted with her hands on her hips.
The section of city in which they stood was markedly clear and empty, but such was not the case a few streets away. They saw something like a giant mound of clay, stretching from floor to ceiling-a calcified, golden-red web.
'What's that, I wonder?' Slip said.
The mass looked like red amber, with an eerie translucence. It glowed crimson from the inside, as though from a beating heart. Gold veins ran through it, like tunnels bored by a worm. The red substance ran over the buildings like glass, or perhaps ice that had frozen around them. It reached to the ceiling, holding fully half the city prisoner.
Then they became aware of a sound-a distinct humming, almost like buzzing, as though the air shuddered and crackled in expectation of a storm.
'Rain?' Slip asked.
'Magic?' Liet asked.
Gargan shook his head. He pointed.
Half a dozen black and yellow creatures swarmed out of holes in the mass of red amber and buzzed toward them. Flickering light twinkled off a hundred facets in their eyes, and gossamer wings zipped through the air. They might have been bees, if bees grew to the height of men and sported arms carrying spears, but these were abeil.
'Down!' Liet cried. A better command might have been 'scatter,' 'ware,' or even 'run!' But he said the first thing that came to mind.
Liet did not know why he took one of the iron bars from his pack and placed it between himself and the diving creatures. Nor did he understand how he knew to press the end of the rod. Instinct, perhaps-or that odd power Twilight had spoken of. The rod gave a little hum but did nothing else.
A lightning bolt streaked into the sky and tore the wings from one of the bees, which plummeted to the street with a buzzing screech. Hefting his crackling scepter, Davoren scoffed. 'Fear not. I shall defend you.' He waved his hand and fire spread through the air.
Liet cursed himself. What had he been hoping for? A blast of fire, a protective shield? A flare of self-loathing came then, and he fought it back. Fury at himself, at Davoren. But he couldn't get angry-not now. Seeing the bees fly around the fire, Liet pulled up the rod and prepared to retreat.
Rather, he tried to retrieve the rod, for it could not be moved. No matter how much he strained, the rod floated in place. The bees were coming, so he abandoned it.
A bee-thing crashed face first into the immobile rod and crumpled around it, there to hang, broken. The rod did not twitch, as though a mountain held it still.
A hissing sound reached Liet's ears then. Now what?
A bouncing motion caught his eye-it was Slip, waving at him and whispering his name from an open, crescent-shaped doorway. Above it floated the flickering image of a hammer emblazoned with seven stars. The seven stars of Mystra?
Whatever the failing image betokened, Gargan was ducking in and Davoren was tearing through the underbrush toward the door, cursing the incoming bees. Then Gargan yanked Slip off her feet and slammed the door.
Bees swarmed past their crushed, hanging comrade, throwing themselves against the crescent-shaped door and oddly curved windows in a killing fury. In reply, Davoren invoked his powers, and a forest of black tendrils sprouted from the building, flailing. The bees swarmed away before he could conjure fire.
Liet and Davoren reached the door at the same moment. It popped open and the men tumbled in past Gargan. The goliath slammed it once again and they collapsed in the darkness.
The four huddled behind the door, Gargan holding it shut. Liet sat near the shivering Slip and looked around. The room in which they found themselves could have been a smithy of some sort. Hammers and chisels and many things he couldn't recognize lay scattered and shattered about them. In the center was something that looked like an anvil, or perhaps an altar-a simple block of jet black stone. Other doors were visible, all shaped like crescents, stars, and inverted triangles. In the center of the room was a black disk, like the trapdoor they had come through.
'I wonder if she sent us here intentionally,' the warlock said.
He looked at Liet, panting heavily. 'Come-what would your mistress say if she saw you cowering?'
Liet wanted to retort, 'She would praise me for having the sense to stay alive under a surprise attack, but by all means, go play if you want. Try not to get yourself killed too messily,' like Twilight would have. As it was, he said, 'My mistress?'
Then a hissing sound came from below, as of metal grinding against metal. The inert disk gave a shudder and sank. They backed away and hefted weapons. When the disk returned, standing upon it was a familiar, dark-haired elf.
'You called?' she asked, wearily.
' 'Light!' said Liet, moving forward.
Twilight stopped him with a raised hand. Something had unnerved her, clearly.
'What is it?' demanded the warlock. 'More foes, coming from below?' He spat.
'What did you find?' Liet asked.
Twilight shut her eyes. 'A mythallar,' she said.
Davoren scoffed. 'And so? This is a Netherese city, and such was the magic of the empire of magic-'
Twilight shook her head. 'It isn't that simple,' she said. She gestured to the lifting disk that had just carried her up. 'The mythallar I found-it's still active.'
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
