protective coloring. The chameleons emerged from their guard posts on the walls and leaped clumsily to the floor, expanding throat pouches to give off deep, ear-splitting
A huge troglodyte chieftain paced out from the warren caves. Twenty warriors came with him-all huge lizards draped with belts made from badlyflayed goblin skins, some with the wet red skulls of victims still hanging in their hands. They dragged prisoners along with them-six gnolls and a hobgoblin,all gouged, bleeding, and nearly dead.
Scores of angry bugbears flowed out from the other warren caves, following the troglodytes. Surly and snarling with jealousy, they eyed the bleeding prisoners. Leaving the slave caravan, the drow merchants walked over to meet the troglodyte leader and began talking in a braying, barking tongue.
Troglodytes offered their captives to the drow, pointing at the slave caravan. The prisoners were clearly too badly injured to march to the caravan’s destination. The drow used gestures to reject the goods. Roaring inanger, the troglodyte chieftain turned and bellowed to his followers, who instantly gripped the captives and tore the creatures apart with their bare hands. Screams echoed through the tunnels, and the troglodytes closed in like piranha to feed on screaming, shrieking flesh.
Polk shrank back against his stalagmite in horror as he watched the captives being eaten alive. “Ah, son? Have you an escape plan ofyour own? Because mine still needs a little bit of work.”
“Polk,
Polk blinked and looked around at the Justicar. “It?”
Lurching up the southern passageway came a large pack lizard-a big thing covered in mildewed scales and occasional fungus growths. Thecreature was led by a solitary drow-a thin, somewhat tall creature armed with aheavy crossbow and with an unusually long sword slung over its back. Watching the drow come closer to their cave, four bugbears at the cavern entrance came to their feet.
As the solitary drow trader approached, a bugbear halted him with an upraised hand and spoke in its guttural, snarling tongue. The drow looked at the floor stiffly and gave a grunt, shrugging his shoulders. The bugbear nodded as if in agreement, then presented its hand toward the drow, palm upward.
The drow hesitated, looked confused, and then put a platinum coin into the bugbear’s hand. The gigantic goblinoid blinked at the coin, lookedpleased, pocketed the trinket, then presented its hand once again.
The creature jiggled its hand and snarled out a few words, then pointed to the drow’s cloak pin. Alarmed, the drow began to pat its pocketsin confusion. It turned to face the pack lizard, careful not to touch the thing, since it was only a flimsy illusion spell case over a floating, misshapen string of shapes tied up in an old tarpaulin. Pretending to search its own robes, the drow hissed a whisper into empty air.
“Why does it want to look at my cloak pin?”
“Cloak pin?” Invisible and sitting astride the floatingcanvas sausage, Escalla felt a flash of inspiration. “Oh! I think he wants youridentification!”
“Identification?” Transformed into drow shape by one ofEscalla’s spells, Private Henry quailed. “I don’t have any identification!”
“Lessee… we found some weird stuff.” Escalla rememberedthe gold hairpin filched from the drow sorceress who had turned into a manta ray. The faerie extracted the pin and slipped it into Henry’s hands. “There yougo! Give this a try.”
His ashen pallor making his black skin gray, Henry turned and placed the golden pin in the hands of the bugbear. The huge goblinoid took one look at the spider symbol upon the pin and instantly fell to its knees. Its companions clumsily followed suit, holding their bloodstained clubs against their chests in salute. Henry accepted the pin back from the guard, raised his hand in a vague attempt at benediction, then towed his rather awkward pack lizard past the guard-post and into the caves.
“There we are-simple!” Escalla, utterly invisible andtherefore not sweating in fear, waved to drow guards and merchants. “You see Jusover there?”
Carefully ignoring the pack lizard and Henry, Jus sat tied to a stalagmite near the lich’s cave. Polk had been tied to the opposite side ofthe same stone pillar, and the little man’s mouth was moving as he showered anunwanted soliloquy on empty air. Pulling his long, stark white locks from his face, the dark elf that was Private Henry peered over at his friends.
“Are they all right?”
“Pretty much. Polk just has to hope Jus doesn’t get one handfree.” Escalla nudged the boy with her battle wand. “All the trogs and bugbearsseem to be gathering at the warrens. Let’s get baby over there as innocently aspossible.”
The long canvas sausage, lumped and ugly, was covered by one of Escalla’s better illusion spells. Even so, the bobbing train of floatingshapes were a poor simulation of a giant pack lizard’s gait. Private Henry towedthe ungainly mass along through the air behind him.
Perhaps forty troglodytes snarled and fought over a vile, blood-filthy feast. Other troglodytes had gathered behind by the score, booming huge calls that shuddered through the air. Swarms of bugbears clustered nearby, glaring in naked hunger and envy at the feast.
Henry brought his lizard close to the flesh eating, blood spattered mob. Pale with fright, the boy fumbled, then tied the leash of his lizard to a stalactite only a few feet behind the snarling, jeering mobs of monsters. He breathed raggedly, his eyes bright with fright, and then felt an invisible kiss on his cheek.
“You all right, Hen?”
“Just fine.”
“Alrighty!” Escalla’s wings whirred like a dragonfly. “Juststroll over to Jus and wait for the fun!”
Henry tried to hold his loaded crossbow as innocently as possible. Wearing somewhat un-elven garments, he had already attracted side-wise glances from the drow. The magic sword Benelux gleamed gaudy and golden as it hung over his shoulder. The boy, trying to look nonchalant, began to make the long walk toward Jus and Polk.
A drow straightened his belt and began to make a determined course toward Henry. The deception could only last a few more seconds. Slapping her hands together, Escalla flew through the belly of her illusory lizard and began unplucking knots of hairy string. She whistled as she worked, the noise unheard over the roar and snarl of feeding troglodytes and the insults hurled by bugbear hordes.
The last knot untied, the tarpaulin jerked away and fell. As the paralyzed beholder thudded to the ground, Escalla tossed a magic floating disc beneath it and sent it scooting off to the north. Behind it, the canvas sausage suddenly disintegrated. Escalla turned and fled faster than any faerie had ever gone before.
The illusory pack lizard stretched, then came apart. In the packed central mob of feeders, food, audience, and jeering crowds, some heads turned-and then screamed in terror. Spreading up from the bursting body of thepack lizard came great bobbing, floating spheres-fleshy globes crowned with eyeson stalks and with fanged, snarling mouths.
The spheres began to scoot in all directions, propelled by internal gasses. The jammed hordes of bugbears and lizards froze in shock until a little voice pealed out across the cave.
Magic missiles flew out from Escalla’s fingertips and thuddedinto all eight floating gas spheres. The universe seemed to take a breath of shock. The troglodyte chieftain had time to swell his throat in the beginnings of a scream, and then one end of the cavern disappeared in a thunderous blast of light.
The gas spores detonated in an instant, each one exploding in a titanic fireball. Bugbears and lizards nearest to the spheres were atomized, while others flew backward as the flesh was blasted from their bones. The explosions rocked the cavern, shattering the ceiling of the warrens and bringing rock falls avalanching down. The ground shuddered. Ceilings collapsed. A few surviving monsters staggered, burned and screaming through the dust, to be crushed by rock falls cascading from above. The distant tribal warren dissolved as thousands of tons of rock collapsed in a massive cloud of debris.
Escalla gave a victory scream. With dust choking the air around her, she sat atop the paralyzed beholder, riding it like a juggernaut as it sped along on its floating disk. The girl fired a spell past Private Henry, turning cavern stone to bubbling mud and sinking drow to their deaths. Wide-eyed, the boy pelted toward the Justicar.
Drowning dark elves fired wild shots from their crossbows. Henry skidded to a halt beside Jus and Polk just
