Reunion

The corridor they traveled down, twisting with complex turns, had been carved from the solid, cold rock. The length of it was littered with swords, lanterns, and dead soldiers, all discarded by Dougherty's men in their desperate attempt to flee the same company of dark elves Wefpub now trailed. In a dim illumination from Flicker, they scanned the carnage that had transpired in these halls. The features of the corpses were frozen, contorted as by the forces of absolute fear. Limbs sat awkwardly askew in the disarray that is death, bodies hopelessly clamoring over one another in a savage attempt to escape. In the stillness that survived, they could only imagine what horrors served as the last of their sights. Even seasoned adventurers like they could not help but feel for these lost men. The brutality and barbarity of the attacks that had overcome these men in red-crescent helms sent lumps to their throats.

  Amanda insisted on taking the time to bless each dead man's corpse, praying to send their souls to their gods.

  When they came to a side tunnel, it was clear that this was where Dougherty first met with the dark elves. Many bodies, mostly of the King's Guard, filled the intersection. There were also a few bodies of dark elves, pushed aside by their own people. Despite what they must have done in their part of this battle, and despite their being left here by their own kind, Amanda blessed them all and sent the elves' spirits to Corellon Larethian, "God of all elves," she was quick to remind them.

  While Amanda tended to their souls, Ace helped himself to whatever they may have been carrying. He disrespectfully rifled through pockets and removed purses to be gone through later. He found a great amount of jewelry and small weapons, including a few of the small crossbows and many different daggers. The fine armor and razor-sharp swords must have been quite common among these people, as Ace managed to collect quite a few of these as well. They simply laid wherever they landed.

  Just for fun, Ace slipped on one of the chain mesh tops, and found it amazingly light and comfortable. While he would normally shun the bulk of chain mail, he decided to keep this souvenir. The top was long, of course, covering down to his knees, but it didn't get in his way. Each link of the armor was finely crafted and wrapped in soft leather, so that the whole garment didn't make any noise.

  Ace picked up a couple of daggers and slid them into sheaths built right into the armor. Most of the hilts of the swords and daggers were ornately decorated with bizarre shapes and unusual beasts. There were many depictions of spiders, which seemed to be a common theme for them, and snakes, which sent chills up Gerrod's spine. (If there was only one animal he hated in this world, it had to be snakes.) The blades of the weapons were of a strange, bluish steel; unlike anything they had ever seen. As suspected, these blades had also been dipped in poison, and Ace was very careful not to so much as nick himself on the extra-sharp edges.

  Large, nine-foot long worms were already devouring some of the bodies. They were aggressive creatures, and with the many antennae flailing from their heads, they gave them a lot of room and stayed away from those bodies they laid claim to, lest they be the next dead bodies they fed on. These creatures seemed to walk on the ceiling and walls as easily as the floor. Allison kept watch over the ceiling above to keep them from jumping down on top of them. There was no way of telling how long they'd be satisfied to feed off of the corpses they had, before looking at them for more.

  "Let's get going," Gerrod urged Amanda on. "I don't think it's such a good idea to stick around here much longer than need be." Even as he spoke, more of the things padded their way up the ceiling of the side corridor toward them.

  Corinna was careful to notice that the side corridor had been sealed off, after Dougherty and his men had battled, with a wall of stone. This impressive new wall had been magically fashioned, and went almost all the way to the top of the twenty-foot tall corridor, leaving just enough space for the terrible worms to get through. "They must not have wanted anyone to escape back that way," Corinna observed.

  Without the need for further convincing, they gathered what they needed and continued their chase toward the dark elven city.

  While the dark elven city promised not to be far away, their escort hurried the troops along at a swift pace. This travel was made longer by their nervous anticipation.

  There had always been stories of a race of elves with the black skin of evil, known as the drow. According to the tales, they occasionally came out of their deep holes in the ground, on moonless nights, to steal away elven children. They would take these children back down into the darkness where they devised many cruel tortures. This ancient story was often used to scare children into behaving, but by the looks of the cruel weapons they had found already, they began to believe that this fable may have more truth to it than they cared to believe, as many fables do. Little was actually known about the drow, but all of it was evil.

  Gerrod kept the undying light from Flicker subdued, just bright enough for them to travel at a normal, slow speed. They traveled silently, as they had come to do so naturally. Each of them was lost in their own world of thought. The scenes of the terrible battle against the drow plagued their imaginations, and the shadows of the flickering light played cruel tricks on their minds. The strange shadow creatures that leapt out at them from every corner and crevice reminded Gerrod sorely of when they first entered the caves. Their fears were, as they had been then, their worst enemy. Their nerves were kept so on edge by these creatures of shadow-stuff, that when a real danger did come upon them, they weren't able to react as they could have; or as they should have.

  The magical light given off by Gerrod's sword was squelched out, and they barely had time to even realize the danger. The sudden darkness from the magical spells shut out even their infravision. They never had a chance to see the enemies as they stepped out of the shadows and their nightmares, to strike them down from behind. Gerrod barely remembered the stinging burn of a small crossbow bolt slicing its way in behind his left knee, a skull shaking blow to the back of the head, and the cold stone catching his falling face. The blackness of the magical spells was replaced by the even darker absolute emptiness of unconsciousness.

  And so it came that their first views of Mezzo'Dakmania were of nothing but a dark, hollow dungeon. That is where Gerrod awoke, an awakening that came to his surprise. He'd given himself up for dead after feeling the poison work its way through his travel-weary mind. But instead of being left for carrion worm food, they had been taken prisoner. An antidote to the poison had been given to them.

  Gerrod awoke with a bad headache and pains in every part of his body as if he had been severely beaten. He opened his eyes, and when he couldn't see anything, he feared he may have been blinded. He was against a wall, where he apparently hung from wrist irons. A warm stream of blood dripped down to his elbows from his bleeding wrists. He forced his resistant legs to stand up, relieving the strain on his arms. The chains rattled in the echoing emptiness of a fairly large room. He had come accustomed to judging the size of chambers by the echoes of sound in the forever darkness of the Underworld.

  Gerrod felt the wall behind him, and it appeared to be rounded, as a pillar of some sort. It extended far above his reach, and to either side, probably ten feet round and stretching to the ceiling, some fifteen feet high here. A kick of his numb legs revealed that they too had been fastened to the pillar by ankle irons. There was no sign of his backpack or sword, of course. It looked like he was here to stay.

  Alerted by the clanging of chains, Gerrod heard the gruff greetings of Ace, "That you, boy?"

  "It's me, Ace." The words burned in his chest. "Where are Corinna and the others?"

  "Must be hanging around here somewhere," he jested, bringing fits of coughing that gave Gerrod images of how badly he had been beaten as well.

  As Gerrod's mind began to clear of fog, he shifted into his night sight, and scanned the range of what he could see. The room was large, as he had guessed, and everything was pretty much the same shade of red, or the sa
me temperature. Nothing had been moved in here in quite a while. There were few details available to him. Gerrod couldn't see anything more than a hand, chained to the wall as his were, in the direction of Ace. He too was chained to the pillar, just out of reach to the left. Gerrod scanned the other side to see the dim light of the hand of a barely conscious person, who he guessed was a member of Wefpub. Her body temperature revealed one who was not awake to the world, and she rested peacefully in her unconscious state. All the better for her.

  Where there was neither sight nor sound, there were aromas. The damp, warm air was filled with the scents of a million different things, none of them pleasant. Above all else was the familiar, musty smell of the caverns, but it was mixed in with something else. Gerrod's dizzy mind swirled as he pushed it to sample the stale air and compare it to a lifetime of experience in order to identify what it was. A sickening feeling spread over him as he finally came to realize what it was he had been thinking of. The air had the distinctive stench of rotting flesh. This did not bode well.

  "Ace, can you get out?" he inquired, as much to see if his friend was still with him as for any other reason.

  "Strung up tight, boy. Me picks be gone, too." His voice had a resigned tone to it Gerrod didn't like. Ace normally had an unbeatable spirit. But, with all he had been through, even this had been beaten out of him. "Me thinks I'm getting too old for this, Gerrod."

  "Nonsense, dear friend. The fates challenge us, that is all." Gerrod knew he could be of little comfort.

  It was difficult to say how long they were left in there; hours, days -- who knows? During that time, Gerrod feared for Corinna, or whoever it was on the other side of him, since they had not stirred. Gerrod wondered where the King's Guard was, and whether they had been getting the same treatment. He doubted that. They weren't expected, welcomed visitors to the Underworld as the army had been. The King's Guard had been brought down here for a reason, and as extra baggage, Wefpub was to be dealt with far differently. It couldn't be expected to be much better than this, but Gerrod's nightmares proved it could be far worse.

  And, if the King's Guard was brought down there for a reason, what was it? Gerrod tried to focus his wavering mind on something constructive. Certainly they had not been brought to simply carry those crates. Mages had better, less risky ways to move important items, Corinna had convinced them of that. What had Rai'dley and these dark elves wanted with them? How was Rai'dley connected to this ancient evil? Is this where Rai'dley had come from; was she one of them in disguise? Too many questions, and not enough answers. Gerrod knew he'd never get his answers while he was chained up here like a misbehaved pet.

  One final question, what did they plan to do with Wefpub? He had heard the tales of their delight at torture, and their sacrifices of surface-worlders to their evil goddess. Was this what was to become of Wefpub? He hated the thought of being goddess fodder, and decided that he would fight with all his might, if given the chance. He would not be a willing victim of these cruel and evil people. They would have to prove their eagerness to destroy him with a fight. They would give him that much.

  The forever silence was ripped by a sound at the far end of the chamber -- voices and footsteps. Though he couldn't see in that direction, he strained to listen, soaking in every sound like it was gold. They had come for them at last, and he would be ready.

  The two men that entered carried with them an eerie torch. The light that came from it barely did an adequate job at lighting up the room. The flames burned purple, lapping slowly and deliberately up the end of the torch like waves coming to a shore. He could feel no heat from the flames, and realized it to be a magical fire. As he was convinced these people must be able to move about in the pure darkness of their evil without the aid of any light, Gerrod was certain these torches were used for their benefit.

  Smiles spread across the two evil drow males as they examined Ace and Gerrod. One lifted Gerrod's head forcibly, and he returned by spitting in his face. He didn't know why he did it, but he knew he would pay for it as soon as he did. In a surprisingly quick blur of movement, the guard produced a short, stout club, and thrashed Gerrod across his already sore ribs. He then drove its dull end up into his abdomen so he couldn't breathe. His smile had turned to a glaring sneer, and Gerrod knew some greater force than he was keeping the man from killing him right there.

  Ace offered no resistance to their prodding, and whether he was alert or not, Gerrod considered his more passive approach the better. He hung as limply as Gerrod had when he first awoke, and there was no sign of life in him. The male examining him slapped his flopping head back and forth a few times, but left him to his misery.

  Noticing the look in the eye of his partner, and the club pressed under Gerrod's ribs, he sent him a warning glare. Reluctantly, the guard withdrew the stick from Gerrod's stomach, sending him gasping for air. With a final warning stare at Gerrod, the guard moved on to other business.

  Gerrod didn't know who it was next to him on the other side. He had assumed it was one of the girls, but in the new, dim light, he saw that it was another drow that they removed from his shackles.

  This drow wore no fancy armor nor brandished any fancy weapons. He had been stripped down to only a torn pair of britches, which looked to have been of fine material before being shredded to rags. These were coated in so much blood and dirt, that their original color could not be identified. His exposed upper body proved strong, with muscles rippling, even though he was no longer able to flex a single one of them. His pitch-black skin shown many light gray wounds, which showed signs of healing. Still, the signs of abuse were great, and even now he didn't appear conscious while they dragged him away from the wall.

  Gerrod noticed a most unusual collar fastened about the prisoner's neck. It was of the same, bluish-gray metal as the swords and daggers Ace had found. The entire surface was filled with many intricately carved runes. Gerrod recognized many of the carvings to be symbols of magic, though he couldn't begin to guess as to their purpose or meaning. In the center of the front, centered on the man's throat, was set a large, oval black onyx stone of considerable size.

  Despite their jabs and encouragements to wake and walk on his own, the guards ended up dragging the unconscious man off, leaving the torch for Ace and Gerrod's use. While they dragged him backwards by his massive shoulders, his bobbing head flashed a wide grin. He too, it seemed, had a strong spirit.

  It seemed like an eternity while the other prisoner was gone. The torch, hanging in a wall sconce, answered some questions, but raised many others.

  From what Gerrod could see of the room, it was square, block-cut design. The only door was to his left. By twisting his neck, he could see them enter and exit, but Ace faced the portal from his angle on the pillar. The thick, lone pillar stood in the center of the room, which other than a large table pushed next to the wall between the two sconces, appeared to be the only furniture in the room. There was plenty of space for the hanging of other prisoners. Around the outside walls, empty shackles were eager for company, but within his range of sight Gerrod couldn't see any of the females of their party.

  "Ace. Ace?" he beckoned, hoping his unconscious appearance had been a ploy.

  "Ya' gotta learn to choose your battles, boy." came his gruff voice. "Way I see it, we ain't in much a fighting position. Wait until the odds are better in our favor. The long shot'll get you no where."

  "So it would seem," Gerrod admitted, accepting his words of wisdom. He was just glad to hear his voice again.

  "There's a light on in here now," he encouraged his friend, though he knew he'd take offense to its magical origin. "Can you see anyone else in the room?"

  "'Fraid not. Looks like we're alone. Not much over here but a door on the other side." He sounded discouraged, knowing what Gerrod was hinting at.

  So the women had been taken away separately. Great. Gerrod only hoped that meant they received better tre
atment than they had, not worse. The ranger had seen what savage things the gnolls and ogres did with their captive females, and he struggled to put those images out of his mind. That could not be happening to his friends. Gerrod prayed to Mya that these drow were, as evil as they were, more civilized than that.

  Gerrod examined the shackles that bound his hands and feet more closely in the new light. To his horror, they were shaped in the form of snakes wrapped around his wrists. Despite their iron-gray steel color, their sharpened fangs bore down on him, digging in as if in a vicious bite. The vision made him dizzy, and he suddenly felt faint. Had they used some sort of mental probe to determine what it was that he feared most so they could use it against him? Gerrod quickly strained to see the other shackles that hung to his right, where the drow had been removed, and noticed the same, snake-shaped devices hanging there. He found little comfort in this.

  "So what do you remember?" he asked Ace. "I didn't even see them coming for us." At least they could compare notes. He was grateful just to have Ace's company in this dreadful place.

  "Took me from behind, the cowards," he muttered. "Must be strong stuff in them there darts of theirs. Took me out cold, and you know I'm tough against juices like that." He sounded disappointed in himself, and Gerrod was quick to let him know there wasn't anything any of them could have done. He vaguely remembered seeing Corinna going down, and was certain the others fell just as quickly.

  They continued their conversation for a long time, just to keep each other alert against the lingering, sleepy effects of their poison. When they heard noises at the door, they both dropped back into feigned sleep.

  Through peeking eyelids, when he didn't think they were watching, Gerrod saw the same two drow still dragging their victim. He still appeared to be unconscious, though after viewing several new, terrible wounds, the ranger questioned whether this was an act. These new wounds were severe. Though they left several large, grotesque scars, these appeared to have already been healed over with fresh new, gray skin. This made little sense to him, and made him wonder what arcane device they might have used to create wounds such as these.

  The two guards dutifully returned the beaten man to his shackles on the pillar, and quickly left without saying a word or even looking at Gerrod. He thought he could see, at the edges of their armor, fresh marks similar to those the prisoner had received. But if they were, they were not near as severe though they still looked quite painful. They wore them stoically, none-the-less, and again left without taking the torch.

  Once he was sure that the guards had left them, Gerrod called out, "Dak'gnu!" which meant "Dark One" in elven. He felt no movement, nor heard any response, so he called it out again, "Dak'gnu!"

  "Surface-worlder," came a spitting reply in a thick, ancient accent that Gerrod had heard only through Corinna's research. His words were only vaguely recognizable as the elven language he knew, but he was glad to be able to understand him.

  "Are you all right?" Gerrod asked, trying to copy the archaic dialect.

  "No worry for I, Surface-worlder. I survive," he replied. At first, with the accent, Gerrod thought he sounded stoic, but he realized he was strangely dismayed by his certainty. "No talk surface-worlders," he said warningly.

  "And I've never talked with an Underworlder before, either," Gerrod came back, undauntedly. "My name is Gerrod. Gerrod of Oswegonia," he introduced himself more formally. Unused to social occasions, the introduction sounded as awkward as the silence that it gained him. After a few moments of this silence, which made him wonder if the dark elf had understood him at all, he asked him his name.

  "I am Dai' --" he paused, as if having to think about his answer. "Call me Dak'gnu, if you must."

  Gerrod started to realize that his gruffness may not be from the crude dialect, but because he really didn't care for him. Still uncertain, he pressed the conversation. "Okay, 'Dark-One,' Where is this place we are in?"

  "Prison," came his only willing reply.

  "Are we in your city?" Gerrod asked sarcastically. His uncooperative, anti-social behavior didn't help the conversation much, but he still had questions, and this Dak'gnu was going to answer them.

  "Mezzo'Dakmania. City of drow." He spoke these words with a sense of pride, though it seemed a wistful pride of old.

  Gerrod felt some relief, though very little. They had at least managed to arrive at the same place that the army was supposedly headed; whatever good that did them now.

  "Do you know why we are being held here?"

  "You don't get it, do you?" he asked incredulously. "I not like surface-worlders. I not like you. I not talk to surface-worlders, and I not talk to you. Just leave me alone."

  Gerrod had had enough, and was too frustrated by the situation to put up with his attitude. "You look. I've been ambushed, drugged, and chained to a wall. I have a million questions, and all the time in the world on my hands. I need information and, right now, you're my best bet. You've nothing to lose by telling me what I need to know, and when we bust out of here, it may even be worth it to you if you are helpful. Otherwise, I've no qualms about leaving you chained up here for daily torture sessions. The way I see it, we're your best chance of getting out of here. You don't have to like me. I just want some answers, and I'm offering to make it worth your while if you help. That's all."

  He retorted with what almost sounded like a laugh. "Surface-worlder." He said mockingly, as an insult.

  "What's so amusing?" Gerrod asked innocently. Though he knew he annoyed Dak'gnu to no end, he was starting to have the same effect on Gerrod.

  "Your ignorance," he said as if it should have been obvious. "You surface-worlder held in drow prison of First Mother. Why you think you kept here?"

  "You tell me. If they wanted to kill us, they would have done that in the caverns instead of taking us prisoners. We have no information that could possibly be useful, so I don't know what use we would be to them alive."

  "Make good slaves, for starters," Dak'gnu replied slowly, as if judging them, "But I think the Matron Mother of House Fa'Langa have better way for you to serve Lolth. A much more devious way."

  "And what may that be?" Gerrod was desperate for answers.

  "You heard of surface-worlder Rai'dley?" He inquired, perhaps thinking this was a person of great notoriety to all the people above.

  Gerrod's mind reeled at the implications of his knowing of the mage. Still, he tried not to show a reaction, just in case he was simply trying to get one. "In fact, yes I have. She is a mage, from my understandings. What does she have to do with your people?"

  "She develop way to transform living creature into powerful zombie, animated corpse of undead world. This creation, unlike most, maintains its fighting abilities. Loses will to who controls it. Become soldier of death under mage's control."

  Shivers ran down Gerrod's spine at the revelation. That was why Rai'dley had brought the King's Guard here. It was an army of well-trained men, ready to be put under her total control. He knew something of the undead, as he had heard of the many encounters Allison and Amanda had told of them. They described them to be the most grotesque abomination of nature that there could be. Denied putting their spirits to rest, the undead roamed the earth with a hatred for anything living. They had a mindless fearlessness about them, and many terrible abilities drawn from the plane of death. Normally mindless creatures acting solely on hatred, they would make a powerful army if they could somehow be controlled. Under an organized leader, they could be a tremendous force. Still, Gerrod didn't get their connection with the drow.

  "Rai'dley is mage. Mages have no dominion over creation or control of undead. Rai'dley needed drow priestesses to carry out plan. Chaos this promises on surface-world fits Lolth's plans. Be great victory for drow, and goddess, if surface-worlders be destroyed. So, drow, the First Mother, aid Rai'dley in plan."

  "So where do we fit in?"

  "I imagine Matron Mo
ther see demonstration of process on surface-worlder. That where you come in, Surface-worlder." Gerrod couldn't help but get the sense that Dak'gnu actually enjoyed the idea.

  "Well, she'll soon have her chance," the ranger explained, putting the two together as much for himself as for the dark elf. "An entire legion of troops from the King's Guard of Oswegonia has just arrived. I believe that your Mother will get her demonstration soon enough."

  "The festival!" Dak'gnu suddenly blurted in revelation, putting together his own puzzle pieces. "Mother Fa'Langa must intend to carry out plan on most holy of days. Today is Festival of To'mak. A tremendous sacrifice that be to goddess. How clever. How devious. Sacrifice such as that would guarantee the First Mother's continued favor with Lolth for long time to come. Brilliant, that one. Well she serves the Dark Queen." Gerrod could hear a warm grin spread across his black face. This grin brought with it the kind of relief a starving man feels when he has his first meal in ages. A great, aching pain in him had finally been satisfied. "Glory to the Dark Queen."

  "I, for one, do not intend to be sacrificed as part of any undead army. We must find a way out of here. Any ideas on how we do that?"

  "You don't," Dak'gnu answered confidently. "There no escape from prison."

  Gerrod didn't doubt the drow's belief in his answer, and felt it was more than drow pride speaking, for there was bitter remorse in his tone. He thought he would try to change the subject. "So, why are you here, if I may ask?"

  "You may not." That is all he would say of the matter, and Gerrod dropped the conversation so as not to rile him further. He had been surprisingly generous with his answers so far, and he didn't want to push it. Gerrod was learning to carefully choose his battles.

  The half-elf left him to brood while he translated the highlights of the information to Ace, who had been patiently listening to the foreign elvish language, trying to cipher what he could out of the broken elven tongue.

  "So where are the girls?" Ace asked at long end, an obvious point that Gerrod had forgotten to ask.

  "They be kept better than us, I assure you. They be sacrificed to the Dark Queen," Dak'gnu answered grimly. "Their deaths be quick and painless," Dak'gnu quickly offered, as if hoping this would be of comfort. It wasn't. "You should wish have been female -- you fair much better. Mezzo'Dakmania strong matriarchal society. Males little more than tools or pawns to women who rule. Such are the ways of the Dark Queen." Again, this sounded like sincere praise for his goddess, despite the terrible comments he was making about her.

  "Where would they be kept? Are they far away from us?" Ace and Gerrod could only hope to formulate some sort of plan. Just in case the impossible happened, they wanted to be ready to make the most of the opportunity.

  As he translated to Ace, Dak'gnu willingly described, in detail, the area surrounding the dungeon, and the area the females were most likely to be kept. Still, all the while, he assured them that it was all moot, since no one had ever escaped from the dungeon of the First Ruling Family alive before. Gerrod was quick to remind him, the dungeon of the First Ruling Family of Mezzo'Dakmania had never held the members of Wefpub before.

 

  Chapter 21

  Fire and Lightning