It took them a moment to gain their bearings and calm their senses. The shock wasn't merely from the jolt of leaving the distorted passageway that Gord had wrought in part it was caused by the place they found themselves in. Iuz had chosen to flee to the great stratum of the fungi queen, Zuggtmoy. They were in a nightmare place, a realm that could only be likened to some great underground cavern where fantastic and weird fungi sprouted from noisome soil, and nothing clean had ever existed.
"Mycorji." The name came to Gord's mind, and he spoke it aloud. "This is the stinkhole of Zuggtmoy."
"Where have Iuz and his whores gotten to?" Leda asked. Her voice bore a heavy tone of hatred. Shared memories, those of the dead Eclavdra, caused the burden of hatred to well up in her and burst out as she spoke.
"Not far," Gellor said with assurance, as he continued to play. The sound of his melodious fingerwork was rotting the tall, disgusting growths all around. As the things toppled and ran into putrid puddles, there was clearly revealed the entrance to a grotto that lay below the place where the three now stood. "See there?"
"I do," Gord nodded. "Let's finish this work quickly," he said, and the three of them began descending immediately. The silvery notes from the bard's kanteel announced their coming, of course, even as did the heaps of deadly fungi that collapsed from the sound.
Iuz was like a cornered rat. His fangs were bared, and the half-demon was desperate, filled with a deadly mixture of fear and hatred that might just prove sufficient to serve. Seeing the diamond and jet of Courflamme, the cambion willed a larger and deadlier blade from his Theorpart. The relic responded, of course, and suddenly Iuz was holding a huge scimitar, a weapon that required both hands and a bulk such as the cambion had to wield its five-foot length. Even as that massive blade sprang into being, the half-demon was attacking, bringing the curved mass of razor-edged metal up and around in a blow meant to decapitate his opponent.
There was no warning shout, no sound, as Iuz swung the scimitar. Pure reflex saved Gord. The cambion towered above the champion, half again his height, three times and more heavier. Shadow armor and elfin mail would never have prevailed against the sorcerous steel of the blade Iuz swung.
Gord flinched into a crouch, and the rubine metal hissed a hairsbreadth above his head, trailing coruscations of lambent maroon in Its wake. Still crouched, Gord lunged inward with a long thrust aimed at the fat, angry pink of Iuz's thigh. The stabbing attack failed to reach its target, and the massive scimitar was surely being brought around for a backhand stroke. Without trying to recover from his lunge, the young champion simply fell to the right, rolled on his shoulder, and did a back flip. The evil red of the scimitar's blade cut through the space where he had been a second before, then flashed its hellish track upward and around toward where Gord now stood.
Iuz stopped the arcing blade suddenly, poising the scimitar as a high-held threat above his right shoulder. "You are quick, you little human flea! Hopping will only prolong the contest, though. You'll be too slow soon enough — then I'll feed your raw and bleeding genitals to your friends!"
The goading was obvious and useless. Gord didn't bother considering the words at all; he was intent upon estimating the cambion's speed, reach, and tactics. Gord feinted, withdrew, cut, and danced back and Iuz did not move. Then Gord sent a sparkling dart of force from Courflamme. Iuz moved very quickly at that, and the angry carmine web that sprang from the scimitar seemed to devour the blacksilver bolt. "You move quickly yourself, pink shoat," Gord called as he stepped well back.
The sting of the force that had managed to get through the Theorpart's screening energy made the cambion furious. "So you like to trade missiles, do you?" he grated through his clenched teeth. His halfhundred little fangs gleamed bone white as Iuz's lips were drawn back in rage. With those words, the halfdemon willed a fiery crimson whip to spring from the weapon he wielded, and the snapping filaments of force shot forth like a cat o' nine tails.
Gellor, meanwhile, was fully occupied against Zuggtmoy. More than fully, as it were. The demoness had resumed her fungoid form, but the puffy white appendages she plied to operate her strange device were faster than human fingers. Out shot paralyzing rhizomes, jets of flesh-dissolving spores, ranks of myconid monsters as she played upon the powers of her Cauldron of Corruption. At each new threat the bard countered with music that neutralized or destroyed the attack.
The ivory kanteel was potent, a match for the vile device Zuggtmoy employed. In time, though, demon strength would prevail over that of mortal sort, albeit Gellor was heroic and imbued with strength and power of supernatural kind. His adversary was, after all, one of the six greatest demons in the whole sphere of demonium.
The troubador played with determined desperation. Zuggtmoy merely kept her endless series of assaults flying from the Cauldron, biding her time with assured expectation, almost enjoying the contest. Wondering if blinding smut might prevail, the demoness triggered a whirlwind cone of the stuff from the device. Notes as bright and hot as the summer sun at high noon frizzled the dark cloud into nothingness, but the stain of the smut's demise lay only inches from the bard's booted feet. Soon, soon . . .
"Turncoat bitch!" Iggwilv spat. Leda faced the ancient witch with no expression, and that calmness disconcerted Iggwilv. "Use the Initiator on that sorry little man," the hag commanded, pointing her wand at Gord as he nimbly danced around Iuz, "and I'll see to it that you rule with us!"
Eclavdra's memories saved her. From deep inside her brain, Leda heard the warning. "That is the Baton d'Agrue, and its malign workings are not direct." Even with the alert, the terror and shaking that stole over her from crown to sole came before Leda could use her Theorpart to defend herself, let alone attack the witch. The little dark elf reeled back legs nearly beyond her control, hands trembling so badly that she almost lost her hold on the misshapen metal of the evil relic that was her only hope against Iggwilv.
"Hee, hee, hee!" the eldest witch cackled. The sound was more grotesque because it issued from the ravishingly beautiful, if depraved-looking, face of a young woman, the favorite alter-form of Iggwilv. "You didn't know that this twisty little stick never works where it's pointed, did you? Hee. hee!"
She waved the convoluted wand here and there, muttering as she did so. Vile terrors oozed forth, collected at the witch's feet, then began to creep and crawl toward the palsied girl. "Now for my piece de resistance!' she cried, and the wand began to vomit horrifying matter that fed the things that came toward her victim relentlessly.
It required all of her will, but Leda managed to shake off the panic that turned muscle to jelly, mind to gibbering lunacy. Her little fingers closed fast on Initiator, and the chill shock of its dark energies ran through Leda. The force coalesced in her brain, and from there she sent forth a wave of loathing.
The monstrous collection of gruesome things that was itself now an entity was struck by the force as a tidal wave strikes exposed shore. Back, up, over its many-formed body it went, splattering bits of itself and the noisome matter that fed it in gobbets of nauseating spray. Iggwilv was caught unprepared for such a turn, and although she dissolved her work as quickly as she could, the remains spattered her, burned her with their acidity, even as the disintegrating main body of the stuff struck the witch. It bowled her over and then was gone.
"No, you degenerate old crone," Leda hissed as she stood straight and held forth the Theorpart as steadily as an artist might hold a brush to a masterful canvas. "Let the two of us see just how potent are the forces we command."