Jak decided to gamble. He whispered the words to another spell and when he was done, he ran forward to the stairs, putting himself between the slaadi, right at the edge of the staircase. The confused slaad paid him no heed.
"Try me, you son of a diseased toad," Jak called.
He knew the insult was silly but that didn't matter. The magic of his spell lent the words power and significance. If the casting worked, the slaad would not be able to resist attacking him.
The slaad opened a gash in Magadon's stomach and whirled around to face Jak, hissing in rage. From the look of hate in the slaad's gray eyes, Jak knew that his spell had worked.
He added further insult by waving his short sword and saying, "I'm going to cut out your maggot-infested tongue and stick it so far up your polluted arse that you'll be able to lick your eyes."
He could not help but grin at that one.
The slaad dropped his sword, apparently intent on using his claws to rip out Jak's throat, and bounded up the stairs with terrifying rapidity.
Jak feigned fear, raised his blade awkwardly, and fumbled backward. The slaad rushed him. His claws closed on the halfling's chest and face. Pain blossomed.
Jak fell backward over the side of the staircase. The momentum from the enraged slaad's charge carried the creature right after.
Jak slipped from the slaad's grip, flipped in midair, and slammed his hands against the side of the tower. It occurred to him too late that the stone might hold an enchantment that would defeat his spell. His heart found his throat.
But his grip held.
Jak enjoyed a moment's satisfaction as the slaad fell, the beginnings of a scream erupting from the creature's throat.
His satisfaction vanished as clawed hands closed on Jak's ankles in a grip stronger than a vice. The weight of the falling slaad nearly dislodged the halfling, but his spell held them both hanging from the side of the tower at a height of four bowshots above the ruins. Jak kicked his feet, trying to shake the slaad loose. No use.
Jak tried to step onto the air and found that he could no longer walk on it. Magadon's psionic effect had ended. Was the guide dead? What had happened to Cale and Riven? He had no time to pay the questions further heed.
"You will pay for this, little creature," growled the slaad below him.
The creature's claws sank deeply into Jak's calves. The pain was excruciating and Jak could not contain a scream. The slaad began to scale him as he might a rope.
One claw released his calf only to sink into his thigh. Jak was dizzy with agony. Warm blood coursed down his leg.
"Magadon!" Jak screamed, praying that the guide was still alive. "Magadon!"
From above, all he could hear were the dumb moans of the enspelled slaad.
"Pain...." the slaad hanging from his legs said.
The creature sank a clawed hand into Jak's shoulder and began to pull himself up. Jak cried out in agony. He couldn't hold on much longer. He could imagine the creature's huge, fanged mouth just behind his head.
"I'll drop us both, you stinking frog!" Jak threatened, and he meant it.
The slaad tensed at that. Jak prepared to let go of the wall, praying to the Trickster that the impact of the fall would kill him quickly.
Magadon's face appeared over the ledge, and the glowing tip of a knocked, psionically-enhanced arrow followed.
As absurd as it was, Jak could not contain a smile.
"Mags!" he said.
He felt the slaad on his back tense, and could imagine the look of shock on his froglike face.
"Take your fill of this," Magadon said, and fired.
The impact blew the slaad from the halfling's back. Jak heard an aborted scream of pain and looked down between his feet to see the creature plummeting toward the ruins.
"Jak!" Magadon said. "Here."
Jak looked up to see Magadon's extended hand. Jak took it in his own sticky grasp, and the guide lifted him up to the stairway. Magadon was covered in wounds, some of them deep.
Near them, the confused slaad continued to sit on the stairs, wounding himself and muttering.
Jak ignored the creature, touched his friend, and spoke the words to healing prayers. Most of Magadon's wounds closed, and color returned to his face.
Afterward, still eyeing the confused slaad warily, Jak used more healing prayers to close the gouges in his own legs and shoulder.
They looked up toward the top of the tower, and Jak prayed to the Trickster and Tymora that Cale had made it to the top before Magadon's psionic effect had ended.
They looked at the enspelled slaad, then looked at each other.
"We'll go past him if possible," Jak said. "Through him if need be."
"Through him," Magadon said grimly.
As he advanced up the stairs toward Dolgan, the nonplussed slaad looked a question at him.
Magadon slashed open the slaad's throat with a hard cross slash. Dolgan fell backward on the stairs, surprise in his eyes, gurgling and spasming.
Magadon walked over him and up.
"Don't slip on the blood," the guide said to Jak.
Jak nodded and followed.
* * * * *
Cale waited until Azriim stepped into the glowing archway. When he did, the slaad's body blotted out the orange light and cast a long shadow behind him. Cale sensed the semi-comprehensible space-between-space that connected the shadows he'd gathered around him and the shadow that Azriim cast. As always, it was not but a step in a direction that could not be represented on a map, that most beings could not see or sense. He readied his blade, prayed that the tower did not interfere with his ability, and took the step.
A moment of motion and he found himself standing behind Azriim. The slaad must have sensed him for he started to turn, but too late. With gritted teeth, Cale drove Weaveshear into Azriim's back, through his spine, and out his green-skinned chest. Azriim screamed in pain, bared his fangs in agony, and started to fall. Some small thing the slaad had held in his hands went skittering across the floor of the chamber beyond the archway. Warm, black blood cascaded down Weaveshear's hilt and over Cale's hands. He twisted the blade as Azriim collapsed, eliciting another hiss. He put his foot into the semi-prone slaad's back and kicked him off the blade and through the archway.
The chamber under the cupola was nothing more than an open space covered with a metal roof. Arcane symbols were engraved into the metal. Cale had no idea what the cupola's purpose might once have been.
In the center of the chamber, erupting from the stone of the tower like the edge of a giant knife, was a faceted wedge of crystal taller than Cale. It pulsed with power and sent its orange beam of arcane might sizzling through the hole in the cupola and toward the top of the cavern.
"I said I would kill you," Cale said, and was surprised to hear in his words the same emotionless tone he sometimes heard in Riven's voice-the tone of an assassin doing his work.
The slaad apparently could not move his legs. On all fours, he dragged them behind him like dead things as he tried to move away from Cale.
So you did, Azriim replied, and even his mental voice seemed strained with pain.
With surprising suddenness, the slaad whirled around, pointed a palm at Cale, and uttered an arcane word. A fan of clashing colors flew from his hand and exploded around Cale-
-and drained harmlessly into Weaveshear. Cale felt the blade pulsing with the absorbed power, vibrating from its proximity to the magical beam.
Azriim's mismatched eyes went wide. He turned and dragged himself after the item he had dropped. Cale saw it lying on the floor not far from them: a silver nut latticed with black veins, about the size of Jak's closed fist. A seed.