Dor’crae turned back, but didn’t leave. Instead, he produced the skull gem and placed it in a sheltered nook next to the door, where it wouldn’t be obvious. He stared at it with great lament, wondering, and not for the first time, if he’d been wise to enlist such dangerous allies. But Dor’crae looked back to the stairwell and thought of Dahlia and the lone diamond stud she wore in her right ear, the stud to represent her only remaining lover.
What choice had she given him?
He glanced down at the skull gem. “Down the stair, Sylora,” he whispered. He paused only a moment longer before moving off to catch up to the rest of the band.
The vampire was barely out of sight when the eyes of the skull gem began to glow red once more, the artifact coming alive with the spirit of Sylora. A short while later, it did more than that, blowing forth a magical mist that took the form of the great Thayan lady.
Once she was through, opening a gate for her minions proved no difficult task.
PRIMORDIAL POWER
ATHROGATE KEPT UP HIS GREAT PACE FOR ONLY A SHORT WHILE, AND soon enough he came to a spot where he stopped cold, staring hesitantly. The walls of the stairway to either side simply stopped, and the narrow circular stairway continued to loop treacherously below him, absent even a handrail, in a wide-open chamber of many crisscrossing bridges and rail lines. The chamber was deep, the walls black with shadow, and far, far below, the floor glowed with orange and red streaks of lava. The air shimmered and waved from the rising heat.
It was loud, too, with the clanking of chains, grinding of stones, and the rumbling of massive fires.
“The stairs ain’t wet, at least,” the dwarf said to himself.
He wiped the considerable sweat from his face and started down more slowly, knowing that any misstep would lead to a long, long fall.
It seemed to go on forever, stair after stair after a hundred more stairs. Athrogate, and the others who soon followed, felt vulnerable enough on the open stairway. Then, having gone hundreds of feet below the walled section, they discovered that they were not alone.
Humanoid creatures scrambled along the lower, parallel passageways, certainly aware of the intruders. It took a while for the group to realize that the creatures moved in a coordinated manner, as if a defense was being set against them. Many of the other walkways were near enough for an archer or a spearman to be brought to bear, and many were above them, too, which left them in a terrible fix.
“Keep moving,” Jarlaxle implored the dwarf. It was rare to hear concern in the voice of Jarlaxle Baenre, but there it was.
The net around them was closing, and they all knew it-all except for Valindra, of course, who picked that moment to begin singing again.
The unknown creatures responded to that song with sharp calls of their own, birdlike but guttural, as if someone had bred a blue jay with a growling mastiff.
“Dire corbies,” Jarlaxle muttered.
“Eh?” asked Athrogate.
“Bird-men,” the drow explained. “Rare in the Underdark, but not unknown. Half-civilized, afraid of nothing, and incredibly territorial.”
“At least it ain’t orcs,” said Athrogate.
“Better that it were,” Jarlaxle replied. “Hustle, good dwarf.”
Athrogate hadn’t even touched his lead foot to the next stair when a sharp crack sounded just above them, as a stone thrown from high above clipped the metal stair.
Down they went, as more cracks of stones sounded. Valindra’s song hit an unexpected note as one rock bounced off her shoulder, though she otherwise seemed not to notice
Athrogate stopped again. Just below their position, several stone walkways crowded near the central stair, and they were not empty. Man-sized, black-bodied, bird-footed and bird-headed, the dire corbies rushed along the narrow walkways with ease and speed, and obviously without fear of missteps and deadly falls. Some glanced up at the intruders and squawked, holding wide their arms, which showed webbing from forearm to ribs, as if the appendages were caught halfway between a human’s arm and a bird’s wing.
“So, we fight,” said Jarlaxle. He snapped his wrists, his magic bracers bringing a throwing dagger into each hand. “Find the weak spots in their line, Dor’crae, and drive them from the ledges.”
“Wait,” Dahlia said before either could act. “They’re not just animals?”
“No,” the drow explained, “but close: tribal, barbaric.”
“Superstitious?”
“I would expect.”
“Keep your position here,” Dahlia bade them, and with a wry grin, she fell off the side of the stair, throwing her cloak over her head as she went.
She came out of the fall as a great crow, and uttered a series of loud, echoing cries to announce her flight. Dahlia swooped down near the dire corbies below, and when they didn’t throw their stones at her, she dared alight on the walkway in the midst of one group.
The birdmen fell to their knees and averted their eyes. Dahlia cawed again, more loudly, trying to sound angry, and succeeding, they all realized, when the dire corbies scampered away.
“Go,” Jarlaxle implored Athrogate.
And the dwarf went, with all the speed he would dare on the dizzying open stair. Dahlia flew around them, darting toward any dire corbies who ventured too near. They crossed by the area of converging walkways and came to a lower landing, where Dor’crae instructed the dwarf to turn left along an open, flat stone walkway.
Finally they came out of the vast open chamber and into another complex of ancient shops and chambers. Barely in, though, and with Dahlia still flying around outside, they ran headlong into a group of the vicious birdmen.
A pair leaped at Athrogate, who took up a battle song and a hearty “Bwahaha!” and swatted them aside with his spinning morningstars. He charged on recklessly, shouldering through another doorway, the impact knocking still more of the dire corbies aside.
“Out! Out! Ye damned freaks!” the dwarf yelled, his devastating weapons swinging fast and hard to shatter bone and throw the bird-men aside. “This is not yer place!”
Jarlaxle ran off behind Athrogate, out to the dwarf’s left, a stream of spinning daggers leading the way and driving back a group of dire corbies. He stopped throwing as he neared, double-snapping his wrists to elongate his latest pair into swords once more and leaping at the stung and dodging birdmen with a dramatic flourish. He stabbed and spun, swept one blade about in front of him then quick-stepped and thrust hard with his other blade behind the sidelong cut.
But more dire corbies rushed into the room, from a multitude of dark doorways.
“Ara… Arabeth!” Valindra cried. “Oh, watch me Arabeth, oh do. I am strong, you know.”
The lich stamped her foot and a burst of fire rolled out in every direction across the floor, beneath the feet of the drow and the dwarf, to roll up in front of them in a circle of scalding flames. Jarlaxle and Athrogate fell back in surprise, and the dire corbies shrieked and fell away, but their cries were drowned by the magically heightened song of the lich. “Ara… Arabeth! Did you see? Are you afraid? Ara… Arabeth!”
Dahlia, still in the form of a huge crow, set down in front of the group of burned dire corbies and cawed her displeasure.
The birdmen ran away.
And the expedition pressed onward.
The second group to move down the circular stair had no such protection as Dahlia had against the agitated and ferocious bird-men.
Stones flew at the dozens of Ashmadai and the red-gowned Thayan wizard as they made their cautious way in pursuit of Dahlia.
The cult warriors replied in kind, with crossbows instead of stones, and while most were shooting at distant, fleeting shadows, more than a few dire corbies screamed out in pain as barbed bolts invaded their black flesh. Sylora held her magic until the situation grew more dangerous, where the many walkways converged below the stairs.
She dropped a fireball in the middle of the convergence, warding the dire corbies away, and when she came level with the walkways, she sent bolts of lightning flashing along each. She snapped her fingers and Ashmadai warriors leaped out from the stairway above, landing on the various walkways, firing off the last of their missiles and rushing eagerly to meet the bird-men in melee, red scepters in hand.