"What is that?"
Enid, Polk, and the Justicar joined him in staring at the river. Behind them, Escalla did up her clothing, sparing a glance to see what everyone else found so fascinating.
"Oh, that? River Lethe. That's the little river here in the Abyss. If you wanna see something really impressive, you ought to see the Styx!" Escalla checked the set of her thong-perfect, as usual. "The Lethe flows through about half the outer planes. Crosses whole worlds! This is the muckiest end of it," The faerie finished tying up her leggings. "There's another river, about half a dozen realities away: Mnemos. Or maybe it's actually the underside of the Lethe. It holds lost memories. Sort of the counterbalance to this one. Hoopy scene, though! Look at the size of this thing!" Escalla held up the slow glass gem to scan it slowly across the scene. "There! At least we can watch it all again and laugh in about two weeks."
Enid blinked, her gaze still on the river. "Counterbalance? Why does a river need a counterbalance?"
"Yeah! I told you, this is the Lethe! If a mortal falls in that water, they lose all their memories." Escalla held one end of a tie between her teeth as she affixed her mail gloves. The roar of the river made it hard to hear. "These are the outer planes! A lot of these places are what you guys think of as 'the afterlife.' If you die, you get reborn into one of these other worlds here!"
"Really?"
"Hey, trust me on this one. I'm a faerie!" Escalla waved a hand. "They're all out there in the planes: Elysian fields, Hades, Valhalla… and the Abyss! This here is where you go if you've been a real arsehole!" The girl waved her slowglass gem at the river. "The river's like a tool. A lot of gods have their worshipers emerge from the river once they die. You know, a baptismal sort of thing. But what it really does is wipe minds! It makes lost souls into blank slates. Perfect servitors."
"Servitors?" Enid seemed bemused. "Whatever do you mean?"
Escalla exchanged a shared glance with the Justicar then hovered up into the air. "All right, these 'god' guys? Hasn't it struck you that they're just beings a bit higher up the power scale than you and I? They're a scam! They're living egos scrabbling for power. But anyway, if you believe in one, then when you die, you become the god's little puppy dog! Born into his afterworld. Maybe you get to live in ease, maybe you get to plow the holy fields and sweep the palace floors, or, if you were a bad boy, maybe you end up here as food for demons."
"The gods can't be like that!" The sphinx bridled. "The afterlife is a place of beautiful reward. Dead sphinxes go to the court of Thoth in the deserts of endless dreams!"
Escalla raised a brow. "And what happens in the palace of Thoth?"
The sphinx puffed in importance. "Well, there we have access to the riddles of the universe! The library of Thoth. The knowledge of the ages! There we are allowed to file the scrolls, dust the shelves, and issue tomes to visiting…" Enid's face fell as realization struck her. "Oh, bugger!"
Escalla tipped her finger to her friend. "Yep! Got it in one."
The sphinx hunched, then suddenly shot a concerned look at Escalla. "You don't have any gods?"
"None I'd cross the street to say hello to."
"What happens to you if you die?"
Escalla hugged her hands against her face and batted eyelids. "Oh, good little faeries are supposed to turn into forest lights somewhere in the Seelie woods." The faerie sneered. "Which is why I'm a bad little faerie. I intend to take up a role as a ghost with fashion sense. Not that it matters. None of us are going anywhere!"
"Eh?"
Escalla spread her arms to encompass her friends. "Hey! I'm a faerie princess. I don't let death screw up a perfectly good partnership!" The girl turned a barrel roll in midair, flying with her back to the vast river. "Now come on! Let's get this spider bitch squashed flat so we can go home and have some fun!"
They walked to the riverbank, the roar of the waterfall so huge that they all had to shout to be heard. Instinctively they moved upstream, away from the river mists with their looping, screaming ghosts. Escalla kept up a monologue for the uninitiated mortals.
"This is the Abyss! Six hundred and sixty-six levels straight down! Each level has the surface area of several worlds, and each one is the domain of a lord of the Abyss. They call themselves gods, but they're just demons with a few ego issues!" Escalla waved her lich staff like a guide, shepherding her friends between the massive footprints left by Lolth's palace. "We read up on tanar'ri at school. Magic resistant; fire, frost, and lightning resistant. Pains in the arse!"
Henry hunched forward against the noise, trying to be heard. "How do we take out Lolth?"
"Steel!" The Justicar took the lead, spying a ragged path to the river. "Ambush and close combat."
"Close combat." Henry listened anxiously. "How do we get close? Do we have anything we can use?"
"Yes."
The Justicar marched grimly on and said no more. Escalla whirred up and took Henry underneath her arm.
"Anything we can use? Sure! Jus has a stoneskin spell on him, and I've got combat spells up the wazoo! We have a stun symbol from Enid, a portable hole, a tangling rope, a frost wand, a lich staff, Benelux, your bow, your sword, Enid's claws, and my brain! And a little dog, too!" The faerie slapped Henry between the shoulders, dangling the slowglass gem on its string. "Hey! We've even got slowglass so we can watch the action and laugh when it's all done!"
Henry reached for the slowglass, dropped it, then almost trod on it. With a screech, Escalla whipped down and snatched the prize to safety!
"Hey! Watch it! Don't break the damned slowglass!"
"Sorry!" Henry looked anxious. "Um, would that be bad?"
"Bad? Hell yes, breaking it would be bad!" The faerie waved her hands excitedly-almost shattering the slowglass against a pinnacle of rock. "This thing screws up time! You break it, and it'd trap us all in a field of slowtime. Lasts maybe two seconds for us-and half an hour everywhere else! By the time we snapped out of it, there'd be six hundred monsters all around us ready to party-hearty with our spleens!" The girl carefully stuffed the gem down her cleavage. "Definitely non-hoopy!"
"Oh. Ah, yes." Henry blinked, looking at the gem nervously. "Definitely."
Enid came swiftly to Henry's rescue. "Henry understands. Now, where is Lolth?"
"Hmm? Oh, over the river, I guess." Escalla lofted higher, squinting into the thick, foul air of the Abyss. "All we have to do is cross."
As Escalla rose from the path, something streaked from behind a jagged spray of glass and sped straight for her. The Justicar caught the motion from the corner of his eye, drew his blade, and whirled, just managing to clip the creature.
It was one of the brass locusts, its poisoned stinger held beneath it like a lance. Escalla dived aside and only just managed to swipe the insect with her staff. The locust struck the magic staff and exploded, the blast bowling Escalla through the air. Enid leaped and caught the girl, ducking as a fresh storm of locusts spat like slingstones from the dust. Forewarned, the Justicar shielded Enid, his blade whipping up to send one locust ringing off into the dust. Others hit a wall of flame from Cinders, their wings melting in the heat. The survivors looped back to make another pass, then Henry cut the leader in two with a single shot from his crossbow. The other locusts turned tail and fled, screeching like beaten children.
The comparative silence was shocking. The attack vanished as fast as it had come. Poison from a dead locust's stinger leaked into the ash, hissing and melting the dirt into glass.