The webs formed giant roads that led to a solid silver wall. One strand headed to vast doors six stories high-apparently the entrance for the spider palace. Escalla headed over to another strand, looking for somewhere decent to set down, then spied a small door of arsenic green.
The door was attended by two figures-one female, blindfolded with a shawl over her hair, and the other a tiny demon sitting at a desk and surrounded by quills. Alcoves to either side showed the presence of at least twenty armed and armored drow.
No problem. Escalla flew straight for the imp, bypassing the drow entirely. From the mouth of the portable hole, Jus's voice came hissing out.
"Escalla, are we across the river yet?"
"Almost! Now shh! There's a big fish or something here!"
Escalla flapped up to the little demon, wrestling madly with the portable hole, and screeched to a halt. Her command of tanar'ri language came from one term of classes she had slept through at school. Bawling in a panic, Escalla skidded onto the desk outside the door.
"Hey-lo! Hey-lo! Deliverings is! Special things deliverings-yes! Moment is impregnated with urgency. Hoopla!"
The little demon scowled and tapped an absurdly long quill on the desk. The blindfolded woman leaned forward, and something hissed and writhed beneath her shawl. Escalla pretended to fight with the struggling portable hole, wailing in panic and trying to hold it back.
"Yours now! For you! Not mine! I go!"
In theory, the demon would fear the bag and wave her through. Unfortunately, the creature hopped up onto the desk and pointed at the portable hole, sensing something alarming inside and apparently demanding an explanation. Escalla screamed and ran out of patience a split second before the demon.
"Tedious conversation anyway." Escalla hit the creature with her lich staff, slinging it across the desk to crash into a pile of papers, and turned into her beautiful faerie self. "Hey, uglies! See this faerie butt? Silken pure!" She whirred backward, dashing off into the mists. "Lolth sucks rocks! Lolth sucks rocks!"
There was a roar of rage. A female voice screamed, and there was a hissing of snakes. Drow yelled at one another, armored feet tramping as they poured from their guardrooms. Escalla fled on foot, theatrically dragging one leg and wing behind her. The snakes hissed a foot or two behind her, and then Escalla laughed and broke into a run.
Another alcove opened up in the wall. Escalla dodged into it, finding a short corridor that took a sharp turn to the right. The maddened hiss of vipers followed, and shadows on the walls showed a woman with hair made from a writhing mass of snakes pelting behind Escalla, followed by a dozen angry drow.
Escalla fired her frost wand at the wall ahead then dived, hitting the wall and running madly around the bend. She screeched to a halt as a sound of crashing stone and breaking glass filled the corridor.
The wall at the corner shed a last few jagged shards of ice, the sheets crashing down onto a pile of broken stone at the foot of the wall. The medusa had been confronted with a wall of reflective ice, and her gaze had totalled the entire guard contingent. They had turned to stone, hit the wall, and broken like a pile of garden gnomes. Escalla flew over the wreckage, spotted one drow still alive and unparalyzed, and bopped it unconscious with a single blow of her staff.
From inside the portable hole, Jus's voice whispered in panic, "Escalla, what happened?"
"Ha! The inevitable happened!" Escalla blew a wisp of frost from the tip of her wand. "The faerie is dealing with inferior mentalities! Now come out of that hole! We're at Lolth's back door."
The faerie threw the portable hole down on the ground. Escalla posed happily over the broken statues as her friends dazedly emerged.
"Hey, look! Wreck of the Medusa!" Escalla spied some gems gleaming about the rubble pile. "Hoopy! All this fun and cash, too!"
Annoyed, the Justicar looked over the scene. "Escalla!"
"Hey! She has some nice stuff here, and we're out of treasure!" The girl found a necklace of amber. "Ooo! Hey, Enid! Catch! This ought to pick up the color of your eyes!" The faerie coiled close into Enid's hair as she fastened the necklace about her friend. "You know a girl has to look her best."
"Best?" Enid flicked a glance at Henry and blushed pink. "Why?"
"No special reason." Fluttering upward, Escalla led the way to Lolth's back door. "All right! Tour leading to the Demonweb Pits, now departing!"
The Justicar seethed with ill humor. He kicked shards of petrified drow out of his way and pursued Escalla up the corridor.
"You promised you were just going to cross the river."
"We're across the river! Hey! Riverbanks can be kind of vague! I mean, what's a riverbank, anyway? Is it where the river stops? Is it where the river once dried? Wetlands, water meadows…"
"Escalla!"
"Hey! We're here! Trust your favorite faerie." Escalla inspected the petrified demon and stored it in the portable hole for later use as a garden ornament. "We can sneak in here. I did good!"
The Justicar looked at Henry as Polk bustled happily past them for the door.
"This is the way it's done, son! Direct, forthright, to the point!"
"Polk, shut up. Don't touch the door. It probably has an alarm spell or a trap on it." The Justicar carefully inspected the little demon's desk. "Everyone look around carefully. Watch for traps. There might be a key or a password somewhere."
"What about this?" Enid laid her face sideways on the ground, where she could take a closer look at a silver sphere the size of a lemon that had fallen off the desk. "Is this a key?"
"Oh! Is it valuable?" Escalla shot over to Enid like a lightning bolt. "Is it a pearl? A giant pearl?"
"No. I think it looks more like a spider egg." Enid batted the object with one paw, and it broke. "Oh, dear."
The sphere had been hollow, and it contained a collection of little objects: a tiny iron pyramid, a silver ball, a little bronze star, and a pale blue crystal. The Justicar took possession of them before Escalla could take one and break it.
"Keys or identity passes." The green door itself was horrible to look upon. The metal seemed to have been pressed out of tortured, screaming faces. "No one touch the door. Polk, do not touch the door! Polk!"
Polk touched the door. The badger simply butted his head against it to push it open. The door instantly glowed a blazing, hellish green, and three bolts of energy shot silently along the corridor. Jus and Enid ducked. Escalla looked up with interest. Having managed to miss the entire group, the energy bolts faded, and the door was open.
Polk looked back at Jus in irritation and gave a superior little waddle of his feet.
"Son, what are you doing lookin' for clues down there? The adventure's this way, son! This way! You're addled, son." The badger walked through the door. "Got to sharpen up your game. Fate keeps pitchin', and you keeps missin'!"
Through the door came a deep silver mist. Stinking and sour, it was as impenetrable as quicksilver. The Justicar unsheathed his sword and moved carefully for the door as Cinders searched the mist. With Escalla at his side, Enid behind, and Henry covering the rear, the Justicar edged into the Demonweb.
At the edge of the River Lethe, amidst the surge and roar of the titanic waterfall, a shape stood over a butchered body. Golden armor and an eagle helm flaked shards of rust, torn across the chest to show the ragged wound where a living heart once had been. A human hand ended one arm, and the undead monster stooped to sever the foot from a dead, bleeding denizen of the Abyss. The living cadaver held the foot against the stump of its ankle. Tendrils of flesh bound the new foot in place. Able to walk once more, the snarling corpse looked through the soot of the Abyss toward the titanic spider webs beyond.