Back in place over Jus's back, Cinders sniggered at Escalla from behind. Hee hee. Love funny faerie!
Escalla looked sideways at the hell hound, managing to look lofty despite her attire, and said, "Keep laughing, pooch. Just keep laughing."
Converted once again into a slug, Escalla moved her tail slowly back and forth. Her eyestalks were peeking under a door-the next teleport room marked upon the map. Her mouth whispered back to her friends as she carefully surveyed the room beyond the door.
"Eh. Looks like more of the same-long path, big fires beside the path, then the rest of the room seems normal. Guess they want to do the same ol' plan. Hide, then use their power to try and tug us into the flames." The worm thrashed in contempt. "Real smart boys. They get one good idea in their entire lives and just have to keep using it again and again."
The Justicar squatted beside her, ready to intervene at the first hint of trouble.
"Where are they hiding?"
"Don't know. In the fires? If they're flame proof, I guess that's their best bet." Escalla's slug body stiffened in sudden suspicion. "Ah, now there's something. Anyone here know about tanar'ri?"
The Justicar raised one brow. "I thought you knew all about tanar'ri?"
"Hey, so some days I paid less than total attention!" Escalla pulled her head out from under the door.
Stiff and hurt by a demon's claws, Henry rubbed his eyes and looked at the closed door. "Um, Escalla? Why did you ask about tanar'ri?"
"Just wondering if they can change shape." The faerie sniffed at the edge of the portable hole, smelling the stink of fish. "Has anyone noticed any vermin around here? I mean, in this whole place-apart from giant spiders-has there been a fly, a rat, a cockroach… anything?"
There was a general moment of thinking and murmuring. No, no one had seen anything. The paths and rooms were so clean as to be sterile. The Justicar pondered it and shook his head.
"Empty. Why do you ask?"
"Because there's a bunch of mice sitting over in the far corner of that room."
Everyone gathered around. Cinders was eating the last of their supply of charcoaled troll, making noises of total rapture as he did so. The Justicar tried to borrow a piece of it to draw a map and Cinders petulantly closed his snout over the treat.
Yummy troll! Cinders keep!
"We'll get you something better in a minute."
Escalla leaned close to whisper in Jus's ear. "Don't worry. You hold his M-O-U-T-H, and I'll make the G-R-A-B."
Cinders thrashed his tail. G-R-A-B spells grab! The hell hound chewed and swallowed as fast as he could. No flakes! Troll all gone, see?
"You and your damned spelling lessons." The Justicar settled on a piece of scorched fish from their rations to serve him as a pencil. "Right. So the room has a path, like this-fire trenches. No other doors?"
"Nah. None I could see." Back in faerie form again, Escalla hitched her horrible makeshift dress about herself. "Mice are over in this corner. They're probably some kind of tanar'ri, shapeshifted to try to fool us."
"Not the smartest disguise." Looking at the map, Jus rubbed his tired face. "Right So we need to eliminate the tanar'ri. That seems to activate the teleport."
The company leaned over the crude map in thought. Her nose wrinkling prettily, Enid tapped at the map with one long claw and said, "We could have Escalla attack them with a spell. Even if they're resistant, one or two of them might drop dead."
"I'm out, hon. You wanna know what spells I've got left?" The faerie always became didactic when tired and bothered. "I can do you a grease, vampire touch, a fire shield, a cloud kill, my invulnerability globe, and a web spell. Real tanar'ri-shattering stuff."
"I was only asking!"
Holding up a hand, the Justicar imposed peace. He looked up at the mists overhead and stared at the half-seen shapes of a pathway overhead. Lolth's maze was doing its job, paring away their spells and magic, weakening them steadily before they could confront the Spider Queen herself.
Always take the unexpected path. Always attack with surprise. The Justicar looked up at the pathways overhead then rose up to his feet.
"We avoid this room."
The others all looked inquiringly at him, but the Justicar never spoke until his facts were all in place. He turned from the map to the mists then folded the chart away.
"If we skip one guard room, Lolth and Recca will have no way of knowing which level of the maze we are on. We will jump up one level, then find a place to rest. We need Escalla with her spells. We need Henry healed."
Enid switched her scorched tail from side to side.
"The other paths are forty feet above us. How do we reach that high?"
"Giant growth potions. Enid, Henry, and I take the potions, Enid and I make a ladder up to the next level. Henry carries Escalla and Polk up, then gives Enid and I a hand up after him."
The mere mention of drinking giant growth potions instantly threw Escalla into a fit of panic. She fluttered about like a mad moth in a bottle.
"No! No! Look-we can get past the mice! You know-talk our way out of it or something!" Everyone was looking at the map, trying to find the best overpass to climb. "Hey! Is anyone looking at me? Hello? Hey! I can get us past mice! Mice are my speciality, I swear! I could turn into a cat or something!"
Trying to be patient, the Justicar inclined his head toward her and said, "Escalla, tanar'ri are not going to be scared of a cat."
"Jus! Those potions are for our honeymoon!" Escalla tried to whisper, painfully aware that Cinders, Enid, and Benelux were all listening. "I've got about a hundred years of theory I wanna put into practice!"
"Escalla, we need the potions."
The faerie waved her hands. "Can't we just throw a rope or something? Why hasn't Polk got rope and grappling hooks and ten-foot poles anymore?"
"Because we used to give him so much grief about it."
"Well, when did he start listening to us?" Escalla gave in with poor grace. "All right! All right! Drink the damned potions!" She kicked the potion bag over to her friends. "You know, if I didn't have Lolth to blame for all of this, you people would get me in such a huff!"
It was a brief walk to the needed overpass. Paths crossed over and under each other like a puzzle knot, but the map showed every twist and turn with total accuracy. Potions were drunk, and the giant adventurers formed an awkward human ladder through the mists.
The fog tugged and shoved at them like a living force as they climbed. Faces screamed in the mists-horrific skeletal figures were blown apart in the currents, only to reform into horrible weeping shapes. The Justicar grimly ignored it all, getting on with the job at hand.
Enid proved to be the major obstacle. They managed to boost her up onto the overhead path with some very indelicate shoving and tugging that left Henry blushing and speechless. The giants collapsed in a heap, panting and exhausted. Clambering out of the portable hole, Escalla and Polk walked over Jus's heaving chest. Polk looked about the empty pathways and gave an irritated scowl.
"Son! Are we there yet?"
"Not yet." Big as a titan, the Justicar raised his head to look at Polk. "Soon."
"Well, come on, son! We have to move. Keep the opposition off balance! Haven't you absorbed any of my tactical training?" Polk leaped to the ground. "The boy procrastinates. Hard thing to say, but the boy just lacks any get-up-and-go."
Surveying the panting wreck of her friends, Escalla frowned as she dragged Cinders from the portable hole and unrolled him on the floor.
"What's wrong with you guys?"
The Justicar sat up, towering vast and grim above the path, and replied, "Enid is bigger than we thought."