T. H. Lain
Return of the Damned
Prologue
Naull lay bleeding at the feet of the blackguard. She had saved her friends-saved Regdar-from death in the City of Fire by trapping the blackguard with a bead of force. The bead trapped Naull as well.
"That was quite a stunt, wizard," taunted the black-garbed figure standing over her.
Naull said nothing. She wanted to lash back at the horrid, armored woman, but in a few minutes both of them would die anyway. Naull was too badly hurt to spend her last moments in fruitless argument.
The City of Fire slipped steadily back into its pocket dimension. The portal to the Prime Material Plane was closed, and the city could no longer hold its position between the planes.
That wasn't the problem.
With the portal closed, the city would return completely to the Elemental Plane of Fire. Already flames lapped under the door frame and through cracks in the walls. The journey from one plane to the next didn't take long.
The force bead trapping both Naull and the blackguard would protect them for a while. Like all magic, eventually its power would fail. When that happened, Naull would be instantly incinerated.
It's not so bad, she thought. The end probably would come so fast she would feel nothing.
Behind her, the blackguard struggled with something inside her pack before pulling out a long, dirty-white staff.
Naull's curiosity got the best of her. "What is that?" she whispered.
The blackguard looked down at the injured wizard, but instead of the cruel scowl that Naull expected, the blackguard smiled.
"This is the thigh bone of a man I killed a few months ago," she said, gripping the rod with both hands. "I don't believe you knew him."
Naull cringed away, afraid the blackguard might find it amusing to beat her with it as a sacrifice to Hextor. "What are you going to do with it?"
"I'm going to break it," she said simply. With a crack, the blackguard snapped the bone in half against her own leg.
A blue-white spark crackled from the broken ends as a dark, red liquid poured from the hollowed-out bone. The blackguard's hands glowed with magical energy, and she reached for Naull.
The wizard squirmed away, but there was no room. The evil woman's hands clasped around Naull's arms. In the next moment, blackguard and wizard teleported away from the lapping flames of the Plane of Fire to a place of cold and intense darkness.
The City of Fire disappeared instantly. The effect was so startling that Naull first thought the blackguard had cast a spell to blind her. Then she felt the woman release her arms and shout the demonic word for light.
The smell of torches igniting filled Naull's nostrils. Light blazed in the wizard's eyes, and she squinted against the sudden, extreme change.
Naull lay on a floor of sand at the feet of the blackguard. The City of Fire was gone. They were now in a huge cavern. Torches on barbed poles formed a ring around the two women, outlining a large oval. Sooty whisps of smoke spiraled from the flames into darkness above. The light thrown by the torches was enough to illuminate everything inside the oval, but outside its circumference and up above, the light trailed off into nothing, seemingly swallowed by blackness.
The blackguard walked away. The sand crunched under her boots as she went, the sound doubling and redoubling in echoes across the dark chamber. As she reached the line of torches, she lifted one from the ground.
Naull pushed herself onto her knees to watch the blackguard as her torch receded into the darkness. The moving flame revealed more sandy ground, growing steadily smaller as the woman walked farther and farther away. Finally, it was no more than a ring of light flickering in the darkness.
After struggling to her feet, the wizard limped in the opposite direction. Her footsteps were loud against the packed sand in the quiet chamber. Naull watched over her shoulder, expecting the blackguard to give chase.
The ring of light in the distance continued on its course, apparently unconcerned by Naull's escape.
Crossing through the oval of torches, Naull turned her attention to the ground before her. She was only a few steps beyond the ring, but already the light grew weak. The farther she advanced, the darker the sand appeared, until she could see nothing but blackness beneath her feet.
Laughter from far behind stopped Naull in her tracks. Another ring of lights flared to life, these giving off the unmistakable blue-white glow of mage-lit stones. The floor on either side of Naull was fully illuminated, but before her, bare inches ahead of her feet, it plunged away into a deep chasm. She tottered and nearly lost her balance before her eyes could refocus.
Across the gap, the ground rose in steps like the seats of a coliseum.
Naull backed away from the edge and turned around. The magical lights revealed an enormous cavern. The oval of torches was ringed on three sides by the steep drop off. The coliseum seats followed the chasm all the way around the cavern, forming an immense gladiatorial arena.
She could not see the ceiling. It was too far above to be lit from the floor. Hanging from that vague darkness were heavy chains, and the chains suspended a dozen or more rusted, metal cages. Bones and rags stuck through the bars or swayed below the floor grates.
Directly across from Naull, far off on the fourth side of the arena, sat a huge throne. Jagged bits of obsidian formed the arms and legs. Above the seat back, inscribed into the stone, was the spiked gauntlet of Hextor, crushing in its grasp four wickedly barbed arrows.
The blackguard sat casually on the throne. "Now," she said quietly, her voice echoing and carried to Naull's ears by the shape of the cavern, "the question isn't so much how I will torture you, but how can I most benefit from it?"
One year later.
The chitinous snap of mandibles echoed against a pock-marked stone wall and a severed human head bounced into a puddle of blood. A helmet, knocked loose from the head, rolled round and round with a warbling clang, speeding up in its last few rotations before finally spinning to a stop. Next to the head, a man's body slumped to the ground with a soft thump.
Regdar wrenched his greatsword from a heap of oozing, gray-green flesh and turned toward the sound. Bodies lay scattered across the darkened floor. Blood ran in rivulets down the slanted passage until it collected again at the foot of a very large beast.
"Another umber hulk," grumbled Regdar. The creature stood at the end of the passage. At its feet lay the remains of an adventuring party-among them Regdar's close friend Whitman.
The fighter looked up at the beast with a burning hatred rising along his spine. Behind the creature, a few beams of natural light lancing down from the ceiling illuminated the dusty air, revealing a large chamber. From where Regdar stood, it looked as if the room might have been a bathhouse at one time.
The fighter sneered and lifted his blade. "Still hungry?" He took two quick steps forward. "Have a bite of this," he hollered. Then he launched himself into a charge down the hall, his greatsword raised overhead with both hands.
In just eight long steps, Regdar closed the distance between him and the half-ape, half-beetle monstrosity. The umber hulk flinched and stepped back. As Regdar swung his heavy blade, the tip scraped across the ceiling, showering sparks along its overhead arc.
The weapon sang as it swung free of the stone, but then it bounced sideways off the creature's thickly armored forearm. Regdar stumbled and struggled to keep hold of his sword.
The monster clacked its serrated mandibles. Its claws descended on the off-balance fighter. The first crashed against his breastplate. Sharp talons screeched, leaving deep creases in the gray metal. The second hit Regdar in the right shoulder, and the impact knocked him upright again.