"Open it," she bellowed to the lich.
Szass Tam made a single pass of his skeletal hand, and the gate's lock sprung free. Tazi threw open the doors, and the raging ores streamed past her into the growing darkness. She cast one backward glance at the necromancer and charged after her troops.
The barracks opened up onto a gentle, downward-sloping stone field. Tazi felt the ground crumble beneath her boots. The heat from the mountains had turned much of the upper layers of rock to brittle pumice. To the east, the lava had made some progress down the peaks, and the demons continued to flow out of the crevices of the Thaymount. Off in the distance, Tazi saw the darkenbeasts swirling around Justikar and beyond them, the zombie troops began their march out.
A strange caw made Tazi turn her head and draw her sword. Not twenty feet away, a stable of riding animals was ablaze. The same intense heat that had cracked the ground beneath her had ignited the wooden slats of their pen. Tazi ran over to them and kicked out at the fence. Wood splintered everywhere, and the frightened mix of animals, eyes rolling wildly in their heads, burst out. Black unicorns and more ordinary horses galloped past her, as well as stranger creatures. One of the last ones to run past Tazi was Naglatha's own griffon: Karst.
She must have tethered it here, Tazi thought, and forgot about it in her hasty departure.
Tazi caught the beast by the neck, and it reared but couldn't break her fierce grip. Tazi swung her leg around the creature's lionlike body and hung onto to its mane with its mixture of feathers and fur. The griffon stood back on its powerful legs and thrashed about with its front claws in an attempt to buck Tazi from its back.
"No!" she screamed defiantly and held on tight.
Tazi had only seen a griffon once before in her life, though it was too young to be ridden. But, as a pampered child from a wealthy family, she had ridden her fair share of horses. And, as soon as she was old enough, Tazi had joined her brothers when there were mounts to be broken and displayed an aptitude for the task that surpassed her brothers, much to their chagrin. She hoped that breaking a griffon would be much the same.
Tazi wasn't disappointed. After a few minutes, the griffon settled down and seemed resigned to its rider. She kicked at its sides and clucked her tongue like she would've at a horse. The creature turned its large eagle head back toward her and glared with its golden eyes. And it took off in a grand, loping run.
Before the griffon had gone thirty feet, it sprang into the air with a great flapping of its wings. Tazi felt a moment of exhilaration as they soared into the air, the horror forgotten for one fleeting second. She pulled on its feathers like reins and turned the griffon, so they banked back around toward the barracks. Tazi leaned over to one side and shouted to the ores.
"To me!" and she didn't even realize she had switched from Common to Orcish, though the language was previously unknown to her. The ore troops stormed after her as Tazi headed over to Justikar.
With the wind rushing past her face, Tazi hoped her burning cheeks would cool. But the air was dry and hot and did nothing to soothe her. She could see the duergar cursing and shrieking at the sky, assembling his fell forces. Most, as far as she could tell, responded to him to one degree or another. As she glided in closer, Tazi saw that there appeared to be no end in sight to the line of monsters that spewed from the Thaymount, though they seemed to be mostly concentrated around one of the central peaks.
Creatures the likes of which Tazi had never seen, even in nightmares, crawled down the steep slopes. There were darkenbeasts by the thousands streaming from their caves. Unlike the others, these creatures had burning red eyes, and their bones glowed red as well-not the green and purple she had seen before. Otherwise, there was little else that set them apart from the creatures under their own control. Lamias slithered from their dens by the dozens. But these sluglike creatures were fat and bloated like corpses left too long in the sun. Mostly gray, they had long, stringy hair and shiny bodies. By the red radiance of the lava and the eruptions, Tazi realized they left a slime trail behind them, and her gut instinct told her that trail would be poisonous.
She tugged along the griffons left flank, and they banked that way, slowly gliding down to the dwarf. But in the other direction, Tazi observed a different group of Eltab's forces. Climbing with great expertise against the slopes were monsters as tall as an average human. At first glance, Tazi thought they were the lizardfolk indigenous to the Surmarsh that Naglatha had mentioned. However, like the Thaymount lamias, the lizards were albinos. And Tazi recalled that the other lizardfolk were supposed to be simpletons at best. From her perch, Tazi could see several of the ones in the lead clearly give orders to those bringing up the rear. She watched as they fanned out and moved down the cliffs like they were a part of them, descending on all their limbs or walking upright, changing between modes when necessary.
The griffon lighted down next to Justikar, and he pulled his stolen war axe free, ready to ward the creature off.
"No," Tazi called to him and jumped off her mount to stand protectively in front of it. The griffon flapped its wings and squawked at the dwarf.
"Remember me, do you?" he asked. "Well, I remember you and what I owe you."
"No," Tazi warned him again and shoved him back, striking him in anger for the first time.
Justikar stumbled from her touch and turned back to her in surprise. "Who did you slaughter?" he asked, and looked her up and down.
"No one yet," she replied bleakly, "but that's all about to change." She grabbed him by the shoulder and continued.
"You see there," she said and pointed to the range of peaks east of them. "As far as I can tell, most of the demons are escaping from those points." She released her hold on the duergar and squatted down, drawing a map in the fresh soot at their feet. "If we can get our forces to form a semi-circle from here-" she motioned with her finger to the drawing of the gorge between the peaks- "to here-" she then drew a line to the location where she had seen, from her aerial pass, a dormant field of ashfall- "we might be able to cut them off."
"And what about the lava?" he added.
Tazi looked up to meet his grim stare. "One thing at a time."
She rose up. "I'll take the foot soldiers and lead them into position. Can you handle those in the air?"
"Do I have a choice?" he grumbled.
Tazi heard the echoes of Szass Tarn's words when she answered, "You always have a choice."
Without waiting for a reply, Tazi mounted the griffon and kicked it hard with her heels. The winged animal leaped into the sky almost joyously, and Tazi felt that it was only happy when in flight. Or perhaps it just felt safer there, away from the trembling ground. Considering the black and red clouds of darkenbeasts that were forming along the gloomy horizon like a storm, Tazi was certain the beast would soon revise its notions of safety in the sky.
She pulled on its feathers, and they swooped down low over the battalions of zombies. Though dead, they wore an eager look on their faces as though anticipating the coming bloodshed. Tazi was uncertain how to order them. She reached over and gingerly rested her right hand along the fell mark on her left shoulder. She closed her eyes and imagined the undead lining themselves up as she had envisioned it. She kept the images clear and simple. When she opened her eyes again and circled back around, she could see that they had begun to take up her formation.
Tazi soared down close to the ground where the troop of Blooded Ones had gathered just downhill from the zombies. They were hardly winded from their run, and Tazi could see several of them were gnashing their heavy canines and sniffing the air hungrily. Watching them, she could feel the blood start to throb in her own head. She drew her sword and pointed toward the ashfall in the distance.