A cry of pain made her spin on her heel, looking back toward Vheod. Chare'en had managed to grasp the cambion in the tendrils of his many-tailed whip. Blood flowed from numerous wounds inflicted by the barbs and spines on the whips. As Vheod struggled to free himself, Chare'en laughed and burst into infernal flames.
Or at least, that was what Melann thought at first. Instead, she saw after her eyes adjusted to the unpleasant light of the piercing flames, that the tanar'ri had somehow immolated himself, sheathing his body in flames that seemed to inflict no pain on him whatsoever. The fire lapped at Chare'en's flesh like waves of water, and as he continued to laugh the balor pulled Vheod closer and closer to him and to the conjured fires of chaos and evil.
Melann bounded toward this scene as Vheod still strained at the coils of the whip that trapped him. She raised the staff, gripping it in both hands, and charged Chare'en with it as if it were a spear. The heat of the fire forced her back. She couldn't get close enough even to strike. With a mighty yank, Chare'en drew Vheod into the flames and held him close in a fiery, life-quenching embrace.
"No, please, don't," she protested in vain. "Vheod! I love you!"
She wasn't sure until now, but it was true. Vheod's nobility, strength, and passion were greater than anyone she'd ever met. Now, it would seem, he would be taken away from her before she could ever tell him, for the roar of the flames drowned out her words.
To her surprise Vheod still struggled in the grasp of the fiend. While the flames obviously burned him, he withstood the heat with a greater fortitude than she would have believed possible. His Abyssal heritage must give him such strength, she reasoned, but could it be enough? She was near exhaustion and thought if she could only reach Vheod, she might possibly be able to call on the power of Chauntea once more to heal him, but then she would be of no further use.
She charged forward again and was again repelled by the flames. The twisted laughter of Chare'en still filled the room. It drew her attention, however, to the orrery-like rotating device spinning almost silently in the room. She had seen it earlier strike the demon and almost knock him down. She'd also seen the face within the metal that appeared when it struck him. Perhaps she could get it to strike again-but if she did, it would strike Vheod as well.
Melann ran back to the center of the room. The base of the device was an immobile tripod of metal that surrounded the now-open glass prison. The top of the tripod, where the three supports joined, held a spinning disk from which curved metal supports extended at various lengths into the chamber. At the end of each was one of the metallic, three-dimensional shapes that whirled in circles. Some moved up and down as well as around. Most were joined to other shapes by further metal supports, so that the entire superstructure moved as one-around, up and down, with many of the individual parts spinning on their own.
Melann tucked the staff into her belt at her back and began to climb up one of the legs of the giant tripod. The support was about as thick as she was, and so by wrapping her arms and legs around it she was able to quickly inch her way up the outer surface of the leg. Near the top, she reached up and grabbed onto the disk that turned horizontally. She was surprised by the force that tore her from the leg. As she held on with all her might, she whirled around on the spinning disk.
Pulling herself up on top of the disk, she found she could stand on it and maintain her balance between the various supports that sprouted forth and connected to the rest of the structure. The whole thing obviously functioned by magic, for she found nothing resembling a mundane mechanism at the center of the device to turn the disk. She reasoned that perhaps the device was some sort of magical generator that powered the prison to hold Chare'en. No other explanation for its existence seemed to make sense. Experimentally, she leaned against one of the supports and began to shake it using her weight. To her surprise, she was able to cause the entire device to waver slightly.
As she turned, Melann saw Chare'en and Vheod. Again to her surprise, she saw that Chare'en had dropped Vheod to the floor, where the cambion writhed in burned agony-but he was alive! Chare'en reeled backward, but Melann had no idea why. She turned past them and no longer could get a good view of what happened.
By the time the device circled her around, Melann could see that Chare'en clutched at something sticking in his left eye. As the fiend staggered backward he roared in pain. With his movement, however, Melann saw past him to the doorway.
Whitlock stood between the open bronze doors, a crossbow weakly dangling in his hand. As she passed around past the scene again, Melann determined that her brother would almost certainly drop at any moment. She had to do something-now was her chance.
Once again, despite the growing dizziness she felt from the rapid rotation, Melann grasped one of the supports and began attempting to shake it. Throwing her weight into it, she caused the device to shudder and shake. With each moment, it grew more violent. The shapes, one by one, stopped spinning on their own. Each formed a humanlike face in the metal surface, each turned toward her. As they rotated around the central axis, shifting up and down, near and far and throughout the room, the faces all moaned with voices of metal fatigue: "No!"
She ignored them. Melann didn't stop. "We maintain the prison of the balor, Chare'en. We were placed here by Braendysh. It is our duty for all time to ensure he does not escape…" the voices continued.
''You failed, whatever you are," Melann whispered as she shook the support. "It's my turn now."
As the support wobbled more and more dramatically, the voices moaned and protested more.
Meanwhile, she saw Chare'en remove the crossbow bolt from his eye and toss it to the ground. Black and green fluid poured from the wound, but already the flow began to ebb. Suddenly, two of the metal shapes clashed together as the device swayed and shook, and the different moving parts began to turn out of sync. The whole structure careened out of control. Supports began to bend and tear apart.
Melann's eyes grew wide. "What have I done?" she shouted, though only she could hear herself.
The floor was fifteen feet below her at least, but she had to get off" the device, and quickly. She stood on the disk, retaining her balance, when a powerful shudder echoed through the chamber. As she'd hoped, a part of the magical generator slammed into Chare'en. The tanar'ri was carried across and around the room a fair distance. Unfortunately, the same shock sent Melann tumbling off the disk to the ground below.
She landed with a crack, and the arm that she reflexively put out to cushion the long fall snapped like a tree branch. Pain shot through her body as she rolled along the floor.
Long, agonizing moments passed while Melann couldn't bring herself even to open her eyes. In her self-imposed darkness, she could hear the once nearly silent device screaming like a thing in pain. Another moment passed before she realized that she screamed in pain right along with it.
Somehow she dragged herself to her feet, clutching her broken arm. She thought it likely that she might have broken a rib or two, judging from the pain in her chest. Luckily, her legs seemed relatively unharmed and she was able to stumble to what she believed was, where Vheod lay, which fortunately was near Whitlock and the exit.
Melann got lucky, or perhaps Chauntea continued to watch over her, for after only a few dozen short, stumbling steps she came to Vheod. She looked down, and what she saw made her no longer feel quite so much pain herself. Vheod's clothing-apparently as well as the straps of his breastplate-had burned away, leaving him with little covering his bloody, black flesh. He was horribly burned, and he curled up like a dying animal.