"And that's what you want me to be like," said Tazi as she and her mother headed back up the hallway, "those two weepy, addle-pated geese."
"I concede, they're high-strung," Shamur replied, peering about, checking for potential threats. So far, she saw none, though strangely, the temperature in the corridor seemed to fluctuate with every stride, cold one instant and hot the next. "Even so, they've never brought discredit on their families by drinking to excess in the lowest, filthiest taverns on the waterfront or lifting their skirts for every likkerish dolt who happens along."
"What happened to turn you into such a dried-up prig?" Tazi retorted. "Is it because you're jealous of Father's dalliances? I can't imagine why. You certainly don't show any sign of wanting him in your own bed." They reentered the foyer, where the madman still lay unconscious on the floor.
"We are not going to discuss my relationship with your father," Shamur said icily.
A groaning, grinding sound arose from the center of the chamber.
Shamur pivoted toward the noise. Bands of color-gleaming, metallic blue and black-streamed through the creamy marble form of the gorgon half of Rauthauvyr's statue. In a matter of seconds, it became a living creature, a scaly bull-like horror that stepped off its pedestal almost daintily, its scarlet eyes glowing, its tail twitching, and greenish vapor puffing from its nostri*****
Suddenly Shamur was facing a different monstrosity, a huge, vaguely man-shaped thing seemingly made of darkness. Only its fangs and long, jagged claws reflected the light of the lanterns.
It had appeared out of nowhere shortly after the explorers entered the ancient crypt, but even so, everyone reacted quickly. The men-at-arms readied their weapons, and the priests and sorcerers cast spells.
The guardian spirit pounced in among the adventurers and started killing. Neither their blades nor their incantations seemed to hinder it in the slightest. But the magic did have an effect. Around the vault stood immense yet intricate constructions built of bronze rods and faceted crystal spheres. No one in the party, not even canny old Anax of Oghma, had had any idea of their purpose. Now, however, it became obvious that they were apparatuses of some sort, charged with arcane energies. The adventurers' sorceries had somehow roused them. Dazzling, crackling bolts of power flared from the orbs and arced about the chamber, adding to the general confusion.
A swipe of the demon's inky hand sent Sorn Notched-blade's head flying from his shoulders. Then the horror dropped to all fours, lunged, and caught Kavith the Blue in its teeth. It reared up, lashing its head back and forth, and the magician dropped from its jaws in pieces. Meanwhile the sizzling blazes of power leaped brighter and brighter, faster and faster. The crypt itself began to tremble.
Stalking on silent feet, wishing she hadn't needed to sell Albruin two months ago to extricate her comrades from a predicament almost as dire as this, Shamur circled to take the shadowy colossus from behind. The demon, however, rendered her efforts useless by abruptly plunging away from her and through the ranks of its nearest opponents to charge Eskander, who was piercing it with arrow after arrow. Shamur knew it wasn't cowardice that had prompted the thin, easygoing brigand-turned-treasure-hunter to hang back and use his longbow. He'd done it because his sword wasn't magical, but his silver-headed shafts were.
She also knew, as she abruptly recalled that she'd lived through this ordeal before, what would happen next. Perhaps she screamed even before it did.
Eskander tried to dodge the demon, but he was too slow. The spirit struck with its left hand and impaled the archer's torso on three of its claws. That had likely been enough to kill him instantly, but, perhaps enraged, its head and shoulders bristling with his arrows, the shadowy giant swung him up and down, up and down, battering the only man Shamur had ever truly loved-or ever would-against the heaving sandstone floor.
Shamur charged the guardian, in her anguish scarcely noticing that the vault was now shaking so hard that it was no longer possible to run in a straight line. The silver amulet she'd stolen from Gundar's hoard bounced against her breasts. Suspecting it to be magical, she'd paid a sage to examine it shortly after her hasty flight years before. He hadn't been able to determine its precise purpose but opined that it might be some manner of protective device, and so she'd elected to hold on to it.
The demon whirled to face her, its agility uncanny in so hulking a creature. Its dark hand lashed out. She dived forward, trying to dodge the blow and get inside the giant's reach. She did avoid the spirit's claws, but its palm smashed into her, flung her off her feet, and tumbled her across the quaking floor.
For a moment she lay stunned, watching stupidly as jagged cracks spread across the rib vault of the ceiling, and the tortured stonework groaned like a god in agony. The demon loomed above her, claws poised to seize her, rend her, and she remembered that she had to keep fighting. When she tried to raise her sword, though, she found it was gone and her limbs were sluggish from shock and pain.
The guardian reached for her, and chunks of stone began to rain down from the ceiling. One of the flares of power from the sorcerous mechanisms struck the pearl in the center of the amulet, and abruptly everything was different.
The demon was gone, and the cave-in was over, though it had buried much of the chamber before it ran its course, demolishing the bronze-and-crystal constructs in the process. Evidently it had also opened some fissures from the crypt to the surface, because a bit of wan gray light was leaking in from somewhere to replace the illumination of the lanterns, none of which were burning anymore.
Dazed and bewildered, Shamur struggled to her feet and cast about for her companions. And she found them, those who weren't buried beneath piles of rubble, anyway.
They were all dead. That in itself grieved but failed to surprise her. The enigma, the grim marvel that made her blink and wonder if she was dreaming, was that they all looked as if they'd been dead for decades. Their remaining flesh was withered and leathery, their eye sockets empty, their garments rotten, their weapons and armor rusty and corroded. Dust covered all.
Numb with shock and sorrow, she couldn't even guess what the condition of the corpses might portend. She walked to the heap of stone that presumably covered Eskander's remains and stood there with her head bowed for a time. Then she made her way out into the daylight.
"Get back!" Tazi said.
Shamur did back slowly away from the gorgon, meanwhile giving her head a shake to clear it. It had been excruciating to relive the slaughter of Eskander and her friends, but she was back in the present now, facing a beast that might well prove as formidable as the guardian of the crypt had been, and this time, her daughter's life was at stake.
The scaly, taurine creature, a third again as tall as a man, turned about, eyeing its surroundings dubiously. Perhaps, Shamur thought, it was feeling so perplexed that it would let a pair of human women withdraw unchallenged. But then, cautiously, stealthily as they were moving, they somehow attracted the gorgon's attention. It glared directly at them, its blank crimson eyes flaring brighter. It bared its mouthful of fangs and stamped its hoof, cracking the terrazzo.
Grinning fiercely, the long sword in one hand and the throwing knife she habitually carried about her person in the other, Tazi interposed herself between the blue bull and her mother. Of course. The girl believed that of the two of them, she was the only trained combatant, and it was unquestionable that she was the only one armed.
Shamur peered about the chamber, seeking a weapon. There was an abundance of art objects that might serve to bludgeon another crazed lackey but nothing that could possibly harm a towering predator with a hide of natural scale armor.