"That's the main problem," interjected Vadania.
"Ladies, ladies," said Devis, gesturing for calm. "There's no need to fight over me. I'm perfectly willing to-"
"This has nothing to do with you, minstrel boy!" spat Lidda. "Butt out."
"Yes," agreed Vadania. "This is between me and the brownie."
"Who are you calling a brownie, you green hag!"
Tordek made a tactical withdrawal behind Gulo, who was already snuffling as the loud voices jolted him from dreams of slapping salmon out of the river-or so Tordek imagined. The thought of standing in an icy river was appealing to him, too, at the moment, as long as it was far from here.
The combatants circled each other while trading verbal barbs. Tordek shot an accusatory look at Devis, expecting him to do something to stop this quarrel. The bard only shrugged with a conceited little smile as if to say, Can't help it.
"If you weren't a friend of Tordek's," said Lidda, working up a good head of steam, "I'd…I'd…" She thrust her finger at the elf, just short of poking her in the chest.
Vadania gasped and arched her back, her head whipping back.
"Don't you mock me, elf!" cried Lidda. "I won't stand for it."
Vadania stumbled forward onto her hands and knees, and they all saw the gashes in the back of her armor and the blood dripping down the leather.
"I didn't do that!" Lidda unsheathed her blade, peering behind Vadania for some sign of her attacker.
Devis hopped up and grabbed his sword. Tordek already had his axe in hand. He swung it before him like a blind man walking through an unfamiliar room, seeking the unseen intruder.
Vadania recovered quickly and scrabbled to her feet while reaching for her scimitar, but then she let out a little shriek as another pair of slashes appeared on her sword arm. For an instant, Tordek saw the pustulant little fiend from the forge room appear beside her, but the creature vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Its mocking laughter rang out briefly, then Tordek heard its scabby feet running across the floor.
Gulo sniffed and growled as he caught the thing's scent. The big wolverine stalked forward, then snuffled the floor. He turned from side to side, unsure which way the thing had run.
Vadania fell again to one knee. Her body shook as the quasit's venom worked its way through her veins toward her heart. Lidda moved beside her, sweeping her short sword in all directions in the vain hope of cutting the invisible foe.
"You ridiculous, pathetic fools," cackled the voice. Tordek stalked toward the sound, but then it spoke again from another location entirely. "Hargrimm promises the next of Andaron's blades to the one who brings back the hammer, and that will be Yupa!"
Tordek lunged for the voice, swinging wildly but cutting only air. Devis did the same, more cautiously and with his back against the wall. Lidda stood guard over Vadania as Gulo lurched first this way, then that. All the while, the quasit mocked them from the shelter of his invisibility.
Gulo roared and twisted around to slap at his tail, which suddenly bled from a jagged wound. The quasit appeared for less than a second before scampering off again. Gulo tracked it for ten or twelve feet across the rubble then darted to the side, confused by the quickly moving scent trail.
"Leave now," cried the shrill and hateful voice. "Leave the hammer behind, dwarf, and flee. It is the only way to avoid joining your brother's bones in my master's belly!"
"You couldn't lift Andaron's Hammer, you troglodyte dropping," spat Tordek. "How will you carry it away?"
A sudden, pungent sensation surged through the room. It was a stink that was not scent, a cold, liquid urgency beyond feeling or taste or sound. Tordek swallowed hard, trying to smother the sudden urge to flee.
Vadania curled into a ball on the floor.
"Oh, good gods," babbled Devis, He almost dropped his sword as he pressed his back harder against the wall. His gaze darted from side to side, finally fixing on the front door. Tordek saw that he would bolt from the place if he could work up the nerve to leave the safety of the wall.
"Tordek!" cried Vadania. "Whatever you do, don't let that thing near those levers or we're doomed!"
He hesitated only an instant before catching her meaning. "Oh, no!" he yelled, a bit stiffly. He balked as if torn by two opposing fears, then he ran-not too quickly-toward the trap levers.
"Too late!" cried the little fiend's voice. One of the levers shot down with a clang.
Nothing happened.
Tordek took a step back and looked up at the ceiling. He half-expected the roof to fall in on them all.
"Oh, no!" shouted Lidda. "He's going to pull the second lever!"
"What?" said Tordek. "Oh, oh no!"
With a gleeful cackle, the invisible quasit pulled the next lever. Eight spears shot up from the floor just in front of the vault doors. The one nearest the levers dripped with ichor for an instant before they plunged back into their sheathes in the floor. A wet mess began pooling on the floor beside the levers. Something burbled and gasped as it made halting trails in its own blood.
"Stand back, everyone," warned Tordek, heeding his own advice by hustling away from the vaults.
Eight granite blocks fell from the ceiling. Their crash silenced Yupa the quasit's frightened squeak.
Devis held a hand to his chest as though to keep his heart from leaping out. Tordek knew just how he felt, but he managed to hide it better. Lidda seemed completely nonplussed by the infernal terror as she knelt beside the elf and popped the cork from a pewter vial then held up Vadania's head to help her drink.
"There, there," she said. "This will fix you up."
Vadania licked the last drops of the curing potion from her lips and sighed in relief. "Thank you," she said.
"Hey," replied Lidda, slipping the vial back into her belt pouch. "Anything for a friend."
"Friend?" said Devis incredulously. "Just a minute ago-"
Before Tordek could warn him, both of the women turned on him with squinty eyes.
"Mind your own business," said Vadania.
"Yeah," agreed Lidda. "Stop causing trouble, Bunny."
"I can't believe I let him snuggle with me," said Vadania.
"You think that's bad?" asked Lidda. "He kissed me, and I've seen where that mouth was recently."
"Hey!" said Tordek and Devis. They looked at each other, then they looked uncomfortably away.
"Men," said Lidda.
"Boys," corrected Vadania, and they both nodded in sympathetic understanding.
ANDARON’S TOMB
Lidda flung a handful of gold coins across the vault. They clattered into a dusty corner and rolled back out onto the granite floor. "This stinks!"
After digging through the rubble that fell on their quasit foe, they had found the secret locks to the treasury vaults. Lidda spent nearly three hours searching for further traps, disabling them, picking open the locks, and doing the same again once they found the second and third doors. When the inner seals opened with an inexorable groan, she cheered her triumph until the others did the same.
Inside they found only a few gold and silver coins spilled at the back of the vault shelves, along with the meager remnants of a much larger, long-absent trove.
Tordek and Devis inspected a row of armor and weapon racks. Most of the sagging wooden frames were bare, their timbers old and dusty. The dwarf frowned as he examined the remaining swords, axes, and hammers. They were serviceable weapons but nothing more.
"Well," said Devis, poking at a gold-plated breastplate adorned with semi-precious stones, "at least some of this stuff is pretty enough to fetch a few more coins."
"It is all gilt and ornament," said Tordek, "the sort of thing some men call 'parade armor.' No warrior-smith would have any use for such frippery. Even were you to find some fool to buy it, the price would not be worth the trouble of dragging it out of here."