Holy Opposites 34

Chapter Twenty Three:


	Time meant less underground.  The passage of days was measured by how long it took the spellcasters to replenish their magic.  When the four of them reassembled after a light meal and a nap, it was dinnertime in the world above, and early morning in the Night Below.

	Benra hugged Luanea goodbye and bowed to Doshellas, then shook both Paladins’ hands.  “Good luck down there, you all,” he said.  “Do return if you need us.”

	Axio and Cavria saluted, the drow genuflected.  “Thank you for your hospitality,” Axio said for the group.  “We’ll be back as soon as we’re finished.”


	The journey onward was slow.  Axio chafed under the necessity, but it was probably going to save them.  The four warriors – they were technically adventurers now, weren’t they? – advanced through the outer reaches of Undermountain, ready for action.  The silence was unnerving.  He had grown up in Waterdeep, so he knew the stories about monsters, madmen, criminals, and worse.  The halls of Undermountain had killed thousands of people over the years, and those were just the ones lucky enough to actually die.  Halaster Blackcloak and his psychotic apprentices had more inventive ways of permanently disposing of their toys.

	“Pit trap here, disabled,” Doshellas said.  He indicated the floor with an arrow he had in his left hand.  His right held a torch.  All three clergy had cast light on something they were carrying, and still held torches.  No such thing as too much illumination in the Underdark.  They could always fall back on their darkvision if they needed it.

	The room they were in had clearly been well traveled.  There were defined pathways around the traps that couldn’t be disarmed, with large splotches of brown paint on the walls to denote falling panels.  Every door hung open, and most had had their locks physically removed.  Their caution didn’t stem from the traps.  The problem was the monsters.

	There were bones scattered everywhere.  Most were from beasts, but at least two looked like partially eaten human remains.  Axio had found arrows embedded in walls, as well.

	“Movement,” Doshellas whispered, and they all froze.  A pair of bats flapped by, and after another moment of silence, he waved them onward.

	“Axio, compass check?” he murmured.

	Axio withdrew his magic compass and studied it in the torchlight.  “Seems… yes.  It’s that way,” he said.  He pointed off in a direction that looked random to the others.  “So we’ll have to move south and west a bit to find it.”

	“Got it.”  Doshellas withdrew a map and studied it.  “Hmm.  Want to avoid portals and gates if we can,” he said in his whispery voice.  “Unreliable, not always mapped.  Halaster was ripshit.”

	“No kidding,” Cavria said.  The debased statues on the walls made even her skin crawl.  They had passed rooms with elaborate alchemical instruments in them that were indistinguishable from torture devices.  “So how do we get there?”

	“Don’t know.  No direct route that I can see.  Could try the Shaft,” Doshellas said doubtfully.  “Not safe, though.”

	“The Shaft is filled with thousands of gargoyles.  We’re not going anywhere near it,” Luanea said firmly.  “Nor are we taking the Pit of Ghanadaur.  I will not set foot in that unhallowed cesspool without an army behind me.”

	“Stairs it is,” Doshellas said reluctantly.  “There are passages around.  We need to find one.”


	I stood ahead of the others as they talked, scanning the corners of the next room.  The path we had been following branched here, and I saw far less paint on the walls ahead.  I didn’t see movement, but that didn’t mean there was nothing there.

	I cautiously leaned through the door, scanning for traps.  “I don’t see anything up here,” I called back.

	The others joined me.  “Looks like this was a storeroom,” Luanea said.  Doshellas scanned the room with his experienced eyes.

	“Hmm.  Fight happened here, recently,” he said.  He pointed to two nicks in the wall.  “No dust on those.  Can smell blood.”

	We all drew our weapons and advanced, eyes scanning around for trouble.  We didn’t make it ten feet.

	Axio heard it first.  His eyes flew open as he saw the monsters.  “Specters!” he shouted, and something came through the wall at us.  It was a specter, all right, with a smaller one behind it.  It was in the shape of a humanoid, but I couldn’t make anything else out.  The tormented soul screamed as it lunged at us.

	Doshellas whipped his bow out as Axio cast a spell.  The ranger’s bow glowed with holy light, and both specters slowed their approach.  Doshellas fired as I turned to cover the others’ backs.  Sure enough, another undead was emerging from the side of the room, phasing through the stone like it were water.

	“Another one here,” I said, and I raised my glaive.  I cast divine favor on myself, and charged into battle.

	I drove the glaive into the specter, and it howled forlornly, before swiping at me with its phantasmal claws.  I grimaced in pain as it found a chink in my armor, but I still stood.  I stepped sideways and swung the glaive in two long arcs, side to side, and the specter started to flicker as I damaged its corporeal link.

	Axio was a whirlwind of movement, as was Luanea.  The priestess slashed with her bastard sword, finishing off the smaller specter, but the larger one was undeterred.  It clawed at Doshellas, who sprang backwards and rolled away as Axio cleaved through it.  The specters certainly didn’t like the radiant light of our weapons.  It seemed to be doing as much damage as the actual blades.  The one I was fighting flickered again and rose high in the air.  A beam of black magic struck me in the chest, and I stumbled, but I forced back the sudden agony.  “Not so easy,” I snarled, and I swung the glaive high.  The specter disappeared with a scream.  “Kelemvor take you, pitiful thing,” I said, before I doubled over with a racking cough.  I supported myself on the wall and spit out something black, which was not a good sign.

	Silence fell as the last specter withered to a divinity-infused shot from Doshellas.  Luanea was at my side in an instant.  “Here, let me help you,” she said, and I felt inexpressibly soothing relief flow into my lungs as Eilistraee’s magic healed the necrotic damage the specter had done.”

	I squeezed her hand.  “Thanks, Luanea,” I said, drawing a ragged breath.  “Everybody else okay?”

	Axio was healing himself with his divine power pool, I noted, but I had barely asked when he pulled his hand away from his left arm and revealed healed skin.  He rolled his sleeve back down and buckled his dented armor back in place.  “I am now,” he said when he was done.  “Those poor ghosts hit hard.”

	Doshellas hadn’t been injured.  Luanea nodded.  “All right, then,” I said.  “Where to now?”

	Axio was tilting his head to look through the door to our left, the opposite of the way the map said we should be going.  “Huh.  Anybody else see that?” he asked.

	I looked past his shoulder and saw a large wooden box on the floor of an adjacent room.  There was no paint nearby, but the idea that there would be something valuable this close to Skullport beggared belief.  “Yes, but it smells like a trap,” I said.  I walked almost all the way to the doorway and gingerly poked at the box with my glaive.  Sure enough, it sprang open and tried to bite.

	“Mimic,” Doshellas remarked.  I withdrew the glaive and rammed it into the creature’s midsection.  Doshellas walked up next to me and shot the impaled creature twice, and it died with a gurgle.

	I walked into the room and kicked at the dead creature, and a piece of gold fell out of its side.  “Hey, this thing ate some real money,” I chuckled.  I grabbed the coin and pocketed it.  “Now, just a few hundred more, and we’ve turned a profit!”

	Axio laughed, and Luanea and Doshellas both smiled.  I knew jokes weren’t always going to be the appropriate response in circumstances like these, but for now, I could help keep humor high.


	Darius Vorthane watched, stone-faced, with Bastienne Toller beside him, as a thief told a story.

	“Found Paladins.  Preparing Raid, Undermountain,” the thief read in his sending.  “Traveling With Drow Cleric, Seeking Hidden Temple.  Know Toller’s Name.  Entering Through Skullport.”  He looked up from the paper in his hands as he approached the twenty five-word limit.  “Going Dark, Now, Toller.  Won’t Return Here.”  His image faded away to mist, which promptly dissipated.

	“I’m glad your man has a sense of loyalty,” Darius said lightly.  He withdrew the psionic tendril he had been using to tap in to Toller’s perceptions and watch the spell’s arrival.

	Toller cursed bitterly.  “Undermountain?  Why Undermountain?  The temple is nowhere near Undermountain.”

	“They don’t know that.”  Darius refocused on his portly subordinate.  “But you, Toller, your laboratory and satellite altar, they were in Undermountain, were they not?”

	“Yes,” Toller admitted darkly.  “If they find the golem there…”

	Vorthane’s fist came out of nowhere, taking Toller square in the eye.  The cleric pitched backwards over his chair and landed on the floor, stunned and bleeding where the impact had split the skin.  His master loomed over him.  “Now you’ve done it,” Vorthane said, with a voice from the grave.  “You created a Wire golem without my instruction, not once, but twice?  Oh, Bastienne, how you have sinned…”

	Toller struggled to his feet, but Darius was faster, and he cast a spell.  Toller stumbled and faceplanted as the world went dark.