Holy Opposites 39

	Axio and Doshellas peeled off in one direction, while Cavria and Luanea walked the other.  They carefully walked around the room in the manic maze of Undermountain, but to Axio’s increasing frustration, they found nothing.  The room was entirely sealed off.

	When they reconvened, the expressions on the women’s faces told him everything he needed to know.  “All right.  Suggestions?” he asked softly.

	Cavria shook her head.  “Nothing.”

	Doshellas just looked unhappy.  Luanea glanced back the way they had come.  “How do they get in and out?”

	“A gate or portal, I would guess,” Axio said.

	“This place is full of those,” Luanea said.  “I know, it’s insane, but what option do we have?”

	Axio stared at her.  “A random door in Undermountain?” he asked in astonishment.  “Luanea, those portals don’t even all lead to other spots on this planet!  We could go to Glyth for all we know!”

	“Then I’m out of ideas!” she said.

	Axio ground his palms against his face.  “Damnation.  Listen, we fade back one room and I will try to pray to Ryaire for advice.  I can contact her as her Chosen.”

	“Yeah, when were you going to tell me that?” Doshellas asked.  He sounded vaguely piqued, but it was hard to tell with him.

	“I wasn’t,” Axio admitted.  “Even some of my own clergy don’t know.  Not yet.”

	“Humph.  I’m not hiding anything, if you’re curious,” Doshellas said curtly.  “How did the lantern illusion know?”

	Axio felt like snapping back, but refrained.  “Whatever.  I don’t know.  You all rest, I’ll see what I can see.”


	The other three adventurers sat around a table in the empty banquet hall they had found in the previous chambers.  The place settings were immaculate, the candles waiting a match, and the chairs soft and comfortable, but no food had ever been served here, not in at least a century.  Axio was out in the hall, praying with his badge of office in his hands.

	Cavria crossed her arms and sat back in her chair, then winced in pain.  She had compressed her wings against the chair.  “Mph.  That hurts,” she muttered.

	“So you just… know how to use those?” Doshellas asked.  He was staring at her in the utter darkness of the room.  “They just work?”

	Cavria shrugged.  “I guess.  I don’t think they’d work if I wasn’t magical.”  She flapped one wing, and the dust on the floor stirred.  “They’re not big enough to let me fly, but they work somehow.  I don’t know.”

	Luanea looked at her askance.  Cavria noticed.  “Look, Luanea, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.  I’m really ashamed of what I am,” she said bluntly.  “This isn’t something I’m, you know, proud of.”

	The drow priestess met her eyes.  “I know how you feel.”

	“You do?”

	“I worship Eilistraee.  That’s a death sentence amongst other drow.  I could never go to the major cities of the Underdark, not openly.”  Luanea rested her head on her crossed arms and looked blankly into the empty room.  “We’d both be killed if we went about our homes openly.  I should have been more sympathetic once I heard the truth.”

	Cavria shook her head.  “No, that wasn’t what happened,” she reminded her friend.  “You only drew on me once I lost my amulet.  As soon as I explained, you put your weapon down.  You did the right thing.”

	“Thank you.”  The priestess looked out the hallway at where Axio was sitting cross-legged.  “I hope Ryaire is listening.”

	“She is,” Cavria said, in total confidence.  “I promise.”


Chapter Twenty-Five:


	Axio had his eyes closed.  He clutched his badge of office so tightly it was leaving marks on his skin.  ‘Beloved Ryaire, you who tend to the lost innocent, I beg you now, on bended knee and with a heart of fear, aid us,’ he said in his mind.  ‘Never have you been needed more.  There is a room full of child sacrifices literally feet from us, and we cannot reach an entrance.  Please, for their sakes, I ask that you show me the way.  I know not how many souls will be lost if I fail, but it will be many.  I plead with you, grant me your wisdom.’

	He opened his eyes and looked around hopefully.  Nothing was changing.  He lowered his badge to its usual position as he stood, still looking around.  It slipped from his fingers and clattered on the floor.  He stooped to retrieve it, and when he went to pin it to his armor, it slipped away again.  He muttered a curse and bent over, and it slid away from his fingers once more.

	Axio froze.  Ryaire was showing him something.  He slowly withdrew his hand and thought furiously.  The badge was falling down, onto the ground.  Out of his hands.  He lifted it and tried to pin it to his chest again, and once again it fell away…

	Landing on the same tile every time, face-down.

	Axio clenched a fist.  “Yes, great-grandmother, I see,” he whispered.  “Thank you.”

	He charged back into the dining room.  “I have it!” he announced.  The others looked up.  “We go down one more level and go up!  Through the floor!”

	“We saw another stair a few rooms back, but it was blocked,” Cavria recalled doubtfully.

	“By simple stones!  We can solve that, I assure you,” Axio said urgently.  “Quickly!”


	The four of them assembled in the stairway and looked over the rubble pile that blocked access to the lower sublevel.  “I don’t know, Axio,” Luanea said carefully.  “Can we-”

	Axio wasn’t listening.  He dug his armored fingers into the nearest block and lifted, and the stone rose from the pile.  He moved it aside and set it down, clearing a few steps.  “I’m not giving up.  We’re pressing on,” he said flatly.  “Lift together if you can’t lift alone.”


	The quartet worked away at the stone, until with a rumble, the last few hundred pounds of stone crumbled away and rolled away as one.  Axio sprang back, feeling fatigue slow him, and lost his footing on the stone as it shifted.  He clattered to the steps behind him, grabbing a railing for support.  Cavria helped him up, and they looked down into the dusty stairwell together.  There was a way out onto the next level, and it looked clear.


	The cultists in the lair paused as they heard the rumble from below them.  “The hell was that?” one of them asked, fingering his blade’s sheath.

	The Wire Golem unspooled and began feeding its tendrils through the tiny ports in the floor.  “Prepare to leave,” it gurgled.


	Axio stood under the place where his compass was going haywire.  “Damn it,” he muttered.  The ceiling was twelve feet up.

	Doshellas looked around uneasily.  The room in which they were gathering looked more than a little ominous.  He had disabled two tripwires just on the way in.  “Watch the walls, too,” he murmured.  “This place is evil.”

	Cavria turned to survey their options.  The room was largely empty.  There wasn’t really much in the way of furniture, just some broken tables in the corner.  They hadn’t searched the adjacent rooms.  “Axio, what about the ceiling here is different?  It’s just more stone.”

	Axio pointed at one spot.  Cavria squinted and saw a splotch of light.  “The mortaring is rotting there,” he said.  “Maybe water damage, I don’t know.  If I can get up there, I can get through.”

	Luanea looked carefully in the next room.  “There’s something in here,” she said.  “A bench, I think.”  Axio walked over.

	Sure enough, there was a long table, covered in complex-looking piles of random paper.  Axio tsked at not being able to salvage the papers, but time was running out.  “Good enough,” he said.  “Help me with this.”


	Above, the portal hummed to life.  How it worked, none present knew, but work it did, and with the pouring of a cup, it attuned itself to the distant Temple of Hate.  “All right, get the bags through, we can send the Grist through individually,” the first cultist said.  He tossed a bag through, and the surface of the portal rippled for a moment.  Another started pushing the heavy burlap bags through, one at a time.

	“Fucking Grist,” he grunted.  A loud thud below him made him pause.  He and every other cultist there drew their weapons.  The Wire Golem pulsed and sent its tendrils out into the stone again.

	“Hurry,” it growled.  “The enemy is here.”