Krynn, Kendermore
Elnamerrna crew
Firstsummer 7th, 2461 EY or Fifthmonth 23rd, 357 AC
Krynn's fine sun had eased into the western sky by the time they returned to the clearing where sat the Elnamerrna.
Tyfelian gazed at the sun for a moment before he stepped out of the forest canopy. The swaying leaves above him allowed this, but he closed his eyes to let it warm his face, and he felt cheered by its light. He had expected a long and frustrating search, with many dead ends encountered along the way, yet Fing was right—they had made progress with their first stop.
He stood there only a few moments, then followed the rest of his team toward the ship. He broke into a springy skip to catch up with them.
They got their first hint of trouble when they approached the vessel. Their path brought them toward the Elnamerrna's lower weapon bay from the port side, so they could not see within the bay. A firm command to go away from inside was met with whining and pleading.
"But this ship is so pretty! Let us in to see!" cried a kender voice that the team didn't recognize.
"Sorry, no visitors allowed," the firm voice came right back in response. "I'm afraid I have to ask you to leave... my captain's orders."
Tyfelian groaned.
"I was afraid of this," he said, sounding more fearful than he should have.
He quickened the pace of his ground team, but as they drew near, they could hear the conversation inside getting more heated.
Then—exactly as Tyfelian had dreaded—the kender taunting began. Tyfelian heard the cutting insults regarding "giants," "goblins," and "draconians" only too clearly.
Alarmed, Tyfelian burst into a dead run. If the Elnamerrna crew lost their tempers, the kenders would die—simple as that. Even fighting a bit less effectively from having their anger fired up, the well-trained crew would destroy a group of kenders, even if outnumbered ten to one.
He ran to the ladder to the weapon bay—he did think to wonder why it was down—and hurried to climb it, but he and the others were far too late.
Worse, his heart sank to his knees at the sight of his infuriated crew going after the poor kenders with drawn blades.
"No, don't!" he cried, but his words were wasted on his crew, who had lost control and now fought the kenders with gusto, if not their full usual skill. Enraged, they went after the insulting intruders for real.
The kenders fought back with their hoopaks but were already being beaten badly. They simply could not match the skills of the experienced fighters from other worlds. Tyfelian could only watch helplessly as his crew tore into them. One kender's hoopak parried a sword from a gunner, but the sword blew right through the kender weapon and scored a hit into the small man's shoulder.
Tyfelian ran into the melee, grabbing crewmen and pulling them back, away from the nearly helpless kenders. He kept yelling, and the rest of the team likewise restrained the combatants.
Alzja whirled around and kicked Barolcot in the belly, knocking him back from a kender that he would surely have killed just seconds later—he had had the smaller being beaten and off balance, and one more swing of his wicked axe would have taken the kender.
Finally, they got the crewmen off the kenders, but the two sides kept shouting insults for a couple minutes, until Fing had moved among them and talked them down.
"You little rodents aren't coming aboard our ship! You don't belong on a ship, any ship, let alone here!" Barolcot yelled.
"Don't do this," Fing implored the kenders. "It isn't worth it. And you," she addressed the angry crewmen, "they're just curious. Remember—they've never seen a starship before."
Barolcot, standing near the ballista, blinked, shook his head, and propped his battle-axe against the bulkhead, a little shamefully.
"Can't believe what I was about to do," he muttered.
"Never mind," Tyfelian called to everyone. "Look," he said to the kenders, "I understand that you're curious about this ship—I would be, in your place—but we really can't let you in here. I'm sorry. There's plenty of dangerous things here that we can't let people play with."
Tyfelian knew he was exaggerating, just a bit, but he hoped that the kenders would buy it. Telling them the truth would only make them angrier; for the blunt truth was that a crowd of kenders aboard a starship would destroy the vessel.
"Our kender cleric there will answer anything you want to know," he added, inclining his head toward Fing. He hoped that he could use her infatuation with him to gain her cooperation.
Sure enough, Fing beamed at him, then waved the kenders out of the bay.
"Come with me," she smiled at them charmingly. "Come outside and I'll talk to you."
Alzja finished up a healing spell on the kender who had been hit on his shoulder, then helped him stand.
"You're okay now. Go with Fing," she told him in a friendly tone.
"They'd play with everything in sight 'til we didn't have a ship left," Tyfelian said quietly, to no one in particular, after the kenders had gone.
"How did they get up here?" Tyfelian whispered to a guard. "I know you did not just put the ladder down at their request," he said to the guard in a warning tone, but he had to suppress a laugh as he said it.
"I have no idea," the guard whispered back. "Far as I saw, the ladder let itself down."
Tyfelian started to ask him how in the name of the gods that the kenders had lowered the ladder, but then he shut his mouth and shook his head, marveling. Kenders had a knack for getting into places where they did not belong, and lowering a ship's ladder from outside the vessel didn't seem too impossible—not for them.
"A couple of them climbed up the hull and yanked on it," he muttered. It was only a guess, but that was how he would have done it, in a similar situation.
After the kenders had gone, Barolcot turned to face Tyfelian.
"Tyfelian," the dwarf began, "I dunno what t'say, really. I just couldn't stand that kender's mouth—"
"I know," Tyfelian waved it off. "They were asking for it... they just didn't know who they were dealing with here," he smiled at the crewmen to make them feel better. "You were victims, too, in a way... those are kenders out there. Their curiosity leads to you stonewalling them, they don't like it and taunt you, and you attack them. This is why I was hoping we wouldn't be found."
He looked at his crew, who he could tell had recovered their wits, and then said, "As you were."
He walked over to the lip of the bay and looked down there. On the ground, he felt happy to see Fing regaling the kenders with a story of their exploits during the Second Unhuman War.
Laughing softly, glad that no one had been permanently hurt, he turned away and left the weapon bay.
Krynn, Ansalon
Elnamerrna
Firstsummer 8th, 2461 EY or Fifthmonth 24th, 357 AC
Trula, Lygalliz, and Frenela kept watch together from the crow's nest.
It was Frenela's watch, but the human lady and the hurwaet man had stayed on, and the three of them now scanned the ground below the Silver Triop, spyglasses glued to their eyes to find any sign of their friends.
The Elnamerrna had spiraled above the great land of Solamnia in an ever-widening circle. Tyfelian had guessed that perhaps the griffons had made it as far as the Dargaard Mountains and had fled at their best speed from some unknown assailant.
At the moment, the Silver Triop flew above the western Plains of Throt, south of the Dargaard Mountains, very near Solamnia. Sailing out of Palanthas, where they had gone to look for their crewmen and had come up empty, they now looked for them along their possible route.
The barren land below looked totally deserted. It also looked war-torn and only slowly recovering. Not a pleasant sight at all.
Lygalliz rubbed his eyes. Ansalon was a big continent, but he would back Tyfelian in a search of the whole landmass if needed. He would happily ride the crow's nest in a search over Taladas, the other continent whose name he knew also, and indeed the whole planet if it came to that. The hurwaet didn't think that anyone should just get away with tossing their crewmen onto another world.
"By the gods, we'll find them or at least recover their corpses," he vowed quietly.
It would take time if they had to search all of Krynn, though, Lygalliz realized humbly. Even with the flight ability of a starship, an entire planet could take months to examine.
Nevertheless, he resolutely put the spyglass back to his eye.
Then both of Lygalliz's eyes suddenly went wide and he grabbed the voice horn.
"Bridge, crow's nest."
"Bridge, Tyfelian," his leader's voice returned.
"I spot a battle site southwest," the hurwaet called. "Many remains."
"Call navigation cues to the helm, Lygalliz."
"Helm, crow's nest," the hurwaet called again.
"Helm, Jalaysa," the elf lady replied.
"Give us a starboard turn, sixty degrees. It's near but not beside the foothills, range four miles ground."
Jalaysa turned the ship. The rocky slopes of the Khalkist mountains passed the outeye's view, then the ship moved southwest.
Presently, they found the battle site. Tyfelian and Kiran both knew instantly that this one had nothing to do with their missing crewmen—this battle zone looked far too big, the very reason it had been visible from the air.
"False alarm," Tyfelian called to the crow's nest. "Too many... this place must've seen some action during the war here a few years ago."
Fing, sitting on the steps to the command area near Tyfelian, stood up and scrutinized the outeye.
"This was where one of the battles near the end of the War of the Lance happened," she commented. "Look—dragon skeletons."
Tyfelian and Kiran had already spotted them. The huge reptilian skeletons lay on the plains like monuments to war, surrounded by dozens of human or humanoid bones. Rusting armor suits and shields lay all about with the skeletons, along with an uncountable number of corroding weapons.
"What are those burned places? Would that be where dragons breathed?" Jalaysa asked the kender over her shoulder.
"Maybe, but some kinds of draconians blow up when they're killed," Fing replied. "Other kinds even turn into puddles of acid. Could be that, too."
"Any idea when this happened, Fing?" Tyfelian, ever the historian, had to ask.
"Spring of 354, I'd say," she told him. "One of the last battles of the War. The Knights of Solamnia with their good dragons were driving the Highlords back toward Sanction and Neraka. I think this is where the Golden General held the line, when Highlord Kitiara mounted a counterattack with her dragon forces. But who could say which skirmish this was?" Fing shrugged, unable to add more detail.
"Three years ago," Tyfelian murmured. He stored the information away in his memory, to write it down later on, in his history notes for Krynn, which had always been lacking. The half-drow had recorded much of what Fing had told him over time, but he didn't put a lot of stock in any of it. He found much of it simply not believable.
Not lazy and recognizing fine stories when he heard them, he had committed her stories to paper in the ship's library, but they sat in bundles marked as "not credible." He felt that they had come from actual historical events, but that Fing's versions were both incomplete and grossly exaggerated.
This time, though, he thought that Fing was probably right. A massive battle involving both dragons and ground forces had obviously happened right here.
He eyed the battle site with puzzlement.
"It's been three years," he said slowly. "Why hasn't anyone been here to clean up that mess?"
"The whole continent must be in chaos. Some places may be even a bit isolationist now," Alzja replied. "And there's Vingaard Keep not too far north," she said, looking at the map, "and the area of Sanction's influence, not far south. This could be a no-man's land."
"They weren't in Palanthas," Kiran thought aloud, "and we know they left Kendermore on griffons. Something must have happened to them en route."
"Then we're too far south, and west," Fing noted, standing on tiptoe to look at Tyfelian's map. "They would've flown over the Dargaard Mountains—" she pointed at the mountain chain that ran more or less straight north to south—"but they would have crossed north of Throt and south of Dargaard Keep. Their guide would've made sure of that if he had any sense."
"Why?" Alzja asked.
"Because Dargaard Keep is the lair of Lord Soth—he's a death knight. You know how he got cursed? He—"
Alzja clamped her hand over Fing's mouth.
"Skip," she commanded. "I know the legend of the Knight of the Black Rose... and it's rather horrifying, even if you're the one telling it."
"And hobgoblins live in Throt," Fing said, disappointed, as Alzja removed her hand. "I don't know if they have any dragons, but still, on general principles, you wouldn't want to go near there, or you might never see anything interesting ever again."
This prospect seemed decidedly repulsive to the kender.
Tyfelian and Kiran exchanged an amused look. Kiran's lessons about visiting dangerous places had taken hold a little.
Alzja traced a general course toward the central Dargaards, and backtracked across them over the northern reaches of the Khalkists. She drew a dotted line across her crude copy of Tyfelian's map, making guesses as to the flight path of the griffons.
"I'd imagine they flew something like this," she said, her guess looking much like the route Fing had suggested earlier, back in Kendermore. "Trouble is... where? Something unfortunate might have happened to them anywhere along that route." She waved a finger vaguely at the map.
"Plot a search course along that route, flying in circles until we find something," Tyfelian ordered. After a moment's thought, though, he said, "Belay that for a minute... Kiran, come with me."
Kiran followed him, and they went to Alzja at navigation.
"Kiran, you're the tactical expert. Look over Alzja's route and give me your best guess as to where someone might have ambushed a flight of griffons."
Kiran moved beside Alzja and examined her map with a soft sigh—not one of irritation or resignation, but a sigh that said, "Sure - I'll see what I can do."
He looked at Alzja's, then Tyfelian's maps, then glanced up.
"Fing?"
"Hm?" the kender murmured.
"What kind of place is Kernen?"
"Ogre country. They'd avoid that, too."
"Any dragons?" Kiran asked.
"You'll see red dragons around there, sometimes. Why, I once saw-" the kender started.
"Skip," Kiran said firmly, imitating Alzja's earlier command, but he failed to suppress a grin as he said it, and Fing picked up on that.
The kender looked from Kiran to Alzja and back again, obviously suspecting a conspiracy against her.
"Oh, you..." she muttered, laughing.
Kiran laughed as well, but then he composed himself and went back to the map. He rubbed his chin for a moment, looking at it.
"It really depends on what direction the ambush came from. Neraka or Sanction, or Kernen. But from either direction, the best ambush would be somewhere in here—" the paladin pointed out a circular area within a north-south region, which lay between one of the northern arms of the Khalkists and another mountain range east of it.
"The Delving," Fing noted. Tyfelian immediately picked up his map of Ansalon, put it down on the desk, and noted the name of the area in the appropriate spot. Fing watched with sincere admiration, rather than her puppydog look, as the half-drow wrote the name on the map. He wrote it down in his beautiful script, in a place and of a size that it did not detract from the map's appearance.
Alzja and Kiran watched with equal admiration and mild amusement. Tyfelian loved drawing maps, took it very seriously, and he was extremely good at it. His maps always ended up looking like an artist's paintings more than maps, though their accuracy could astound any navigator.
"That's where I'd ambush them—if I knew they were coming, that is," Kiran said. "How could anyone know?"
"How did Mister or Miss Whoever know we got the Elendran artifacts, and put Jumpspace right beside a flowriver for us to see?" Tyfelian said ominously.
"True enough," Kiran granted.
"Alzja, set our course toward your own best guess as to the likely place where an ambush might catch them, in the center of the area Kiran suggests, then spiral us outward."
Alzja set to work immediately. She was nearly as good a navigator as Tash and had the course set in moments. She called cues to both Jalaysa, now relieving Melanerra at the helm, and the steering crews, at their stations, and the Elnamerrna turned northeast and moved away from Solamnia with purpose.
The Silver Triop gained altitude and shot across the northern arms of the Khalkists. The outeye showed the bridge crew the great ridges of mountains stretching northward—overall, the Khalkist Mountain Range resembled a spider sitting right in the middle of Ansalon—then they crossed the last line of mounts and entered the airspace over the region which Fing had called "the Delving."
Jalaysa flew the ship toward the center of Kiran's suggested area with Alzja's cues, then she obeyed the navigation commands to spiral outward.
"Lookouts, sharp watch below," he called after hailing the crow's nest.
"We're on it," Frenela replied readily.
Jalaysa flew lower, to the highest altitude from which the lookouts could effectively search. The elf lady cunningly swerved in wide arcs in her spiral course, making the view from the crow's nest wider with each circle, so they could survey the most land in the shortest time, and yet be thorough about it.
Tyfelian understood what she was up to—he kept glancing at Alzja's work, and the drow was keeping track of their location. Alzja apparently understood, too, and Tyfelian relaxed into his chair. His fine crew knew how to get things done without constant supervision and comments from their leader. He decided that they had the search well underway and that he should just let them take care of it on their own.
Less than an hour later, an excited hail from the crow's nest galvanized all of them.
"I see possible griffons. They are downed... probably dead," Frenela called.
"Cue the helm, please," Tyfelian called.
Tyfelian heard a short conversation between Frenela and Lygalliz—something to the effect that she had to defer to him to give bearings because she didn't know how—but swiftly enough, Lygalliz called the cues.
Presently they examined a horrifying sight—over a dozen griffon corpses lay scattered over the rough, rocky ground of the Delving.
"Down, Jalaysa. Do not land, but hover near them. Kiran, come with me," he finished, rising and heading for the starboard door.
"No," Jaclyn said. "I'll teleport you there. I want to see if my powers still work. I'm feeling very strange right now."
Tyfelian looked at her appraisingly for a moment, then shrugged.
Moments later, the three of them vanished with the pops of teleporting.
Jaclyn moaned softly.
Tyfelian glared at her.
"Using my teleport hurt me," she explained. "It doesn't make sense."
"Steady," the half-drow tried to reassure her, then moved away across the Delving's ground toward a griffon.
After examining it for a moment, he groaned.
They checked the remainder of the griffon bodies, but found nothing more of interest. Satisfied with his check, Tyfelian nodded to Jaclyn to teleport them back to the Elnamerrna's bridge.
When they reappeared there, the half-drow started to hurry straight to Alzja, but he froze in mid-stride as Jaclyn moaned, then grabbed the back of the spelljammer helm with both hands to keep from falling.
"I'm feeling ill," the human noted.
"Go see Melanerra," Tyfelian said.
"Ty, I'm—"
"Go," he repeated. "Ursallus," he waved to one of the guards, "go with her. Tell Melanerra to examine her."
Tyfelian then finished his step over to the navigation station.
"Where are we?" he demanded.
Alzja pointed out their location—the extreme southwest of the Delving.
Tyfelian took a breath as he straightened. Some anger darkened his eyes.
"Dragons killed the griffons," he told them. "I saw the claw and tooth marks. I'm sure you did, too. But there are no other bodies there."
"They were captured," Alzja breathed as she understood. She was also starting to look angry.
"Yes, and those damn dragons had to be sent by someone who knew they were coming, just like Kiran said. And they came from Neraka or Sanction. Kernen is too far away, almost certainly," he finished. After he'd said it, he closed his mouth and his expression went stone hard.
Kiran glanced at Tyfelian's map.
"Alzja," Kiran said quietly, "set our course for Neraka."
Yalthra'teyka, 474th layer of the Abyss
Braskrakel, The Lordcity
Firstsummer 8th, 2461 E. Y.
"They are WHERE?"
Dretch shuffled back a step, terrified at the Master's shout.
"On de broke dragon world, master. Dey use old world-step magic thing to get dere and now look for friends."
The Master screamed in outrage and Dretch got the worst of it. The Master's hand shot out and grabbed the unfortunate creature. He played out his fury by ripping Dretch to ribbons, which he then hammered on the floor of his throne room with maniacal anger. During the physical tirade, he swore at Dretch, demanding of it how the Prime Material morons had remembered anything about that place—something Dretch didn't know, and even if it had, it could not have answered, anyway. Not with the Master ripping it to shreds.
After his madness played itself out, the Master sat down upon his hideous throne. He looked at Dretch regenerating, but paid no attention to it despite the oddity; instead, he thought hard about what he should do about the meddlesome mortals now on Krynn.
When Dretch finished regenerating and picked itself up from the floor, the Master regarded him thoughtfully.
"Contact our agents on Krynn, Dretch," he commanded. "Make sure that those pests meet some trouble when they find their friends."
"Yes, Master," Dretch said subserviently, still groaning with agony.
"Tell Gagangis to kill them all—including the twenty that he already has in custody."
Dretch bowed deeply, and then waddled out of the throne room. His watery telepathic yelps of pain pleased the Master, so he decided not to punish Dretch for moving too slowly. That slowness was the Master's own fault, but that was not relevant. The Master liked inflicting punishment.
The Master clenched his fist hard as Dretch left.
"Tyfelian, you cursed fool, would you just die?" he snarled.
Krynn, Ansalon, Khalkist Mountains
Elnamerrna
Firstsummer 8th, 2461 EY or Fifthmonth 24th, 357 AC
The Elnamerrna darted over the Khalkists and passed over the Plains of Neraka.
Ahead and below, they saw the old city and the two enormous floating castles above it. Once there, the wizards set to work immediately.
The Elnamerrna moved into a holding pattern, circling Neraka. Tyfelian moved the outeye's view to see the city. The half-drow turned to share a big grin and a silent laugh with Kiran as the starship's presence created a panic—on the ground and in the castles.
"It seems we look a little alarming to the people of Neraka," Kiran commented.
"I don't care," Tyfelian chuckled. "This was the home base of the Dragonarmies in the War of the Lance. They're evil to the core."
"Are we going to attack them?" Kiran queried.
"No," Tyfelian laughed. "Not unless those flying castles move or they have our people."
"Bridge, crow's nest, emergency," Frenela called, though in fact she didn't sound very frightened—instead, her voice carried a faint hint of mirth, similar to Tyfelian's.
"Bridge, Tyfelian," the half-drow responded after clicking the horn, still laughing.
"The floating castles are firing on us," she told him, "but we're out of range."
The bridge crew—every one—could have sworn they heard a ghost of a laugh from the voice horn.
Tyfelian laughed again, this time a bit more loudly.
"And we'll stay out of range unless our people are here or those castles move. Keep an eye on them." He shut off the horn.
Tyfelian glanced at Alzja and the five Listraeean wizards, whom he'd called to the bridge for just this purpose. They all had their eyes glued to their scrying mirrors, using their magic to search Neraka for the missing crew.
Alzja and Tash, the best two at scrying, ran their scry search through the old city. Tyfelian glanced at their scrying mirrors. Their magically enhanced eyes roved Neraka, scouring the tent town.
There, they saw hundreds of soldiers hastily donning armor and weapons. Ignoring these, they next checked the huge, horrible building that squatted directly under the flying castles. Finding nothing, they scoured the dungeons beneath that building.
Tyfelian waited quietly, watching, as the wizards searched corridor after corridor and tunnel after tunnel. Bleak, unworked stone and flooded passages flashed before his eyes as his wizards performed a search that would have taken days or weeks by conventional means, even if Neraka were uninhabited.
"Nothing," Alzja finally reported, and the Listraeeans shook their heads.
"They're not here," Chalizon reported, "unless they're dead, and I'm fairly certain that they're not here at all."
"They are not," Alzja verified. Having known the crewmen in person, she and Tash had the better chances of finding them.
"On to Sanction, then, Alzja," Tyfelian commanded.
The Elnamerrna chased the sun westward.
The sun set shortly after they left Neraka.
The Elnamerrna now flew like a ghost across central Ansalon's twilight, headed for Sanction. Jalaysa piloted the ship across the fastness of the Khalkists by Alzja's cues, and they found Sanction quite easily despite the darkness, because of its glowing volcanoes and the light of the lava flows.
The wizards repeated their search. The Listraeeans came up empty, but Tash smiled tentatively.
"I've found them," the blond drow said.
"Helm, full stop," Tyfelian told Jalaysa. "Keep us back a bit. I don't like the looks of that lava."
"They're in a place that's shielded against scrying, but my spell can still let me in on where they are. I can give you a direction..." Tash pointed her finger at the outeye and moved its view.
The outeye obediently looked upon one of the volcanoes.
"There," Tash said, not sounding very thrilled.
"Can we get in there with a dimension door?" Tyfelian asked hopefully. "I'd rather not parade right through Sanction to get to them."
"Not right to it, but I can open a door to a spot right outside the scry shield," Alzja said confidently. "I'll be damned if I open a dimension door where I can't scry."
"How did you get anything, even a direction, on people inside a scry shield?" Krendren asked Tash, puzzled.
"I'm using a different spell," Tash replied with a smile. "Nothing I know of, except a god's will, can completely block it out."
Krendren raised his eyebrows quietly. He felt more than a little impressed.
"Good enough," Tyfelian responded. "Jalaysa, land somewhere nearby, please."
Jalaysa examined the Sanction area with the helm's wraparound view. She moved the ship toward the volcano slowly, wary of updrafts from the lava, and possibly even from the overheated ground itself.
Sure enough, the flight began to get rough. No one on board the Elnamerrna could feel the shaking, because the helm corrected the internal gravity, but they could see that the ship was trembling in the outeye.
"Just what I was afraid of," Jalaysa said. "Turbulence. It's all the heat down there."
"Sail crews, keep sharp," Tyfelian called to them. "Can't we land a little farther away?" he asked Jalaysa.
"Not if we want to use a dimension door to get near our people," she replied. "We'll have to be as close as possible. A dimension door doesn't have the range of a teleport spell."
Tyfelian grimaced. They rounded one of the volcanoes, and then closed on the one Tash had indicated.
Tyfelian clicked the voice horn to Shipwide.
He shut the horn off, then buckled on his sword belt.
"All hands, except sail crews, prepare for a ground operation, then report to the lower weapon bay for exit. Sail crewmen, prepare to leave your posts as soon as we land."
"They're underground, beneath that one. We're very close to where we need to be, Jalaysa," Tash called to her. "Put us down right here if you can."
"Can the people of Sanction see us?" Kiran asked no one in particular.
"I doubt it," Jalaysa replied. "We're too close to the volcanoes to be easy to spot... too close for my liking in any case, but I guess we have to do this."
She moved the ship northeast a couple hundred yards to avoid a lava flow, then settled it down onto the heated ground.
"Down," she announced.
"Let's go get our friends, and try to find some answers."
Krynn, Ansalon, city of Sanction
Elnamerrna crew, searching
Firstsummer 8th, 2461 EY or Fifthmonth 24th, 357 AC
Abt did his usual knee-bend to allow Tash to put the dead-box into his backpack.
"Elnamerrna secure," he said to his leader.
Tyfelian glanced over his shoulder at the minotaur. Like Fing, Abt stood on his home world, but unlike her, he felt no special attachment to Krynn. His old life here was finished and he now followed a different career entirely.
Tyfelian himself, though, looked around with interest... mixed with some measure of alarm. Volcanoes could be dangerous, but he figured that these had to be relatively stable or else no one would ever live here.
He waited for Alzja to cast her dimension door spell and moved toward it.
"Dimension door?" Chalizon asked him, puzzled. "That doesn't look like a dimension door. A dimension door is just a short-range teleport. I've been puzzled by your terminology ever since you had your rather heated conversation with Crilsteroy."
Tyfelian shrugged, no expert, but Tash chimed in.
"That's what we call this spell," she said, gesturing at the energy vortex. "Technically, its name is Portal Vortex, but," she smiled apologetically at Jaclyn, "our psion once flubbed the name into 'dimension door'—which, you're right, is a different spell altogether—and the wrong name just stuck."
Jaclyn might have been embarrassed, but she didn't even seem to notice. She clearly looked even more distracted and in pain than she had been earlier.
Tyfelian nudged Melanerra.
"What did you find?" he asked, indicating Jaclyn with his gaze.
"Something here is disrupting her mental powers... and I can tell you for a sure thing it hurts like we don't want to think about," she replied. "But I don't know what's causing it. Alzja's the real physician," she whispered, "so I'd like to defer to her, but we don't have the time."
"The magic used by that portal artifact is a more powerful version of this?" Krendren was asking Tash.
"Unimaginably more powerful," Tash answered him. "I don't think mortals can cast spells like the effects of that artifact. I believe it was made by gods, maybe long-forgotten gods. The Elendran spell 'spansphere portal,' they called it, is probably about the best a mere mortal could ever do."
Satisfied, the two Listraeean warrior-wizards stepped away to wait their turns to walk through the magical portal.
Tyfelian went first. The passage through Tash's door felt much easier than the step through the world-spanning arches of the ancient artifact. He felt nothing but a slight tingle as he left the surface world in Sanction and entered an underground tunnel, swords drawn.
Nothing awaited him there. He stood in a rough, twisting tunnel in solid rock (at least he hoped it was solid), which ran both directions for farther than he could see with his darkvision. He moved away from the far end of Tash's magical door to let the others through, and had a closer look at his surroundings, as others coming through brought light more substantial than the energy vortex of the door offered.
The tunnel looked like a natural lava tube, perhaps worked a bit to enlarge it, but Tyfelian couldn't be sure. As the last of the crew came through and Tash closed the door, Tyfelian called for Alzja, Barolcot and Fing.
"Fing, you will be our guide once we're into places where people live. I'm sure you've heard all kinds of stories about this place. Alzja and Barol, get us there."
Alzja glanced at the dwarf.
"Barol, which direction is more northerly?"
The dwarf looked around, concentrating on the native rock, then pointed in the appropriate direction, past Tyfelian.
"Tash popped the door in here facin' the right way, or as close as this tunnel gets. It's about due north thataway, but I'd bet it won't stay north."
"Keep tight, but don't bunch up," Tyfelian said to everyone. "Alzja, Fing, Barol—stick with me."
He led them down the tunnel. They hadn't gone far when their tube dropped them into a dead end, abruptly terminating at a rock wall.
"Damn," Trula muttered.
"There must be a secret door," Alzja said. "We're close."
"Our people are less than a thousand yards away, roughly northwest," Tash said softly.
Tyfelian examined the rock wall. His mouth set into a firm, hard line as he realized its nature.
"There's a secret door there, all right, but there's no way of opening it from this side. No matter." He stepped aside to let the wizards work.
Alzja cast a spell, but nothing happened in response—a non-event that raised eyebrows all around the party.
"That was a knock spell," Alzja frowned. "It should have opened this thing."
Tyfelian glared at the rock wall, then turned to address the whole crew.
"All hands, be on the lookout for a powerful wizard. Tash—if you please, open it from the other side."
Tash cast, then walked right through the wall. A moment later, a portion of the wall slid downward to allow entry.
Tash had her hand on a knob beside the door. When all of the crew had entered, she pushed it left, evidently reversing her previous action, and the secret door slid up, closed once more.
Tyfelian flashed her a smile of appreciation, then looked around appraisingly.
The immediate area turned out to be just a tunnel, but a hand-made one. To his right, Tyfelian saw a stairway leading up. To the left, the tunnel intersected another one that headed off north, but the tunnel they stood within kept going, and turned right a short distance away.
"Tash?" the half-drow whispered.
The archmage pointed left. "Steady on."
Tyfelian led them again. They turned the corner and found a door hanging askew on its hinges. They found a room past the door, though they could see only a portion of it, with another broken door on the opposite side.
Fing straightened as something occurred to her, then stood up on tiptoe to whisper into Tyfelian's ear.
"It's coming back to me now. This is... er, was, maybe, I don't know—the Temple of Luerkhisis, the Dark Queen's most powerful temple outside Neraka. We're close to the place where the Dragon Highlords made draconians during the War," she whispered to him. "Back then, getting through here would've been tough. That used to be a guard post," she stated, waving at the room beyond.
Tyfelian had already figured as much, but he merely nodded and moved ahead, glancing all around.
Nothing came out to attack them, though.
"Abandoned," Kiran noted.
"Watch out for Highlord Kitiara," Fing warned. "She's a devil in a fight, and she won't be alone if we meet her."
Despite her ominous words, Fing's expression looked almost merry, as though she would have liked meeting Kitiara.
Tyfelian felt absolutely sure that she would, and he couldn't suppress a smile.
"Leave it to a kender to want to meet someone as evil as a Dragon Highlord," he muttered with amusement. In his heart, he hoped that they would not encounter her. He knew little of Krynn, but even a spacefarer knew the name and the reputation. Tyfelian felt relatively confident that he and his crew could defeat Kitiara and her guards, but she would likely kill some of the Elnamerrna's complement in the process.
The ruined door on the other side of the room led to a long hallway. This took them to another, larger guard post, also abandoned.
"This place hasn't been abandoned for three years," Tyfelian said sharply. "No dust."
Kiran tightened his grip on his sword anxiously and nodded.
They kept moving, and the maze turned east, then south. The Elnamerrna crew found several rooms along the way. These had clearly been living quarters for higher-ups at one time, but had been ransacked.
Then the maze took them east.
"Very close now," Tash warned Tyfelian. "Less than a hundred and fifty yards."
They walked down the hallway heading east, Tyfelian still on point.
They spotted openings into various chambers, north, south and straight ahead.
Fing skipped quietly over to the north opening, curious.
"This is where the eggs of the good dragons were kept until the Highlords broke them to make draconians, but there won't be any eggs here now," she told him. "They—"
Tyfelian nodded automatically; though she couldn't see him with her back turned, but then he looked at her again as she froze suddenly with a choked gasp. She had stopped talking so suddenly—highly unusual for a kender—that Tyfelian and the others hurried to her side in alarm.
"Fing, what's wrong?" Kiran called to her softly.
Tyfelian and the others likewise rushed to the spot. Some of the crew took up positions along the wall in case of attack, but most stood in the entryway...
... and stopped in abject mortification just as Fing had. The kender did not feel fear—she could not—but she could be appalled just like anyone else.
And she was.
"No!!" Fing whispered, shuddering with fury, though she retained enough sensibility to keep her voice down. "No!! They won't do it again!"
Tyfelian and Kiran stood beside and behind her, looking around with pure, unabashed fury, equal to what they had felt when the Elendrans destroyed Nauthe'hressishtel... and they had been forced, by circumstances, to just sit idly on the sidelines and let it happen.
Both men tightened their grips on their swords to the point that their knuckles started to crackle, and they were not alone in that reaction. Even Sildara and her company started muttering angry curses in Drowic, though with the language barriers down, everyone understood their words perfectly.
Tyfelian's face twisted into a bizarre expression mixing rage, hatred, and terror. His eyes roved around wildly, having widened with the horror he felt at what he saw there.
Eggs.
Eggs of metallic dragons.
Hundreds of metallic dragon eggs.
"We can't allow this!" he cried, likewise keeping his voice down, though he truly wanted to scream the words out for all of Krynn to hear. He turned and fled the room as fast as he could and still be quiet about it.
"Tash, which way?" he choked out.
So furious that she couldn't talk, the blond drow pointed west, and then arched her finger to indicate "west, then north."
Tyfelian waved the crew into line, and they headed off in that direction. They passed a crossroads of sorts, not exactly a chamber but somewhat of a widened spot in the hallway, and then they walked through an opening that faced east. The tunnel beyond turned north immediately.
"Right down there," Tash signed at the half-drow, pointing north. "Not even two hundred feet away."
"Attempt to scry again," Tyfelian ordered. "Find out what we're up against if you can."
Tash took a breath to clear her thoughts, accepted a mutually strengthening hug from Fing, then pulled a silver mirror from her belt pouch. The mirror became larger the moment she pulled it out, and when it was its normal size, she began to use it with her magic.
Her vision in the area beyond looked fuzzy, dark, and indistinct. The shield within this place that fouled scrying was strong. From within it, however, Tash's far-sight did function, in a limited manner. She looked around but saw only vague shapes at first.
Then a much larger shape caught her eye.
"Dragon!" she hissed at Tyfelian. "White. I'm sure of it."
"White dragon? Here?" Kiran frowned.
"Who could say why?" Tash whispered. "But it's there. Our people are there, along with who knows how many guards."
"All right," Tyfelian shrugged. He raised his eyebrows at the clerics and wizards, and they went to work casting defensive magic.
"Jaclyn," he added quietly, "when we get into battle, I want you to mind-read someone who might know, and find out where those eggs came from. Can't be many from Krynn's dragons—those eggs are gone or used already."
"I'll try," the psion replied, but her voice came out as naught but a thin, loud whisper. She rubbed her temples against an agony that was obviously getting worse all the time.
The spellcasters worked up the team's defenses. Tyfelian felt Alzja's hand on his arm, casting upon him some defensive spell, and Fing's touch on the back of his knee. Tyfelian could only guess exactly what either spell did, for his own magical knowledge and training were rudimentary at best, just enough that he knew how to direct his spellcasters effectively in battle. He trusted both women, despite the fact that they were both guilty of odd behavior in battle, so he did not question their spells.
Jalaysa could not cast any spells, for spelljamming had drained them. Instead, she accepted protective spells cast upon her from the clerics and wizards, and checked various magical items she carried. Her fingers pressed several scrolls out of a large belt pouch on her hip, readying them for use in battle against a dragon, and she held a wand in her left hand.
None of this took long—Kiran's drills had seen to that. Soon enough, Tyfelian quietly set off down the hallway, his expression hardening again with anger and fear.
