Vinespace, in the lair of the enemy
The Elnamerrna crew
Firstsummer 24th, 2461
Tyfelian and Jalaysa left theElnamerrna together, through the upper weapons deck. Jalaysa carried a staff which glowed with a strong magical light; she would be the light-bearer, since she would not be able to cast spells after using the helm. The ship's complement, all fifty-two crewmembers, waited for them there, weapons drawn, most looking outward in all directions.
Tyfelian watched Jalaysa climb down the ladder, then climbed down himself. His soft boots tamped down upon the surface of a net of sorts.
A net made of vines, however, he noted.
The surroundings looked odd indeed—they stood within a shaft made of woven vines. Enormous it was, easily five times the Elnamerrna's length in diameter. Tyfelian ignored it, though, and waved Alzja to work her magic.
Alzja cast her spell and touched the Elnamerrna's bow. Kreg came over with the dead-box in his hand, with Abt at his side.
"There is no other way?" the Elnamerrna called to Jaclyn.
"I'm afraid not," Jaclyn replied. "Not yet. You'll be safer in there."
"Alone in the dark."
"I'm sorry," Jaclyn said sincerely. "I'll tell you everything that happens here after we leave, I promise."
"Someday, I'll be able to do the things you do, Jaclyn. Can we throw the dead-box away then?"
A smile crept onto Jaclyn's lips.
"Yes."
Alzja picked up the Elnamerrna and put her in the dead-box. Kreg's big hands closed it and slammed the latches into place. Beside him, Abt lifted the dead-box high and put it into Kreg's backpack.
"Elnamerrna secure, Tyfelian," Abt informed his leader.
"Very good. Now, all hands, let's pull a disappearing act, shall we?" He switched to the silent drow sign language. "Alzja, a spell to prevent us from being scried would be in order," he signaled at her.
Alzja cast.
"No one can scry us now," she said with satisfaction.
Tyfelian walked over to the opening in the vine-floor. He sniffed at it.
"Air. Coming up from below. Smells of plants."
"No surprise there," Alzja commented, coming up beside him. "Can we climb... no, it's a fall-shaft, I think."
"What?" Kiran asked.
"You just step into it and gently float down. Watch."
Alzja picked up a length of dead vine and dropped it into the hole. It floated down slowly. Then she stepped off the lip of the hole and did exactly the same thing that the dead vine had.
"Come on," she called up to them. "It's a soft landing—ulgh!" Alzja screamed.
Tyfelian immediately jumped into the hole, but unlike Alzja, he kept a firm hold on the vines and climbed down the shaft. Kiran followed, and the others streamed in behind him, two at a time.
The half-drow had his swords out before he even landed—the sight of spiders drove him into a fury. A swarm of giant spiders had attacked Alzja. She hacked at them wildly with her hand axes, but Tyfelian leaped upon them in a rage, his twin swords deftly flashing to and fro at blinding speed. Kiran joined him, and the others kept coming.
A spider leaped onto Alzja, knocking her backward, nearly toppling her from her feet. It raised its fangs to bite, but she jammed one of her axe handles under the fangs, holding them back. The spider overrode her physical strength for a moment, its fangs closing for the kill, but then went flying backward as Kreg bashed its head open with his huge sword.
Then the five drow wizards drifted down. The battle had been a bit in favor of the spiders, which could kill outright with any bite, but the tide reversed as the wizards blasted the spiders with various precision attack magic. Spiders fell right and left to their onslaught.
Kiran stabbed a spider through the head, tossed it away, then his sword nearly ripped one in half that had been about bite Kreg. Kreg and Abt circled each other back to back, slashing and bashing with sword and axe pommel.
The rest of the crew likewise formed tight groups, under the suppressing fire of the wizards. The battle was over in minutes; the last spider suffered a severed abdomen at the hands of Kelton, a human crewmember.
Tyfelian hurled his own last victim away with an expression of disgust. "Alzja, be more careful. You happen to be the only cleric we've got left, and anyway, you know I hate spiders."
"How was I to know that there were spiders down here?" Alzja shot back, but her tone was playful, not confrontational.
Tyfelian gave her a stern, disapproving look, then turned to look at the crew. "Everyone all right?" he called softly.
No one responded except with hands raised dismissively, so Tyfelian began to examine their surroundings.
Menlina interrupted his scan with a question.
"Are you and the others always so playful after dangerous experiences?"
Tyfelian blinked at the question, unsure how to answer, but Sildara spared him.
"It's their way of daring death—laughing," she guffawed.
Tyfelian looked as if he wasn't so sure that he agreed with that assessment, but tellingly he did not verbally challenge it, either, just went back to his examination.
The area that Alzja's "fall-shaft" had dropped them into seemed roughly circular, about sixty feet in diameter. It had one straight wall, cutting off about a quarter of the circle. A door stood closed enigmatically in that wall. Two small semi-circular alcoves budded off the other side of the area.
The walls and ceiling were made of tightly woven vines. As Tyfelian examined them up close, he no longer had any doubt that the weaving was spider work. The floor was likewise woven of vines, but coarser than the walls, more like a net.
"As I think on it, why would spiders use vines?" Sildara wondered. "And, if they don't spin webs, how do they know how to weave?"
Tyfelian shook his head, not at all sure, but Alzja stepped over to a spider body and glanced at its abdomen.
"Web-spinner," she called over. "Someone must have forced them make all o' this."
Tyfelian walked over to the door and examined it. It was also made of vines, but its edges were of fine varnished wood, Tyfelian noted. He found no traps with his scan, so he waved Kiran to his side, gripped the handle in his hand and turned firmly, then pushed.
The door opened more quietly than Tyfelian had hoped—but he reminded himself that it was made of vines, after all, and probably saw pretty frequent use. He stepped through the doorway into a cross-corridor beyond.
Walking gingerly on the vine-floor, the half-drow looked right, the human left. To his left, Kiran saw a right turn about fifty feet away; he could see no farther. To the right, Tyfelian's side, the woven corridor stretched beyond the range of his sight, but he thought he could see a chamber beyond.
"Lygalliz!" Tyfelian hissed.
The hurwaet slipped through the other crewmembers to Tyfelian's side. Tyfelian pointed to the right.
Lygalliz peered that way, squinting. Jalaysa raised her staff to help him.
Lygalliz's hands worked through drow sign clumsily, signaling, "Chamber there. Big. Dark."
Tyfelian set off that way, Kiran following, both with weapons drawn. The fifty others followed in their wake, quietly, as swiftly as the vine-floor would allow.
Kiran eyed the passage. He had traveled underground areas before, but this was very different. Walking on vines and being surrounded by them felt bizarre. He was therefore relieved when the vine-tunnel ended in a stone archway.
"Jalaysa!" Tyfelian called in a loud whisper.
The elf came up with her staff. She raised it high again to see the place beyond the arch.
"Coffins?" Kiran frowned puzzledly.
The fifty-two of them moved into the stone chamber. It was so vast that they could not see all of it while standing in one place, even with Jalaysa's continual light staff. Filled with crudely made coffins set diagonally against the walls, it had a floor of stone—it felt good to all of them to walk on something firm again. Tyfelian examined the coffins closely, while Jalaysa and Alzja moved off along the wall that the arch pierced.
"Inscriptions," Alzja murmured. "Rune-type, but..." She raised an eyebrow. "They're typical magic runes, but I don't know the language, so I can't say what they mean..."
Alzja cast another spell to deal with that problem, then read the writing.
"What does it say?" Kiran called over from where he was examining a side wall for anything of interest and finding nothing.
"Incantations against evil, I believe," Alzja stated. "This place is partially protected against evil."
"Partially?" Tyfelian queried. He stood to move to Alzja's side. In doing so he placed his hands against the top of the coffin he'd been studying.
The coffin opened from within. A ghostlike form sat up from the dusty skeleton inside the coffin.
Tyfelian leaped backward, hands going to the hilts of his swords in a blur of speed.
The ghost likewise reached for its weapon, but it did not draw when it saw that Tyfelian didn't. It spoke, its voice deep and chilling. Tyfelian listened closely but could not understand the language.
"Ghosts, like you said," he muttered at Jaclyn. "What did he say?" Tyfelian asked her in Drowic.
"He said, 'Unhand my coffin, intruder.'"
Tyfelian inclined his head at Jaclyn, glancing at the magical helmet resting above the Psychotralex. "Speak to it in its
language."
"What should I say?" Jaclyn replied, still in Drowic.
"Tell it I apologize."
Jaclyn looked at the ghost for a moment, and then spoke to it. Her helmet changed her words into some other language, presumably the ghost's own.
Apparently it worked, for the ghost lay back and closed the casket again. Tyfelian let out a sigh. He would fight nearly anything if need be, but fighting the undead was a deadly proposition every time. Some undead had attack abilities that could not be easily countered, even by powerful magic.
He realized belatedly that the ghost's features had looked very Eastern in tone, like the people of Fui-Cha on Erilonia or Kara-Tur on Toril. Tyfelian thought about that, then dismissed it as being not too surprising. The various peoples of Fui-Cha had been space travelers for longer than anyone else from Erilonia had.
"All hands," Tyfelian said to everyone, "look but don't touch in here."
Tyfelian turned to complete his movement toward Alzja and Jalaysa, but a voice froze him in mid-movement.
"Pardon me, honorable sir." The ghostly voice spoke Stellar Common with an extremely thick accent.
Like a cat, Tyfelian stopped in mid-stride and his gaze locked on another ghost. This one stood only Tyfelian's height of five-four, though it had obviously been human in life. Tyfelian noted again the small, almond-shaped eyes.
An Easterner.
"Yes?" Tyfelian asked warily.
"Might I ask a favor, sir?"
Tyfelian nodded once. "If it is within my power."
The ghost closed its phantom eyes briefly in understanding. "My name is Shoriku Harazawa, a humble shukenja serving Zeratzu. I am here because of the Ancient Curse I brought down upon this place until its evil is banished. Will you do so?"
Tyfelian had to take a moment to sort through the ghost's accent before he could answer that, but then he figured it out and replied.
"Actually, that's why we're visiting here, though it may not be the same evil you're meaning. Whom are you referring to?"
"Illithids," the ghost replied.
Tyfelian swallowed hard. He had no love for illithids—he had met a few in Tatissadane, and had no desire to ever see one again.
"We know nothing of illithids here, but we can try to remove them if we find them. We're here because an invasion force of hammerships and dragons recently invaded Hearthspace, and we found—were given, actually—a lead that makes us think that they might have launched that invasion from here."
Shoriku nodded to indicate that he'd been listening, but his next word asked about a different topic.
"Hearthspace?"
"Yes," Tyfelian returned, not sure where the ghost was leading.
"Is... Erilonia still there?" the ghost queried, softly, as if it were almost afraid to ask.
"It is, and so is Fui-Cha," the half-drow answered, remembering the collective name of the Far Eastern continents of his home planet, "though all of us are from... the other side of the world," Tyfelian explained.
"Kennaplestis?"
Tyfelian blinked. "Um... no. Kennaplestis sank beneath the sea five thousand years ago. There's another continent near there now. Engethi."
"I see," the ghost said softly. "Who is this enemy whose presence draws you here?"
"Jaclyn," Tyfelian hissed.
"We don't know yet, exactly," the human told the ghost. "We only have a brief sighting and a name—I believe he calls himself 'Lord Bri'kerzz,' and his forces include evil metallic dragons."
"A contradiction in terms," the ghost intoned.
"Not for them," Jaclyn shrugged helplessly. "I don't know how, but they've found, or created, evil metallic dragons."
"A terrible thing that is. I bless your efforts to stop them, though I cannot convey any magical blessing anymore—unless you join me upon the plane of ethervapors. If you cleanse this place of its evil, my crewmen and I will be released to proper eternal rest."
"We will make every effort," Kiran broke in to say.
"You may rest here as long as you wish. But there is an artifact of evil below us, in the tiny world of stone hidden there."
"You were right," Jalaysa whispered to Kiran. "And so were you," she added, glancing at Jaclyn. "The rumor you mentioned had it precisely right."
Shoriku paid little attention to her. "You will need this to destroy it, sir," the ghost stated, handing Tyfelian a black metal circlet. Within it, a sheet of the black metal sported seven stylized stars.
"This is the Talisman of Zeratzu," the ghost said.
"Celestian's symbol," Alzja whispered. "Black circle with seven stars!"
"You know this?" the ghost asked, its empty eyes locking onto Alzja.
"We... once had a friend, a cleric... er, shukenja... of Celestian... or Zeratzu, as you know him," Alzja stammered.
"Once?"
"She was recently slain in battle with our current enemy," Tyfelian explained briefly. "We're hoping to find a way to bring her back."
Shoriku looked at him puzzledly.
"Their bodies were destroyed entirely?"
"Dragon fire," Tyfelian replied simply.
Shoriku digested this information, swaying on his feet slightly, obviously a habit from his former life.
"You still may yet find a way," the ghost told him. Suddenly its voice, despite the cold undead overtones and the odd language pattern that came with the thick accent, sounded very clerical, very... wise, thoughtful. "There are surely many ways to try that you have not yet attempted."
"Do you know a way?" Tyfelian asked hopefully.
The ghost considered.
"If all else fails, you can always travel to the land of the dead, and visit whatever deities of death reign over the places where your friends were born. If you are fortunate, they are all the same deity under different names. You can appeal to that deity to restore your lost friends.
"But be warned—no god suffers interruption lightly. Make sure you have a very, very good argument to raise, as to why that god should restore your friends to life, or you may be punished for impertinence."
"I will try, if all other ways turn up nothing," Tyfelian told the ghost. "Thank you for telling me; I didn't know that one."
"I am honored, sir." The ghost sketched a bow.
"We will take our rest," Kiran said politely. "Then we will depart to conquer this evil."
The ghost of Shoriku Harazawa regarded Kiran thoughtfully for a moment, as though it didn't quite understand all he said. He did not question the paladin, though, just turned away to lie down in his coffin once more.
Tyfelian watched it go, feeling a considerable weight lift off his shoulders. Not only had he not heard of that method of recovering a dead person, he'd also run out of ideas... but not hope, hence his failure to complete the grieving cycle and let them go within his heart. Most of the crew had not known the four women long enough to suffer the emotional consequences,
"Rest positions. Post guards. Not just at the entrance," he added, looking at Kiran.
Kiran left him to select guards. The wizards either sat down with their spell books or, in Jalaysa's case, unrolled her bedroll for sleep, to shake off the aftereffects of the broken spelljammer link. The helm was in a dead-box, snapping the connection, but the Elnamerrna helmsmen had discovered, long before, that the fact that the helm sat in a dead-box did not return spellcasting ability immediately. Rest was required.
Tyfelian himself lay down to take his rest. He meant only to fall into the elven reverie, the trance-like, thoughtful state that elves normally experienced instead of sleep. The relief of finding another possible way to bring his friends back from the dead had relaxed him too much for that, though. He fell into true human-style sleep.
Despite the fact that he was not in his own bed in his quarters, he slept more deeply on that crypt floor than he had since that horrible day on a planet halfway across the known universe...
... and he would be puzzled later by how that sleep brought dreams of Embimura, his adopted home.
Vinespace, a sanctuary of goodness within the lair of the enemy
Elnamerrna crew
Firstsummer 25th, 2461
Tyfelian awakened to the silence and darkness of Shoriku Harazawa's burial crypt. He looked around anxiously, worried that he might have missed something, but no surprises awaited him. He had slept very well and got to his feet with renewed energy.
The guards had roused other sleeping crewmembers, who roused others; Tyfelian knew that their sounds, quiet as they were, had awakened him due to his keen hearing. The wizards had awakened before Tyfelian had, and he saw them preparing to march.
The half-drow walked over to the two guards at the entryway. "Report," he said to them.
"Nothing much," replied Autumn. "Some of those big spiders passed by while we rested, but they didn't try to come in here."
"All right. As you were, for now."
Autumn resumed her watch beside the entry, exchanging a comradely smile with her fellow guard, Lanna, a jettison gunner. Together they kept watch, though Tyfelian correctly figured that they could all have slept and been in no danger—Shoriku and his fellow ghosts would have prevented it.
He skipped quietly over to where Kiran, Jalaysa, and Alzja busily pulled themselves together. Jaclyn, already prepared, helped them. Surprisingly, Alzja flashed Tyfelian a very brief smile as he approached—a real smile, not her ever-present smirk.
Tyfelian returned it, but he caught Jalaysa regarding him with amusement during his entire approach. She was noticing that he had skipped, not walked, over to them.
"You skip rather nicely, Ty," Jalaysa commented off-handedly. "You've been doing that occasionally since you got the Dridercomp."
"I have?" Tyfelian replied innocently. "Maybe it just feels good to have two legs again, not eight," he said warmly.
He turned to Kiran.
"What do you make of that Shoriku fellow?"
"He's on the level, but way behind the times," the paladin replied as Jaclyn helped him strap on his heavy armor. "You heard him ask you about Kennaplestis?" he queried as he got the sophisticated celestial armor in order.
"Yes, five thousand years gone. I wouldn't mind seeing the ship he flew here."
Kiran nodded, but had no definitive comment. Alzja jumped in, though.
"Five millennia back, the Mercane hadn't come across with spelljammer helms yet. I bet his ship used the old-style furnace engines."
"Which didn't drain a spellcaster," Jaclyn murmured, glancing at Jalaysa.
"You take the helm and see what happens to you," Alzja challenged, but the twinkle in her eye made it a joke rather than a caustic statement.
"We don't have a pool helm," the psion shot back in the same spirit.
Alzja laughed softly.
Kiran grinned at their antics, then, with his own personal effects in order, he moved off to see to the crew.
"Maybe we'll find his ship," Tyfelian murmured thoughtfully. "I'd like to see a furnace engine—they're so rare these days. I've never seen one."
"Yeah you have," Alzja giggled. "You saw one explode in Spiralspace during the War. Remember that porcupine ship? It had a furnace. When Jalaysa hit 'em with that fireball, it fried the porcupine and made the furnace blow up. Must've had a crack in it—if I heard right, furnaces weren't that touchy."—
She started to go on, but Jalaysa put a hand over her mouth.
"Are you part kender?" Jalaysa grinned.
Alzja gave her a look of mock outrage and Jalaysa took her hand away.
"Come," the elf laughed. "Everyone's ready."
Elnamerrna crew Vinespace, within the
lair of the enemy Firstsummer 25th, 2461
Tyfelian and Kiran led them out into the vine-tunnel.
Lygalliz paced them, his sharp eyes watching ahead. The Elnamerrna crew, weapons drawn and spell components in hand, quickly made it back to the door which led to the bottom of the shaft, then passed it quietly. The tunnel ran about fifty feet to a shallow turn to the right.
Tyfelian peered around the corner, then stepped around it. He waved the others to follow.
"It widens ahead," his hands flashed at Lygalliz and Kiran. "Perfect guard post, but I see nothing."
Lygalliz eyed the wide spot in the tunnel as he approached it behind Tyfelian and Kiran. Vines. Nothing but vines... or was there...? The hurwaet frowned, not sure what he was seeing.
He waved at Tyfelian to get the half-drow's attention.
"I cannot tell, but I think I see something—all looks alike," he signed awkwardly. He wished hard that he could perform drow sign language better, but his hands and fingers were only hurwaet and couldn't make the moves correctly.
Behind them, Jalaysa raised her staff with its continual light enchantment. It revealed nothing but vines, however.
Lygalliz squinted, trying to see what his eyes were trying to show him, but it all looked the same. Greenish vines. The soft lighting didn't help much.
Tyfelian glared at the area, then walked boldly forward. Kiran followed him.
Tyfelian glanced to the right. "A short hallway, then a chamber, with a tunnel leading straight ahead on the other side. Side corridor to the right," he signed at Lygalliz and Kiran, just before a thick vine rose from the floor and lashed him hard across his back.
"Shamblers!" Lygalliz hissed.
Tyfelian gasped with pain, but still reacted so fast his swords blurred. The vine fell to the floor in twitching pieces seconds after striking him.
That did not stop the creature that did it, though. The shambling mound rose from the floor fully and engulfed Tyfelian.
Jalaysa shot off a volley of energy arrow spells at the plant-beast, but it held Tyfelian securely. The half-drow struggled gamely but could not get loose.
Kiran looked around quickly. The Elnamerrna crew hacked and slashed at five of the monsters. Small shamblers compared to others he had seen, these shamblers moved faster than ones Kiran had fought on his home world. He saw that the crew could hold them off, at least for a time, so he dashed over to the one suffocating Tyfelian.
A deft slash of his sword ripped a broken swath in the vines that held the half-drow. Kiran had nearly reached Tyfelian when the monster suddenly realized what was going on and swung a heavy, viny arm right at the paladin's head.
Kiran ducked and bashed his shield into the arm. It had no effect, but Kiran didn't notice. He kept hacking at the vines. He nearly cut Tyfelian's arm off, staying his strike at just the last second, after a flurry of spells from the wizards killed the monster.
Tyfelian fell out of the monster and collapsed, coughing and trying to breathe—not easy things to do at the same time.
The crew battled the monsters with sword and axe. Barolcot, the only dwarf of the Elnamerrna, muttered curses into his beard and swung his axe in slow, wide swings, the best way to attack plants. Beside him, other crewmen swarmed around the monster, ripping it from limb to vine-twined limb.
Alzja's hand axes chopped into the last of the five monsters to fall. It fell over into the entrance to the side passage just as six humans charged out of it. Clerics, by the looks of them, wearing dark bronze-colored robes trimmed in dark blue.
The lead cleric raised his unholy symbol. "Intruders! You have killed the gifts of Bri'kerzz! Kneel before me and beg forgiveness before I execute you!"
"Nothing doing," Alzja laughed. She began casting a spell.
"At them!" the evil cleric shouted. "And you!" he cried at Kiran. "Be gone! I command it!"
Kiran felt the turning power of the evil priest wash over him, trying to compel him to flee, but he steeled himself against it and charged.
A nasty thicket of arrows narrowly missed the paladin as he reached the priest. Most missed, but two of the evil clerics groaned in pain—and frustration, as their spells fizzled out, wasted.
The lead priest cast. His pointing finger shot out at Jalaysa and she froze in place.
Kiran stabbed the cleric seconds later, but his sword turned against chain mail under the robes. Undaunted, the paladin swung his shield full-force into his opponent's nose.
Tyfelian staggered to his feet, wheezing, and scrambled frantically to get his swords, which had slipped from his hands while the shambler had had him engulfed. He had time, though—three of his crew had interposed themselves between him and the evil clerics. He smiled at their quick reactions and loyalty to him, but kept up the search for his lost weapons.
The enemy clerics cast, and eight crewmembers froze in place. Well trained, the others leaped forward to protect the immobile ones.
Alzja cast. A bolt of lightning shot from her hand to strike the lead cleric. He screamed and fell back, his robes smoking.
Kiran clobbered him on the side of the head with the hilt of his sword, and then stabbed him again, sending him to "Bri'kerzz," in his own words, or whatever deity he worshiped, Kiran figured.
Three of the five other priests froze in position as the Elnamerrna wizards got them. The other two cast again, freezing Kiran, Lygalliz, and three other crewmen, but the arrows shot in once more, and Abt came up with his huge axe and attacked a cleric.
The arrows stopped, then the crew moved up and overwhelmed the clerics. Abt raised his axe to finish one, but he encountered resistance on the downward strike to kill the prone cleric. Telekinesis. For a second, Abt tried to override it and finish the killing strike, and perhaps he could have. Jaclyn caught his eye, however, and he realized that it had been her interference keeping him from the kill.
His bovine face screwed up in puzzlement.
"No," Jaclyn whispered to him. "I should probe his mind to find out all I can, then you can kill him."
"All right," Abt shrugged, and lowered his axe as Jaclyn released him.
"Hold him," Jaclyn said to the minotaur.
Abt did. The human squirmed in the powerful grip, but he had no chance to break loose. "No..." he moaned, suspecting what was coming.
Tyfelian caught Jaclyn's eye and nodded. He turned away, unable to watch the spectacle of someone's mind being... reamed. His hand waved to the wizards, getting them into motion to free the magically bound crewmen, and they set to work.
Kiran finished a swing of his sword. Kreg grabbed his arm to stay it before he accidentally killed Lygalliz, then shared a chuckle with the paladin.
Jaclyn's right hand briefly caressed the evil cleric's forehead. There was no visible effect—except an instant look of horror on the cleric's face. Jaclyn probed his thoughts for several minutes, pushing past the man's mental resistance to find out what Tyfelian needed to know, then she started to leave his mind.
The cleric gave up his resistance and spoke to Jaclyn, his voice conniving.
"Lord Bri'kerzz does reward his faithful servants. He could certainly find a place for you, with your mind powers, and some of your friends, too. Maybe all of them. Interested?"
"No chance in hell," Jaclyn "told" him, then her psyche left his with mocking mind-laugh.
Jaclyn walked away from the man.
Abt killed him in the fastest, most merciful way—his huge axe right to the neck. When the dreadful business was done, Abt nodded to Alzja and moved off to join the others.
The half-drow glanced at the remains, then turned away again.
"Kiran, get the crew reorganized for marching," Tyfelian said to the knight.
The half-drow and the paladin swiftly got the scattered crew back in marching order, and then they set off again. Jaclyn started to talk, to tell Tyfelian what she had learned, but he stayed her with a raised first finger. He did not wish to linger at a battle site for longer than absolutely necessary.
A quick look down the vine-hallway from whence the clerics had emerged revealed a chamber with a large stone slab as a floor. A table with chairs squatted on the slab, and several barrels littered the area. The crew examined these but found only normal foodstuffs.
"Take it," Alzja giggled, stuffing some food into her backpack. "We don't know how long we'll be here, and the rations get pretty old."
Tyfelian waved the crew to take what they wanted to take, then called Jaclyn over to him.
"What did you learn?"
Alzja waved Sildara and her company over to her so that they could hear, then told Tyfelian of her results.
"For one thing, our incident in Listraeespace was just a decoy, to allay our suspicions in the wrong direction. I verified that 'Lord Bri'kerzz' is the name of our top-dog bad guy. He's the tanar'ri lord," Jaclyn told him. "Also, I'm not clear on exactly what he's trying to do... he sent these dragons out into Hearthspace just to kill all good people they can. He's not trying to take over the entire crystal shell, like the Unhumans tried."
Tyfelian frowned. That didn't make sense—which, he realized, simply meant that there happened to be more going on than he could know.
Noting the expression on his face, Jaclyn went on.
"It's worse than that. These good-for-nothings know a lot about us. That cleric knew that my father is a farmer."
"Never mind that," Tyfelian scowled. "They would do that so they could bring up painful subjects to distract us."
"No, there's more," Jaclyn went on to say. "Bri'kerzz wants to kill everyone in Hearthspace, and he thinks we can stop him."
Tyfelian's eyes widened.
"Why the hell does he want to do that?" he exclaimed.
"The cleric didn't know."
Tyfelian set his jaw grimly.
"This is sounding worse all the time," he grated.
Jaclyn nodded, and she quietly hoped that their enemies wouldn't find any weaknesses by knowing a good deal about the Elnamerrna. After all, with the knowledge she had taken from the cleric, several possible weaknesses in the enemy seemed apparent to her... Bri'kerzz could do the same with his information.
"One good thing, though—we're not alone. There are other crews, other starships that Bri'kerzz is afraid of. Maybe we can find them."
Tyfelian thought hard, absorbing this information, good and bad. "We'd be smart to find them and join up, but I doubt that we really have time for that. Still... there are other ways besides spelljamming..."
Tyfelian broke off his thoughts and called everyone back into marching order. When they were all lined up, he led the crew back out to the battle area. Spying around the corner leading to the vine-corridor he had seen before the battle, he saw very little, so he walked down it. He noted the fairly steep downward incline with interest.
"Maybe we'll find that planet soon," he signed at Kiran and Lygalliz.
The vine-tunnel they'd entered turned out to be a long one... they trudged nearly a hundred feet, the tunnel veering to the right, and still sloping downward. The Elnamerrna crew reached the distant turn without incident, and Tyfelian once more peeked around a corner.
"Clear. Thirty feet to a Y. Stairway in the right branch," he informed the others.
The half-drow stepped out into the turn. He moved cautiously to the Y-branch. Glancing left, he saw only another narrow tunnel leading away into darkness, though this left tunnel had an odd rectangular arch at the end. He could not tell any particulars, though.
To his right, he saw the stairwell. It was a short one, leading to...
"A chapel," he hissed quietly to Kiran.
A chapel of evil it certainly was. A flat stone floor supported a vine building, with a large altar at its far end. Even in the poor light, the Elnamerrna crew could see that the altar was covered with blood. Behind it loomed a huge statue.
"Lord Bri'kerzz," Jaclyn whispered loudly.
Tyfelian looked away from the grisly altar. He noted that the benches for the faithful to sit upon had been placed in a depression in the stone... odd-shaped indeed. He guessed that the depression in the floor measured fifty feet wide at the far end, just in front of the altar, but at the near end, where its bottom sloped upward, forming a ramp, it was but twenty feet wide or so. Torch sconces lined the walls, and braziers surrounded the altar, but he saw nothing of any interest.
"Let's move on," Tyfelian ordered. "Left branch of the Y."
They turned about and marched that way, Tyfelian leading. The vine-tunnel led them to the strange rectangular arch, which they found to be made entirely of brass or something similar. Stepping through the arch put them at an opening into an overgrown area very quickly.
Tyfelian frowned as his boots thumped quietly against metal. The floor was also of brass.
"What's this?" Lygalliz murmured, looking it over puzzledly. "A perfect place for more shamblers."
"Or something like," Kiran whispered. "Jaclyn... check it out, please."
Jaclyn did, but she saw little more than the others. "Nothing I can see that you can't."
Tyfelian put a hand to his throat, remembering the shamblers. He was no coward, but neither would he repeat a bad experience. He bit his lip.
"Jaclyn, how big is that area in there? What kind of place is it? Dead end, a chamber, what?"
Jaclyn worked her clairvoyance through the area; Jalaysa raised her staff high to try to help her see. Presently, she gave Tyfelian his answer.
"The far wall is about a hundred feet away, and there's an exit there... the whole place is about eighty feet wide. Regular rectangle... and it's weird, but I think the walls are metal, too. They look to be covered with rust, anyway."
Tyfelian's eyebrows rose slightly. He turned to Jalaysa.
"Put a fireball in there on my command—at farthest range, but lowest heat blast. Alzja, Chalizon, Krendren, Nefliss—put up spells to protect us against poisonous fumes, please."
Alzja and the others cast. When they were done, Tyfelian nodded at Jalaysa.
Jalaysa murmured soft words, then pointed her finger and fired a blast of flame. It shot into the heavy vegetation and exploded somewhere on the other side.
The vegetation ignited like oiled paper. Standing outside, the Elnamerrna crew could feel the heat, but Tyfelian watched with satisfaction as a large number of walking plants went up in smoke. The smoke roiled over the magical shields that the other wizards had placed, but did not penetrate it.
"They were lying in ambush," Lygalliz noted. "I saw where they'd been as the fireball lit the place up."
"What were they?" Jaclyn whispered.
"I don't know. Not shamblers, but something like them."
"Wizards," Tyfelian called, and stepped aside for them.
"Fire control protocol," Kiran said, picking up on Tyfelian's lead. "I think that'll work here."
"The path is clear," Lygalliz said.
Alzja cast again. A huge ball of water appeared within the chamber beyond, killing a large swath of fire. The drow wizards and Jalaysa then hit the area with spaced rain cloud spells, this being their familiar and practiced method of fire fighting aboard ship. This knocked the fire completely out, and revealed the exit that Jaclyn had seen on the far side.
"Let's go," Tyfelian bade them. "I'm glad of your spells keeping those gases off of it."
"It's just smoke," Alzja laughed.
"I doubt it," Tyfelian returned. "I wouldn't want to bet my life on it."
Alzja shrugged, having learned, years before, to trust Tyfelian's intuition. She moved ahead carefully, watching the smoke in the room being pushed aside as four protection from gases spells hedged it out of their areas of effect. The wizards moved slowly and carefully, allowing the others to keep within the protection.
Tyfelian tapped the floor with his boot. "Stone."
Jaclyn frowned. "Why would anyone put metal walls to a stone floor?"
"To hide something," Jalaysa murmured.
Tyfelian tapped Alzja and moved toward the wall to his left. His boots slid quietly through burned, wet vines, but the floor beneath remained solid stone.
He examined the rust-covered wall curiously. He noted that while the vegetation (and the monsters) had been all but destroyed by Jalaysa's fireball, the rust had not even been scorched.
"Look at that... it didn't burn—"
"Tyfelian! Stop!" Lygalliz cried softly.
Alzja, Tyfelian, Kiran, and Jalaysa, within her protective spell, had almost reached the wall when that call stopped them.
"What is it?"
"That isn't rust!"
"Back off, back off!" Tyfelian said, gripping Alzja's arm.
They moved away from the wall.
"What is that stuff?" Tyfelian snarled. He could tell, now, that it couldn't be rust... but he had no idea what it was if not.
"Some kind o' bizarre mold," Alzja sneered at it disgustedly.
"Out!" Tyfelian called.
They rushed through the opening as quickly as caution allowed.
Vinespace
Mazar's domain, center of the sphere
Firstsummer 25th, 2461
"Where are they?" Mazar fumed.
His clairvoyance power revealed nothing. Nothing at all. He probed the area where they had last been seen, but could not find them.
He moved his awareness to the chapel and found nothing... then to the overgrown chamber, set as a barrier against intruders. His eyes glittered with rage as he saw it burned and blasted.
"They destroyed the outer barrier... and the vinestalker monsters with it," he growled.
He hoped that the russet mold on the walls would have killed a few of the Elnamerrna crew, but he saw no bodies, and no disturbed mold, either—so he knew it had not sprayed anyone with its deadly spores.
Mazar growled and moved his awareness again.
He lost the trail in the next chamber, which contained more deadly plants... some of them, near the entryway from the vinestalkers' lair, were burned black and destroyed, but others hung intact. Mazar grunted and a blast of smoke shot from his mouth to hit Dretch in the face.
"Got to be there, somewhere," the dragon mumbled. "Dretch, send a large force of spiders to the First Hatchery. I'm sure that the Elnamerrna fools are close there. Tell them to kill all of the intruders."
The dretch coughed up smoke, then babbled, "Think can, Master?"
"No," Mazar laughed. "They can't—but I'll find out exactly where they are and then Krynderyl and I will take them."
"Yes, Grand One."
Vinespace
Elnamerrna crew, descending toward the center of the sphere
Firstsummer 25th, 2461
Tyfelian muttered a curse on all moving plants and all spiders.
He had led the crew in a series of small battles against bizarre predatory plants, the likes of which he had never seen before. Past the area with the mold, they were better described as nuisances, but bad ones.
That area, just past the mold chamber, had turned out to be a large triangle of woven vines, with huge, ropelike vines dangling from the ceiling. Those vines were alive and mobile, and had grabbed the throats of several crewmen, nearly killing them, before the others managed to rip them apart.
Then, as the fifty-two of them left there, a small nest of spiders had dropped upon them. Not normal spiders, though—these monsters had glowed a soft electric blue and shocked anything they touched.
Tyfelian irritably shoved his way through the vegetation in the next chamber. It was overgrown like the previous two, but it had no stone walls and therefore a fireball to clear it would be dangerous. The half-drow was getting angry... and he let it happen. Anger might help him fight.
He fully expected an attack by something before he reached the exit that Jaclyn had reported, but nothing happened at all until he got there.
As he looked through that opening, his anger faded, replaced by wonderment. He had never looked down such a distance except from the deck of a starship.
They had penetrated below the vines, which Tyfelian figured must make a shell around the primary, though he could not see the vine-shell, of course. His line of sight was blocked in every direction except downward.
He spotted the primary of Vinespace in that direction. Definitely an earth body, it appeared perfectly spherical, solid gray-white stone, and enormous—but it couldn't be very big by celestial standards, Tyfelian knew. That, along with the fact that he didn't think it was rotating at all, made him think it just might be artificial. A soft glow illuminated the earth body. Tyfelian saw no source of light, but he figured he just couldn't spot it from his current angle.
Thanking Corellon that he had no fear of heights, Tyfelian looked farther along the path he and his crew would have to take if they wanted to proceed.
It consisted of nothing but archways, hanging suspended in midair. Connected by woven-vine bridges, these arches led about a hundred feet, with a definite downward slant, almost like a ramp. The "ramp" led to a large "building" of vines, which in turn had a vine-shaft dangling from it, leading downward into darkness.
Tyfelian looked at the archways and the vine-building curiously, wondering what was holding them up—to his perception, they simply hung steadily in mid-air.
"More to be seen there," Tyfelian thought, but the distance and darkness defeated even his keen eyesight.
"Lygalliz," Tyfelian called.
The hurwaet worked his way to Tyfelian's side. He gasped at the spectacle below—Tyfelian suspected it impressed Lygalliz even more than it did him, by virtue of the fact that he could see it better. Lygalliz suppressed his awe after just a moment, though, and inspected the huge area, pulling his spyglass from his vest to help.
It took him a couple minutes—one did not normally see vistas like this except from a ship, as Tyfelian had thought before. Enormous it was, yet not passable to a starship. No ship could move in here—to enlarge the Elnamerrna here would be begging to wreck her.
Lygalliz pointed at the shaft leading down from the vine building.
"That shaft leads to another whole layer of vines, and I think that one leads to another... also, I think it keeps going in a spiral—or in centered circles, maybe—right down to the earth body. The whole thing is suspended like..."
"A gigantic spider web." Tyfelian finished with disgust.
"Aye," Lygalliz concurred. "Pulled down from the center, though. The center of that... web... is on the planet, it would figure, but I can't see to tell for sure."
"Jaclyn... how far, as the crow flies?"
Jaclyn stared into the darkness, then looked back at Tyfelian.
"Three miles, give or take."
"Gods," Alzja muttered.
"Any way to just go right down there? A dimension door, maybe?"
"Three miles is stretching a vortex, but it's worth a try," Alzja stated.
"All hands, line up to walk through dimension doors," Kiran called.
The crew did. All of the Elnamerrna's seven wizards swiftly cast dimension doors.
Tyfelian walked through one. He felt the usual slight disorientation as the surroundings vanished, to be replaced by another location, but it looked wrong. The sight of the vine-bridges and archways blurred to a ghostly image, then mixed with another view, which he figured had to be what could be seen from the surface of the sphere below...
... but then, everything snapped back into focus and none of them had moved anywhere.
"What happened?" Jaclyn called to the wizards.
None had any clue except Alzja. She looked out the opening at the earth body.
Scowling, she muttered, "It couldn't be..."
"What is it?"
Alzja's lips locked into a tight line. "I bet that that blasted thing is a mass o' kerteoite. No wonder it's glowing a little."
"That's the baking mineral in drow weapon cysts, isn't it?" Jalaysa glared down at the thing.
"Yes and no. It's got a natural magic aura, but it's worthless for baking drow weapons. It'll turn 'em to nothing but slivers if they're there long enough. No, it's methlivite ore that does that. But kerteoite is a lot more common."
"How long?" Jaclyn asked, her hands pressing to her sides. Alzja understood; the human was concerned about the duergar-made armor hidden beneath her clothing. She chuckled.
"Oh, fifty years, give or take. Your armor is safe," she smirked.
"No teleporting or use of dimension doors anywhere near kerteoite deposits," Tyfelian recalled.
"Which means, this whole crystal shell, with a ball o' that stuff that big," Alzja verified.
"Can we fly down there?"
"All of us?" Jalaysa shook her head. "It'd take a day or more to cast that many fly spells."
"What about a raft?" Jaclyn suggested. "Moved by telekinesis... put the crew down there, then the wizards could fly down."
"Risky, but it might work," Kiran commented.
"We could make rafts with wall of stone spells," Jalaysa said slowly, "or maybe just mass feather fall the whole crew. But those could be dispelled and drop our people. A terrific time for that dragon to attack."
"I think I'd rather walk," Tyfelian returned, "but I'm sure I'll regret saying that later on," he added, looking at the long downward route through who-knew-how-many levels of vine corridors.
"Too far down," Alzja shook her head. "The telekinesis spells would expire and drop the rafts before we could move three miles down. Not for a soft landing, anyway."
"Forward, then," Tyfelian said, and strode boldly ahead.
Vinespace
First Hatchery, near the vine-shell
Firstsummer 25th, 2461
"Urg, urg, urg," Dretch mumbled, its version of a laugh. "Sivver triup dummies come. I see stupid drows and big hooman man up front, wid the herwet."
"What about that human maiden?" Mazar's voice called to Dretch from far below, using magic. "She has fair hair and wears no armor. Also, she wears an odd black headband with a deep blue gemstone."
"Y-yes, Master," Dretch muttered back to him hurriedly. "She walk wid elfin maiden."
"Her name is Jaclyn, I believe. If you get a chance, take her alive. Definitely take Tyfelian alive. Kill the rest unless they surrender."
"Why you want hooman maiden 'live, Master?" Dretch questioned—not the smartest thing it could have said, but no dretch has ever been noted for intelligence.
It got lucky, though.
"I have something personal I want to talk to her about," Mazar replied—a very magnanimous act, to answer a dretch, but Mazar felt like telling someone. "Something about clairvoyance powers."
"Yes, Master."
