Vinespace
Elnamerrna crew, near the First Hatchery
Firstsummer 25th, 2461
Jaclyn swallowed nervously and looked around. She saw nothing except the archways and vine bridges, but she felt someone's scrutiny once more.
Her own gaze locked onto the building ahead of the crew.
Jaclyn closed her eyes for a split second, concentrating on Tyfelian.
The half-drow felt a presence against his mind. He relaxed his thoughts and let Jaclyn into his brain.
"We are being watched. Not by clairvoyance, but someone is watching us. From that building."
"Can you tell what it is?"
"Not without using my own clairvoyance, if it would work, and that might tip it off."
"Alzja," Tyfelian hissed, then switched to drow sign language. "Get us off of this bridge, then hide us all, and hurry."
"I cannot cast mass invisibility, you idiot," Alzja's fingers signed back to him—but by the way they flashed the words, Tyfelian knew that Alzja hadn't meant "idiot" seriously, and that Alzja had meant that she hadn't yet figured out that spell—she was powerful enough to cast it, but she had not yet had time enough to study it. Drow sign language was very expressive for a non-verbal type of communication.
"But I have some o' Tash's scrolls on me," Alzja added.
"Spread out. Mass invisibility march," Tyfelian called to the crew as softly as he could, and they halted.
Alzja cast a spell. After it was done, she tentatively put a foot over the side of the bridge, and it stopped against an unseen barrier.
She urgently pointed the entire crew onto the floating wall of force, then pulled out a scroll and read it.
The Elnamerrna crew vanished.
Dretch blinked.
"They gone, Master. Just... gone."
"They couldn't have teleported!" Mazar shouted. "They're just invisible! Send the spiders out there and swarm the entry strand!"
"But, Master—"
"Do not question me! Do it NOW!" Mazar roared.
"Alzja, take my left elbow and guide me," Tyfelian called, unable to see the edges of the wall of force.
"I can't see your left elbow," Alzja smart-mouthed.
"I'd punch you in the arm if it wouldn't end my invisibility," Jaclyn snarled at Alzja. "You know where he is. Do it!"
Alzja grumbled, but then groped for Tyfelian's elbow. He fumed at the drow woman, even though she couldn't see it, hoping her uncooperative nature wouldn't get them all killed.
"It's there," Alzja said, her voice not grouchy anymore. She had bounced back from an irritated mood with her usual speed.
"All hands! Step onto the wall of force, quickly and orderly—" Tyfelian broke off as the door in the building ahead burst open and he saw what had been waiting for them inside that building.
Spiders. The largest, most disgusting spiders Tyfelian had ever seen in his life, he knew for a certainty. Dozens of them. Larger than Kreg, black with neutral gray stripes, the horrible things crawled out of the building ahead and swarmed onto the bridge and over the arches at alarming speed. Some also walked under the vine-bridge, walking upside-down with the casual abandon of all bugs.
"Fast!" Tyfelian called as loudly as he dared. With Alzja's guidance, he felt for the wall of force floating nearby with his foot, found it, and leapt upon it. He guided Kiran to do the same, placing him at the opposite corner.
Kiran and Tyfelian then guided the crew onto the invisible floating wall, first with soft calls, then with gentle touches.
As if they had practiced this before—and they had; Kiran had seen to it—the Elnamerrna crew stepped over onto the wall of force. Being unable to see each other slowed them to a shuffling pace, but the last of them—the weapon crews, if the drills had done any good—stepped up and off the vine-bridge just as the first wave of spiders rolled by the spot.
The crew froze, hardly even breathing. The spiders passed by them, then reached the entry to the vine-shell and swarmed there, frustrated.
"That dragon might show up at any moment," Tyfelian whispered to Kiran. "If it does, hit it with everything you've got—everybody. Except you, Alzja. Wire its mouth if you can. Spread the word—quietly."
Tyfelian resumed watching the spiders. He knew that, at any moment, their master would recall them. He also watched the half-open door to the building uneasily, his eyes shifting to the right, toward the spiders, and to his left, restlessly.
"Jalaysa, cast another wall of force so we can spread out some... we'll be sitting ducks lined up like this. Put it over on the side toward the building and make it quick."
Jalaysa cast. Tyfelian, with his keen ears, heard the crew slowly spread out. As they did, he whispered one last command. "Alzja, Jalaysa, cast prolong spells on these walls... we might need them for a while."
Kiran called for sharp watch. "Be ready if that dragon comes out."
"They can't have disappeared!"
"I sawwy, Master, but I not see 'em! Spiters not get 'em!"
"All right, that's enough! I'll be right there, you worthless piece of garbage!"
"Faprol, where are you?" Kiran called.
"Over here," returned a whispered voice.
"If the dragon appears, after you hit it, fireball those spiders over there. We don't need to fight both at once."
"That will likely destroy the bridge."
"We'll cross that bridge after we fix it," Tyfelian joked, daring to raise his voice a little so all could hear him. "And hope to the gods they don't have any flour to dump on us."
Tyfelian was not overly comfortable taking Fing's place as the ship's battlepoet, but to his relief he heard a few stifled laughs and giggles. Alzja tittered in his ear, then cast another spell, then another.
Tyfelian smiled and chuckled softly as she did, but then murmured, "Any time now."
Sure enough, a gigantic claw slammed the half-open door aside with a crash. A red dragon burst out of it, springing into flight. Then, the creature apparently reversed a shrink spell, for he then expanded to unbelievable size.
Tyfelian gasped; he had never before seen a dragon, any dragon, that big! It had to be fifty feet long, not counting the tail!
He realized instantly that it was not a created dragon, not a Bri'kerzz dragon, for he felt the great wyrm's aura of fear. His hands shook with irrational panic, but he gripped his swords tighter until his knuckles turned white, to help him shake off the dragonfear.
The dragon began to cast a spell—Tyfelian would have bet that it was one to let him see invisible objects.
"Now!" he cried.
The Elnamerrna crew reappeared to the twangs of three dozen bowstrings and the blinding bursts of seven lightning bolt spells. The dragon screeched horribly and turned about.
Faprol blasted the spiders just as Mazar opened his vast mouth to breathe flames. The Elnamerrna crew fired their bows again; almost immediately after, more lightning blasts struck the dragon. The bridge collapsed near the vine-shell, the strands vaporized by Faprol's fireball, but the archways remained, still floating in mid-air as if nothing had happened. The dragon's inferno-breath streamed over the stone archways near the walls of force, incinerating more of the vine-bridge, and rolled over the Elnamerrna crew.
Tyfelian gritted his teeth against the agony of the blast, but fired his bow again gamely. Kiran moaned, and Tyfelian heard some of his crew scream.
Jaclyn was virtually unaffected. Her energy barrier transformed the heat into light, making her glow fiercely as she turned the flames into radiance.
The archways in the midst of the dragon's attack melted. Tyfelian then realized that Alzja had cast a couple of defensive spells—or they would have been killed, all of them. The red's breath had just melted stone! This was a Great Wyrm, one of the oldest dragons.
Then Alzja cast once more.
Tyfelian watched with satisfaction as wires appeared out of nowhere to bind the dragon. A piece of floating slag suddenly moved, striking the dragon in the neck. Tyfelian guessed that Jaclyn or one of the wizards had used telekinesis to make it move.
He noted that the dragon's mouth looked to be firmly bound up by the wires. Its claws also looked immobile, as Alzja had intended. He realized that the dragon was temporarily neutralized as a threat, and nodded to Jaclyn.
Jaclyn began to concentrate on the dragon's mind.
Tyfelian started to look around to check the condition of his crew, but a searing pain in his foot stopped him.
Looking down, Tyfelian swore as he saw one of the overgrown spiders. It had hooked its fangs over the lip of the wall of force and stabbed Tyfelian's foot, right through his boot.
The half-drow dropped his bow and drew his swords. The twin weapons stabbed into the spider's head, ripping it off his boot and tossing it to its death.
The venom, however, was in. Tyfelian could literally feel it flow through his foot and up his ankle. He swooned, then fell over onto his side.
"Alzja! Poison!" Lygalliz called.
"No, she's busy," Kiran raised a hand to stay the hurwaet. He knelt by the fallen half-drow and tore his boot off, then snatched a potion vial out of his belt pouch. The paladin swiftly poured the liquid onto the wound.
"That'll keep him alive for a while," Kiran noted.
"What is Bri'kerzz trying to do?" Jaclyn demanded of the dragon's brain. The creature did not know that Jaclyn was reading his thoughts, so she had to question his unconscious mind.
"All will be his. All will be Yalthra'teyka."
"What is Yalthra'teyka?"
"A layer of the Abyss. Lord Bri'kerzz's home."
"Bri'kerzz wants to take over the entire multiverse?"
"No."
"Then, what?"
"All the multiverse will be Yalthra'teyka."
Jaclyn did not understand this; it made no sense and went in circles. Her jaw tightened with irritation at "reading" raw knowledge—she could get facts that the dragon knew, but not the background behind those facts. Jaclyn bit her lip, suspecting that this dragon's mind had fallen under the temptation, the lure of power, of some so-called higher cause, some ludicrous goal that the dragon's master pursued.
"How will he attain this?"
"Kill all Good beings, everywhere. Control all others."
More nonsense, Jaclyn thought. She caught herself thinking that perhaps the dragon had been brainwashed, but she actually laughed softly at that idea; brainwashing a dragon was nearly another definition of impossible. No matter how little sense it all made, she knew that the dragon believed it.
"What exactly are you trying to do here? You cannot take over Hearthspace by military might—even the Unhumans could not do that. Why are you trying?"
"We are not attempting that."
"Then what exactly are you planning?"
"We will Shift Hearthspace."
"What does "Shift" mean?"
"Hearthspace will become part of Yalthra'teyka, forever."
"That is impossible. No one can plane-shift an entire crystal shell!"
There was no knowledge the dragon had that verified that. Jaclyn raised an eyebrow.
"It can't be done... can it?"
"Of course it can be done."
"How?"
"By killing all Good beings in the crystal shell."
Jaclyn was badly confused. This seemed like madness to her—the ultimate dream of a would-be conqueror of All. Could this Lord Bri'kerzz be insane? Killing all Good beings in Hearthspace would simply turn it into a crystal shell sparsely populated with evil people...
... Wouldn't it? Jaclyn asked herself.
She figured that there had to be more going on here than she knew about... a lot more. She felt very puzzled, very frustrated—and very, very lonely. The idea of all Good beings in Hearthspace being gone made her feel so alone that her heart shrank from the idea.
Realizing that she needed more knowledge, she forced herself to ream the dragon's brain for everything it knew on the subject. The knowledge did stream into her mind, but there was too much of it. She knew she would spend days, perhaps weeks, meditating on it, before she would understand.
Alzja gritted her teeth, snarling at the dragon. It was strong! Keeping it bound by the coiled wires, yet keeping that illusion believable, was becoming increasingly difficult.
She also realized uneasily that they still had the problem of killing it after Jaclyn finished, but Jaclyn assisted with that problem herself. She left the dragon's mind, but not as gracefully as she had with the evil cleric. She hit its brain with a barrage of conflicting input, shocking and stunning the creature.
Jaclyn then waved at Alzja to get her attention, and waved a hand negligently to tell her to discontinue the wire illusion.
"Good-bye, Mazarixopellin," Jaclyn shouted.
Mazar drooped. Reeling from the mental attack, he caught himself on one of the surviving arches, dangling by one claw.
Seven more lightning bolts flashed forth to strike the dragon. Jaclyn recognized these as illusionary, but she doubted that Mazar would realize it.
The claw slipped, then part of the archway broke off, letting the battered dragon fall. Jaclyn slugged him with a psychokinetic punch, then pressed him down with standard telekinesis.
Meanwhile, the arrow shots, relatively ineffective though they were, never relented, fired by all the others.
Mazar fell toward the earth body, screaming. A ragged cheer went up from the Elnamerrna crew, but Jaclyn wanted to be certain of the kill before rejoicing. She closed her eyes and used clairvoyance again, to follow the dragon down.
She waited out the tense time that it took for the dragon to hit, then smiled with satisfaction when the stunned and injured red dragon slammed into the planet below from a fall of three miles. He hit it hard enough that Jaclyn felt sure he had been killed on impact.
The psion closed her clairvoyance and turned to Kiran.
"I confirm the kill."
The paladin nodded, but then called, "Alzja!"
"Tyfelian?"
Kiran nodded again. "Poison."
Alzja rushed to the fallen leader's side and examined him. "Sweet water potion straight to the wound?"
"Yes."
"Good decision." Alzja cast a spell on Tyfelian, then another. The half-drow stirred.
"Can you stand?" Kiran queried.
Tyfelian shrugged, not really knowing, and started to pick himself up, but Kiran and Alzja both helped him.
"The crew?" Tyfelian asked shakily.
"No casualties, but all of us got burned badly," Kiran reported.
"My spell kept off the worst of it," Alzja put in proudly. They all knew that Alzja had been working on a countermeasure against dragon breath ever since their visit to Krynn.
"It worked, they would be happy to know," she said softly.
Tyfelian smiled, but then swallowed hard. "We're hurt. We need to retreat."
"That can be arranged," Alzja said confidently. She cast again, longer this time, and a strange shimmering appeared in the air, in vaguely the shape of a building, with a rather ordinary-looking door in it.
"Jaclyn, make sure we're not being watched... you said something about that," she added, looking meaningfully at the nearby building.
Jaclyn did. "There's a blobby creature in there, climbing down the shaft. It's retreating. No one else is around."
"Then follow me, everyone," Alzja called.
Alzja opened the door and stepped through. "Quickly, now."
All of them filed into the place. Tyfelian looked around with interest. He had seen this spell before, but Tash had cast it.
"You mastered another of Tash's spells."
"I did," Alzja smirked.
"Kiran, post two guards at the door—or where it was," he corrected himself, laughing softly at Alzja's antics. "Just in case someone finds us here. All hands, find a spot in here and rest."
Dretch scurried down the shaft, wondering what he was supposed to do next. He had hated Mazar, but he would have preferred to work for a red dragon than Master Krynderyl any day. The stupid dretch had no idea of what he should do after Mazar's death. According to normal procedures, he would have to report to Krynderyl anyway, whether he happened to like it or not...
... but he did not wish to bring that one any bad news.
Yalthra'teyka, 474th layer of the Abyss—city of Braskrakel
The Master's throne room
>Firstsummer 26th, 2461
"THEY DID WHAT!!" Bri'kerzz shouted at Krynderyl.
Krynderyl could only grimace. His right hand nervously clenched the mangled remains of Dretch, but Dretch would not be dead very long, unfortunately for it. Krynderyl, like Bri'kerzz before him, did not know why; dretches had no power of regeneration, yet Dretch would heal and spring back to life even after being ripped to shreds.
"They made it to the top of the Great Web and, last Dretch knew, they shot Mazarixopellin out of the air!"
"KILL THEM!! KILL THE ELNAMERRNA CREW NOW!!!!" Bri'kerzz shouted, causing pain even in Krynderyl's ears. He noted it, and lowered his volume. "Go to Vinespace and get them! If you fail and yet survive, I will destroy you utterly, Krynderyl! Find them and slay them! They have gone too far this time! Never again!"
"Yes, lord," Krynderyl replied. "I will liquidate them as ordered."
"It will be well for you," Bri'kerzz growled. He glanced at the slowly regenerating Dretch with a snort. "Go—and take that garbage with you."
Vinespace
Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion spell, three miles above the central earth body of Vinespace
Firstsummer 27th, 2461
Alzja worked nonstop to heal the Elnamerrna crew. Even supplemented by Kiran's limited powers of healing, it still took all of her healing spells, a full eight-hour rest period, and all of her healing magic again to do it. After that, she recast her spell, to get another full rest period, to regain those powers—again.
Tyfelian deeply lamented the loss of Melanerra, and even the irritating Fing, the kender cleric. The crew could have been healed up at three times the speed—in other words, almost no time, one eight-hour rest period to regain spells, at most—if those two had still been around. Still, Tyfelian knew that Alzja was, after all, only one person, one cleric, and would always give her best despite her smart mouth.
The lot of them crept out of Alzja's Mansion spell when they were finally ready. Nothing awaited them there, but they swiftly found a serious problem. Little remained of the vine-bridge, and what was left dangled uselessly below the nearby building. Jalaysa cast a wall of stonein a thin strip, merging with the surviving archways, leading from the exit from the areas above to the vine building, to allow them to move out.
"Wait," Tyfelian called as Kiran began to go. "Alzja, you do that same thing. Make our walkway wider."
"Why?" she asked, with, oddly, no smartmouth at all, only curiosity. She reached for her material components as she said it, though.
"Quickness," Tyfelian explained. "We don't want to go single file."
Alzja shrugged and did as Tyfelian had requested, making a wider walkway.
"Weapons ready. Move out," Tyfelian called.
They stepped tentatively out and onto the new stone bridge, but it held steady as solid ground under their weight. Tyfelian eyed the still-ajar door on the vine building. Nothing had changed since last they had seen the area.
"I can't believe they aren't looking for us," Kiran stated.
"I'm sure they are... but maybe the last thing they expected was for us to stay right where we were," Tyfelian shrugged.
Alzja chuckled softly, taking credit for the fact that they had not been found.
"Outsiders might not know about spells like that," Jalaysa murmured.
Tyfelian nodded, but he had reached the door.
A soft push set it aside. Tyfelian's swords came up instantly, then relaxed.
"Spiders," Tyfelian shuddered.
"What?" Kiran muttered.
"This was a lair. A hatchery, in fact. Look at those egg strands... but all the eggs have been removed."
The southern portion of the building's interior was a series of what, at first, looked like overgrown vine-arches, but Tyfelian saw that these were, in fact, emptied strands of webbing—web-tubes that had once held egg sacs. The arches, six of them total, got smaller and smaller the closer to the door they happened to be, until at that entryway, the final arch gaped about twenty feet wide.
Tyfelian guessed that the far wall measured around sixty feet wide and was draped with spider webs of every type. This included the webbing that had once held eggs.
"The First Hatchery," Jaclyn murmured.
Tyfelian looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
"That's what this place is called. The First Hatchery."
"How do you—oh," Tyfelian smiled. "The dragon's mind. Have you sifted through more?"
"Some, but not much. The name of this place sprang to my mind as I saw it."
"There's another part to it," Lygalliz informed them. "The far wall isn't a wall at all. It's a web drapery."
"Looks like a wall to me," Kiran said, but he eyed it curiously, moving toward it across the floor. Sure enough, it turned out to be no wall but a sheet of strung webs. Thick and somewhat dusty, it had looked like stone from the entrance.
"The vine-shaft isn't in that hall," a member of the crew called over to them. "It leads to a door."
"Reamie, Haroley, Dremley, guard that opening. The rest of you spread out. I want to see what's past that web-wall."
The crew moved into the area and filled it, weapons bared and spells on lips. Tyfelian slashed at the web-wall with his swords, swallowing his revulsion, and found that he could break through it with some difficulty.
"A staircase... and a vine-shaft," he called softly to the others. "But let's check out that hallway first."
Kiran moved over to it. The others followed.
Tyfelian inspected the door for any obvious traps, then twisted the handle on its right side. It opened easily.
The half-drow let it swing open, instantly drawing his sword to his right hand.
The place beyond appeared circular, and sported a floor of wood, with rich throw-carpets scattered around it. Tyfelian looked it over curiously, then his brow cleared. This must have been the quarters of the guardian of the eggs, whoever that had been.
Moving inside, Tyfelian examined the area but found nothing of interest. He moved toward the door when Lygalliz called to him from where the hurwaet had been leaning against the doorframe.
"Straight behind you; the wall, four feet up," Lygalliz stated with a slight smile.
Tyfelian looked hard at the wall in the spot Lygalliz indicated. At first, he saw nothing unusual, but then his sensitive eyes caught sight of a very slight crease...
Tyfelian moved over to it. He pressed on it lightly, at the same time motioning Lygalliz to move aside from his location, then leaped aside, himself.
A good thing; a small ball of fire belched from the opening revealed, hissed loudly, then expired with a poof. It would have seriously burned Tyfelian if he'd still been there.
Chuckling softly and sharing a grin with Lygalliz, Tyfelian peered into the secret compartment.
"Treasure," he said happily. He took some small objects of art and jewels, then called the usual treasure-bearers, which included Jaclyn, into the area to collect it. He smiled at the large number of valuable gems they'd found. Sildara's teasing back on Krynn aside, he had little use for wealth himself—indeed, all of the Elnamerrna crew felt at least somewhat the same way, the very reason Tyfelian and Kiran had signed them on. Still, they needed money despite their lack of greed. It cost dearly, at times, to keep the Elnamerrna in good repair.
Jaclyn was, as always, the exception. After the others were done, she collected everything that remained in the secret compartment. Tyfelian stifled a laugh as Jaclyn scooped over and picked up every last copper coin in there.
Jaclyn was too absorbed in collecting the money to notice. Tyfelian saw a point to it, though—she was, without doubt, the wealthiest person on the ship, and she contributed greatly to the repairs. Moreover, she helped with the buying of certain raw materials for healing potions, which Alzja then synthesized. Tyfelian stood quietly, patiently, as he remembered who had paid for the three powerful healing potions in his belt pouches.
"Done," the human said to Tyfelian with a smile. That told him that the wealth they'd just found had turned out to be considerable.
"We'll all explore down that staircase, then go down the vine-shaft," Tyfelian told them.
They moved out, back to the main room of the building, then to the staircase. Lygalliz took point beside Tyfelian and they crept down the steps, two and three abreast.
They discovered at that point that the vine building stood upon a large slab of stone, or perhaps a block of it.
"Probably levitating in mid-air just like those stone arches outside," Kiran guessed.
Tyfelian nodded thoughtfully, then led them down further.
The stairwell turned left, then left again, obviously well cut into a solid block of stone, possibly by magical means. It emptied into a large chamber.
Jalaysa raised her staff.
Tyfelian—and everyone else, for that matter—gasped in shock and contempt.
"This wasn't just a spider hatchery," Tyfelian spat angrily.
"No..." Kiran groaned.
A memory sparked into Tyfelian's mind.
"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. They—"Fing's voice drifted up from the depths of his memories.
She had stopped talking so suddenly—highly unusual for a kender—that Tyfelian, Kiran, and Lygalliz hurried to her side in alarm.
"No!!" Fing whispered, shuddering with fury. "They won't do it again!!"
Tyfelian's face contorted with hatred and loathing.
Now, here in Vinespace, they walked into another storage area for good dragon eggs. Gold, silver, bronze, brass, and copper eggs sparkled at them in Jalaysa's light.
"Taken from all over Known Space, wherever good dragons live," Jaclyn had told them on Krynn, Tyfelian remembered. Undoubtedly, it was no different here.
"Can we save them?" Tyfelian asked Jaclyn.
"I'm not sure. I've still got lots of meditating to do before I know for sure exactly what's happening here... and figure out the process they use with... these." She nodded at the good dragon eggs. "Mazar knew, but I had to take in too much all at once... it's like reading a book. You can only go through it so much, so fast."
Tyfelian raised a hand. Jaclyn's tone had been slightly defensive; his gesture was meant to ease her down, keep her from feeling pressured. Among other reasons for not wanting her to feel that way, Tyfelian knew it wouldn't help anything.
She smiled slightly, accepting it.
Tyfelian looked around unhappily at the eggs, then spread his arms helplessly, his hands slapping his hips.
"We can't do anything here... because we don't know what's in those eggs. Maybe they're already evil, but maybe not. Tell us as soon as you... figure it out," he said to Jaclyn.
"I will."
"Back to the vine-shaft, everyone," Tyfelian called.
As they reversed their path, Tyfelian wondered uneasily if they'd made a mistake back on Krynn. They had taken the good dragon eggs and given them to authorities in Solamnia for return to the good dragons... but he realized now that that may very well have been a serious blunder. Those eggs may have contained young Bri'kerzz dragons. He hoped not, but he really didn't know, and his intuition told him nothing, not on this.
He did have some strange associations floating around in his mind, though. He kept thinking of his pleasant dreams of home during his sleep in the shukenja's crypt, and those kept making him think of good dragon eggs. The exact connection eluded him. He thought it very unlikely that any good dragon eggs had been taken from Erilonia, and certainly not in large numbers... yet the idea haunted him.
Dragon eggs from Erilonia.
He felt a cold finger of fear press his heart for some reason, but nothing specific came to mind.
As the half-drow made his way through the massed crewmen, he thought hard, in the moments it took him to reach the front again to lead them, but the connection between dragon eggs and his home world flitted away, like a bit of knowledge he could not quite remember.
Jaclyn's clairvoyance probed downward through the shaft. Seeing nothing, she nodded to Tyfelian, who started to jump into the shaft.
Jaclyn restrained him. "Let me take point for this. I'll continue to clairvoy and watch for attack from below."
"Okay."
` Jaclyn crawled into the shaft gingerly and let herself float down it. She slowed herself by clawing her hands on the shaft walls, then closed her eyes to use clairvoyance downward, along her path.
Tyfelian let himself fall right above her, weapons drawn, but held close to his body to avoid slashing the shaft. The others followed closely.
This shaft turned out to be longer than the last one. Tyfelian could not tell for sure, but he thought that it might have dropped them half a mile when Jaclyn's voice came up to him in a soft hiss.
"Stop!"
Tyfelian sent the command upward, let himself fall a moment longer—his foot brushed Jaclyn's shoulder—then stopped himself by grabbing a vine. He floated there and looked down to Jaclyn.
"What is it?"
"Spiders below. Those nasty ones that shock you."
Tyfelian's expression hardened.
"Wizards!" he whispered. "Any way you can take 'em out from up here? I know, I know—no fireballs!" he added, thinking of what might happen if they blasted part of the vine-structure away; doing so might very well drop them for a very long fall.
"I could try a cloudkill," Alzja called down to him.
"Go," Tyfelian told her, and moved aside for her, motioning Jaclyn to do the same.
Alzja slid by them. Tyfelian expected her to slip him a sly wink or toss out a sarcastic comment, but she did neither; just looked at him with amusement and floated down the vine-shaft past him.
The drow whispered something to Jaclyn that Tyfelian couldn't quite hear. The human laughed softly; Tyfelian felt sure that he had just missed a joke at his expense. Alzja said something else, and this time Jaclyn replied with words—Tyfelian still couldn't hear but he guessed that Alzja had asked for a description of the area below. Jaclyn grinned at Alzja, then gave the drow a gentle push down on the shoulder to get her going again.
They all heard Alzja's voice a moment later, then a loud hissing noise.
She float-climbed back up to them with an ear-to-ear smirk. She looked straight at Tyfelian as she said, "All clear—no spiders."
Tyfelian ignored Alzja—to him, it was worth a joke at his expense to avoid fighting spiders.
Presently the lot of them stood on another vine-net at the bottom of this shaft. It was filled with dead shock spiders and a foul, bitter odor from the cloudkill.
They looked around with interest. This shaft-net was nearly identical to the earlier one, but it had no wall cutting off a quarter of it. Instead, the far wall was divided in two, and the two halves met in a "V" shape, the point of the "V" pointing inward; where they met, a small archway gaped. It didn't take fine eyesight to see that it led to a vine-bridge.
Tyfelian examined it, then moved toward it slowly. He poked his head through the opening for a look around.
The bridge hung suspended between the vine-net and a large mass of floating rock. About thirty feet long, the vine-bridge looked to Tyfelian to be as sturdy as the others they'd encountered. The rock mass appeared natural, except for a blocky cube on its left side. Clearly no natural formation, it looked to Tyfelian like a cube made by magic. The bridge led to a hole in the rock on its near side.
Glancing down, he saw the earth body primary of Vinespace.
"Make the crossing quickly," Tyfelian called, then proceeded to do just that himself. "I can think of a dozen places I'd rather fight something."
Alzja nodded and clapped Tyfelian on the shoulder in a comradely way—not something normal for her to do, not at all. Tyfelian noticed, but didn't comment. It might only call forth smartmouth comments from her.
The half-drow moved across the vine-bridge as quickly as prudence would let him. He watched all around tensely, expecting an attack, but he made it to the rock face, which surprised him. Evidently, Alzja's anti-scrying magic was still working, but Tyfelian knew that more mundane spies—like spiders—could be tracking them, and he thought...
"Alzja, I see a spider back there on the outside of the net," he said to her. "You got another spell going?" he added, remembering her shoulder-clap on him.
Alzja raised her eyebrows briefly above her constant smirk.
Tyfelian shot her a quick, complimentary smile and stepped cautiously into the hole in the rock.
Vinespace primary
Former lair of Mazarixopellin
Firstsummer 27th, 2461
"Where are they?" Krynderyl fumed, just as Mazar had done before. He absently kicked Dretch in the belly in frustration, knocking the creature clear across the lair.
Accustomed to worse, including being killed, Dretch simply dragged itself up and waddled back over to Krynderyl, though prudently a step away from its earlier spot. "Spiters not find 'em, Master, but they under Fuurrst Hatch, Dretch know."
"How do you know that, you moron?"
"Nothin' left stop 'em. They in Betkerspitch now. Mebbe even closer."
Krynderyl knew that the place Dretch was burbling about was the tiny earth body called Belkerspid, a former moon of the primary, now locked in frozen orbit by the vine-work of the great spiders. It was only a barrier to those who didn't know how to move through it. It might hinder the Elnamerrna crew for a time.
"Send a wave of spiders to Belkerspid—all that you can gather on short notice," Krynderyl ordered Dretch. "Issue the kill command. I want no survivors. Report back to me immediately, whether the spiders succeed or not."
Dretch scurried toward the exit in a rush.
Krynderyl frowned. He didn't quite understand how the entire crew of a starship could simply vanish. Over fifty people! He was having no luck finding them by scrying, nor by spider spies.
It would take a spellcaster of considerable power to hide fifty people from both clairvoyance and from scouts who could see them in person. Krynderyl knew that their most powerful wizard, an archmage, had been killed on Krynn. Though the Elnamerrna had seven other wizards, a remarkable number, none were reputed to be especially powerful.
"The artifacts," Krynderyl murmured.
"Master?" Dretch turned around at the exit to look at Krynderyl.
"Nothing," Krynderyl snarled, though it would explain much, Krynderyl thought, if the seven artifacts these intruders carried provided such protection and non-detection. These intruders, Krynderyl decided, don't amount to much without their magical items, especially the artifacts.
Yet, they kept blasting aside obstacles in their way, getting closer and closer. Krynderyl knew that the obstacles didn't get deadlier the closer one came to the earth body Yelthontrel; the entire "spider web" of vines was a functioning community in service to Lord Bri'kerzz, not truly a defensive structure.
'Sivver triup dummies,' Dretch had called them. Boneheaded Silver Triop fools or not, they would eventually get to Yelthontrel and find Krynderyl.
The cambion pondered over what measures he could take to prepare for their all-but-inevitable attack. He could return to Yalthra'teyka through the portal and get reinforcements, but he wondered how that would affect his standing in Bri'kerzz's eyes; for a servant to get cold feet invited cold death when the master was Bri'kerzz.
If the attempted ambush at Belkerspid came to nothing, he could recall all spiders to Mazar's lair, summon all inhabitants of the vine-web to his side, and wait, thus making the Elnamerrna crew to face an overwhelming force...
"The flaw in that idea is that I don't know exactly how powerful those artifacts really are,"Krynderyl reasoned. "They might still defeat us all, even against the force I could raise..."
Then Krynderyl smiled, as a dragon's mouth smiles, when the answer dawned on him. He could easily set up waves of defenders in his lair, so that he could watch two or three battles against the Elnamerrna's crew and evaluate the results. If the intruders proved too powerful, all would be ruined, but he didn't have to report back to Bri'kerzz. He could desert the Lord of Yalthra'teyka and find another Abyssal Lord to serve.
His mind made up, Krynderyl closed his useless clairvoyance. Then, he swept some fabulous treasures like a platinum-chased sapphire necklace and crystal lion statue off a throne sitting in the middle of Mazar's treasure hoard, and settled into it to await Dretch's report.
Vinespace, Belkerspid
Elnamerrna crew
Firstsummer 27th, 2461
Tyfelian and Kiran walked into the small floating rock.
Kiran sniffed, got a look of disgust on his face, and peered at the interior.
Filled with fungus growth, the inside of the rock reeked of the stuff. Tyfelian, wary of fungi from his Underdark experience, eyed a large blob of the mess in the center of the cave. His eyes locked onto it and didn't let it go. In his peripheral vision, he noted a door that had to lead to the cube they'd seen earlier, but he kept looking at the center blob. His mind registered the fact that the opening on the far wall had to be an exit; he felt a slight breeze coming from it, but he ignored it.
Slowly, cautiously, the half-drow led them around it toward the door. He had made it perhaps halfway when the fungus blob shook, then a hole gaped open in it and blasted Tyfelian, Kiran, and Lygalliz with wet spores. All three moved out of the way fast, but not quickly enough; they got drenched.
Alzja raised a hand and mumbled a spell. A small ball of fire rolled off her hand, hit the floor, and roared toward the blob. The other wizards followed suit, and swiftly the fungus blob went up in smoke.
Alzja turned to the three men and cast again. The watery spore issue vanished; she then walked over to them and prayed briefly over each, taking no chances.
"Thanks," Kiran said to her, then they moved on to the door.
Tyfelian examined it for traps. Finding none, he grasped its handle and tried to open it. To his surprise, it opened easily and revealed someone's personal chamber.
Kiran and Tyfelian exchanged a glance.
"Someone lives here?" Jaclyn chuckled from behind them. "Whoever it is must love fungus blobs."
Tyfelian motioned her to stand fast, did the same to Alzja, then waved Kiran, Lygalliz, and three crewmen to follow him in there.
They looked the place over carefully.
"A cleric's room?" Kiran frowned.
"So it would seem," Lygalliz bit his lip, making his slightly reptilian face look sinister in the flickering light of three braziers. The hurwaet noted the clearly religious accoutrements—a small basin of holy water, a tiny altar, and a tapestry showing a large rendition of an only-too-familiar unholy symbol on the far wall, above the head of the vast bed.
Tyfelian frowned at the non-concentric circles in the drawing. "What...?" he frowned.
"A crystal shell within a crystal shell," Haroley called to him from farther back, outside the open door.
Kiran stared at the unholy symbol with loathing, then continued to look around.
The door slammed shut.
Alzja ran to the door and grasped the handle, trying to reopen it.
Not surprisingly, it didn't budge.
Alzja's hands slipped quickly into her spell component pouches.
Lygalliz leaped back to the door in a bound and savaged the handle. When he found that it wouldn't open, the hurwaet slammed his shoulder into it, but to no effect.
Tyfelian drew his swords and leaped into a defensive stance with Kiran, but a sudden, unexpected yawn made him swoon on his feet. A moment later, he spun and braced himself against Kiran, but the paladin likewise braced himself against the half-drow.
Lygalliz fell backward between them and all three men collapsed in a heap.
Kreg slammed the hilt of his sword against the door handle, a powerful downward strike, but the handle moved nary an inch.
The big ogre then bashed his shoulder on the door as Lygalliz had, but it held solidly, barely making a sound.
Jalaysa cast a spell of opening on the door.
Nothing happened.
Jalaysa frowned, but Alzja glared at the door angrily and cast a spell of her own. Her pointing finger shot a green beam of light, which flashed on the door.
The entire door flashed into nonexistence.
"The men!" Alzja shouted.
A bronze-robed wizard stood in the room beyond, looting Tyfelian, Kiran, and Lygalliz, with five armored men behind him. Alzja ran into the chamber straight at the wizard.
The wizard stood and began casting, but Alzja, wasting no time drawing her weapons, ran right up to him and leaped, kicking him in the belly hard. Her aim was perfect and the kick sent the wizard careening into his guards.
"All hands, to my side!" Alzja shouted.
The rest of them crowded in fast; the enemy wizard and his men were surrounded by the time they recovered.
"Surrender!" Alzja yelled at the wizard.
The wizard looked around. Ten bows with nocked arrows had him lined up; they couldn't possibly miss.
He held his hands out in surrender. His guards did likewise and some of the Elnamerrna crew swiftly tied up the guards with short ropes, while two crewmen seized the wizard's arms to immobilize him.
"Don't kill us," the wizard pleaded. "We were told you were invaders."
"We are," Alzja giggled. She addressed the crewmen who had tied up the enemies. "Watch them carefully while I take care o' the three sleepers."
Alzja examined them, but she couldn't be sure what had happened. "They're out cold—what did you do to them?" she asked the enemy wizard.
"Sleep gas."
Alzja cast a spell on each of the three, then shook them to awaken them. As they woke up, she cast another spell surreptitiously.
Tyfelian got to his feet and picked up his swords, all the while glaring at the wizard, but he kept quiet and let Alzja handle the interrogation.
"Who are you and why did you knock them out?" Alzja demanded.
"I'm a humble wizard from the planet Toril," replied the bronze robe. "We were told to stop you here because you're invaders. She verified that," he added, glancing at Alzja.
Alzja shrugged. "We'll see about who's an invader. First, I know you work for Bri'kerzz. What's he doing here, exactly? Not sightseeing—not in this miserable crystal shell."
"I really don't know," the wizard replied. "I'm nothing more than a hired defender of the base here."
Alzja turned slightly, a casual movement that let him catch Sildara's eye. He raised his eyebrows at her. She nodded slightly, confirming the wizard's words so far. Sildara's fingers quickly signed that she was using her detect lie ability, then moved to a spot beside the wizard, so she could keep Alzja advised as to any lies.
Alzja turned back to the wizard. "Do you know a fast way to the planet below us?"
"No," the wizard replied.
"A lie," Sildara advised Alzja.
The wizard went on, "The spiders can get down there quickly, but they can climb down the spiral-web easily, where we can't."
"What about the earth body itsel-"
"Tyfelian!" a crewman called. "Spiders outside!"
"Speak of a baatezu," Tyfelian muttered. "Wizards, conceal us."
Alzja's block of stone filled the empty hole left by her disintegrate spell, then the area changed its appearance to something very similar to what it had been before. Satisfied, Tyfelian turned back to the wizard and nodded to Sildara and Alzja to continue.
"Now, about the earth body below—"
"Yelthontrel," the wizard supplied.
"Yelthontrel," Alzja said with wave of her hand. "I want to know something about its layout and defenses."
The wizard grabbed a black crystal wand out of his boot and started to fire it at Alzja, but he never got the command word out of his mouth before Tyfelian's fist broke half of his teeth.
Lightning quick, Tyfelian took the magic wand from him deftly and gave him a warning look, but then the wizard pulled a concealed dagger out of his robes, plunged it into his own heart, and fell with a soft scream.
"Damn you," Tyfelian snarled at the dying man. "Jaclyn, quickly—at least pull the command word for this wand from his mind."
Jaclyn hurried to kneel behind the nearly dead man and brushed her fingertips over his forehead. Normally, finding a single bit of knowledge from a dying person would have been very, very difficult, but in this case, the word she wanted was the last one this human had ever tried to say.
"The command word is "ushzness," Jaclyn told Tyfelian. "It's a word from some language of Toril, but I couldn't get what it means. Also, that wand is a wand of lightning bolts. Anyone can use it."
Alzja shrugged off the wand, and Tyfelian slicked it into his backpack.
"Get his spellbook, Alzja," Tyfelian said grimly. "Share out the new spells."
Alzja nodded and looked for it, but predictably it was not on his person, so she began to scout the place with magic.
"He didn't happen to know how many charges that wand has left, did he?" Tyfelian asked Jaclyn.
"Forty-seven. He created it."
"What about them?" Sildara asked, pointing out the wizard's guards.
"Good question—what about them?" Tyfelian shot back, trying to think.
"You could let us go. We don't want to be here," one of them said slowly.
Tyfelian bit his lip thoughtfully. "Conscripts?"
"Huh?" asked the guard, not knowing what the word meant.
"Did you get pressed into guard service when you didn't want to be?"
"Born to it," the guard replied. "We're from Quenna-taylee."
Tyfelian shook his head; it was his turn to hear something not familiar. Alzja knew what it meant, however, and grimaced at the name.
"An illithid slave world. That's horrible."
"They're not lying," Alzja signed at Tyfelian. "But if they've always been slaves, they don't know how to live their own lives—they know nothing but the master's whip."
"We can see to it that they're taught," Tyfelian replied, also in Drowic sign. "But at a more convenient time."
"Let us go," asked the first guard again.
"No," Tyfelian replied at length. "You have nowhere to go. We'll leave you here, all tied up... we'll come back to get you after we're done with your boss."
"What if he kills you?" asked another guard.
"Someone will find you eventually," Tyfelian shrugged. "Jalaysa, gag them and disarm them."
"What will you do with us when you come back?" the first guard queried just before the elf gagged him with a scarf.
Tyfelian considered, then shrugged. "We'll take you or send you to Embimura, our home country on our native world. There, you'll be taught how to truly live."
The half-drow ignored the looks of confusion on the slave-guards' faces and waved everyone into line.
"Let's go."
"Nothin, Master. They not there. They not anywhere."
"Never mind, Dretch," Krynderyl snarled back at him. "Go back to the Great Web and withdraw all spiders. Bring them here—bring everyone here. Mass them on the surface of Yelthontrel, then I'll send them where I want them."
"Yes, Master."
The Elnamerrna crew left Belkerspid and got a good look at the massive spider web for the first time.
It stretched below them, an enormous spiral of woven vines, twisting downward, with its center and bottom at the surface of Yelthontrel.
Thus had Lygalliz described it while looking down upon it from Vinespace's vine-shell, but no words did justice to such a thing; it seemed the biggest created object they had ever seen.
Now that they stood upon its very top, they could see that each "circle" of the spiral floated above the next smaller one by way of very thick vine cords, obviously woven, making the entire object look exactly like a spider web, except for the fact that the center was pulled down to some unseen attachment on the planetoid below. The supporting vine strands were so numerous and heavy that the interior of the downward spiral looked rather dark; they could not see the bottom from three miles above it.
The main spiral even had odd bulges at irregular intervals, reminding Tyfelian of wrapped-up bugs that he had seen in real spider webs. He shuddered and redirected his gaze to the top of the strange structure.
The uppermost "circle" had some of the floating arches at intervals around its circumference, which held it steadily in mid-air above the second one down. The access to it was another vine-bridge leading directly into the upper end of the spiral; the uppermost "circle" ended right at Belkerspid, to the left of any traveler leaving the tiny earth body.
Tyfelian drew forth his mapping papyrus and swiftly drew a diagram of the area, with help from Lygalliz to judge distances and scale. When he was done, he put his papyrus away, stepped onto the vine-bridge and moved quickly to the entrance.
He looked around with interest at the interior of the web. Perfectly circular, forming a tube with a flat, vine-weave floor, it stood empty and extended forward, curving to Tyfelian's right. Tyfelian guessed the tube's inner diameter at thirty feet or thereabout, so he ordered the crew to march four abreast.
He bade the crew to follow and began the long walk down to Yelthontrel.
Vinespace
Yelthontrel, former lair of Mazarixopellin
Firstsummer 27th, 2461
"Krynderyl?!" came a snarl from the planar gateway.
"Master?"
"Where is Mazarixopellin?! That worthless clod!"
"He is dead, my lord, killed by the Hearthworld fools."
A very loud growl issued from Bri'kerzz's lips, but he held his outrage in check with an effort.
"What are you doing now?"
"The Elnamerrna crew will be here very soon, lord. They have penetrated the vine-shell and have gotten past everything between here and there. Barring a miracle, they'll descend the Great Web and be on the surface of Yelthontrel within the hour. I will let them approach this place, Mazar's former lair. I've recalled everyone I can to this spot. When they arrive, we will attack and destroy them."
"Do not let them get to the artifact," Bri'kerzz snarled at Krynderyl with a warning look promising eternal agony. Some of the effect got lost with the distortion of Bri'kerzz's image through the portal, but Krynderyl understood anyway.
"They will be dead upon my next report, Master."
Bri'kerzz closed the portal.
"But what does the artifact look like—" Krynderyl started to ask, but Bri'kerzz was gone.
After the master "left," Krynderyl regarded the magically enhanced portal thoughtfully for a moment, wondering whether it could be reset to go somewhere besides Yalthra'teyka... then pushed the thought away with a helpless feeling. If it were possible, he didn't know how to do it. He didn't even know how Bri'kerzz had modified it in such a way that one could speak to another on the other side. No, he would have to devise his own means of escape if he lost the fight against the Silver Triop maniacs.
He turned away from the portal, then teleported himself back to Mazar's throne room.
"Dretch, get those spiders up on the ceiling!"
