Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [2]
"You aren't going to find Tymora's favor with that portal."
Twilight whirled and slammed her back against the marvelous door. Again, her hand twitched toward her missing belt, this time to draw a nonexistent rapier.
How she'd failed to notice the young man in the shadows was beyond her, but there he sat, on a crude, stained cot. She could see little about him but for his mismatched eyes-one green, one gray-blue-which shone dully in the dim torchlight.
Many thanks, strange lad who offers sage but perfectly obvious advice at crucial junctures, she thought, but she kept silent. Such a quip would be unnecessarily rude, and Twilight was never unnecessary.
"I wouldn't stand there," her companion added. "Tlork upsets easily."
"Tlork," she repeated.
Instinct sent her springing just before a mass of iron slammed into the door. The bars creaked and bent inward under the impact of a warhammer with a head the size of an ale keg. Even from half a pace away, the concussion sent her stumbling.
She ended up headfirst in the lad's lap.
"But, uh… we've yet to be properly introduced!" he protested.
Ignoring him, Twilight scurried to her feet and stared up at the twisted creature that loomed in the corridor, and blurry memories started coming back.
It was a troll-or at least, it had been, once.
Both its original arms had been severed at the shoulders and replaced. Its left-holding the hammer-was long and wiry with half a dozen digits, and its right was a muscled limb three times as thick that ended in a clawed hand. A stumpy, elephantlike leg rooted it to the floor alongside a ganglier limb. It was balanced by a segmented, prehensile tail that looked like a scorpion's. Because of the oddly imbalanced limbs, the creature walked with a drunken sway. Half its skin had been replaced with the mottled pelts of demons: vrock, babau, and several she didn't recognize.
"Pretty elfy-not pretty when Tlork crush." It-he-made a twisted face.
Twilight remained crouched in the shadows until the troll left. She remembered exactly how heavy that hammer was, and exactly how fast that distorted body could move. Now she remembered how she'd come to the cell.
"He's gone, methinks," said the man. The troll had not seemed to notice him.
"My thanks again," Twilight murmured under her breath.
Then the implications of her situation hit her, and her hand darted up to her breastbone. The youth might have thought her frightened, but in reality she was searching. Her hand fell.
It was gone.
Twilight's blood ran a touch colder. How long? How long had she lain visible?
The youth stood and walked into the light. He wore a coarse tunic, dirt, and sweat. "Well met, Lady. I am Liet-Liet Sagrin of Harrowdale."
Twilight took his hand. It bore sword calluses, but was otherwise soft and limber. By human age, Twilight guessed this Liet could not have seen thirty winters.
Twilight smiled… and drove her knee up between his legs.
Liet yelped like a wounded puppy, eyes bugging. He seemed as if he would remain standing, so she kneed him again, this time in the stomach. He sagged, only to catch her backhand with his nose. Then Liet's only resistance was a moan-a moan of surprisingly high pitch.
Within a breath, Tlork was back, drooling greenish spittle that sizzled when it struck the floor. "What you do? You-you shut yourself up in there!" The words came out together awkwardly- the troll put them together with effort, it seemed.
No, Twilight thought with a whimsical grin, you shut me-self up in here.
Aloud, she gave no response, but put a bare heel-hard-into Liet's stomach, eliciting a breathless groan.
The troll fumbled with a huge key and opened the lock. Then, for all of the portal's intricate engineering, the troll wrenched it open like any other door, almost tearing it from its hinges. Tlork roared and leaped inside.
Just as the troll's claws were about to close around her head, Twilight ducked, dived, rolled between the mismatched legs, and darted out the door. A flick of her wrist clicked the padlock shut behind her.
By its dull, confused