Depths of Madness - Erik Scott De Bie [79]
When had he become just like Twilight?
The day you broke rule four, he told himself with an inward sigh.
The corridor rose for forty paces before terminating in a space for a lifting mechanism, like the one they had used to escape the prison level of this labyrinth. The platform was down on the floor, and it would rise if someone stepped upon it-if the magic of the place yet operated.
The platform did not even tremble as they stood upon it, and Gargan boosted each of the others, one by one, before pulling himself up. The four moved down a tunnel toward a set of steps, and Gargan's long strides took him swiftly to the front rank. Davoren watched approvingly, but Liet suspected it was more in quiet consideration of what the goliath could do to Davoren's foes-his former allies-suitably armed and charmed. In all ways, the two seemed to be opposites.
Opposites… the thought bounced about in Liet's mind, reflecting off walls of indecision and longing. He and Twilight were so opposite one another, yet so close.
He no longer tried to tell himself that Twilight meant nothing to him. The first night they spent together had changed that, but the feeling grew more intense as time passed. He dared not mention it, for Twilight would certainly…
Gargan hissed a warning note, and Liet looked up.
They had ascended the stairs into open air, but there was no breeze in the darkness. Liet was suddenly aware that he stood upon something much like grass, though the sun was not to be seen. Great forms loomed out of the darkness, and Liet had to draw his sword and gasp before he realized they weren't moving.
All around them, the torchlight revealed huge bulks that looked, oddly, like flowers and vines of reds, oranges, and purples. Luminescence came from fungi on the walls, such as they had seen in the sewers below, and some plants shed light in many subdued colors. They felt as though they had come into some sage's arboretum.
Some plants were normal, most were strange and twisted, but all were gigantic. Something like a daisy was taller than Liet, and Slip had to brush away petals of violets the size of her face. Mountainous moonflowers and firedragons the size of their namesakes swelled around them. Liet had to stomp his way out of the clutches of a rose vine with thorns like daggers. Most of the plants he could hardly recognize-turgid buds and whorls coming out of green stalks, knobby trees like heaps of flatcakes that wove from side to side with budding pink flowers up every inch.
How they grew in perfect darkness was beyond Liet.
"What is this place?" Liet asked. He started away from his echoing voice.
"We have arrived," Davoren said. He held the scepter up and intoned deep, powerful words. A bolt of lightning arced from his hand, high into the air. It struck something like a steel rod and sizzled along it. In half a heartbeat, the bolt exploded out, illuminating the vast cavern in which the four found themselves. The great rod flickered, hissing at intervals like an unhappy dragon.
And occupying that cavern with them was a ruined, overgrown city.
"Negarath," Davoren said with a glint in his evil eyes. If they had thought the architecture of the sewers odd, nothing could have prepared them for what lay before them. Negarath was a city of madness.
Buildings spread wider as they reached upward, almost as though built upside down. All around them, sprouting from the sides of buildings, coming up from the streets, were the strange flowers, some growing large enough to dwarf Gargan. There was not a single perpendicular edge in the place; all was a mixture of curves, waves, and obtuse or acute angles. Windows hung upside down and horizontally, as though the interiors of the buildings did not match the exteriors.
Most of the doors to the varying buildings were of odd shapes-circular, triangular, hexagonal, octagonal-anything but rectangular. Only