Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [111]
As earth fell away, the rising rock opened eyes and regarded her with a look that was unsurprised but rather weary. It was a human-shaped head with beautiful female features of a green-gray hue and was as tall as she. The head swayed atop a massive serpentine body. A naga.
"So young and so pretty," it said. "Come ye here, maiden, but to die?"
"That is not my intent," Laeral replied calmly, preparing to move quickly. "Who set thee here, and what is thy purpose against me or my entry?"
"Thalon set me to guard this place and, by my powers, to slay all who cannot use Art to avoid me," the deadly guardian replied. Its eyes flickered.
The bolt that leaped from its mouth was too fast for the mage to avoid entirely. Protective Art flashed as it crackled along her flank. Laeral wasted no Art in battle but extended her aerial dodge into a twisting, darting dive toward the dark, waiting windows of the tower beyond.
Behind her, the naga hissed sadly, "Ye will not find what ye expect to, when ye reach the throne." By its tone, it seemed to like her.
The mage scarcely had time to be surprised at that. She cautiously slowed her approach to the nearest arched window but struck a solid barrier of invisible force, hard.
Had she been flying a little faster, Laeral thought as she tumbled away through the air, she'd have broken her neck. Bruised, she rose again cautiously and approached the next darkly gaping window… then another. Before all of them were barriers-barriers her detection spell did not show. They were there nonetheless. The lone exception flared with such a bright aura of magic that Laeral suspected the traps it held would outnumber even a handful of dispellings.
She settled cautiously to the ground and approached the lone doorway of the tower. It stood open, dark and waiting, its doors fallen. There was no magic about it that her spells could find.
Time to play the hero, Laeral told herself. Unbidden, the next line of the ballad came to mind: Time to play the fool. Sighing, she stepped forward into darkness.
Dust swirled within; dust clung to cobwebs all about. All was dark and cold and still. Laeral gently took flight again, her feet treading air inches above the dusty stones. If Tymora smiled, she'd be safer that way.
Softly glowing motes of light kept Laeral company. She floated slowly and carefully from room to room of the tower. In one lay a gigantic stone block, fallen from the ceiling. The shattered, yellowed bones of a human skeleton protruded from under one corner. Its arms reached vainly, its jaw open in an eternal silent scream, Laeral floated over it in wary silence.
A little farther, as expected, there was a pit. More skeletons lay below, twisted and broken on dust-covered spikes-the death she had expected. Warily she advanced, wondering when she'd find the traps against those who flew.
All too soon she saw a spray of quarrels, projecting like the stems of some sort of thorny plant from one side of a dark wooden archway ahead. The skeleton among them still had scraps of dark brown sinew dangling from it.
Laeral halted before the arch and unclasped her cloak. Floating in the air, she swirled it forward.
There was a dull snapping sound. A quarrel leaped from a hidden fissure and tore through its folds to join the cluster in the arch, quivering.
Laeral swung the torn cloth again, but no more quarrels came. Rolling the cloak around her forearms as a sort of shield, she darted through the arch, diving low and to the side.
The rusty blade that squealed across the top of the arch missed her entirely.
Laeral sighed again. She wondered when she'd run into the trap that would try to strip any magic items she'd brought. Unfortunately, traps one knows about kill just as effectively as the unknown sort. At least, Laeral thought wryly, I haven't run out of maxims yet.
Fire of nessus, nor has she! Little man, is this going somewhere?
[silence]
[slow diabolic growl, eyes kindling into