Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [103]
Despite the decimation of what must have been half an Empyrean company or more, the undead seemed more intent on reaching a central pyramid built of their stony brethren, which squirmed and buckled, but held its shape well enough to support a blood red throne of rough-cut crystal.
On one side of the throne a fossil, caped and crowned in violet luminescence, brandished a staff of deadly energy. Was it the Traitot, or some fell working created by the Traitor? No, Angul thought not. But yet…
On the other side of the ruby throne appeared a male star elf who wore the trappings of a Keeper! And in this man's hands, a blade whose outline was night's progenitor.
Something in Angul stuttered. It imparted to her, That sword is somehow familiar…
Kiril gasped. Angul had never before betrayed even a hint of uncertainty in the entire decade she'd wielded him.
At that moment, the fungus hulk gave voice to what sounded like a despairing moan. It clashed to the ground, turning its body as it buckled, protecting the man it held from its weighty fall. Kiril touched Angul's tip to the creature's lichen-covered carapace.
Dead, pronounced her blade. A sacrifice for a righteous cause. Turn aside now, and go to that Keeper who yet holds faith with the Sign!
Kiril winced. The blade's implication was that she, Kiril, did not hold such faith…
/ will see us through this press, promised her sword. His fire fumed and grew, new strength rushed into her limbs, and surety of purpose infused her will. The last thing she saw as she plunged into the mob of animate neoliths was the monk bending to ctadle Adrik's lolling head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Stardeep, Underdungeon
Oppressive slumber relinquished its clotted hold, and Adrik opened his eyes. Tunnel walls rushed by on either side, bluish with luminescent haze. The hue seemed somehow familiar… such an effort to recall to mind why.
And what held him so snugly in arms overgrown with lichen and trailing tiny rootlets through the dank air?
He tried to voice his question, managing only to croak. The noise was enough to catch the attention of something above him-a great head swiveled forward and down to fix him with its… gaze? A lopsided, vegetable-like visage of wavering rhizomes and empty sensory pits. A vacant face, yet somehow, one that communicated intelligence.
Adrik was so far past exhaustion the face held little terror for him. He allowed his head to fall the other way, and saw that below, at the side of the great creature that clutched him, padded his friend from Telflamm, and the elf woman they'd met.
Unaccountably, sadness touched him. There were so many questions he had, like friends whose company he never tired of. But those friends were drifting away now. He sensed his curiosity dispersing to find a host whose life wasn't dripping away with each stuttering, slowing heartbeat.
What surprised him the most was the pain. The numbness began to give way to an agony unlike any he'd before imagined. Except for the pain right before the stern star elf guarding Stardeep's outer gate had healed him. Some lingering nilshai curse was released from the bonds that had temporarily held it. The taint began to bite into him anew.
He began to shriek. He tried to flail; the unrelenting grip of the fungus hulk held him fast. The tunnel walls continued to speed by, painted blue in the creatute's spore halo.
He noted Raidon glancing anxiously up at him, but at that moment the tunnel disgorged into a ruin of arching white columns choked with thrashing fossils whose lives ended thousands of years, maybe hundreds of thousands of years ago. The blue light was drowned by a greater fire, the fury of which seemed to sear Adrik's eyes. The light reached him in shafts and rents obscured by crumbling spires and broken towers.
The swordswoman Kiril dashed forward. A hundred or more colliding stone figures turned from their rush down the