Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [97]
The arachnid was too close, but dangling as he was, he had no other option. He dashed the bulb down, whipping it with as much strength as he could muster. The bulb detonated on the creature's face only a body length away.
The explosive fount punched up into his body. It reminded him of the time he'd leaped for a neighboring roof but missed and fell three stories. Except this time he was on fire. But, just like then, he blacked out a moment later.
Flickering light on a smooth white ceiling. Torchlight? A numbness slowly faded under a barrage of tingling-and pain. Gage blinked. Why would that be? He groaned as he sat up. His entire body was one contiguous bruise. Then he recalled the spider and the detonation.
The webbed hole lay several dozen paces away, its gooey coating ablaze. The explosion had propelled him past the gap. About halfway between him and the burning pit crouched a figure silhouetted by the flames. At first the thief took it for a detached portion of the spider, blown loose in the blast. Then he noticed the black scales, the horns, and as it slowly stood from its crouch, its flaring batlike wings.
Those black, finely grained scales looked familiar…
Gage dropped his gaze to his right hand. His gauntlet. Gone!
He jerked his eyes back to the figure. It stood now to its full height and beyond, reaching and stretching its long, clawed limbs as if waking from sleep. Or as if freed from an enchantment that bound its shape into something far smaller. Say, a glove?
The creature, clearly a demon, began to chuckle. One of its eyes fixed the thief with a sinister, gleeful glare. A mass of burned flesh and scars festered where its other eye should have been. Gage recalled again how Angul had burned his other gauntlet to a cindet, the one with the single, enchanted eye.
He scuttled backward on hands and legs. A sharp rock cut his palm.
The demon flared its wings. It interrupted its mirth to speak. "Recall the payment I've reminded you that you owe me, mottal, time and again. I'm afraid our acquaintanceship is over. The time has come for me to eat your soul!"
Fear tried to break his normally professional detachment, bringing an unfamiliar and unwelcome quiver to his limbs as he sprang upright. His voice, too, sounded weak and pitiful in his ears. "Demon! Uh… Hold, will you? Wait! I have more value to you alive than dead, if you hear me out. I offer a bargain!"
The scaled wings pulsed and the razor-sharp tail lashed, but the demon remained at the edge of the hole. Its single eye narrowed, and it growled, "Explain." Gage's wit failed him. He stammered then turned and ran.
The thief heard the demon laugh. Then, oddly enough, it scteamed.
He glanced over his shoulder. The stone spider was back! Its upper body protruded from the burning hole at the demon's back, the pale stone of its carapace blackened and cracked with alchemical scorch marks. The wail of a baby burst anew from the insectoid maw like a little one hungry to suckle.
The spider's mandibles clamped the demon around its waist. The demon's wings burst into a fit of mad flapping, as a moth that is caught too near a flame. It bit, clawed, raked, and bucked with such ferocity the tunnel floor shook. All to little effect. With a chilling finality, the spider retracted its head and body back into its lair, dragging the hapless, howling demon with it.
The demon gave one final, soul-shattering scream, which ended abruptly.
Gage, without his gauntlets and unable to see, sprinted, whimpering, into the unrelenting darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Stardeep, Underdungeon
Awind, bearing alien odors, brushed Raidon's face. He wondered by what daik, subtetranean route the ait had traveled, and for how long before caressing his face with its feathery, unseen hands. Black lakes, unlit mansions of stone, warrens of crystal, caverns housing forgotten secrets-who knew the depths of these passages whose extent was large enough to generate its own breezes, perhaps its own weather?
Raidon followed a conflicted woman. As they strode white-washed subterranean