The Paladins - James M. Ward [5]
Aleena looked deeply into Miltiades's eyes. "Please," she pleaded. "I love my father, and I can't simply stand by while his beloved is missing and he lies in a coma. For the sake of justice," she said, stressing the word, "let me offer my humble assistance in all things magical. I must do something to help or I'll go mad with worry. I am a talented spellcaster; I can help your group."
Miltiades gazed back at the beautiful spellcaster, and for a moment he spied a passion he often saw in the eyes of his own beloved Evaine. "All right, I wave my objection and you shall join the team."
Khelben quietly sighed in relief. At least one person he trusted would be there. "And you'll swear to strictly abide by my three conditions?" he prodded.
"Upon our honor as paladins of Tyr."
"Then good luck, all of you," concluded Khelben. "I just hope this isn't a mistake," he added under his breath.
"Let's gather the team!" cried Kern, beaming. "We're going to rescue a princess!"
"She's not a princess," said Aleena, glancing at Khelben with a slight grin and shaking her head.
Interlude 1
It's not whether you win or lose that counts, it's how much pain you inflict along the way.
Lightless fire shrouded the ground in a hypnotic, tumbling blur on the sixty-fifth level of the Abyss. It obscured jutting razors of flint, erect and barbed, like swarms of devil's-grass. Unwholesome blackness swallowed and choked the plane, and a constant echo of wind blew through the barren chasm, carrying upon it the distant wail of futile death. The reek of curdled blood hung like hot sewage in the bitter-cold air.
General Raachaak inhaled deeply and flexed his bony wings while the trace of a grin played across his toothy maw. The towering tanar'ri fiend crossed his muscular arms and tucked jagged claws under massive biceps, against his bare, crimson torso. A serpentine whip of manifold tails, studded with whetted shards of obsidian, coiled and hung from his belt of baatezu hide. Faintly glowing steam curled along his leathery red, oily skin, enveloping the pointed-eared balor in a miasma of evil.
Before him, three vulturelike vrock tanar'ri stood reluctantly, casting their avian gazes from side to side, as if they sought some escape. Their long, pointed talons sank into the hard stone, crushing flat the keen blades of Abyssal flint like crusty sand. A slime oozed from glands beneath their wings, spreading a film over their thick coats of black and gray feathers. Their wide collars of pinfeathers, shining with mucous, stabbed outward like filthy, curved needles. The skin of their scrawny necks and knobby heads folded and cracked like mildew-ridden leather, but their curved, pointed beaks were glossy and fierce. They hunched like scavengers devouring the dead, masking their thoughts from the telepathic greater fiend, concealing a desire to kill and consume him. The central vrock extended a hideous pair of shriveled hu-manoid arms from beneath his wings and wrung his craven hands together in a gesture of humility.
"You're to go to the Prime Material Plane," the general's bass voice boomed in their scaly heads, making them wince and flutter nervously. "To a feeble world called Toril by the miserable primes who live there- humankind and its ilk. There, in an ancient city newly resettled, the primes have unearthed a most delightful contrivance, one that conjures countless warriors out of thin air! When I acquire the dark of this device, this bloodforge, I'll raise an army large enough to overrun stinking Baator in a single roll of the Sisyphus Stone!"
The balor laughed aloud, filling the plane with terrifying glee as he spread his wings wide and unclasped his arms. The vrocks shrieked and capered in agony and delight. Abruptly, Raachaak stifled his merriment. His eyes widened, and he bared his pointed teeth, clenching his thick jaw while his amber eyes burned gold. His slimy lips curled into a sneer.
"But… there is a problem. The sniveling low-life berks who brought me this information first tried to take the prize for themselves, and they failed!