Well… at long last, and the better part of a year without an update, I'm back. Two, in fact. I apologize profusely to everyone who has been waiting for so long for me to finally get around to doing this. The truth of the matter is that Law School continues to be a massive time sink, leaving me with little free time or sanity to do much of anything else. I'm in my final semester, dealing with seven classes, and one of them being my ALWR, which doesn't help matters. After which, the difficult part of my legal career begins, namely, trying to pass the Bar on the first go and then securing employment so that I may begin the tedious process of paying back the small fortune that I owe Uncle Sam for the student loans.
The good news, though, is that I have finally finished with the rough draft of the story. Part of the reason I stopped updating here was I didn't have the time to both write, critique, and polish at the same time. With that out of the way, I can now focus on the polishing… though no doubt there are still enough errors in this thing to keep a red pen factory in business for a month. Hopefully, though, I can once again resume regular updates, now that the story's fully written.
I will also go ahead and apologize for some of the content present in this chapter. You will know it when you see it. Suffice to say… I was rather… uncomfortable writing certain sections of this chapter. The year and a half since it was originally typed up has not changed my feelings towards it. But I do not know what to do. My writing talents are too limited to come up with a way to get around this. Hopefully, Chapter 25 will be much, much more to your liking.
With that in mind, I once again thank everyone who has reviewed and read this story. Thank you, for taking the time out of your lives to read this story. I only hope that it is worth that time. Thank you also, for putting up with my increasingly hectic personal life. I will resume responding to reviews on an individual basis after this, so please feel free to ask any questions you may have regarding this story, big or small. Critiques and constructive criticism are welcomed with open arms. Flames shall be accepted as well, so that I might use them to heat my home next winter and save on the bill.
Chapter Twenty Four- Plotting.
Jarlaxle paced back and forth furiously within the headquarters of his mercenary group. He kept running the numbers over in his head. He had lost forty of his troops during the bungled defense of Mithril Hall, most of them thanks to these strange Demons and King Bruenor's otherworldly allies. His hands were clasped behind him, and he kept glaring at whatever wall he happened to be facing at the time. He was deep in thought, occasionally pausing in his stride to bring his hand up to his chin and rub at it thoughtfully.
Dinin Do'Urden suddenly walked into the room, a frown upon his face. Jarlaxle turned to acknowledge the presence of his subordinate, and arched an eyebrow.
"Your—" he caught himself and shook his head. "Matron Baenre wants to meet with you."
Jarlaxle cocked his head to one side. There was a noticeable quaver in the voice of the former prince of House Do'Urden. It was not something that Jarlaxle would be used to hearing from the man. Something was up. He narrowed the gaze of his one visible eye, and strode from the room, his armor moving against his body and his weapons belt thumping against his hips.
Normally, such noise would be the sign of someone dangerously unwary. In the Underdark, noise was how many predators hunted. Such a racket would give you away to them, and you'd find yourself part of their next meal. Or it could be taken as a sign of weakness by a person looking to kill you and move up in the ranks. Here, though, Jarlaxle felt no fear. These were his men, his women. He had taken them in, sheltered them when no one else would. They possessed the trait of loyalty, so foreign and alien to the rest of his people.
Which was why he was so upset about the outcome of the Mithril Hall occupation, something that had cost him the lives of dozens of his soldiers. Why hadn't a counter assault of that nature been seen? Why hadn't Lolth warned them?
The mercenary captain hid his bitterness and anger deep within his mind, and straightened his face out into a flamboyant smile as he entered into the back alleys and shadows of his hometown. It was harder than usual to remain hidden here. Soldiers were being brought in from all over the underdark. Tens of thousands… hundreds of thousands. And that wasn't even counting the untold myriad of slaves that were being shackled into the preparations. He wondered why so many were needed. Was it possible that the Matrons had known about the arrival of the strange demons, but had not seen fit to warn him and the others of such a possibility? A single pulse of rage raced through him, but he smothered it again. Slippery as he could make his thoughts, it would not do to give the Matrons a target to latch onto, especially if who he thought would be present really was.
The guards parted before Jarlaxle as he made his way deeper and deeper into the depths of House Baenre. He could feel the magic that still faintly thrummed through these walls. It seemed somewhat more powerful than it had been a few days ago. Perhaps that was a sign that things were getting better? Who could guess thus far?
As he passed the ornate columns of the grand hall and entered the chapel of the House, he was met with the sight of the main matrons, all eight of them. Three hundred years of surviving where none should have had prepared the mercenary captain well for the sight that lay before him. The matrons floated upon their thrones, discs of blue-white light supporting them. In their hands they clasped their scepters and other objects of power, while their loyal body guards surrounded them. The female troops looked towards the male, and he could see their faces twist into masks of disdain. Jarlaxle ignored them, for there was something far more important in the room. Or rather, someone.
She was a Drow, at least at first glance. She was, however, impossibly perfect in her physical appearance. There were no other words fit to describe her, and the mercenary knew that he was looking upon Lolth herself, or rather, one of her avatars. Next to her was a brazier, burning with black fire and filling the room with the stench of sulfur and rotten flesh. He could see a pair of red, malevolent eyes staring back at him from inside of the flames, and he wondered what was going on here.
Best to show respect, he decided, getting down on a knee and bowing low before the matrons.
"Rise," Matron Baenre said.
The male did as he was commanded, and stood with his hands clasped behind his back. All eyes were upon him, and he could feel the weight of their gazes upon him. His eye narrowed, and he wondered what they wanted him here for. Surely this could have been conveyed to him through a simple message.
"We wish to know what you thought of the creatures that assault the Hall," Lolth spoke, her voice echoing in his ears and within the depths of his mind. "We believe we have a plan to crush them, but I cannot observe the fiends. It is troubling."
"You mean that the Troubles are over?" Jarlaxle asked, cocking his head to the side. How long ago had this happened?
He received a lance of pain to his mind, a blow that nearly drove him to his knees.
"Does that answer your question, fool?" Lolth asked. "My patience is short. I have plans that must be implemented, and alliances that have to be secured now that my house is back in order."
"My apologies, Milady," he said with a gasp. His mind felt as if it were on fire and gripped in the talons of a dragon. He tried to blink past the pain, and focus his thoughts.
"The creatures were unlike anything we'd ever seen before. The one that I encountered was large… far too large to be a Human, and clad in a suit of armor that our warriors could not damage." He took a breath. "Its allies were similarly equipped. Everything that challenged them died, torn to shreds by weapons that roared like Balors. Others wielded blades that tore through our armor and weapons as if they were made of the crudest iron and roth hide."
Lolth's gaze narrowed and Jarlaxle let out another gasp of pain as he felt the deity probe his mind. He managed to suppress his fear of what she might find, an action that probably saved his life, he realized. He could feel the goddess poking around inside of his memories, first upon the battle scene where Briza had met her end, and then upon the assault of Mithril Hall. She stopped short of the part where he and his troops had fled, and withdrew from his mind.
"So, you speak the truth." She frowned. "We may need yet more allies to deal with these fiends."
"There is a solution," the voice from the brazier spoke. Jarlaxle recognized the impossibly deep timber as the voice of a Demon, probably a very big one. "My agents that were defeated at the Hosttower spoke of a Tiefling being present. One that is related to the mighty Mephasm."
Lolth stared over at the flames for a moment, and then a wicked grin appeared upon her face. She nodded her head slowly, and her fists started to clench, as if she were imagining grabbing something around the throat and squeezing the life from it.
"Yes," she tapped a finger against her lips. "Yes, that would work. Her blood has some of his in it. Properly attuned, and with the right enchantments, she could be useful indeed."
"You will gain the most powerful ally that you could in my master," the voice spoke. "And I will have the freedom I so desire. But do not forget our bargain."
"How could I, Errtu," She smiled at the flames.
Jarlaxle's eyes widened, and he understood. Errtu was a Balor, a mighty one at that, ruler of his own level of the Abyss. He had gotten careless several years ago, though, and Drizzt had managed to dispatch him. He would be bound within the abyss for a century, unable to do much of anything but skulk and plot. Unless, either the one responsible for his banishment were to free him willingly, or… Or, if a being with enough power broke the curse. There was only one such being with both the power and the inclination to do such a thing. Jarlaxle had to repress a shudder. He almost felt sorry for Drizzt and his allies. What was about to come their way would be something that would be most unpleasant.
Commander Miranda Keyes blinked as she stared at the holographic display before her. Within the chamber, Grunts, Dwarves, and humans were all toiling to erect barricades and set up electronic machinery to help prepare a command center. The noise around her was nearly deafening, making concentration a tedious effort at best. It was, however, a necessary evil. It had been two weeks since the enemy had been driven from Mithril Hall, and every second that was delayed was another second that the enemy had to try and retake the Dwarven stronghold. Defenses were being scrambled into place, battle plans drawn up, and then fall back plans, secondary plans, and as many conceivable avenues of attack brought to light as possible.
Magic had started working again just a few days ago, and that meant that the Drow would be coming all the sooner, now that their primary edge had been fully restored.
Cortana popped up next to her, out of another holographic projector, and crossed her arms over her chest. Symbols and glyphs flashed over her body as she rapidly changed color from blue to greenish-aqua. Keyes had been around the A.I. construct long enough to realize that that had meant that she was excited by something.
"Update?" she asked.
"The Chief and Orna are inbound with another PD cannon," she said, a cool smile coming over her face, "and the training of the native forces is going well. I wish we had more equipment available to them, but you know how it is."
"Believe me." Keyes nodded, flipping a strand of hair out of her vision. "Still, every Plainsman, Dwarf, and Human that we get shored up here is going to be worth ten of what he used to be, easy. Where are Lord Nasher and King Bruenor?"
"They just got done meeting with Khelgar and some of the Ironfist Dwarves. They're on their way to meet with you." Cortana glanced over at the map of Mithril Hall that her commander was staring at so intently.
"Keeping an eye on the sensors?"
"All quiet on the western front… and the north, east, and south." Keyes frowned, and rubbed her chin. "I almost wish I was dealing with Truth again. I still haven't learned everything I can about these Dark Elves."
"Well, at least we've been making progress in other fronts," Cortana nodded towards the tome of spells that was on the table.
Keyes nodded. Nothing truly offensive yet, but Helm had told them to focus on the defensive after all. She still wasn't certain how good she was at stopping the intrusions of others into her thoughts, but it was getting harder and harder for the Many Stared Cloaks to snoop on her mind during training sessions.
"You seem excited by something," Keyes said, moving a stylus over the holoprojector in front of her and tapping it against a few of the defensive sites indicated upon it. Displays and read outs leapt to life, outlining mines, auto turrets, and barricades that had been erected.
"I'm making progress with my studies and experiments," Cortana said, flexing her holographic hands. The sound of knuckles cracking reached Keyes' ears, barely audible over the din. "There's so many things the natives haven't thought of. I'm expecting breakthroughs very soon."
"What happens then?" Keyes smirked at the A.I.
"Not much," Cortana shrugged her shoulders. "We become more dangerous, the Master Chief and Sergeant Johnson probably fall in love with my toys all over again, and I begin plotting a bid for world domination…" she paused and brought a hand up to her mouth, her eyes wide with false shock.
Keyes couldn't help it. She laughed. For the first time in days, she laughed and shook her stylus at the mischievous computer. "Keep that up and I'll have your behavior matrix cut out. You're supposed to keep your megalomania under control."
Cortana merely smiled, and then gestured towards the door. Bruenor, Nasher, and several other Dwarves walked through, presumably Ironfist delegates. There was another Dwarf as well, one she had come to recognize over the past few days. Pwent. Leader of the Gut-Busters. The Dwarf was a shocktrooper if ever there was one. His armor was covered in spiked plates and claws, meant to rend and tear into the flesh of an enemy. It was capped off by a quarter meter long spike on the top of his helmet. He was also a borderline psychopath and in desperate need of a bath. The scuttlebutt around the Hall was that Pwent's underarm odor could wilt a sturdy flower at fifty yards.
Keyes resigned herself to breathing through her mouth for the duration of this meeting, and snapped to a salute as the others drew near. Though the two rulers saw her as an equal, it would be best to be respectful. Nasher and Bruenor returned the gesture in their own fashions, and then the group turned their attention to the read outs before them. Keyes tapped a few controls and blew the display up.
"Gentlemen," Keyes said, highlighting the lower areas of the Hall. "Our defensive preparations are going well. We're dismantling eight of the Dawn's point defense weaponry, and we expect it to be set up and primed by the end of the day," she clasped one hand behind her back and brought up a read out on the weapon.
It was a six barreled monster that made a thirty millimeter autocannon look like a spitball shooter. There had been close to thirty of them on the Dawn, and they were set up in pairs, covering major avenues of approach. Cortana would have control of them during the battle, ensuring that every single round was on target and nothing was wasted. The natives seemed satisfied enough by that, and by the mines that they'd put into place. What had Keyes more concerned was the training that they were attempting to give to the elite forces of the surface dwellers. Some were taking to it with more enthusiasm than others were.
"Good to hear," Bruenor said with a grin, leaning forward on his axe. "What about those 'sensor' things?"
"Long range sensors are in place," she said, highlighting areas that were outside of the Hall. They were similar in nature to the ones that the Master Chief had first used in order to set up the perimeter around the Dawn, but armed with a more powerful transmitter for longer range. "We have several dozen covering the outer avenues of approach. When the Drow move their forces up, we'll get about four hours of warning. We're currently working on a secondary and tertiary ring closer to the Hall to give additional warning, just in case they find a way to bypass the first one."
The assembled natives nodded in approval.
"To be honest, I'm not really all that worried about the fighting inside of the hall itself. King Bruenor's forces know this place like no one else, and with the edge that we can give in addition to our defensive measures and our own forces, we should be able to force the Drow to bleed for every centimeter of ground that they take, if they can take it at all."
"Then what has you concerned?" Lord Nasher cocked his head to the side.
In response, Keyes pulled the holomap back out, further and further, until the hall disappeared behind the mountain that held it. She waved the stylus around the large hilly field that lay outside the massive double doors.
"This," she remarked, moving the stylus up and highlighting a few caves that were some ways off. "The Drow could use these caverns to circumvent our underground defenses and assault us on two fronts. I've consulted with Drizzt and several others who have experience with Drow combat tactics. They're pretty certain that the Drow will attempt a pincher movement to hit us on multiple fronts. This represents one of the best places to do it."
"We were discussing this in our own meeting as well," Lord Nasher said, rubbing his trimmed beard and nodding his head. "The Knights of Silver have been able to spare five hundred of their number to help defend it, and ten times that amount of standard Silverymoon infantry, and my own troops can bring about nine hundred mounted, perhaps four thousand foot."
"More or less ten thousand troops," Keyes chewed on her lip, "not enough to turn back any dedicated attack. And the doors won't hold against a concentrated arcane assault. Drizzt said that if the Drow are careful about it, they could call in as many as a half a million troops or more if they use their slaves, as well as other hostiles." She let the sentence die. The others were aware of what the ranger had told them. Mind Flayers, creatures that resembled humans with octopi for heads and a fondness for sentient brains. Gray Dwarves, who would be eager to get their hands on the hall and its vast resources, and all too willing to mine it for the Drow to use in a surface campaign. Even things like Demons and Dragons were not outside the realms of possibility.
"What of your vehicles?" Lord Nasher asked.
"That's why I wanted to meet with you," the Commander said as she used her stylus to open up a series of files. Within moments, Cortana had faded and read outs of UNSC vehicles appeared, along with Covenant ones. "With your permission, we'd like to use them to help support the infantry that will be deployed here."
"You don't have to be asking for my permission to help defend my home," Bruenor said, a warm smile upon his face. "We're strapped for allies as it is. Having someone step up and volunteer is never something to be turned down."
Keyes nodded her head, and highlight an anti-infantry Warthog and a Specter.
"You've seen the Warthog and Specter in action before, Milords," Keyes said. "We've got four in the anti-infantry configuration, and two specters. Our plans were to deploy them along the flanks of the main infantry barricades, supporting a few additional autocannons and some heavy machineguns, here," she turned to the field's display, and with a few waves of her stylus, she highlighted the hill tops, and a series of blocks sprang into existence.
"These are?" Bruenor asked.
"A little something that the Master Chief and Cortana came up with," Keyes said with a grin."
Outside the hall, one of the Dawn's Pelican's rocketed overhead, coming to a stop over the fields. Down below, a number of Greycloaks and other troops from the Lords Alliance shielded their faces as the dropship touched down. The back door opened, and the Master Chief walked out, followed by a squadron of Sangheili, carrying the components of one of the Forward unto Dawn's point defense weapons.
Neeshka approached him and the others as they drew near their ultimate destination: a series of thick tree trunks that had been magically woven together by the Many Starred Cloaks. The Tiefling offered a salute as the Master Chief lugged a generator so heavy that he was nearly bent over double carrying it on his back. John took note of it, and while she was grinning widely, he could tell that she was trying to get the salute correct. Her hand was a little too far out, though. There would be time to correct it later however, and he allowed himself a hidden smile.
He carefully swung the generator off of his back and placed it against the ground, while the rest of the Elites set up the power connectors, targeting sensors, and the weapon itself.
They positioned it in a small slit of sorts between the logs. It was just wide enough to allow the gun to pivot from side to side and increase and decrease its angle of elevation to fend off attacks from the air or if people got too close to it. Murder holes had also been carved out in order to allow for the troops inside to take potshots at the encroaching armies. Each bunker would also have a slot for a heavy machine gun, to allow for rapid elimination of targets that didn't quite merit a blast from the autocannon.
The Spartan hooked up a portable targeting interface, used by the rank and file whenever they carried a Stanchion into battle. Here, it would enable Cortana to interface with the weapon remotely, and ensure maximum accuracy.
Now it would be time for the Many Starred Cloaks to do their work. Two of them stepped forward, chanting and muttering under their breath as they furiously weaved their hands back and forth. The sound of their voices rose as they neared the end of their spell, and as they finished, they placed their hands against the logs. The area that they touched rapidly turned from brown to gray, becoming pocked and pitted as its molecular composition was changed from wood to reinforced stone. Down below, in the small valley between the hills, more mages were at work, carving out trenches with their earth moving spells, before the built up dirt and soil were also petrified and turned into stone and metal barricades. The other side of the pit was then carefully lined with rows of concertina wire and abatises. The ridge in front of each pit would be lined with heavy weapons, mostly fifty caliber rotaries, but there would be a couple of M-27 belt fed grenade launchers as well.
The mages had been curious about the applications of their magic at first, given how much this sort of material deviated from the norm. Movement off to his side caught his attention, and he realized that it was one of the Harpell wizards, moving about on what had to be the most bizarre mount that the cyborg had ever seen. It resembled a cross between a horse and a frog, and moved with great bounding leaps that covered the better part of fifty meters.
He shook his head and bent down to hook up the power generator to the autocannon. Once it was primed and ready, another spell would be cast, one that would create arcane wards around the bunker. The Commander doubted that the Drow wizards would have the range necessary to engage the autocannons before being ripped to shreds, but she was taking no chances.
The Spartan turned his attention back to Neeshka, and she saluted him once again. He chuckled softly this time, so quietly that only the Tiefling heard it, and then stepped forward and corrected her posture. She smiled at him as he stepped back and returned the gesture.
As he returned to a more at ease posture, The Spartan was once again reminded of his former brothers and sisters. Memories flooded over him, flashbacks of the few times that he and his siblings had cut loose after their training missions. Such as that time that they had made off with the 578th ODST's Regimental flag and spent the next two days hiding out on one of Reach's islands, catching shellfish and allowing themselves to forget, for a moment, that they were supposed to be weapons.
He snapped back to reality, and remembered that his next assignment was to go assist Johnson in training some of the more elite soldiers of the Lord's Alliance in the use of firearms. He motioned for Neeshka to follow, and the Tiefling happily took up a position a few meters to his rear.
"Additional fire support will be provided by the Pelicans, Scorpions, and the Rhino," Keyes said, pulling the scope of the map back out. "Mortar teams will be stationed along the ridges and approaches to the valley, hopefully out of range of counter attack, but we've got heavy support troopers to back them up in case things get hairy." The map pulled back further still. "And here," she placed the stylus against a particular region, some fifty kilometers away from the expected battle zone, "will be our Avenger."
The Avenger was a multiple launch rocket system, over the horizon artillery that could be employed with devastating effect against enemy infantry. The vehicle was as large as the Rhino tank, with a massive seven by seven box shaped rocket launcher system. The missile fired by this particular vehicle was the STS-2 "Atoll." With its extreme range, excellent, A.I. controlled guidance systems, and multiple secondary thrusters and stabilizer fins, the Atoll missile was feared by anyone who knew what it could do.
The Dawn had nearly two hundred missiles for the MLRS, ranging from scatter warheads, which set off secondary devices to impact alongside the main one, to incendiaries, thermobarics, and bunker busters.
A trio of Elites would have to be stationed to reload the device and man its last resort weaponry if the enemy somehow managed to get in close, but Keyes considered it a small price to pay to be able to reuse the device's ungodly firepower.
"Fire from the Avenger will be held until we can lure most of the Drow army out onto the field of battle." The commander said. "Once they're out, the bunker busters will fire first, followed by scatter heads. The former will hit the caves, burying them and cutting off any escape, while the rest turn the fields into a chaotic mess filled with lots, and lots, of dead bodies."
The Dwarves and Lord Nasher nodded their heads, and Keyes zoomed the map back in to the main field. She highlighted the trenches that were there, selecting different colors with the stylus. The ones closer to the Hall were a bright red, the ones further out, yellow. Beyond that, she drew circles around certain areas of the field.
"The red lines represent where our troops will be stationed. We're erecting barricades and firing points along these points," she drew a faint 'V' shape in the area leading from the entrance caves towards the lines. "This will force the Drow and their troops towards a narrow point that we can easily hold with our troops. Supporting them will be Sangheili, Unggoy, and Lotar," She said, as she clasped her hands behind her back. "They are veteran soldiers, they've fought the Dark Elves before. They can keep the morale of the others high, show them that the enemy is mortal, that they are vulnerable and they can be beaten."
"Excellent," Bruenor said. "The dogs are likely to send their slaves in first, let them take the brunt of the assault. You mentioned a little surprise for those fellows."
"Indeed I did," Keyes' grin was almost feral. "With the help of Ten Towns forces and Plainsmen, we've managed to set up drilling points and mining operations near the Dawn," the Commander said, and she quickly brought up a world map, temporarily replacing the one of the Hall and its surroundings. "We've gotten access to Uranium, oil, tungsten, and additional material to make our explosive charges in the Dawn's manufacturing center. Combined with the steel ore that Lord Nasher has lent us, we're in the process of producing mines."
"Like those lotus bombs?" Pwent spoke up, stroking his beard, the one kempt bit of hair on his body.
"Similar, but smaller, and more numerous," a diagram of one of the mines popped up. "They're not as powerful as the Lotus, but it doesn't take as much to set them off, and we can scatter them throughout this area here," she brought the map of the Hall back up. "The mine should be powerful enough to kill anything within fifteen meters of the detonation point." She cut to a demonstration on the hologram, of a group of Orcs charging over the ground. One of them stepped on the ground, activating the mine's proximity pressure detonator. A micro charge on the bottom detonated, shooting the mine up into the air. It detonated at about chest level, and the Orcs quickly turned into something that typically came out of a meat packing plant. "It won't keep them away from the defenses, but that's not their purpose. They funnel the troops towards the killzones, make them go where we want them to go."
"Even then, however, we cannot make too many, given how we have to split the Dawn's resources. To try and fill the gap, Fougasses are also being manufactured." She gestured to a corridor leading to one of the forges. There, Dwarven laborers were hard at work constructing tar lined tubes into which blasting powder would be put. These would be buried, and covered with rocks and metal shards, both of which had been covered in explosive, arcane runes. Keyes felt certain that the results would be devastating. The sooner they could throw the second branch of the Drow army into confusion, the better.
"Additional defenses include spike pits running along the width of the valley," Keyes pointed to the second set of highlighted trenches. "We've set up a number of pits of varying depths and widths to keep the enemy guessing, and have disguised some with arcane means such as invisibility fields and the like, and others with more mundane objects such as wooden planks and turf. It'll hold the weight of one or two individuals, but if a group tromps across it, it breaks, and down they go." A simulation followed. She smirked. "Just in case the fall doesn't prove lethal, the spikes have been tipped with poisons that we 'appropriated' from Luskan."
"Ironic… I like it," Nasher mused, rubbing his beard again. "Anything else."
"Some of the pits have been sloped and lined with proximity spells to set off grease traps when groups of hostiles are too near to them. Aside from that, and some punji-sticks, we're prepping our UAVs to be able to drop large numbers of flares and flash-bang grenades, and caltrops are also being deployed."
The assembled troops nodded approvingly. The Drow would almost certainly attack at night, to try and give themselves the edge. They knew that Humans couldn't see in the dark, and even though Surface Elves and Dwarves had better night vision than Humans, it still didn't match the keen sight that the Underdark dwellers had. With luck, a number of them would be blinded.
There was a sudden beeping on her comm unit, and she opened up the channel. It was Johnson.
"Problem, Sergeant Major?" she asked.
"Yes and no, ma'am," Johnson responded. "The 'Cloaks have given up trying to get information out of our prisoners They were wondering if we might be willing to give it a shot."
Keyes paused for a moment, and then tapped a finger to her lips. She looked out over the assembled troop before her, and ideas started coming into her head. She snapped her fingers a moment later.
"Tell them we'll give it a try," she told the Sergeant Major, and then turned to Pwent. "Excuse me, Battlerager, but I'm going to need your help, and Drizzt's."
Pwent cocked his head to the side, and then looked to his King. Bruenor's eyes were sparkling, and his cheeks flushed as he began to laugh. Keyes was suddenly reminded of Saint Nicholas for some strange reason.
"I think I can see where this is going to go," he said, before motioning Pwent to go on. "Go give her a hand," he said, "Nasher and the rest of us will be down at the range with the Sergeant."
Pwent nodded his head and fell in line behind here. Keyes headed towards the portable medical lab they had set up further into the Hall. There were a few things that she needed to grab before she went and introduced herself.
Keyes walked into the holding cell. The Luskan prisoners were restrained, blindfolded, and gagged, and Alicia trapped that had a rune circle that kept her arcane powers in check. It was something the mage did not seem happy about, nor the chains that connected her to the wall. Normally, the prisoners would be kept separate, but there was so much going on that the force necessary to guard them could not be spared. As such, other measures had to be taken. Thus far, there had been very little information that had been gathered from them, but they had to keep trying. These had been the elite troops of Luskan, and Alicia one of the pupils of an Archmagi. If anyone had information on what the Drow had as far as battle plans and force projection capabilities, it would be them. Keyes slung a pack off her shoulder as Pwent, Drizzt, and Dove moved up behind her. The short Dwarf had a feral grin upon his face and was popping his knuckles.
Keyes held out a hand to restrain him, and motioned for Drizzt and Dove to remove the prisoners' gags and blindfolds.
The sight of the three guards reaction to the violet eyed Drow was enough to pull a smile from her face. The men recoiled in horror, shuffling away from Drizzt as much as their chains would allow them, while babbling incoherently. Just as she'd hoped. For once, she could use the psychological reputation of the Drow to her advantage.
She stepped forward. Though not as tall as Sergeant Johnson, or anywhere near the proverbial mountain that was the Master Chief, she was still an imposing figure in her armor. She placed her pack of supplies on a ledge next to the entrance of the cell, and began rummaging through it. Inside were a number of drug injections, hallucinogens, and other means of information extraction.
"So, anyone wish to talk about the Drow?" she asked, pulling out the gleaming needles to where the torchlight shone upon them. She glanced over at the three men. They were white as a sheet, and Alicia seemed to be somewhat unnerved.
There was power behind that name, the Commander realized. She was dealing with something that would require a delicate hand. This was not merely trying to get the troops in front of her to tell her what she needed to know, this was trying to get them to overcome their fear of the Dark Elves, to overcome the fear of an entity that was used as a nightmarish bedtime story to keep children in line, of a people whose barbarism and cruelty matched only that of what Humans themselves were capable of. Once again, it seemed like bringing Drizzt along had been a good idea.
Met only with silence, Keyes crossed her arms over her chest plate, and cocked her head to the side.
"We can do this very easily," she kept her voice level and calm. "You can tell me what I want to know, after which we'll leave you in peace until after the battle for the Hall, or, we can do this the hard way, and you can keep resisting until I'm forced to get nasty."
One of the prisoners snorted, and Pwent cast a sideways glance at her. It was hard to tell with the beard in the way, but she had the distinct impression that the Dwarf was frowning at her.
"Go ahead," she motioned to the prisoner that had snorted at her, the one in the center, "tell me what's on your mind."
"No whips, no poisons, or knives, not even a rack or a wheel," the man sneered at her, "nothing but words. You have a rather feeble way of trying to get us to talk." His eyes drifted to her and Dove, and Keyes glared at him. "Of course, there are other ways of getting a man to talk."
The Commander heard the Ranger growl softly, and her hand went to the blade on her waist. Not a bad idea, Keyes thought to herself. She smirked, and motioned for Drizzt to come over to her. The Drow seemed upset by the comment that the man had made, and his eyes burned with rage as he walked over towards her.
All the prisoners heard was a hushed whispering between the strange woman and the equally enigmatic Drow. Drizzt nodded his head, and walked forward. As he did, he withdrew a figurine. Moments later, Guenhwyvar burst into being. The prisoners edged back slightly as both Drow and Panther stood before them.
"Which of you is least important?" Keyes asked, crossing her arms again, and letting her gaze harden to steel.
"What?" the question came from Alicia.
"Which of you is least important?" she asked again. There was a touch of anger in the query this time.
They stared around, as if stricken dumb. Just as Keyes suspected they would. Time for the next part. "Fair enough," she growled, and motioned to Drizzt. "The one on the left."
The man's face twisted into a mask of confusion, before becoming a dictionary definition of terror as Drizzt advanced towards him. He pointed to the man, and Guen charged forward. The panther grabbed the prisoner's mithril chains, and tugged hard. Guenhwyvar, a being born of magic and endowed with a strength greater than any of her mortal cousins, ripped the shackles straight out of their rock anchors, and began dragging the man from the cell. Drizzt turned to follow.
As he passed Keyes, she reached into her bag, and extended a black object towards him, no larger than her thumb. "Use this," she said, and smiled at him, a grin that the Drow returned, "I'm sure you can be very… creative… with it."
"The pleasure will be all mine. It is not the way of my people to be easy with our prisoners…" the Ranger said.
What little color was left on the Luskan's face disappeared in that instant. He was dragged out, and the two headed for another chamber, deeper in the prison. A large iron door separated the two areas. Drizzt kept his pace steady as he approached it, and the man in front of him began to plead and babble like an infant as he was dragged along the stone floor by the enormous black cat. Cries for mercy and offers to tell the Dark Elf whatever he wanted to know went unheeded. As they reached the door, he instructed for his friend to drop the man. Guen did so, and then paced up until her fanged maw was scant inches away from the man's face.
The Luskan stared up, eyes pleading as Drizzt raised the device high. He pressed something on it, and then in a flash, his scimitar was out and whirling. The man let out a piercing shriek that went on for several seconds. Just as the prisoner seemed to realize that the Drow wasn't advancing, Drizzt blurred forward and punched Icingdeath's pommel into the man's temple. He slumped over without a sound.
The Dark elf quickly turned back to the door and slammed it close, while pressing another button on the device. He rewound the recorder, setting it back to the beginning, and then, as Keyes had shown him earlier, pressed a button at the other end of it. This would extend the recording of the scream, and alter it to different pitches and intensities. He waited for a few seconds, and then pressed the play button again.
Another shriek, this one starting off loud, and then getting even louder, before dying away to a faint moan, echoed through the chamber.
Back in the holding cell, Keyes crossed her arms and put the most evil grin upon her face that she could muster. The racket reached the other prisoners, and even Alicia's face went slightly pale, and she shuddered.
"I don't need knives, or poisons, Luskan," she hissed, staring down at the one that had addressed her. "Not when I have one of 'their' kind on my side." She paused for a moment, and let the message sink in. "However, I do have a number of alternative means extracting information if you think you're strong enough to go ten rounds with a Drow blademaster." She reached into her bag, and pulled out a very large syringe loaded up with truth cocktails. She let the group stare at if for a moment before she motioned Pwent forward.
The men recoiled from the Dwarf, whether from his intimidating appearance, his rank odor, or some combination of the two, Keyes didn't know. Regardless, the Dwarf was playing his part. They weren't thinking straight, they were terrified of what she might do next. Time to start delivering the heavy blows, she thought, as another scream from Drizzt's "torture" echoed over to them.
Keyes started forward with the needle in her hand. She depressed the plunger slightly, letting some of the liquid drip out and drop onto the floor. Both of the Luskans shuffled away from her and she let another smile come to her face.
"Now, I suspect that as elite guards, you've probably had some training or been enscrolled to be able to resist magical truth telling probes. Am I right?" She asked. They didn't reply, but gave uneasy glances towards one another and the one furthest from her chewed on his lip.
"I'll take the silence as a yes. Now, I'm going to try one more time to be nice, before I start using this stuff," she shook the hypodermic slightly. "Now. What do you know of the Drow? What's their command structure? Do you know of anything that can be used against them?"
The one that had first spoken to her shifted his eyes up and to the right, paused for a few seconds, and then answered.
"We never heard the Arch-Magi speaking with anyone about anything really important." He said, stuttering slightly.
The Commander narrowed her gaze, and stuck a hand out, waggling her index finger back and forth. "Now, now," she said with a tone of one addressing a child who had just been caught stealing from the cookie jar, "what did I just tell you about lying?"
"It's the truth, I swear…" he began, before Keyes cut him off.
"I am many, things, Luskan, but an idiot is not one of them," she hissed and motioned to Pwent.
The Dwarf reached down and despite his smaller size, easily hefted the Human off of the ground. Keyes was brandishing the needle all the while. When he had to the right, he had subconsciously been accessing the right part of his brain. The part responsible for creative works of fiction, as opposed to logic and organization. "I've been in the field long enough to know when a person is lying to me. You. Were. Lying."
The man's jaw started to shake, and he kept clamping and unclamping his teeth. Keyes shook him, and placed the hypodermic right in front of his face. He looked at her again, unable to tear his eyes off of her.
"This needle contains a number of substances that will weaken your mind, your judgment, your ability to reason. In thirty seconds, it'll have you thinking that I've been your best friend since childhood. You'll tell me whatever it is I want to hear, whether you want to or not. Too much, though, can damage the mind beyond repair. It's a surprisingly fragile thing," she said, noting the cold sweat that had broken out over the man's face as another scream came from where Drizzt was, followed by laughter from the ranger and a roar from the panther that made even her spine tingle.
Drizzt was a very good actor, it seemed.
"One way, or another," she said, focusing the Luskan's attention back on herself, "I will get what I want to know. The question is, afterwards, are you going to be capable of thinking, or are you going to be a drooling wreck with a mind like a zombie? Make the call, my friend, you've got thirty seconds before I stick this needle through your neck and put this concoction into you."
Ten seconds passed, and the man began to shake. Fifteen, he looked ready to soil himself, but Keyes did not relent. She steeled herself for what she was about to do. She had never used this amount of the cocktail upon another Human. She reminded herself that there were lives at stake here. Ten seconds. Another well played scream from Drizzt, and Keyes placed the needle against the man's neck, ready to plunge it in.
"Alright!" he hissed, trying to shrink away from her. "Alright, please!"
Keyes took the needle away from the man's neck. "Speak," she said.
"I don't know much," he said, looking straight at her, his eyes not wavering at all. "I remember that the Arch-Magi spoke often with a Drow woman, an old crone, wrinkled as my grandmother's grandmother," he said. "Said her name was Matron Baenre, leader of the Dark Elves."
"I already know this. Try again, and think harder." She put the needle back in place, though not quite to his neck.
"Alright, alright!" he screamed. "There was someone else… something else. A demon of sorts. Big one, claimed to be one of the sub-lieutenants to Demogorgon himself!"
Keyes' arched an eyebrow. The tomes that Helm had given to them had spoken of that two headed monster, how it had the power of a God, and was feared by all mortal things. She remembered how its lust for destruction was rivaled only by its lusts for power and love of lies and deceit. The perfect bedfellow for the Drow. "Who was it?" she asked. "What was its name?"
"I don't know its real name," the man said, holding up a hand, "but it called itself Erttu. The demons your soldiers fought at the Tower were some of his minions. I'd suspect he wasn't too happy about them being wasted like that."
Keyes heard a gasp and looked over her shoulder at Dove. The other woman was pale beneath her tan skin, and her eyes fluttered over towards where Drizzt was at, still hard at work.
"A Balor," Dove whispered. "A very powerful Balor…"
Keyes nodded. She knew what those things were now, too. So, they had at least one Balor on their side… probably more than one, actually, if they were courting Demogorgon. Things might get complicated. It was time to double check the blessings on the ammunition.
"Anything else?"
"There are a few caches of magical artifacts and weapons stored in the Luskan underground," Alicia spoke up. All eyes jerked to face her. "I can provide you with a map to their locations. There's bound to be something in there useful to you and your cause."
Keyes raised her eyebrow again. "Awfully cooperative of you, kid, pardon me if I'm a little suspicious."
"Understandable," Alicia responded, crossing her arms. She was cool and collected, Keyes admired that. "However, look at things from my perspective: Luskan has fallen, and the Hosttower is in ruins. My masters are all dead, and even if the Drow come storming in here and defeat you, what are the odds that they'll let me go, as opposed to simply assuming that I gave out information and have me killed as a traitor to the cause anyway?"
Another scream from where Drizzt was echoed through the area, and the young mage shivered. "Something tells me they won't bother to scry my mind."
"Y-Y-you know," the other Luskan said, pausing to gulp and looking over at his companion, still trapped in Keyes' iron hard grip. "She's got a bit of a point. What do we gain by resisting?"
"Smart. Very smart." The Commander smiled, and suddenly grabbed him by the chin. "Regretfully, I have to inject this anyway. Just to be safe."
The man started to shake, and Pwent growled. He stopped instantly, but she could tell that he was about to start sobbing. She could hardly blame him. She pulled his face down, looked him in the eyes.
"Relax," she said. Some of the hardness was gone from her voice. "You've started to cooperate, I won't use the whole dosage, and your mind will survive the experience." She placed the needle next to his neck, but that part of him was still shaking and tensing up. "Stop it," she whispered to him. "You tense, you'll bend the needle. I don't think you want that."
The Luskan became as stiff as a board, and pale as Death himself. Keyes put the needle in, and depressed the plunger. She stopped after injecting a tenth of the hypo into him.
"That should be enough for you," she said. "Pwent, set him down, and let's move onto the next one."
In rapid succession, Alicia and the other remaining prisoner were quickly injected with localized dosages. Soon, Keyes was learning secrets that she knew would be vital to increasing the Drow casualties while decreasing those of her allies.
The Drow had begun lighting torches in their homes to prepare for the light of the surface. That would mean that despite this clever attempt at adaptation, that Flash-Bangs would still work. A torch and a ten million candela flash, after all, would be two different things entirely.
The Drow assault was to be lead by a number of captains, and Keyes made a note to remember the names of them all. One in particular stood out: Berg'inyong, if only because once again Dove's eyes widened upon hearing it. Keyes suspected that the Baenre weaponmaster and Drizzt must have had something of a history.
Other information astounded her. It was not merely the forces of one or two Drow cities that would march against the forces of Mithril Hall. A full half of the cities of the Dark Elves were being emptied of every slave, troop, wizard, and dark cleric that could be spared. This alarmed Keyes somewhat, but she quickly calmed as she remembered that either battle field would play to their advantage. The open fields would be a slaughter house of an epic caliber, while the tunnels would limit the number of troops that could come at the defenders. Indeed, more than equal things, the increasing bodies of slaves and the gore that would choke those tunnels would possibly even turn the numbers of the Drow army against them.
Once nothing else was there to be learned, she pivoted about and motioned for the others to follow her. Dove paused only briefly to go retrieve Drizzt and the prisoner, who would need to be resecured, and then they left the dungeon behind them.
Within the depths of Watcher's Keep, Demogorgon stirred. The twin headed Demon Prince growled faintly as he sensed magic in the air. Magic that was different from the chains and spells that kept him bound and in constant agony, assaulted by pain born in the forges of both Helm's divine citadel and the darkest pits of Baator. The twin heads looked at each other in confusion. What being would be foolish enough to try and penetrate here, into such a protected sanctum? Sealed by the power of a God, how could… he stopped short and closed both sets of eyes, probing at the spell that was building around him. He could sense divinity in it, but far from the horrid sensations of purity that came from Helm or one of his ilk this one felt dark, tainted… corrupted.
A small portal opened in front of him and Demogorgon adopted a neutral expression as a small being became visible. It looked like a Drow, albeit much taller than most of them. It was still dwarfed by the massive bulk of his form. However, he didn't need to probe much further to identify what he was looking at.
"Lolth…" his left head said quietly. "Entering the realm of the Watcher, so soon after your brush with mortality?" Both heads laughed. "The Troubles made you bold indeed."
"Helm cannot touch me, due to Ao's decree," the Goddess said with a smirk. "Assuming he even notices this. I'm not disrupting his warding, after all." He could see the smirk on her face.
"Why are you here?" the right head asked. It already knew the answer of course. Nothing came before the Demon Prince without wanting something.
"To offer you a bargain," the Queen of Spiders said in a smooth tone of voice. "This tormented existence is unbecoming of you, Lord of the Abyss, and I know your hearts long for vengeance against Helm and all his ilk."
A pulse of raw fury surged through the twin minds of Demogorgon as the Watcher's hated name was spoken. Heedless of the consequences he thrashed within his chains, ignoring how much deeper they bit into him every time he struggled against his prison. A thousand horrid fates danced before his eyes as Demogorgon imagined all the things he wished to do to the being with the audacity to imprison him.
It was many minutes before he regained control of himself. "What would you offer, Spider Queen, you cannot release us. That power is beyond you."
"True, it is, but I have another means by which I can aid you," She gestured and a smaller figure appeared next to her. "This is Triel Baenre, one of my most promising followers, daughter of my greatest High Priestess." As she spoke, the firstborn daughter of Matron Baenre bowed low before the Demon Prince.
"Get to the point." Demogorgon's eyes narrowed.
"You know that the magic of Baator forms a part of your cage. Such magic often requires blood sacrifices from those using it, especially ones as powerful as would be required to hold you," Lolth's grin widened. "We know the forger of some of your chains. And we know a way to use that magic against him for the purposes of freeing you."
"What do you require?" It was a struggle to keep the eagerness out of his voice and his mind focused on the here and now, rather than planning his revenge if Lolth spoke the truth.