Chapter 2
Good enough for me
"Bloody hell."
John blinked as the badly dressed genie in need of a health diet twirled away, to be replaced by something vaguely human, if you discounted the way it was nearly twice John's height, with greenish skin, dressed in crude plate armor and holding a large club, reappeared in its place. The creature began to speak in some incomprehensible, guttural language, and waved the club around in what could be a pattern or a good stab at one…
"Ogre mage," Y'vair identified casually, as if she were at some police line-up picking out suspects. "Hmm. I wonder if…throwing daggers?"
K'yanae obliged, but the daggers merely interrupted the spellcasting as they buried themselves in the ogre's unprotected kneecaps. It toppled over with a bloodcurdling growl and struggled to claw itself back to its feet, smashing some of the landscape with its club, by which time Y'vair had crossed over, cut its throat, and leaped back before the arterial blood could ruin her clothes.
The genie reappeared. "You have dealt with your consequences…" it began, but didn't make it any further as one of K'yanae's throwing daggers buried itself to the hilt in the creature's throat. With a choked gurgle, its body faded away, leaving behind the stylishly stereotyped clothes that looked like cast-offs from a movie set titled 'Arabian Nights' where the script writer had never been to Arabia in the first place.
John had to hold back a snicker. K'yanae, like her father – or at least the Zaknafein that he knew – had a short temper with riddles and creatures that summon hostile things.
"Hmm. He might have told us something," Y'vair approached the corpse of the ogre mage and searched it, then stood up in disgust. "Nothing of value."
John attempted to say something suitably cynical, then shut up. He was still awash with that sensation of helpless, numb dislocation, though he devoutly wished that he could, in a phrase, snap out of it. The incident in the Underdark was easier than this – though it probably helped that he was in near-total darkness and near-constant terror, alone, unprepared. They were currently in a room that looked as though it had been hollowed out of a rock mountain with inexpert hands, ignoring the fact that all the other rooms still looked as though they had been lifted out of a bad medieval picturebook. There were occasional growths of huge pink crystals and suitably mysterious, black bubbling pools of what he could only hope was tar. The scent of whatever it was pervaded the room and threatened to set up permanent residence in his nose. The panther let out a sound almost like a whimper – its sense of smell being far keener than his.
He approached one of the crystals and saw his reflection – scruffy, expression twisted into that of mild astonishment, one hand bandaged by K'yanae with scraps of someone else's clothing when they'd found and cut down a well-armed person wearing black armor, who'd attacked at sight. Or rather, K'yanae had cut him down, and the rest of them had watched. K'yanae said he was a Shadow Thief, whatever that was, and sounded curious, though not curious enough such that she didn't hesitate to relieve him of his black, better-made leather armor, cloak, money, short sword and daggers. Y'vair had put on the cloak expertly, snickered at the way the hem brushed the ground, then adjusted it.
He stared at his reflection. It stared back. At least this wasn't one of those days where it'd proceed to talk back to him, or worse, change into a face of a 'friend' long dead.
Y'vair's visage appeared next to his. "Something wrong, sparrow?"
"Sometime ago I may not have…ah hell, it doesn't matter." John rubbed his brow absently. "Let's get out of here."
They ran into a few more of those tiny, chattering creatures that rather resembled mutant flying Gremlins from the movie, and which bit and cast annoying spells, like one of which filled the chamber with choking, stinging orange gas. The panther seemed blithely immune to most of their spells, for some reason, though it gave John a dirty look when he'd suggested that it could eat some of the flying Gremlins for a change, instead of tearing them to pieces. Y'vair had called them mephits…apparently they were in a sorcerer's dungeon. John had thought that obvious enough – the golems, the odd monsters, the magical traps, like that lightning bolt one which had taken at least a year off what was left of his alcohol-soaked life.
There was even a library, where Y'vair had located a few more potions hidden among the moldering, ancient leather-bound books which would have been worth quite a bit in his world, but here, K'yanae took one look at them and pronounced them useless. John had no idea why any sane person would put breakable potions among old, probably irreplaceable books, but no sane person would have built this dungeon in any case, where the actual keys to exits could be found in the dungeon itself. Bloody stupid, that. If he ever had to design a dungeon, not only would there not be weapons in it where any old fool could get at them, the keys to doors and suchlike activation stones would be stored elsewhere! Probably in his pocket far, far away…
There were some goblins in a set of connected sewers outside the library – again, another bloody stupid idea – the sewers were damp, and books didn't like damp. Besides, how was the architect of the dungeon supposed to know that the goblins/mephits/whatever wouldn't come in and rip up all the tomes? Sign a treaty? John nearly chuckled as a picture of that invaded his mind. "I, Gar, the Goblin Chief in the sewer, swear not to come in and use the books as firewood, toilet paper, dental floss…"
The only warning they had of the nasty, green-skinned creatures was when the panther bounded ahead around a corner and something eventually squealed and crunched unpleasantly. A spirited fight had already taken place when John and company finally caught up with the cat – spirited in that the goblins were trying their level best to run away, and the panther was carefully hunting each of them down, breaking their necks, or simply landing on them with all its weight. John winced at one particularly loud crunch.
"Very useful," Y'vair chuckled, lowering her sword. "Care to sell it to me, sparrow?"
"If I tried to it might just decide to bite off my head, luv." John glanced down at the sad little corpses. He stepped on what looked like a length of bent wood with a string at one end, wood sporting patterns that looked as though it had been attacked with a red brush. "They actually shoot with those bows?"
"Unbelievable, isn't it?" K'yanae agreed, picking up one. "The damp from the sewer has totally ruined the aim. I'm surprised they haven't as yet shot each other with this thing."
There was a sharp ringing sound, like some sort of fire alarm, then somewhere down the corridor they heard the unmistakably heavy footsteps of golems, hollow and echoing down the slimy walls, the smash of a sturdy door being splintered under stone fists, then the tramp of feet of stone retreating down another corridor.
All three let out breaths that they had not been aware that they had been holding.
"For a moment I'd thought we set off an alarm," K'yanae relaxed her grip on her staff. "Come on."
"Cat?" John called, and flinched at the echoes. Lucky enough, no heavy tramp of footsteps started their way, only a self-satisfied panther that padded out and rubbed happily against his trousers, leaving a dark stain of goblin blood. John nudged it away quickly before it could do further damage to his clothing, then followed K'yanae as she experimentally kicked open a door at the end of their current corridor. She leaped back quickly as the golem inside lurched to red-eyed life, then relaxed her grip on her staff as she realized that it wasn't about to attack.
John decided to be suicidal and sauntered in, addressing the golem. "I'm your master. Now, show me the way out."
"Way…out…open the doors to portal," the golem grated. John had to fight from clamping his hands over his ears. "Give the activation stone."
"And where is this activation stone?"
The golem didn't answer, nor did it answer to further questions regarding what the stone looked like, where it was usually placed, how to use it, and whether the golem's grandmother was a stone quarry used for nuclear testing. Happily engrossed by this, John was on the verge of asking more questions, each perhaps more degenerate than the rest, but Y'vair cleared her throat pointedly.
The small, nearly claustrophobic (especially with that hulk of stone in it) room had nothing more of interest except some coins scattered on the lone table and more shot that John filched from the cupboards. He looked up to the intense amber stare of K'yanae. "Do you know how to use that?"
"No, I'm only taking the sling and the shot to cook and eat later," John said dryly.
"I didn't know you out-worlders had such impeccable tastes, sparrow," Y'vair quipped with a wicked grin. "Maybe you're not all barbarians after all!"
"Yeah well, we're known for our appreciation of fine dining, luv." Taking pity on K'yanae, John added, "But yes, I can use the sling – one of the products of a delinquent childhood spent harassing things that couldn't throw stuff back at you. May be a bit rusty though."
"Good enough for me," K'yanae shrugged. "Right. Now to find this activation stone. The way this idiotic dungeon is designed, it'd be in one of the unlocked rooms…"
She was right.
**
The room in question sported several glass jars, more worm-eaten tables that looked as though they should have rightfully belonged in a table cemetery, and some crates. John peered closer at the nearest glass jar, and was sickened to find that the…creature inside, suspended in thick, transparent bubbling liquid, looked as though it might have been once humanoid. It was twisted into a position that looked, mockingly, like a fetal one, and its arms loosely floated, like tentacles, the flabby inertness that could only be caused if its bones had been removed. The legs appeared to have been surgically removed, leaving only sad stumps, and John didn't even want to look at what had been done to the torso, or the face, which seemed to have been magically rearranged. He concentrated on not throwing up, as K'yanae sniffed the air, then pulled a face.
"More damned experiments. Sick bastard," she said, summing it up. Y'vair, by the look of it, was trying her utmost not to look into any of the jars, and just at the tables and crates. Only one crate was closed, and at that one K'yanae took a closer look. She let out a strained, hoarse chuckle, under the circumstances. "Someone trapped this crate. That's new."
"New?" John stared at his scuffed shoes. Anything but look at the creatures in the jars – and his mind, which chose at this point of time to be irritating, suggested that they were alive – he could hear soft, ragged gurgles that could have been sounds of breathing. Did he hear a word, a phrase, the word 'Master', or perhaps unintelligible pleading, hissed out from their orifices with each unnatural breath? Bloody hell, then they were…conscious… Unwelcome bile began to ascend in his throat. He struggled to keep his mind on something else, anything else, and fixed on the sight of the panther chasing rats, oblivious as to John's discomfiture.
"Yes…I've never seen trapped crates before," K'yanae looked disgusted. "Wire, ward, wire…ah, there we go." The lid sprang open, and John's nostrils filled with the musty smell of rotting hay, and he took it in gratefully, relieved for a moment from the underlying chemical smell that emanated from the glass jars. Tufts and bunches of it were flung onto the ground as the werewolf dug around inside. "This staff looks better…" she pulled up a metal pole, and hefted it. "Heavy, though…but if we do meet any more golems, it would have to serve." She put it on the ground, and sifted through the hay again. "Activation stone…activation stone…"
"Ah." She picked up something that looked as though someone had cut up a dark mineral, polished it until it resembled a dark blue duck egg, then twisted many threads of bronze, gold and unidentifiable metals onto it. "This should be it…I think. If not, we should be able to sell it."
"Right. Ah. Let's go…" John paused, then stepped closer to a jar and peered at the back of it. There was something that vaguely resembled a medieval battery – an oval cylinder with wires snaking out of it, wires that connected to the bottom of the jar, and which seemed to be feeding bubbles into the mixture. He yanked out the battery, and immediately the bubbles ceased, the last of which floated lazily to the lid before bursting.
The breathing of the creature became harsher for a moment, then burbled wetly before stilling.
"You've killed it?" Y'vair approached the jar.
"Seems like it," John fervently hoped it was so. He didn't need to mention to his companions that death, for these things, was probably the only kindness they had left to offer them. They understood perfectly what he wanted to do, and even better, agreed with him. John was not in the mood at all, at this point, to argue the merits between clinical life and peaceful death.
Before leaving the room, they carefully plucked out all the other batteries from the other jars, then stomped them into pieces. K'yanae voiced a suggestion that she use the metal staff to smash open the jars to make sure they were dead, but not knowing what substance the liquid was, they decided not to risk it.
Behind them, the tortured souls of the creatures floated into oblivion.
**
They needn't have worried how to actually use the activation stone – once they neared the golem it just raised its hand, palm up, towards them, making John start violently and nearly fall over the panther, which made the sound he familiarly associated with laughter. There was an obvious hollow in the stone, and K'yanae gingerly placed in the stone. She jumped back as the golem's eyes flared, and then it hurried out of the door.
"Should we follow?" Y'vair asked rather nervously. There was something inherently eerie about animated blocks of stone that wouldn't be put off by such an organic sensation as pain when attacking.
Echoing down the corridors was the sound of doors banging open, as well as fainter, insane moans and gibbers of the freed prisoners.
"Discreetly, or we'd never find out which doors the thing opened." John held his staff more firmly. "I wish I had me Silk Cut."
"Silk?" K'yanae glanced at his trenchcoat. "That looks like leather."
"I'm talking about ciggies, luv. Cigarettes. No cigarettes in this world? Bloody hell! I really need out of here." John sighed, absently patting his pockets out of habit.
"Hmph. What are these cigarettes? Small cigars?" Y'vair led the way out of the small room as they followed the distant sounds of doors being forced open.
"In a sense," John's sigh deepened as his fingers registered the lack of cigarettes in his pocket.
"Nasty things, cigars" Y'vair snorted. "Might as well turn yourself into a dragon, if you like breathing smoke so much."
John decided not to argue. The panther padded ahead to scout the way, occasionally running into a few goblins that found, all of a sudden, that they had appointments elsewhere. The mad rush to get away from the huge cat was, to John, highly entertaining, especially the bit where the goblins ran up against a dead end. Or when they were passing some corridor and some goblins attempted to ambush the three of them as the panther had run ahead.
K'yanae let out a most unearthly growl that could have been wolf-like at some stage, but actually hinted at being a primal growl that might have come from a sort of carnivore that would make a wolf look like a Chihuahua.
Predictably, they shrieked, and scrambled to get away. The three of them strolled along, waiting…ah, yes, more panicked, high-pitched screams ahead as they ran into the panther.
"Don't kill them!" Y'vair called, "Drive them ahead." There was a deep growl of assent, then the shrieks faded away, as well as the sound of snarls.
"Clever," K'yanae agreed, as they speeded up to a quick jog. Her eyes moved constantly, scanning for traps in a way that made John's own eyes ache in sympathy. "This way they'd run into danger first."
John pulled a face and feigned indignation. "Hey, I'm supposed to be the brutally practical one of this group, luv."
Y'vair and K'yanae gave each other the Look, which John had long-ago counted as one of the myriad unspoken ways with which women communicate with each other in the presence of men. Knowing it could mean anything from their admiring his wit (unlikely) or agreeing to pound him simultaneously, he adopted the instinctual reaction of guys to this sort of communication – he remained silent.
The uniform corridor eventually reached an end at a door. Apparently the architect, after going into raptures when designing certain rooms with monsters or chains or those jars in them, lost inspiration when it came to the corridor. It just looked as though someone had measured a space with rulers, then hacked out a long, cuboid tunnel – no decoration except for the few torches that burned with an orange flame that danced above the cloth - more sorcerous intervention.
The door had been opened by the golem, and the three of them were just in time to see the panther chase the goblins through it, down a short flight of rickety steps. The panther stopped dead, and growled a warning.
"Yeah, cat, it stinks," John agreed, wrinkling his nose. They appeared to have hit the garbage room, or sewage room, or whatever – it smelled as though all the leftover food that John had ever seen had been dumped in it and left to rot gently and pungently. If bottled and left for a while, it could even be a new weapon for gas warfare.
The panther turned its large head and gave John an exasperated look.
"What?" John blinked as he heard a deep, savage roar from inside the room. "This dungeon is just a bloody fountain of enjoyment."
"I'm glad you appreciate it," K'yanae sighed, gripping her staff tightly. "By the sounds of it, I don't think I want to get close to this thing." The goblins' screams could be heard. This was just not their day.
Cautiously, the three inched closer to the panther and peeked in.
The room was a dump. It was fairly large, but refuse had been strewn around it, dumped at corners, and by the looks of it – chewed on. John identified a broken bathtub that had suffered, by the looks of it, an experimental bite, by a very, very big mouth, with lots of teeth. The walls and ground were covered with an unhealthy green slime, as was the sewer grate in the center of the room, over which a very unlikely monster was biting off the head of a goblin.
It looked as though someone had taken the Venus flytrap from the Little Shop of Horrors and had fun with radioactive chemicals, insane plastic surgery, steroids and possibly a host of other illegal drugs. The first thing John noticed about it was its size – it would tower over a tall man, and was a man's height in diameter. It was a bulging, mottled-green and red bag of muscle supported by three trunk-like legs, and marred by a giant mouth, and John lost count of the number of thin, curving dagger-like teeth that framed a tongue of an unhealthy liver color. Three long, thick tentacles curled out from its back, the ends also armed with the same teeth and covered with thorny growths.
As they watched, it grabbed the last goblin easily with one flexible tentacle, then proceeded to eat it while it writhed and screamed.
John touched the elbows of his companions, and prudently gestured that they retrace their steps before the thing decided to have them for dessert. K'yanae pointed just as eloquently to yet another open door, which led up to what appeared to be someplace with soft, inviting light. Not the surface, but it might just be the exit…they hadn't been able to find the exit in any other tunnel that they'd visited, in any case. The problem, of course, was that the monster was between them and the door.
"Do you have a sleep spell?" John whispered to Y'vair, the grotesque sounds of bones crunching and splintering covering the sound of his voice.
"That's an otyugh. It's immune to certain levels of magic," Y'vair replied just as quietly. "I'm not exactly sure how many levels. Never met one before, but I understand that they can speak Common."
"Common?" John asked blankly, then relaxed. "Ah, you mean the Queen's English."
"Queen? Interesting, how you out-worlders call things."
"Can we have this discussion later?" K'yanae pointed again. The otyugh was finishing its meal, and the waving of its tentacles seemed to become businesslike again.
"Maybe I can try talking to it," Y'vair said doubtfully.
"Or we could just attack," K'yanae patted her throwing daggers.
"Do you really want to attack a huge walking plant with lots of teeth?" John eyed it critically.
"We're on higher ground." K'yanae argued.
"Well, I've read that otyughs usually only attack when it feels threatened or when it's hungry. Usually it won't attack those that are feeding it…"
"We're not feeding it," K'yanae watched as it finished off the goblin and started turning around. It was disconcerting – the creature had no eyes that they could see.
"We could pretend we had been. Believe me, you don't want to be bitten by it. The fever its bite would give is serious, and rather infectious." Y'vair decisively stepped out onto the top of the stair where she could be heard by the monster. "Otyugh! We wish safe passage. We drove the goblins to you."
All three tentacles turned to her, then, ponderously, the creature also moved. The mouth worked, and then it spoke in a rasping growl. "Goblinsss…tassste bad. More…meat."
"Let us pass and we'd send some to you," Y'vair promised, folding her arms, not an easy task when you're holding a staff.
The tentacles waved in the air, as if sniffing. "You…not the…massster…"
"I can still send you food," Y'vair said, convincingly lying through her teeth, "Let my friends and I pass."
"All other…than massster…mussst attack…" With surprising speed, the otyugh lunged forward, and the tentacles shot towards Y'vair. Instinctively she leaped back, just as K'yanae and John took hold of her shoulders and hauled her away. The tentacles snapped into thin air, and the otyugh roared in frustration.
"Well, that was very helpful," John commented from the safety of the corridor.
"This 'master' of theirs brainwashed everything," Y'vair groused. "Ah well. Now what?"
"I suggest we make it angry enough for it to try and get through the corridor – then we attack it safely. It can't fit." K'yanae grinned wickedly. "John Constantine…why don't you use this golden opportunity to…"
"I get your point, luv," John was already loading his sling. His first shot missed, ricocheting off the rail, but the second one hit a tentacle underneath the teeth. It flinched back, as the otyugh roared again, this time in mounting fury.
"Hey, that looks fun…" Y'vair tried to make a grab for the sling, but John held it out of reach.
"I'm supposed to be practicing…hey!" John yelped as Y'vair tickled him and snatched the sling as well as the shot. She was, however, less accurate than he was – the bullet bounced off the platform of the staircase, but hit the top of the otyugh as it descended. It shrieked its fury.
John tackled her and retrieved the sling, shot and his masculine pride, glared at K'yanae, daring her to laugh, then tried again. He got better with every shot, and after a while, was hitting the creature with enough force to bruise it. It made it simpler that the otyugh had now somehow crammed itself up the staircase, breaking off the metal railing as easily as John would snap a stick, and was trying to reach into the corridor. Its roars echoed off the walls.
The panther padded over to John and sat down to wash itself. Somehow, this gesture infuriated the otyugh, and the teeth of its tentacles left furrows along the stone. Its breath, needless to say, stank even worse than the chamber.
Y'vair glanced at K'yanae, who nodded, regretfully putting away her daggers, leaning the staff against the wall, and drawing the short sword of the now-deceased Shadow Thief. Y'vair followed suit.
"Stay here, sparrow," she told John, with a grin. Pragmatically, he didn't argue, knowing that they were much more suited to fighting the thing than he was. Besides, he wasn't sure that he did want to fight it in the first place, even if he was…qualified to do so.
Nimbly they minced forward, as the otyugh redoubled its efforts. Y'vair ducked a tentacle, falling to one knee, using the momentum to hack off one under the razor teeth, then twisted up and swung with both hands, severing the first one before tackling the third, and narrowly missed being lacerated as it swung wildly at her. The panther had attacked, bringing claws into play as it knocked the appendage away from Y'vair, then held it down as she finished the job.
K'yanae had ignored the tentacles and ran close enough to the mouth, before raising back the short sword in a hand like a javelin, no doubt utilizing werewolf strength, as she threw the weapon. Like an oversized arrow it shot in past the monster's teeth and embedded itself deep in its maw.
With a gurgle the otyugh lurched backwards, one flailing tentacle managing to knock K'yanae hard against a wall, then it fell off the dented platform onto the littered ground of its lair, where, to John's satisfaction, it proceeded to die. K'yanae stood up, rubbing her head and chuckled. "Thank Asur for werewolf powers, or I'd have suffered concussion. Over confident. Everyone all right?"
"Yeah." John grinned. "Lucky for us that it fell off the platform, or it would have blocked the way."
**
They hurried past the otyugh chamber after picking up their discarded weaponry, not willing to stay in it longer than was necessary and into the corridor after it. Theoretically the chests John had seen in a passing glance in the chamber might have contained valuables, but the stink drove them away. K'yanae and the panther especially were obviously having a hard time, having more refined senses of smell.
The corridor petered off into a room that looked like a magnificent embodiment of luxury. Beautifully woven carpets graced the wood-paneled floor, and exquisite paintings of sunsets hung on white slate walls. The furniture had been hand-carved from what John guessed to be mahogany, and there was even a four-poster bed with a tapestry of a quilt. Potted plants had been placed discreetly in corners, and a fire burned merrily in the stone fireplace.
It was so extraordinary, considering their current surroundings, that John had to look behind him involuntarily to reassure himself that he was still in the dungeon, and not magically transported elsewhere.
"I have a bad feeling," K'yanae announced. "Let me check." Slowly she inched into the room, then grunted in satisfaction, bending down on one of the carpets and fiddling with something on the ground. As they watched, she methodically circled the room, disarming traps with expert ease, then finally rounded off by discovering a secret panel in the wall, which she disarmed and opened.
"Spells and more potions…" she took out the contents carefully and laid them on the ground, checking for other traps. "Money…nothing else of interest. Bah."
The panther lay down on one of the carpets as John and Y'vair sat down and sorted through the things. K'yanae roamed around the room, rifling the bookshelves, chests and cupboards and taking out items of use for their inspection. There were two more doors in the room, which they ignored for the moment.
John picked up a scroll at random and let his eyes roam over it. Again the words seemed to flash, and faded. He dropped the empty scroll quickly, as though it burned his fingers. "And what was that?"
"Magic missile," Y'vair said. "Hmm. This is interesting…well, since a mind can only seem to learn a certain number of spells of different difficulties before it fail-safes and refuses to learn others, I think I'd pick out the spells you can try to learn…"
"What if you learn too many?"
"Never heard of that happen before, sparrow, but from what I understand, you brain explodes." She grinned at his horrified expression. "Kidding. You'd probably go mad. But it's never happened before."
"There's always a first time, luv," John eyed the scrolls apprehensively.
"You seem intelligent enough." Y'vair retorted. "A few more won't hurt. Have to remember to teach you how to cast the things. Here." She passed him a scroll, and he looked at it automatically, with predictable results.
"Hey!"
"That wasn't so bad, was it? That one's the easier type of Protection from Evil." Y'vair looked through the other scrolls, to the sounds of K'yanae pulling out a drawer.
"Hmm. So if I cast it, I become suddenly allergic to myself?" John grinned.
"No, it's just called Protection from Evil. Other evil – anything demonic can't attack you – everything sort of bounces off a barrier. Useful spell to have in an emergency when your enemy decides to summon fiends."
"Anything demonic?" John smirked, thinking of the First of the Fallen.
"Yep. On this world, at least."
"Ah, shite," John stretched his legs, rubbing his knee. Y'vair handed him more scrolls. In the end, John had apparently learned how to make himself invisible, how to make it such that others turned invisible, how to magically open locks, how to cast jets of flame and how to create a mirror image of himself. The other scrolls Y'vair deemed useless, and tucked them away along with the coins and jewels.
"That should be about it," K'yanae returned to them. "No weapons of any kind. There was this thing, though. Looks like a wand." She handed over what looked like a deranged creation of a scepter, painted with garish colors, to Y'vair, who examined it quickly.
"The runes on it…I think it's a wand of monster summoning. Useful." She put it at her belt. "Right. Let's go…"
K'yanae opened the door to their left. There were goblins behind it, which immediately regretted attacking as the panther jumped on them. However, one of the archers had gotten lucky, and an arrow buried itself into John's thigh.
"Bloody hell!" John let out a yell of pain.
"Sit down on the bed," Y'vair said quickly, before he attempted to pull it out. K'yanae removed one of the potions that she had strapped to her belt as he obliged, cursing.
Y'vair inspected the wound quickly, pulling open the hole in his trousers carefully then looked relieved. "Missed the bone and artery…not too deep. Anyway, this is going to hurt," she finished matter-of-factly, and before he could protest, grasped hold of the arrow and pulled it out swiftly. John yelled again, and K'yanae forced the potion into his hands.
"Drink slowly until I tell you to stop," she ordered. "Right. Stop." She took it back from him and strapped it back on.
"What was that supposed to do?" John felt even more disoriented than ever. Being ordered around…a tingling sensation was fast creeping down from his throat. As he watched with disbelief, the wound closed and scabbed over. As an afterthought, he removed the bandage on his hand, in time to see the scabs turn black, then peel off. "Bloody hell."
"You could say that. First thing we do out of here is to get some new clothes," Y'vair gestured at his bloodstained trousers. John stood up, and apart from a twinge, he didn't feel the pain anymore…
The panther bounded out of the chamber, glanced at him, and looked relieved, but approached anyway, seeking reassurance. John rubbed it behind the ears. "Now…"
K'yanae had already looked through the door. "A portal!"
"What?" Y'vair joined her.
The adjoining room, now littered with goblin corpses, was bare except for a few smashed pots and the portal. It was of the height of a normal door and as wide, framed with some sort of dark metal twisted in eerie designs. Between the frame was a strange, flat swirling surface. The frame had been mounted on a stone platform, a plain block of stone. Remnants of small bones lay in a corner, as well as a bucket of water, and the room smelled of piss and worse, which was of course what would happen if one was so stupid as to enclose goblins in it. It was a wonder that they hadn't suffocated to death, but John supposed that air could come through the portal.
Delicately Y'vair approached the portal, then stuck her sword through it. It passed, but just through air – emerging on the other side of the frame. With a sigh, she stuck her hand through – and it passed like the sword had. "Nothing. We need a key…"
"Key?" John said blankly. "Why doesn't this bugger use proper doors all the time?"
"Variety, sparrow, variety," Y'vair pointed at what looked like a keyhole in the frame.
"I didn't see anything even remotely resembling a key in the room," K'yanae commented, as Y'vair hurriedly exited. "Hmm. Maybe the other door."
She unlocked it with a piece of twisted wire she apparently found from the room, then kicked it open. John flinched, almost expecting an arrow, but the door opened to yet another giant, ludicrous room, this time resembling a forest. Trees, somehow managing to grow healthily underground, nearly brushed the ceiling of the cavern, and grass, even flowers grew in lush abandon. It was beginning to remind John of certain parts of the Heart of the Dreaming, and he had to stop himself from looking apprehensively for Zaknafein.
K'yanae walked first, as usual, then they stopped short as three women emerged from behind the tall trees.
Immediately K'yanae drew her throwing daggers, letting the metal staff clank onto the ground. Y'vair unsheathed her sword, also discarding the staff, the panther moved to flank them and John, to his mild surprise, found that he had loaded his sling. His association with his current companions appeared to have rubbed off on him.
The three women squealed girlishly in fright, but nervously stood their ground. They were extremely beautiful – if you discounted skin that looked the same color as tree-bark, green hair for one, yellow on another, and blue on the last, scanty clothes…wait, scanty clothes on beautiful women counted as a plus in John's idea of the world.
"Nymphs," K'yanae said flatly. "Are you going to attack us? After that otyugh, you lot are going to be woefully pathetic, so I suggest you stand aside."
"You are not with him?" the first asked.
Quickly, the second followed. "The master?"
The last chimed in immediately. "The monster?"
"I wish," Y'vair hefted her sword and narrowed her eyes, "So that I can put this through his belly, then cut his throat in such a way that he'd die slowly."
"Ah! You are escaping."
"From this dungeon."
"From this hell."
This method of speech, one after another in what looked like a practiced sequence, was beginning to annoy John. "Yeah. Know the key for the portal?" he asked brusquely.
"The portal!"
"The key!"
"Oh yes."
"But you must help us."
"Bring our acorns to our queen."
"Help us."
"Acorns? Queen?" K'yanae asked blankly, managing to get a word in edgeways.
"The Queen is in the Nymph Forest southeast of Trademeet."
"The acorns are with the gray dwarves."
"Not on this level of the dungeon."
"Gray dwarves…duergar," Y'vair looked thoughtful. "Rumored to be a hard fight."
"Help us and we will help you."
"We'd tell you where the key is."
"We promise."
"All right, all right," John raised his hands after tucking the sling back into his pockets. "Fine. Where's this key, then?"
"Down this road."
"There is a room."
"Her room."
"There's traps."
"And an alarm."
"Some of the mad creatures ran into it."
"Golems came."
"Still there."
"Killed them."
"They didn't want to help us."
"Didn't tell about the room."
"They went anyway."
"He kept us here."
"For pleasure."
"Then he lost the ability to feel."
"So cold."
"Remember the acorns!"
"From our trees."
"If you get them out we can be free."
"Okay!" K'yanae broke in. "I wonder how they got past the otyugh…oh, never mind."
"Didn't you find it odd we only saw a few of them after the sewers and the library?" Y'vair asked, reaching down to pick up the staves and hand K'yanae hers.
"Hmph. The smell of this place – blood and death - must have disguised them, then, if they were using invisibility spells." K'yanae looked disgusted at herself as they left the nymphs.
The room was just a circular space with walls surrounding it in the shape of a C, so that there was one obvious opening. There was a large bed, as elegantly decorated as the rest of the beautiful, feminine room. All the furniture was chased with silver and wrought from pale wood, delicately made, even the chest at the foot of the bed and the bookshelves. The corpses of two prisoners and the two golems, standing immobile in the middle of the room, ruined the effect.
"You might as well use the sling," K'yanae suggested, as she held the metal staff.
The first shot cracked the head of one of the unmoving golems, then the second, the other. Not much damage seemed to have been done…until finally, after a few more, the first abruptly toppled over with a loud crash, falling into the second one, which smashed into the wall and knocked out a portion. The red light in their eyes faded away.
"Hmm. Apparently the thing can only take so much damage." K'yanae walked over to the golems and took a look. She prodded the head of one with her staff. It fell off. "Clay."
"Odd that they didn't attack…but perhaps they were only designed to attack those that set off the alarm that the nymphs mentioned." Y'vair glanced at the door. "I suggest we enter via the new opening, in case there're more of these golems."
The room, like the one they had visited earlier, was viciously and (according to K'yanae) ingeniously trapped, contained more scrolls that were useless, potions, and what could theoretically be the key, but since there were no other key-shaped items, or even items with helpful labels like "Key", or "Portal Key", or "This is the key, you idiot!" on them, they settled with it.
They hurried past the nymphs before they could start their Synchronized Speeches, and back to the portal room. The key worked admirably, and they passed through the blue haze.
--
Little notes and references:
Face of a 'friend' long dead: For a time, Constantine was badly haunted by the shades of his old friends, such that at one point, in a fit of anger, he jumped off a train. This shows that you can be one of the most powerful magicians in the world and still be bloody stupid. Pun intended.
Tiefling: Okay, I've explained this on drowfic, but if there're others out there who don't know what tieflings are, I'd tell you now. They're giant mutant green hamsters that eat peanut butter. Okay, seriously – to use the Monster Manual definition, which I, as usual, will not totally follow…'twisted, devious and untrustworthy, tieflings more often than not follow their inherent traits and heed the call to evil. A few defy their nature, but still must fight against popular opinion…blah…many tieflings are indistinguishable from humans. Others have small horns, pointed teeth, red eyes, a whiff of brimstone about them, or even cloven feet. No two tieflings are the same…'
Silk Cut and Alcohol: Constantine is addicted to cigarettes and alcohol. Once I remember what happens to a person during nicotine withdrawal, I'd write it down. He once made his own cigarettes, but I wonder if he can in FR…
The rooms of the dungeon: I know that I'm not following the exact layout of the game dungeon, and am omitting rooms. Obviously…I'm not writing a walkthrough here. And I hate that genie. I'm also making up secret passages. They might not exist as the story claims they do…some do, of course, but others may not. Play the game yourself. Am writing this also in part to prevent letters from people who'd go 'No! The acorns are in this room, not that room, you blockheaded moron!'
Thank Asur: Asur is a group of seven spirits that in K'yanae's universe, made the worlds. They're not gods. They're just powers that vaguely resemble the Creators of Pratchett worlds, though with worse attitudes and very human characteristics, especially possessiveness. It's complicated. Go read the earlier stories, if you can stand them.
Heart of the Dreaming: A castle at the…as its name says, the heart of the Dreaming, the realm of (d'oh) Dream of the Endless. It's a very interesting place. Read the Sandman! It's good for you.
Thing about the Keys: I find it amusing that the implements in Baldur's Gate II are all automatically labeled in your inventory like this: "Key to the Portal". It's so helpful as to even provide a description if you click on it twice, that goes like this: "This is the key to the Portal." I find this very…well, I wish I had such labels on my keys. I've had the same set of keys for years, and I still have to think for a moment which keys go where when confronted with a door…and in BG II they open automatically if you have the key! Wow! ;p
