(A/N: My apologies if you find this chapter to be too short, but it seemed like a good place to end off at. Wouldn't it be a waste to spend even more time trying to make this chapter longer when I could be working on the next one? Thought so. Again, thanks to everyone who reviewed.
Disclaimer: Neverwinter Nights REALLY doesn't belong to me.)
Chapter Three
They hadn't gone three steps down the hall, when Deekin realized something was wrong. A sudden chill went up his spine, the side effect of that innate feeling that something is amiss...the handaxe in Nars's side might have been a clue, too. Fortunately--or perhaps unfortunately, thought Deekin--the armor caught the full brunt of the weapon's attack, and the blade lodged no further than the metal. A black-bearded duergar peeked around the hall's far entrance, saw that his attack hadn't hit home, and tossed another handaxe. Nars intercepted the axe's path with the flat of his greatsword, and, needless to say, was not amused.
"FEEL MY BARBARIAN MIGHT!" Nars bellowed, charging at the offending gray dwarf.
"Deekin leaves lame, cliched war cry out of story, he thinks," the unfortunate kobold companion sighed, busily writing details in his notebook. He was aware that he should help, but didn't feel so inclined.
"Kobold! Help me or you're fired!" Nars hollered, fending off the original duergar and twootherswho had joined the fight. It would be tempting to just leave him, Deekin thought. But the odds that he'd find someone else to take him into Undermountain were slim. Reluctantly, Deekin put his book away and mumbled two incantations. The first spell empowered Nars and healed his wounds, while the second caused a ball of fire to plunge from the ceiling. Just before it could drop on Nars, it branched into three fireballs, each one striking a duergar. The fire did not kill the dwarves, but sufficiently weakened and distracted them, so that Nars was able to fell them with only a half-dozen chops of his greatsword. Sloshing the blood off his sword blade with a few shakes of the hilt, Nars grinned down triumphantly at the fresh corpses.
"Score three for Nars Sater, zip for the drow! HA-HA!" Nars declared self-assuredly, preparing to exit the long hallway into the next room.
"One for the Valsharess, wael," smirked a drow male, lunging from the next room out at Nars with a gleaming katana in hand. Nars prepared to deal a killing blow to the elf, but was thwarted when the drow deftly ducked under the barbarian's sword and plunged his own into the handaxe-opened gap in Nars's armor. Nars grimaced, but used his strength as an advantage by grapping the drow's wrist and twisting it. He succeeded in breaking the drow's arm--unfortunately, the drow's hand was still holding the katana, and Nars simultaneously twisted the blade into his own flesh. Enraged, Nars pulled the katana out of his side, holding back screams as it ripped a sizable amount of his flesh out with it. He flung the sword aside, attempting to impale the drow with his own weapon and missing.
While Nars and the drow were engaged in their bloody duel, Deekin took this opportunity to sneak past them both--a difficult thing to accomplish in such a narrow, violent passage, even when kobold-sized--and made it into the next room, careful to keep his footsteps quiet. Nonetheless, the drow and duergar in the room had their eyes trained on the spot from whence he came lest they need to step in to the battle, and easily espied him. Deekin gave a mild shriek and instantaneously cast a spell. Large shards of ice bolted from nowhere and impaled several of the Underdark natives, caught off-guard by such a potent spell from such a seemingly harmless foe. Deekin was pleased with his success; the pleasure faded when the survivors came charging at him, brandishing weapons and starting spells. Luckily, Nars had just entered the room, smeared with dark drow blood and looking smug after another victory. He made a perfect human shield, Deekin found, darting past him.
"What the--" Nars uttered as the kobold rushed past. Looking ahead, he was prompted to repeat this. One foolhardy drow came charging straight at Nars, who pushed the blade of his greatsword into the elf's chest and flung it into one of its brethren. One dead and another temporarily knocked down, Nars was free to decapitate a duergar, well-armored but for the thin gap between its helm and collar. Deekin cast another spell, raining fire on the rest and leaving the charred beings prime victims for a hot-headed barbarian. The drow who had been crushed by his dead fellow was unscathed by fire, disdainfully heaving the corpse off himself and sneaking up behind a distracted Nars, foolishly distracting himself. Deekin grabbed his rapier and drove it through the conniving drow's spine. Paralyzed, the drow fell to his knees; twisting around to swing his greatsword with force, Nars noticed the drow and beheaded him as well as the original target. Finally, the battle was won.
Deekin panted from exertion, but smiled with pride at his part in the fight. "We makes good team, you thinks?"
"You're kidding, right?" Nars growled, shoving the greatsword back in its scabbard after shaking the blood off its broad blade. "You're the worst henchman I've ever had! And that's saying something." Stomping down on a fallen drow's skull and cracking it open with a burst of sanguine liquid, Nars stormed off toward the hall on the other side of the room, completely oblivious to the blood gushing out his side wound. Hesitantly, Deekin healed it up with a charm from a distance and scurried behind. He wanted to write something horrible right then, but was keeping his eyes peeled for traps in this treacherous place. The room they had entered was immense, and brought back memories of Undrentide's palatial insides. Of course, Undrentide had been a place of beauty and grandeur, despite its age, decorated with elaborate frescoes and stylized statues; not so here. This had been built a dungeon and served its purpose faithfully throughout the years, as evidenced by the dried blood that spattered the walls and the corpses that littered the floor--not just the recently slain drow and duergar, but the splintered gray bones of adventurers and thieves killed by marauding beasts or hidden death-traps.
Speaking of which.
A thick but aged rope stretched down from the ceiling, braced to the floor by a closed metal hook. Running the length of the floor where the hook was attached was a strip of metal, on which Nars's foot was bound to land in four to five paces. It was a fantastic trap in a fantastic place, and Deekin felt honored to see it all firsthand, but knew that as much he would've liked to, he couldn't stand by and watch Nars be horribly mutilated by a vicious trap of Halaster's make.
"Mean barbarian man!" Deekin called out to Nars.
"The name's Nars," Nars returned indignantly.
"Nars," Deekin corrected himself without sincerity, "you is abouts to step in horrible trap of dooooom!"
"What horrible trap of" --Nars unknowingly stepped on the metal strip with a noisy clank-- "doom?" A message of some sort, whether mechanical or magical, traveled up the rope's length and triggered something in the ceiling above. A sheet of gleaming metal whooshed down at Nars, intent on splicing him in half. Admittedly, the barbarian was quicker than Deekin had given him credit for, evading a split second before the metal sheet hit the ground, wobbling fervently on impact. It was a gigantic guillotine, stretching from wall to wall, and Nars had been only a hair's-breadth from being bisected lengthwise. A couple seconds after descending, the guillotine pulled back up into the ceiling.
"HAH! I can handle anything that crackpot wizard has to throw at me!" Nars beamed conceitedly, looking every bit as sure of his abilities as Deekin didn't.
"But Halaster's traps sometimes comes in--" The floor promptly started to rise, in conjunction with the ceiling lowering. "...twos."
"Oh, well isn't this great," Nars groaned, just as five-foot spikes sheared up from every square foot of floor, though Nars neatly avoided being struck by any. "Even better." A spike had grown up between Deekin's back and his pack, suspending the kobold by the straps of his pack. Heart racing, he worked the straps free and let himself down, only to discover that Nars had made a run for it and was almost clear across the room.
"HEY!" Deekin cried.
"Survival of the fittest, kobold!" Nars responded loudly with a grin--and promptly smacked into a metal spike. He avoided spearing himself on the point, but the hit jarred his metal suit and shook the man inside it. Nars recovered a second later, but that was all the time it took for the ceiling--also barbed with long, deadly spikes--to get five feet closer to the ground. Nars scrambled ahead and made it into the hallway, which was thankfully safe for the time being. More than half a room away was his kobold henchman, not so lucky.
Deekin removed the heavy suit of Nars's armor from his pack and breathed in deeply. Remember Boss, he told himself, bunching his leg muscles. Remember what Boss would do. With that, he bolted forward, urged on by the Boss's legacy.
He just barely remembered to skip over the metal strip, and his short legs made the stride with difficulty, but he did it. He swerved around five metal spikes and was feeling fairly confident, when a sudden quake caused him to stumble headfirst and bang his snout lightly against a spike. A smarting nose was the least of his troubles; the quake was a result of the ceiling spikes hitting the floor, and the floor spikes hitting the ceiling. The tall spikes pressed against the room's top and bottom and halted them in their movement, granting Deekin a few seconds to catch his breath. He got to his feet and kept on at a brisk but more relaxed pace; abruptly, the spikes retracted and the floor and ceiling resumed gravitating toward each other. Deekin yelped and sprinted forth, giving a cry and tripping when he felt a sharp pain in his foot. The bottom of his foot leaked blood, pooling bright crimson on the dark floor, and he saw what had cut him.
The floor spikes were not entirely concealed, sticking up just enough to pose a hazard to his feet. Deekin pulled himself into a standing position, then hunched over when he saw that the ceiling was getting too close for even him to stand up straight. To save time, he dropped down to his knees again and crawled forward. His elbow grazed a floor spike, slashing a wound in his arm. He ignored the pain and kept on, fighting the desperate kobold instinct to panic. In his mind's eye he could see the ceiling spikes above him, getting ready to press into his back and pin him there to be crushed...
YES! He had reached the hallway! Deekin's claws sank into floor ahead and he pulled himself out into the hall a full three seconds before the ceiling and the floor clamped shut. Exhaling a deep sigh of relief, he sat up in a cross-legged position and closed the fresh cuts, then got to his feet and glared at Nars.
Or at least, where Nars had been standing. Nars was already so far ahead as to be out of sight. Deekin griped to himself and started forth. It wasn't hard to track a heavily armored barbarian through Undermountain's dusty, echoing halls, luckily. Deekin found him twenty yards ahead in a small, unlit room branching off from the hall to the right, hacking an old wooden chest apart with his greatsword, finally opening it only to find he had destroyed the precious statue within in the process.
"You leaves Deekin behind," Deekin frowned at him. Nars shrugged, unconcerned, and got to his feet.
"Survival of the fittest," he repeated callously, inspecting another chest next to the first; having learned nothing, his brought his sword down on this one as well. This time, leaning down and inspecting the insides, he came up with two handfuls of gold, some irridescent gems and a satisfied grin. "Good thing you came through alright, though...I'm going to need someone to carry all the stuff I find here." Lifting a pale eyebrow, Nars peered down at Deekin. "What happened to the armor I--well, nevermind that ratty old suit, I'll find better." Adding the gold and gems to his own pack, Nars reached into the chest and pulled out a heavy old metal helm, which he attempted to drop into Deekin's pack, but the kobold stepped back before he could.
"Deekin not carries stuff for mean barbarian man," Deekin stated defiantly. Nars's ice-blue eyes flashed steely cold and narrowed.
"You'll carry what I tell you to, runt!" he snapped, grabbing Deekin by the collar of his shirt and shoving the helm in his pack, then pressing the kobold's face up against his own. "I'm the boss here. Not you."
"You not be Boss!" Deekin growled lowly, and bit Nars's nose. Nars cried out and jerked back, cupping his bleeding nostrils as his face contorted with anger.
"Why...you little..." Furious, Nars unsheathed his greatsword and raised it high over his head. Deekin backed away, shivering as he prepared for the attack...
The greatsword dropped to the ground with a loud, resounding clatter. Deekin looked up in surprise to see Nars's eyes bulging with fear--and then he saw why. Curled around his neck were fingers, long and black.
"Any matters with Deekin are to be taken up with this one," a familiar voice spoke coldly from the room's dark shadows. Deekin's eyes lit up cautiously.
"Boss?" he whispered. Nars recovered his battle fury and reached behind him. The fingers slipped away from his neck, but a dark, robed form rose up in front of him, barring him from attacking Deekin. Then, with surprising strength for such a slender figure, it gripped Nars by the shoulder and forced him against the wall roughly, holding a longsword to his throat.
"Wh-who are you?" Nars choked, his neck jutting out against the blade with those words and drawing a thin line of blood on itself, while his eyes focused on the emotionless, cowled black face before him.
"This one is called Umbra Lumina," she responded simply. "Perhaps Deekin has told you of this one?" Nars didn't dare nod with the longsword's blade so close.
"Uh-huh," he managed dumbly. Umbra pulled the longsword away so suddenly that Nars fell to the ground. Nars scrambled to his feet and felt for his greatsword, only to remember that it had been taken. Besides that, Umbra was pointing the tip of her sword in his face.
"Leave now," Umbra instructed intimidatingly, "lest this one reveal to you the horrors which the shadows hide." Emitting something between a gurgle and scream, Nars obediently fled. His pounding footsteps echoed down the hall to Deekin's ears pleasantly, sounding almost half as sweet as the sound of Umbra's voice again. They eventually faded off, indicating that he had either found a way out, or more likely, gotten himself lost in the maze that was Undermountain. Of course, Deekin was far too taken with Umbra to notice or care.
"Boss." Tears of happiness glossed his eyes. "You comes back!" He embraced her as tightly as his spindly arms could. Umbra knelt down and returned the hug.
"Yes, Deekin." Her own voice was filled with quiet joy as her slender fingers stroked his head. "This one has returned."
"How you finds Deekin?" the kobold questioned. In response, Umbra pulled back and opened the hand that wasn't grasping the sword. A small, twisted object carved of an odd, radiant substance glowed in her palm.
"What be that?" Deekin asked, fascinated.
"It is called the 'Relic of the Reaper', or so this one was told by the shadow-being who held it," Umbra told him. "The shadow-being told this one that the Relic would take this one anywhere she wished to go. So...this one took the Relic, and wished to go where you were."
"Where Deekin was, Boss?" Deekin was astonished, but pleasantly so.
"Of course," Umbra assured, stroking his head again and getting to her feet. "If you do not mind this one asking, however...where are we?"
"We be in Undermountain," Deekin informed, scrabbling into a standing position.
"Undermountain?" Umbra was thoughtful. "Yes...this one believes the dwarf mentioned this place, once. It is quite dangerous...what were you doing here that incompetent flesh-mound?"
"You hears of Underdark, right?" Deekin began.
"Yes, the shadow lich traded with Underdark denizens for artifacts of power," Umbra replied. "Why do you ask?"
"Well..." And so, Deekin explained the current situation in Waterdeep as briefly as he could. Being Deekin, however, that wasn't very brief. When at last he finished his tale--coupled with emphatic arm-motioning and repetitive details--Umbra was quiet.
"That is quite the tale," she remarked at last. "And you have become quite the adventurer since last this one saw you." Deekin smiled and looked at his feet bashfully.
"Oh, Deekin not knows about that..." He looked back up Umbra. "What abouts you, Boss? You has adventures in Shadow Plane?"
"The Plane of Shadow is a place of drear and darkness," Umbra said. "This one wandered. This one thought. Little more."
"Oh." Deekin's heart sank at the thought.
"Do not be sad for this one," Umbra chided him gently. "This one is here now, and she will help you find Halaster."
"You will, Boss?!" Deekin cried joyfully.
"But of course," Umbra said with a smile in her voice. "Now, where does our search begin?"
"Uhh...Deekin has no clues," Deekin admitted. "We uses Relic, maybe?"
"No," Umbra decided. "The Relic can only be used three times. This one has used it once already...it should be preserved for an urgent situation." She tucked the Relic away in her pack--the same woolen gray pack she had worn on their previous travels. To Deekin's surprise, she held his hand.
"Let our adventures together continue," Umbra proposed, quiet voice as joyous as her face was stolid. "Shall we not proceed onward, Deekin?" Deekin's eyes were still wide with shock, but he smiled broadly and nodded.
"Lets Deekin writes something down first," he said, taking the writing supplies out of his pack--after disdainfully discarding the helmet, of course. Carelessly, he ripped out all the pages he had written one and began writing anew:
"The great hero Umbra Lumina returned from the dark, spooky Plane of Shadows to save the world once again. The faithful kobold companion, overjoyed at this recent turn of events, could only follow her, and wonder what great adventures the even greater hero would go on next."
Finishing the sentence, he returned the notebook to his pack and smiled up at his returned hero.
"Onwards, Boss!" he cheered. "Sequel is only beginning!"
"Onwards, then," she agreed.
And so, reunited, into the depths of Undermountain they set off.
(Huzzah! A happy ending for this chapter! To be continued in Chapter Four.)