The adventurers squatted at a bend in the path as Jus, Polk, and Henry puzzled over the new map. Letting the boys pretend to navigate, Escalla amused herself with a spider leg, tossing it off the path.
"Hey, Cinders! Fetch!"
The leg bounced. Cinders lay beside her, thump-thump-thumping his tail. Escalla gave an unhappy sigh and collected the spider leg for later.
"Are you really trying, or what?"
Cinders trying. Stick moves too fast.
"Oh, all right! I'll try to roll it slower or something. Maybe we should make it smell of coal?" Escalla looked over at her friends. "Have you guys figured out what that map means yet?"
"I think these paths are all different levels. The levels never seem to link. No one level is entirely below or above any other-all except for this top level here, where the red X is marked." The Justicar looked down a pathway and scowled. "So there's no way to communicate between levels, unless that's what's been marked here in pencil. The paired numbers on the map might be link points."
Henry scratched underneath his helmet. "Can we be sure?"
"They're the only things marked on the map at all." The Justicar looked down at the tortured tangle of lines marked on the map. "The first number marked is over that way. Past another door and to the left."
Enid came and settled on her haunches beside Escalla. The big sphinx folded up her paws and lowered her voice so that only the faerie could hear her. "That undead ranger is unpleasant. I hope the Justicar can find him soon."
"Yeah. Well, we'll get him. Jus just has a little problem with him."
"You mean he's holding back?"
"No. But he's pretty miffed."
"Oh." Enid thoughtfully kneaded the path with her big claws. "I wonder where your sister is? She's been remarkably quiet."
"Oh, she's a lady. She won't work unless she has to." Escalla snorted and threw Cinders's spider leg once more. "If I know her, she'll sit there glued to her crystal ball, waiting for my scrying shield to fade."
"She won't come hunting for us here?"
"You don't get as plush as that girl by walking the wilderness and camping under trees. Nah. She'll use magic to look for us. She's probably still back in her cave."
Cinders was wagging his tail more happily. Jus returned and picked the hell hound up, smiling fondly as he dusted the dog's pelt clean of ash and troll. He swept Cinders back into place across his back, then lifted Escalla onto Enid's back, where the faerie could ride comfortably upon her friend.
A distant glimpse of a path far below showed a horrible pack of giant spiders skittering along the roadway. The adventurers kept back from the edges and speeded their pace, passing by doors and side paths as they followed the map for turn after turn, path after path. Finally the Justicar held up his hand as the road led up to another floating door.
Escalla slithered down from Enid's back and peeled off her long gloves. She kept her voice a whisper as she handed her wand and staff to her friends. "Stay here. Henry, turn around! Mama's going natural again!"
Henry blushed and turned around. The faerie shucked her fine black mail, tossed it to the Justicar, and changed herself into a flat-worm. She slithered her front portion carefully under the bottom of the door, remained half in and half out of the room for a long, silent minute, then stealthily withdrew. She converted back into her usual form and motioned her friends to gather a few yards away from the door. When she spoke, she spoke in a careful whisper.
"All right. There's four demons in there. Big vulture guys!" The girl scanned carefully, staying quiet and unhurried. "The floor's covered in broken skeletons-all busted up, legs broken and stuff. The demons are in the corners on pillars about a hundred feet high, all facing the center of the room and just sitting there. They must be guarding something!"
"Four demons?" The Justicar kept careful watch on the paths and mist. "Real demons are important. Lolth and Iuz use them to control whole regiments. If there's four demons there, then it's an important room."
"Should we try to take them?"
"Yes."
It seemed easier said than done. Escalla picked her teeth and tried to come up with an idea. Henry looked nervously about his circle of friends.
"Vulture shaped?" Henry was all at sea. "Are they dangerous?" The Justicar said nothing. Escalla took it on herself to answer. "You bet your pearly white buns!" She kept her voice in a careful whisper. "Tanar'ri are about as bad as it can get. Pretty much immune to magic, tough as iron, dirty as a roach, and just plain nasty. All sorts of powers. You know-teleporting, making darkness, telekinesis… If we take them out, it has to be fast! Real fast. We can't let them teleport out and raise the alarm."
Enid brightened. "I could try to coax them out with a riddle!"
"They're demons, hon." Escalla shrugged. "They get their jollies from other things."
"Oh." The sphinx folded up her paws and frowned.
The Justicar took a piece of charcoal saved for Cinders's dinner and made a sketch of the room upon the floor.
"Escalla? Are there enough skeletons to interfere with footing?"
"Not too thick. I dunno-maybe a dozen dead guys."
"The bones on the floor are all broken?" The Justicar took on a meaningful look. "Like they've been dropped from a height?"
Escalla sat back, looking displeased. "Telekinesis! These guys can lift weights with their minds. Crap!" The girl explained Jus's point to Henry. "That's the trap! Telekinesis. They use mind power to lift you up a hundred feet, then drop you to the floor. Simple."
Henry looked at the rough sketch of the room and blanched. "So how do we kill them, and do it fast? They're a hundred feet above us!"
Still naked but supremely confident, Escalla spread her arms and said, "Oh, tanar'ri? You want to see how I handle tanar'ri? Insanely bloodthirsty, outnumber me four to one, outweigh me by three hundred pounds. Watch this! A great mind is at work beneath the pretty face."
The Justicar sensed a stupid stunt about to happen. He leaped forward to stop her, but it was too late. Everyone scattered madly aside as the faerie danced over to the door and raucously knocked on the demons' door.
"Hey, you! Hello in there! Anyone here order a two-foot-tall goddess in a thong? Yoo-hoo! I'm too short to reach the handle! Open up!"
The door gave a click and swung open as if by magic-or as if by telekinesis. Escalla shoved it wide open and gave a happy cry. She fired a lightning bolt high into the ceiling of the chamber, blowing apart a ledge that a vulture demon was standing upon. The creature fell, and Escalla whooped as the tanar'ri spread its wings. She dashed into the room and fired a spell up into the ceiling, which immediately became clogged with a pretty pink fog that smelled of strawberry flowers. Outraged, all four tanar'ri howled in anger.
Escalla turned herself into a huge limpet and stuck herself fast to the floor. A mouth tube stuck out from one side and showered abuse on the demons above.
"Hey, vulture boys! Do you guys fight as bad as you smell? You call that telekinesis? Come on! Put your frontal lobes into it! Pull! Pull!"
Escalla the limpet was having the time of her life.
The tanar'ri abandoned all pretense at rational planning. Berserk with rage they fell on the limpet with their claws, pounding at its thick shell and trying to wrench it from the floor. Huge, stinking, with vulture heads and verminous bodies, the demons screamed in rage.
"Is that all you've got? Hey, you! The one with the beak! Yeah, I'm talking to you!"
The savage ring of Benelux smashing through tanar'ri flesh was pure music to Escalla's ears. She grew an eyestalk and watched as one vulture monster staggered, the white blade protruding from its shoulder and into its chest. A kick of Jus's boot freed his blade. A second blow, then a third smacked into the tanar'ri and killed it.
Henry's crossbow hammered five darts into a demon's side. The monster spun, leaped to attack, and tripped as Enid pounced on it from behind.
The melee spread, Jus furiously defending himself from a vulture's talons with his sword. Henry whip-cracked the Justicar's magic rope and sent a tanar'ri spinning to the ground, choking to death.
Escalla whistled, turned back to her usual form, and dashed outside for her clothes. She fetched her lich staff, pelted up behind a tanar'ri, and took its leg off with a single well-placed blow. Demon claws ripped empty air as Escalla made a fantastic handspring onto a tanar'ri's back and smote the monster upon its skull while Polk bit it in the rear. The last of the creatures staggered as Enid ripped it apart like a cat shredding a chair. Feathers flew, then Henry drove his sword into the last monster's chest.
The party had a mass of wounds and scratches, but nothing too severe. The Justicar issued his healing spells, while Escalla dusted off her hands.
"A-a-and that's how we do it in the bad side of the faerie forest!"
Panting, wounded, and a little dazed, Henry leaned upon his sword and said, "Wow! You… fought tanar'ri… before?"
"Who, me? Nah! I'm daddy's little angel." Escalla shrugged. "But you should have seen me in pillow fights!" The girl picked up her slowglass gem and scanned it about the room. "All right! Here we are in tanar'ri central, our heroes standing triumphant above piles of four vulture things!"
The Justicar scowled. "Will you stop doing that?"
"Hey! These are precious memories! In two weeks' time we can watch all this and laugh!"
The Justicar cleared his throat and murmured in Escalla's ear. "Most of what we see will be a view down your cleavage."
"Oh, yeah." The girl looked down at her bosom. "Well, we can put a bag over Henry's head at those points. All right! Let's look for treasure!"
The promised cache never came. The tiny iron pyramid they'd found outside Lolth's gates rose up out of Jus's purse. It twirled, flared with light for a moment, and disappeared.
With a blink, the dead tanar'ri, skeletons, and blood were gone, leaving the adventurers standing in a blank stretch of open path. Mists swirled. Ghosts moaned.
Fastidiously washing her paws, Enid sat on her haunches and looked around. "Oh, I say! That was jolly well done. I do so dislike stairs."
Wide-eyed, Escalla looked around. "Hey! My treasure!"
"Do vultures keep treasure?" Enid blew vulture fluff from her nose. "I thought they mostly liked decaying bits of bone?"
"Maybe they had gold fillings or something! This is an adventure, damn it! I demand financial rewards for acts of homicide!"
The Justicar sheathed his sword and knelt to examine their map. He pointed at two bends in the corridor and tapped the markings penciled down in red.
"We're here on the map. This corridor junction is a match. We just climbed up one level of the maze." The big man flipped the map into a strip and put it through his belt. "We were given an accurate tool."
He moved away to stare down the paths. Behind him, Polk looked up from his notebooks with a quill pen quivering in his paw.
"Wait, son! How do you spell 'lissome'?"
"E-S-C-A-L–L-A." Dressing, the faerie leaned helpfully over Polk's notebook. "And those things in my bottom are called dimples, not divets."
"Oh!" Polk crossed out a few words. "That's all right. That's fine! As long as the gist of it's there! I can get the prose really purple when I edit it after the adventure!"
The badger kept writing. Enid picked him up with her teeth and carried him down the corridor. They were deep into the Demonweb, and Polk still had half an empty notebook to go.