Shayleigh considered putting an arrow into the tumbling thing, but heard the three corridors behind her fast filling with enemy soldiers. Instead, she turned about and launched the arrow into the thickening mass behind her, not waiting to see if she had scored a hit The giant, though very much alive and very much enraged, lay on its back, its head toward Shayleigh and its feet still far up the staircase. It struggled to right itsetf, but its bulk filled the not-too-wide stairs, and in that awkward position, with both legs injured, it floundered miserably.
Shayleigh drew out her short sword and leaped ahead, skipping off the monster's face, nearly tripping on its huge nose. The giant grabbed at her with its hands, but she dodged them and stuck one when it got too near. The giant lifted a huge leg and curled it in at the knee, forming a barrier of flesh, but Shayleigh drove her sword deeply into the thick thigh and the barrier flew away. As she cleared the huge torso, the elf saw Pike! coming the other way, rushing under the one upraised leg.
Shayleigh called out, thinking that Pikel would surely be crushed, but the dwarf was already wedged tightly between the stairs and the giant's huge buttocks.
A swarm of enemies came to the bottom of the stairs, some clambering to get atop the giant, others drawing out bows and taking a bead on Shayleigh and on Ivan as the yellow-bearded dwarf rushed down to grab the elf maiden.
Pikel's pet snake bit the giant on the fleshy backside, and the monster's predictable hop gave the dwarf all the momentum he needed. Bracing his shoulder, the powerful little dwarf heaved and groaned, turning the behemoth up onto its shoulders, lifting a wall of flesh between his friends and the enemies. The giant grunted several times as it intercepted arrows, and then, with Pikel's stubby legs driving relentlessly, it went right over, wedging tightly into the low, narrow stairway entrance.
Pikel gave his snake a pat on the head and tucked it back into his sleeve, then rushed to join his friends, taking his club back from Ivan as he hopped past
Shayleigh stood shaking her head once more.
"Stronger than ye thought, ain't he?" Ivan asked, tugging her along.
They met no foes at the top of the stairs, and Ivan and Pikel immediately lined up side by side and resumed their battle charge, Shayleigh heard no sounds about them other than the echoes of dwarven sandals and boots, and while that fact gave her some comfort, she realized that this blind rush through the complex would Hkely get them nowhere.
Finally Shayleigh was able to stop the brothers' wild run, reminding them that they had to sort out the maze of tunnels and try to find Cadderly and Danica.
When the dwarves had quieted, they did hear some noise, a general murmur, down a corridor to the left Shayleigh was about to whisper that she should go ahead and stealthily check out the place, but her words were buried under Pikel's hearty "Oo oi!" and the resounding clamor of the renewed charge.
The Fifth Corner
There," the prisoner said to Cadderly and Danica, pointing across a last intersection to an unremarkable door. "That is the entrance to the wizard's chambers." Cadderly.
The call came again in the young priest's mind, from somewhere not so far away. Cadderly closed his eyes and concentrated, coming to understand that the call came from somewhere beyond the unremarkable door. When he opened his eyes once more, he found Danica eyeing him curiously.
"The man does not lie," Cadderly said to her. The prisoner seemed to relax at that "Then why are there no guards?" Danica asked, more to the prisoner than to Cadderly. TTie man had no answer for her. "This is a wizard," Cadderly reminded them both. "A powerful wizard by all that we have heard. There may indeed be a guardian or some protective magic."
Danica roughly pushed the prisoner forward. "You shall lead," she said coldly.
Cadderly immediately moved up beside the man, catching his arm to hold him back, and looked across him to regard Danica,
"We go together?" he asked as much as stated.
Danica looked to the door, to Cadderiy and the other man. She understood her love's sympathy and protective-ness toward the helpless prisoner, understood that Cadderly, convinced that this was not an evil man, would not use the prisoner as fodder.
"He and I lead," Danica decided, pulling the man from Cadderly*s light grasp. "You follow."
The monk soft-stepped up to the intersection, bent low and peered both ways. She turned back to Cadderly and offered a shrug, then motioned for the prisoner to keep pace and skittered across to the door - almost
The creature seemed to unfold from the air itself, becoming first a black line, then expanding left and right, two dimensional, then three dimensional. Five serpentine heads waved in front of the startled companions.
A hydra.
Danica skidded to a stop and hurled herself to the left, rolling from the lunging reach of three great heads. The prisoner, not as quick as the monk, managed only a single step before a monstrous maw clamped down across his waist
He screamed and batted futilely at the scaly head as the needle-sharp teeth ripped him. A second maw descended over the man's unprotected head, stifling his scream fully. Both heads working in unison, the hydra tore the man in half.
Cadderly nearly swooned at the sight. He got his loaded crossbow up in front of him, shifting it this way and that, trying to follow the almost hypnotic motion of the wearing heads.
Where to fire?
He shot for the center of the great body, and the hydra roared in rage as the dart hit and exploded. Two heads still snapped at the dodging Danica, two continued their feast on the slaughtered man, and the fifth shot forward, far short of Cadderly, but compelling the hydra's bulky body into a short rush at the young priest
Danica started for Cadder'.y, but reversed direction abruptly as the hydra shuffled by, and chose instead to work her way behind the beast. She cried out for Cadderly to run, though she could not see him around the bulk of the monster.
The lead maw came, straight as an arrow, for the young priest, testing his nerve as he struggled to get his weapon readied a second time. The serpentine maw was barely two feet away when Cadderly's arm at last came up, and he fired, the quarrel skipping off six-inch fangs, diving intc the mobster's mouth and blasting in a muffled explosion.
The head and neck dropped in a line on the floor, slowing the charge.
The two heads that had been after Danica, and the one finished with the dead prisoner, came sv/ooping in, though, and the young priest wisely fell back, desperately bringing up his walking stick to fend off the nearest attack.
He knew that he had to get fa- enough away to reload the crossbow, had to fall into the song of Deneir and pull something, anything, from the notes. But with the maze of darting heads, the creature pacing his every retreat, Cadderly couldn't begin to hear the song, had to concentrate simply on whipping his walking stick back and forth in front of him. He did connect once, luckily, the enchanted ram's head knocking a tooth from the closest maw. That head went up to issue a roar, and Cadderly, purely on instinct, rushed under it, used the serpentine neck as a shield against the other two pursuing heads.
The fourth head, the other one to the right, spit aside the dead man's torso and would have had the young priest then, except that Danic? came around from behind and snapped a kick under its jaw.
The monster's maw smacked shut; its flickering tongue fell severed to the floor.
Cadderly continued toward the door, concentrating on readying the crossbow- Danica came, too, by his side, looking back as the hydra lumbered about, dragging its one dead head along the floor as it turned.
"Get in!" she called, but Cadderly, for all his desperation, kept his wits enough to keep clear of the door. It was warded, he knew, sensing the magics upon it. Shoulder to shoulder with Danica, he brought his crossbow up again as if to shoot at the hydra. But then he turned, firing instead at the lock on the door, blowing a wide hole in the wood.
Danica hit Cadderly on the shoulder, throwing him aside. He came up against the wall, dazed, to see his love engulfed by four eagerly snapping hydra heads.
She rushed straight for the beast, ran inside its initial bites, twisting and turning, swatting blindly at anything that came near. A head turned enough to get at her, and she grabbed it by the horn, twisting with a jerk that angled the maw so that it could not wrap around her, so that the snout butted her in the ribs. Danica's other hand shot out the other way, her stiffened fingers driving through the eye of still another snapping head.
All the hydra's heads were turned completely about, facing its bulky torso. Danica grabbed the half-blinded head, threw her back against the thick serpentine neck, then dodged away as another head rushed in, its wide-opened maw biting hard into its own companion's neck. Before the hydra even realized its error, the other head fell dead.
Danica was still pinned in that hellish spot, but a quarrel skipped off the side of one turned neck - off the side of one to solidly strike a second. The first head that had been struck wheeled about to view the newest attacker, while the force of the ensuing explosion drove the second head aside, opening a hole for Danica to rush out The door is warded!" Cadderly cried at Danica as she darted straight for the loose-hanging portal.
It was a moot point, for Danica had no intentions of going through. She stopped and, sensing a maw rushing at her back, leaped up high, catching the top of the jamb and pulling herself straight up. The hydra's head burst through the door.
Lightning flashed several times; fire roared out from every side of the magically trapped doorjamb.
Only two heads remaining, the blasted hydra backed away. Serpentine necks crossed; reptilian eyes regarded the two companions with sudden respect
Cadderly tried to line one up for a shot, but he hesitated, not wanting to risk a miss.
"Damn," he hissed, frustrated, after a long and unproductive moment had slipped past He fired the bolt into the hydra's bulk, apparently doing no real damage, but driving it back another step. The hydra's living heads roared in unison. It hopped to the side, three dead necks bouncing along.
"Shoot for my back," Danica instructed and before Cadderly could ask her what she was talking about, she rushed forward, charged right between the swaying heads, drawing them in to her. "Now!" Danica ordered.
Cadderly had to trust in her. His crossbow clicked, and Danica dropped suddenly to her back, the quarrel crossing above her and splattering a very surprised serpentine face.