Fawnlum rushed over, as Gritcomb fought to muffle Bluntwerk, the red-bearded dwarf shouting his grief.

Fawnlum lifted him off the floor, and clamped her hand over his mouth.

“What is it?!” she hissed.

“The Kettlecot Clan!” he sputtered, freeing himself.

“Who?”

Gritcomb answered, before Bluntwerk could yell again.  “A family of dwarf engineers, lost long ago in a great and bloody conflict.  This is their home.”

Fawnlum could see, in the light of the torch, the great, engraved plate on the front of the humongous, barrel-shaped furnace.  It was in dwarvish writing, but the meaning was clear enough.

“And what’s this home’s name?”

“Greyer Vauld,” Bluntwerk said, ashen-faced.

“A lost kingdom,” Bik’nar added, and Fawnlum looked at her, not missing the cold undertone, in the normally calm and composed elf’s voice.

“Decades ago, it was a mighty dwarf stronghold.  It was lost in a horrible war, when tribes of tri-cleorps invaded, creeping into their tunnels from all reaches of the deepway.  Survivors told of a strange magic, which smothered torches and lanterns, casting darkness before waves of the gloom-loving scum.

“Survivors,” she added, with a hard glint in her eye, “who were few in number.”

“There were wizards with them,” Gritcomb added.  “The foul tricksters cast the magic; and the noble dwarves fell by the score.”

Fawnlum looked into Bluntwerk’s hard eyes.  The dwarf was on the verge of explosion.  He slapped the shaft of his warhammer in his palm.

“Vengeance,” he growled, quietly as death.

“They brought my friend here.  We came to rescue her!”

Still he gripped his weapon, his knuckles turning pale.

“One mission at a time,” she warned, matching his stare.  “Vengeance only means something if you win!”

Shahrv’j was still at the central exit, peering down its dark depths.  “No one’s come,” she announced.

“Right then,” Bik’nar suddenly said, taking charge.

“Halrick and Lucas will stay here and guard Iljareve.  The rest of us will find Sienna, and bring her back.”

“Where do we go?” she asked Bluntwerk.

He slowly turned his gaze away from Fawnlum, and toward Shahrv’j’s door.  “That way.”

“Allow me.”  With that, and with her dark-sensing eyes, Bik’nar stepped into the tunnel, and took point.

Bluntwerk and Gritcomb followed her, and Fawnlum went in after.

“By the Firecore’s Cinders,” Fawnlum heard Bluntwerk mutter, “what means this?”

“We’ll learn as we go.”  Bik’nar replied from up in front, her whisper echoing, and reaching Fawnlum’s ears.

Nepta and Honee followed Fawnlum.  Shahrv’j brought up the rear.

Lucas looked around, as Iljareve continued to sit in front of their enchanted shroom, and quietly sing.

“Let’s get to work,” Halrick said, pointing at some large pieces of wood.  “If we wedge those beams in beside the carts, we can block the other entrances.”

Bik’nar stayed in front.  Despite the sharp-sighted advance guard, the dwarves looked keenly at each corner.

Not every intersection was a tunnel, though, as side chambers abounded.  “How much did they build down here?” Fawnlum quietly asked, having never been in a dwarf realm before.

Deeper shadows rose up from the floors.  Piles of bodies could be sensed even in the fleeting light, and her bearded comrades grumbled more sullenly, the farther they went.

Once before, while fighting Hansite orcs in their dreary tunnels back home, Fawnlum had learned that time loses meaning when wandering around underground.  For one who was not raised in the ‘comfort’ of mines and tunnels, it did not help her mood, knowing uncountable tons of rock sat above her.

The subterranean was a world all its own.

She resisted the urge to count her footsteps, and just kept following the torch in front.

After an interminable amount of time, a slight echo started playing to the tall heroine’s sharpened ears.

Although subtle, it became louder and more defined as they went farther.

The party joined Bik’nar at the door of a huge chamber.

It was more like an amphitheater.  Levels of walkway had been carved into the sides of its bowl, with stairs leading down.  They stood on the highest level, watching a great underground river, gushing from a waterfall up above, to pour into a large pond, where it then emptied out through other tunnel mouths.  The companions could taste the water’s pure mist in the air.

The pond’s surface reflected the torchlight, casting meek illumination, and rewarding them with a most macabre sight.  On the darkened bedrock on the far side of the great pool, were piles upon piles of bodies.  The great mounds rose high in the air.

Descending the steps, and walking around the pond’s perimeter, they saw sharp and blood-caked weapons sticking out in all directions.  Many of the bodies still had flesh on them, thanks to the clean air.

The dwarf armor still shined, as the dead tri-cleorps outnumbered them five to one.

Without any adieu, Bluntwerk picked his way over the corpse-piled ground, and commenced climbing up the largest hill of grisly remains.

“What’s he about?” Fawnlum whispered to Gritcomb.

“Sh.”

Slowly, stepping only on the enemy corpses, Bluntwerk worked his way up to the armored figure at the very peak, and carefully pried the axe from the body’s cold dead hands; then climbed back down.

“They took a great many of their enemies with them,” Fawnlum said.

“Aye,” came Gritcomb’s quiet response.  “They died well.”

“Now we’ll have something to show the clans when we get back,” Bluntwerk said, lashing the battle-axe to his pack.  “We’ll have much to avenge here.”

“This be the Cool-Flow Chamber, Missy,” he told Fawnlum.  “The waters that come through this underground river here, branch out all through the complex, until they exit through their own tunnels, on the southwest side o’the mountain.  If ye were to walk through that tunnel, for near a mile,” he said, pointing at a worn exit where the widest stream of water flowed out through the far wall, “ye’d come to the Fire Tongue Warren, the lava flow that passes underneath the northern side o’Mount Haber.  It’s where King Brickcutter’s people lifted molten metals right out o’the magma, forgin’ tons o’ crafts that fed the kingdom’s fortunes for many a year.”

“The Kettlecot Clan?”

“One of many families.  Friends o’mine.”

“The axe?”

“General Vengestamp McBelt.  A hero known in many a dwarf home.”

He looked back at Bik’nar.  “Turn left out o’here, and make a quick right.  It’ll take us to the Great Hall.”

Dowsing the torches, they allowed the green glow of the strange liquid guide their way, where its spots littered the floor.  Pausing at an intersection now and then, they hid, as an occasional handful of tri-cleorps passed by.  Bik’nar peeked inside a couple of high-ceilinged chambers, whispered of the presence of shrooms, and went on.

And they kept going, until Bik’nar trotted back, and bade them follow silently.

Fawnlum saw a faint glow over Bik’nar’s head, colored green, like the light of the green goo.

There were echoes and chattering voices clustered together, as if coming from within a small canyon.

“Wait,” Shahrv’j whispered.

She pointed at the sheathed Icefire on Fawnlum’s back, and its glowing hilt.

Honee quickly took the scarf from around her neck, and wrapped it around the mighty blade’s handle.

Shahrv’j joined Bik’nar at the front, and froze, as if listening.

“What is it?” Fawnlum asked, after the silence had dragged out for several seconds.

“Powerful magic,” Bik’nar replied.  “Great waves of powerful magic.”

Waving everyone to stay back, the silent Bik’nar crept around the corner to the tunnel’s exit, and then came back, with a grave timbre in her voice.

“Trouble,” she whispered.  “Stay behind cover.”

“Move with absolute silence,” she added pointedly to the dwarves.

Staying down behind thick stone rails and banisters, they crept out of the passage, onto a long, balcony-like landing, which overlooked a great, high-ceilinged, massively adorned hall, carved out of the mountain’s rock.

In the unnatural light, Fawnlum guessed the Great Hall could hold half the town of Henbrace.

Ancient and massive pillars reached from floor to ceiling, beggaring anyone to believe such height existed indoors.  Four levels of walkways ringed the whole place, with bridges that spanned the expanse here, or simply went to other walkways connected to the pillars there.  And everywhere there was carved and ornate dwarven stonework, detailed and burnished from the most massive stone support, to the small knobs atop the balustrades they now hid behind.

The landing where they crouched had perfectly-shaped stairs that went up to the level above, and down to the landing of the second level below, then down to a smaller landing on the ground floor.

And in the bottom of the Great Hall, sat a sight too terrible for the sane or kindly.  Before Fawnlum’s eyes was displayed a body of liquid – fairly the area of a great pond – containing the green glowing Slime that had guided them here.

But the foul ooze was not alone in its basin.  Submerged up to their chests, hundreds of humans sat in the substance, helpless and unmoving.

Moaning in helplessness, or in semi-conscious nightmares, some of the voices echoed meekly through the hall, the great space too massive to care.

Others shouted and cursed, at the tri-cleorps and the occasional goblin, walking on the rough-hewn boardwalks built above the Slime.

Fawnlum squinted at the head of the Great Hall.  On the elevated platform above the steps, sat a dwarven throne, destroyed, but easily showing what it once had been.  Statues of dwarf kings stood on either side of the chair, broken and crumbled.

But the vandalism was insignificant, compared to what now occupied the dais to the right of the ruined chair.

A massive toadstool sat, giant like the shrooms, but different.

Not of this world, the giant, squat thing provided the strongest source of the greenish light, radiating from its 10-foot-thick trunk.  Fuzzy, root-like tendrils crept from its base, down the stone steps, to submerge into the mire of the Slime Pit, in a symbiotic fashion.  The very sight of the fungus, with disease-like splotches on its 12-foot-high, tan body, and dark, purplish spots on its massive pink hat, left Fawnlum feeling soiled.

Around the Toadstool stood several robed figures, engaged with waving hands, and speaking words too distant to make out.

“Priests?” Fawnlum whispered.

“Wizards,” Bik’nar breathed.  “They’re using that Toadstool to create a great and horrible magic.”

As the wizards continued their spells, teams of tri-cleorps worked around the Slime Pit, filling great wheelbarrows with buckets of Slime, and then carting them away through the many exits.

The noise of the Slime Pit did not distract the wizards, even as a gaunt cow, among other livestock animals, lowed in an echoing call, as it tried to rise out of the ooze, only to sink back down in defeat.

Fawnlum hoped the thing was dead, and released from its torment.

Whether the unmoving among the humans were alive or not, she could not tell.

From the wooden walkway, more than one tri-cleorps and goblin snorted in contempt at the prisoners held below.

Honee tapped Fawnlum on the shoulder, and pointed.

She spotted a dark-haired form, sitting head and shoulders above the other captives.

They had found Sienna.

<*>                                                          <*>                                                      <*>

In East Osterly, Morgy tapped her foot, waiting.

After she had taken Baneck and Torsar back to the Coast, they talked to Dregor and Viognia about the situation Fawnlum had found.

Viognia was clearly not pleased, but said nothing about it.

Then the diplomat came to the dragon a day ago, and commissioned her to go back, and try to convince Fawnlum to go directly into Humboldt, as Viognia originally intended.

Now she sat at Klingger’s.

Night had fallen, although it was difficult to tell in this city, and the Araby native told her about the more recent goings-on, using his great map to illustrate where Fawnlum had built her fort.

Taking the initiative, she cast her magical vision out to that spot using Half-wing, and promptly spotted a white sliver of light – – moonlight that could only come from the discs Baneck had spoken of.  Focusing in closer, she spied Dreighton standing guard.

She secured Half-wing in Klingger’s care, went outside to a wide but secluded spot in an alley, shifted forms, and flew up into the dark sky.

Within minutes, she touched down, and found the motley crew.

The dwarves and uzruul called out in alarm, but Caitlyn and Dreighton quickly bade them to calm down, stepping up between them and her draconic self.

Stuttering as he was introduced, Banacheck slowly quieted, likewise Leruna.

One pair of uzruul, however, never regarded her.  They maintained their meditative singing, bathed in the moonlight as they sat in front of a shroom.

Huffed at Fawnlum’s absence, Morgenferrin settled down on her haunches, and allowed Dreighton to tell her the latest news.

<*>                                                          <*>                                                      <*>

“There be dwarves among those prisoners,” Bluntwerk said quietly, as they stood again in the safety of the tunnel.

“Don’t lash out!” Bik’nar said tersely.  “I don’t know what magic they’re building in that Toadstool, but if it were to be released right now, it would destroy half of East Osterly.”

“What about the lake of Slime?” Fawnlum asked.

“A magical substance,” Nepta quietly said.  “It’s draining the strength of their victims, to feed that abominable plant.”

“Then what’s the plant for?!” Bluntwerk whispered, through clenched teeth.

“To make the magic that grows the shrooms and the darkness up above,” Shahrv’j answered.

The dwarves were tensed and glaring, torn between making an argument, and just charging in.

Fawnlum stood by Bik’nar, backing up the elf.

“That magic is so strong,” Bik’nar told them fearfully, “I can feel its power, and it beggars my wits.  We have to escape to tell others of this.”

Then she looked at Fawnlum and hissed, “Those are powerful magic-users!  They’ll feel the power of Wintermore in our things, and sense us within minutes!”

“Are they beyond any of us?” Fawnlum asked.

“Beyond all of us,” Bik’nar curtly answered.  “We can’t give them a chance to attack.  We must grab your friend and go!”

Fawnlum looked at Bluntwerk.  “You have to take the axe to your people.  Now’s no time for a suicidal charge.”

“That doesn’t mean there won’t be killin’ here today,” Gritcomb said.

“Of course not,” Fawnlum answered delightedly.

After a moment, Bluntwerk gave a glum, silent nod.

“So,” Honee said to Fawnlum.  “You’ve found what’s behind the shroom-doors.  Now what?”

Fawnlum turned to Bik’nar, with experience fighting evil in the darkness of this underground world.  “How do we approach?”

Under the uzruuls’ concealment cloaks, Nepta and Honee went back to the rail in the Hall’s greenish light.  Nepta sat and called upon Diamance, and started casting her spell.  Honee walked into the air, up into the space among the massive pillars, ready to shoot her bow from above.  Gritcomb and Bluntwerk stayed behind Nepta and her cloak, keeping their rope handy.

Hugging the wall, Bik’nar led Fawnlum and Shahrv’j along the walkway from their balcony, in the shadow of the level above, toward the Toadstool.  “They’re very powerful.  They can most likely cast an attack spell very quickly,” she whispered.

“Understood.  Our only advantage is surprise.”

“We have another,” Shahrv’j said.

Fawnlum looked at her.

“There’s enough visible light in this chamber, the tri-cleorps aren’t looking with their infra-vision.  The shadows conceal us.”

Fawnlum kept following Bik’nar, moving in silence.  But if anybody were to look up here right now, they would be sunk.

At the end of the walkway, Bik’nar separated from Fawnlum, waiting for a wheelbarrow crew to pass below.

Then she climbed down the ornate pillar, past the second level, to the Hall’s floor, and silently headed for the wizards.

Shahrv’j stayed behind the rail, bow at the ready.  Fawnlum snuck down the blind side of the pillar, descended past the rails of the second level, and also touched down on the floor.

She looked back towards Sienna.  Nepta’s magical fog was building.

She looked forward again at Bik’nar.  The uzruul was actually moving among the tri-cleorps in plain sight!  She was walking beside and behind bodies, exploiting their blind-spots in the visible light.

Now she was closing in on the Toadstool, and the closest wizard.

Fawnlum let a wheelbarrow crew pass, and started following another as they cut across the platform.  Her adrenaline spiked, as she caught sight of a tall wizard on the other side of the Toadstool, but he was not looking at her.  She followed his line of sight toward the Slime Pit, and saw what he was looking at – – Nepta’s misty fog settling in place over 75 yards away, over the prisoners.

A clash of blades snapped her head back to her right, and she saw Bik’nar, battling a twisted creature with the upper body of a human woman, and the lower body of a giant snake.

Fawnlum heard the snake-woman say, ‘I smelled you,’ with a flick of her forked tongue at her elf ally, but she had already drawn Icefire, and ran past the distracted tri-cleorps.  With a flash of her glowing blade, she cut down the closest dark wizard – a woman – before she could react.  As the tri-cleorps howled in alarm, she lunged for the next one.

The wizards reacted slowly, and she claimed another kill, before she was forced to spin and turn her attention to the tri-cleorps.

The dwarves rushed down as the sounds of battle rang out, through the cover of the fog, and onto the walkways above the ooze.  As they tromped across the boardwalk, dozens of people shouted at them, pleading for help.  Ignoring the cries, they tossed the rope to Sienna.

“We’ll be back!” she said to Tombart, as her dwarf allies pulled her out.

“Intruders!  Enemies!  To arms!” yelled the tall wizard, as Fawnlum cut down another tri-cleorps.

Bik’nar still engaged the snake-woman, and the ‘zing’ of one of Shahrv’j’s arrows whipped by.  But the snake made a whip-like dodge, and the tip only nicked her.

As Fawnlum forced the tri-cleorps back, she saw a shorter, heavier wizard, with a damp-looking robe and hood, call a command, his finger pointing at her.  She jumped into the group of tri-cleorps before her, surrounding herself.

The damp-wizard finished his spiel of words on a high note.  She ducked and darted, grabbing a tri-cleorps by the wrist, and pulling him directly between herself and the wizard.

A piercing scream cut through the noise, causing the gang of monsters to jump back.  Her sacrificial stooge had been hit by the pudgy wizard’s spell, and he now danced about, a black cord wrapped around him, with the ends jabbing his flesh, like two venomous heads of a striking snake.  Try as he might, the three-eyed brute could not dislodge the squirming rope.

“Go!” Bik’nar shouted.

They broke and ran, as Shahrv’j shot over their heads, forcing the enemy to duck and cover. Fawnlum covered the distance faster with her longer legs, cupped her hands in front as she stopped beside the pillar, and gave Bik’nar a boost.  The lithe elf shot up to the rail of the next walkway, then nimbly climbed to join Shahrv’j on the third level.

The mob was too close.  Fawnlum could not turn her back to climb up.  A call of “Ylrann” from above brought a sudden gleam of silvery white moonlight, and the charge halted, the tri-cleorps cowering before the glow.

Fawnlum ran forward, flattening one tri-cleorps with a boot to his chest, got a few steps’ worth of space, then turned and dashed back to the pillar.

Another arrow zipped high above her, and she leaped.

Grabbing one hand-hold, she pulled herself up to the second level, just as Shahrv’j let fly again.

“Blast!” the uzruul warrioress shouted from up above.

Fawnlum glanced behind her.  The damp-wizard was exposed in the open.  He was obviously her target, but still standing.

“A magical decoy!” she heard the elf curse, as her hand grabbed the third rail.

“Good reach, human!” Bik’nar told her, as her feet swung over.

Then all three were running all-out, back to Nepta.  Fawnlum’s heart caught in her throat, as she looked at the other side of the hall, and a stampede of thousands of tri-cleorps poured from the entrances.  The only thing slowing the horde down, was their need to go around the Slime Pit.

The walkway shook, and the roars echoed.  They had to stay ahead of that army at all costs.

Fawnlum and the elves arrived at the balcony as Honee touched down.  The dwarves had carried Sienna up the steps, past Nepta, and were already through the tunnel.

Nepta called to Fawnlum, “Carry me!  I have to cast!”  Before she finished, Fawnlum scooped her up in her arms, and was running after the dwarves.

Relieved joy added a new spring in her step, as Sienna looked back at her, laughing.

Bik’nar and Honee brought up the rear.

Running single-file, Gritcomb carried Sienna’s legs and Bluntwerk her torso, as Shahrv’j guided them down the tunnels.

Down the twists and turns, borne by the short pumping legs, Sienna called out, “I can run!”

“Not yet you can’t!” Fawnlum yelled at her, the tunnel behind echoing with the sounds of pursuit.

Shahrv’j’s disc lit the way for all of them, with no need to be stealthy now.  Fawnlum tried to make her gait as smooth as possible, and not mess up Nepta’s hand movements.

With the sounds growing behind them, they reached the Cool-Flow Chamber.

After they went around the pond and reached the top of the steps, Fawnlum set Nepta down a few yards inside the tunnel mouth.

The young wizard brought her hands forward with some impassioned words.  The sound of tri-cleorps flooded into the chamber.

A mist sparkled in the air like frost, and coalesced in front of her.  A thick wall of ice formed, sealing the tunnel.

“Well done!” Fawnlum told her.

“I just hope no other tunnels join with this one.”

“Come on!”

Halrick whooped, as he caught sight of Sienna and her bearers, and they finally allowed her to stand.

The first thing she did, as she got her feet under her and wiped her Slime-stained hands on some dirt, was ask for her saber.

Bik’nar and Shahrv’j joined Iljareve at the shroom.  They each summoned their moonlight, and started singing in concert, preparing to command the shroom-door open again.

Puddlence looked at Pouzelle, and the fallen Daghaivan, with disgust.  Other Daghaivan were coming from their rest periods, rushing to lend their strength, and keep the spell from falling apart.

From her place, Pouzelle stood with her coils gathered under her.  Her eyes were half-closed, concentrating on her own powerful spell of searching.

“I’ve found them!”

“Send the chaff to deal with them,” Puddlence ordered.

Fawnlum and her friends watched, as the uzruul completed their invocation.

Suddenly, Bluntwerk charged, yelling his battle-cry to get at a tri-cleorps who appeared in their midst.

A banging came from the upper tunnels.  Tri-cleorps were trying break through the obstacles Halrick and Lucas had set up.

“Defend the elves!” Fawnlum ordered, watching to see where danger might appear next.

Sienna, armed with a metal pry-bar, took up position next to Iljareve.

“There!” Lucas called, pointing as more tri-cleorps started appearing.

“Lucas!” Fawnlum yelled, moving forward with saber leading.  “Nepta!  Sienna!  Stay with Bik’nar!”

Honee was already high in the air, picking targets.

The tri-cleorps coming out of thin air looked around for just a moment, distracted as they got their bearings.  Halrick brought his saber down, and sent the latest arrival to his maker.

Then a shadow loomed across a wall, and he set himself in time to deflect a charge, as another came in through a tunnel.

Lucas saw the same thing happening on the other side of the chamber.  Sienna put a hand on his shoulder.

“Go!  We’ll watch them!”

As Halrick’s tunnel foe went down, the human suddenly saw a much bigger, much different three-eyed enemy.  Tearing in from the tunnel-mouth, his roars echoing before him, the mutated Croll swung a spike-studded great-club, with a blow that would fell a giant.  Halrick deflected the attack, and the club’s head bashed pieces out of the rocky wall.

The predictable moves were easy to exploit, and Halrick’s rune-etched blade slashed in.

But the over-massive brute was tough as oak, with stubborn, callous-like skin protecting his vital spots.  Halrick stood his ground, and kept cutting into him.

On the other side of the chamber, Lucas heard Gritcomb shout, “Here comes a bunch of’em!” as he stood over a couple of bodies, in front of a tunnel entrance.

“We don’t have time!” Lucas yelled, running up between him and the tunnel, and the red-glowing eyes approaching within.

The fireball flew from his ring.  Unfortunately, he had forgotten the rule about summoned fire and tight spaces.  The combustible projectile struck the tri-cleorps, and its incinerating heat exploded out of the tunnel mouth.

“Get down!”

He and the dwarf dove, just in time to keep their faces from being seared off.

Halrick struck fast as a snake, his saber biting deep.  Muscles bled, and tendons severed, but the twisted tri-cleorps kept coming.

He slashed again to parry the next blow of the club, but it was a feint.  The ugly face twisted in a smile, and Croll’s sweeping right hand struck him in the ribs, lifting him off the ground and into the wall, with enough force to break the spine of a horse.

But Halrick was made of sterner stuff than the ‘civilized’ lands in which they walked.  Born of Coastal blood, with strength built by a fighter’s life, he met the impact with every muscle flexed rock-hard, and withstood it.

He raised his sword-arm, and was hurled to the floor with teeth-rattling force.  Croll stomped on his right leg, breaking the shin bone and pinning him there.

He held the monster’s eyes, even as the creature sneered down at him.  Croll raised his club to deliver a thunderous blow.

But he was knocked back, as a small boulder sailed into him from the catwalk up above.

A boulder named Bluntwerk.

Fawnlum heard Bik’nar shout above the tumult.  The door was open.

Croll gave a murderous bellow at the dwarf, and brought his club over in a great arc, meant to pound him right into the stone floor.

The red-beard thrust his warhammer’s head straight up as he darted forward, deflecting the mighty blow, and came in nice and close to his big, wide open enemy.

The hammer’s ‘crack’ against the kneecap brought a new howl from the monster’s throat, and he jumped back.  He gave an angry swing in response, which Bluntwerk ducked inside, and hit the same spot again.

The shattered joint buckled.

Croll dropped his club as he fell on his rump.  Kicking furiously with his good leg, he pushed himself away from his vicious little enemy.

Gritcomb gave a shout from across the way, ending Bluntwerk’s advance.

The fiery-eyed dwarf gave a toothy smile, and pointed at the downed monster.  “Another time,” he promised, and ran to join Gritcomb, as Lucas helped Halrick hop toward the exit.

Fawnlum waved, with much frustration, beside Iljareve, beside the shroom.

Halrick, leaning on Lucas, had just made it through.

“Come on!” she yelled at her dwarven friends.

Then as she emerged on the other side of the gate, she nearly fell over them, as they stood stock-still, staring up at a copper-scaled dragon.

“Move!” Bik’nar snapped at her, pushing from behind.  “Now!” she then shouted, and Dilerr’n and Ariea ceased their singing, letting the shroom-door close.

“Fawnlum,” Morgy said, in her most charming tone of voice.  “What trouble have you found?”

“All of it!”