Once again the armies of darkness are sweeping across the world and this time there may be no stopping them. Only by standing together can the heroes of civilization hope to prevail, but at this hour of their greatest trial the mightiest of their nu...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Thomas stepped out of the teleportation cubicle and found himself in a small room with brick walls, lit by a dim red glowbottle sitting in a niche in the opposite wall. There were no windows, and the only door led to a flight of stairs leading up, telling the wizard that he was underground, probably in a cellar. Their equipment lay in an untidy pile in the middle of the room, and over in the corner the slaver regarded him silently with its cold, emotionless octopus eyes.
Thomas had been chosen unanimously by the others to be the first to go through, it having been explained that, since the cthillian had been his idea, he could have the honour of being alone with it for the five minutes until the next person came through. He glanced over at it, still looking inscrutably back at him, its alien face utterly unreadable, and thought of the time, back at the University, when their resident expert on the inhabitants of the world below, a balding, bespectacled wizard called Siparillas, had given a long lecture about the slavers, describing the long list of their terrible powers and abilities and recounting some of his own unpleasant experiences with them. He’d left them in no doubt that to be alone in the presence of a living slaver was about as conducive to a long, happy life as trying to fly a kite on a hilltop during a thunderstorm. What would you think if you saw me now, he thought wryly, all alone in a dark cellar with a perfect specimen of the cthillian race and neither of us lifting so much as a finger to harm or even threaten the other. Strange times we live in. Strange times indeed.
He tore his gaze away from the slaver and looked at the pile of equipment in the centre of the room, a wicked smile appearing on his face. Send me through first, would they? Well, that means I get first choice of the equipment, doesn’t it? Let’s see what we’ve got here.
He sorted through the equipment and tucked the only white light glowbottle into his backpack, along with the bottle of magical energy. He hung one of the clay men's mind protection pendants around his neck (with a quick glance at the slaver to see if it reacted. It didn’t) and picked out the best of the pot holing equipment so that when Shaun eventually came through he found the wizard cradling it protectively in his arms, a broad grin on his face. The soldier glared enviously at the harness he’d had his eye on, now gripped firmly and irretrievably in Thomas’s long fingered, lightly tanned hands, the straps dangling across his hips, and gave a grumble of disappointment as he went over to pick out the second best stuff.
The others came through one by one. The two trogs next followed by Diana, Lirenna, Jerry and Matthew, and the young soldier had just emerged from the cubicle when they heard footsteps coming down the stairs. They looked around just in time to see a middle aged, dark skinned man come into view. He was wearing long, white robes and a turban, had sandals on his feet and was wearing a large, jeweled ring on the second finger of his left hand. The three wizards recognised him instantly as a Haldornian, there having been several of them at the University, but to the others he was just a bewildering foreigner from whom a strong spicy smell was spreading out to fill the room.
