Akin's Throat 1

Nolin shakes his head, his senses swimming, his eyes clenched shut. Okay, think. Where are you? We jumped into the stone vortex.. there was a horrible grinding and I could feel something stripped from me. He reaches out with his mind to the other Defenders of Daybreak, but the mental link that connected them is gone. He then cracks open an eye, sees nothing but darkness, and closes it again with a rush of vertigo. Right. The mindlink and my darkvision are both gone, so I probably have no more active spells. The question is, where am I? He stops his internal monologue to feel and listen.

There's extreme heat and humidity – it's like a steam bath in here! 95 degrees, at least. I'm kneeling on something that bounces slightly, and it's gritty and a little sticky. A web? Oh, I hope it's not a web. I can hear... He pauses. Water dripping. Lots of echoes. A distant crowd roaring and cheering – and booing. Lots of faint conversations, in a variety of languages. The quiet clinking of glass. A scream. A different roar, sounds like a dragon breathing. More rain. Another roar from that crowd. He brightens. Hey, is that the sound of someone selling meat pies? Then he stiffens. And... there's something very nearby that has clicking mandibles. Mandibles are never a good sign.

A hissing, scratchy voice sounds just a few feet from his head, speaking in undercommon. "Arrre you alll riiight? Iiii didn't seee you arrrive."

Nolin doesn't look up or open his eyes. "Hi there. I'm fine, thanks. Am I going to want to look at you?" He hears a dry, throaty laughter in response.

"Iiii don't see why nottt."

"Uh huh." He feels the web beneath his fingers. "I'll take that under advisement. Where am I?"

"Ohhh!" says the voice. "You didn'ttt walk up here, diddd you?" The voice clicks several times in confusion, and takes on a more certain tone. "You arrre in the webbb of the Butcherrr. That is Iiii. Iiii offer only the finesttt meeeats, cured or frrresh, of all varrrieties." Nolin feels himself wobble as the Butcher scuttles to one side. "Beetttle. Delicious caaave eelll. Rothi. Axebeakkk. Rattt. Whatttever you may liiike."

"Joy. No elf, I hope?"

"No!"

Nolin gets up into a crouch, eyes still closed, feeling the floor shift and bounce under him as he finds his balance. "Well, hello, Master Butcher. I'm Nolin Benholm. Where is this place?"

"Ahhhh, jussst Butcherrr, pleassse. Ittt is my naaame and my calling bothhh." The clicking, hissing voice swells with pride. "Youuu are inn Aaakin's Throattt. Traaading city of the Underdarkkk, and the finest plaaace on earthhh. Maaay Iiii interest you in some meattt as you start your visittt heeere?"

Balancing on the balls of his feet, Nolin finally cracks open his eyes. The sight of the 6' diameter black and purple spider looming over him doesn't upset him half as much as he thinks it ought to. I've been in the adventuring business too long, he reflects moodily. I'm getting blasi. He glances about. Well, at least it's nice to see that the dozens of web-wrapped meat bundles dangling from the ceiling DO still upset me. His stomach turns.

Gazing past the web-wrapped meat and the spider's eight glittering eyes, Nolin looks around. He's 60' up in a web that spans a 40' wide gap between stone pillars, a web-like staircase reaching to the cavern floor. In front of him, he looks down into a mostly empty fest-hall; behind him, he stares into a huge and steamy cavern lit by faintly glowing fungus and the occasional torch. On the other side of the cavern, hundreds of torches line the sides of some sort of huge stone building, and as the bard squints he is fairly sure that the building is covered with scaffolding, and lined with almost a thousand people. Another roar rises from that direction, the echoing boos and cheers of an excited mob.

"Say," asks Nolin, "what's that over – holy crap! What's that?" He's staring at a bizarre creature that has floated up next to him. It is shaped like a pinkish pancake, but has eyestalks and dangling tentacles that twitch and sway. It makes a noise like a half-orc in gastrointestinal distress as it floats over and examines Nolin. Phosphorescent fungus glimmers on its round back.

"Shoo! Shoo!" The Butcher scuttles forward and waves a foreleg at the creature, which slowly turns and floats off in another direction. "Flummmph. Nuisannnce creatures, they'rrre everywherrre. Verrry annoying. Good to eattt, though." It rubs its abdomen with a middle leg. "Tasssty."

"Yeah?" asks Nolin, interested. "I'll take some cooked flumph if you have some. That'd be great." The Butcher nods in acknowledgement, turns its bulk and scuttles obscenely over to a web-wrapped bundle dangling from a ceiling strand. Nolin squints back towards the stone building in the distance, rolls his eyes, and turns back to the Butcher. "Then I better go. I need to find my friends, and I have a nasty suspicion that I better check out."

* * *

Meanwhile, Mara and Agar appear simultaneously, the paladin still atop her warhorse and Agar standing next to her in the darkness. Their darkvision gone, Mara looks around blindly before drawing her holy mace. "Well, that wasn't too bad," she states cheerfully as the golden light from the mace fills the room. "Oh, hello, Agar! Where do you suppose the others ar..."

"AUGGGGH! GET THEM OFF, GET THEM OFF!"

Mara blinks as her eyes adjust to the light, and she realizes that the entire cavern is filled with beetles. Hundreds of thousands of beetles.

They're crawling on the floor, on the walls, and on the ceiling. They're whirring through the air on jewel-like wings. And they're crawling all over Agar, completely disregarding his horrible phobias of insects.

"Get them off, get them off!" Agar leaps up and grabs madly at Luminor's harness, lost in the panic of madness and fear. "I can feel them on me!"

Mara quickly sizes up the situation. "Come on up, Agar. We'll get off the ground." Agar scrambles blindly onto the horse's back, and Mara nudges Luminor. They're just bugs, snorts the horse into Mara's mind, but at Mara's command he activates his magical harness and huge feathery wings sprout from his sides. He flaps them, hard, and beetles scatter as they take to the air.

It's quickly clear that this isn't going to solve the problem. Jostled by the air from Luminor's wingbeats, thousands more insects begin to fly. They range from the size of Agar's fingertip to almost 7' long riding beetles with gleaming carapaces and huge filmy wings. Agar sobs as he clings to the back of Mara's armor. "I can't... I can't..." he keeps repeating. Some memory flashes in his mind, far enough out of reach to preserve his fragile sanity, but every bug that smacks into him brings it closer. He screams as a beetle smacks into his cheek.

"Enough of this," snorts Mara, and she dodges an incoming dog-sized beetle as Luminor turns in mid-air. "Let's find the exit." Flapping forward through the small cavern she immediately sees that the exit is blocked off by a pair of heftly, solid stone doors.

"Uh oh, Agar," Mara says breathlessly, trying not to inhale insects as she talks. "There are doors blocking the exit! I could land and knock; I'm sure someone would come and open them. Or maybe they're already unl ..." Agar gives a little scream of terror and rears up on the saddle, his eyes popping in fear. With finely focused concentration and a strangled incantation, the wizard gestures wildly, and completely disintegrates the doors.

"Oh, okay," Mara allows politely as the doors explode into gritty dust. "That works too." Luminor swoops forward out of the enclosure, carrying thousands of beetles in his wake. The horse rockets past other several small caverns full of beetle pens and strange tools, emerging into an open shop area separated from an even larger cavern by a wooden storefront and a wide window. A sign on the window announces "Nilf's Beetles" painted (badly) in the standard undercommon script. Two goblins minding the shop turn at the noise, and both of them scream simultaneously as they see a flying warhorse and several thousand insects bearing down on them at high speeds.

"Breach! We've got a beetle breach! Shut the windowfront!" one of them gibbers in goblin. The other one is already grabbing for the window crank, and the window is starting to descend. "Gotta get it closed. Gotta get it closed." "Faster!"

Mara ignores them. "Duck," she advises the halfling, and Luminor pulls up his legs as he rockets through the closing gap. Several hundred beetles of various sizes make it out with them, but the goblins manage to slam shut the wooden window before thousands more escape. The sound of the insects hitting the closed window reminds Mara of pebbles dropped onto a metal roof; of course, the sound reminds Agar of thousands of bugs that want to crawl inside of him and devour him from within, but Agar's like that sometimes.

Within seconds, Luminor soars away from the bugs and vaults upwards across an immense steamy cavern. Lone flumphs tumble away from the violence of their passage, and the horse dodges as a plume of super-heated water and steam sprays up from the ground right in front of them. "Oh look, Agar! A geyser! How exciting!" In response, the halfling continues to twitch and shudder as he flicks imaginary insects from his skin.

"It's okay, Agar," Mara soothes. "Shhhh. They're gone. Hey, did you hear that? It sounded like a crowd roaring! I wonder where it came from?" Agar moans, and suddenly Mara spots a phoenix-like form of fiery magnificence soaring across the cavern towards her. "Oh, and there's Nolin! Luminor, let's land. I don't like the look of that building ahead; it's covered with people. I wonder where the others are?"

* * *

Meanwhile, Velendo and Tao look up from the filthy black muck where they appear, lying flat on their bellies. The first thing Tao notices is the feet right in front of her nose. The second thing she notices is that their skin.. well, it seems as if the skin has already rotted off.

"Auggggggh," groans the dead thing standing above her.