The Belly of the Beast

Stone Bear disappears into the darkness of the chewed-open tunnel, and Nolin is right behind him. "Man, this is just like going down the purple worm hole," grumbles Nolin as he slips out of sight. Galthia is right behind him, followed by the bullywug gladiator Burr-Lipp.

"I'm going to stay up at the top," announces Velendo. "If things start chasing us in here, I want to be up here to hold them off. Can you still hear me?"

"Sure, " answers Nolin over the mindlink. His voice is faint.

"There's still no proof this is the right place. You guys scout. "

Priggle and Agar take up positions next to him. Malachite starts for the hole, surveys the almost vertical shaft, and shakes his head in annoyance.

"I can't get down that without falling or setting up a rope and tackle, and I don't want to use the necklace of levitation until we know he's down there." He grimly surveys the battleground as ghouls begin to close in on them from around Nacreous.

"I've got the same problem," Mara says in annoyance. "Usually I like my armor, but some times it just gets in the way." They watch as Burr-Lipp's head vanishes from sight. A writhing maggot wriggles out of the hardened flesh at Mara's feet, and she steps on it out of reflex. Agar looks at it in horrow, noticing that small worms can be seen squirming underneath everyone's feet.

"This," he announces, "is why this halfling wears boots."

Velendo's stomach is churning, and cold sweat runs down his face. "Nolin, keep up a running commentary. We have to know as soon as possible if the Ivory King is actually down there."

"A running comentary? Oh, that'll be" – lovingly breathing into a titan's corpse and watching the mouth gape in a scream of pain – "hard." Nolin slithers out of the spiraling tunnel into an open space. He should be able to see in the dark, but he has trouble glimpsing Stone Bear just a few feet away. Hatred and cold twine around him, the negative energy from Imbindarla's corpse. He shivers, and looks – a dead baby falls from a barren womb and opens its slitted eyes – around as best he can as the others slide down behind him. The air is horrible, filled with the stinking belch of decay. A fat maggot the color of old ivory plops out onto Nolin's head. "Just when I thought my life couldn't get any worse," he says mockingly. From ahead of him, Stone Bear's voice calls back.

"I think I'm inside what used to be her stomach."

"I can't believe we were in the belly of a God," muses Nolin as he gasps for breath.

"The belly of the beast?" asks Galthia.

"Something like that."

Stone Bear's mystic sight isn't affected by the – – studying the world from an incomprehensible height, each undead singing its own prayer of buzzing flies – writhing darkness, but the screaming of spirits make it hard for him to hear. The raven still on his shoulder squawks in sympathy, and he twitches his head to the right. "This way." The shaman leads the way through a ragged hole in an abdominal wall, clambering over a knee-high barrier and trying not to notice that their path has been chewed open by tremendously wide jaws. The group wends their way in single file downwards into – – each ceremony so richly rewarded with a fraction of Her power – Imbindarla's body.

Every step is a trial. Memories assail them. The images seep into the edges of consciousness, twisted thrashings of a putrescent God, and adventurers less experienced than these might be overwhelmed. The Defenders force their legs to keep moving, however, and they suddenly find themselves in an open space. The poisoned air is redolent of maggots and dead dogs on summer days, of rancid breath and swelling tumors. They're in the heart.

"Not very big. Figures," muses Nolin painfully. The phoenix thrashes madly in his chest. "I wonder if Agar wasn't right. Maybe fatso isn't down. . ."

Then oddly, in front of them they hear something begin to... bark? "Woof! Woof woof!" The noise is bestial, the sort of howl you'd hear from something stalking you on the moors late on a foggy night. It doesn't sound ghoulish, but it echoes horribly in the claustrophobic tunnel.

"A dog? Is it Angus?" Nolin checks his pouch, reassuring himself that the figurine is still in place. The group freezes in place, but no dog reveals itself; just the horrible barking that continues around them.

Nolin frowns. "Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound?" Up on the surface of the body, Agar shrugs as he replies through the mindlink.

"Could be."

In the darkness, something moves. A faint greenish ghoul-light kindles, and the Ivory King shambles forward. Behind the group, Galthia senses something slide around to cut off their escape. Something big, and terrible. Fear buffets each of them, and oddly enough it is the memory of the morning's feast that staves off the implacable urge to run screaming.

"I didn't think you'd find me quite so soon," his gurgling voice croons. The swollen ghoul looks quite different from the last time the group saw him. Then he had multiple flaps of loose and scabrous skin encircling his body. Now, however, his fish-pale flesh is strained to the breaking point from all that he has eaten. The Ivory King is as revoltingly large as a dozen normal men, and gobbets of half-swallowed flesh stain his front and lower face. The group feels an inexplicable hunger upon seeing this, a gleeful desire to drop to hands and knees and feast upon the dead godddess themselves... or perhaps to tear the flesh from their own limbs just to see how it tastes. It would be so good to give in, the urge insists, to see how the other half live.

"A good diet," Nolin muses out loud. "Look into it." He keeps his feet, although he blinks away sudden agony from a twisting belly. His tone is scornful. "How could we miss you, you fat tub of crap? We couldn't miss you with a catapult. We're here to kill you and put an end to this. When we're done, the only question is whether we render you down into soap or use all that fat to grease your way into hell." "He's down here, Velendo!" snaps Nolin into the mindlink. "Damn it, it's nothing but negative energy in here and I think we're cut off from retreat. Everyone get down here!"

"You are missing the blessed of Galanna, the blessed of Aeos, the blessed of Calphas," the Ivory King burbles. He looks almost perturbed. "I'll want them as well."

"...lin? ...pening?"

Oh no, thinks Nolin. Too much negative energy means no mindlink. No mindlink means they don't know what's happening. "HE'S HERE!" Nolin tries to scream, and each of the other Defenders there with him echoes the warning. "HE'S HERE!"

Meanwhile, Nolin manages to curl his lip in defiance. "They were given the option to come and kick your pasty bloated white ass, but they said 'Nah, he's not worth our trouble."

The taunt is ignored. "Come closer, snackling," commands the Ivory King as he crooks a finger at Nolin. The jiggling white flesh shines eerily in the darkness. He lets a mouthful of Goddess dribble half-chewed from his clacking jaws and crooks one fat finger at the bard. Piggish little eyes narrow in humor. "I ate the law-bitch," he pauses while thinking of the still-bleeding arm spiked to a door of his temple, "or most of her, and you're nothing in comparison. You're just a distraction. I'm almost done here, so close to rapture, and you're not going to stop me." He leans forward as if to impart a great secret. "And my mother tastes soooo good," he whispers conspiratorily. He licks slug-like lips with an agile tongue.

The ghoul gestures downwards with one flabby protuberance that may be an arm, and Stone Bear is the first to realize that the ghoul has eaten through the bottom of the heart and into the spine itself. "That's where the power is. I just had. . ."

Up above, Mara and Cruciel shield the others with their shields as the circle of ghouls inexorably closes. More spells flash from the trap near Imbindarla's head, and time is running out. "Nolin!" Velendo is insistent. "What's happening?" Malachite swivels his head anxiously towards the pitch-black tunnel, wondering if he should descend.

The radiant knight glances up swiftly at Velendo. "Did you hear that?"

Velendo squints. "I think so. I. . . there it is again!"

". . .ere!"

Malachite stands up, and two poisoned bone arrows rattle off his armor. Ghoulish deep gnomes on undead cave bats swoop overhead. "That's it. We're going." He takes a few steps and slides down the hole into darkness.

"But we can't fight him down there! In the heart of the Goddess? All of our most useful powers will be utterly useless!" Velendo looks at his wits end as Mara follows behind Malachite. Priggle glances up at the cleric, his face a mask of inevitable sorrow, and he lets out an eloquent sigh.

Meanwhile, Galthia, Stone Bear and the others stand beside Nolin as he trades insults from across the stilled heart of Imbindarla. "You know the real problem is, tubby? Who's going to worship you? You're ugly!" His voice grows conspiratorial, as if sharing an important secret. "You're really ugly. You're smelly ugly. You're stinky ugly. If you were an actual God, you couldn't find worshippers if someone was giving them away."

The mound of undead flesh snorts wetly, sending cascading ripples through the swollen flab. "Ah. Now I sense the others, all but the blessed of Galanna. Thank you for bringing them to me."

Uh-oh, thinks Nolin. "Oh, I brought them? You didn't consider that I just came to kick your butt?"

"Heh. You are here because I wanted you here. He grins even wider, showing multiple rows of teeth. "I'm not sure you appreciate the problem you're in."

Nolin chuckles without mirth. "Can I spellcast at you now, before you're finished gloating? Because really, I don't want to hear it."

Velendo looks around as he talks rapidly over the mindlink. "I've been saving a miracle. I've almost prayed for it a dozen times. But now is when it's needed." He nods decisively and shouts mentally to the people beneath him. "Tell me if you want to be up here, to have this out on top of the body instead of it in, where the rest of us are." This time the Defenders deep in the body hear him.

"The only problem is that the other ghouls are closing on us," says Agar.

"Well, a sovereign wall makes a big difference in a fight."

Despite the horrible hunger he's fighting, Nolin laughs. "Velendo, you're my hero. Make it so. Hey, two can play that 'random yanking from somewhere' game."

Mara scowls as she runs through the tunnels with Malachite. "From what Galthia is relaying, it sounds like the Ivory King wants all the clerics and paladins, so he can eat all of us at once." Her face brightens in a look of pure inspiration. "Hey Velendo, can you miracle us all into the middle of the Aeos-light?"

Malachite stops in his tracks, turns and stares at Mara with a look of respect. "Holy. . ." There's a pause, and everyone breaks out into delighted laughter that rings through the tunnels and across the cavern. "Yes!"

On top of the body, Velendo smiles. "That's worth giving up life force for my last miracle. Cruciel, put your hand on my shoulder, please." The old cleric sits down as his guardian angel's wings enclose him like a shield. He takes a deep breath.

"Calphas, if you need extra life beyond what is usual, take what you need. I would like I, my allies, and the Ivory King to be transported from their current location to be replaced in the building where Aeos smote his enemy near the center of this town. Please take of me what you must, even if it leaves me helpless in what is to follow. It is the right thing to do. It is the surprising thing to do. It is the satisfying thing to do. It is the holy thing to do. We have been on this journey a long time. I am eager to see it ended."

Malachite smiles. "Amen."

The world dissolves into white light.

The group stands in pure sunlight atop the ruined mansion of bone in Nacreous. The Defenders are all there, both those who were on the hill and those who were in the heart. Two other creatures have joined them.

Trying to keep her balance on the unsteady rubble, Mara glances over and blinks. "Tao? Is that you?"

Tao looks extremely confused as she looks around. "Mara? Where the heck am I?"

Then she sees the Ivory King and feels the terrible hunger that surrounds him, and realizes that Mara looks delicious herself.