Descent Into the Depths of the Earth by Paul Kidd

Author:Paul Kidd [Kidd, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780786916351
Publisher: Dungeons & Dragons
Published: 2013-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

“ESCALLA!”

The noise shot Escalla up out of her bed, eyes wide open and her hands moving to snatch spellbooks, pens, and scrolls to look as though she were still working. She blinked about in a daze, only to see Jus looming over the dead campfire and wringing something in his hands. The faerie instantly turned invisible.

“It wasn’t me! It was Polk!”

Polk awoke in a mad confusion of blankets. “It’s a lie! A lie!”

“Of course it’s a lie!” Jus whirled, uncannily able to see right through Escalla’s invisibility. “You slept on guard!”

“It’s not my fault! I was working! Everyone knows I fall asleep when I’m working!” Now near the ceiling, Escalla took shelter behind a stalactite. “Look. Everyone’s still alive. What is your problem?”

Hundreds of pounds of stubble-headed fury paced like an enraged cave bear below Escalla’s hiding place.

“This is the problem!” Jus waved the wolf-skull hilt of his sword. “My sword! Something’s eaten the whole blade of my sword!”

The black blade was now nothing but a rusted stump about half a finger long. Escalla blinked back into view, hoping that calming words and a nervous grin were better than calming words alone.

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Then whose fault was it?!?” Jus’s bellow must have reached halfway to the drow citadel. “We left you in charge!”

“Well, Cinders was there!”

“Cinders is still humming away from some damned idiot’s repair spell! We’ll be lucky if he wakes up before lunchtime!”

Huge with anger, the Justicar paced back and forth, his furious eye always fixed upon Escalla.

“That sword saw me through a hundred fights. That sword wasn’t stopped by any blade. That sword was the only thing I had to keep us alive long enough to beat your damned murder charge!”

Private Henry peeked out from behind a stalagmite. “Murder?”

“It’s a bum rap!” Escalla shot a comment at the boy, then squeaked as Jus’s hand fastened around her and dragged her down to face him. “All right, I made a teeny error of judgment! I was tired, man! Those drow really blasted me!” The girl clasped her hands. “I’m really sorry. Really really really sorry! Really really really really amazingly sorry! Now will you just calm down?”

Jus released the faerie and sat down, fuming angry and swearing at the dark. Polk cleared his throat to speak, but Escalla waved the man down before he could make a bad situation worse.

“Jus? We can get you another sword.”

“We are in the bowels of the earth a hundred miles from anywhere!” Jus seethed, his head stubble standing up like porcupine quills. “Where were you planning on going shopping?”

“Hey! We’ve got swords! See! Lots of swords!” In a mad panic to head off Jus’s rage, Escalla spilled captured drow short swords all over the floor. “See? These are swords.”

The drow weapons were scarcely eighteen inches long. Jus picked one up, the weapon looking like a toothpick in his hand. He dropped it and sat down to brood, seething in annoyance at the whole wide world.

Escalla wrung her hands in misery and hovered at his side.

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