What, we skipped Zone 15 entirely?...

“I can’t believe you actually netted so many Will o’ Wisps.”

“They’re like prize munchies for Shield Dragons. I’m thoughtful that way.”

“But really, a Ghost Touch net? When did you make that up?”

“Well, considering how much silk was left over after killing all those ether widows...”

“And you’ve got Ranks in Weaving?”

“Don’t be silly. I had Hazé do it. She’s got the Spell Weaver Mastery, has ten Ranks in Weaving as a pre-req.”

Briggs mumbled to himself for a moment. “That’s a hilariously good way to trap incorps, who have no strength to speak of...”

“Well, it was her idea, not mine. She dropped the comps off at one of the temples she was evacuating, didn’t even have to use her own downtime.”

“Clever. It’s like being an Archtheurge saving thousands of the faithful is worth a few favors here and there...”

“I’d say we could have joined an army and done the same thing... except anyone stupid enough to have us join an army and think we wouldn’t take it away from them deserves what he gets.”

“Requirement one, of age to be recruited. Oh, wait...”

I uttered a few choice syllables at his words. Can Kill Greater Demons, not qualified on basis of being too young. He laughed. Can throw a horse at someone, as an Ancient obviously too unruly to be a soldier...

“That certainly was a lot of damn stinking swamp,” he observed, not looking back at the miasma a mile or two behind us.

“You want to work out how you get a draconic black willow?”

He scrunched his flat face up. “That’s like where you do it in the woods, right?”

“Sure.”

“See, just take the basic approach.” We looked at one another, and then spluttered at the imagery. Forget humans, dragons really will mate with anything...

“I notice that nobody complained we didn’t stick around to slaughter stuff,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, the I-wanna-fight to the I-wanna-puke ratio was more than a bit off. Have to work on that. Wimps.”

He rubbed his nose and chuckled again. We’d certainly cut through enough lizard men communities, all of them led by half-dragon kroks (gator-men) or the like, but we hadn’t stuck around to really do the job right.

Except at the Obelisk, now that we knew they were such fun places to investigate, and the lads really, really liked the Karma from beating on creatures with Eternal-class Templates. The four pseudonatural wakos had certainly stirred up a fuss, and their little giant monitor lizard brothers kept the lads excited while we dealt with them. The Royal/Imperial/Divine half-dragon krok guards had all been enthusiastic about us being there, too.

It had been a fine party, and there was plunder for party favors under the altar, literally a dragon’s hoard worth, which we merrily looted and exited with.

The lads were in the middle of burning pretty much all of the metal and magic of it away at the moment. It was funny how far a dragon’s hoard worth of loot did not go with several hundred gold-hungry mouths to feed.

Of course, what awaited ahead of us in Zone 16 was similarly welcoming. Cold fogs laced through the desolate wasteland ahead of us, the winds yowling with a connection to Leng, things we couldn’t make out moving in the sky, shadows at the edge of vision, tempting, teasing, trying to stick with us.

The Elevator Music to Heaven /chanted, and those things were ignored, actually sounding kind of petulant at not getting a reaction from us...

----------

Zone 17 flies by...

“Wow, that was my first gug!”

The anatomical stupidity of having vertical jaws splitting your face in two firmly established them as aberrations, and no evolution could defend having two forearms extending out from your elbows.

“Same here!” Errant’s Heavenbound chimed in at Briggs’ words, as did the dragons and their riders watching as the massive natives of Leng burned away.

Conspicuously, the Ironblood stayed silent, and Errant, AA, and I said nothing.

Briggs slid his eyes our way, figured that out quickly, didn’t even think about AA, and grimaced at Errant. “You kidding me?” he grumbled at our Heavenbound Ten.

Silver eyes glittered over his smile. “The tunnels beneath Zynozure go down rather too far, and some things wanted to bring up a couple guards with them. Guess what easy-to-dominate brutes they picked?”

Briggs mumbled something about unfair extra years, and Errant just winked at him.

Pseudonatural spiders lorded over by a Spider of Leng. It was probably not here by choice, as being compelled to guard the Obelisk simply wasn’t in the nature of the things... But compelled it was, and we weren’t going to pull punches against the massive eleven-legged thing, especially when massive wolf, dream, black widow, sword, and trapdoor spiders from Outside Creation were doling out the poison, shooting hair-thorns at us, waving four living sword-limbs at us, and dispensing hallucinatory powder in the air.

We’d simply cut through most of the things we’d run across. I’m sure they appreciated the murderhobo action of hitting and running faster than they could move. This group of gugs looking for some ghouls to munch on were high-Karma targets, and the lads and monkeys definitely wanted to give them a try. Elder Arg straight up mangled one, ending up rather unimpressed, especially compared to wrestling an eighty-foot crocodile from Outside Creation...

I didn’t ask the gugs’ impression of Elder Arg, but I’m sure they admired his mangling technique.

----------------------

Zone 18...

“And here I was complaining about not fighting any gugs because I hadn’t gone underground,” Briggs announced, Endure beating agreement.

The cave before us was a hundred yards in diameter, clearly going down and deep through a mountain that rose beyond sight above us. Not even the dragons wanted to think about flying over it.

“Did the Brothers say what we’d be meeting down here?” Estemar asked from dragonback, his eyes thoughtful.

“The first Obelisk we’re shooting for is the territory of the Shellycoat, the Zone after next. Take a guess,” I grinned at him.

Everyone shuffled. Images of dark and slender figures with crimson, violet, purple, or obsidian skin and pale hair all came to mind. The faces of the elves hardened, the dwarves snorted, the Ironblood just grunted, the berserkers tried to hide their interest in other matters, and the apes snarled.

“But we’ve got a route, right?” Verd asked from behind me.

“Sure. They had to come out the far side.” I smiled winningly. “There’s only a few tens of thousands of them to get past on the route. I’m sure it won’t be an issue.” The Map popped up, and our route was plotted out for everyone.

“Two hundred miles underground?” Even Errant had to wince.

“Aren’t you glad shit can’t teleport through the Felldeep?” I said merrily. “Otherwise, they could pull up so many demons and send them after us the fast way!”

“They can send word on ahead that we are coming...” mused Errant back at me, also smiling slightly.

I pointedly turned around and looked up at the sky. “Damn, that’s horrible. There’s definitely no way they’d know we were coming otherwise.”

A ripple was in the churning clouds above, fed by a whole Zone worth of millions of undead, cracking this much-abused sky and giving just the hint of sunlight coming through from above.

Definitely a lot of low chuckles going out at that statement. Even the apes were learning to appreciate some good snarking.

“Dragons... go humanoid? They can always revert if need be?” Briggs spoke up calmly. The dragons glanced at one another, then back at their riders, who dismounted with alacrity.

The hellpoodles whoofed, glancing at the griffons as the dragons shrank and shifted into their humanoid forms.

“No, the griffons are fine. They can basically levitate and speed after us with Heavenbound on them. But you’ve a point. Sir Harbrom, Sir Estemar, on Captains Fido and Shirley, chop chop.” The two Paladins only paused a moment at the thought of mounting two ex-Hounds of Hell, but the saddles unfolded out of the Hounds’ Barding and the two Paladins swung up onto them smoothly.

“Elder Arg, you’re probably going to have to fly prone most of the time. Most of these tunnels are going to be small for you. If need be, we’ll get you shrunken down to fit.” The great ape grunted understanding, sparks crackling on his fingers for a moment, his eyes glowing with soulfire. “Yeah, there’s gonna be stuff to mangle down there that needs the mangling.”

“Like all the drow,” General Moonriver muttered under his breath, to the general agreement of the elves and dwarves.

There were two kinds of dark elves: drow and drakeer haror. The latter were ‘redeemed’, returned to the stars and moon of Sylune, the most magical of the elven races, the drakeer haror, the Star Elves... of whom Sylune Herself belonged to...

Drow were demon-worshipping fallen elves turned from the Light by denizens of the lower planes and their own accumulations of sin. Given their casual proclivities, killing them all was very much the preferred way of dealing with them.

“Well, there’s the equivalent of a dozen empires of them spread throughout the Fifth Zone-ring here, so let’s focus on sending them all off to whatever doom awaits them when we really mess up the Formation the Hags have up, rather than having to chew through millions of them one after another, shall we?” Oddly enough, nobody thought that was a bad idea. “Okay, pop those Masks of Clarity, you poor bastards who don’t have perfect night vision.” My own Mask descended on me, as did those of all the non-humans.

Why yes, sapient apes are actually Powered, and it was like we planned ahead on teaching them what to learn, or something. As for my Ironblood, it was one of the Tats they all had to get to go on this little escapade, and pay up to at least Mastery/2.

Ancientaxe also had one, since Devilsight outdid infravision in almost every practical way, and down we went, not quite moving as fast as we had through the angry and misty-fist-shaking plains behind us...

----------------

I had to admit I grinned when the elves, dwarves, and gnomes along for the ride all had Masks of their own. It wasn’t just for the visual acuity, although that was part of it. It was for style points. Can’t have all the humans and monkeys running into battle with stylish Masks over their faces and them not having any either, right?

Soul Essence was a valuable commodity, and usually they didn’t need to waste it on visual enhancement. This was a special situation, and it meant we didn’t have to light up the area with magic to see... although that was an option we could exercise at any moment, very well prepared for that eventuality.

Our worries were about full tunnel obstructions, possible collapses, or potential large magical formations or traps. Tight quarters fighting with troops weren’t what we were much afraid of.

Already having a route to follow also made things much easier. I reflected on all the many, many side tunnels that we’d be passing by and ignoring, eaten away by massive stone-feasting elemental worms or other entities and forming the Swiss-cheese underworld of the Felldeep in passing. The larger caverns were generally formed by elemental creatures acting in some capacity or another...

Drow did mess around with demons and daemons a lot, which could be problematic, but the sheer amount of time/space interference here meant that bringing in such would be dangerous, as they couldn’t leave easily... and not even dark elves generally wanted demons around for the long term.

It also meant there was probably going to be more Evilborn around than a normal dark elf society...

++++++++++++++++

Author’s Note: I was always annoyed that Ealistraee, the good Drow goddess from Forgotten Realms, was basically a ranger, when her ceremonies are obviously so magical... and she’s the daughter of the Pantheon Head Corellon, and the former elven goddess of magic, Lolth.

So, Sylune is straight up the Goddess of Silver (Good) Magic, the Moon, Stars, Travel and Navigation in the story... and she is drakeer haror, a Returned Drow, a Star Elf, invited into that position by the other Powers of Heaven, and stands as the beacon of Good in the night, opposite the light of the Sun King Aru; the Silver Queen of Heaven, Sylune!

Uruth is the famously uncaring Neutral God of Magic, whose Coinmages charging for every Cantrip are infamous. Think Boccob, with less philosophy, for his Church.

Ruilvei the Witch Queen is the Mistress of Black Magic, and the preferred Patron of Crones... and probably the one who subverted the Hag Curse.