June 1st, 1430 AD
It was a motley crew indeed that responded that evening on June the first, in the Year of Our Lord, 1430, to the clangor of a great bell falling from its mooring in the north belfry of Notre Dame cathedral. They had all been strangers to one another at that moment, enjoying tankards of beer in the common room of L'auberge du la Grotte, an inn on Isle de la Cite, just a bowshot from the cathedral.
An English knight, Alphonse Veritas.... A fugitive ninja from Nippon named Hisao.... A Norse sage and alchemist, Tyr Magnusson.... A charming Irish rogue named Paddy.... A more unlikely quartet of companions, one could hardly imagine.... Nonetheless, it was these diverse adventurers who answered the clarion call of a fallen bell that night.
Dashing out of the inn and through the cobbled streets that lead to Notre Dame cathedral, these four strangers came into the shadow of the great cathedral's facade, and as they rushed across the square in front of the three great portals, they became the latest targets of the gargoyles perched along the roof over the facade!
Though they had long been the benign protectors of the clergy and parishioners of Notre Dame, these gargoyles were lately the victims of a dark curse laid upon them by a necromancer, a traitor who had once been one of the priests of the cathedral, but now laired in a secret chamber within the subterranean catacombs that riddled the earth beneath the streets of Paris.
Now the gargoyles dislodged slate shingles, loose mortars, or crumbling pieces of architecture, and hurled them forcefully at the four approaching interlopers!
"Ouch!", shouted Alphonse as a slate shingle clipped his left shoulder. He ran up to the central portal, the Portal of the Last Judgement, and pulled it open, ducking inside.
Hisao the ninja dodged a chunk of mortar and sprinted into the shadow of the left-most portal of Notre Dame, the Portal of the Virgin.... He tried the door, and found it unlocked, so he threw it wide and darted inside the nave to seek cover from the gargoyles' assault.
Tyr ducked a spinning slate shingle and followed Hisao through the Portal of the Virgin.
Paddy grunted in pain as a chunk of mortar bounced off his chest.... He dashed inside the open Portal of the Last Judgement, safe from further bombardment by the accursed gargoyles....
From the safety of the nave, just inside the Portal of the Virgin, Tyr Magnusson shouted out to the gargoyles: "Gargoyles of Notre Dame, long have you protected the good folk of Paris.... Why do you now attack us!?"
A voice like stone grating against stone replied from aloft: "We are sorry, men of Paris! We are compelled by the curse of the treacherous necromancer to attack any who approach Notre Dame! Please, we beg your pardon for our rude assault!"
"That be dire news, forsooth," mumbled Tyr.
A fugitive ninja from Nippon named Hisao....His backstory has to be bigger than your entire adventure.
Lol.... Close.... He has quite the backstory! It will eventually catch up to the party in the form of two bands of rival ninja assassins trying to kill him....
From within the shadowed space under the north belfry came a weak cry for help in French! Someone was trapped or injured! So the Lusty Fools dashed over to where a great bronze bell lay on the cathedral floor, crushing an aged priest half pinned beneath the great bell's weight....
Alphonse and Paddy immediately rushed to the bell and struggled to lift its great weight off the injured priest, but they could barely budge it, even when Hisao moved to aid them!
Tyr Magnusson spied a long shaft of iron that had recently been removed from the banister of the stairs that ascended the belfry. Sprinting over to retrieve this long iron pole, he jammed it under the lip of the bell and used it as a lever to lift the bell off of the old priest. Seeing the priest freed by Tyr's clever use of the lever, Alphonse dragged the elderly man out from under the bell. Tyr, Paddy and Hisao then let the bell fall with a clangor that echoed throughout the nave of the cathedral.
"Praise be to God!" declared the old priest, "you have saved my life! Bless you, monsieurs!"
"Will you survive, padre?", asked Alphonse.
"How did this bell fall?" inquired Paddy.
"Why stone monsters on roof of monster building attack us?" queried Hisao.
"I thought the gargoyles of Notre Dame protected the people of Paris, holy man! Why were we assailed on our way in?" demanded Tyr.
"I am Father Renaud. I think I will live...." Intoning a quick prayer in Latin, and laying his hands upon his injured legs, the old priest restored strength and vigor to his limbs with a healing spell. "The gargoyles suffer from a curse laid upon them by the traitorous Pierre Le Necromancier, formerly one of our order, who dabbled in black magic and made unholy bargains with the Devil! Now he lairs somewhere in the crypts below Notre Dame.... He has attracted an infestation of gremlins to the cathedral.... They lurk in the belfry and vex us priests terribly with dangerous pranks and evil mischief!"
"So that is how the bell fell on you, padre? The gremlins cut it free?" Alphonse ventured.
"Oui, monsieur!" replied Father Renaud, "The little wretches must have been working on the rope with a blade, and waited until I was underneath to cut it free! .... Go up into the belfry, and exterminate these little pests, and you will have our thanks, and the thanks of Our Lady!"
"It shall be done, padre!" promised Alphonse, who unslung a scythe from his back. "I shall reap them like the grass!"
"Aye, father!" chimed Paddy, "We'll see that the little imps get what's comin' to 'em!"
"If we kill monsters in monster building, holy man will reward us with gold?" wondered Hisao aloud.
"Let's take care of these gremlins first, Chinaman! Then we can discuss rewards...." replied Tyr to the young ninja....
It's like I'm really there!
Wait.
It's like I'm really there!
Wait.
Haha!
Peering up into the darkness above them, the four unlikely heroes thought they caught a glimpse of several sets of beady eyes reflecting the light of torches guttering in sconces within the cathedral, higher up on the narrow stone stairs that climbed the inner walls of the belfry....
"I think I see their beady little eyes!" declared Paddy. "Let's send the lot o' them down to Hell, me boyos!" The Irish rogue began to move toward the stairs.
"Wait, monsieur!" cried Father Renaud. "These gremlins are fey creatures, and normal steel will not cut their evil hides! You will need weapons of cold-wrought iron! We have some such arms stored in the vestry. I will send my acolyte to fetch them!" Father Renaud gestured to an ashen-faced young man in clerical robe who had been standing dumbfounded in the nave since the great bell fell on Father Renaud. Immediately, the young acolyte's stunned stupor was broken, and he dashed off toward the vestry flanking the nave of the cathedral to fetch the chest of cold iron weapons the church kept in store in case of attacks by fey or demons.
Watching the darkness above as they waited for the acolyte to return with cold iron weapons, the four young heroes heard skittering and squeaking that sounded like big rats moving about on the stairwell above!
"I hear them!" whispered Hisao, "Little rat monsters on stairs, making mischief!"
A moment later, the young acolyte returned with a heavy chest, which he dropped with a bang on the floor under the belfry, nervously glancing up in anticipation of another bell falling down to crush him. Tyr threw the lid of the chest open, revealing several weapons of cold iron, including a case of cold iron tipped crossbow bolts, which he took for himself. A cold iron greatsword he handed to Alphonse, a cold iron heavy mace to Hisao, and a cold iron short sword he gave to Paddy.
Loading a cold iron bolt into his light crossbow, Tyr ordered the others up the stairs to deal with the gremlin menace. "Quickly, up the stairs! Before they can work further mischief!"
Hisao led the charge up the narrow stone stairs that ascended to the north belfry, and encountered a quartet of two-foot-tall, scaly gremlins with heads like bats lurking on a landing where the stairs took a turn.... He pounded the foremost gremlin on the head with the cold iron heavy mace, crushing it's skull! It toppled off the landing, falling with a splat to the floor some twenty feet below.... The other three squealed in fear and scrambled further up the stairs to join a group of their fellows, who were ready to push a barrel with spikes driven through the staves from within to form a deadly trap!
"Look out!" cried Hisao, as he nimbly flipped forward into an aerial cartwheel over the bouncing, spiky barrel.... Behind him, Paddy sprung into the air, and the spiked barrel rolled beneath him, crashing into the stone wall and bouncing off the landing to shatter into flinders on the floor below!
Joining Hisao on the landing with seven gremlins, Paddy plunged his cold iron short sword deep into the chest of one of the little monsters! It died with a squeal of pain, and the young Irish rogue whipped it's corpse off his blade to plummet to the floor twenty feet below the landing!
Squeaking like bats or rats, the remaining six gremlins withdrew further up the stairs to the next landing, luring the young heroes on into another trap....
Taking the stairs two at a bound, Alphonse Veritas passed his companions on the first landing and chased the retreating gremlins, cleaving the two in the back of the fleeing pack into halves with a single mighty stroke of his cold iron greatsword! "To Hell with you, little fiends!" he cried....
The remaining four reached the landing, where four more gremlins waited to tip a board over, freeing a wooden crate studded with spikes driven through from within and suspended from an overhead rafter by a rope.... The spiky crate swung down at Alphonse's head, but the young Englishman ducked, and the deadly crate grazed the top of Paddy's scalp, drawing blood! "Blasted little buggers! I'll have your heads on pikes for that...." vowed the angry rogue, and he dashed past Alphonse with his cold iron short sword poised to skewer the nearest gremlin....
Tyr Magnusson took careful aim and pierced a gremlin with a well-placed shot of his crossbow! The fey creature squealed in agony and fell limp on the landing.
"Good shot, sir!" cheered Alphonse, as he rushed up to the landing and cleaved another gremlin in twain with his cold iron greatsword. "A good stroke of the blade, yourself, sir!" replied Tyr.
The gremlins scrambled further up the stairs to the shadows of yet another landing, where they triggered yet another of their previously prepared traps, dumping a box of iron ball bearings to roll and bounce down the stairs and under the feet of the pursuing heroes, making the narrow ascent all the more perilous....
"By Saint Peter, those little bastards are cunning!" admitted Alphonse. "Tread carefully, lads! It's a long fall down from here!"
With skill and caution, the four heroes managed to climb the stairs without slipping and falling on the ball bearings that rattled and rolled underfoot....
"Little monsters full of tricks," muttered Hisao as he chased the chittering gremlins up the belfry stairs. With another swing of his cold iron mace, he bludgeoned another gremlin to death, and it fell to the floor below with a splat.
Paddy soon joined the young ninja, thrusting his cold iron short sword at another of the little imps, but it was too agile, and dodged the blade. "Damn it! Hold still, ye little bugger!" snarled the Irishman. The gremlin made a rude gesture and leapt further up the belfry stairs, no doubt leading them on into further dangers....
A cold iron bolt flew up and ricocheted off the stone wall behind a gremlin. "Blast! They make difficult targets, to be sure," grumbled Tyr, as he loaded another bolt into his light crossbow. "Keep after them! Don't let a single one escape!" shouted the young Norseman.
Up and up the heroes climbed, pursuing the evasive gremlins all the way up to the top of the belfry, some two-hundred feet above the floor of the cathedral. There, they were confronted by a shape of stone, menacing and devilish! One of the gargoyles from the roof had entered the belfry through one of the open windows overlooking the city below, and now awaited the four interlopers, growling with a sound like stone grating on stone.
"You should have stayed below, fleshlings! Now I must rend you and smash you!" roared the stony beast!
"Well, let's not be hasty," offered Tyr, "Remember your purpose, noble guardian! Why do you attack us now?" The gargoyle shed pebbly tears and cried out in anguish! "We are compelled by the necromancy of Pierre! He has cursed us, and made us anathema to the children of God who come to Notre Dame!" Tyr nodded in understanding. "We shall free you from your curse, noble guardian! Fight the compulsion! We shall find this traitor Pierre, and undo the magic he has laid upon you and your kin!"
The gargoyle seemed to struggle for a moment with some inner turmoil, it's stony eyes rolling wildly and shedding pebble-tears.... Finally, it beat it's stony wings and sprung through the open window and out into the night with a strangled cry of rage and frustration!
"Poor beast!" declared Alphonse, "We must find this wicked necromancer and put an end to his evil deeds!" The others nodded in agreement, and after a swift and bloody melee in which they slew the remaining gremlins, they hurried down the belfry stairs to find Father Renaud, and question him regarding this traitorous necromancer, Pierre.
"He was once the keenest mind among us," began Father Renaud, "ever curious about the ways of nature. But he delved into subjects that were deemed improper for a clergyman to investigate.... Spells to animate corpses.... Spells to summon and bind demons to do his bidding.... Lore that man was not meant to know.... He protested that one must study the ways of the enemy in order to properly combat the forces of darkness.... But in staring into the Abyss, he became that which we would protect mankind from.... A monster! A necromancer, who discourses with the restless dead and the very fiends of Hell!" Father Renaud trembled as he spoke of the traitor.
"Once, he was one of us.... Now, I fear he serves a new master.... None other than The Prince of Darkness, the Archfiend, Lucifer!" Father Renaud and the young acolyte both crossed themselves at the mention of this archdevil....
"When did Pierre fall into darkness, padre?" inquired Alphonse.
"It was some two years ago, now.... At the same time that the fire dragon, Conflagratius, flew down from Mercury to plague the Earth with his demands of annual tribute of gold and maidens from every kingdom of Christendom! Ever since that vile wyrm took up a lair in the caldera of Mount Vesuvius, Pierre began his fall into darkness!" The old priest shook his head. "It is said by some that this dragon is the comet Wormwood, foretold in the book of Revelation! Many believe that the end of days is upon us, my young friends...."
"Can you tell us where this Pierre the Necromancer might be hiding out now, holy man?" asked Tyr.
"I believe he has made a lair for himself and his undead minions in the crypts beneath Notre Dame, monsieur," replied Father Renaud. "A veritable labyrinth of tunnels and chambers riddle the earth beneath the streets of our city, many leagues underground.... Many levels deep.... Some believe these catacombs connect with the Underworld, where all manner of strange creatures dwell in the darkness...."
"Underworld?" queried Hisao, "Yomi? Jigoku? Where oni torture spirits of the dead?"
"Hades," offered Paddy. "Hell," said Alphonse. "Niflheim," mused Tyr....
"There are many names for the place of the dead," explained Father Renaud. "What is certain is this: the dead are interred below in leagues of crypts and catacombs, and with the coming of the fire dragon, and Pierre's descent into madness and evil, the dead have grown restless! Ghouls and skeletons crawl out of their graves by night to torment the living! Many have been abducted from their beds at night by the unquiet dead these past two years!"
"Then I say we should go down into these catacombs, find this Necromancer Pierre, and bring an end to his evil!" declared Alphonse. He looked at the other three young adventurers who had helped him cleanse Notre Dame's north belfry of gremlins. "What say you, gentlemen? Will you join me in purging the catacombs of the evils that beset this fair city of Paris?"
"Aye!" replied Tyr Magnusson. "Aye!" responded Paddy the Irishman. "Hai!" said Hisao of the Iga clan.
The four adventurers were determined to take up this noble and perilous quest. "May we take some holy water to aid us against the undead, holy man?" asked Tyr. "Yes, of course!" replied Father Renaud. "Take as much as you think you might need.... We have vials that you can fill in the vestry."
So the young heroes filled several vials with holy water from the baptismal font in the nave, securing them in pouches to be hurled at the undead they might encounter in the catacombs, and taking torches to light their way, descended into the crypts below the great cathedral via a stairway in the nave.
Into a Stygian darkness they descended, their guttering torches casting restless shadows that made the skulls and bones stacked in niches on the catacomb walls seem to twitch erratically. Alphonse and Paddy walked side by side in the front rank, and Hisao and Tyr trailed behind, forcing back the darkness with their torches.
Rats and other vermin scurried away as the adventurers proceeded through the ancient passageway, adding a dry rattling and scuttling to the sounds of armor clanking and boots crunching on bones and other detritus....
Hisao and Paddy were the first to detect another sound drifting down the corridor from up ahead: the thin notes of a flute playing the ancient church tune known as Dies Irae (Day of Wrath).... The notes of the ominous tune echoed eerily in the darkness of the catacombs....
"I hear music," whispered Hisao. "Aye, laddie, so do I...." concurred Paddy, "A familiar church tune.... About Judgement Day, if I'm hearin' aright...." Soon, Alphonse and Tyr picked up the faint piping as well....
"Hmmm.... Now who--or what--would be playing a flute down here?" wondered Alphonse aloud.
Pressing forward down the corridor past niches full of the bones and skulls of thousands of long-dead Parisians, the music of the flute grew closer and more audible as they approached the dark chamber from which it came. In the inky blackness ahead, they perceived several sets of glowing eyes like red coals burning in the darkness.... Unholy fires of malice burning in the hollow eye sockets of a band of skeletons animated by vile necromancy! And behind this line of skeletal guards was the grim flautist--a gaunt, nearly skeletal figure with pallid flesh and eyes that burned like hellfire--a ghoul!
"By Saint George's lance!" exclaimed Alphonse, "These must be undead minions of the necromancer we seek! Steady, lads! Let us lay these wretches back to eternal rest!" And he raised his cold iron greatsword, ready to smite the first undead monster to come within striking range!
Hisao muttered a quick prayer in Nipponese to Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, who was his patron deity, something along the lines of "Sun Wukong, let me escape this trouble you've led me into...." and poised his cold iron heavy mace to strike at the undead creatures!
Paddy crossed himself quickly and pointed his cold iron short sword at the nearest skeleton! "Well, come on, then, ye bony wretches! We'll lay ye back in your graves, where ye belong!"
Tyr prepared an alchemical firebomb to lob into the line of skeletons and let it fly.... It smashed against a skeleton in the middle of the line of six, bursting and spraying flaming oil on the one it struck and on the two to either side, singeing their bones!
The skeletons surged forward with a dry rattle of bones and the jangle of rusty mail coats that clung loosely to their bony frames, raising rusty scimitars and battleaxes to strike at the heroes, while the ghoul piper continued to play the somber notes of the Dies Irae....
Alphonse quickly placed his torch in a niche in the corridor wall so he could wield his greatsword in both hands. The others held their torches in their off hands and wielded one-handed weapons in the tense, furious skirmish that followed. After a few ineffectual stabs with his short sword into empty rib cages revealed that bludgeoning the skeletons would be more effective, Paddy began to smack the bony undead with the flat of his blade or pummel them with the pommel. Likewise, Alphonse soon dropped his greatsword and unslung his scythe from his back, using the long wooden haft like a staff against the skeletons to break their bones. Hisao's mace made quick work of the skeletons, caving in skulls and smashing in ribs. Tyr lobbed firebombs to best effect, careful not to splash his allies with flaming oil.
In a matter of seconds, the unholy fires in the skeletons' eye sockets flickered out, and the six undead skeletons were laid to rest for all time. The ghoul piper hissed a mockery of scripture at the young adventurers in Latin, which translated to "Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink of His blood, ye shall not have life within thee!" and scuttled forth with talon-like claws upraised and slavering mouth agape!
"Careful!" warned Tyr, "The claw or bite of a ghoul can temporarily paralyze the living!"
But the ghoul was given no such chance, and was swiftly struck down by blows from Alphonse's scythe, Hisao's mace, and Paddy's short sword!
"Well done, gentlemen!" declared Tyr, when all of the undead lay motionless on the catacomb floor.
Unknown to the mortal heroes in the catacombs beneath Paris, they were being observed by various divinities from the Celestial Planes, among them, Hisao-San's patron, the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, also known as Hanuman....
"I like this Mister Hisao!" declared the Monkey King out loud to himself as he perched atop a stalk of celestial bamboo. "He displays the proper balance of piety and cynicism as he suffers through the adventures I throw in his path.... I believe it is time I should bestow upon him a gift suitable to his profession." Sun Wukong snapped his nimble fingers, and just such a gift was instantly created and placed where Hisao was sure to spot it....
As the companions were about to move on through another corridor exiting the chamber where the battle with the undead was fought, a glittering object in a niche in the east wall caught Hisao's eye....
Moving over to the niche in the east wall, Hisao looted a golden ring etched with arcane sigils, with a small diamond setting that glittered in the torchlight. Slipping it onto a finger of his left hand, he and the others were startled and amazed when he vanished from sight--it was a magic ring of invisibility!
"By Jove!" exclaimed Alphonse, "What a lucky find! A magic ring of invisibility!"
"My God!" gasped Paddy, "Who would leave such a treasure down here in this place!?"
"Perhaps it is providence?" suggested Tyr.
"Thank you, great Sun Wukong!" chirped Hisao as he removed the ring, becoming visible once more.
"If it be providence," ventured Paddy, "then where's my gift from God?"
The others couldn't help but wonder the same, and began to look around in the catacombs, thrusting back the shadows with their torches.
"Not here, evidently," muttered Alphonse. "Let us press on, friends. By the way," he said, "I am Alphonse Veritas of England. We've not really had a chance to properly introduce ourselves, have we?" Alphonse was a tall and handsome Englishman, with wavy golden locks of hair that fell past his shoulders, and piercing blue eyes, with an aquiline nose that bespoke some noble--perhaps even angelic--bloodline. He wore a hauberk of chain mail that protected his torso, upper arms and thighs, a sky-blue cloak hung from his broad shoulders, and supple leather boots covered his feet and lower legs up to his knees. His weapon of choice was a scythe, but he also carried the cold iron greatsword gifted to him by Father Renaud to fight the gremlins in Notre Dame's north belfry.
Tyr nodded in agreement. "I am Tyr, son of Magnus, of Gotland. Pleased to make your acquaintances!" Tyr Magnusson was almost as tall as Alphonse, and nearly as handsome in a Nordic way, with close-cropped copper hair and ice-blue eyes. He wore a lighter shirt of mail than the hauberk Alphonse wore, and strapped a bandolier of prefabricated alchemical extracts and firebombs crosswise over his armor, a green cloak with a hood hung from his shoulders, and his boots were shorter and harder than Alphonse's. A light crossbow and a case of cold iron bolts was strapped to his back, and he wore a rapier in a scabbard at his hip, but his preferred weapons were clearly his alchemical firebombs.
"Paddy the Loon," offered the rakishly handsome Irishman with a grin. He wore a leather cuirass over his torso, and leather greaves and bracers on his long limbs, a black, cowled cloak that helped him blend in with the shadows when he preferred to go unnoticed, and high, supple leather boots like Alphonse's. A pair of short swords, one of which was forged of cold iron and gifted to him by Father Renaud prior to the skirmish with the gremlins, hung in scabbards at his hips, and a bandolier of throwing knives crossed his chest. Paddy had long, raven-black locks and emerald-green eyes that sparkled with mischief. "My full name is Patrick Sullivan, but my friends call me Paddy the Loon!"
"Er.... Hamid.... Of Persia," lied Hisao, who was on the run from both the Koga and Iga ninja clans of Nippon. He was shorter than all the others, and wiry, with olive skin and night-black hair pulled back in a topknot. His almond-shaped eyes were dark and mysterious. He was attractive in a rugged way. His garments were dark gray and loose-fitting to allow maximum range of motion, and he often wore a black scarf to cover his mouth and nose and a black cap on his head. His wakizashi, a short samurai sword, was slung low on his back, and he carried the cold iron heavy mace gifted to him by Father Renaud. He wore the split-toed tabi boots that were the customary footwear of ninja.
Properly introduced to one another, the Lusty Fools (as they would come to be known for their adventures with the serving wenches at L'auberge du la Grotte) proceeded through the labyrinthine catacombs in their hunt for Pierre the Necromancer. Disturbing a colony of bats that dropped from their perches on the vaulted ceiling overhead to swarm around the company of torch-bearing adventurers, squeaking and chittering madly, the heroes hurried on through nighted galleries of macabre decor, shrines devoted to death and the dead, crafted from the bones and skulls of thousands of dead Parisians....
At length, they entered a spacious vault in which an altar constructed of bones and skulls emerged from the gloom. A crucifix of silver inlaid with red garnets reflected the torchlight on the wall behind this grisly altar, and there, crouching over a gruesome meal of raw rats skewered on a thin dirk was a man-sized-and-man-shaped figure cloaked in dark garments and cowl! It was clear that this creature had four arms, which worked with uncanny dexterity to skin and gut the rodents it had caught and was sucking the blood out of!
"Yuck!" exclaimed Paddy. "What in the Nine Circles o' Hell is that!"
That was "Nacht", formerly a young man from Bavaria named Hohenheim Dobberkau, who was captured by the necromancer Pierre and transformed through a combination of alchemy, surgery, and vile necromancy into something more and less than human, combining the features of a man with those of a variety of insects and other vermin. Now possessing four arms and hands instead of two, a pair of multifaceted insect-like eyes that glowed with an inner yellow radiance in the darkness of its new home, the catacombs beneath Notre Dame, and a pair of mandibles in lieu of human teeth, Nacht dwelt in darkness, a refugee, having escaped from the lair of the necromancer several weeks before, subsisting on rats and vermin, and taking a perverse thrill and fascination in playing with its food in painful ways before devouring it....
Nacht could only recall faint snippets of memories of its former life as a Bavarian man, but knew that something irreplaceable had been stolen from it forever by the evil necromancer, and longed for vengeance. These intruders into its lair were not rats or insects.... They were beings like Nacht had once been, and something like a feeling of kinship welled up inside the creature Parisians knew and feared as "The Beetle Man of the Catacombs".... Rather than drawing the swords and daggers it wielded with deadly expertise in all four hands and attacking these visitors, Nacht cocked its head with curiosity, and extended a freshly-skinned-and-gutted rat skewered on a dagger as a friendly offer of food!
"Um.... No, but thank you," said Alphonse in French, assuming this strange creature might speak the local tongue. "We've, ah.... We've already had supper, but.... very kind of you to offer...."
"What...." began Paddy, also in French, "I mean.... Who are you?"
Nacht regarded them quizzically and spoke with a hissing, insect-like voice in German: "I am Nacht. What are you surface-beings doing down here? You are not minions of the necromancer, are you?"
Tyr Magnusson, who was fluent in several languages, replied in German, "We are hunting the necromancer, to bring him to justice and bring an end to his evil works. Do you know where his lair might be found?"
Nacht's glowing yellow eyes seemed to blaze brighter at Tyr's declaration of the company's intention to punish the necromancer, and it nodded it's cowled head. "Yes!" hissed The Beetle Man of the Catacombs. "I am Nacht. I will lead you to the necromancer, and help you slay him, for he has wronged me greatly!"
Tyr nodded and smiled at Nacht, and said to his companions, "He is called Nacht, and he wishes to join us in our quest to hunt down the necromancer!" The others nodded in approval, though Nacht's strange appearance and mannerisms did cause some secret misgivings in each of them.
Nacht led The Lusty Fools deeper into the catacombs, his glowing yellow eyes apparently capable of seeing in utter darkness without the need for torchlight. The others followed about twenty feet behind their strange new guide, shining their torchlight at the skull-and-bone-filled niches riddling the catacomb walls lest they miss another treasure placed in their paths by providence.
Coming to where the corridor widened into another dark vault decorated with the remains of the dead, Nacht halted and hissed, blades unsheathed in its four hands and poised to strike at a new danger that soon became apparent to the others: a quintet of pale, gaunt figures--more ghouls--emerged from the gloom, snarling and hissing with insatiable, unholy hunger for mortal flesh! Rising up from heaps in the corners, another five undead skeletons joined the ghouls in advancing to attack Nacht and The Lusty Fools!
Another skirmish in the torchlit darkness ensued.... The shuffle of booted and bare feet on the catacomb floor mixed with the clanging of armor as it deflected the deadly claws and bites of the ghouls, and the clang of cold iron clashing against the rusted steel weapons wielded by the skeletons!
Nacht moved with insect-like speed and precision, striking down one ghoul, then another, then a skeleton, all in a matter of seconds!
Alphonse lopped off a ghoul's head with his scythe, then staved in a skeleton's rib cage with the haft of the scythe, before spinning out of the way of a pouncing ghoul and cleaving its rotting chest cavity open with the scythe's blade, spilling its worm-eaten innards onto the floor!
Paddy impaled a ghoul, felling it with his cold iron short sword, then parried the swing of a skeleton's rusty longsword, then smashed the skeleton's skull in with a sharp blow with his weapon's pommel!
Hisao, slipping on his ring of invisibility, vanished from sight and moved unseen among the undead, striking down a ghoul by caving in the back of its head with his cold iron heavy mace, which negated the magic of his ring, causing him to become visible again as he struck down the ghoul! The ninja cursed in Nipponese, surprised by this unforeseen consequence of attacking while invisible, but now he knew exactly how his divine gift from The Monkey King worked--it would render him invisible until he attacked, then he must slip the ring off and on again to become invisible again.
Tyr hurled a vial of holy water at the nearest ghoul, scalding its undead flesh as though it were boiling oil! The ghoul shrieked in agony and staggered back a few paces. The Norseman followed this attack up by launching a second vial of holy water that burst on the same ghoul and laid it low!
A pair of skeletons flanked Nacht, striking at The Beetle Man simultaneously with rusty blades--Nacht parried one blow with crossed short swords of ancient Roman gladius fashion, but the other blow, with a rusty battleaxe, bit deeply into one of The Beetle Man's shoulders, eliciting an angry hiss....
Nacht answered the blow with a flurry of strikes that hacked the skeleton apart! It fell to the floor with a dry clatter of sheared bones. Spinning, Nacht snapped its booted foot out in a side-kick that hurled the other skeleton into the deadly arc of Alphonse's swing with the haft of his scythe, knocking its skull off its shoulders! It fell with a clatter in a heap of motionless bones....
A matter of seconds later, all five ghouls and all five skeletons were defeated and lay sprawled out, forever laid to rest on the catacomb floor by the formidable battle-skills of The Lusty Fools. Nacht had proven himself a valuable ally, and had earned an unspoken place in the band of companions.... The Lusty Fools now numbered five!
"Nacht," began Alphonse, "you were struck.... Are you alright?" Nacht nodded, and showed Alphonse the wound on its back--it was quickly knitting itself up, becoming a scar in a matter of seconds! "By the Archangel Gabriel! Your wounds heal swiftly...." Nacht nodded again, shrugged, and gestured for the others to follow as it crept off down another corridor that exited the vault on the opposite side from that which the heroes had entered by.
Nacht led the rest of The Lusty Fools down a long, narrow stairway, that switched back through several flights as it descended deeper into the earth beneath Paris, drawing ever nearer to the subterranean border between the catacombs dug by the hands of men and the natural caverns and ancient passageways dug by creatures of the deepest and darkest realms of the Underworld....
At the bottom of the long stairway was another maze of tunnels and chambers, excavated in the ancient days of the Roman Empire. Nacht became visibly agitated as it led the intrepid adventurers closer to the necromancer's lair, occasionally giving voice to a sound like the buzzing of angry hornets, or a rapid series of mandibular clicks. "We draw nearer the necromancer's lair," hissed The Beetle Man in a buzzing, monotone German, translated to English for the others by Tyr....
"How many languages must I learn," grumbled Hisao to himself in Nipponese. He was quite surprised, and so were the others, when Nacht turned to look at him and replied in fluent Nipponese: "I can speak the words you speak, stealthy-being.... Though I cannot remember how I came to know them.... The necromancer stole my memories when he stole my humanity." The yellow eyes blazed like twin stars in the shadows of Nacht's cowl.
"This creature speaks your language, Hamid!?" queried Paddy, incredulous in spite of hearing it with his own ears. "Where would it learn to speak Persian?" he wondered aloud. The fugitive ninja shrugged nervously, wondering how long he would be able to masquerade as Hamid of Persia.... He also wondered when his past might catch up with him....
Soaring high above the world of mortals, their outstretched wings riding the thermals, two archangels--Gabriel and Michael--pierced distance and even earth and stone with immortal eyes and observed the progress of The Lusty Fools through the leagues of catacombs beneath the sprawling city known to mortals as Paris....
Speaking to one another with voices of unearthly beauty in the timeless language of Paradise, they discussed the possibility that these young novice heroes might rise in power and fulfill a prophecy known only to immortal beings and a very few mortals steeped in the most obscure esoteric lore; a prophecy of possibilities, not of garauntees....
"Dost thou believe, Gabriel?" inquired Michael as the archangels soared together, side-by-side. "Could these mortals forestall Armaggedon? Slay Wormwood? Counter the Antichrist?" Gabriel considered the possibility a moment before replying, "The Great I Am alone knoweth forsooth, Michael.... But if these be the heroes foretold by the prophecy, then should we not lend our aid to their cause?" "How so?" Michael asked. "The Monkey King hath granted a magic ring of invisibility to his favored, Hisao of Clan Iga," began Gabriel, "Why should we not also favor a chosen champion from among these Lusty Fools?" he continued, "Doth Alphonse Veritas not possess the blood of our own kind?" "Yea, verily," answered Michael, "One of the nephilim begat his noble line. So we shall favor young Alphonse with a magic weapon worthy of a Son of Angels! A scythe, with a blade of star-metal forged in the fires of the Sun, and a haft crafted from the petrified femur of a titan, wrapped in wire of gold and inlaid with gems mined from the highest peaks of Paradise!" Gabriel grinned in approval, and the two archangels flew off, back to Paradise, to forge for Alphonse Veritas the holy vorpal scythe that would be known as "Foereaper"....
Other immortal beings watched from on high as The Lusty Fools progressed.... Hermes, Messenger of the Olympian Pantheon, known to the Romans as Mercury, observed their adventures through the waters of a scrying pool on Mount Olympus.... "I shall choose as my pawn in this game of mortals the dapper Irishman, Paddy.... I like the looks of this roguish fellow, and I like his swagger.... I shall reward him with a magic tunic that will help him perceive all things as they truly are.... Even the invisibility magic of his companion Hisao's ring will not fool the eyes of this clever mortal, Paddy!" chuckled the fleet-footed Olympian to himself in a tongue that was the precursor to Ancient Greek. "I shall adorn a magic tunic woven by Arachne herself with the eyes of Argus, most vigilant of titans.... No thing will escape Mister Paddy's notice so long as he wears this tunic of eyes!" The god of speed and arbitration darted off to make his will manifest....
At the same moment, watching with his one good eye from the height of his throne in Valhalla on the world of Asgard, Odin Allfather beheld the deeds of Tyr Magnusson down on Midgard with admiration and interest. "Should Tyr Magnusson not likewise be blessed by his patron?" rumbled Odin in prehistoric Norse, "Should Odin the Allfather not make like gift to his chosen mortal being?" And so was the Asgardian Stone created for the benefit of Tyr Magnusson, a multifaceted lump of garnet that bestowed upon its possessor protective wards and amplified his alchemical fires with the divine might of the Aesir!
In the briny depths of the sunken city of R'lyeh, another immortal being laid in a mystic torpor, dreaming in a state of perpetual undeath in a colossal sarcophagus crafted in eons unknown to mankind.... Dread Cthulhu lay dreaming his dreams of death and apocalypse, awaiting the proper alignment of the stars to rise again upon the world of men.... But in the meantime, even dead Cthulhu would choose a pawn to play in this game of mortals.... Nacht, The Beetle Man, would don the scales of R'lyeh, a shirt of fish-like scales to armor a being with more than the two arms of men, a suit of mail that would grant its wearer the power of flight, as it turned aside all but the most potent weapons!
Each of The Lusty Fools now had a divine patron looking out for them, and casting "gifts" in their paths....
Down in the darkness of the catacombs below Paris, The Lusty Fools encroached upon a trio of Satanic cultists in black robes and skull-face masks, lurking in the shadows before an unholy shrine.... An altar of basalt stood before an inverted silver cross inlaid with moonstones and rubies.... The thin wail of an infant came from a bundle of swaddling clothes on the altar.... Etched in silver on the floor was a pentagram adorned with unholy symbols at the five points of the encircled star....
"They mean to sacrifice a wee bairn!" growled Paddy, "I mean to see their blood spilt instead!" The Irish rogue dashed forward, aiming a thrust of his short sword at the nearest devil-worshipper.
The struggle was brief and rattled the nerves of Paddy, Alphonse, Tyr, and Hisao.... The life of a newborn babe had hung in the balance, until Hisao deftly snatched the wailing infant off the basalt altar! "This baby needs a change of diapers," muttered the ninja in Nipponese.... Nacht sniffed in the babe's direction and nodded in concurrence.
Nacht slashed and pierced, dipping its blades in the blood of the Satanists.... Paddy parried and thrusted his way to victory over one of the three, which collapsed in the vault, howling like a damned soul in Hell.... Alphonse plied his scythe like a workman mowing high grasses down.... Hisao punctured and stabbed with his invisible wakizashi, spilling the blood of one of the three cultists all over the unholy shrine.... And Tyr seared their flesh with firebombs lobbed with expert precision! In short order, two of the Satanists lay dead on the catacomb floor, and a third fell to his knees, dropping the sickle he had briefly wielded against The Lusty Fools in surrender! "Mercy!" he squealed in French.
"Aye," snarled Paddy, "mercy, indeed! Shall we show ye the mercy you would have shown to this poor wee babe!?" The Irishman struggled mightily to contain his urge to drive the blade of his short sword through the captive Satanist's throat.
"Please, I beg of thee, monsieurs!" sobbed the kneeling Frenchman, trembling and pale behind his skull-face mask and cowl. "I repent! I repent of my wicked deeds!" he railed in French. "I know not what came over me, monsieurs! First the fire dragon, then the undead...." choked their frightened captive.
"We shall get to the truth of it soon enough, wretched cur!" admonished Alphonse. "We will bring you up to the priests of Notre Dame, and there, before the cross of Our Savior, you will tell us everything. Mayhap Our Lord will find it in His sacred heart to forgive your vile sins."
When the original four Lusty Fools were ready to depart to the surface with their captive and the rescued infant, Nacht shook its head, and hissed in German, "I shall await your return here, surface-beings. I have sworn a sacred vow.... I shall not look again upon the stars of night or the light of day until I have relieved the necromancer of his evil head!" The others regarded Nacht solemnly for a moment, then nodded in agreement. "We shall help you uphold your sacred vow, Nacht of the Catacombs!" promised Paddy the Loon. "We'll see ye tomorrow, lad.... Be well...." And so the four Lusty Fools who had fought against the gremlins in the belfry of Notre Dame returned to the starlit world of men, with a captive Satanist and a rescued infant in tow....
June 2nd, 1430 AD
It was almost an hour past midnight when The Lusty Fools emerged with their captive and the wailing infant from the crypts beneath Notre Dame, ascending the stairs to the nave. Father Renaud had been keeping a vigil by candlelight near the stairs, and praying for their victory and safe return, but had succumbed to sleep and was now snoring softly where he lay on his side on a worn prayer mat. The echoing cries of the infant and the clank of The Lusty Fools' arms and armor awoke the old priest, and he rose unsteadily to his feet and rubbed his eyes before uttering a prayer of thanks to The Lord God, and another to The Virgin Mary. "You have returned no fewer in number, praise Our Lord and Our Lady...." wheezed Father Renaud, "In fact, you return with two others, and one of them a mere babe!"
"Baby needs cleaning," declared Hisao, wrinkling his nose, and handing the crying infant to Father Renaud, who rocked the baby boy in his arms and smiled at him, babbling softly words of gibberish to comfort and hush him. "What was this little babe doing down in the catacombs?" wondered Father Renaud. "This scum," snarled Paddy, and shoved the captive closer to the old priest, "and two o' his mates, whom we sent on ahead o' him to the Pits o' Hell, were about to sacrifice the wee bairn to the Devil!" Paddy regained his composure somewhat, and continued, more calmly, "We aim to interrogate him, and find out where the wee bairn came from, Father, and if possible, return him to his ma and da. We'll also learn where their master resides--he's sure to be one and the same as your traitorous necromancer, Pierre."
Father Renaud regarded the captive, who was looking down quietly at his feet and visibly trembling with fear or remorse, or both, and uttered to the man in French, "May God have mercy on your soul, monsieur." Then, looking down again at the infant in his arms, he smiled, and softly spoke to him: "You have been spared a terrible fate, little one.... I shall give you a name, in case you don't already have one.... You shall be known to us as Clementine, which means merciful, because God has shown you His mercy! And at dawn, Little Clementine, you shall be baptized by that name, in the Name of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit!"
The Lusty Fools interrogated their captive into the early hours of morning, and Alphonse and Tyr turned blind eyes to the occasional "encouragement" Paddy and Hisao employed to loosen the cultist's tongue. They learned that the infant, whom Father Renaud had christened Clementine, had been purchased for ten silver coins at a local brothel from his mother, a drunken prostitute who wanted nothing to do with another mouth to feed. "We shall raise him as one of our own," promised Father Renaud, which lightened Paddy's heavy heart. "Good, Father," said the Irish rogue, "I'm glad to know he won't be going to an orphanage.... I grew up in such a place back in Ireland.... I haven't many fond memories o' me time there, and I ran away as soon as I was brave enough to...."
They also learned that they had been very close to stumbling upon the secret underground stronghold of Pierre the Necromancer and his minions, which included a half-orc apprentice named Hershenk, more undead guardians, including the animated skeleton of a young acid dragon that lurked in a cistern that formed a moat around the subterranean island on which the necromancer's stronghold stood, and a powerful form of undead known as a graveknight, formerly a Rhenish knight named Herr Grimulf. According to the cultist, Herr Grimulf had been quietly resting in his family crypt beneath the crumbling ruins of his castle on the Rhine for the past hundred years, until Pierre the Necromancer traveled there and bound the graveknight to his will with evil necromancy. Now Herr Grimulf sat in a throne within the attic of the necromancer's townhouse, which sat above the underground stronghold, awaiting the wicked commands of his new master. Pierre, they learned, would likely be encountered either in the subterranean stronghold, engaged in forbidden research, or else in his townhouse above.
When the cultist had revealed all he knew to The Lusty Fools' satisfaction, they turned him over to the city guards. "Let his fate and punishment be decided and rendered by the courts of Paris," declared Alphonse, "Were we back in England, I would behead this wretch myself as a Knight of the Realm, but here in France, I hold no such authority." Then, with the dawning of a new day only a few hours away, the battle-weary heroes sought warm beds to catch a few hours of sleep in at the inn they had met at, L'auberge du la Grotte ("The Inn of the Cave").
At the inn, the companions had to knock at the front door, which had been barred a few hours before after the last patrons in the common room had departed for their beds. A pretty young wench named Bettina answered the door, pouting and rubbing sleep from her lovely brown eyes. "Damn you for waking me at this hour," she muttered in French, but when she saw that the handsome Paddy, who had recently become her latest lover, was among the group standing on the front porch of the inn, she softened somewhat and ushered The Lusty Fools inside, giving Paddy a slap on the rump.
At around nine-o'-clock that morning, Bettina awoke Paddy with several kisses. "Bonjour, my handsome rogue," she whispered into his ear. "Bonjour, my sweet flower," answered Paddy sleepily. "Dawn already?" he groaned. "The Sun has been up for two hours now, my dear," answered Bettina. "I've let you sleep in my bed long enough!" she continued, "I have chores to attend, and breakfast to serve to hungry patrons." "Very well," sighed Paddy, as he rose and stretched. Dressing quickly and strapping on his sword belt, he ventured into the common room, where he found Hisao, Alphonse, and Tyr already midway through breaking their fast on boiled duck eggs, toasted bread with fresh-churned butter, and rashers of bacon, washed down with fresh milk taken that morning from a cow in the innyard.
"Ah! Good morning, Paddy," called out Alphonse. "I trust you got some sleep in Bettina's bed?" grinned the handsome English knight. "Oh, a wee bit," admitted Paddy. "Then we shall finish breakfast and make haste back to the catacombs," declared Alphonse. "I wonder what Bug-Man eats for breakfast?" mused Hisao in accented French. "I'd rather not think on it while we are trying to enjoy ours," replied Tyr in French to the young ninja. When they had finished their breakfast, The Lusty Fools wasted no time in returning to Notre Dame cathedral, where they found Father Renaud saying morning mass for a large congregation of Parisians. They respectfully stood at the back of the nave until the old priest had finished mass and most of the parishioners had departed to go about their daily business, then greeted Father Renaud, who escorted them once again to the stairway that descended into the dark subterranean crypts below.
Before they descended the stairs into the Stygian gloom of the catacombs once more, Alphonse confided to Father Renaud, "We met a strange creature down in the catacombs last night.... Once a Bavarian man, I believe.... He fell victim to the obscene experiments of the Necromancer Pierre, who transformed him into some kind of four-armed monster through surgery and arcane rituals I can only imagine...." "Ah, oui, monsieur," answered Father Renaud, "The Beetle Man of the Catacombs, the townsfolk call him...." The old priest narrowed his eyes. "He survives on rats and other vermin.... As if he himself were some kind of varmint.... Be careful around that one.... He is unpredictable and deadly with blades.... Like a butcher, they say...." "Aye, Father," agreed Alphonse, "He is a lost soul among the many lost souls of the catacombs.... We hope to bring him into the light of Christ one day."
They found Nacht, The Beetle Man, munching on the remains of one of the two Satanic cultists they'd slain in the unholy chapel several hours earlier, like some ghoul of the necropolis under Notre Dame.... "Sustenance...." it whispered in German, translated by Tyr to the others, "sweet, sweet sustenance...." Paddy and Alphonse turned green as they beheld Nacht's grisly feast. "Well," offered Paddy, "'tis better'n letting 'em have a church burial in the catacombs, I suppose...."
When Nacht had finished its gruesome repast, The Lusty Fools once again took up their quest to rid the world of the evil Pierre the Necromancer.
At a spiral staircase that connected an upper chamber with one down below, The Lusty Fools confronted the Necromancer's apprentice, the half-orc Hershenk, a green-skinned, warty brute with patchy black hair and a snout-like nose, clad in black robe and cowl. He had been transcribing an ancient manuscript, none other than the infamous Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Al'Azred, by candlelight in the subterranean scriptorium, when the sound of booted feet and the jangle of arms and armor alerted him to the presence of interlopers. In spite of casting abjurations to protect himself from blades and arrows, and slinging evocations at these torchbearers, young Hershenk was no match for the combined efforts of The Lusty Fools. With skill and panache, they rendered the half-orc apprentice unconscious in a matter of seconds, and bound him with a rope they had brought for the purpose.
Leaving the apprentice bound in his scriptorium, they began a descent down the spiral stairs. At the bottom, they were confronted by Le Goop, a barely-sentient, amorphous blob of gray, oozing protoplasm that had developed in the dank, lightless environment of the catacombs, and was fed waste and offal by the Necromancer and his evil minions! Le Goop oozed forth to claim this livelier meal, which it would have to eat out of shiny metal shells, apparently....
"Egads!" exclaimed Alphonse, "What in the Hells is that!" The English knight pointed the blade of his cold iron greatsword at Le Goop as it quivered and rolled closer across the wet flagstone floor of the catacombs toward them.
Why, I am Le Goop! thought the gray ooze to itself indignantly. Have zey not heard of zee great Le Goop!? it proudly thought. No matter! Zey will soon fill Le Goop's belly!
"My intuition tells me that we must burn this thing," declared Tyr, and he lobbed a firebomb at the wet, shiny mass of gray matter, causing it to recoil and sizzle in the heat. "Aye," agreed Paddy, "I doubt our weapons can cut such a....blob...." "It may even corrode our blades," warned Alphonse. "Maybe Bug-Man can just eat blob-monster?" suggested Hisao to Nacht, and The Beetle Man shook its head in answer. "No nourishment there," croaked Nacht in Nipponese as it pointed at the gray ooze with its blades, "only hunger!" Hisao nodded in understanding and tried to pound the ooze into submission with his cold iron heavy mace, causing its form to splatter momentarily before recoalescing into a rough ball of goop again.
In the end, Tyr had been correct: The Lusty Fools had to burn Le Goop to death with alchemical fire. Out of the charred, black pudding of its remains, Hisao fished several shiny gemstones and gold Francs it hadn't been able to digest. "Is this what we came for?" wondered the ninja aloud in broken English. "No, Monsieur Hamid," answered Tyr, "We are hunting an evil man who discourses with the Devil and with spirits of the dead, to bring him to justice," continued the young Norseman, sensing that this "Chinaman" who claimed to be from Persia hadn't quite understood what their company was up to because of language barriers. "But whatever treasures we may find down here are ours to keep!" Tyr assured the young ninja. Hisao grinned in understanding and shoved the loot in his pocket.
"Which way?" asked Paddy, for at the bottom of the spiral stair, a corridor ran both east and west. They looked to Nacht for guidance, but The Beetle Man seemed uncertain, and from under his cowl came sounds like the rapid beating of insect wings or the buzzing of hornets. "Well, then, we'll flip a coin," suggested the Irish rogue, and he produced a copper piece from a pocket and tossed it into the air, catching it in his gloved palm, and covering it with his other hand, declaring, "Heads is east, tails is west," before glancing at the coin. "Heads it is.... We go east...."
Traveling east down the dark corridor, The Lusty Fools saw their torchlight reflected off a strange, brass-plated door at the end of the passageway, graven with arcane symbols and bearing a strange indentation at its center, as if a walnut-sized goat's head had been pressed into the brass when it was soft. "Very peculiar," commented Alphonse. "Can you make out these markings, Tyr?" inquired the English knight, gesturing to the strange symbols engraved on the brass door. "Aye," replied the Norseman, "These be draconic runes, and I can read them. It's a riddle pertaining to the key that unlocks this door. It reads thus: Seek the key in waters deep, where the dragon's bones swim and sleep."
"I don't like the sound o' that," muttered Paddy; he continued, "Seems we'll be going for a swim soon, me boyos!" Alphonse frowned. "I'm not very buoyant in this armor," admitted the knight. "That's alright, Alphonse," chirped Paddy, "ye can hold the rope I mean to tie about me waist before I go for a dip!" Turning back west, the heroes passed the spiral stair where they'd fought Le Goop, and continued on down a damp corridor that began to show watermarks on the walls at various levels. The sound of falling water spilling into an underground pool echoed from up ahead.
"The cultist said something about an undead dragon skeleton guarding a moat around the necromancer's lair," remembered Alphonse. "I suppose we'd better prepare for that battle, lads," he concluded. "Aye," agreed Paddy, "an acid dragon's skeleton, he said it was," offered Paddy. "And the riddle on the door spoke of dragon bones swimming in the deep water," said Tyr. "I believe we are coming to the place we seek, gentleman," said the Norseman in a low voice. "Let us be as stealthy as we can," he added in a whisper. "Which is not very stealthy," muttered Hisao in Nipponese, wincing at each clank and thump from Alphonse and Tyr.
The corridor opened out into a vast underground cistern, half filled with murky, churning water, fed by a waterfall that spilt from a ten-foot-diameter pipe jutting out of the concave wall of the great circular vault, some thirty feet away and twenty feet above where The Lusty Fools stood on a sort of pier that extended about ten feet into the chamber from the corridor. At the center of this great cistern was a circular, man-made island, constructed of mortar, about forty feet in diameter, and on the same level as the pier on which the young heroes now stood. It rose just some five feet above the surface of the dark, churning water, which formed a moat around the island. The island was dominated by a stone dome, about thirty feet in diameter, with an apex some fifteen feet above the level of the island. A door plated in verdigris-tinted copper and engraved with more arcane symbols was the only apparent means of accessing the interior of the dome. A drawbridge was raised on the side of the stone island facing the pier on which the corridor opened, and it was then that Hisao spotted a lever in the wall to one side of the pier, which doubtless dropped or raised the drawbridge from the company's side of the moat. There could be little doubt that this was the subterranean stronghold of Pierre the Necromancer!
The Lusty Fools nervously eyed the surface of the moat for a moment. "See anything moving down there?" asked Paddy in a whisper, barely heard above the cacophonous roar of the waterfall spilling from the pipe. "Nay," replied Alphonse, "not yet...." The Irishman sighed and pulled a coil of rope from his backpack, uncoiling it to tie one end securely around his waist. "Now, hold on tight to the other end," he demanded of his companions, "and two swift jerks means reel me in, boyos! I do not want to be a dragon skeleton's next meal, understand?" "Aye, Paddy," promised Alphonse, and the others nodded in agreement.
Paddy was slowly lowered into the cold, murky waters of the moat by the others, dangling from the rope secured around his waist, a short sword in each hand. Once he was submerged to his neck, his companions played out the coil of rope to grant the rogue freedom to swim and explore the nearer depths of the moat. A normal man would have been blindly groping in the inky darkness of those subterrene waters, but Paddy Sullivan was no normal man; his great, great, great grand sire had been the incubus Narsephilous, and from this demonic ancestor the young Irishman had inherited more than extraordinary good looks and an easy charm with women.... He had also inherited eyes which, like those of the verminous Nacht, could see perfectly well in pitch black darkness, out to about sixty feet. His previous use of a torch had been completely for the benefit of his companions. In truth, Alphonse could also see perfectly well to about the same distance in utter darkness, thanks to his angelic ancestry, but like Paddy, he carried a torch for his companions' sakes. Tyr and Hisao alone of The Lusty Fools had actual need of torches in the darkness.
As Paddy swam through the murk, he saw pale, blind cave fish swimming in schools by some form of current-sense, and the ancient, algae-clad debris of past generations that had somehow tumbled down through pipes or had been cast by hands into the murky depths of the great cistern. Paddy began to feel like bait on the end of a fishhook right about the time that he felt the current of something large displacing water nearby.... He caught a long, serpentine--no, draconic--shape gliding effortlessly through the water with strokes of its great, skeletal wings! Kicking for all he was worth, the young rogue swam back toward the pier, yanking twice on the rope!
"He's in trouble," muttered Alphonse when he felt the double tug on the rope in his gauntleted hands. Immediately, the others began to haul the rogue in as quickly as they could reel in the rope. Paddy heard and felt the great dragon skeleton closing the distance behind him, and he uttered a prayer to Saint Patrick for salvation. Apparently, the saint had heard the young Irishman's prayer, for the other Lusty Fools hauled him up and onto the pier, just a split second before the jaws of the skeletal acid dragon would have snapped down upon his booted feet!
"The key to that door back there," puffed Paddy, "would be harder to find than a needle in a haystack without an undead dragon snapping at your heels...." The Lusty Fools attacked the half-submerged dragon skeleton from the pier as best they could without falling into the moat, Tyr lobbing his firebombs to burst and sizzle on the scum-clad skull whenever it surfaced, Hisao hurling star-shaped shuriken that mostly bounced off the slippery bones, Paddy cursing each time his hurled daggers sunk into the murky depths or flew between ribs instead of sticking and damaging the undead monster, Alphonse striking at it with his scythe when it reared its scummy, horned skull close enough, and Nacht striking whenever the opportunity arose with its gladius blades and daggers.
The dragon skeleton whipped its skull forward on its serpentine neck bones and snapped its fanged maw at the heroes, occasionally tearing off a piece of a cloak hem, but usually narrowly missing the dodging and backpedaling adventurers. Once, it clamped down on Alphonse's left elbow, eliciting a cry of pain and anger from the young knight, and another bite chomped down on Paddy's booted foot, urging a snarled curse from the rogue. Tyr's alchemical firebombs did the most telling damage, and when Alphonse drove home a mighty blow that cracked its skull with his scythe, Hisao was inspired to finish the undead beast by leaping onto its snaky neck and driving his wakizashi to the hilt into the weakened point on its skull, causing the twin orbs of greenish fire that burned in its hollow eye sockets to gutter and die out. The victorious ninja sprung like a monkey or a wild cat from the sinking skeleton back onto the pier and sheathed his blade with a flourish!
"Excellent work, mates!" crowed Paddy, his jubilant voice echoing strangely in the vast cistern. "Hush!" reprimanded Alphonse, "There are sure to be more foes about!" whispered the knight as he pierced the gloom with his angelic blue eyes, scanning the water, the island, and the corridor behind them for more enemies. It was at that moment that Hisao decided to pull the lever, dropping the drawbridge with a loud rattle of chains and a resounding boom that echoed crazily in the circular vault. "Damn it, Hamid," hissed Alphonse, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at the apologetically shrugging ninja.
Noticing that Alphonse was bleeding from a bite-wound on his left elbow, and Paddy was limping on his bitten foot, Tyr distributed curative potions in small vials to each of his wounded companions. "Drink these, my friends," instructed the Norse alchemist, "they should quickly knit up your wounds." Nacht watched with cowled head cocked to one side with curiosity. These surface-beings were imbibing some kind of liquid to simulate what The Beetle Man could do naturally, it seemed.... Then Nacht seemed to catch a vague shred of memory that it had not always had the power to heal rapidly; this ability had been one of the necromancer's many "gifts" to the creature that had once been a man named Hohenheim Dobberkau of Bavaria. But as many "gifts" as the necromancer had given, he had also taken much from Dobberkau, including even the memory of that name....
When Alphonse's and Paddy's wounds were but faint scars thanks to Tyr's potent curative potions, The Lusty Fools proceeded across the drawbridge to the circular island with its domed stronghold accessed by the strange, symbol-engraved, green copper door. They paused before the green door, and Paddy frowned at the arcane symbols. "What do ye make of these, Tyr?" asked Paddy quietly. "They are magical glyphs of warding, if you ask me," replied Tyr. "That's what I was afraid of," responded Paddy. "Can they be disabled or disarmed in some way?" asked Alphonse. "If Saint Patrick be with me," murmured Paddy as he took a small lump of soft beeswax from the pouch in which he kept this thieves' tools. Carefully filling in several of the graven glyphs with the beeswax, the young rogue hoped to disrupt their deadly magic. There would be only one way to know if he had succeeded or not, and that was to open the green door and hope for the best.
"Ye might want to stand back a wee bit, me boyos," muttered Paddy, and the others shuffled back several paces before the young Irishman closed his eyes, silently praying once more to Saint Patrick, and pulled on the handle to throw the door wide. Unfortunately, it seems his patron saint had been otherwise engaged at the moment, for throwing wide the door discharged a blue bolt of lightning that wracked Paddy's slender but muscular frame for a brief second, lighting up the cistern like the noonday Sun for the same brief instant! "YEEEOOOWWWCH!!!" screamed Paddy, and once his muscles unlocked from the brief electricity-paralysis, he staggered back away from the open doorway, shaking his smoking, gloved hands vigorously. "Ouch!" he said a second later, still feeling the sting of the magical lightning trap. "Good Lord, Paddy," gasped Alphonse in concern, "are you alright, man!?" "I believe me pride took the brunt o' the blast," groaned the young rogue, "but, aye, that bloody well hurt! Got any more o' those potions, Tyr?" hoped Paddy. Tyr gave Paddy the last of his potions, warning, "That's the last of them.... I'll formulate more next time I have access to a laboratory and the proper reagents." Paddy quaffed the curative potion greedily, savoring the numbing sensation of his electrical burns rapidly healing.
Paddy and the other Lusty Fools had very little time to recover from the literal shock of the lightning trap on the green door, for only seconds after the door was thrown open and the warding glyphs discharged, a pair of vaguely human-shaped shadows rose up from where they had been hiding in the flagstone floor of the interior vault within the mortar dome! Once the souls of a pair of thieves who'd met an untimely end trying to rob the necromancer's stronghold, these undead shadows now hated the living and hungered to sap the strength of living beings through their enervating caress.... The two shadows hissed, a sound like the rustling of dry Autumn leaves blown by a chill wind, and glided through the air toward The Lusty Fools--one toward Paddy, the other toward Alphonse!
"Odin's bloody eye!" cursed Tyr, "Shadows! Be very careful! They will be highly resistant to our nonmagical weapons, for they are incorporeal--like ghosts! Our weapons will mostly pass through them about half of the time," continued the Norseman, tersely and rapidly, first in English, then in German for Nacht, "and their touch will sap the strength from your thews!" "Bloody Hell!" sighed Alphonse, gripping his scythe in both gauntleted hands. "Come on, then, hungry spirits!" challenged Alphonse, "We'll lay you to rest, just as we did the ghouls and the skeletons!" "Hopefully we don't simply increase their number by five--a living person killed by too many brushes with these shadows will rise as one of their kind!" whispered Tyr nervously to the English knight.
As The Lusty Fools engaged the two shadows in mortal contest, Tyr's firebombs once again proved the most effective weapon against their foes, seeming to burn the undead spirits as if they possessed the fleshly bodies of the two thieves they had once been. The company fought bravely and skillfully against the incorporeal monsters, and finally destroyed them, but not before the shadows had considerably weakened every member of the company except for Hisao, who'd been invisible to the shadows and thus able to avoid their sapping caress, and Tyr, who had been careful to stay at bomb-throwing range from both undead spirits.
"I am sorry, my friends," confessed Tyr, "that I haven't any potions potent enough to restore your sapped strength.... That is a formula I have yet to master...." "Then...." croaked Paddy fearfully, "we shall ever after be weaker than we were!?" "Oh, no, no, my friend," Tyr promised the Irishman, "Your strength will return with several days of bed-rest, or so my studies of spirit-lore suggest." "Thank God, His angels, and His saints!" sighed Paddy, considerably relieved. "We should withdraw for the nonce," suggested Alphonse, "and return at full strength! I feel I can barely lift my scythe...." "Aye!" agreed Paddy, and the rest nodded in agreement.
"But...." muttered Hisao in accented English, which he had begun to pick up in only the very brief time of his association with the English-speaking Lusty Fools, to the others' great surprise, "should not we search dome for....um....treasure?" "No," snapped Tyr and Alphonse simultaneously. "We don't know what other guards or wards the necromancer's lair might yet hold," explained Tyr in English, "and we mustn't find out while our companions are so weakened from the shadows' vile touch." The ninja considered Tyr's words, translating them to Nipponese in his head, then nodded in understanding. "Englishman, Irishman, and Bug-Man weak," summarized the young ninja, "so we go back to inn, let them sleep off weakness." "Yes," confirmed Tyr.
So The Lusty Fools withdrew back across the drawbridge, noting that the level of the water in the moat had risen by at least two feet since they had opened the green door in the side of the mortar dome, and was only three feet below the level of the island, drawbridge, and the approaching corridor. They recalled the watermarks on the corridor walls approaching the vast cistern, and now their suspicions that this corridor and the adjoining cistern were frequently flooded were confirmed. "Some magical ward no doubt holds the water at bay, keeping it outside of the dome," reasoned Tyr aloud, "else the necromancer's tomes, grimoires, and scrolls would all be ruined." On their way back through the catacombs to the stairway that ascended to the nave of Notre Dame, the company halted in the unholy chapel where they had rescued the infant Clementine from the trio of devil-worshippers just long enough for Hisao and Paddy to pry out each of the precious and semi-precious gemstones inlaid in the silver inverted cross affixed to the wall over the basalt altar, and to pry away the silver cross itself, which they planned to melt down for the silver.
At the stairs that ascended to the upper world in the nave of Notre Dame Cathedral, the surface-dwellers bid Nacht farewell until their return, and made their way on to the Inn of the Cave, while Nacht waited for their return down in the crypts beneath Notre Dame. The Lusty Fools did little for the next two days, Alphonse and Paddy mostly resting in bed to regain their shadow-drawn strength, as did Nacht down in the catacombs.... Hisao and Tyr took to the markets of Paris to sell their looted gems, silver, gold, and unwanted arms and armor taken off defeated foes, netting a respectable hoard of treasure for the company to split evenly amongst themselves.
With his share of this rich plunder, Alphonse purchased a masterfully-forged suit of full plate armor to replace his battle-worn hauberk of chain mail, and had enough left over to purchase a few curatives and other useful potions from an apothecary in the bustling market in the square of Notre Dame.
Paddy upgraded his armor as well, trading his old, punctured leather cuirass, greaves and bracers for a shirt of masterfully-crafted chain mail, new studded leather greaves and bracers, and an iron gorget to protect his throat. With his change, he followed Alphonse's example and purchased various potions, oils, and elixers useful to adventurers at the apothecary shop.
Hisao replaced the battle-damaged studded leather cuirass he'd worn under his ninja garb with a masterwork chain mail shirt as well, and procured some potions for himself.
Tyr likewise upgraded his equipment, purchasing the reagents needed to concoct more firebombs and other alchemical extracts. He also purchased a masterwork rapier and better armor--a jerkin of masterwork studded leather that offered a balance of mobility and protection.
For Nacht, Hisao and Tyr purchased several potions of various sorts that would allow him to breathe underwater, or see invisible enemies, among other effects. They also purchased for The Beetle Man a pair of masterwork gladius swords, and a pair of masterwork daggers.
In addition to the new arms, armor, and other equipment they purchased for themselves with their hard-won loot, a few of The Lusty Fools received from their mysterious divine patrons the powerful magical gifts intended for them: Alphonse received Foereaper, a magic scythe with a blade of adamantine, affixed to a gold-wire-wrapped haft made from the thigh bone of a titan, inset with gems mined from the peaks of Mount Meru in Paradise, a scythe apt to cut off the heads of its weilder's foes, which blazed with pearlescent radiance that seared the flesh of evil creatures; this divine gift was delivered to him at the common room of the inn by an extraordinarily handsome, well-dressed, mysterious young man, who claimed to be a messenger from the court of Prester John in the unknown east, greatest king of Christendom, who somehow had heard of young Alphonse and his noble quest, and sought to lend his aid in the form of this formidable gift.
Paddy received his tunic of eyes from Bettina the serving wench, who claimed she'd received it from a mysterious traveler the night before, who had made her vow to give it to none other than the Irishman known as Paddy Sullivan.
Tyr was certainly surprised, mystified, and to no small degree intrigued by the appearance among his possessions of the acorn-sized lump of garnet that was known thereafter as the stone of Asgard, a potent gemstone that brought its bearer incredibly good luck, deflected by mystical force attacks made against him, and amplified the potency of alchemical firebombs prepared and hurled by its user.
All three adventurers were perplexed and filled with wonder and amazement at these unexpected gifts from mysterious patrons, but felt certain that they were a sign from their gods that they were meant to travel and adventure together for some great purpose as yet unrevealed....
When The Lusty Fools were ready to reconvene at Notre Dame and continue their exploration of the necromancer's lair in the catacombs below the cathedral, they were well-equipped and well armed and armored, and had recovered all of their lost strength and vitality. It was the fourth of June, in the Year of Our Lord, 1430.
June 4th, 1430 AD
The Lusty Fools, fully recovered from their adventures in the dangerous catacombs beneath Paris two days before, and armed with upgraded equipment, were determined to finish what they had begun down in that Stygian Underworld. They met Nacht a few hundred feet down the initial length of corridor, stalking rodents and vermin. The journey back to where they had been seemed to grow shorter with each return, as they knew where they were going, and spent less time searching for traps, secret doors, and treasures than they had on their previous treks en route to the necromancer's secret lair. This time through, they even avoided disturbing the bat colonies
After navigating the tangled, multilevel web of passageways and chambers that they had so far explored, they returned to the spiral stairs, the top of which had been the site of their conflict with the apprentice Hershenk, the bottom the site of their scuffle against the gray ooze Le Goop. Descending halfway to the bottom of the spiral stair, they saw fresh watermarks, indicating the water level had risen in the cistern sufficiently to flood the corridor leading into it. The rough-hewn limestone walls were still damp from the recent flooding as the young heroes made their way down the westbound corridor leading into the cistern where the necromancer's domed stronghold stood upon a small circular isle of mortared stone.
When they arrived at the pier jutting out over the murky moat surrounding the central isle, they found the drawbridge raised again, so Hisao once more gave the lever a pull, dropping the drawbridge to span the moat and grant them access to the isle with the necromancer's dome. As before, the waterfall cascading into the moat from the pipe in the concave wall swelled to a gushing torrent that soon began to raise the water level in the moat. "We'd better make a quick job of this," grumbled Alphonse as he led the charge across the drawbridge.
The Lusty Fools found the verdigris copper door to the dome closed again, and the magical lightning ward recast to secure it. Paddy sighed and fished the beeswax out of his kit of thieves' tools, whispered another prayer to Saint Patrick, and warned his companions to stand back as he set to work attempting to disarm the magical trap, hoping he would have better luck than on his last attempt. Once the arcane runes etched in the green copper were filled in with wax, the young rogue crossed himself with a small amulet bearing an image of Saint Patrick herding snakes out of Ireland with a shillelagh. He then yanked the door handle, throwing the copper door open, and swiftly crouched as if ready to spring into a backwards roll to dodge the lightning bolt he feared would strike at him.... But no lightning bolt lashed out this time--he had successfully disarmed the ward!
"Good show, Paddy!" exclaimed Alphonse. Hisao bowed in respect to the grinning Irishman, and Tyr raised his right hand in salute, smiling and nodding approval at the rogue's skillful disarming of the trap. Nacht watched the others' responses with curiosity, and mimicked Hisao's bow. Paddy then cautiously led the others into the dome, his keen eyes scanning for further evidence of wards or other traps. Alphonse entered behind Paddy, then the invisible ninja, then Nacht, and finally Tyr.
The interior of the dome seemed to be completely dry, even though everything outside had apparently flooded, and they had left the green door open. "Tyr, I believe you might have been right about this chamber being magically protected from flooding," observed Alphonse. Bookshelves filled with ancient, worm eaten manuscripts, tomes, manuals, and grimoires lined the concave walls, and a desk and high-backed leather-bound chair stood at the south side, while a large, canopied bed, a nightstand, a chamber pot, and an armoire occupied the north side.
It was from the canopied bed that the company then heard a rustling and a long, ghastly moan that sounded not-quite-human! The silken veil surrounding the bed was suddenly rent by a blackened, not-quite-skeletal claw, and through the long gash, a twisted, blackened, almost skeletal corpse leapt, landing in a feral crouch beside the bed and fixing the company of intruders with a pair of hollow eye-sockets that burned with unholy red fires! The wight was clad in a white bridal gown, and long, white wisps of hair still clung to its blackened scalp. Moaning again, it raised its terrible claws and pounced at Alphonse! The young knight narrowly evaded the claws that reached for his visored face, and spinning into a swing with Foereaper, sunk the holy scythe's glowing adamantine blade deep between the wight's shoulder blades! The blade briefly flashed with a crackle of white energy that seared the undead flesh, and the wight's moan rose into a bloodcurdling shriek of agony and rage!
"It's a wight!" shouted Tyr in warning, "Its touch is even deadlier than the shadows'.... It will drain your vital energy!" The Norse alchemist followed up his warning with a carefully-placed firebomb that landed so that only the wight was caught in its fiery explosion, and Alphonse was not struck by even a drop of the flaming oil. Nonetheless, the knight was compelled to tersely urge Tyr to "Be careful where you land those things!" "Fear not, Sir Alphonse," assured Tyr, "my aim is impeccable!" Now the wight howled again in furious pain, and dropped into a tumbling roll toward the Norseman, extinguishing the flames that had charred the back of its bridal gown! "Yikes!" yelped Tyr as the wight tumbled closer, "Destroy it, quickly!" Tyr urged.
Nacht sprung nimbly toward the wight, all four arms bearing blades, and began to slash and stab at the undead bride of the necromancer, forcing it to change its focus to defense and evasion rather than throttling the young Norse alchemist with its twisted, black claws. The wight hissed at The Beetle Man and slashed at the yellow eyes hidden within the shadow of the insectile creature's dark cowl, but Nacht dodged the deadly claw-swipes.
Paddy dashed to the wight's back and plunged his cold iron short sword into its lower back to the hilt, and as the undead monster jerked around to free the blade from its back and retaliate against its weilder, its screams were suddenly silenced by a great gash that seemed to open by magic in its rotten throat! Hisao appeared out of thin air next to Paddy and the wight, and with another swift stroke of his wakizashi, the monster's head went tumbling through the air and bounced across the flagstone floor! The decapitated wight sunk to the floor, its rotten heart pumping out jets of black blood from the stump of its neck until it slowed to beat no more. Tyr sighed in relief, and muttered, "Thank Odin," under his breath.
The Lusty Fools began a cautious search of the dome's interior. Clearly, the necromancer must be elsewhere, but perhaps they would discover some clue as to his current whereabouts in his underground lair. "The cultist said we'd find the necromancer here," began Tyr, "or else in his townhouse above." At this, they all glanced up at the domed ceiling of the chamber, and it was then that Paddy's keen eyes detected a barely-visible circular seam, about twelve feet in diameter, encircling the apex of the ceiling. "D'ye see that faint circle on the ceiling, there, lads?" Paddy pointed out the seam to the others, who eventually made it out in the dim light of their torches. It was then that the once-more-invisible Hisao's disembodied voice piped up in English, "Same circle on floor!" Now they all scanned the flagstone floor, and Paddy was next to spot a circular seam of the exact same size in the floor, directly below the one in the ceiling. "Look for some kind o' lever, or catch," ordered Paddy, so they continued their systematic search of the chamber.
While they searched, the water level outside of the dome was rapidly rising, and soon overflowed the isle on which the dome sat, and would have begun to flood the interior of the dome, had Tyr's prediction that some magical barrier that prevented only the water of the cistern from entering the chamber not been correct. The water pooled up at the threshold of the green door, slowly rising as a wall of murky water, as if a glass pane filled the doorway! After only five more minutes had passed, the water level had risen to completely cover the doorway, and would soon flood the entire vast outer cistern vault! "Well, we're trapped here," declared Tyr, "unless we find some secret shafts above or below these circular seams that grant escape." "Or we swim," offered the disembodied voice of Hisao, who moved close to the open doorway with its wall of water and dipped his invisible hand into the water-wall, causing a hand-shaped imprint to form briefly in the vertical surface.
Eventually, it was Hisao that spotted a foot-high-by-two-feet-wide secret panel on the concave wall just over the nightstand beside the canopied bed, cleverly disguised to blend in with the rest of the mortar around it. Sliding it aside, the ninja discovered a secret niche of similar dimensions behind it, only a foot deep. He removed a small leather pouch, from which he looted seven shiny black onyxes and 20 gold Francs, then noticed a small lever at the back of the niche. "Stand away from circles," warned Hisao, and once all the others were clear, he pulled the lever inside the niche. With the growl of stone grating on stone, the disc in the floor rotated clockwise and rose a couple inches out of the floor before swinging upward on a hidden hinge on one side, revealing a twelve-foot-diameter shaft sunk in the floor that opened into a dark pit below. Simultaneously, the parabolic disc in the apex of the domed ceiling rotated counter-clockwise and lowered a couple inches before swinging down from a hidden hinge on one side to reveal a shaft of the same dimensions opening above! A large bronze diving bell, with an iron ring affixed to its top as if to engage a hook, began to ascend up from the lower shaft into the domed chamber, accompanied by the echoing clank of gears and chains hidden within the isle below. The great bell continued to rise toward the shaft in the ceiling, and a great hook depending from a thick chain descended from the upper shaft to engage the ring atop the bell with a reverberating clang. The diving bell continued to rise until the top was about five feet inside the upper shaft, the rim at the bottom of the bell hanging about ten feet above the floor of the chamber. Now the companions could see that four rope ladders hung from the inner apex of the diving bell, as it slowed to a halt.
"Well," surmised Paddy, "here be our means of escape, lads." But just as the company was about to climb up the rope ladders and inside the great diving bell, a dark, vaguely humanoid shape appeared in the murky water of the doorway, and then the dark shape stepped into the dry interior of the chamber, revealing itself to be a seven-foot-tall, heavily muscled, gray-skinned humanoid with a head like a shark, a dorsal fin jutting out from its back, and a pair of lateral fins thrusting out of extra openings in the sides of a scaly coat of armor that protected its torso! Tyr searched his memory for an obscure passage in an ancient bestiary he'd once read in the library at the great University of Oxford when he was visiting England as a boy, which had described a race of aquatic, Dagon-worshipping beings known as deep ones. According to the bestiary, they bred with degenerate cults of coastal-dwelling humans, producing human offspring that gradually transformed into deep ones around adolescence, joining their aquatic kin in their undersea realms. "I think that's called a deep one!" called out Tyr, "It doesn't appear to be interested in parlay," continued the Norseman, for the deep one hissed, brandishing a wicked-looking bronze-and-coral trident in its webbed claws, and suddenly rose a few feet off the floor, hovering toward Nacht! To himself, Tyr thought, "The bestiary never mentioned that deep ones could fly!"