Where there's life there's hope, as my Gaffer used to say; and need of vittles, as he mostways used to add.
- Samwise Gamgee
22. Doom and Gloom
The robed elf sat, balled-and-chained, and sulked.
Age after age, the humans and the others built and multiplied and warred, while the lower races scrounged and pillaged and multiplied even more. And the People grew slowly, and spent many a long year hiding in the woods that were sawed at, gnawed at, and they fled and sailed into the west.
Evil rose and fell, but every time, the woods were cut back further, and the lands left more war-torn and squalid, and evil grew, within the deep halls of the drow and the dwarves, across the city-scarred plains of the Old World and now even the jungles of the New, and there was unchecked, cancerous growth, tyranny and slavery were exported about the world, and the machines of war grew ever greater and more efficient.
They were doomed.
-----
"We're dooooooomed......"
"What'n the blazing..." Kagain grumbled. Montaron slinked over to the edge of the chamber, and nearly disappeared as he sauntered along the wall and peered into an adjoining chamber of the cavern.
The halfling popped into full visibility again and chuckled. "Looky looky here, Mulahey had a pet!"
Mulahey's 'pet' turned out to be a chained moon elf in violet robes, sitting gloomily in the middle of the floor of a dead-end chamber, appropriately enough. The five adventurers approached him warily, and he looked up at them, not with fear or joy, but indifference.
"Who are you?" Jade asked neutrally.
The elf just appraised his surroundings and moaned, "It's unbearable, you know; waking each morn to the mud and rock instead of the rising sun. Too long for one of the fair folk to live like a dwarf."
"Hey now, pansy li'l elf," Kagain grumbled, peering at the prisoner as if assessing the best angle to meet his skull with an axeblade, "Keep on talk' that way, and I'll stuff your mouth with horse dung!"
The elf's face didn't get any sadder than it was, which probably wouldn't have been possible. Jade repeated her query and he answered, "Oh, I'm Xan, a Greycloak of Evereska, and as proficient in the ways of magic as any man can be."
"And why then yer robes be purple?" Montaron glared. "It not be grey, and a sissy color!"
Xan looked dejectely down at the jabbing halfling, but verbally ignored him. "If you be enemies of Mulahey I'd join your cause, hopeless though it is."
"We've already killed him in our 'hopeless' cause," Jade snickered. "Why and how'd you get trapped here?"
"Alas," moaned Xan, "I was sent to investigate the strange goings-on about this area and I landed caged for seemingly hopeless weeks on end. I have not seen the sun almost as long as I have not seen my home."
"Oh, boo hoo," Kagain spat, "I didn't see the sun til' I was older'n all of you are now! Wouldn't miss it if I ne'er saw it again!"
"You were sent by yerself?" Montaron squinted, "Just one mage? These Greycloaks ain't too bright, are they?"
Xan sighed, and slumped over his knees. "I suppose they saw the futility of it all, and decided only to waste me."
"Typical elven thinking," Kagain scoffed. "We killed that half-orc! Surely your pretty li'l elven ears heard it all. You can thank us at your leisure."
"I'd dared to hope so," the elf nodded.
Jade thought for a second. "He has superiors elsewhere, and we'll be continuing an...investigation of our own. We'll free you, and if you prove a useful battle-mage, perhaps you can continue your own by helping us."
"I thank you," Xan exhaled, "However ineffective our actions be, I shall not rest until I have made payment to you."
Branwen grumbled, "You can start by now doing your best to drag party morale deeper than these oppresive mines." Jade snorted in agreement.
Xan merely looked through them. "If you have searched through Mulahey's treasure you may have found a sword among his documents. The sword is a moonblade and my most valued possession."
"Oh really..." Jade shot a sidelong glance at Xzar.
"It was...a bonded weapon," the necromancer shrugged. Jade frowned. "Count Cinnamon will vouch for it." Branwen groaned.
They returned to Mulahey's chamber, and Xan took his sword as if it were an obligation. The weapon was an extremely ornate, impressive, and palpably powerful electric-blue-glowing sword, which the obviously weak and frail elf seemed able to wield with ease. The chest did also contain an enchanted shortsword to replace Montaron's already-weakening-iron blade, and upon Mulahey's body they found a ring which would augment Branwen's repertoire of clerical spells, and magical electrical-resistance boots which Jade donned. She also kept Mulahey's holy symbol of Cyric as proof for Berron Ghastkill.
"Perhaps we'll survive a little longer than I at first thought," Xan sighed as he looked over his reclaimed moonblade, earning hostile glances from his new companions.
"Be you a specialist, elfling?" Xzar cooed fruitily, poking Xan's sallow cheek and then tracing the shape of his skull.
"An enchanter," the elf sighed, making no attempt to fend off the necromancer's proddings.
For some reason, Xzar broke into spasmic fits of high-pitched laughter. "An..enchanter? Oh, the sadistic alien clown from beyond the moon must have a great sense of humor indeed! Nyehehehehehe!"
"What's so funny, Xzar?" Jade peered at her old friend.
"Enchanters can't....can't...." Xzar was holding his sides, barely able to speak through his giggling, "...can't even comprehend evocation!!!" With that he fell down and rolled around on the thin grass, laughing his head off.
Montaron snickered. "No magic missiles, no spiderwebs, no stinking clouds, no fireballs, no lightning bolt..."
"What?" Jade's jaw dropped. "Even I know those are the bread-and-butter battle-mage spells!"
Branwen must have too, for she gave the enchanter a rather deflating, dismissive look.
Xan stared at his small feet, practically burying his pale face in his robes, likely crying.
"Pretty pretty pretty...." Xzar had uncovered a brightly glowing gem that had been hidden behind one of the Calimshani tapestries hanging in the room. It stood on a stone pedestal, and the necromancer reached out for it, with his wild eyes almost glowing with the reflection.
"X, ye blasted fool!" Montaron hissed and dashed up, "It might be...."
Montaron tackled Xzar's legs, but the necromancer managed to swipe the gem before he fell onto a moldly pillow. Moments later, the stone pedestal began to creak and groan, and its center slid upwards, freed from the weight of the gem. A clicking sound echoed.
"...Trapped," the halfling sulked.
Ominous groaning sounds echoed throughout the ceiling of the room. From the chamber where they'd found Xan, a loud crashing sound, as if a stalactite had just fallen and shattered, echoed.
"I told you," Xan moaned. "We're doomed."
No one contradicted him this time. Jade screamed, "RUN!!!!"
The six bolted out of the room and towards the crude stone stairway leading back to the fouth floor, more stalactites and chunks of rock falling down behind them, one nearly smashing Xan. "So close," Kagain grumbled. Once they reached the previous level, they dashed across the bridge just before it gave way, but before they could make it up the tunnel they'd come down before engaging the kobold commandos, its ceiling groaned, cracked, and poured itself over the path, blocking it.
"We're trapped!" Xan screamed.
"This way!" Kagain yelled, turning right and zipping along the edge of the underground river. "There used to be another exit!"
The other five followed, and Jade marvelled at how quickly the short dwarf could zip on his stubby legs. Montaron practically seemed like a cheetah by halfling standards, and Xzar, hiking up his skirt and shrieking, skipped along beside him. Branwen and Jade easily kept astride Kagain, letting him lead, and the moans of the faltering Xan fell further and further behind.
After exiting the chamber with the river into a narrower tunnel, they followed a long hallway as it crumbled behind them, and it last, saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Everyone broke into their maximum speed, and Jade led the party out, followed by Branwen, Kagain, Xzar, Montaron, and finally, flinging himself through the mouth of the tunnel just as it collapsed, a screeching Xan saw again the light of day.
