Quest of the Stolen Characters

[GRWelsh]

"Aieee!!!" the elf wailed. "A balrog! A balrog has come!"

"Shut up, Nancy," the dwarf growled. "If we're going to die, at least spare us your insipid wailing!."

"My name's not Nancy, it's Lumbo!" the elf pouted, stomping his foot.

Hefting his axe in two hands, Trelli Gray-Sides ignored the elf. Instead, he looked over at the wizard next to him. "What say you, Drystaff? Is that indeed a balrog?"

Drystaff's face was ashen gray. "A Type VI demon, actually," he croaked. "No one has been able to call them balrogs since the mid-seventies, when the Tolkien estate got all uptight."

"I remember that! They didn't like other people using their creations without permission," Fineous Fingers said. "I never saw what the big deal was!"

"You wouldn't; you're a thief," Trelli said grouchily.

Fineous had been hiding behind the wizard. After one look at the balrog, he said loudly "GULP!" and pulled back into the wizard's shadow.

"That ability is to hide in shadows, not hide in MY shadow!" Drystaff complained.

"I'm not particular," a voice came out of the wizard's shadow.

"Well, what are we going to do about the balro- I mean, Type VI demon," Lumbo asked.

"I don't know," the wizard muttered, pulling his beard. "It's between us and the only way out. And our pursuers are coming up behind us rather quickly..."

The sound of drums echoed down the tunnels behind them. And the stony ceiling of the vast cavern in front of them glowed with the red light of the demon.

"This all seems oddly familiar..."

[GRWelsh]

The sound of tromping boots grew louder in the tunnel behind them. The sound of Fineous Finger's teeth chattering could also be heard.

"Stop that!" Drystaff barked, reaching back into his shadow and slapping the thief upside the head.

"Ouch! I needed that!" the thief said.

Trelli held his axe over his head. "Let's pick a direction and charge! I tire of this cowardly waiting. If we're going to meet our death, let's at go and find it, instead of letting it find us!"

"Find it..." Lumbo the elf echoed. He turned this way and that, studying the alcove in the tunnel that was next to him. "Find it!" The elf rushed over, and fiddled with a knob of stone. A part of the stone wall slid in -- a secret door!

"Now, why didn't I see that?" the dwarf asked.

"You were too busy singing our swan song," the wizard said grumpily. "Now, double-quick, through the secret door!"

"But we don't know what's on the other side!" Fineous objected.

"We know what's on this side!" Lumbo said. "Let's go!"

Bumping into each other, the four clambered through the secret door, into a narrow dark passage beyond.

"Now, Lumbo -- shut the door behind us!" Trelli exclaimed.

"I'm trying!" the elf said, frantically trying to work the secret door from the opposite side. "There!"

It slid shut.

[GRWelsh]

"Where are we?" Fineous Fingers asked, peering out from the shadows.

"In a secret passage, fool, and be quiet since we don't know what lurks about," Drystaff said in a hoarse whisper. "Now, if only we had some light." He tapped his staff, and knocked the crystal head-piece against the wall. "Damn thing seems to be on the fritz!"

A glow next to them flared up, and then they smelled a waft of smoke go over them.

"I'm lighting up," Lumbo said, puffing on a thick roll of smoke-weed. "Just trying to do my part -- ah, that's better."

"Ah, great, we're in a life and death situation, and the elf is getting high on smoke-weed," the dwarf stomped his foot.

"High as the Astral Plane," the elf said, drawing deeply. The glowing ember lit up the passage.

"We seem to be in a kind of stairway," Drystaff said. He shrugged. "We might as well go down the stairs, what else are we going to do."

Lit by Lumbo's glowing smoke-roll, they walked down a seemingly endless flight of stairs. Just when they were starting to worry they might have ended up in some bizarre, cursed passage, they felt a breeze.

"I think we are getting near an opening of some sort," Trelli said.

Drystaff tapped his staff on the wall again. Abruptly, the head flared, dimmed, and flared again in the full brightness of a sun-dazzling crystal. It revealed to them a ledge, and beyond, the passage opened out into a vast, underground cavern.

"It must be a mile across!" Fineous exclaimed.

"And that's not the most amazing thing -- look," Lumbo gestured with his smoking joint.

On the floor of the cavern was a pale collection of mushrooms of all shapes and sizes, clustered around a few immense stalagmites of stone. And in the mushrooms were all sorts of doors and little shuttered windows.

"By the gods of lucky knucklebones, it's a subterranean city," Drystaff exclaimed.