# Night Below - well, a few nights really



## demajen (Mar 22, 2002)

MORE FUN FROM ANDARCAL, THE ARCHER, AND HIS NEW-FOUND "FRIENDS"...ENJOY...
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The underground cavern dripped with moisture. The air swirled with water vapours. The small stream that ran through the cavern must have been fed by the volcanic lake they had passed a while back.

   Andarcal scanned the surroundings, picking out all the available places for an ambush. Down by his side, Casmaran peered carefully into a pool of condensed water that had formed in the top of a worn-down stalagmite. The gnome rippled his reflection thoughtfully.

   Their third companion, Farlas, waddled through the cavern towards the stream, blissfully unaware of any danger that might lurk around. The penguin held his icepick between his flippers. He could feel the heat radiating from the stream at a much greater distance than his friends. Being a creature from the Plane of Ice, Farlas was much more susceptible to changes in heat than his companions. He wiped back lines of sweat from his impressive golden eyebrow crests and stopped suddenly. A reflection in the water had caught his eye.

   “Err, guys…”

   Andarcal looked up from where he was hunched on the ground, trying to make out any tracks. “Yeah?”

   “Don’t suppose you checked the ceiling for ambushes did you?” Farlas still hadn’t moved a muscle.

   Andarcal’s bow was in his hands, notched with a crystalline arrow, before Farlas took another breath. The archer inched his face up to look at the ceiling.

   Hundreds of glittering white eyes stared back at him.

   “Oh crap!” Andarcal swore. “Tilvas… Explosive arrows please…”

   No problem! The crystalline bow’s string shimmered with barely compressed energy which flowed out along the arrow. It too now swirled with fiery sparks.

   Cas looked up from the pool. “What’s all the commotion? It’s a really bad idea to shout down here. The ceiling could be covered with any number of nasties, yet here you are blathering your mouths…what?”

   Andarcal’s glare caught the svirfneblin off guard. The deep gnome suddenly shuddered, winced, and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh…bugger!”

   A crystal arrow streaked through the air, exploding in a huge blast of flame that illuminated the cavern brightly. Several huge bats hit the floor, burning madly. The air above them suddenly exploded with a swarm of bats with barbed tails. They screeched, filling the cavern with wailing sounds that echoed madly and hurt the ears. Andarcal blanked his mind and shut out the noise.

   “Keep them coming…” he told the bow.

   You don’t need to tell me twice… it echoed through his mind.

   The room was lit up by a hail of exploding arrows.



   Farlas had screeched as the first explosive arrow went off, diving for cover behind a stalagmite. A bat swooped low, diving for his head. The penguin swung his icepick up, caught the bat straight in the belly, and was hauled up into the air, little webbed feet kicking hard against nothing.

   He cursed quietly as the bat ducked and dived around stalactites. Thick black blood dribbled down his flippers. The bat twisted and turned, trying to shake him off, but the little penguin hung on stubbornly. After all, it was either that or fall into the volcanic stream below. Farlas wasn’t desperate to become a cooked lunch anytime soon.

   Farlas muttered a few arcane syllables and then wrenched his icepick free. He fell slowly, drifting back and forth through the air like a lazy feather. He hit the floor at as much of a run as he could manage, and turned to face the bat who he expected to be right behind him. All he saw was a spiralling mass of black fur as it plunged into the subterranean stream.

   Nodding his head as if to say ‘served you right’, Farlas turned to see how his companions were doing.

   Andarcal was picking off individual bats with relative ease. They were big targets, and despite their speed, they were no match for the steady thrum of arrows loosed from the archer’s bow.

   Casmaran was hitting a fallen bat on the head with his druid staff. The creature was probably already dead. If it wasn’t, it certainly would be by now. The gnome whirled and dodged as a bat swooped past, reflexively bundling himself into a crevice in the wall. His figure melted and swam, changing from that of a rocky-skinned gnome to a reasonably large mushroom growing out of the wall. His magical disguise in place, the svirfneblin waited for the bats to fly off.

   The bat swooped round low, heading back to catch the gnome from behind. All it sensed was the mushroom, and then its side exploded in a gash of blood and fur as an arrow slammed past. The bat spiralled down to the ground, wing torn, quite dead.

   That was the last of them. Casmaran’s nose, mouth and eyes appeared from under the cap of the mushroom. “They all gone?”

   Andarcal nodded, silently checking the bodies for signs of life. “Let’s get them into the stream. No one’s going to use this one for drinking water.”

   Casmaran nodded. “Apart from salamanders maybe. But they deserve what they get, setting things on fire all the time.”

   Farlas waddled out from behind a stalagmite, wiping his pick free of the thick black blood with a cloth that he had produced from his small backpack. “Nice shooting Andarcal.”

   Oh of course, it’s all his aiming and everything. No thanks to the instrument of destruction...hmmm...that came out wrong!

   Andarcal sniggered and flicked the bow’s crystalline shaft. It psychically screeched in protest. He spent five minutes toting the corpses into the deep currents of the stream.

   “Let’s move. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before we rest. That band of slavers is going to be way ahead of us now, and we’ve only got limited supplies of...well...everything!”

   Farlas groaned. “I don’t know how much more walking I can do Sir. We ‘Guin are designed for swimming gracefully through icy seas, not waddling through some dank caverns beneath the earth, scorching ourselves in volcanic streams.”

   “That, my penguin friend, is why I bought this.” Casmaran grinned as he rummaged through his backpack. Odd bits of junk flew everywhere. Springs, twisted bits of metal, and iron rods at least six or seven feet long clanged about the floor. Everyone looked on in wonder as the gnome pulled more and more out of his tiny rucksack. Eventually, Casmaran pulled out what looked like a very tatty wall hanging.

   “Oh wow. A tapestry. Just what I needed to take my mind off the long walk. Thanks Cas.”

   “You know, for a penguin, you have a fine grasp of sarcasm.” Casmaran scathed.

   Farlas shrugged, made a passable grin at the corners of his beak, and flicked a rude gesture – or at least what they assumed was a rude gesture – with a flipper.

   Casmaran laid the tapestry out on the floor. It was about four by three feet, and very ragged indeed. “Sorry about the holes. My great aunt twice removed on my second cousin’s side kept it locked in a musty old cupboard that had a slight case of moths.”

   While Andarcal tried to work out if that lineage was physically possible, Farlas started tapping the tapestry with the head of his icepick.

   “Am I to assume, oh mushroom head, that this does more than just sit there and look reasonably attractive?”

   “It, friend ‘Guin, is a carpet of flying.” Cas tried to bite back a sarcastic retort.

   “Really. It doesn’t seem to be flying particularly well.”

   Andarcal looked at the two arguing. If they got any louder, something big and quite probably fatal would come and see them about a light snack,

   “Will you two pipe down. There are all manner of things down here that I’d rather not alert to our presence.”

   Casmaran, in a huff, bent down and pressed his hand on the centre of the tapestry. There was a brief hum, a slight hiccup as the carpet stalled, and then a haze of moving air appeared beneath the carpet as it floated into the air. The gnome crossed his arms proudly across his diminutive chest.

   Farlas jumped on, making the carpet wobble slightly. He jumped up and down to test the carpet’s stability. “Nice work. I take most of it back...”

   “Why you little...” Cas growled, but Farlas was already shooting off down the tunnel across the stream,

   Andarcal looked gruffly at him.

   “What?”

   Andarcal said nothing, shouldering Tilvas, hopping over the narrowest part of the stream, and heading swiftly off down the tunnel after the penguin on a flying carpet. This expedition was turning into a farce. He was not impressed.

   Lighten up And. It’s not the end of the world. Not yet anyway.

   “Didn’t anyone ever give you training in subtlety?”

   I’m a bloody composite longbow! Why in the Nine Hells would I need to be subtle?!

   Andarcal groaned and strode forwards into the darkness. Behind him, Casmaran’s little gnomish feet struggled to keep up.


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