Faint purple light wavered ahead. Tension pinched Ghomarck's face and he extinguished his magelight. Gradually, it dawned on Séa that bare, lifeless rocks, left to their own devices, should not produce such a spectral luminance. Something abnormal lay ahead.

As silently as armor rattles allowed, they crept forward into a chamber crowded with a grid of blocky dwarven columns. The violet illumination flickered from their left. Warily they wove among the stone pillars.

On tiptoe, Séa passed a final row of columns and eased from shadow into garish radiance. Against the smooth stone of the left wall, three figures in tall gnome hats clustered around a glowing oval, the source of the illumination. The door-like oval stood man-high, and significantly taller than the tips of the conical hats. One of the small humanoids wore a bright green coat and one wore enormous boots the color of sunflower petals.

Gnomes. A smile flickered on Séa's lips for a few moments. The gnomes she had previously met were magical, clever, quirky, and generally lighthearted. They were artisans, artificers, performers, and pranksters. Perhaps the three in the hats could be reasoned with as regards the princess.

But her positive expression plummeted as she took in additional visual details. Two of three figures went barefoot, but instead of ordinary skin and big toes, red scales covered their clawed feet. Likewise, the scrawny backs of the two coatless ones resembled the spiny backs of red dragons, right down to stubby, useless bat wings. Scales? Wings? Claws? No gnome ever had those!

To Séa's left, Tash's bowstring creaked as she pulled to full draw. Her whisper tickled Séa's ear, "The feck are those things?"

The paladin sighed and reached for her mace. "Yotches in gnome hats. Father Kay says they're tricky."

Tash's eyes narrowed. "So ... kill 'em?"

One of the gnome-sized humanoids glanced back over its narrow shoulder. Its hook nose descended to nearly touch its protruding chin, and its beady eyes stared inscrutably from beneath lumpy brow ridges. It squawked, revealing rows of yellow, pointed teeth. Instantly, the others spun and stared at the trio of invaders.

Ghomarck croaked from the vicinity of Séa's right elbow. "'Ware! Spellcasters."

Séa blurted, "Yes, Tash. Before they cast." The paladin accelerated toward the trio of gnome-hatted creatures. Her feet pounded the floor in clashes of metal on stone.

All three creatures crouched and wove arcane hand motions. Tash's bowstring twanged, and one of them paused its air-weaving to stare at the feathered shaft protruding from its chest. The next yotch raised its trembling hands skyward like a religious zealot and babbled reedy, raspy syllables.

The third extended knob-knuckled fingers to spray a fan of brownish mist toward the now-running Séa. Her next footfall slipped. She windmilled her arms and pumped her legs, but the floor's friction had disappeared. She crashed to the unyielding ground and slid, her speed unabated, with metallic scrapings and grindings that sounded like an iron golem chomping rivets.

"Oh, butt," Tash muttered. Like a squirrel proving its superiority to a yapping dog, she whisked behind a pillar. The travelling wave of friction-killing mist passed by, bringing with it the scent of black oil. The wizard adopted a strategy of immobility as the brown miasma dosed him. He schooled his feet to hold still on the floor gone slippery. Only his hands moved with purpose, pinching powder from a belt-pouch.

"Eeee!" Séa slid into two yotches broadside. Caught between the armored knight and the glowing door-like oval, their small, scaly bodies crunched as they cushioned her impact. They shrieked like mad teakettles. One flopped backwards. Its head and shoulders dangled through the curtain of light and disappeared from view.

Yards away, the wizard's hands ignited his powder to magical life. But a black shape the size of a rat dropped from above and landed on the back of his neck. "Yark!" A spasm racked his body, including his feet, which slipped. Limbs flailing, he dropped to the stony floor. The spell he had started fizzled into ozone-scented smoke.

From her supine position, Séa tapped her mace against the skull of the yotch she had pinned. With a sharp woody crack its gnome hat fell off and its black-and-yellow eyes pushed forward in their sockets. Its jaw slackened and it slumped.

A fourth yotch, this one in a pink gnome hat and cherry-red pants, burst through the oval curtain of light. The yotch with an arrow in its chest restarted its spellcasting hand motions.

On his back and squirming, Ghomarck wheezed, "Damage the portal! And beware stirges!"

From nowhere whizzed an arrow. The yotch with an arrow in its chest ceased its purposeful hand movements to paw weakly at the new shaft that quivered in its neck. It toppled sideways as a fifth yotch popped through the oval portal.

The three active yotches clambered on Séa. With teeth and claws, they tore at her protective metal. The metal plates screeched at the abuse and began to bend. One yotch clamped itself to her mace arm and rode it as she ineffectively flapped. Through her visor, she caught a momentary impression of rows of yellow triangular teeth snapping in rabid fury.

A stone's toss away, Ghomarck lay. He thrashed and squirmed, beset by small, dark bodies that made leathery flapping sounds and rubbery squeaks.

Tash leapt from behind a pillar. Mid-air, she bounced off a wall. Lightly, she landed among the yotches on top of Séa. Her dagger flashed thrice. From three yotch throats sprayed dark yellow fluids: the creatures' blood. They all three slid to the stone floor, clutching at their throats as the air they breathed hissed and bubbled in the gush of foul liquid.

Séa's jaw dropped. By Torugg, she is lightning in a bottle, just like she said.

The spell-greased floor changed color from greasy brown back to dull gray. The smell of oil disappeared as if it had never existed. Séa rolled to her feet. "Tash, wow! My hero." Another yotch popped through the portal. Séa wound up, then swung her mace through its skull. "Eeyah!"

The rogue dodged flying bone and grisly spatter. "Nice to have one's talents recognized. You break the portal. I'll help the wizard." She dashed away.

"On it," the paladin replied. Tentative mace taps to the shimmery oval's frame yielded metallic ringings.

Tash alit by the downed Ghomarck. The creatures that beset him resembled a hideous chimera of bat and mosquito, with dark, matted fur, wings, and sharp proboscises, several of which were buried to the hilt in the hapless, thrashing wizard. She stabbed at the little bodies, again and again.

Séa increased the force of her swings until sparks arced from the oval machine and the purple glow destabilized to a spectral light show of fast-varying color and intensity. The curtain of plasma flashed, then died.

In the sudden silence and complete darkness, Ghomarck's labored breathing was the loudest sound.

Guided by muscle memory, Tash's fingers slipped into a belt pouch for her steel, flint, and candle. In well-rehearsed ritual, she cupped the angled candle and flint in one hand and struck with the steel. Sparks flew. In a few heartbeats, Tash's candle glowed enough to illuminate the pillars and floor near the wizard.

"I think you killed all that remained, Tash," Ghomarck wheezed from a sitting position.

Séa lifted her visor as she approached and winced. Crimson blotches stained the aged man's robe, and he lay in a circle of lacerated stirges that oozed more. In an unsteady hand the wizard held his own dagger, also stained with blood. His own blood, in large part. Stirges were bloodsuckers, and these had plumped themselves on his internal fluids. Tash thought, It must be the fur that makes them so nauseating. If they were just big bugs, it would be easier to stomach, somehow.

Tash idly skewered a still-twitching stirge. "You all right, wizard?"

"I could use a healing potion," he admitted. His voice gained strength. "And a tankard of mead."

"I have neither." Tash's flat expression softened to one of contented pleasure as she licked blood of two varieties from her dagger. Stirge blood tastes ... like chicken's.

"I have two. Potions, that is." Without attempting to stand, the mage plucked two vials from his belt. He held one up, toward the paladin. "Surely you were injured, Séa?"

"Maybe a bruise. No potion needed, though," she replied sunnily. "Succor to those that suffer, that's my motto."

"What does that even mean?" Tash grumbled. "And — succor? Why does everything you say sound vaguely voluptuous?"

"It's a talent I have, I guess." Séa flashed a grin. "It just goes unnoticed where I live."

The rogue snorted. "The monastery."

"Correct." Séa tittered.

Maybe I'm reading in more to what she says than what she means, but I could swear she wanted to rub lotion on my butt, before. And, just now, suckle ... something.

After quaffing one potion and stowing the other, Ghomarck struggled to stand. Séa whisked to his side, supporting him as he found his feet. "Thank you," he said. With a snap of his fingers, another magelight appeared. The circle of illumination widened to include the forlorn, dead portal.

"Eh?" Tash's eyes darted around the many-pillared room. "Where are the bodies?"

Only gnome hats, jackets, and boots littered the floor. The yotches themselves had vanished, though a black mist curled lazily in the area. "Their matter is foreign to this plane," Ghomarck intoned, "and because no spell dictated otherwise, they have disincorporated. Ladies, let us go."

The three of them wove back through the pillars to the main passage. Séa and Tash turned left, but Ghomarck did not come. "Ahem," he said.

Owlishly, they stared at his beckoning finger. The way we came? Why?

"This way, please." He pointed the way they had come. "We are finished, here. We are going."

Séa's forehead wrinkled up. "But we didn't rescue anybody, yet."

"We are not prepared for a demon incursion," he said tartly. "This changes matters. Completely." Séa's uncomprehending expression caused him to inhale with a hiss. "Don't you agree?"

"Um," she said.

His arms waved to emphasize his rhetorical declarations. "Kneecap was wrong. Not his fault, of course, but there are no gnomes involved in the princess's kidnapping. The gnomes were yotches and this ... all this is some demonic intrigue." He stabbed a finger in Séa's direction. "You ought to know what they're capable of. If gnomish traps are worthy of respect, demonic ones are pantaloon-poopers. It would be suicide to go forward."

"Wizard's got a point," Tash said. But I'd better get paid, regardless.

"Thank you. I do, in fact." The bearded worthy bowed. "We'll fetch help from the King and return in a few days. Yes?"

"Aw, nuts," Séa said. "This trip had shaped up to be funner than I guessed it would be." Her eyes widened. "But Ghomarck, there's a princess captive! It's our duty to free her. We can't shirk our duty."

I don't give a flying feck about duty. I am duty free.

The wizard's eyebrows rose and his eyelids lowered. "We are not shirking, Lady Séa, we are strategizing. A temporary retreat maximizes the changes of success."

Séa's shoulders slowly deflated. "All right. You're the leader, master Ghomarck."

With the paladin clanking along dejectedly in the rear, they retraced their steps. The arches of the passage opened into the circular room with the dais. The paladin shuddered visibly as they crossed the dead-feeling space.

Tash's eyebrows pinched together. What could possibly cause an overoptimistic airhead like Séa to tremble, as if in fear?

Séa said, "On second thought, maybe you're right, master Ghomarck. There's something powerfully wrong, here."

Under the arch of the passage ahead of them, something moved. With a grating rumble, stone ground on stone. Ghomarck's magelight illuminated a solid block of rock as it descended to block their exit.

"No!" Tash cried out. She dove forward, but long before she arrived the block reached the floor and halted with a granitic thunk. From wall to wall, a slab of blank rock faced them.

Behind them, from the center of the circular room, boomed a disparaging guffaw. A deep voice laced with sibilant saliva bubblings resonated in the chamber. "Powerful and wrong? Sounds like me."

A/N: Ghomarck should be drawing a map as he goes.