Later that day they came upon a most unusual clearing.

It was perfectly circular, about a hundred yards across, and contained a deep hollow in the centre, the ground sloping gently downwards to form a bowl-shaped depression whose centre was about ten yards below the centre of the surrounding forest. It was obviously artificial. It was much too perfectly regular to be natural, and a small pond about thirty yards wide had formed in the centre above which a thin layer of mist lay.

There was something about that layer of mist. Something very strange. Lirenna imagined that she could almost see vague, shadowy shapes drifting within it, as though it contained some kind of internal structure.

"What is it?" said Thomas, staring in fascination. He took a step closer, to see more clearly and the others followed him, equally entranced by the strange phenomenon.

Despite her anxiety at their vulnerable situation, Lirenna found herself smiling to herself as she looked across at the human wizard, feeling a warm delight that his curiosity seemed to know no limits. To Thomas, the world was a source of never ending wonder and delight and something inside her responded with adoration, that such a person could exist in a world containing so much cynicism and selfishness. And a human as well. A race that the shae folk generally held to be ugly, graceless and stupid. Little better than shologs.

There was something about Thomas, though, that attracted her in a way that no shae man ever had. He wasn't bad looking for a human and, even though small by human standards, he was still larger and stronger than any shae man. Strong enough that, if he wanted, he could physically overpower her and do anything he wanted to her. Anything at all. She shivered with delight at the fantasy that began to unfold in her imagination. Just a fantasy, of course. It could never be anything else. Could it?

Then something made her look back at the layer of mist they were approaching. There was something about it, she suddenly decided. Something she didn't like. A voice deep inside her head was screaming at her, trying to tell her something, and she stopped for a moment to try to figure out what it was. She concentrated hard, and suddenly it was as though there'd been a blanket of fog lying over her mind, a blanket that was suddenly pulled away, allowing her to see clearly again.

She saw her friends in front of her, slowly walking down towards the pond with their eyes fixed straight ahead as if in a trance, and the layer of mist seemed to grow thicker and denser as they approached, growing both in bulk and malicious intent. With a surge of terror close to blind panic, she understood in a flash what it was and, to her later, intense shame, came close to just running away, leaving her friends to their fate. She'd actually turned her back on them and taken a few staggering steps away, her body responding instinctively to the danger before her higher brain functions could override it.

Her feelings of loyalty and friendship towards them, and in particular her growing feelings for Thomas, stopped her in her tracks before she'd gone far. She felt as though she was attached to the wizard by an unbreakably strong fishing line whose hook was firmly lodged in her heart. She could no more abandon him than she could claw her own eyes out. With a cry of anguish, therefore, she turned back and ran madly past the others towards him, now only a few feet from the water's edge and the malevolent mist. The wizard was in a deep hypnotic trance and kept walking steadily onwards like a zombie, pushing past the demi shae as though she didn't exist. Completely ignoring her every effort to snap him out of it. He stepped into the water, and the mist swirled up around his legs to engulf him.

She grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back but, small and weak though he was by human standards, he was still much bigger and stronger than the small and slender demi shae and he shrugged her off with little effort. The mist was beginning to swirl around her own ankles as well now, and she felt a strange, tingly feeling in her feet as it began feeding on her. She jumped back out of the water with a cry and watched helplessly as the others stepped past her into the mist. Thomas was completely engulfed in swirling fog now, and his skin turned grey as some vital essence was sucked out of him. He began to sag weakly.

"No!" cried Lirenna in horror and, pointing her finger, she shot a pair of firebolts into the cloud of mist. The effect was dramatic. A flash of light exploded inside it and Lirenna heard a telepathic howl of pain in her head. Its telepathic hold over the questers was broken and Shaun, who was still on the edge of the water, only knee deep in the mist, realised immediately what was happening. He drew his magic sword and slashed it through the mist several times, each time leaving a glowing trail behind it like the tail of a comet. The creature gave more howls of pain and the entire layer of mist rose out of reach of his sword, gathering itself to form a roughly spherical cloud about twenty feet across, hovering thirty feet above the ground.

Thomas collapsed into the water, too weak even to stand any more, and Matthew and the trogs had to pick him up and carry him back to the shore.

"What is that thing?" asked Matthew, staring up at it in horror.

"A Llanok," replied Lirenna. "It tried to hypnotise us, so we wouldn't be able to fight it off with magic."

"How come you weren't affected?"

"I don't know. I was thinking about something else, maybe that's why. Even so, it almost got me as well." She went over to where Diana was kneeling over Thomas's prone form and said "How is he?"

"I think he'll be okay," replied the cleric, and indeed his skin was beginning to turn back to its natural colour as his strength returned. "He seems to be coming out of it nicely. I always knew his curiosity would get the better of him one day."

Jerry looked up at the Llanok, hovering above them out of range of their spells. "We'd better get out of here quick," he said, "before..."

It was too late, though. Before the tiny nome could even finish the sentence they heard a sound and looked up to see hundreds of blue skinned kimmats standing around the rim of the hollow, having just arrived in answer to the Llanok's telepathic summons. They were a little shorter than the ones they'd seen before but they were broader across the chest and had flatter faces with lower foreheads. Members of a different tribe, clearly, maybe even a completely different sub race. They stood there for a moment, staring down at the questers, and then one of them uttered a battlecry and they charged down to attack.

Shaun pulled Thomas roughly to his feet and the questers formed a defensive circle just in time to meet the attack.

"Don't use any spells!" warned Lirenna, drawing her dagger. "We'll need them to hold off the Llanok."

"What difference does it make?" demanded Matthew, swinging his sword in a desperate attempt to hold off the blue skinned horde. "Look at the numbers of them, and there's more coming all the time!"

He was right. Even as they were fighting the first arrivals, more were appearing at the edge of the hollow and running down to join the fray. "We've had it!" the young woodsman cried. "This time we've definitely had it!"

Strangely enough, though, the kimmats didn't seem to want to kill them. Instead of trying to batter them with their clubs or impale them with their spears, they only used their weapons in self defence as they tried to disarm and overpower the questers. They want us alive, Lirenna realised. That monster must be tired of a steady diet of kimmats and Underworlders and fancies the more exotic taste of surface dwellers. The Llanok had given instructions that they were to be taken alive, and it didn't care how many of its slaves were killed in the process.

A dozen of them were already dead, lying in a mutilated heap at the questers' feet, but the rest simply stepped over them, pressing in so close that the soldiers and trogs would have no room to swing their weapons. The end was only seconds away, and the demi shae could already see it clearly. They would be overpowered, their weapons taken, forced to their knees and their arms and legs tied. The wizards would be gagged to make absolutely sure they couldn't cast any spells. Then the kimmats would step back and the Llanok would float down towards the helpless questers...

Matthew was right, their spells wouldn't make any difference against the kimmats. They might kill a few, but there were simply too many of them. The only thing their spells would do any good against was the Llanok, and it was safely out of range. With nothing to lose, therefore, she settled for an act of utter desperation. She swung the backpack off her shoulders, reached into it and pulled out the bottle of magic. Then she threw it as hard as she could at where the kimmats were clustered most densely. The fragile bottle landed intact at their feet, causing her to despair, but one of the small humanoids swung his club at it, shattering it and releasing all the magic it contained in one explosive burst.

There was a blinding flash of light, followed by streaming shafts of colour radiating out in all directions. Every kimmat within twenty feet of the explosion literally melted, the flesh streaming from their bones like water, while those just outside the fatal radius screamed piteously as their flesh bubbled and boiled, flowing downwards to leave their skulls and collar bones exposed. Lirenna saw living skeletons, their hearts beating inside their exposed rib cages, flesh dripping from their hands like hot wax, and she screamed in pure horror. She felt Diana's hands gripping her arm with painful tightness, heard the cleric crying Caroli's name over and over as figures from a fevered nightmare danced and capered before them, driven insane by what was happening to them. The questers completely forgot about the kimmats behind them, unharmed by the explosion, but that didn't matter because they'd already fled in terror.

A corona of shimmering light filled the air above the spot where the bottle of magic had broken; a cloud of pure sorceric energy. The raw material that all wizards drew upon to work their spells but concentrated a thousand times more than ever occurred in nature. It emitted a buzzing hum like that of a gigantic swarm of bees, mingling with the horrified wails of terrified kimmats, and as the questers backed carefully away some of the magic re-condensed, causing the spontaneous casting of low level spells. A pair of kimmats suddenly found themselves weightless and floated up into the sky, flailing their arms and legs wildly, while another slowly began to change, turning into a large, ugly mule, kicking and braying and running amok. Half a dozen others found themselves suddenly entangled in a rapidly growing patch of twisting vines that entangled their legs and held them fast. A cloud of green smoke appeared out of thin air, slowly dissipating in the light breeze, and a small beetle crawling around in the grass found, to its surprise, that its wing cases were now made of fine gold leaf, a trait that turned out to be transmittable to its descendants leading to the creation of a brand new species.

The questers weren't immune to these effects and Angus was hit by a spontaneously created firebolt while Jerry's robes began to glow with a bright white light, alarming him as he wondered what it was doing to his body. As soon as the initial force of the explosion had passed, though, leaving only a few lingering spell effects, the questers pulled themselves together and ran before the kimmats could recover. Despite the impressive force of the explosion, only about a quarter of them had actually been killed or maimed and the rest would soon be after them again. Lirenna looked around for the Llanok as they ran, but failed to see it anywhere. Evidently it had been blown to oblivion by the magical shockwave.

They made it to the lip of the hollow before the scattered kimmats organised themselves enough to give chase once more. They ran desperately, as fast as they could, and the soldiers cursed the weight of their armour while the kimmats, unhindered by clothing, gained rapidly on them. They were still doomed, but at least the questers had taken a Llanok with them and Lirenna found that the thought gave her great satisfaction. Also, their end would now be a quick, clean one when the kimmats caught them. Far better than a slow, suffocating death inside an ancient, alien creature of gas. One blow from a club and it would all be over. Lirenna found that she had no regrets at all, and felt no fear at the imminence of her death.

Then she spotted the remains of a low brick building some distance away among the trees. It took some time for it to register on her brain, and they'd passed it before the full import of it dawned on her. "The ruins!" she gasped gratefully. "The ruins, off to our left!"

She grabbed Diana's arm and steered her in that direction, the others following. The kimmats gained considerably on them as they angled across, trying but not quite succeeding in cutting them off, but by then they were among the ruined remains of a small city; Agglemonian by the look of it. They headed towards the largest remaining building, hoping to barricade themselves inside. Its walls were more or less intact, although rotting and vine covered, and as soon as they were all through the open doorway Thomas cast his shield spell across it to prevent the kimmats from following them in. Shaun, Matthew and the trogs ran over to the open windows to prevent them from getting in that way instead.

"Look for another way out, quick!" called out Thomas to Jerry and the women. "I can't keep this up long."

There was only one other doorway into the rest of the building and the three of them dashed through it to search the ground floor. They found themselves in a long corridor. At one end, twenty feet or so away from them, was another open doorway heavily overgrown with creepers and vines which the kimmats were struggling to fight their way through, so they went the other way past other doorways and intersecting corridors. They moved fast, splitting up to search the building faster, and a moment later she heard Jerry crying out that he'd found something. She turned and hurried back the way she'd come

She arrived at the same time as Jerry. "This way, quick!" the tiny nome cried.

"I can't leave the doorway," cried back Thomas, knowing that the shield would fail in another minute or so anyway. "They'll be through, right behind me."

"No they won't," replied the demi shae, and coming up to stand beside him she cast a sleep spell through the shield at the nearest kimmats. Five of them fell unconscious, blocking the doorway as effectively as the shield had done, and then the questers fled the room before the rest could clear the obstruction and scramble through the windows.

"They must have the building completely surrounded by now," said Shaun. "There's no way out!"

"Yes there is," replied Jerry. "We found it, the way back to the surface!"

"But that's impossible," protested the soldier. "We're nowhere near a pillar, there's nothing but empty cavern above us."

"You'll see," promised the nome. "Come on!"

He led them through doors and along corridors until they came to a doorway still complete with a thick, strong wooden door. They dashed through and had no sooner slammed it shut and thrown the bolt before they heard kimmats thumping against it on the other side.

"That'll hold 'em for a while," said Shaun, gasping for breath. "Now what?"

"Here, look!" said Jerry enthusiastically, indicating another door in the opposite wall. It was also closed, but unlike the first door it was made of steel, devoid of any trace of rust or any apparent means to open it. It looked quite capable of withstanding any possible non-magical assault indefinitely and they spent several futile minutes trying to get it open, all in vain.

"What is it, anyway?" demanded Matthew above the heavy thuds of kimmats trying to open the first door.

"The entrance to a teleportation cubicle," said Lirenna. "We've only got to get inside and we'll be instantly teleported back up to the surface."

"Except that it's locked from the inside," cried Jerry in frustration. "The Agglemonians locked it behind them when they left."

"There must be some way to open it!" protested Matthew.

"Not necessarily," pointed out Shaun. "They didn't want kimmats following them up to the surface, did they?" Behind him, the door was beginning to splinter under the relentless assault.

"There might be a way," mused Thomas. He pulled a linked pair of hand carved wooden rings out of a pouch, hurriedly cast a spell, and soon the shimmering, barely visible form of an invisible servant materialised in the air in front of him.

"Open this door!" he commanded, and the magical construct vanished, going through the door to attack it from the other side. "I'm hoping they made provision for someone being left behind down here," he explained. "Shaun's right, they didn't want kimmats following them through, so they needed some method of opening the door that was only available to surface dwellers and not to Underworlders. The most obvious candidate is magic. All it needs is a small lever on the other side, light enough to be pulled by an invisible servant..."

Even as he spoke there was a click and the steel door swung open. They dashed through just as the wooden door finally gave way and the kimmats poured in. The nearest blue skinned humanoid sprinted for the steel door, but didn't quite make it as Shaun, the last one through, pulled it shut behind him.

To be continued.

Coming soon, the next volumes in The Chronicles of Tharia.

The Fallen World

Lost and alone, disheartened by failure and wanting only to go home, Thomas Gown and his companions face the darkest hour of their lives when they stumble across a remnant of the once mighty Agglemonian Empire. There they make a stunning discovery that could mean the salvation of the world if only they can get word to the desperate, embattled armies of civilization, but instead they face a lifetime of crippling servitude, hopeless prisoners of the insane tyrant, Lord Basil Konnen...

The Caverns of Kronos

Thomas Gown and his companions have escaped from captivity, but only by fleeing deeper into the unknown, to face new dangers. They are carrying a secret that could save the world, though, and they have a duty to take it to those who can make use of it, but to do that they must return to the city of Kronosia, to go back among those from whom they have only just escaped...

The Scrolls of Skava

The fate of the world hangs in the balance. Belthar faces imminent defeat, and if the empire falls there will be nothing left to oppose the armies of darkness. One hope remains, one last all or nothing gamble, but for it to succeed the heroes of civilization have to find a way to team up with their bitterest enemies, creatures every bit as evil as the Bone Prince but whose existence is also threatened by the undead hordes. Side by side, they must march together into the very heart of the Shadow...