make out in the horrible mist. Without pausing for thought, he scrabbled forward at the best speed he could, hoping to emerge from the acidic fog before it burned the flesh from his face.
Goddess, what a mess! he thought, slashing and cleaving at the thick tendrils of fog with Splitter.
The beholder had been waiting for them to resort to magic to ascend the shaft, and it had scoured the company with every spell at its command.
"The devils are coming up after us!" Jezz shouted from somewhere beyond the burning fog. "Finish this thing quickly so that we can get what we came for and leave!"
Finish it quickly, Ryld thought with a grimace. That's a novel idea.
He surged forward and suddenly found himself free of the deadly, clinging fog. No one else stood nearby, though he could hear his compan-ions battling in the mists behind him.
"Damnation!" he muttered.
Clear of the unnatural fog, it was apparent that the whole floor of the tower had once been a royally appointed suite of rooms. A thick red haze of dust on the floor might have once been a plush carpet, and the walls were finished in patterns of orange and gold tile to form the image of a surface forest with its normally green leaves for some reason rendered in reds, oranges, and yellows. Ryld coughed, his eyes streaming from contact with the noxious fumes. Evidently he'd blundered through an archway into a differ-ent chamber, but another doorway led out of the room on the far side.
"Where in all the screaming hells am I?"
Something screeched in rage ahead, and the room beyond the arch flared brightly with magical fire. Ryld hefted Splitter and dashed into the next room, right into the middle of a fierce skirmish.
Danifae and Jezz battled against a pair of lean, scaly devils almost ten feet tall, horrible fiends with huge wings who fought with razor-sharp scourges and barbed tails that dripped with green venom. Several lesser devils hissed and surged behind the two already in the room, pressing for-ward and looking for a chance to join the fight.
"The devils are upon us!" Jezz cried.
The Jaelre fought with a curved knife in one hand, and a deadly white spell-flame wreathing the other. One of the big devils sprang at Jezz and hammered its iron chains past the Jaelre's defenses, spinning the surface drow to the floor. The creature stooped over the dazed Jaelre and reached for his throat.
Ryld glided forward, feinted high to bring the devil's weapon up to guard its face, and crouched low to take off its leg at the knee. The huge fiend roared in pain and toppled, its wings fluttering awkwardly as black blood spurted from the horrible wound. Ryld moved in close and reversed his grip on Splitter to finish the monster on the ground, but it replied with a flurry of slashing claws and snapping teeth, while lashing its barbed tail at him so quickly that only the stoutness of his dwarven breastplate saved him from being spitted on the wounded devil's sting.
Ryld parried furiously, battling for his life, as yet moredevils - a group composed of man-sized creatures who were armed with knifelike barbs jutting from their scaly bodies - swarmed closer, their fanged faces twisted in hellish glee.
"Dark elves to feast on!" they gloated. "Drow hearts to eat!"
"We've got to get out of here!" Danifae cried. "We can't hold them!"
She whirled her morningstar with skill and strength, dueling the other big devil and a pair of the smaller ones whosnatched at her from her flanks.
"There's no place to go," Ryld snapped. "The beholder's behind us!"
He could feel deadly spells flying in the chamber behind him, the re-verberations of thunderbolts and the soul-searing chill of slaying spells that made his flesh crawl.
This isn't working, he thought. We're split in two, fighting two dan-gerous enemies.
They needed to regroup and focus on one foe or the other, or aban-don the field all together and try again later. Presuming, of course, that the denizens of Myth Drannor allowed them to retreat at all. More than likely, they'd all die here, surrounded and overwhelmed by endless hordes of blood-thirsty demons. Quenthel and Valas were likely dead already.
Enough, Ryld snarled to himself. We didn't come all this way to be defeated here!
He redoubled his attack, stepped inside the big devil's reach, and drove Splitters point through the creature's scaly neck. It flailed violently at him, but it was dying, and its convulsions gouged stone and clawed at the air