We slogged out of the mess that I’d created in the intersection. We’d avoided the inconvenience of being riddled with hundreds of darts, probably poisoned, but my companions were more upset about the gritty mud sticking to their pretty clothes than the pain and death that I had deprived them of.

Left, right or straight ahead. We went left, which was fine by me. FINE. Sly led, as he is prone to do. It wasn’t that long ago that he might as well have walked backward, so blunt were his skills of perception and stealth, but he had come a lone way in a short time. He was almost as quiet as an elf when he walked now, and little escaped his probing eyes. The corridor went a short distance and then cornered to the right. There was a door of iron another twenty feet up.

"Door," Sly whispered back. It was a relief when he identified what had plainly baffled me before he named it. So that was what a door looked like. There was a subtle weave on the door. A few seconds of study revealed the nature of the magic. "Illusion spell on the door," I said, bored. Illusions, like evocations and enchantments are begger’s magic, and I could not bring myself to waste time trying to understand it. An illusionist once observed that, if I were so smart, then why could I not easily grasp a form of magic that was so clearly inferior? I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Ciante. I would as soon become a scholar of the olfactory properties of fecal matter as devote even one additional hour of my life trying to create a fake shadow of something I could conjure in fact. 

A mouth of cartoonish proportions formed on the surface of the door as Sly approached it. "Friend or Foe, which do you fight?" the troll-like pie hole quipped. I sighed. The thing spoke in drow, but there was nothing in our experiences that made this too-clever trick relevant or even mildly entertaining. We had a fifty percent chance of getting the right answer, assuming the right answer wasn’t something else, and right or wrong, we wouldn’t have learned anything either way. At that moment, I was more ready to hold a loaded fireball to Arliss’s head and force him to plane shift us back to Mythgar than I’d been since we’d arrived in this Gods forsaken dump.

"This is what you have to look forward to, you know," nattered the ever-present voice in my head, "You’ll slay all the dragons and conquer all the kingdoms and then spend the next millenium thinking up silly traps for young adventurers to pit themselves against, never stopping to consider that it would take a miracle for one in a thousand to even follow the logic of your uninspired puns and riddles."

"If you ever speak again, I’m going to find an exorcist and sell your soul to the local priest of Llolth," I replied, half considering doing exactly that. Of course I would be obliged to kill that priest, them being a dark elf who channeled the divine power of spider queen herself, which would mean I would have to find another priest of Llolth… well it would turn into a vicious cycle, and the thought of it made me want to sit down and sleep. Better to just put up with the until death did us part, which if I was lucky could happen at any time.

"Foe!" squealed Marqes like a little school girl with a severe glandular problem, though it was just as well since there was no way we were going to noodle it out. I’d stepped back just in time as a cloud of noxious and probably poisonous gas filled the hall around the door. Marqes got a snoot full of the stuff, but the Gods love fools and dwarves and make the stout hairballs durable to survive their own lack of judgement.

The door opened into a wide room no more than forty feet deep. The stonework was adequate but not fancy, and an inch of dust layered the floor. We stood on the left end of the room, and there were three doors opposite–left, right and middle. Two desicated giants stood by the flanking door. They must have stood there for hundreds of years, awaiting this moment. They swung into action.

"BEGONE!" Arliss yelled, bandying his holy backscratcher at one of the giants. One turned a fled to the far corner. Nice. The other charged as I cast haste upon the group. Elijah met the filthy creature and began his butcher’s trade on it. Bones splintered and chunks of flesh fell writhing to the floor as the elf’s mighty hammer took its toll. Of course, the mindless dead do not give up the fight easily, and this one was no exception.

There was little more I could contribute to this hack and slashery, so I cast protection from evil upon myself. I had no idea what the punchline might be to this particular joke, and wanted to be prepared to repel any additional boarders to my already overcrowded mind. That would be all I’d need–a lich or a vampire cohabitated in my head with Echi. I’d have to trance all day, every day.

Elijah finished the giant with Marqes help, then they both ran across the room and beat the other one down quickly. It wasn’t sporting, but then we don’t think much about fair fights anymore. Marqes, his blood up, ran around opening doors without taking advantage of Sly’s professional services. He got gassed a time or two, but I think he’s gotten to the point that he likes it. He didn’t die, which is perhaps more ironic than if he had. I have often heard it said that the Gods’ sense of humor is so subtle as to appear arbitrary to a mortal. That sounds like a likely excuse.

The middle door on the opposite wall wouldn’t open, so Elijah used an old adventurer’s technique called "bashing it off its hinges" to get past it. Beyond was a large bedchamber with plenty of good loot in it. We stuffed our pockets and made a mental note to pick up the bigger bits on the return trip. A hallway led out of the far end of the room.

A door at the end of it had some magic on it, but just a trace. I warned Sly. There was engraving in the stone headstone above the door. In drow, it said "By Sword or By Will You Will Fail". Very good then. Sly found a trap on the door and figured out a way to disable it by slipping a thin metal blade into the crack. He unlocked the lock and opened the door, then turned to accept our congratulations for his impressive display of skilled robbery. An arrow came from the space beyond and skewered his leg. He danced about cursing on his one good leg in his heavily accented common. 

I spied drow through the open door, and undead by the look of them. I dumped a web, perhaps a bit too close as the fringes caught Sly up somewhat. That tangled him and kept him still long enough for Arliss to come to the fore and snap the arrow of, drawing the splintered end back through the leg. Sly howled another, even more-colorful string of invective. A moment later, the wound was closed and our swarthy friend was shaken, but whole.

Elijah, having waiting out Sly’s healing with little patience, blasted the web with a jet of flame. The whole mess went up with a roar, leaving an acrid stench in the air. Our adversaries awaited us, slightly singed but ready to rumble. One of them seemed to be a writing mass of bugs. Marqes cut loose with a dazzling beam of light that struck the creature in its chest. It responded with a belch of bugs that swarmed over Marqes and Elijah. I hit the thing with unluck, but something about its composition allowed it to shrug the potent magic off.

They mixed it up. Soon everyone was out of position and doing it completely wrong. I cast dimension step on Arliss, Sly and Elijah to give them an opportunity to correct their tactical blunders. They improved the situation somewhat, but they continued to fight as individuals, focusing on separate targets and dragging the battle out. Bug man tried to breath his buggies on me, but I jaunted out of the way. Getting hurt is not my specialty.

Our boys were taking a lot of damage. They were handing it out too, but Arliss had all he could do to keep them from dropping. Finally, I managed to blind the undead drow fighter. Arliss finally caught his breath and tried to turn the bug man, but it had no effect on him and the divine power found the blind fight instead. He stumbled off in the opposite direction, unseeing. I threw an acid ball at the drow archer, which missed by drew his attention. He fired at me so I triggered my stoneskin contingency from Heart of Stone.

Arliss pulsed, which heals us as you know, but also causes damage to undead. One of the undead drow was so battered that the pulse finished him, follow soon after by Elijah dealing a massive hit to the archer who also crumbled. Bug guy was still in the fight though, and nearly killed Sly with his buggie breath. The fight continued to drag on. Our boys were having rotten luck and bug man couldn’t seem to miss. Finally, with a fiery ray inspired by Saint Cuthbert, Marqes laid him low. We all slumped to the floor exhausted.

Several long minute later, we picked ourself up and went to see what kind of droppings our foes had dropped. Lots of fun stuff for the kill-billys but nothing for the humble wizard. Yawn.

In the room beyond was a fascinating site. Nine pillers were arrayed in a grid across the floor of a medium-sized vault. Each was about four feet high, and upon each rested an ornate box of glass and metal. In the glass boxes lay books. Nine books in nine boxes. All of the boxes were lousy with magic. I spent the next two hours studying the weave of the various books and boxes. To the last, the books were powerful magic, worthy of some sacrifice to liberate. We talked about it for some time. I pointed out that the best dispelling magic that either Arliss or I had was wholly inadequate to overcome the eldritch spells woven on the boxes by some ancient caster of great power. It would be a job for Sly’s skills, not mine. He would have to be greatly fortied with magic to survive it, most likely, so we resigned ourselves to hours of idle rest in order for Arliss and I to recoup our lost magic.