Monday, August 18

92. (The Best Damn Thieves: Chapter Three)

Marcus and Fergy had just finished failing to dust each other off when an explosive crack tore through the air, and something smashed into one of the closer tree-branches on the other side of the fire, shattering it. The pair immediately ducked reflexively, quickly looking around--and towards the tower's entrance, where a stubby figure was standing on the front steps, pointing a long instrument of some kind at them.

"Oy, ye lot," the figure shouted, its mouth hidden in a thick, white beard. "Hands in th' air, step 'way from each other, ye hear? That was jest a warnin' shot, next one en't gonna be."

Fergy raised her hands, taking a step away from her husband, but Marcus just stood there, glaring incredulously at their attacker. "Is that a musket?!" he asked, a huge grin growing on his face. "Are you threatening us with a musket?"

"Bloody 'ell lad, ye got some cheek, don' ye?"

Marcus laughed, walking calmly towards the short man. "Can you blame me, mate? That thing's about as dangerous as a kitten."

"Oh aye?!"

"Oh, aye," Marcus repeated. He stopped walking, crossing his hands over his chest. "Go on then, shoot me."

Fergy took half a step towards him; "Marcus, baby--"

"Just trust me, love."

"Fine lad, ye asked for it!" The short man--a dwarf, Marcus could see by then--took aim down the shaft of his musket. "Ye sure?"

"I'm sure."

"This is a stupid plan," Fergy muttered.

A heavy silence fell over the ashy clearing, and all Fergy could hear was her own heart beating. She could just imagine in in her head--the musket ball striking Marcus in the head with the force it had shattered that branch with, splattering his brains all over the place. She closed her eyes, unable to watch.

"Baaaaaaagh!" the dwarf shouted, shouldering his weapon. "C'mon then, Ah'll get ye some vittles." And with that, he turned and stomped back into the tower, grumbling.

Fergy opened his eyes, dropping her hands to her sides. "What the hell?"

Marcus grinned at her. "He hadn't loaded in a second shot, and that takes bloody forever. Hungry?"

She let out a little half-hearted laugh. "Quite." Together, the two closed the distance between themselves and the entrance to the tower, and slipped inside.

Once they were inside, both of them were so distracted by the structure's interior that the apple the dwarf tossed at Marcus caught him in the chest. He clumsily caught it and relayed it back to Fergy, then caught the dwarf's second throw and took a big bite. The room they were standing in was fairly barren, save a few barrels and crates on the far side, and clearly spanned the entire base of the tower. The ceiling, some thirty feet up, only covered half of the room; the other half was open, apparently, all the way to the top of the tower. From where Fergy was standing, she could see the different floors of the tower above her, as if she were looking at a cross-section of the structure. The third and fifth floors were lit, while the one directly above them and the fourth were darkened. There were no stairs leading up from the ground floor, and none connecting the other floors that Fergy could see.

"What... exactly is this place?" she asked, munching idly on her apple and turning her eyes to the dwarf. "And... why does this apple taste like stale bread?"

"'Ell if I know, lass," the stumpy man replied, shrugging his broad shoulders. "Sorc'ress lives up there, flits aboot some'ow without stairs, I reckon. Don' ask me 'ow it works, I en't got th' slightest." he crunched on his own apple, grimacing at the taste of it. "Conjured food--reach int' the barrel an' ye can pull out jest aboot whatever ye want, but no matter what ye pull out it all tastes like last week's bread."

"That's... very strange," Marcus muttered.

"Oh, en't jest strange, 'tis barkin' mad!" The dwarf threw his arms in the air and stomped over to Fergy so he could see up the empty half of the tower. "Ye hear that, ye daft bitch! Ye'r barkin' mad!" He hurled his apple upwards, but missed his angle and it fell back to the ground a few feet away, splattering.

A head, with long black hair, poked out from the top floor, and a moment later, words floated down in response: "Excelsior! Panda tunic rocking sky!" The head vanished and silence fell over the trio at the bottom.

"Baagh!" the dwarf groaned. "Don' pay that useless thing a fig o' attention. She's always like that--utter gibberish. Been tryin' t' get 'er t' help me get the hell out o' this damn wood, but she won' even come down here."

While he was talking, Fergy was eying the wall, and without a word to interrupt him she walked across the room and started shoving a crate across the stone floor.

Marcus watched her nonchalantly. "Going climbing?"

His wife just grunted, then said, "If I can get a little higher up, yeah, the stonework looks climbable. Just gotta push this really heavy, bulky crate over there and it shouldn't be hard. Really heavy. Pushing it all on my own."

Her husband grinned. "You want some help?"

"A little late now, you think?" Fergy shot back, rolling her eyes; a second later the crate thunked dully against the wall, and the woman climbed on top of it. A second later she was clinging to the wall like a spider, working her way towards the level directly above them.

Down below, the two men watched her; the dwarf let out an impressed whistle. "Nimble lass, en't she?"

"That's my wife," the other muttered. "I'm Marcus, by the way. She's Fergy."

The dwarf shook his hand eagerly. "Brasskicker."

Marcus nearly spit out his bite of stale-bread apple, choking back a laugh. "Seriously?"

"Cross me heart."

"You pick that name yourself?" Fergy called down, laughing.

Brasskicker chuckled, walking over to try and get a look at the floor above. "Me pa... he had high hopes fer me. If'n it weren' for me ma, I'd pro'lly jes' be 'Asskicker'. She didn' think it was a proper dwarf name without the metal in it, so the two o' em came t' a compromise, or so they tell me. I do me best t' live up to the name."

"I'll bet you do." Marcus patted him on the shoulder, watching his wife climb. A moment later, Fergy vanished into the level above, and Marcus and Brasskicker craned their necks in vain to try and get a look. "So," the big man said, "Does that sorceress have an airship or something we can ride out of here on?"

"Hell if I know, lad." The dwarf scratched his beard thoughtfully. "En't ever seen anythin' but this room, never seen 'er flyin' in or out on one, that's fer sure. Mebbe she's got one tucked away up there, that lass o' yers'll be the first t' know. Ye lot come in on one?"

Marcus nodded, taking another visual survey of the room. "Forced landing a few miles from here. It's wasted, though, torn apart by the woods, so even if we stood a chance of getting through the trees, it wouldn't matter."

"Queen o' th' fores'?"

"The lackey, actually--"

"Aye, the creepy bugger. Gave me the willies, that 'un did."

"Yeah, I sorta figured you'd say something like that. What the hell are you doing out here, anyways?"

"Jus' passin' through." Brasskicker shrugged and waddled over to the food bucket, pulling out what looked like a leg of mutton. As he munched on it, he continued, "Makin' me way north o' here. Was runnin' a'hind schedule, so I figured I'd cut through these woods. Pah, that came back an' bit me in the ass, didn' it?" He let out a loud guffaw and tossed the conjured food over his shoulder. "Ran into that woody bassard, then hoofed it here when 'e tried t'... ugh, I don' even wanna talk aboot it. Ye?"

"Queen tried to possess my wife. It didn't take." Marcus frowned, thinking about that.

"It didn' take? Why not?"

"Search me, I've got no idea. Neither does she. Neither did the queen."

Up above, the woman in question squatted on floor, stretching her arms over her head languidly. She was in pretty good shape, and scaling the wall hadn't been that difficult, but her muscles burned from the strain nonetheless. She stood up and surveyed the room around her, stretching her legs as she did so. It was mostly dark, but she could see well enough from the torchlight below. She appeared to be in a library of sorts--there were a lot of books, but they seemed to lack any kind of organization. Some were on shelves, other were stacked on top of tables, and still others were just scattered on the floor. On the far side of the room, a spiraling metal staircase led up to the level above; Fergy headed for it, careful not to step on any of the tomes.

She was about to mount the steps when a shadow across them moved, and immediately the woman dropped into a crouch and slipped a pair of daggers out of her belt; in the same motion she slipped silently backwards and behind a table, hiding, ready, holding her breath.

She crouched there for a minute or two before peeking back over the pile of books on top of her hiding place, brows furrowed. Sitting a few steps from the bottom of the spiral, at about eye level, was a small black cat. It regarded her coolly, its head tilted just slightly one side.

"Well," Fergy said, standing up, "I guess the sorceress isn't the only one hiding up here--or maybe she is." She slipped the daggers back into her belt and curtsied quickly, keeping a fair distance from the animal. "A pleasure to meet you, m'lady sorceress. That is one hell of a shape-shift."

The cat just stared at her, and let out a little "Mew."

"I hope you don't mind me climbing up here. We're kind of in a bit of a snafu down below--I'll bet you've met the queen of the forest, right? Well, her little goon tore our airship to bits, and we're looking for a way out of these woods--and, since she's taken a liking to me, sanctuary until we can skidaddle."

The cat continued to stare at her.

"You're just a cat, aren't you?"

"Mew." The cat padded silently down the stairs and closed the short distance separating them, then rubbed against Fergy's legs amiably.

"Just a cat... without a tail. Poor thing, what happened to it?" She reached down to scratch it between its ears, then picked it up and held it against her chest. The cat curled up into a ball and rubbed its head against her chin. "Sweet thing. Let's go find your lady mistress, yeah?"

Holding the cat with one hand, Fergy mounted the spiral staircase, her other hand on the curving banister. The second story up was much like the first, in that it was messy and disorganized; instead of books, however, its shelves, tables, and floor were lined with glass jars, each full of some kind of clear fluid, floating in which were various bits and pieces of--well, for the most part, Fergy wasn't sure what they were bits and pieces of. As she walked idly through the room, which like the two rooms below it took up the entire half-level of the tower, she saw claws, plants, scales, rocks, crystals--and, seeming to stick out to her specifically, what looked like a long, black worm, curled into a spiral in the clear solution.

"Well, I guess now we know what happened to your tail, fella," she muttered, scratching behind the cat's neck, her lips twisting into a little frown. The cat just purred against her breasts, pleased with the attention she was giving it.

The entire room was softly lit with a bright, natural light. At first, Fergy thought it was coming from the jars themselves, as there were no windows, but soon she realized it was coming from another source, a flat-looking disc of light just off the center of the room, hanging vertically in mid-air. Looking at it made her head hurt; Fergy dismissed it as some random magical do-dad, something she probably wouldn't be able to wrap her mind around even were it explained to her, and continued up the stairs.

The floor above was utterly empty, and covered in dust, which was marked with lines of paw prints.

The top floor was also empty--or nearly so. In the center of the room stood another strange light source, this one a lantern hanging from a curved pole. The lantern was emitting a soft glow that shifted from blue to green, and back again, as she watched it.

"Hello?" she called out. "M'lady sorceress? The hell did she go?" There hadn't exactly been a lot of places to hide that Fergy had seen on her way up the tower--she would have seen someone under any of the tables, and all of the bookshelves and cabinets had been flush against the wall. She set the cat down and walked around the edge of the room, towards the empty space on the other side, keeping a fair distance away from the odd lantern. She leaned out over the ledge carefully, and spotted Marcus and Brasskicker on the ground level.

"Any news from down below?" she called out, waving a hand to get their attention.

Marcus looked up and grinned; a moment later, his voice floated up to her: "We pulled a keg out of the barrel of tasteless food, but--surprise!--it tastes like bread. Worse, it's not getting us drunk."

"A crime, if'n I ever heard o' one!" the dwarf shouted. "Oughtta string th' daffy lass up fer it."

There was a noise behind Fergy, but when she turned around, the room was still empty, save for the black cat, which looked like it might be having a spasm or a seizure of some kind. She frowned and leaned back over the drop; "Have to find her first, I haven't seen her anywhere. Hang out down there, I'll get back to you. See if I can find some rope or something."

"Aye."

Turning back to the cat, Fergy walked across the semicircular room and kneeled down next to it, watching its odd movements. "What's gotten into you, friend?" she whispered; then, reached out and grabbed a fistful of air; the air attempted to pull away, but Fergy held on tight, then pressed it up against the wall before taking two quick steps back and raising her empty hands. "Drop the invisibility, m'lady sorceress, I'm not here to hurt you. You know I know you're there now--can we talk?"

The space of nothing next to the cat shimmered, and suddenly a young woman with long black hair was standing there; the cat was rubbing up against her legs, purring. "Treebranch moonlily," the sorceress muttered, glaring at the animal.

Fergy just stared at her. "I have no idea what that means." She dug around in her bag, then held out small pouch of cloth, which was tied shut with a bit of purple ribbon. "Here, you can have this, as a sort of peace offering, I guess."

The sorceress eyed her warily, her brows forming a sharp V shape. She looked twenty, twenty-one, and exceptionally pretty--but being a magic-user, that didn't exactly come as a surprise. Her robes were thick and well-decorated, with a golden insignia attached above one of the girl's breasts. "Corsair grass plains..."

"I don't know what that means, just take the bloody chocolate!"

"... Crackers?" The sorceress' eyes went wide and she snatched the little pouch up, slim fingers yanking it open viciously. Inside were several small squares of the sweet, brown substance. The sorceress immediately popped several in her mouth, and leaned up against the wall, eyes closed, savoring it.

"I figured you might be a little tired of the stale bread downstairs. Do you have a name?"

"Evergreen rats plank sky."

Fergy just let out a sigh. "I officially hate this job. Okay. Fine. No words."

"Juniper midni--"

"Just stop!" Fergy threw her arms in the air. "Don't talk. Yes or no--just nod, or shake your head. Don't speak. Okay?"

The girl nodded.

"Okay, good, you can understand me."

She nodded again.

"Are you the mistress of this tower?"

And again, a nod. She was chewing on another square of chocolate.

"Have you met the wood nymphs outside?"

Another nod, this time more vigorously.

"Have they trapped you here?"

This time, the sorceress shook her head.

Fergy frowned, confused at that. "Then why are you here, in this god-forsaken place? No--wait! Don't answer that--"

But the girl only held up a hand, her pointer finger extended. She quickly slipped over to the spiral staircase and beckoned Fergy to follow, before vanishing down it. Fergy found the sorceress on the floor full of books, shoving several around, searching, until she found the volume she was looking for. Grinning, she held it up for Fergy to read the title:

On Behavior of and interaction with Magical Creatures; vol. Seven: Nymphs of the Wood, Water, and Sky.

Fergy put a hand over her own mouth and let out a sigh. "You have got to be kidding me. You're here to study them?!" She noticed, then, that several of the tomes scattered about the room were marked with the same insignia as the mage's robes.

The younger girl nodded vigorously.

"How did you get out here, then?"

The sorceress held up a hand, forming a circle with her pointer finger and her thumb. She stuck the opposite pointer through the ring and wiggled it around.

"I don't understand."

The sorceress repeated the gesture, a frustrated look on her face. "Compound eloquence!" she shouted, clearly annoyed.

"Okay, new subject--what the hell happened to your... to you?"

The sorceress let out a little huff, dropping her arms to her sides. She glared at Fergy for a moment, then walked past her to a bookshelf against the wall. Regarding it for a moment, she selected a tome from one of the middle shelves and laid it out on a relatively-clear table. She opened it up to the middle and pointed at it, looking at Fergy.

Fergy looked at the page in question, but, "I can't understand any of that--I've never even seen that language written down before."

The girl nodded repeatedly. Then, she pointed at the page again and shrugged melodramatically and pointed at herself. After that, she wiggled her fingers at the book--and then slapped the page with her palm, formed a fist, and thrust the fist in her own face, opening it up and wiggling her fingers again. With this last motion, she made a little "pssssh" sound with her mouth.

"Oh, wow, that is unfortunate," Fergy replied. "Your translation spell backfired and hit you in the face--so, if what little I know about magic is true, the only person who can... fix it is... you. So... why haven't you fixed it?"

Looking impatient, the sorceress pointed at her mouth and rolled her eyes.

"The... fix is a verbal spell. Amazing--someone with worse luck than ours!" Fergy couldn't help but grin. "So are you just screwed for life, or what?"

The sorceress pointed at her mouth again and wiggled her fingers, then spread her palms apart; then, she pointed at herself, and placed her palms much closer together. "Apricot snowfall..."

"You need a more skilled magic-user."

The girl nodded.

"Have you tried writing? This pantomime garbage is going to get tiring fast."

The girl nodded again, and found a third book to show Fergy; this ones pages were blank for the most part, but at the front of the book was what looked like utter gibberish--random words with no apparent relation, written in lines as if they were actual sentences.

"Okay, look. I think I can help you out here, would you like that?"

The girl nodded.

"Do you have a way to leave the tower other than going through the forest?"

Another nod--and at almost the same instant, a thunderous impact rocked the tower; Fergy and the sorceress leaned against tables to steady themselves, and were suddenly bathed in a shaft of sunlight. Down below, they could hear Marcus and Brasskicker shouting and cursing. The far wall of the tower now had a massive hole in it. Peering down over the ledge, Fergy could see a large boulder down below.

Marcus looked up at her; she could just barely make out a redness on the side of his face. Blood, probably. "I think your green lady-friend outside is tired of waiting on us to come out," he called up. "And she smashed our keg."

The sorceress was suddenly beside her, looking down at the men below; then, a look of confusion came across her face and she turned her gaze to Fergy and said, "Thesis horseback arrogant grasslands?" Her tone was as bewildered as her expression, but it was pretty clear what she was asking.

"I may have set the queen nymph on fire before we came here."

"Quantum philandry?!"

"I had a good reason!"

Down below, Marcus examined the boulder, and the hole it had made. He blinked and wiped the side of his face against his shoulder, staining his jacket with blood. Best he could tell, a bit of shrapnel from the shattered wall--the same kind of shrapnel that was all over the floor now--had caught him in the temple. It wasn't a serious wound, but like most head wounds, it was bleeding profusely. The big man was already feeling a little light-headed, and was trying to keep himself focused.

He managed to catch a glimpse of the second boulder through the hole the first one left, and just barely had enough time to shout "Incoming!" before it hit the side of the structure. The impact shook the tower again, but the wall held somehow, and outside he heard the muffled thud of the boulder landing in the ashes.

Brasskicker was at the doorway, shouting madly; "Ye'll 'ave to do better'n that, ye old bag!"

"Brasskicker," Marcus said calmly, "Come take a look at this. There's something up with this rock." There were several odd depressions in the boulder, almost like scraping, and strange cracks scored the surface. The dwarf hobbled over, and as he examined the boulder Marcus could hear Fergy and the sorceress upstairs, arguing. Or at least, that's what Fergy's half of the conversation sounded like--the other woman's words didn't make any sense to him. It sounded like, somehow, she and his wife had come to some sort of verbal understanding.

"Ye hear that?" Brasskicker murmured.

"What, them?"

The dwarf shook his head, leaning down close to the boulder. "Ne'er been in a dwarven city, have ye? No fire, no light, gotta have good hearin'."

Marcus just stared at him. "Why no fire?"

"T'dangerous--something goes up, fire sucks all the air out--jes' trust me on this, lad, en't really got time t'explain, ye know?" he interrupted himself inpatiently, "I got pretty damn good hearin', and there's somethin' movin' 'round in there."

"I think we should probably move away from it."

"Ye think we should prolly move away from it?!" Brasskicker shouted. "Ye think so, do ye?! Well screw that!" The dwarf leaned down and threw his shoulder against the boulder, rolling it towards the door; as he did so bits of the rock started to break out and fall to the floor. It looked like an egg hatching.

"Shit," Marcus muttered, moving to help Brasskicker. "Queen's more devious than I figured."

"No kiddin', lad," the dwarf replied, giving the boulder one last shove out the door; as he slammed it shut, Marcus caught a glimpse of whatever was stored inside as it "hatched"--long, sinewy vines, which seemed to be growing larger by the second.

"We might just be well and truly screwed," he muttered, vaguely amazed.

"Best I can tell, lad, that wall o' fire out there en't just yer normal fire," the dwarf said, looking upwards into the higher areas of the tower. "'Tis a magic shield o' some kind. Queen's not gonna have a lot o' power in here, and we know she cannae cross it 'erself."

"She's throwing over those things, whatever they are," Marcus said, continuing the dwarf's line of thinking, "Hoping to hit us, maybe?"

"Mebbe." Brasskicker brushed himself off. "Thing had plenty o' time to grab me, didn' do snot." He tried to peek through a crack in the door, probably split open by the impact of the attack. "Jes' sittin' there now," he said after a moment. "But gettin' bigger. Weird. Y'ougthta tell yer lass t' get a move on with wha'ever plan they got goin' on up there, aye?"

"Aye." Marcus looked up into the tower again, trying to figure out which floor Fergy was on now. He started to shout for her when a third impact rocked the tower, this one higher up. He could hear the boulder tumbling down the side of the structure--then nothing, the noise stopped. The tell-tale sound of the boulder hitting bottom never came.

"Oy, lad." Brasskicker was still peeking out the door. "Bloody thing's lookin' at me. Friggin' eyeballs on it."

"Oh, well, that's just fantastic, isn't it? Queen of the forest's taking a peek. Oy! Fergy, love! We need to get a move on!"

Fergy's head appeared two floors above the bottom. "Look," she called down, "I think we've got a thing figured out. There's this thing up here--I think it's some kind of magic transport, a portal. We're working on a way to get the two of you up here to it. How're things down there, baby?"

Marcus' voice floated up to her. "Decidedly distressing. We're running out of time."

Fergy frowned. "Just a little longer." She turned back to the flat disk of light--the portal, or at least that's what she thought the sorceress was trying to tell her. It certainly felt like one; standing in front of it, if she got close enough, she could feel a warm, muggy, tropical breeze. Whatever was on the other side, it was overwhelmingly pleasant.

The sorceress was busy rummaging around the room of jars, clearly looking for something. What it was, Fergy had no idea. The younger girl had her tailless cat stuffed into the neckline of her robes, its little head poking out under the girl's chin.

Fergy watched her for a moment, then asked, "Look, don't you have some rope? Nothing fancy, just a length of rope. Maybe half as long as the ground floor is tall would be enough."

The sorceress just looked at her, and muttered, "Taters." She started searching again, then stopped suddenly, her eyes staring across the empty space at the far wall. Fergy followed her line of sight and took a small step backwards: hanging there in the hole in the wall, about level with the floor above them, was a plant. It wasn't moving, just hanging there and slowly getting bigger. And looking at them.

"That's... eerie." It took Fergy a moment, but it dawned on her that the plant thing wasn't looking at just them, but in lots of places, above and below them.

She could hear the sorceress murmuring, more gibberish words, but now she sounded legitimately scared.

And suddenly it dawned on Fergy what it was the plant was looking for. "That thing--" she snapped out at the sorceress, "That lantern thing upstairs, at the very top--that's what's making the wall of fire, isn't it?"

The sorceress just nodded once.

"The nymph is aiming," Fergy hissed, then let out a string of profanities. And then she could hear it, the wind-like sound of something flying through the air; a shadow passed over the hole in the wall, and Fergy had just enough time to throw her arm over the sorceress' head and yank her down to the floor before a fourth boulder smashed through the tower, much higher than the previous three. She caught a brief glimpse of it as it sailed into the top floor above them, and heard it smashing through the floor into the empty room between the lantern and the portal. The sound was immediately interrupted by a metallic impact as the boulder hit the spiraling stairs, a long chunk of which immediately came crashing through the ceiling and landed, horizontal, on the floor only a hand's breadth away.

Fergy stood up and looked out the hole--the wall of fire was still up. "You missed!" she shouted.

They wouldn't get that lucky again, and Fergy knew it. Without a word, she threw herself into shoving the stairs towards the ledge, the hard metal screeching in protest as it scraped against the stonework. She hardly noticed when the sorceress, panic still in her eyes, started shoving with her. A moment later the stairs toppled over and fell to the ground level with a clang.

Marcus had to dive out of the way, but as soon as he saw what Fergy had thrown down to them he knew what her plan was. It was simple, the kind of simplicity that only came from accidental boons. With a look to Brasskicker, he lifted the stairs up and leaned them against the wall, then held them steady as the dwarf scrambled up them, cursing. It wasn't quite to the second level above them, but he could jump. The dwarf hit the ledge with his stomach and grunted--his gun slipped off his shoulder and fell to the floor with a clatter. After a moment of stumpy legs dangling over the ledge, Brasskicker vanished, only to reappear a moment later to help Marcus once the big man had made it to the top of the makeshift stairway; it fell away below him.

"Dropped me gun," Brasskicker muttered,

Marcus replied curtly: "Not worth it."

Another impact rocked the tower, another boulder smashed its way onto the top floor, and all four pair of eyes turned to look out the ravaged wall--just in time to see the wall of fire go out.

"We are so bloody screwed," Brasskicker shouted. It only took a few seconds for Marcus and Brasskicker to reach the next level up, the room with the portal in it. There, they found Fergy and the sorceress waiting before the flat disk.

Marcus gave his wife a kiss, muttered, "I love you," and before she could protest he shoved her bodily through into the light, following immediately after.

Fergy squeezed her eyes shut and let out a shout as she hit the portal--a shock passed through her, and for an instant before she blacked out she was very, very cold.

As the woman passed through the portal, the duo still behind her watched as the warm, golden light shifted suddenly to white, followed by a blast of cold air and a biting, freezing wind; the round portal began to waver, destabilizing. Brasskicker turned and glared at the sorceress, whose eyes were as wide as saucers.

"Weren' s'posed t' do that, were it?" the dwarf snapped.

She took two steps back and shook her head--and Brasskicker grabbed her by the wrist and dove through the portal, taking her light frame with him.