"What by the beard of my father is a chrys—chrysalun?"

"Bigger..." the prisoner rasped, its tongue darting in and out. "Bigger inside...not out..."

"What pile of tailings is that beast spouting? He mocks us all!" one of Grenda's brothers snarled. Although not twins, her siblings looked even more like one another than most dwarves did, and Rom always had trouble telling which was Gragdin and which was Griggarth.

Whichever he was, he followed his declaration by charging forward, ax raised as best the tunnel allowed. The skardyn hissed and struggled anew.

It was Grenda who blocked her impetuous brother. "No, Griggarth! Not yet! Put the ax down now!"

Griggarth shrank under his sister's admonition. She was the mistress and they were her two hounds. Gragdin, who had no reason to, imitated his brother's reaction.

Grenda turned back to the skardyn. "But if this filth doesn't make more sense with the next word he utters..."

Rom seized control again. Finishing the last bits in his pipe, he tapped the ashes out, then muttered, "Aye. One last time. Maybe a different question'll stir you right." He considered, then said, "Maybe something about the tall one and what his ilk would be doin' here of all places."

His suggestion had a disquieting reaction on the skardyn. At first, Rom thought that it was choking on something, but then he realized that the damned beast was laughing.

Drawing his dagger, Rom thrust the point under the skardyn's brown, scaly chin. Despite that, the prisoner did not let up.

"Be still, you blasted son of a toad or I'll save them the trouble of flaying you and—"

The celling caved in. Dwarves scattered as tons of rock and stone tumbled down.

And with it came three massive figures not only armored in brass breastplates and guards, but scaled even more than the skardyn. Worse, these imposing giants—nearly nine feet tall by Rom's expert reckoning—were far more deadly and far more unexpected than the descendants of the Dark Irons had been.

"What are—" cried one dwarf before a huge, arced blade cut through his midsection, breastplate and all.

Rom knew what they were, if only by description, but it was Grenda who cried out their foul name. "Drakonid!"

She lunged toward the first, her ax already out. Looking as if someone had melded a dragon and a human into one vicious warrior, the black-scaled drakonid she moved against swung at the dwarf with the already-bloodied weapon. As it struck her ax, the blade flared, cutting through good dwarven workmanship as if through water.

Only Rom's swift action saved her. Having launched himself toward the monstrous figure at the same time that Grenda had, he was there in time to shove her aside. Unfortunately, the confines of the ruined tunnel did not give him enough room to avoid being struck by the blade meant for her.

The dwarf screamed as it burned through his wrist. He watched with amazement as his hand fell to the ground, where it was trampled under the drakonid's massive, three-toed foot.

If there was anything fortunate to come from the terrible wound, it was that the magic of the blade also cauterized the cut. That, combined with dwarven endurance, enabled Rom to throw his strength into a one-handed swing.

The ax cut into the armored hide near the shoulder. The drakonid let out a growl of pain and backed up.

Laughter rung in Rom's ears, laughter that less and less sounded like the skardyn's and more like something far more sinister. He glanced over his shoulder to where the prisoner should have still been held.

But the guards lay dead, their eyes staring blindly and their throats cut. Their axes remained harnessed on their backs, and their daggers were still sheathed in their belts. They looked as if they had simply stood and waited to die.

Or had been bespelled... for what stood where the skardyn had been was no magic-degenerated dwarf. Instead, the figure stood as tall as a human, but was slimmer of build. His long, pointed ears were clue enough to his identity, but his crimson robes and fiercely-glowing green eyes—the sign of demon taint—verified to Rom's dismay just how big a fool the commander had been.

It was the very blood elf about whom he had been asking.

Rom's hunt for a prisoner who could give him information had been turned into a trap for the dwarves. His pulse raced as he imagined his followers slaughtered or, likely worse, captured and dragged back into Grim Batol.

With a war cry that resounded in the ruined tunnel, he charged the blood elf. The tall figure eyed the powerful dwarf with disdain, then held out one hand.

In it, a twisted wooden staff materialized, the head ending in a fork in which a huge, skull-shaped emerald matching the blood elf's evil orbs flared.

Rom went flying back, the dwarf colliding with the wall behind him.

As he dropped to the ground, Rom uttered an epithet that would have burned the ears of any human, much less one of the elven races. Through his blurred vision, he saw dwarves desperately trying to make a stand against the powerful drakonid. It was not that the dragon men were unstoppable, but his people seemed to be moving sluggishly. Gorum, a fighter whose swiftness was second only to Rom's, hefted his ax as if it weighed as much as he.

The blood elf...It... it has to be the... blood elf... Rom struggled to rise, but his body would not obey.

Worse to him than even his own certain demise was his failure to his king. He had sworn an oath to Magni that he would discover the secret of what was now going on in Grim Batol, but all Rom had accomplished was this horrific debacle.

That shame managed to get him to his knees, but from there he could rise no farther. The blood elf turned his attention from Rom, yet another insult to the dwarf's honor.

Rom managed to seize his ax. He struggled against both the spell and his own pain—

A horrific roar that shook the walls rose above the tunnels, causing everyone to look up.

The effect on the blood elf was greatest. He cursed in some tongue Rom did not understand, then shouted to the drakonid, "Up! Quickly! Before it gets too far!"

The dragon warriors crouched, then leaped up and out of the tunnels with astounding agility for their immense size. Their leader tapped the bottom of the staff twice on the ground—and vanished in a brief burst of golden flames.

Rom abruptly found it possible to move. If somewhat wearily. Slowly, the conditions of his comrades registered. There were at least three dead and several others wounded. He doubted that the drakonid had suffered much more than one or two cuts each, none of them threatening. If not for the mysterious roar, the dwarves would have been lost.

Grenda and one of her brothers came to his aid. Sweat drenched the female warrior. "Can you walk?"

"Hmmph! I can run... if I've got to, girl!"

It was because of no sense of cowardice that he suggested running. There was no telling if the blood elf and the drakonid would return as quickly as they had left. The dwarves were in disarray and needed to retreat to a location where they could recover.

"To... to the slope tunnels," Rom commanded. Those tunnels were much farther from Grim Batol, but he felt them the best choice. The ground of the region there was full of rich veins of white crystal—highly sensitive to magical energies—which would make it difficult for even a mage like the blood elf to scry for them. In a sense, the scouts would become invisible.

But not invincible. Nowhere was it completely safe.

With Grenda's assistance, Rom led the dwarves off. Glancing over his battered followers, he saw again how much the very brief struggle had cost them. If not for the roar—

The roar. As grateful as he was for that interruption, Rom wondered at its origins, wondered about that... and whether or not what had been the dwarves' salvation was the harbinger of something far, far worse.