The door was pushed open easily enough. Behind it was a short landing and a long, worn flight of steps leading down. As the sputtering torch cast its scant, almost brown illumination, Gord went down the rough-hewn stone stairs, Hotbreath padding before him and the nine other great cats filing after. All were moving quickly, for soon the time of absolute dark would be over. Snuffdark would not recede gradually the way Twilight had waxed. The blackness came instantly at the final waning of the brightness, and it disappeared as quickly. When Snuffdark’s grim time was finished, Shadowrealm regained its usual pallor of shadowy silvers, manifold grays, deep blacks, until Mool waxed and the oppression followed again-a year’s span, as time was measured on the Plane of Shadow.
When they finally reached the bottom of the long stairway, Gord saw that they had arrived at what must be the very heart of the gloams’ stronghold. Above were the places for guards, hounds, and the rest. Down here were the workrooms, laboratories, and libraries of those who sought to usurp the rule of this plane for themselves.
Gord’s rapid exploration of the chambers that opened onto the gallery at the bottom of the steps revealed all this. It also provided him and his escort of lions with better light, for in one alchemical study he discovered an oddly fashioned lamp. It was enclosed in a crystal-sided box, making it almost a lantern. The fuel inside it was unidentifiable, but it had what was clearly a wick, and when the nearly exhausted torch was applied to it a healthy flame sprang forth. From this lamp came a misty light of luminous gray. The radiance spread into the hemisphere ahead of the lamp, casting its strange illumination a distance of almost twenty paces. Now the group was far better prepared to see and search.
Although this seemed the nerve center, there were certainly other places that had to be found. During Snuffdark, the gloams would be bolted closed in their personal chambers-unless they were of the same sort as Imprimus. Gord knew that fiend would be entombed in his casket or sarcophagus, awaiting the return of shadows upon the plane, at which time his powers would again be restored and waxing.
When he had attempted to get Shadowfire from Gord, the gloam-lich had been constrained by the power of the approach of Twilight. The brightest and darkest times of Shadowrealm were the only ones when Imprimus’ powers were diminished. The brightness of Twilight would certainly slay the vampiric lich if he were not safely hidden from it. The total gloom of Snuffdark made Imprimus very weak and without his full range of powers. It did not harm him physically, as the radiance of Twilight would; Snuffdark made the gloam subject to attack, however, through causing him great weakness. That, Gord hoped, would prove as fatal as the full face of Mool in its single period of glory.
“Gord! I smell bad smells. This way.” The rumbling communication came from Hotbreath. His body was in rigid point as he glared toward a dim recess of the subterranean library. With the guidance given by the big male lion, Gord quickly located a secret exit from the place, a door concealed by a shelf of ancient librams and scrolls. Again steps were discovered, and the young adventurer headed down them immediately, bringing a tail often lions after him.
There was a charnel reek arising from the narrow stairwell. Even Gord’s human hearing could also detect sounds coming from below. Then the light of the lamp shone on the gray pallor of shadow-bones. It was evident that the ghouls and corpse-eaters of the material plane had counterparts dwelling in Shadowrealm, for mingled with the stench of death were the unmistakable odors of those foul creatures who dined upon corpses and delighted in decay.
“What lurks below, friends,” Gord said softly, “is such which I can fight but poorly, bearing as I do our light.”
“Eaters of dead humans,” Smokemane nearly roared in reply. “We have encountered them once or twice, for such things will contest with us over our kills if they have not other flesh to feed on.” Gord noted that the cat made no distinction between human folk, such as found on Oerth, and the phantom folk of this plane. The phantoms were, in fact, the parallel of humans, their equivalent in Shadowrealm. But the gloams were something else, something unnatural, as inimical to the phantoms as to all other clean forms of life. The two big males squeezed past Gord and bounded downward. After them went the lionesses, and the battle was on.
Light held high, Gord hastened down the stairs immediately after the last female had shot past him. Snarls and roars were intermingled with the horrible shrieks and yapping of the ghouls and their even worse and more foul cousins, the ghulaz, as they sought to defend themselves from the lions’ ferocity. As reflections of the undead of the material plane, these eaters of corpses were severely afflicted by the time of total lightlessness. Although all creatures of Shadowrealm were affected by the gloom of Snuff-dark, lions being among the roster of animals, the great cats were by no means as weakened as the ghulaz and ghouls. The slowly moving, lethargic creatures were fighting desperately to save themselves, but their defense was not strong enough either to give serious injury to their attackers or give themselves hope of prevailing. The evil undead quickly understood this fact and sought to retreat.
Unlike the chambers above, where masonry combined with hewn and polished stone to form elaborate spaces, carven pillars, and the stuff of habitation, the place of the undead was stark and foul. The area was certainly a natural cave with only a few marks to indicate that hammer and chisel had worked its stone. Niches in the walls indicated the place might once have been a catacomb-although these recesses might simply have been cut to provide the ghoulish residents of the place a more comfortable and “homelike” atmosphere.
The uneven floor of the cave was a foul mess of bones, partially consumed carcasses, and filth. More bones and rotting cloth were evident in the niches and in odd corners of the large space where ghulaz or ghoul went to feed on some particularly choice morsel of corpse, or to take its ease. The creatures of this charnel cave, however, sought not to hide in niche or cranny. Instead, the smaller ghouls were shambling off toward a dark opening to the left, while the larger, dog-faced ghulaz were seeking refuge behind an upthrust slab of rock at the right rear of the chamber.
Gord ignored the lesser things. “The big ones-ghulaz!” he shouted to his feline comrades. “We must take them. Follow me.” With that, the young adventurer headed straight for the place the six dog-featured undead had slunk into. The space the shelter provided was certainly insufficient to hide all six. There had to be some egress there.
As the lamp shed its pale illumination on the place, however, Gord saw nothing but bare stone. No ghulaz, no exit. Nothing.
“I smell the reek of those things,” Smokemane growled. “They are near, but I cannot see them.”
Obviously, some powerful magic was at work. By utmost effort, Gord marshalled his will and disbelieved as he touched the rock wall of the sheltered spot. The combination worked. A small opening existed here after all-a narrow, low place that a man could squeeze through, but far too small for one of the great shadow-lions to use. “Stay here, my friends,” Gord rumbled to the lions. All of them were wounded by now, although most not seriously, but at any rate the big cats could do nothing to assist him in what must be done next. Somehow he had to deal with the ghulaz alone.
“I must take the light and go down this little tunnel,” he said quickly to Smokemane. “Use your noses to guard against the return of the death-stinking two-leggers,” he ordered, pointing to the place through where the ghouls had vanished. “Wait for me here. If I do not come back in the space of time you take to sleep a short sleep, go the way the stinking ones went. I think there must be a way above in that direction. I cannot offer you more than that.”