Barrick Eddon was staggeringly weary. He had climbed several staircases, some taller than anything back home in Southmarch, and also two high, terrifyingly rickety ladders, yet he still seemed no closer to the surface: the air was still as dank, hot, and choking as before, the other slaves and workers just as confused as they had been a half dozen levels lower. He was lost, and now even the strength that terror had brought him was beginning to fade. Things fluttered past in the dark tunnels and shadowy figures slid across his path before vanishing down side passages, but more and more he seemed to be alone. That was bad: to be alone was to be obvious. The monstrous demigod might be dead but that didn’t mean Jikuyin’s surviving minions would just let Barrick go.

He grabbed at the first creature he found that was smaller than himself, a strange, hairless thing with goggling eyes like a two-legged salamander, the last of a pack that slithered past him in a stairwell. It let out a thin shriek, then before he could even find out if it spoke his language it fell into pieces. Arms, legs—everything he tried to grab dropped off the torso and the whole slippery, strange mess tumbled from his grasp and then hopped and slithered away down the stairs after its fellows. Barrick was so startled that he stood staring as the hairless creatures (trailed by the one he had captured, still in its constituent parts) hurried down and out of his sight, then was almost crushed by a large, hairy shape chasing after them.

The hairy thing was on him and then past him so quickly that he only knew it was one of the apelike guards by its foul smell and by the scratch of its fur as it forced its way past him down the narrow stairwell. He stood for a moment after it was gone, gasping, grateful that it seemed more interested in the hairless things than in him.

Maybe they’re good to eat, he thought miserably. Barrick wasn’t only aching and tired, he was famished—the guards hadn’t bothered to feed them before dragging them off to the gate. I’ll be killing and eating the horrid things myself before long, and glad to have them…

Just as he reached a landing, lit fitfully by a pair of guttering torches, a small shape dashed out of one of the side passages. The little, manlike creature took one look at Barrick and turned to run back the way he’d come, but Barrick lunged forward—surprising himself almost as much as the newcomer—and gripped the creature’s knotted, oily hair with the fingers of his good hand.

“Stop or I’ll kill you,” he said. “Do you speak my tongue?”

It was a Drow like the one which had ridden the burning wagon, tiny and gnarled, with bristling brows, a wide, onion-shaped nose and a ragged beard that covered much of its face. It was strong for its size, but the more it struggled the tighter Barrick held. He drew it toward him and laid his found blade against its face so it could not fail to notice. He struggled not to show the creature how much it hurt him just to hold the blade with his bad arm.