Part C: A Staff of Kings
All five of the adventurers stood in the dry, dusty desert. Duo consulted a map.
"This, my friends, is the Maggot Lair. Population: Nasty bug things. Home of the Staff of Kings. After you."
Duo's undead minions murmured to one another. Trowa's ravens cawed at one another, running their beaks through Trowa's hair. For their own part, the others shifted on the hot sand. Duo sighed.
"I can feel your enthusiasm all the way over here. I'll go first. Let's go, boys." Duo descended into the dark pit. His armor began to glow faintly, casting deep shadows onto gnawed tunnels. The others joined him quietly.
The ravens seemed anxious. Trowa, too, looked rather nervous, and kept looking up, only to see a very low and slightly gooey ceiling. Wufei didn't look happy, but then, he never did. Quatre cast his ice shield, which extended the diameter of the ambient light a bit.
Heero walked first, sword ready. Keen blue eyes scanned the darkness, looking... looking...
"Ahh!"
"Donkey dung!" Quatre cried, waving his hands in a spell. A fiery three-headed hydra popped up from the ground in front of Heero. The hydra aimed fireballs at the swarm of locusts and as one they dropped.
"Hn. Thank you," Heero said. Quatre nodded to him. All a little more unsettled now, they carried on. They encountered more hordes of locusts, as well as large sand maggots which were the size of one and a half people long, and that remaining half a person tall. They threw poison.
"I really hate this place. What were the Horadrim thinking?" Quatre asked rhetorically after quaffing his third antidote potion in an hour. Heero shrugged and took his antidote silently, like everything else.
"I dunno Quat. But hey look, an exit," Duo said, pointing to a hole. Quatre made a face.
"We're going down again, aren't we?" Quatre asked. Duo nodded.
"Well, frazzle," Quatre said. He dusted off his robes and headed on down. Duo shrugged and followed. Now that Duo and Quatre were on the other side of the hole, the grimmer part of the party smiled broadly, shaking their heads.
"His turns of phrase are quaint," Wufei pointed out. Trowa's shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter. His ravens cawed their amusement.
"Help!"
All three instantly became serious and charged down to the next level.
"How many levels are there in this place?" Duo asked.
"Too many," deadpanned Heero. Duo fell over in shock, which was a rather good idea, because it gave him the perfect position to fire a bone spear at the locusts over head. Heero swung at them and Duo was showered with dead locust bodies.
"Ick. Let's move on, shall we?" said Duo, a tad shakily. Heero offered him a gauntleted hand up. Duo took it and stood. He turned to his minions, who in their own brainless way were concerned. "I'm okay!" he said.
"Duo, may I have my hand back?" Heero asked. Duo flushed and dropped his hand, joining Quatre at the front of the party. Trowa and Wufei exchanged knowing nods. Heero merely inclined his head.
"We found another level down," Quatre called.
"Okay," Trowa called back. Everyone headed down to the final level, where things seemed to be deceptively quiet. They opened a slime door "Ew, that's rank!" and rounded a corner where they were faced with several dozen sand maggots of various shapes and sizes. In the center of the room was a monstrous sand maggot who was easily four times the size of the ones they'd fought before. It's rear end was somewhere under the soil.
"Back up back up!" Heero ordered, charging forward. After being hit by several dozen squirts of poison, Heero's vision was beginning to blur. A raging inferno seemed to grow in front of his eyelids. A pair of strong hands pulled him back.
"Stay with me buddy..." Heero heard Duo say as a vial was put to his lips. Almost instantly, Heero's vision cleared and his eyes met a pair of concerned, violet ones. Heero smiled slightly.
"I am well Duo," Heero said. Duo handed him an invigorating health potion and Heero stood. He squinted in the bright light, and tried to see past a dark figure.
"Stay put, I have a feeling things will be over shortly," Trowa said, voice tight. Wufei paused from stroking a raven and nodded.
"Then who...?" Heero asked as it dawned on him. "Where's Quatre?!"
Trowa indicated the dark figure. "He's over there."
Quatre for his own part was surrounded by fire and maggots. He called down meteor after meteor and threw up firewall after firewall. Maggots died, piling up in front of him. Barely pausing, he drank potions down and kept going. He could barely hear himself think over the cutoff squeals coming from the dying creatures. One by one the creatures died until only the immense queen was left. Finally, he dropped his arms and sagged to the ground. Trowa rushed forward and dragged him away.
"Quatre, can you hear me?" Trowa asked, slapping his cheeks lightly. Quatre smiled up at him.
"Hurry, kill the queen before she starts to spawn again." Duo, Heero and Wufei marched into the chamber, kicking away the dead corpses. The bloated queen remained still, now vulnerable without her minions. All three hit the queen and kept hitting her, ignoring her squeals of pain. After what seemed like a long time, she began to shudder.
"Uh oh..." Duo said and backed off. Heero and Wufei stared, mystified, and the queen deflated, and in her death throes began regurgitating poison everywhere. Then she sort of exploded, spraying gore in all directions.
"Yack," Wufei commented, wiping himself off. He spotted a glittering chest and opened it, finding inside a great deal of money and a wooden staff that seemed to emanate power. "I found it!"
The rest of the party scrambled over. They each put a hand on the staff, caressed by it's power. They nodded to each other and they walked through the Maggot Lair, back across various lands filled with sand until they got to Lut Gohlein. A pleased Deckard Cain ran to greet them.
"You found the Staff of Kings! Wonderful, wonderful! You are certainly a talented group." Suddenly, everything seemed to go dark. In the pale light, Deckard Cain's face grew grim. "Strange darkness. You must talk to Drognan."
To Be Continued... *insert demonic laughter here*