The Heavenly Host

Tom examined the runes, found their starting point and quickly intoned the runes. The portcullis began rising on its own. Very slowly — it took about a deminute — but eventually it was raised.

“That’s convenient,” Reggie said. “I guess.”

They went across the room to the open door. Tom peered through and then opened the door wider and stepped through. He found himself standing on an open bridge with a deep cavern beneath his feet. The bridge started at the door and went about fifteen feet before opening up onto a huge platform.

Tom looked up, and up. There was sky above them! The others filed out onto the bridge with him. They were in a large... something. It was a huge oval room open to the sky above. Its walls were somewhere on the order of two thousand feet high. Along the walls, starting at about two hundred feet up, there were openings like balconies, spanning both sides of the oval room. There were probably a dozen rows of balconies on each side.

The platform spanned the center of the room, with various bridges to other doorways or landings around the room. The platform appeared to be suspended over a large chasm. On the platform at the end of the bridge was a raised dais about forty feet across with steps leading up from the bridge to a dais. The dais appeared to be square or rectangular with large black-and-gold marble pillars at each corner. What appeared to be large gold braziers were set on the top of each pillar. In the center of the dais was a massive malachite throne, its back facing them, trimmed in mithral and adamantite with very large gems on the back posts and possibly on the arm end posts, although it was hard to tell from this angle.

As Tom’s gaze went to the top of the throne and pillars, he suddenly realized there was a huge metal emblem over the door they had entered through. He had to turn and look up — the angle was very bad — but it appeared to be an absolutely huge, upside-down pentagram.

That seemed a very odd thing for an amphitheater in the Abyss. Pentagrams were a symbol of demon slavery. Of course this one was upside down; did that make it a symbol of power? As he was thinking this, the ground lurched again and what sounded liked an enormous burp came from underneath them. Their attention was whipped to the right side where, between three and four bridges down, a bunch of rock came spitting up and then a glob of hot lava jumped up and fell back down.

“Okay, this goes without saying, but didn’t you say the volcano was inactive?” Reggie asked Tizzy. Tizzy was grinning widely. “Only for the last four thousand years. Apparently only napping.”

“Well, that explains where the D’Orcs would have gone. They’ve fled the volcano,” Antefalken said.

“Maybe.” Tizzy shrugged, his grin fading. “Maybe not.”

“Why would they stay?” Reggie asked Tizzy. “That would be insane, to stick around an active volcano?”

Boggy’s eyes suddenly widened. “Maybe not,” he said. Rupert and Reggie turned to Boggy. “What were we doing yesterday?”

“Playing in the lava flows of a small volcano?” Tom said. Tizzy grinned.

“So you think the D’Orcs have decided to open a health spa at the exact moment we arrived?” Talarius asked sarcastically.

“No, only that an active volcano is not that big a deal for them.” Tizzy shrugged. “After all, they were here when it was active before. For them, it’s probably like the furnace kicking in after a long summer.”

“They were here when the volcano was active?” Reggie asked incredulously.

“So that’s why they are here? Are you saying this is where their dark god stationed them?” Antefalken asked.

Tizzy shrugged. “That would make sense.”

“None of this makes any sense,” Reggie complained.

Due to his height, Estrebrius had mainly been flying since they had encountered the hydra hounds; he could fly faster than his stubby legs could walk. After the first eruption, while the others were talking he had floated up to see over the dais. Now he floated down. “Uhm, sorry to interrupt, but the D’Orcs haven’t actually gone anywhere,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Talarius asked.

“They’re on the other side of the dais. A few thousand, I would say. More are filing in as we speak.”

“So why can’t we hear them shouting?” Reggie asked.

“They seem to be on their knees in front of the dais,” the little demon said.

“Kneeling?” Tom asked incredulously.

Estrebrius shrugged and made a puzzled expression with his mouth.

“Well, if we hadn’t already established that lava isn’t a problem, I’d have said ‘crazy volcano death cult waiting for the end.’ But that no longer seems so likely,” Reggie said.

“Maybe we should just go up and take a look from the dais?” Tizzy asked. He turned and started walking towards the dais.

Tom looked to Talarius and Antefalken.

“Well, we either go and look, and if need be head straight up, or we shoot straight up and out of this place right now,” Talarius said.