"You have to listen for it. I can't explain it better than that."

"I'm glad you're here," she admitted gratefully.

"I'm not," he groused, and Tazi smiled at him. At least he's consistent, she laughed to herself.

They were continuously on guard but came across no signs of anything living. In a relatively low tunnel, wide enough for them to walk abreast, Tazi spotted a small pile of what looked like white sticks. But she recognized them for what they were: bones. She raised her weapon higher, though she knew they were not fresh remains. Tazi reached down for one of them, but the dwarf knocked her hand away. She was about to snap at him when the realization dawned on her that they might be the bones of his brother. Her face softened some.

Justikar bent down and gingerly lifted one bone close to his eyes. He turned it around thoroughly and sniffed it. His nose crinkled up, and he threw the skeletal remains to the ground.

"Stinks," he told her. "Trog bones." She nodded and knew he was both relieved and frustrated that they were not his brother's.

"Judging by those teeth marks," she added, "something feasted on these creatures not too long ago. But where are they?"v

"Maybe the heat has something to do with it," Justikar replied. "Drove them away or something."

"Maybe," Tazi responded, less certain.

They walked farther and came to a split in the tunnel. "Any ideas?" Tazi asked the dwarf.

Unexpectedly, he pulled at the shoulder of his tunic and ripped his right sleeve off, tucking the torn cloth in his belt. Tazi could see that a series of black marks covered his arm. He held it up and consulted the designs. "We go left," he told her.

"What kind of map is that?" she asked.

"My brother's," he replied curtly. "Just before he left, he had this map tattooed onto his arm, figuring it was the best place to keep it."

"So did you," Tazi pointed out the obvious. "I thought you said it was your brother who was the dreamer."

"He is," Justikar answered her seriously. "I'm the one who has to clean things up."

"I'm sorry," she apologized, not exactly sure why she should suddenly feel so sad for him.

He shrugged, and they went farther into the depths, certain that Szass Tarn's cache of arcane knowledge would be along the same route his brother had taken, the only viable path through the depths below. Perhaps because they had come across no obvious threat as yet, Tazi and Justikar became sloppy. Perhaps the growing heat and steam obscured their vision and other senses. For whatever reason, neither of them realized just what they were literally walking into.

"Justikar," Tazi began.

The duergar turned back toward Tazi just as a tremor shook the tunnel. Before he could respond to her, though, the walls appeared to suddenly collapse around him and immediately obscured the dwarf from her sight. Tazi herself was knocked flat.

"Justikar!" she cried. As she struggled to regain her balance and blink the dust from her eyes, she couldn't comprehend how a portion of the passageway had closed over him so quickly. There appeared to be only a few stones between them, but Tazi couldn't make out any large boulders that could have trapped him so completely.

"Tazi!" she heard him cry in a muffled voice. She crawled over on her knees toward him. When she reached the large pile where she had heard his voice emanate from, she tried to move the debris away to free him. But even as she searched with her hands, she couldn't get a good purchase on any of it. She pulled off her gauntlets, and Tazi was startled to feel something that was not quite rock under her hands. The lump shifted at her touch, and Tazi heard the duergar scream in pain.

"Hold on," she called to him and drew her rapier. Acting on a hunch, Tazi slashed at the mass and was not really surprised when a strange, viscous fluid oozed from the gash she had inflicted. She did not expect, however, to hear Justikar cry out as though he had been cut, too.

She raised her arm back and prepared to slash at what must've been a monster, but never got the chance. A tentacle, thicker than her own forearm, encircled her waist with lightning speed. Before Tazi could counter the attack, she was lifted bodily and felt herself slammed into the tunnel wall. Dazed, she could see that the lump that covered the duergar had begun to ripple slowly, and she suspected that the creature, whatever it must be, was beginning to digest him.

"Hold on," she called out again. Though the tentacle had encircled her waist, and it held fast, her arms were still free. Tazi had not released her hold on her rapier even when the creature had smashed her into the passageway. She managed to raise her weapon, point down, with both her hands high into the air. With a deep grunt, she slammed the weapon down and stabbed the tentacle close to where it joined the main body. The blow was so strong that the rapier actually impaled the tentacle to the tunnel floor. Tazi was able to pull away the wounded appendage from her waist and free herself from its limp grasp. She scrambled over to where she thought Justikar was still trapped. She called out his name but received no response, and she began to dread that she might be too late.

As she turned back to retrieve her rapier, Tazi saw a portion of the war axe the dwarf had stolen from the halls above suddenly pierce its way through the center of the creature's body. Tazi grabbed a flap of flesh and began to pull. She groaned with the strain as she pulled. The dwarf popped his head out, and Tazi could see that he looked mostly none the worse for wear. Between the two of them, they managed to tear a wide enough opening for Justikar to extricate himself. He tumbled to the passage floor in a messy heap, and they both lay panting quietly for a few moments.

The ruined mess of a creature simply lay there, and Justikar shoved at it with his foot. All of a sudden, though Tazi wouldVe thought it was impossible, the creature disappeared down the passageway as though something larger had yanked it from the opposite side. Tazi sprang to her feet and grabbed her rapier, but Justikar waved for her to settle down.

"Rock worm," was all he said by way of an explanation.

"What?" Tazi asked.

The dwarf brushed at himself and sighed. "The thing's known as a rock worm. I should've noticed it, but I guess I was distracted. They simply expand and adhere to the sides of tunnels and wait for prey to stumble in."

"Like we did," Tazi interrupted.

"Hmph," Justikar grunted. "They lure their prey in and crush them in their stomachs. They've got two tentacles, one on each end," he explained.

"So that thing yanked itself away from us by using its other tentacle," Tazi surmised.

"So rather than wait around and see if it's got a mate," the dwarf added, "we should probably keep moving."

Tazi nodded, and the two of them maneuvered along their knees through a very low side tunnel. Suddenly, Justikar ripped the sleeve he had tucked into his belt into two wide bands.

"Here," he said to^Tazi and passed one of them back to her. "Use it to cover your nose and mouth. The smell is going to get worse from here."

"Worse than how we smell now?" she joked. The dwarf snorted.

When the tunnel widened into a larger vault, Tazi was aghast. She didn't need the dwarf to point out the features to her. They had moved from the cook pit right into the fire. The room was aglow with a flickering red light. And she hastily donned the makeshift mask before the smell of sulfur overwhelmed her and seared her lungs. The entire chamber was filled with pools of bubbling magma, each one nearly as wide as Tazi was tall.

"I think this is why we haven't seen much besides that worm," she told the dwarf, pointing to the boiling earth. "What could live down here?"