A blur of motion later and one of the gnolls was down, then the other. The slaves stampeded past. A third gnoll leaped over the two with a scream, battleax high--a little too high, as it turned out. He embedded it in the ceiling.
    "So there," Scott observed, and hit him.
    The two that had been knocked down got back up. One took a swing while the other tried to rush past him, no doubt hoping to stop the slaves. No luck there. A half dozen more gnolls appeared, looking for the source of the alarm.
    
    Telek yelled and swung at the wolf, which sprang for her leg and knocked her down. The female gnoll managed to hand-over-hand off the end of the bridge, while the dangling one reached up for a better hold, missed, and barely kept from falling. The third sprinted for the safe end and dove onto the branch.
    Phoenix Talon and the gnoll female grappled for a moment on the edge of safety; she was quite strong, but he succeeding in kicking her feet out from under her. A desperate, scrabbling moment later she was gone. It was a very long way to the ground.
    That left a wolf, and a couple of gnoll hounds. I didn't want the other one getting away and alerting others to our presence; time for some waving and chanting of my own. I cast a Hold Person on him and let him sit wondering how long it was going to take the raven to finish its rat....
    
    Glancing down at the new gnolls, Scott cast one of his small repertoire of spells, causing a quantity of grease to appear on the floor. Four lost their footing; the other two inched forward carefully.
    Until a group of wolves charged into the fray as well, excited barking turning into yelps of astonishment as they hit the grease.
    Larry would love this, Scott reflected, watching the collision and ignoring axe blows. The slaves were running for the armory. He could hear more sounds from that direction, perhaps more gnoll reinforcements on the way.
    It turned out to be only two gnolls, who had been surprised in turn by the slaves as they emerged from their armory. These were not elite wolf-riders, just ordinary warriors who were badly outnumbered against people who were very, very upset.
    In sum, he spent a long while hitting gnolls, tossing them into the grease, bowling for wolves, and generally having fun. He did his best to defend the slaves, driving the gnolls back into the room they had come from. They came out through another set of doors, which told him that he had found the barracks, where most of the gnolls apparently drank themselves stupid every night. Despite that, there were a lot of them, and the slaves were starting to get the worst of it. Scott encouraged them to pull back and free the rest of their comrades while he guarded their rear. Eventually the gnolls began falling back; many of them carried healing potions which they used if he didn't kill them quickly enough, and there was a chance they were going to flee into the woods and find someone to tell about the disaster. Outside, looking for slaves to free, he came upon a large, bloody stain on the forest floor. No body, though.
    
    Telek staggered onto one knee and swung the axe to deadly effect, spent a moment gathering her breath and kicked the wolf off the branch. It vaporized in mid-air on the way down. Samantha stuck her head out and asked, "What are you going to do with that guy?"
    "I'm going to cut the rope," Talon said. Which he did. The bridge fell, swung a long way, and the gnoll lost his grip when it reversed. So much for him.
    "How are we getting back across?"
    "That is what this is for." I unrolled my carpet for the two of them, unfurled my wings, and Phoenix Talon got out his Ebony Fly.
    The raven had just noticed the last of the gnolls, pecking at it with her beak. He wasn't terribly well balanced, and a moment later he too was making the long trip, very quickly.
    "Good birdie," Talon said. "We have to go find Scott."
    We had been in the tower about half an hour by then.
    Talon and I found the bottom of the tree engulfed in a massive slave revolt, with gnolls running everywhere as they realized they were under attack by demonic forces. We did what we could to corral escapees for a bit, then returned to the branch where the sorceress and the dwarf had stayed.
    "Samantha, I think you'd better contact the old man, let him know the some of the gnolls are getting away," Talon suggested.
    She got a distant look.
    "You okay, want a glass of warm water?"
    She focused on him with a puzzled look. "What?"
    "Nothing." He went off to look for Scott. Most of the gnolls had been driven off, and the slaves were cheering and discovering that they were quite unable to lift Scott on their shoulders. Talon picked out a leaderly type. "What was the complement of this fortress? Did you ever see anyone besides the gnolls, and the wolves?"
    "Did you get both of the women?"
    We had only seen one. "What did she do?" he asked. "Another spellcaster?"
    "They were the two in charge."
    I sighed. "I guess we'd better brace for Gretchen's wrath to descend on us any minute, then."
    If we weren't too late already, she would be up at the top of the tree. We landed by the door, ignored by the raven.
    "The message has been sent," Samantha told us. "I told them that the citadel has been taken but some of the gnolls have fled into the forest."
    "So the military situation is good, but the security situation is bad," Talon noted. We went back into the tree, back to the point where we had stopped before.
    "Why don't we let them out?" Samantha suggested, looking at the prisoners. Talon gave her the keys; they started getting slaves down and taking them into the overseer's rooms to see if they could be revived.
    At the top of this ramping section, the hall turned right and ended in a door. It was unlocked. Scott poked a part of him underneath and found it the peculiar pitch-black of magical darkness.
    "I've got an idea. Open the door," he told me.
    I did so. Phoenix Talon set his katana alight and called upon his Gem of Brightness, and Scott used his Dancing Lights spell. We could now see a large-ish room with a screen shielding off a ten-foot alcove. I noticed the secret door immediately, of course.
    Phoenix Talon used his katana to move the screen aside while remaining defensively positioned.
    Even deeper darkness lurked there, flowing over his sword and across him like water. He danced back before it could actually touch him. It seemed to grow more solid, congealing into five distinct shadowy shapes, vaguely humanoid. The foulness of the undead flowed from them like a stench.
    Phoenix Talon struck with his katana; the shadow hissed. "Sprung a leak?" he taunted. One of them tried to attack Scott, who was of course immune to such things. One of the shadows flowed over me, spectral hands passing through my armor and leeching the strength from my body. Scott tried to hit one and shattered part of the wall.
    I pulled myself together, focused my thoughts on my goddess and intoned as firmly as I could, "Begone, thou creatures of the night!"
    Lightning split the room; thunder rolled. The shadows seemed to stand in outline on the wall for a moment, then faded away into nothing.
    There was, of course, nothing of interest in the alcove; it was a very basic sort of trap.
    "I think she went thataway," I pointed at the secret door, relieved but still very weak. It didn't seem to be locked, just well-concealed. Talon raced ahead. After ten narrow feet it opened out into a slightly larger chamber. In it we found a door to our left, while to our right the passage made a short arc and continued up, still forming a clockwise circle around the tree. Directly before us was a pool of water.
    We checked the door first while Scott kept watch on the other two directions. It looked like one or two gnolls lived there, but no one was there now. Scott moved over to look at the pool before I could tell him to wait while I checked for magic, unsurprised to find it radiating strongly. Nothing jumped out to grab him, at least.
    "Maybe that's what they use to communicate with Gretchen," Talon theorized.
    Spoke too soon. A bubbling noise came from the pool, and then a large silver blob emerged: another Scott.
    "Son of a bitch," Talon muttered as it attacked our Scott.
    "Go find the gnolls," the golem told us, knowing that the silver thing could not hurt him any more than he could hurt it, and that this was going to take a while.
    "No, save me, help!" the second invited, launching a tendril at the original.
    We left him to it and continued. At the top of the ramp was a very large chamber, some sort of growing room it seemed. The floor was covered with mushrooms of quite unusual sizes and hues. A wooden platform a foot wide ran around the upper part of the room towards the exit. Phoenix Talon leaped up onto the platform and ran lightly toward the other side, trying to breathe as little as possible while doing so. I spread my wings and followed, until strands of spiderweb floated down onto me from above, binding me. I fell out of the air, missed the catwalk by inches and hit the mushrooms.
    The mushrooms were an illusion. The three-foot spikes under the mushrooms were not.
    They make you wonder why you even try. A moment of wild contortion and I hit the ground badly scraped but mostly unimpaled.
    Phoenix Talon saw me disappear, heard me say, "Fuck." Saw the spider above and noted that it was the size of a horse. He leaped up and took a swing at it, sliced into it with his blade and was rewarded by a drenching shower of ichor. It dropped down even with him, moving with remarkable speed, and bit him on the arm. Fortunately, thanks to his long years of contemplation under Da'an, Phoenix Talon is immune to poisons.
    I hauled myself to my feet, feeling a trifle annoyed with the world and particularly with this spider, and murmured to myself for a moment, raised a hand. The center of the spider vaporized under an intensely focused beam of light that slowly ate away everything but the outer edge of its body and the legs. I flew clear and joined Talon on the ledge, looking up. "Well, that sucked. Anything else hiding up there?"
    "I don't want to find out, let's go."
    "I didn't want to find out about this one."
    
    Scott was edging ahead of his mirror-twin. This was definitely going to take a while.
    
    We followed the corridor up another turn around the tree and found a huge set of double doors. I checked the ceiling this time; it seemed free of threats. Listening at the doors, Talon heard nothing.
    "Let's just go," I murmured.
    The doors were beyond my current strength; Talon grabbed one and yanked on it. The door swung open; he moved into the room beyond in a defensive crouch, saw our quarry immediately and shrugged off the gnoll's attempt at a paralytic spell through sheer will even as a gnoll warrior leaped at him from each side of the door.
    He ignored them and sprinted toward the priestess, performed a running kick that rocked her back but did not quite stun her. I touched the mummified elf's hand I wear, murmured the words of the spell and reached out for the gnoll woman now facing Talon; there was the usual sensation of ghostly touch and a massive sword wound sprouted on her chest.
    She took a step back, waved her hands and pointed at me. Nothing visible happened.
    One of the other gnolls charged Talon, the other me. He was being awfully quiet; in fact, I realized I couldn't hear anything; her spell had been a silence. He swung a battleaxe at me, which I failed to parry entirely. The one charging Talon cut him as well, and then both of them switched their battleaxes to a one-hand grip and pulled out hand axes, too.
    Talon unleashed a series of blows at the gnoll female, and I whirled my staff, touching the gnoll attacking me lightly while backing up toward the doors; if the spell was on the area, rather than on me, it would help to know where the edge was.
    
    

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