So. Dragons.
    So, floating castle.
    So us, wishing not for the first time that there was someone else around to take care of these things once in a while.
    The problem with Prismatic spells—which we assumed we were up against—is the sheer number of counterspells required to take them down, one for each color in the rainbow. Thunderbolt knows what all of them are, and between the two of us we knew most of them... most. The green layer was going to be the problem; it required a Passwall, and we didn't know anyone we could get such a spell from, and we were running out of time before the main offensive was launched, our allies being confident that we could deal with the dragons. It had taken us a week just to find the place, but we had finally located the correct cloud, with its tall domed spire and a large flattened landing area.
    We sat in our camp, sheltered from Gretchen's wandering troops, and talked it over. We didn't actually know that there was a Prismatic spell up there, and Scott pointed out that it might not be permanently emplaced—after all, the dragons had to get in and out—and so it seemed that a scouting mission was in order. We went looking for cattle and sheep herds that might be preyed upon by dragons.
    "Big flying lizards? We have enough problems right now with soldiers coming in, stealing our cows," a local told Scott. "They take whole herds, ride off with 'em."
    "Where do they go?"
    "I don't follow 'em!"
    "Which direction?" he asked patiently.
    "That way."
    The next day we located what seemed to be the staging point, a small town up in the mountains where cattle, sheep, and people were taken every fortnight and from which they disappeared. The place had been turned into a gnoll barracks. The pens were currently empty; it had been a few days since the last shipment, so it was going to be quite a wait before we saw any dragons there. So much for that idea‹we only had a week left‹but we didn't like the idea of hanging around in the clouds and waiting for a dragon or two to leave on a raid.
    But there wasn't much else to do. We waited a couple more days for a cloudy night, and Scott and Phoenix Talon went up to take a closer look at the enormous castle. The place wasn't visibly surrounded by any rainbow, nor was there any sign of dragons or of anyone or anything else.
    "This might be my parentage showing, but what's the point of running a giant villainous organization if you don't have minions?" Scott sighed. Phoenix Talon inspected the underside from a cautious distance while Scott surveyed the upper reaches. Nothing stood out, but when he got closer Scott could see footprints in the spongy texture of the cloud. He watched them for a while; they did not fade quickly. He noted a door leading into the castle from the landing area. There was no other evident means of entrance or exit.
    There came the thud of leathery wings beating the air; Scott became very still, and Phoenix Talon drove his mount into a bank of mist. The massive dragon landed on the cloud, banged the door with his head. It swung open, and the dragon went inside. Still no rainbows. Perhaps they simply relied on doors most creatures weren't strong enough to open.
    Phoenix Talon dubbed the dragon Bozo.
    "Why don't you head down and I'll stake out the fortress for a while," Scott suggested, drifting down to join him. The fly dove downward. Above, the door slammed open and a different dragon came out, stamped out to the edge of the landing area and dropped off it. This one we called Jumbo; the remaining dragon would be Koko.
    Jumbo cocked and ear and began swinging his huge, equine head around for the source of the distant buzzing sound. Phoenix Talon, becoming aware of the dragon's interest, considered making his way onto the beast's neck and trying to cut his head off, but he could only use the door once a day, which left problems with escape. He used it to get down to the ground instead, safely eluding Jumbo's attention. It swept off into the distance, on some other errand.
    Meanwhile, Scott drifted around the castle looking for secret doors. As dusk fell, seven lights came to life around the edge of the landing area, each of them a different color. If they had some magical purpose, the dragons seemed unaffected. One place on the bottom of the clouds caught his attention, a sort of reverse funnel running upwards, not very large by the scale of the cloud castle‹after a bit it turned into a square shaft about thirty feet on a side.
    He spent another day in observation. Each dragon seemed to go out for four or six hours a day, individually, to stretch their wings‹not raiding, they weren't gone long enough. He returned to the base camp.
    "I found the entrance to the sewers."
    "Well, then. Does it go all the way in?" I asked.
    "I didn't go all the way in, I would have hated to trip across a dragon."
    "I found the entrance to the sewers," Thunderbolt pointed out more heavily than needed. I stuck my tongue out at him; it was raining again, and we were all a little cranky. Stephanie rubbed against my leg in commiseration.
    We were as well prepared as we thought we could be; we headed up to look at this sewer entrance under cover of darkness. Koko was gone. We went up slowly; inside the tunnel it was entirely dark. We followed Thunderbolt rather than use up one of our light spells. It went up a hundred feet and stopped, ending in a flat surface of solid cloud, just like the walls. Scott misted around the edges and found it airtight. I poked it with my staff; it thunked with a distant echo. It wasn't giving off any rainbow lights, anyway.
    "Can I stand on the carpet a second?" Scott asked. Thunderbolt made room for him. Scott braced himself on the fabric and pushed up. No give. Perhaps it opened down, perhaps he just wasn't strong enough. Thunderbolt joined him in the effort. Just as the carpet was about to give under the strain and Stephanie was asserting her opinion that they were going to die, the surface disappeared. With the sudden absence of pressure the carpet shot upwards, and then the surface came back.
    Scott and Thunderbolt were in a thirty by thirty room. "I think I've got this figured out," the golem said, making a small light. With that aid he could see that one part of one wall looked slightly different from the rest, perhaps marking a door. He and Thunderbolt lay down on the carpet and pushed down on the floor.
    Phoenix Talon and I were left in the pitch blackness, with very little idea of what had just happened. It didn't sound as if they had been eaten by a dragon, or suffered the myriad fates of those who attempt to pass a Prismatic Wall. I decided it was time for a light spell, which made me feel better if nothing else. Talon and I tried pushing.
    The stuff blinked away; we hurried through the opening quickly, and then it closed again.
    "Well, that was different," Scott commented.
    "Embarrassing, but not fatal," I nodded.
    He slithered over to the opalescent patch on the wall and whacked it. The door blinked open. We scurried through and found ourselves in another thirty by thirty-foot room, with an open archway on one wall. The scale of the place was impressive, even though we'd tried to prepare for it.
    We skulked toward the arch. Phoenix Talon put away his fly, but Thunderbolt remained on the carpet just in case. Beyond the arch we found a circular chamber a good hundred and fifty feet in diameter, where we had just stepped through what appeared from this side to be a bright violet wall. All around the circle were gracefully carved archways in classical motifs, framed by caryatid columns. There were eight in total, each archway filled with one of the colors of the rainbow and then one black arch.
    The violet behind us changed to indigo; the spectrum had shifted counterclockwise.
    "Great," Talon said.
    "This could be fun," I opined.
    "Hold on a second, let me see something," Scott said. He moved to the newly indigo door and poked his head through to see first what happened, and second if it was the corridor we had left behind us—in other words, were the colors spinning, or the corridors themselves.
    He felt something touch his innermost core, temporarily disorienting him. He kept going forward and fortunately did not succumb to the insanity spell, and found himself in a thirty by thirty chamber that certainly looked like the one we had come through. The archway looked clear from this side, and he could see us clearly. He checked to make sure that it was indeed the right place, and headed back. Meanwhile, we watched the colors rotate again. The arch behind us was now blue. We exchanged glances. If this was a Prismatic spell, blue at least was one of the easier layers to deal with.
    "Cast Magic Missile and see what happens," Talon suggested to me.
    "Don't look at me."
    "I get confused."
    I pointed to my chest. "Five foot tall elf," and then to Thunderbolt, "six foot human."
    "One of you evil magic-wielders."
    "See who brings you back from the dead again."
    The Missile cleared the blue from the arch, and revealed Scott making his way back toward us down the corridor. The colors rotated again; it seemed we had only cleared the blue from this particular arch, which had now turned green, as the one to our right was now blue.
    The colors seemed to stay in place for about fifteen seconds each time. We watched them circle around to see if the blue was permanently gone from that arch, or if it would come back the next time the cycle started.
    In the meantime, since Phoenix Talon is immune to poison, he followed the green door around the room—moving very quickly of course, with many a kaia and backflips—to see what lay beyond each arch.
    He jumped through the first one into a passage that ran over a hundred feet to a large opalescent door, with nothing else to see. He leaped back.

Game date: May 31, 2003

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