The second opened into a green chamber—nasty, violent, fungal, squamous green. Floating in the middle of a pool in the chamber was a biped with the head of a frog floating in lotus position several feet from the floor.
    "Nice to meet you, we're leaving," he said to the slaad.
    "Wait!" it exclaimed.
    "No, really, I have a portal to catch." He ducked back through the arch. "There's a hideous frog-man back there," he informed us. The frog-man did not pursue.
    The third arch revealed another corridor, this one an unpleasant violet; ninety feet down it was an enormous hole in the floor, and a ragged area of wall as if there had once been a door. He did not investigate just yet.
    The fourth was only a hundred and twenty feet long, and the center occupied by a pool of pure blue liquid, and an enormous blue frog-man beyond that. It saw Talon and made a surprised sound.
    Fifth, another corridor that ended in a door.
    Following that, a red spherical chamber full of magma? blood? some red liquid, and three red slaad. They hissed at him.
    "You know, for creatures of chaos you're real predictable," he told them, noted the door on the other side of the room, and jumped back through the door.
    Finally, another corridor with another door.
    Phoenix Talon reported his findings to us while Scott confirmed that the blue layer was truly gone from the door we had come through; it did not reappear when the colors cycled through again.
    "So what we've actually got going here, just to make our lives a bit more complicated, is eight prismatic walls," he said.
    "With a mysterious black layer," Talon reminded him. None of us were inclined to investigate that personally.
    "Maybe if we get a slaad on a rope or something, we can toss him into the black one, drag him back and see what he looks like," the golem mused. "So shall we just start someplace?"
    "I was thinking the corridor with the hole in the floor. Once the blue comes around to that you can magic missile it, and we'll have a time when it will be open."
    "Or we could see what Skip the Friendly Slaad wanted to talk about," Scott offered.
    "One does not generally want to talk to monsters of pure chaos. They're not trustworthy. Let's examine the hole corridor."
    Scott waited for green and misted through to see what might be waiting for us. He looked down through the hole in the floor into another enormous chamber, sixty feet from floor to ceiling. Lying asleep on the floor in brilliant crimson glory was Bozo. Scott retracted his misty tendril very, very quietly.
    "Let's get to the hacking," Talon said cheerfully. "I'll dimension door onto its back and get in as many whacks as I can before it wakes up."
    "I think the Harm spell is a great wake-up call," Scott opined.
    "So if I go in and attack, and while it's concentrating on me, Needle can come in on the carpet, swoop in and," he made a popping noise. "In the meantime, you and Thunderbolt can add in whatever you can."
    A problem was that most of Thunderbolt's spells would cause just as much damage to Talon as to the dragon. We discussed tactics for a while, very quietly, and decided to start off as Talon wanted‹though saving his door for greater extremity‹follow with a massed lightning attack from Thunderbolt and myself, and see how things developed.
    That much decided, we paused to apply flame-resistant spells to one another, then waited for the blue to arrive at our arch. Thunderbolt missiled it, and we all jumped through. Wondered what the violet implied; there were no purple slaad that might have inspired the color scheme. I killed my light; the violet was vaguely phosphorescent, and there were small fires below where the dragons nested.
    Thunderbolt and I were on the carpet to minimize potential noise, and Phoenix Talon never makes any, and Scott was a gas. We crept to the edge of the hole.
    Looking down at it, for a moment I felt really bad about what we were going to do. Attacking something in its sleep, something that curled and stretched in slumber just like my catŠ. Phoenix Talon was giving us a significant look, and then he leaped. Showtime.
    Thunderbolt was using his trademark ball of lightning, and I a Chain Lightning, which had the added benefit that the secondary bolt hit Scott and give him some extra energy. For a moment the room was full of coruscating light.
    Good morning, Bozo.
    "We killed your brothers and now we will kill you!" Talon announced.
    The dragon came up with a roar and proved itself far more alert on first waking than I am, as it ignored the human on its neck and unleashed a torrent of fire‹up at Thunderbolt and myself. Thank the goddess for those fire resistance spells.
    "No, you stupid lizard, you want me!" Talon yelled at it, dancing on its neck.
    Scott whipped his length against the creature, shattering a few scales as Bozo got to his feet and took a few steps backwards under the impact. Thunderbolt threw another lightning bolt; this one came within a couple of inches of the dragon and fizzled.
    Now that we were lower down we could see three exits from the room, including a sixty-foot wide door and two more of the apparently standard thirty-foot halls.
    I took stock of the situation and paused to pray again; this one had no visible effect on anything, but I hoped it would come in handy soon.
    Phoenix Talon aimed another blow at the back of Bozo's head, and then Jumbo charged into the room and breathed another gout of fire that engulfed Bozo, Scott, and Phoenix Talon‹or seemed to, but Talon ran up the wall and backflipped to avoid it, and Scott went to liquid form and dodged the white-hot cone.
    Jumbo looked a bit startled.
    Bozo leaped with rending fangs, claws, and wings. One wing struck Scott, bruising his metal form somewhat, but Talon took the brunt of it by far. Scott launched himself against the soft part of the dragon's side, seeing as how he was under its wing anyway, and it roared its displeasure.
    I directed the carpet lower so Thunderbolt could unleash a Cone of Cold. Scott and Phoenix Talon threw themselves out of the way, the latter receiving a light coating of frost.
    Jumbo froze over and simply stood there, solidified in mid-strike. Our carpet continued its graceful arc around as the room became considerably quieter.
    Phoenix Talon struck at the second dragon, but his katana is not a terribly effective weapon against these creatures. He did have its attention, however; the dragon leaped up and came down on him with all four claws, while at the same time the tail slapped out and struck the carpet. I felt the shift in balance as Thunderbolt was tossed off, and then we all hit the ground, bruised but unbroken. Thinking Talon done for after his rending, the dragon flicked him aside with a paw, only to see him bounce agilely from the wall and land on his feet, ready for more; the beast's howl of fury set the cloud-chamber shaking.
    Scott struck again, to his usual effect. I staggered to my feet and grabbed the mummy hand, still with me after all this time, and murmured the words of the spell I'd been preparing for.
    The dragon, in the midst of preparing to breath fire again, stumbled backward and collapsed against his frozen brother, shattering the body. It was dead.
    "OK, one more," Scott announced.
    "Nice work, guys," Talon judged. "I thought these things smelled bad when they were aliveŠ." Thunderbolt and I shared a slightly smug look, although mixed in with the pride I did feel a bit bad about what I'd done. It is a terrible power, so easily abused.
    "Hey, for those of you who like eat and things, isn't something spiffy supposed to happen if you eat a dragon heart?" the golem asked. "It's so rare you get to test this out, how often do you find a dead dragon?"
    As it happens, he was right; specially prepared dragon heart does bestow certain benefits. Talon went spelunking after I had healed some of his wounds. I picked up a fang for myself as a reminder. In the meantime, Scott scouted around to see if Koko was on his way home, and the rest of us looked around the enormous chamber. Aside from the rooms the dragons lived in, there was a moderate-sized (in giant terms) chamber that had apparently been used for storing unwanted items; a chaise lounge the size of a house, an end table, and a large pile of copper and silver.

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