We stopped briefly at the copse of trees that Adriana and Simon said that Wilma had backed into when protecting the children, but we did not discover anything, and Biff was in no mood to investigate.

  The open grate was not far from there, and a ladder led down about ten feet. As we decided who was going to go first, Simon jumped down and moved forward. Biff jumped down as well. The rest of us quickly, but carefully, used the ladder.

  Adriana, Bido, and I created a light source so we could see better. I used my staff, Bido used one of his mirrors, and Adriana used her fire wand to create a heatless torch light that hovered about her.

  Biff and Simon took the lead, followed by me and Bido, and then Steven and Adriana. Steven was an excellent fighter, all clerics were, but he reasoned that if they came at us from behind, he didn’t want the soft mages unprotected.

  He was not wrong.

  Steven lit up with Holy Light that was far brighter than our other sources.

  “Well, they will know we are coming,” Adriana said.

  “Good,” Biff remarked angrily.

  “I am not hiding from the corrupt,” Steven said, “and if they come at us in large numbers, we will want the protection of the Holy Light about us.”

  “And the dark is creepy enough without knowing what is lurking down here.” Bido agreed.

  “It’s what’s lurking down here that we don’t know that worries me,” Simon added.

  Adriana threw a pebble at him, which, being Simon, he caught and tossed to the side. “Not helping!” She complained about his choice of words.

  “How many ghouls were there?” Steven asked.

  “Maybe a dozen,” Adriana said.

  “Ten,” Simon answered.

  Adriana said, “Seriously, you counted?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m good with numbers.”

  She snorted. “A monk accountant. Great.”

  Biff hissed. “Can we maybe focus on why we are here?”

  Everyone drew silent.

  Biff turned around but kept walking. He started to say something else, but never got the chance. He stepped into some sewer goo common enough down here and smelled bad enough that none of us wanted to think too much about what it was made of.

  That was our mistake.

  The sewer goo exploded upward and wrapped all around him.

  “Sewer Slime!” Bido yelled.

  A milky gray ooze surrounded Biff in moments, and by the wispy vapors that came off of it, it smelled like there was a kind of acid in the air.

  “It is digesting him. He won’t have long!” Bido explained.

  Simon reached out to grab the goo off of Biff, but jerked his hands back with a yelp. “The acid is on the outside as well.”

  “What are its weaknesses?” I asked out loud to Bido or anyone who knew.

  Bido answered, “Heat and light. It will take damage from our blades, but so will Biff.”

  Adriana yelled, “Stand to the side!”

  There was not a lot of room in this tunnel, but we moved aside as best we could for her and Steven to approach. The Holy Light enveloped the creature, and there was a high-pitched whining sound, but it did not look like it had taken damage.

  Adriana pointed a wand at Biff and said, “Steven, keep an eye on his health.” And she let loose a barrage of Firebolts into the creature and Biff.

  That hurt the creature.

  It also hurt Biff.

  Adriana said, “It looks like they are each taking about half of the damage. Any idea how tough this thing is?”

  “Toast it!” I yelled. “Steven, heal Biff.”

  Adriana let loose another barrage of Firebolts, and huge chunks of the creature simply burned away or tried to flee. Biff collapsed to the ground, hurt but alive. Adriana just kept walking forward as the thing whined and tried to slide away.

  But the Sewer Goo was an ambush predator and did not move quickly after its initial lunge attack.

  Adriana just kept shooting into it until Simon came up behind her and said, “You got it, Addy, you got it.”

  She was panting heavily, and her face was set in anger.

  “I’m not losing another friend today.”

  “Wilma is not lost, she just needs some help escaping,” Simon said carefully, placing his hand on her shoulder.

  Adriana shook slightly, calmed herself, and said. “I should have saved Wilma.”

  Biff came up behind her, still dripping with pieces of dead ooze. “It’s not your fault. We’ll find her. We just need to be careful where we step.” He added.

  Adriana burst out in nervous laughter and then hugged him. Then she backed away and slugged his arm.

  “Ouch!” He said. “Hurting all over here!”

  “That’s for not watching your step.” She explained.

  “And the hug?” He asked.

  “Was for not dying.” She added.

  Steven gave Biff another dose of a Lesser Heal Other spell, but just enough to bring him to half. He explained, “I’m almost tapped out after that battle and out of potions.”

  I said, “I’m all tapped out. I used up all my potions fighting the undead and shadow monsters.”

  “Shadow monsters?” Steven asked.

  “Later. Does anyone else have a potion that we can give our healer?” I asked.

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  Bido walked up. “This is my only one, but you can use it. I’m at about half my points remaining and still have some magic in the mirrors.” He explained.

  Steven nodded and drank the potion.

  Steven cast another Lesser Heal Other spell that got Biff up just above three-quarters. “We need our only fighter ready as well.”

  “Standing right here,” Simon complained with his arms up and an expression of frustration.

  “Then you will agree with me,” Steven said with a wink and moved back into our marching order.

  “Which way, Gwyd?” Biff asked.

  The Sewer Goo had been at the center of a cross-section.

  Nobody had an idea which way to go.

  Simon examined the sewer floor. It was pretty messy, but up ahead, he discovered some serious scrapings. He said, “I think Wilma is showing us the way. There is a single, long, dragging mark going forward. It could be from her.”

  Biff moved forward in that direction. “We go that way, then.”

  Simon joined his right side, and we all resumed our trudging, but being more careful to watch where we stepped. Steven was also keeping an eye behind us, which we all appreciated.

  We moved on for maybe fifty yards, and it branched into another intersection.

  “This place is like a maze,” Bido complained.

  Simon examined the floor again and saw what looked like scrapings going to the left. Biff saw them this time as well and turned in that direction without saying anything.

  “Left it is then.” Simon agreed.

  There was a loud screeching sound, and we all crouched instinctively as a creature faced off against us at the very edges of the light. It was a rat.

  A giant rat.

  A gargantuan rat. And the beast took up most of the passage before us.

  Simon said, “Any ideas?”

  Bido moved forward and flashed one of his mirrors at the rodent, saying a single word in a gentle and calm voice. “Boo.”

  The sound of his voice did not echo or come out in any unusual way. It was just in his normal, conversational voice. But the effect it had on the rat was instantaneous.

  The giant rat somehow turned itself around completely in the small space and launched away from us as fast as its legs could carry it, screeching in panic.

  We all stared after the rat and then turned to look at Bido.

  “Something new I picked up from Wilma that played really well on my thaumaturgy mirrors. It’s a kind of advanced fear spell. Works really well on rats, apparently.”

  “Lucky for us,” I remarked.

  We could still hear the rat screeching in the distance, the sound of its running away distorted by the hard surface of the sewer pipes and the locations of running water.

  As we continued down the tunnel, we came across more and more side passages. Simon said, “Keep an eye out for the scrapings we are looking for. The rat has eliminated any traces of Wilma in this main passage.

  About forty more yards down, Simon stopped and said, “I think this smaller tunnel might be what we are looking for.”

  He stepped through and then gasped as two side panels shot out after he triggered something with his foot. The dirty, rusty nails in the wooden planks had been painted quite well to look like tunnel stone and had swung out on some kind of hinge and spring contraption. They were designed to aim for the legs and struck Simon squarely.

  We made room for Steven. “That’s nasty. And dirty. And, well, smelly.” He added. “I thought you could dodge things like this,” Steven said as he pulled them loose from where they were sticking in the monk.

  “It would have hit Biff or one of you if I had dodged them.” He gasped between breaths.

  Steven healed him and then cast Cure Disease on top of it just to be sure.

  Biff said, “Don’t you need to cast Cure Disease on me as well?”

  “Nah, you were acid-washed,” I said before anyone had a chance to reply.

  He cast me a dirty look.

  Adriana said, “Been holding that one back, Gwyd?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t think about it until it was too late, and it didn’t work for the rat. I thought I was going to have to save it until dinner tonight.”

  They shook their heads.

  “Well, the good news is that this trap didn’t set itself.”

  “It didn’t set off itself, either,” Biff said.

  “What I meant,” Simon ignored Biff’s jibe, “is that what we are looking for may be down here. Why else trap a small side tunnel?”

  The tunnel went on for only another twenty yards or so before it ended at an archway that stood open to the right.

  We paused at the archway but saw no signs of movement.

  Biff pushed forward, and we entered a room.

  The room itself was not overly large, perhaps thirty feet across, but it would be plenty large enough for us all to enter. The edges of the room were rounded in design, but with four actual corners giving it a slightly star-like shape. At the center of each cardinal direction along the curved walls, a door stood closed except where we stood at an open archway.

  “Which way?” Biff asked.

  As if on cue, the three doors burst open and a dozen cultists charged us. Two pairs of cultists exited each room and moved in practiced tandem with one another toward the archway and us.

  The cultists were dressed in black from head to toe except for a single, bright red sash that wound about their waists like a belt. Out of the sashes they drew blackened, curved-edge daggers. Each weapon had a blade that was easily twelve inches in length and looked more like a wicked, thin shortsword than a long dagger. These were not throwing daggers, but fighting blades with but one brutal intent. There was a liquid gleam to the edges of their weapons.

  “The blades are venomed,” Simon called as he entered and slid to the right-hand side with Biff following suit to the left. Bido and I stepped forward, and we had nowhere to go until space was made for us to either side since the cultists were charging us head-on.

  Realizing we needed just a bit more time, I called forth an air elemental attack from my staff to create a gust of wind.

  I had not expected it to be as strong as it ended up. The gust blew all twelve men across the room and into the wall. They took damage from the blow, and one had landed on his blade and began to writhe in agony, suffering from the effects of his own bane, as the alchemists called it.

  Steven and Adriana had time to step in as we all made room for ourselves.

  Simon and Steven may have waited for the cultists to recover from their vulnerable positions, but Adriana just started shooting out Firebolt spells.

  They gave her a look and she said, “What? It’s wrong to shoot a guy when he’s down? Try being half the size of every hairy ape around and see if you wait for a fair shot.”

  She had a point. And not just about her size. She was fairly small at five feet, or as I like to tell her, four feet twelve inches. We were outnumbered, and these evil guys were working with the undead and probably directly for the necromancer who started this whole mess.

  I added a bard area of effect spell to her Firebolts. My bard friend referred to it as his “crowd control spell” in case he needed a rapid escape from a hostile tavern. It sent small lightning bolts into every cultist in the room. There were two levels to the spell, and he had chosen to give me the lower level to save casting points for his upcoming trials. In this capacity, it was not an especially damaging spell, but it did affect all of them at once. Between that and her insistent blasting, we accounted for a couple of them before they could get back up and at us again.

  Biff wasn’t waiting either, but I could tell he didn’t want to close on their deadly daggers. So he picked up a large piece of building material, which appeared to be three two-by-fours nailed together for some purpose, and began swinging it like a huge club.

  In his hands, it worked.

  Brawlers could use weapons. They just preferred their hands. And in situations like this, any broken or breakable piece of building material would do. In the hands of a brawler, any improvised weapon was usable. He once explained that after his hand-to-hand mastery, his Improvised Weapon Mastery was his favorite. Big heavy chairs were a specialty of his, but long wooden beams sufficed in a pinch.

  And with his strength and reach, he could hit two cultists at a time with his heavy swings.

  The rest of us gave him room to swing.

  So did the cultists, which meant more headed toward the rest of us.

  They really were no match for us; the only real concern was their bane-coated blades.

  But with a timber swinging brawler on one side, and a concussion-smacking monk on the other, they didn’t get very close.

  Simon smacked the stone ground and directed a Concussive Blast at the main body of cultists. They flew back to the same wall I had smashed them against thirty seconds earlier.

  This time, only two got up, and Adriana set them on fire. There were little cultist blazes glowing along the far wall when she was done.

  Bido stepped forward as Biff smashed the remaining cultist through a door and into one of the rooms they had just departed. Bido wiped his hands and said, “Nice work, everyone. Next time I’ll lend a hand.”

  We all just stared at him.

  “What?” He said. “I never had a chance. You all took the mickey out of them before my grand entrance.”

  “What did you have planned for them?” I asked.

  “Well, I don’t really know. But it would have been good.” He said with a smile.

  “Biff?” A weak voice called faintly from the center room where the cultist lay amidst a splintered door.

  My friend barreled forward, smashing open what was left of the already demolished door. It teetered for a moment and then fell entirely off its remaining top hinge.

  Inside the room, in a back corner chained to the wall, was Wilma and four students who started to cheer and cry at our appearance.

  I stood at the doorway while the others checked the two rooms to either side, making sure we were alone.

  Biff hugged Wilma and then grabbed the chains and began pulling. I walked into the room, picked up the keys off the desk, and moved to the back, where Biff was working on the chains.

  With a tearing sound, Biff sent stone and mortar flying, and he ripped one of the chain pitons out of the wall.

  “Or we could use these,” I said loudly.

  Biff turned and saw the keys dangling in my hand.

  He accepted them with a shrug and said, "They could be faster.”

  Adriana and Steven gathered the kids up and made sure they were okay. Wilma just stared deep into Biff’s eyes and said, “I knew you’d come.”

  They hugged again, and Wilma cried silently in his arms.

  “Hey, guys?” Bido asked.

  The rest of us turned toward him.

  “Where did all the ghouls go?”