The Gossamer Plain by Thomas M. Reid

whisked the two of them deep under the surface.
    Rorgak’s competence was already gone from the cambion’s thoughts when he and his sorceress appeared upon the spiral steps within the abandoned Forge Tower. He could feel that the heat was more oppressive than the last time he had visited.
    The fey’ri magic must be going well, he thought.
    Vhok ascended the staircase and stepped into view of his minions, still hard at work magically disrupting the Everfire. He saw evidence of a recent battle atop the tower. One of the fey’ri sorcerers lay unmoving, his skin blackened, and several others showed signs of injuries. A pair of the demonic elves perched on the edge of the roof, wands in their hands, gazing down into the depths of the chamber below.
    Lysalis surveyed the situation, examining the dead and wounded fey’ri and studying the floor far below. She turned to Vhok and caught his eye, then gave a jerk of her head to indicate that he should see what was transpiring. The cambion strolled to the edge and peered over the side.
    The Everfire roared and bucked, sloshing scalding hot liquid rock. It swelled and spilled over the sides of its channel, sliding across the vast floor and cooling in uneven mounds. Dwarves had scattered throughout the cavern, furiously working to stop the onslaught of fiery destruction. Their efforts were hampered by the churning lava, the magical attacks from the sorcerers on the tower, and a horde of tanarukks that pressed the attack directly.
    Some of the dwarves had formed a shield wall. They defended a second, smaller group from attack, fighting to keep the swarming tanarukks away from their charges while the smaller collection worked magic. The wizards, clerics, and sorcerers struggled to repel the mass of fiendish ores. At the same time, they flung destructive magic at the sorcerers atop the tower.
    Even as Vhok watched, a sizzling nugget of fire soared upward from the cluster of arcane spellcasters. He recognized the fireball well before it reached him. The cambion chuckled as the blast of searing fire erupted all around him. The burst singed the heated air, but he and his sorcerers remained unscathed.
    The diversion seemed well in hand, so the cambion looked at Lysalis. “It’s time to go,” he said. He pointed to an overhang of natural rock jutting from the cavern wall near the sloshing, churning Everfire. “Whisk us over there, please,” he instructed the sorceress.
    Lysalis gave Vhok a slightly chagrined look and shrugged. “You’ve had me whisking you here and there all evening,” she said. “I can’t perform that particular trick again for a while. At least not until I rest and recuperate.”
    Vhok frowned, eyeing the vast space between the base of the tower and the promontory he sought. “Then I guess we’ll get there the old-fashioned way,” he said, pulling his long sword, Burnblood, free of its scabbard. “We’ll drop down on the far side and work our way around those sluice channels, which will give us some cover from the fight. Over the side it is, then.”
    The fey’ri nodded, chanted a. few lines of sorcery, and moved to join him on the far side of the tower. Together, they stepped off the edge and began to plummet toward the bottom. Near the halfway mark of the fall, Vhok invoked an innate ability and immediately slowed his descent, creating a magical disk of force beneath himself and levitating upon it in the air. Beside him, Lysalis also slowed, though her reduced speed hinted at a gentle drifting, as though she were light as a feather.
    Two different tricks, similar outcome, Vhok chuckled. “Race you down,” he called, allowing his disk to accelerate its descent. He dropped below his sorcerous minion and reached the rough-hewn floor of the great cavern a few heartbeats before she did.
    As soon as Lysalis joined the commander of the Scourged Legion, they crept around to survey the battlefield. The dwarves were hard pressed on two sides. It wasn’t quite a