Showdown!

Having escaped from the frying pan of Lolth's underworld into the fire of Calamus' London, our heroes meet BOWGENTLE, the blind sage and friend of Count Brass. Bowgentle says the Runestaff told him they would need his help, so here he is.

He is indeed helpful, as he knows of a sewer passage which avoids the monster-filled streets of London. JUNIUS decides to take some of the loud, violent types and create a big ol' diversion, while the sneaky sorts enter Calamus' tower and take him out. He takes BJERN, Gnorfank, Ringorix, and his last surviving officer with him.

(This plan may seem less suicidally brave if one remembers that Junius is carrying the plasma cannon of Shiro, one of the slain Knights of the Dawn. Or then again, it may not.)

The diversion does indeed attract all manner of attention. In battle with a beholder, Ringorix is frozen solid, Equitas (the officer) is killed by lightning, Gnorfank is set on fire, and Junius is slowed down. But he still manages to shoot the beholder (whose anti-magic ray does not affect the plasma cannon, which is not magical at all) long enough for Gnorfank to stab its eye out. Which, being a beholder, is pretty much everything.

POUNCEQUICK sneaks up the tower with the intention of dropping on Calamus from above and stabbing him in the head. Hey, it usually works.

Everyone else sneaks through an oddly clean sewer and ambushes Fabulus Calamus in his lair, next to his brooding balcony. Calamus calls in Andronicus, the rather unmanly governor of Britain. RETARIUS clobbers Andronicus with his shield. He goes down.

ROSA shoots Calamus with an arrow which knocks loose a vial on his vest and eats a hole in the floor. Calamus commands Retarius to slay his friends, and when he refuses, is puzzled. Anyone who talks to Calamus for ten minutes or so basically IS Calamus from that point on. Has Retarius, he asks, been killed and resurrected lately? Because that would explain it.

Indeed, way back in 532, Retarius and the leader of the wolfmen killed each other. Retarius was healed in time, but apparently he was dead for a moment or so, long enough for Calamus' snare on his mind to be broken. Darn it. He had been waiting six years to use that, too.

Calamus shrugs. No matter, the Runestaff predicted he would triumph over the Valerians. He selects another vial, but Retarius knocks it down, then finishes him with a shot in the heart. That wasn't so hard ...

... until Andronicus rises, speaking in Calamus' voice. Seems Calamus took him over long ago, so his consciousness resides in Andronicus as well! Andronicus summons a water warrior, a water crossbow, a water cataupult, and between himself and Retarius, a big water shield! Retarius fakes him out and cuts him, then cuts him again, and Andronicus backpedals out onto the balcony, where Pouncequick drops from above and stabs him in the head!

With Calamus now twice-dead, the monsters of London lose heart and flee, which is bad news for those monsters' caretakers. Count Brass is found in an elaborate water-operated death trap, then freed.

But the Runestaff predicted Calamus would win? Was it wrong? Well, no, says Count Brass. Elrond examines the Runestaff and finds one rune-tag which is brass, not gold. Count Brass added it, and of course anything including this extra rune would be gibberish.

Elrond is about to declare that the Romans have no further need of the Runestaff, so it is time to return it to Elfland. But the Romans aren't sure, and want to return to Rome to check, which Elrond agrees to. There is the little matter of Count Brass' claim to the Runestaff, but Elrond seems content to wait.

To Fall Beyond the Night

Count Brass returns from the Air Dimension and cuts the white thread. Now only two threads, Water and Fire, hold the Demonweb up. They're opposite each other, as you would expect, but the Demonweb begins swinging wildly back and forth.

Lolth, who was about to summon six more bodies, rushes over to stabilize the Air thread. But Count Brass, Pouncequick, the Rebukers, and Bjern rush over to clobber her. Lolth is rescued by a Phase Spider, which transports her and Count Brass to another corner of her dimensional realm.

Next, Lolth summons her princes, Rhan-Tegoth and Abhoth, who burst up out of the ground and web a bunch of people in place. ROSA calls lightning on Rhan-Tegoth, which causes green lightning to burst out of the underside of Hell and smash a hole in his rocky armor. POUNCEQUICK jumps on that hole, stabs it, and rides Rhan-Tegoth up and into the Fire Dimension, pursued by Rosa and her flying horse.

The Fire Dimension turns out to be the interior of Mount Aetna, which Rosa has seen before while Lolth was sabotaging her woodswalk paths. Pouncequick dodges a huge thrown ball of molten metal hurled by the Balrog which lives in Aetna; it hits Rhan-Tegoth squarely, knocking him down into the base of the volcano. Rosa catches Pouncequick and calls lightning into the volcano, turning what was already going to be a Sicily-wrecking eruption into a hard lance of molten iron, straight up into the stratosphere. By the time the hot ash falls back down, it'll be way out in the ocean.

Pouncequick cuts the fire thread, but Lolth grabs the other end. So Pouncequick runs, telling everyone to run to the water thread, and drops the other end of the fire thread. The thread goes slack, and Lolth heaves on it, but she can't support the Demonweb herself, so she pulls in its edges, causing most of her monsters to fall off the suddenly retreating edge. Everyone runs for the water thread.

Meanwhile, BROTHER AQUILA travels up the Water thread and finds it leads to Londinium, capital of Fabulus Calamus the water wizard. He almost drowns in the polluted Thames but manages to avoid the fungus monster and rebuke the patchwork monster, and also some flying knights of the Order of the Bat. He sees the exit thread at the very top of Calamus' Panopticon, the crystal tower which sees all things, and concludes this is not an achievable one-man mission.

Nor need it be so! For just about everyone emerges from the water thread into Londinium. JUNIUS, the last to escape, sees the Demonweb tilt and submerge, falling on the support of the water thread until it snaps, and Lolth and her demons fall, farther and farther from God, glaring at Junius with her six red eyes until she is so far away she cannot see him. So far is she, in fact, that Sylvia cannot even see her with the Jewel in the Skull, and that's pretty darn far.

Next week, the Roman forces are in Londinium, capital of Calamus, the last villain left that they know of. They could just leave, recruit more forces, heal up, plan, and come back, but I somehow doubt that's going to happen ...