Gauntlgrym

OLD KINGS AND ANCIENT GODS

BRUENOR SALUTED DRIZZT AND RUSHED THROUGH THE FIRST OF A SERIES of doors down the small tunnel, Athrogate right behind him.

Drizzt didn’t see it, and had to just trust in his friend. His glance back at Jarlaxle, his shock at seeing the drow’s demise, had cost him precious seconds, and he sprinted to catch up to Dahlia, who was already furiously working her tri-staff to hold back the rush of Ashmadai. He drew out his onyx figurine as he went and called for Guenhwyvar, but he didn’t keep the cat at his side as she appeared, instead ordering her to bring chaos to the ranks of their enemies.

Off Guenhwyvar leaped, and in came Drizzt, hard. Afraid for his dwarf friend and surprisingly outraged at the loss of his other… friend, the drow charged into the nearest Ashmadai warrior with his scimitars spinning. He hit the cultist’s scepter four times before the Ashmadai man, an ugly half-orc, even knew what hit him. Batting the scepter left and right, not even bothering to work it out to one side or the other, Drizzt had the overmatched warrior confused and off balance. He struck again with a fifth parry, batting the scepter to the right, then hit it with an unexpected uppercut, lifting it away. Even as it cleared the Ashmadai’s torso, Twinkle, in Drizzt’s left hand, slashed across, slicing open the half-orc’s belly. As the Ashmadai lurched forward, the same blade struck a backhand against the half-orc’s temple, sending him tumbling to the side.

Up came Icingdeath in a powerful horizontal presentation as Drizzt stepped ahead to meet the next enemy in line. But before he could strike through the opening with his left-hand blade, he had to launch Twinkle out wide to parry a thrusting staff-spear.

Drizzt missed the opening, but Dahlia didn’t. Under his upraised blade came her staff, a single long pole once more, to stab into the Ashmadai’s chest. When it hit, it threw forth a burst of lightning, launching their opponent through the air and backward. He flew several feet, and several feet high, but he never came back to the floor. A long-bladed sword drove through his chest, impaling him in mid air.

The legion devil easily held the dead Ashmadai aloft with just that one sword arm, and let him hang there for a few heartbeats, arms and legs out wide, lifeblood pouring from the wound. Looking around its macabre human shield, the devil grinned at the drow and the elf, even laughed a bit. Then it jerked its great sword powerfully back and forth and the dead cultist fell to the floor at the devil’s feet in two pieces.

Drizzt presented Twinkle horizontally in front of him, left arm out straight, his right hand tucked at the side of his face, Icingdeath atop the left-hand blade. He stood in a crouch, right foot dropped back and holding most of his weight. Beside him, Dahlia broke her staff again into three parts, pointed one end toward the fiend, and set the pole hanging from that end into a lazy, measured swing.

The great devil’s three hellish companions stepped out beside it.

“You should have kept the cat with you,” Dahlia whispered.

Drizzt shook his head. “We have to fade back to protect the tunnel.”

But they were already too late. The pit fiend appeared there, sliding through another dimensional gate to the entrance to the tunnel. With a mocking laugh, it went in pursuit of the dwarves.

Drizzt turned to give chase, but the lesser devils could also teleport, and two of them did, blocking his way so that the four devils surrounded them. In unison, the fiends began banging their black-bladed swords against their iron shields.

Dahlia glanced at Drizzt, and the hopelessness washed from the drow in the wake of an impish, mischievous, exuberant grin.

“You know they’re devils, right?” the drow asked her.

“We know what they are, but they have no idea who we are,” Dahlia replied.

She exploded into motion, leaping at the nearest fiend, her front pole spinning wildly. Up came the devil’s shield to block that spin, but it was merely a distraction. Dahlia prodded ahead with the center piece of her tri-staff as if it were a spear, clipping the devil’s cheek as it frantically dodged back.

The elf had the staff presented more conventionally in front of her in the blink of an eye, both ends spinning, and she worked her hands up and down expertly to block the second devil’s thrust. The second creature reached far enough ahead to allow the spinning pole to painfully crack against its forearm.

As Dahlia went forward, Drizzt rolled behind her, back to back, his scimitars working in a blur, sweeping side-to-side strokes that picked off the thrusting sword of the legion devil rushing in pursuit. He hit that blade several times in rapid succession, then launched his own attack from on high, forcing the devil to lift its shield to block, once then again. Before the devil could bring its sword back in for a countering stab, Drizzt rushed under that upraised arm as if he meant to run right past the fiend.

The devil turned and so did Drizzt, cutting back the other way, inside the devil’s reach. Up went Twinkle, taking the devil’s sword arm with it, and as Drizzt stepped back under that uplifted arm to rejoin Dahlia, a backhand from Icingdeath sank deep into the hellspawn’s flesh. The frostbrand drank hot devil blood, and the fiend howled in agony.

Drizzt faded fast to the side as a second legion devil came in swift pursuit, and so intent was the creature that it didn’t comprehend the “switch” executed by the two elves. Drizzt stepped in to spin his blades against the rush of the two pursuing Dahlia, and Dahlia confidently turned her back on them, trusting fully in Drizzt as she focused on the third. Her flail worked in a blur, over and around, angle after angle, that got them around the blocking shield. The fiend tried to counter with a sudden and overreaching slash, but Dahlia easily slipped out of reach, then came right in behind the cut. Her right-hand flail spun over to connect solidly with a blocking shield, and Dahlia released a powerful jolt of energy at that, shocking the legion devil. Because of that, the hellspawn could not realign its shield in time, nor bring its sword back to fend her off. That gave two-handed Dahlia a clear strike with her left flail.

The metal pole cracked hard against the devil’s skull, staggering it backward, off balance and dazed-not a proper defense against the likes of merciless Dahlia.

In short order, the elves had gained the upper hand, but that brought no thought of victory to Drizzt. Ashmadai swarmed around them, and the pit fiend must have been close on Bruenor’s heels.

Purely by luck, Drizzt noted Valindra, her eyes and smile wide, reaching toward him and throwing… a flaming pea?

Sweat dripping, heat stinging their eyes, Bruenor and Athrogate came through the last door, gaining the ledge around the primordial’s pit. Athrogate turned fast to close the door behind them, as he had done to all the various portals. Only a Delzoun dwarf reciting the proper rhyme could get through, after all.

Or so he believed.

Even as he swung the last mithral door closed, Athrogate saw the one behind it burst in, flying from its hinge and tumbling into the corridor, bent and scarred by the mace of the pit fiend. Beealtimatuche stared at him and laughed.

Athrogate slammed the door.

“Across the way, o’er the bridge!” he shouted at Bruenor, trying to hustle the king along.

But Bruenor heard the commotion in the tunnel behind them, and he stopped and turned.

The mithral door went flying from its hinge, up sidelong and spinning in the air right over the ledge of the deep fire pit.

Onto the ledge stepped Beealtimatuche.

“Go! Get ye gone!” Athrogate yelled at Bruenor as he shoved the dwarf toward the small bridge spanning the pit, then rushed back the other way, morningstars spinning, to battle the devil.

Bruenor stumbled a few steps, but stopped fast and turned. His vision blurred, his muscles swelled, and memories of a long-ago time filled his thoughts. He heard the voices of long-dead kings inside him. He felt the strength of the dwarf gods inside him.

As if in a dream, Bruenor watched the scene unfold before him, Athrogate striking with fearless fury, his morningstars flashing in against the blocking forearm of the pit fiend. And the devil winced, but nothing more, and wasn’t lurching or off balance as Athrogate’s second weapon crashed in, connecting with the devil’s mace.

Hooked and tugged, the morningstar was torn from the dwarf’s grip and thrown back to clatter to the floor near the door.

Still boring in, undaunted, Athrogate took up his remaining weapon in both hands and set it in a great and mighty spin, up high.

Then Athrogate, seasoned by centuries of battle-Athrogate, possessed of the strength of a giant-Athrogate, as tough a dwarf as ever lived, was simply slapped aside like a child, sent skipping and spinning across the floor, right to the edge of the pit and rolling over. He came around, in control, to his great credit, and managed to hook his free hand on the ledge, holding his place.

“Run, ye fool!” he yelled at Bruenor. “Bah, but get to the lever, or all’s lost!” he finished with one last act of stubborn defiance, grunting and throwing his shoulder over the ledge to gain the leverage he needed to launch his remaining weapon at the pit fiend, which stalked in at Bruenor.

The morningstar connected but Beealtimatuche didn’t flinch, and the movement cost Athrogate his balance.

He gave a yell at Bruenor, telling the dwarf to “Run!” once more, but his voice grew more distant as he fell away.

But Bruenor didn’t hear him, and wasn’t running anyway. It wasn’t just Bruenor in the body of the dwarf king then. Within his mortal coil loomed the kings of old, the blood of Delzoun. Within him loomed the ancient gods of the dwarves-Moradin, Clangeddin, Dumathoin-demanding of him that he champion their most hallowed hall.

Bruenor wasn’t running. He wasn’t scared.

He swelled with a titan’s strength, from the potion his enchanted shield had given him, from the infusion of the throne of the kings, from the glory of Gauntlgrym itself. Anyone looking at him wouldn’t even have thought him a dwarf, so swollen was he with power. And even that larger form could hardly contain the might within, muscles knotting and bulging.

He banged his axe against his shield and waded in for battle.

The drow spun and threw himself over Dahlia, taking them both to the ground the instant before Valindra’s mighty fireball exploded in the air just above them. Even with that feat of acrobatics, both would have surely been consumed had Drizzt not been holding Icingdeath in his right hand. The frostbrand glowed an angry blue, and its magic fended off the flames to such an extent that Drizzt and Dahlia felt only minimal discomfort.

He rolled off her, terrified that the three surviving legion devils would simply fall over them where they lay. But the three fiends did not advance, obviously caught by surprise by the fireball as well. While the flames did no harm to the hellspawn, the surprise of the blast gave Drizzt and Dahlia the time they needed to get back into a defensive position.

Drizzt went right back to work on the two devils he had taken from Dahlia, his blades working in defensive circles as he tried to separate the pair. He had found an advantage in that the one Dahlia had earlier struck showed itself to be nearly blind in one eye. As he wedged the fiends apart, he worked his scimitars independently, right hand parrying the sword of one, left hand working on the wounded devil.

Still looking for his opening, still patient, though he knew the Ashmadai were again pressing in, he heard a crack and the report of lightning behind him. Dahlia had finished the third.

The drow stepped his left foot forward, snapping off a strike that hit the devil’s shield hard. Drizzt rolled behind the jolt, daring to turn a complete circuit that brought him out fast and far to his left. As he’d hoped, the devil couldn’t see the move well enough to retract, and the drow came around with both blades working fast and hard against the hellspawn’s frantically-parrying sword.

Drizzt could have beaten those parries, if that was his plan, but he instead spun back the other way, reversing his movement. He finished as he came around with two heavy sidelong chops at the devil, one of which slipped past the shield just enough to score a wicked hit across the fiend’s upper arm.

And Drizzt disengaged there, completely and without another thought, turning his full attention to the remaining fiend, who was, predictably, coming at him hard.

The one he’d hit tried to come at him hard, too.

Tried to, but the flying form of Dahlia double-kicked the devil in the face, throwing it backward.

“The lich!” Dahlia cried as she nimbly landed. “And now we die.”

Drizzt just growled and fought on, determined to at least kill the fiend before the inevitable killing blow overwhelmed him.

But then another cry rent the hot air of Gauntlgrym’s hallowed forge, a shout full of passion and determination, a yell Drizzt Do’Urden had heard many times in his life, and surprised as he was, never had it sounded as sweet as it did just then.

“Me king!”

And into the hall they came, scores of dwarves: Icewind Dale Battlehammers, the Shield of Mirabar, and scores of Gauntlgrym’s ghosts.

Like towering trees toppled into each other, like two mountains falling over to fill a valley, the dwarf king and the pit fiend threw themselves together. Each swung a weapon, mace and axe, but those seemed secondary to the sheer power of their bodies colliding. They grappled and twisted. Beealtimatuche’s tail flipped up over his shoulder to sting the dwarf in the cheek, but if Bruenor even felt it, he didn’t show it.

Instead, the dwarf twisted the fiend hard to the right and drove on harder, down and forward. Just as Beealtimatuche broke the grapple and leaped back, so did Bruenor. Tucking in his left shoulder, he plowed ahead with his shield in a sudden and brutal charge. He collided into the turning devil and sent Beealtimatuche flying backward, almost off the ledge.

Almost, but the fiend spread his leathery wings and came right back in, half leaping, half flying, descending upon Bruenor with a tremendous downward chop of his fiery mace.

Even with his shield in place to block, Bruenor should have been crushed by that blow. His arm should have shattered under the sheer weight of the mighty devil.

But he wasn’t, and it didn’t, and his countering sweep of his axe had Beealtimatuche twisting frantically to avoid being gutted.

On came the dwarf, taking another heavy hit against his indomitable shield, and slashing again and again as he continued to plow forward.

Beealtimatuche slammed him again, but the shield would not yield, and so the devil backed further, took up his weapon in both hands and met the swinging axe with the mighty mace. Sparks and fire exploded from the powerfully enchanted weapons, and Bruenor slipped his shield to his back and took up his axe in both hands to drive on again. The two combatants matched blows, weapon to weapon, to see which would lose his grip first. Like a bell of doom, the many-notched axe and the fiery mace rang out, devil-crafted against god-forged.

Roaring with rage, screaming for the beast to flee the hallowed halls, Bruenor swung mightily again… and missed.

And he was overbalanced, the devil holding his swing. Bruenor’s right foot stepped past to the left, where he planted it powerfully and threw himself back the other way, spinning a reverse turn, throwing his shield up high off his shoulder and onto his arm once more. As he caught the heavy hit from the mace-a stunning, arm-numbing blow-the dwarf kept turning, his right arm going out wide, axe at the very end of his reach to sweep across as he came around.

He felt it connect with devil’s flesh, goring a deep wound on Beealtimatuche’s hip and bringing forth a howl from the pit fiend.

Who was gone, then-simply vanished.

Bruenor threw himself forward, twisting to throw his shield arm behind him, and not an instant too soon. Beealtimatuche had “blinked” behind him. He managed to only partially block the mace as it clipped the edge of his shield, and it caught him down across the back, throwing him forward and face down to the stone.

But up he hopped, whirling to defeat the pursuit with another powerful swipe.

His lifeblood dripped behind him, but so too was Beealtimatuche’s leg red with blood.

To Valindra Shadowmantle, the moment of her freedom was at hand. When she had finished Drizzt and the troublesome Dahlia, and ended the threat to Sylora, her own place among those who served Szass Tam would be secured.

The drow and Dahlia still battled furiously by the side of the main forge, not quite at the side tunnel. But they couldn’t avoid her magic forever, and Valindra was a lich. She had forever to kill them, if need be.

Her eyes glowed with satisfaction. She heard the commotion as the newly-arrived dwarves and their ghostly kin met her Ashmadai legions, but she didn’t care. All she wanted was to be rid of one elf, and one last drow.

When six hundred pounds of furious panther slammed into her, knocking her back, the gathering energies of her spell were taken from her. Guenhwyvar flew aside and landed in a turn, claws screeching on the stone floor. Valindra, barely hurt, began casting again, and as Guenhwyvar managed to turn at last and come at her, waves of anti-magic hit the panther. Her strides seemed to slow, as if she were running in water. Then, despite herself and her loyalty to Drizzt, she felt the compulsion to return to her Astral home. She was unable to ignore the lich’s persuasion, the powerful dispelling of the magic that kept Guenhwyvar at Drizzt’s side. And so she became a gray mist, and with a plaintive wail toward Drizzt to alert him to her failure, the panther dissipated.

Valindra turned back to the task at hand, but too late, for then behind her came a distraction she could not ignore, another force charging into the fray. Salamanders entered through the same tunnel that had brought Valindra and Beealtimatuche and their minions into the Forge. Many were running, some riding large red lizards, and all closed fast on Valindra.

The lich turned and hissed at them, then issued the spell she had planned for the elves. And how the creatures of the fire god, children of fire, recoiled and shriveled and died before the waves of killing ice in Valindra’s cone of cold.

The lich hissed at them, screamed at them in outrage for stealing her moment of glory. Lightning erupted from her fingertips, blasting into the ranks of those trying to enter the room, rebounding with killing force back up the tunnel.

She hissed again and waved her arms and a great ice storm formed above the corridor entryway, raining sleet and pelting ice down upon any who dared come through.

Valindra spun back to line up a new killing strike at the hated elves. Her red eyes flared with inner fire as she began her casting. But then she was screaming incoherently, caught in a pillar of unexplained light-bright, burning light.

She thrashed and tried to fight through it to launch her spell, but to no avail. Smoke began to rise from her rotted flesh, and much of it began to roll up under the brilliant glow.

The chamber began to shake and roll. The forges vomited angry fires once more as the primordial reacted to the assault on its minions, and all the room began to quake with such force that most were thrown from their feet.

Not Valindra, though, who floated above the tumult.

But the light did not relent, biting at her, burning her, half-blinding her. She managed a half turn and at last spotted her assailant, and despite the sting, her eyes did widen indeed.

And he tipped his wide-brimmed hat and leveled his wand, and a second beam engulfed Valindra.

And she began to smoke, her skin to curl.

With a shriek that seemed to stop all other chaos in the room, Valindra flailed wildly and out of sheer terror managed to spit forth a spell, one that turned her into the form of a wraith. Her wail continued to echo throughout the chamber, but the lich slipped through a crack in the floor and was gone, her wraith form sliding through cracks in the stones and rushing far from the scene, never to return.

After all, Valindra was a lich. She had forever to kill them, if need be. Drizzt, Dahlia… and Jarlaxle would wait.

He tried not to let the sudden chaos in the hall distract him, thrown as it was into wild and heated battle between three distinct forces, each hating the other two. He tried to ignore the room itself, which had become an army of its own, it seemed, with rolling floor and shaking walls, rocks tumbling dangerously from the ceiling and forges spewing forth fire that could melt flesh from bones, and char the bones to ash for good measure.

Drizzt had to put all of that in its proper perspective, with so formidable a foe as a legion devil facing him.

The fighting beyond him was of no interest. And the room he used to his advantage. So swift, so agile, Drizzt accepted the rolling floor rather than try to fight against it. When the floor pitched left, left was the way he went. He rode it, his feet moving back and forth, sideways and sidelong, whichever way was necessary to keep him in perfect balance and speed him along. And if the fight called for him to go opposite the pitch of the floor, he used the roll of stone to grant him lift as he pitched back the other way in a leap or somersault.

His devilish opponent, no stranger to wild battle, did well to hold its footing in the shaking and trembling, but as Drizzt fell into the rhythms of the primordial’s angry gyrations, the legion devil could not keep up.

The drow began not only to react perfectly to the quake, but to anticipate its next movement. Confident that he was quick enough to correct if his guess proved wrong, Drizzt worked his scimitars up high in front of his face, rolling his wrists over each other to create a circle of angled downward slashes. As the fiend brought its shield to block, the drow just angled to the side a bit more, keeping the devil on its heels, forcing it to use both shield and sword defensively.

Further to his left Drizzt turned, bending the fiend, turning the fiend, and when the floor rolled under their feet, left to right, Drizzt used the momentum to step back fast to the right, then used the cresting wave of stone beneath his feet to launch himself. Flipping back to the left, even as the fiend, caught in the flow and expecting the reversal, the drow was fast turning the other way.

Right over the sweeping blade went Drizzt, landing in perfect balance on shaky ground, and with the devil’s side exposed, shield and sword back the other way. He struck deeply, but only once-it was Icingdeath that bit into the creature of fire. It only had to bite once.

Drizzt held his pose for several heartbeats, the devil immobilized by agony on the end of his blade, hot blood bubbling from the wound. The drow gave a few slight twists and tugs to tear at the fiend’s organs, then he yanked the blade out.

The legion devil crumbled to the floor and sizzled away into black smoke and a mist of boiling blood.

Drizzt spun away to help Dahlia, but stopped short and watched in admiration as the elf spun and struck, her advance coming in a series of turns, and through every one and from every angle came a whirling strike from a flail, some spouting lightning, others just smashing with crushing force. The legion devil couldn’t match her speed and precision.

She hit it again and again, and by the time she played out her spinning charge, that devil, too, crumbled to the floor.

She looked at Drizzt, and the two exchanged smiles and nods.

“Me king?” Drizzt heard behind him, and he spun, shaking his head in disbelief. He looked to the small tunnel before turning to the dwarf, and so by the time he did regard his old friend, that dwarf had already picked up on the cue and started away at full, rambling speed.

Drizzt and Dahlia started to follow, but hadn’t gone two steps before a host of Ashmadai descended upon them.

More to kill.

His shield clipped the mace, stealing some of its strength, but still it came across with enough force to take Bruenor’s one-horned helmet from his head, and to gash his scalp in the process.

But the dwarf got the better of that particular trade, his mighty axe crashing against the pit fiend’s ribs, opening a garish wound.

They came together, titans wrestling once more, head-butting, biting, and thrashing.

But the fiend had more weapons. Its tail, as if acting of its own volition, whipped about and banged repeatedly against the back of Bruenor’s armor, seeking a seam. Its bony, ridged arms ground in painfully against the dwarf, tearing the skin of his arms. And its mouth, so wide, so full of long teeth…

Bruenor looked up and into its open mouth and up farther to those wild eyes, as the fiend bit down at him. Instead of dodging, though, the dwarf responded with his own charge, his powerful legs driving him upward, his forehead snapping forward to meet the grasping jaws.

Blood poured over his face-his own blood, Bruenor realized, but he knew, too, that he had put a solid smack into the face of his enemy.

Arms wrapped around the devil, the dwarf handed his axe to his shield hand. Then he brought his free hand back into his chest and pushed up, over the devil’s chest and under the stunned creature’s chin. Bruenor drove on with all his might. The old kings and ancient gods within him drove on with all their might.

He threw Beealtimatuche away. Half blinded by the gush of his own blood, Bruenor could barely make out the staggering devil, or the smaller form that rushed in suddenly at the fiend’s side, leaping upon the beast with abandon. But he did hear a comforting call, a declaration of friendship he had known for so many decades…

“Me king!”

Bruenor staggered backward and shook his head, wiping the blood from his eyes. It was Thibbledorf Pwent!

Of course it was Pwent.

It didn’t occur to Bruenor at that moment how odd it was that the battlerager should suddenly appear. Indeed, to him the better question seemed to be, how could Pwent not be there, when Bruenor most needed him, when Gauntlgrym herself most needed him?

And so it made perfect sense to Bruenor, watching the thrashing Pwent tearing at the devil’s skin, head spike buried deeply, fist spikes, knee spikes, toe spikes stabbing and jabbing and kicking, ridged armor thrashing lines of red skin wide open.

Bruenor took up his axe, and for a moment it seemed as if he wouldn’t even be needed to finish the job.

But Beealtimatuche was a pit fiend, a duke of the Nine Hells, a devil of extraordinary power.

Pwent jerked when a poisoned tail barb popped into the back of his head. He stopped thrashing and Beealtimatuche pushed him away, the devil hissing and roaring as the long helmet spike slid out of his torso. Pwent stood staring at him, obviously working hard just to hold his balance.

A backhand from the devil launched the battlerager flying away, to slam hard into the wall beside the blasted door.

Bruenor watched Thibbledorf Pwent slump to the floor.

And with rage climbing atop everything else churning within the dwarf king-the history of Gauntlgrym, the glory of the gods of Dwarfhome, the essence of what it was to be a dwarf, a Delzoun dwarf, a Battlehammer dwarf-Bruenor charged in once more.

His fury heightened with every swing. He took brutal hits from the fiery mace, but he shrugged them off and unleashed his rage through the blade of his mighty axe. The chamber reverberated with the sound of weapons clashing-not with other weapons or with shields, but with flesh. They traded blows, each staggering after every hit, neither giving ground.

Across came Beealtimatuche’s mace, but Bruenor brought his shield up and he ducked away, back and to his right, the mace clipping the shield, but not enough to send him flying-just enough to add to his spin and send him leaping.

Up high soared King Bruenor as he came around, both hands again taking up his axe, lifting it up above his head. And he came down from on high, his whole body snapping in one great moment of complete exertion, muscles screaming in protest, senses jarred.

Right between the turned-in horns went Bruenor’s descending axe, the power of Gauntlgrym’s forge, the power of the old kings and ancient gods, reaching through King Bruenor and through that blade.

With a terrible crunch, the blade split Beealtimatuche’s skull, driving down, halving the devil’s face. And driving down more as Bruenor descended, crushing the devil down to its knees.

Head lolling uncontrollably, the pit fiend still tried to stand.

But Bruenor’s rage was not sated, and he threw down his axe and shield and fell over the fiend, one hand grabbing its throat, the other slapping in against its crotch. As Bruenor stood his full height, up into the air went Beealtimatuche. And though he seemed merely a dwarf again-the power of the throne and the potion, the kings and the gods, no more-still he stood tall and still he pressed Beealtimatuche straight up over his head to arm’s length.

Bruenor stalked to the ledge. He looked down into the fire pit of the primordial and witnessed the beast, like a fiery eye staring back at him.

He threw the devil into the pit.

Then Bruenor fell to his knees, his strength leaving him, his lifeblood pouring from a dozen wicked wounds. He went to his chest, flat on the ground, his head hanging over the edge to watch the descent of the devil.

He noted instead a dwarf’s form, on a ledge some thirty feet down, broken awkwardly but not dead, and reaching one hand up toward him plaintively, even calling out his name.

But it was a distant call to the dying Bruenor. Far distant.

“The bridge! The lever!”

Thibbledorf Pwent felt the poison coursing through his veins. Wicked poison. Worse than spoilt Gutbuster, he lamented.

He had seen Bruenor’s victory and Bruenor’s fall, and for a moment, he thought he had to be satisfied in that, that he and his king had died gloriously. What more might a shield dwarf ever want? What greater honor for a battlerager?

But then a reminder, a distant cry.

“The bridge! The lever!”

Pwent saw Bruenor pull himself to his feet. He saw his king begin to crawl. To crawl!

Toward the bridge went Bruenor, one stubborn foot at a time.

But he couldn’t make it. He fell over. He tried to get back to his elbows, tried to crawl again, and when he couldn’t, he made to slither like a snake.

But he went nowhere.

And so it was Thibbledorf Pwent who had to call upon the greater powers of his heritage at that moment, who had to reach beyond his old and broken body. The battlerager pulled himself to his feet and staggered across the way. He nearly overbalanced and went right past Bruenor to pitch from the ledge.

But he caught himself, and caught up his king under the arms, hoisting him as much as he could and dragging Bruenor on toward that one small bridge that spanned the primordial’s hellish chasm.

All Drizzt wanted to do was get through that tunnel to the side of his dwarf friend. He was glad that Pwent had gone through, but it gave him little comfort as the tremors mounted. The pit fiend had gone through as well, and Bruenor had obviously not gotten to the lever.

Drizzt tried to fight his way to that entrance, but there always seemed an enemy in his path. His scimitars worked furiously in an overhand roll, overwhelming the nearest Ashmadai, but as that one fell aside, another was quick to the attack.

With a growl of frustration, Drizzt maneuvered to set that one up for the kill, as well.

Dahlia rushed up beside him-flew past him, actually, vaulting with her long staff. She landed and brought the staff forward, turning it to drive the Ashmadai to the side.

“Go!” she yelled to Drizzt.

He didn’t want to leave her, but Bruenor needed him. He sprinted into the tunnel and swung around to fend off any pursuit.

But there was only Dahlia, her back to him, blocking the way.

Drizzt rushed into the chamber. Debris lay all around the ledge-black rocks, some fast-cooling lava, a pair of morningstars, and so much blood. Before him lay the pit and its orange glow. The beast roiled, spitting rocks up above the ledge, some arcing back down into the pit, some bouncing onto the floor, smoking. Hardly looking to the side, the drow, mesmerized by the spectacle of the raging primordial, rushed to the ledge, fearing the worst.

He looked down into the very eye of chaos. Lines of fire erupted from the lava, reaching high. Rocks bubbled and spat forth, lifting up toward him. He had looked upon dragons, but the primordial, he knew, was something more.

Some movement broke him from his trance.

“Bruenor!” he started to yell, but it was not Bruenor. It was Athrogate, on a ledge, badly wounded and trying to cover as the rocks and fire spat up about him. Stubbornly, the dwarf managed to point up and to Drizzt’s right. Following that, Drizzt caught sight of his friends, both Bruenor and Pwent, crawling along the far side of a narrow arching bridge that spanned the divide.

He took a step that way-almost a step-then he saw the primordial leap up at him.

Drizzt flung himself aside as a column of lava leaped from the pit, rushing up through the room to disappear through the hole in the ceiling high above.

“Bruenor!” he screamed, blocking his ears against the roar of the beast.

He fell and covered his head with his hands as rocks and bits of hot lava rained across the ledge. It seemed to go on forever and ever, but in truth it was only a matter of heartbeats before the column dropped back down. Had Icingdeath not been in his hand, the dark elf would likely have been burned to cinders.

Drizzt scrambled to his feet, calling for the dwarf. The bridge was gone, blasted apart by the force of the eruption-but there were Bruenor and Pwent, across the way, holding each other and crawling together for an archway.

Doing his best to keep Icingdeath in his right hand, Drizzt pulled a cord from his pack, nimbly tying one end into a knot while still holding the frostbrand. He drew out an arrow, poked its head through that knot, and chanced sheathing Icingdeath to take up Taulmaril.

A flutter behind him alerted him at the last second and he dived aside into a roll, dropping his bow and drawing forth his blades as he came around. The danger had passed-for him-and he realized then that he had narrowly avoiding being knocked from the ledge by the attacker, a giant bat. The creature had clawed him as it passed, and Drizzt reached up to his temple to feel the hot wetness of blood.

Still confused, the drow watched the creature fly across the pit, and on the other side, right before the archway, it flopped over weirdly in mid-air and landed, no longer a bat but a man, staring back at Drizzt.

Cursing himself for his hesitance, Drizzt sheathed his blades and leaped back for his bow. He took up the arrow and knocked the rope aside, setting the missile and letting fly.

But the vampire was quicker, slipping under the archway, and the arrow hit nothing but stones, exploding in a shower of sparks.

“No, Bruenor, no,” Drizzt mouthed, grabbing up the rope, pulling forth another arrow and taking aim. He let fly high above the archway, the arrow driving hard into the wall, burrowing the rope deeply into the solid stone.

More commotion came from behind Drizzt, and he turned just in time to see Dahlia speeding his way.

“Dor’crae!” she yelled, and she dropped her staff to the floor as she charged right past Drizzt, yanking the rope from his hand and swinging across the open lava pit. She leaped off and landed in a run, disappearing under the archway.

Frantically, cursing with every movement, Drizzt fumbled for another length of rope. He glanced back as yet another figure entered the chamber, and how his eyes widened when he saw that it was Jarlaxle.

“How?” he asked.

The drow mercenary replied with a grin and brought his hand up to his mouth to flash the same ring he had given to Dahlia before the fight in the Cutlass.

“Get me across!” Drizzt yelled at him, not having the time to sort it out.

The room shook then, so violently that it threw Drizzt from his feet. Jarlaxle, though, managed to stay standing, and even collected a pair of morningstars lying on the floor. He held them up, his face a mask of puzzlement and horror.

“Athrogate?” Drizzt explained, and as if on cue, they heard the dwarf cry out from the pit below.

Jarlaxle tucked the morningstars into a magical bag as he sprinted to the ledge and looked down.

“Bruenor is across the way!” Drizzt yelled at him. “The lever!”

Jarlaxle turned to face him, the mercenary’s face twisted in pain.

“You cannot!” Drizzt cried.

“My friend, I must, as you must go to your Bruenor,” Jarlaxle replied with a shrug. He put his hand over his House Baenre emblem then, and with a tip of his cap to Drizzt, he hopped off the ledge.

Drizzt growled at the frustration, at the insanity of it all, and went back to his rope, knotting the end.

And the primordial roared, a column of lava once again leaping up from the pit, rushing skyward to the ceiling and beyond.

“Jarlaxle,” Drizzt wailed repeatedly, shaking his head, but he didn’t cover his ears against the roar of the volcano. Instead he kept working at the rope.

Dahlia rushed under the archway just in time to see Thibbledorf Pwent, his throat torn, tumble to the stone beside Bruenor. Gasping, the dwarf reached up, his hands clawing the air as he tried futilely and pitifully to grasp the vampire.

Dor’crae turned to face Dahlia, his face bright with Pwent’s blood.

“You wretched beast,” she said.

“You can leave this place and be redeemed,” Dor’crae replied. “What have you gained, my love?”

He finished abruptly as Dahlia leaped across the small room at him, all punches and kicks.

But just punches and kicks, for she had left Kozah’s Needle behind. As fine a fighter as Dahlia was, even unarmed, the supernaturally strong vampire had no trouble pinning her arms and spinning her around, slamming her into the wall.

“At last, I feast,” Dor’crae promised.

But then he froze in place, only his eyes widening.

“Does it hurt?” Dahlia asked him, poking her finger, tipped with the wooden spike from her ring, harder at his chest. “Tell me it hurts.”

Dor’crae’s head went back and he began shaking, and smoke began wafting from his skin.

Dahlia’s wooden stake stabbed at his heart again.

“Ah… me king,” she heard from the floor behind her, a voice gurgling with thick liquid, and she glanced back to see a bloody, strangely armored dwarf somehow rolling himself over to one elbow, his other arm coming across to grab at Bruenor Battlehammer.

Somehow, impossibly, Pwent got his knees under him and heaved Bruenor upward, then fell forward with him, right beside the lever. Like a loving father, Pwent lifted Bruenor’s hand, cupping it with his own, and set it against the angled pole.

“Me king,” Pwent said again, and it seemed the end of his strength. His head dropped down and he lay there very still.

“Me friend,” Bruenor answered, and with just a glance at Dahlia, the dwarf king summoned his strength and pulled.

Dor’crae was babbling for mercy the entire time, pleading with Dahlia to let him live, promising her that he would make everything all right for her with Sylora.

“You think I will let you fly away, when I am surely doomed?” Dahlia said, face to face, letting him see the absence of mercy in her freezing blue eyes. As if in response to her, perhaps, but surely to the reversed lever, the primordial roared again and the room lurched.

Dahlia tried to drive the wooden stake in harder, but the tremor stole her balance and the desperate Dor’crae managed to slip aside. Sorely wounded, the vampire wanted nothing more to do with Dahlia. Once more, he took the form of a bat.

The splattering lava and bouncing black stones had Drizzt shielding himself and ducking away, and thinking that they had failed, that the volcano had again fully erupted. To his great relief, though, the lava column again dropped back down below the rim, and the drow was fast to the ledge, bow in hand.

Without the protection of Icingdeath, the heat proved too intense, but he couldn’t help but look down, though he feared what he might see.

The lava had climbed far up the pit, and was barely twenty feet below the rim, waves of heat assaulting the drow. And it was up above the ledge where Athrogate had lain, and there was, of course, no sign of Jarlaxle, who had descended almost as the lava had rushed back up.

For the second time that day, Drizzt had to shake off the loss of Jarlaxle, for not even Icingdeath could have protected him from that rush of lava.

His next arrow flew, setting a second rope near where the first had been-before the lava had rushed up to burn it to nothingness. Without even testing the rope, without even a thought that the lava might leap up at him, the anxious drow sprang from the ledge and swung away, landing easily across the way.

Even as he caught his balance, he had to duck aside once more, as that same giant bat flew out from under the archway. Its flight was noticeably unsteady, as if it were gravely wounded, and Drizzt dropped his bow off his shoulder, thinking to shoot it from the sky.

He needn’t have bothered, though. As soon as the bat crossed the lip of the pit, it seemed as if all the water of the Sea of Swords had come charging in to battle the fire primordial. It poured from the hole in the ceiling like a giant waterfall, and through that thunderous, translucent veil, Drizzt could still see the bat. Obviously, its flight was as much magical as physical-it resisted the downpour.

But that didn’t much help the creature. The bat became a man again, and the vampire looked back at Drizzt, though whether he could actually see the drow, Drizzt couldn’t know. He reached out plaintively, hanging there in the curtain of water, his face a mask of agony.

Then he blew apart, like so many black flakes, and was washed down with the waterfall.

It stopped as abruptly as it had started, but Drizzt knew the primordial’s trap was back in place, knew that they had won, for below the rim, he could see the water, not like a pond or puddle, but spinning furiously along the sides of the pit.

Down below, the primordial responded, the ground shaking violently, the lava column trying to rise, the room filling with steam. The water did not relent, though, and the beast sank back, far below, and the room went quiet, a stillness that seemed more complete than it had been for many years.

Drizzt wasn’t watching, though. As soon as he regained his balance, the drow sprinted under the arch.

Dahlia sat against the far wall, exhausted and sweating, but she nodded to Drizzt that she was all right. He wasn’t looking at her, anyway. He couldn’t with the other sight before him.

Thibbledorf Pwent had met his end. He lay on his back, blood on his throat, his eyes open wide, his chest not lifting with breath. There was a serenity to him, Drizzt recognized. The battlerager had died in a manner befitting his life, in service to his king.

And there lay that king, Drizzt’s dearest friend, half on his side, half face down, one arm extended with his fingers still gripping the lever.

Drizzt fell beside him and gently turned him over, and the drow was shocked to find that Bruenor Battlehammer was still alive.

“I found it, elf,” he said with that smile that had brought Drizzt joy for most of his life. “I found me answers. I found me peace.”

Drizzt wanted to comfort him, wanted to assure him that the priests would be right in and that everything would be all right. But he knew beyond doubt that it was over, that the wounds were too much for an old dwarf.

“Rest easy, my dearest friend,” he mouthed, not sure that any sound came out.

But the look of comfort on Bruenor’s face, the slightest of nods, the slightest of contented smiles, told Drizzt that his departing friend had indeed heard him, and that it was indeed all right.