R. Salvatore - Archmage

“But is it contained?” Kipper asked, moving closer, but quickly retreating, wincing against the oppressive heat.

“Aye, is this a new tendril or an old one?” Penelope asked.

“Old,” said Catti-brie, and her two companions offered sighs of relief-short-lived relief, though, as Catti-brie continued, “Old and new. It pulses with new lifeblood, thicker and richer than ever before, save the eruption itself.”

Penelope and Kipper turned to each other with concern.

“The containment magic is failing,” Catti-brie explained. “The Hosttower of the Arcane in Luskan was destroyed, and its residual magic has fed the water elementals to the pit, entrapping the primordial. But it will not hold forever, likely not even for much longer.”

“A vague reply where specifics could save many lives,” Kipper complained.

“Centuries more?” Penelope asked.

Catti-brie looked at the mound, unsure, but finally shook her head. She turned back to Penelope. “A decade, perhaps? Less? I can only estimate at how much of the magical containment has eroded in the time since I was last here, and can only wildly guess at when that erosion will allow the beast to break free of its bonds. The erosion seems substantial.”

“Then this journey is a fool’s errand,” said Kipper.

“Let us not dive into grim Kipper’s well of eternal darkness,” Penelope scolded, and managed a smile at the often dour old mage as she did. “The magic is here to hold the beast, and has done so for millennia. We need only find a way renew that power.”

“I have seen the pit,” Catti-brie reminded her. “Not all the wizards of the Ivy Mansion could control a small fraction of the water elementals dancing along the walls of the primordial’s cage if they did nothing else, not even sleep or eat. It would take all the wizards of the world, Elminster himself and Khelben beside him, and with a renewed Mystra with her hands upon their shoulders.”

“So often do we make wide eyes at the ancient relics and powers we uncover,” Penelope interrupted. “We gasp in astonishment and awe at that which those long past have made and have done. When really, if we look closer, we oft find that their ways can be replicated, their artifacts reproduced, their marvelous engineering improved upon. Are we to surrender hope now, then? Is this escape a foregone conclusion? For if so, then go to your father, King Bruenor, and tell him that we must be gone from this place.”

“That one wouldn’t listen,” Kipper muttered.

“No,” Catti-brie answered. “It has not happened, so it is not a certainty.”

“Then lead us, and let us investigate more, discuss more, and reason more, and let us see what we shall see,” said Penelope. “Did you come to this particular place at the primordial’s call?”

Catti-brie looked around. They were in the same area as where she had helped Bruenor and Drizzt turn the tide on the kobolds, and the monsters had been sent running. Back the way she had come, toward the throne room, the dwarves were hard at work repairing doors and patching corridors, and the other way, deeper into the complex, many dwarves had gone, securing the next steps in the reclamation of Gauntlgrym. Drizzt was out there too, patrolling the corridors ahead of Bruenor’s battle force.

“I came to learn what I might now that the region is secured from the kobolds,” she answered.

“Not so secure that you should be out alone.”

“But I am not alone, am I?”

Penelope smiled. “Lead on, my friend.”

Catti-brie turned back to the mound. With a slow breath, she placed her hands upon the glowing pile once more, and followed its tendrils. She visualized the main vein, reaching back to the primordial pit, and noted, too, the tributaries. Most were new, she understood, and tiny and inconsequential-for now-but one seemed quite old to her, a continuation of this same ancient vein that had produced the eruption point.

She nodded to her left, toward the mines, the natural tunnels that ran alongside the area the ancient Delzoun dwarves had carved out as the upper chambers of their homeland.

“They’ve got the mines blocked just outside of the throne room,” Penelope said. “They’ll not let us pass through.”

As she spoke, though, old Kipper moved to the chamber’s left-hand wall. He muttered a few words in the arcane tongue of wizards and brought his hands up, feeling the stone.

“Kipper?” Penelope asked.

“Not so thick here,” the old mage replied with a wink.

“And a nest of drow on the other side?”

“Now, now,” Kipper teased. “Let us not dive into grim Penelope’s well of eternal darkness.”

That brought a laugh from both of the women.

“You’ve a passwall enchantment prepared, no doubt,” Catti-brie said dryly.

“Several,” Kipper confirmed. “And a few dimensional doorways ready as well. Very handy spells when navigating a maze, especially when one is fleeing hordes of enemies, you know.”

Catti-brie shrugged. “I do now.”

“Shall we see what we can see?” Kipper asked, rubbing his hands together, and before either had begun to answer, the old mage began his spellcasting. Soon after, a section of the room’s wall disappeared, creating a ten-foot deep tunnel that ended in more solid stone.

“Not to worry, the next will get us through!’ Kipper assured them, walking forward and beginning a second spell.

As he did so, Penelope conjured a stronger magical light, placing it on the end of her long staff.

Shortly after, the three entered the naturally sloped tunnels of the complex’s northern mines. They lingered about the magical opening for a bit, protecting the unexpectedly opened flank of the dwarf workers, and when the passwall effect ended, the solid stone returning, the three made their way, side by side, down into the maze of ancient mines.

The kobold died without a sound, and fell to the ground with not a whisper of noise, guided expertly by a strong dark hand.

Drizzt stepped over the body, slowing only a moment to wipe his bloodied scimitar on the creature’s ragged fur.

On he went, picking his way from door to door, through rooms that looked as they had millennia before, and others that had been twisted and blasted, ravaged by time, by the eruption of the volcano, and by other mighty denizens of the Underdark. At one point, Drizzt found a tunnel that had most likely been cut by an umber hulk entering a side wall to a narrow room and exiting through the opposite wall. The floor between the tunnel holes showed the deep scratches reminiscent of an umber hulk’s powerfully clawed feet, leaving an impression as clearly on the solid stone as a bear might leave on a forest’s dirt path.

A closer inspection of the tunnel edges showed Drizzt that this was not a new cut, but neither was it centuries old.

The drow nodded, reminded of the many obstacles the dwarves would find in trying to fully reclaim and reopen this place. Complexes like Gauntlgrym, so vast and far-reaching, tied to mines that wound deeper into other Underdark tunnels, would not remain empty in a land where creatures benign and malignant alike were always seeking security. . or food.

Drizzt moved along, as invisible as a shadow in a lightless room, so quiet that the skittering of a rat would sound more akin to the scrabbling of a tunneling umber hulk beside him. He kept his bearings at all times, and occasionally heard the ring of a dwarven hammer, another comforting reminder that he was not too far outside the perimeter of the lands Bruenor’s kin had tamed.

But then he came upon the remains of a most curious encampment.

Someone had set a cooking fire-Drizzt had never known kobolds to cook their food, or at least had never known them to go to such trouble as to cook their food in an environment with little kindling to burn.