R. Salvatore - Archmage

But Athrogate, recognizing the deadly aim, caught the club with a great “Oof!” and held it at bay, stubbornly, mightily, holding his ground.

The behemoth pressed on, and the dwarf, for all his strength, found his feet sliding on the blood- and brain-slickened floor.

“Girl!” he cried.

He needn’t have bothered. The demon was so focused on Athrogate that it remained in its crouch, bent low and over, hands engaged.

Whether or not Athrogate had called out, Ambergris wasn’t about to let that beautifully presented target go to waste. She ran back up the hall several steps, turned, and charged, leaping high, Skullcracker up and over her head. The huge mace came over as she descended.

The demon looked back just in time to see the weapon’s descent.

That blow would have shattered the skull of a hill giant. It did drive the demon to one knee, staggering it, but only temporarily.

Long enough for Athrogate to press back against the shoving weapon, though, even to wrench it from the demon’s grasp.

The nalfeshnee started to rise, but Skullcracker hit it on the head again. Stubbornly, the beast growled through the blow and tried again, but now came Athrogate’s morningstars, one after another.

And the nalfeshnee was dazed again, and now the dwarves were climbing all over it, striking and leaping, climbing and striking again and again, battering the beast with an incessant rain of heavy blows, any of which would have felled an ogre.

Soon enough, the demon spent less time trying to stand up to its full height than in trying to grasp at the troublesome dwarves.

But it couldn’t catch up to them, in their coordinated fury, and anytime the beast got near to grabbing Athrogate, Ambergris changed its mind with a crushing blow from Skullcracker. And anytime it got near to grabbing Ambergris, Athrogate introduced its ugly face to Cracker and Whacker yet again.

Demon blood and ichor splattered the floor all about the hunched creature, and that only spurred on the ferocious dwarves.

By the time they had finished-and that only when Catti-brie cried out in horror-the creature hardly resembled a nalfeshnee demon, seeming more like a mound of boneless jelly.

“Break!” Bruenor yelled and the Fellhammer sisters caught each other by the wrists and whipped about left and right, each flinging the other aside. And through that gap leaped Bruenor, and through the vrock’s outstretched arms, as well, as the confused creature grabbed at the two fleeing dwarves it had been fighting.

Inside its defenses, Bruenor had one clear attack, and he struck true and struck hard, his powerful axe burying deeply into the vulture demon’s chest.

Its screech came out as a blood-filled gasp, and the destroyed vrock fell away. Another took its place, coming at Bruenor but catching a faceful of Mallabritches instead, the furious dwarf leaping high and battering it with her fine sword.

Across the way, Tannabritches dispatched a manes with a stab and a twist, then flung herself across in front of Bruenor just as Mallabritches landed on her feet and leaped at the vrock again. The creature was more ready for her this time-or would have been, except that Tannabritches barreled into the back of its legs just as Mallabritches hit.

Over went the demon and over went Mallabritches atop it, living up to her nickname of Fury as she continued her assault, using an offense of pure fury to keep the demon from beginning to counter.

Bruenor turned to follow the tumbling duo, but stopped short and set himself in a defensive crouch. The glabrezu rushed in, pincers leading. Bruenor called to Tannabritches, but too late-she was well on her way to leaping upon the downed vrock. Into the air she flew, and from the air she was plucked by the powerful glabrezu.

“No!” Bruenor roared, leaping forward, axe swinging for the pincer arm that had caught his dear friend Fist. He scored a clean and deep hit, but on the demon’s chest and not its arm.

He brought his shield up as the demon’s left hook pounded home, the balled fist hitting Bruenor’s buckler with the force he would expect from a mountain giant.

The blow sent him skidding, his feet churning to send him back the other way.

His progress halted when the demon’s free pincer caught him by the shield and began to tug him all around, his feet flying off the floor. He was in trouble, off-balance and seemingly overmatched.

Then Tannabritches cried out in pain as the pincer closed around her waist.

“No!”

Bruenor’s roar came from somewhere inside of him, came from a place of utter denial and utter outrage. He felt the dwarf gods then, as he had on the ledge on that long-ago day when he had battled a pit fiend in the primordial chamber.

The pincer yanked Bruenor’s shield arm out to the left, opening his defenses, and a heavy punch came in right behind it, hitting him squarely in the face. His head snapped back from the devastating blow.

But he accepted it and countered cleanly, turning, his axe chopping across his body to hit the forearm of the pincer limb grasping his shield.

The shield was freed, the pincer fell free to the floor.

Tannabritches screamed in pain, the remaining pincer arm digging at her waist.

A lightning bolt from Catti-brie flashed above Bruenor, striking the glabrezu and sending it staggering back-not fast enough to evade the howling Bruenor, though, the dwarf charging in.

Again the glabrezu punched at him, this time striking the shield once more. But this time, the weight of the blow did not halt the dwarf or move him backward. The strength of Clangeddin flowed through him now as he swelled with rage and terror for poor Tannabritches.

The demon threw Tannabritches at him and he instinctively ducked, then winced as he realized the truth of the missile. With a roar of denial, he crashed into the glabrezu and sent his axe spinning forward and up, then right back over his shoulder.

The pincer snapped down at him, catching only shield, and the axe came around and up, right between the demon’s legs and into its crotch, driving the beast up high on its clawed toes.

Bruenor bore in, cursing it, bashing it. He stopped and sent his axe across, chopping the inside of the glabrezu’s right knee. He reversed his swing, spinning the axe in his hand as he went and bringing the weapon back across to strike at the left knee, but now with the weapon’s head farther back, behind the leg.

The glabrezu was still backing, but Bruenor went the other way, tugging powerfully, the axe-head catching behind the demon’s knee and twisting it off balance.

Bruenor came back in again, behind a second lightning bolt cast by Catti-brie, crashing into the demon and sending it tumbling backward to the floor.

Bruenor also fell, face first, and fell hard. His nose bleeding and broken, Bruenor just kept on charging, using his axe as an ice-climber might use a pick, repeatedly chopping it into the demon and tugging himself forward.

By the time the axe descended into the demon’s chest, the glabrezu was no longer defending, and by the time the next swing came down on the creature’s canine face, the husk was already beginning to smoke and disintegrate, the destroyed thing melting back to the Abyss.

Hot winds buffeted Bruenor as he tore his axe free, scrambled up to his knees, and lifted the axe in both hands up above his head to hit the thing again. For a moment, the dwarf thought another demon had come.

But no, it was instead another devastating fireball from Catti-brie, filling the corridor farther along, melting the next group of demons and opening the way to where the tunnel wall neared the inner complex, the place where Kipper’s passwall had brought them through: the way home.

But Bruenor couldn’t think of that then. He drove his axe down on the already destroyed demon, and used the leverage of the embedded weapon to help him hop back up to his feet. He ripped the axe free with a sickening sound as he leaped around, calling out to Catti-brie to call the goddess to Tannabritches’s side.