R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

And the explosions roared on all around her, the ground shaking, like a prolonged peal of thunder reflecting back and forth off canyon walls, and hardly dissipating.

More energy flooded into the staff, arcing around its length, stinging her hands, reaching into her. She felt her heart pounding. Her temples throbbed, the world seemed to go dark, black splotches racing across her vision.

But she held on, because to let go was to be consumed, to melt, as Effron had.

Effron! Her son!

Rage drove her back against the mounting force, a scream of denial deep in her mind. She clenched her jaw tightly to stop from cracking her chattering teeth, or biting off her own tongue.

And then it was done. The lightning web folded up, swirling above her once more as it seemed to be sucked into the end of her mighty staff. She couldn’t contain the power; she felt as if the metal staff would simply explode, or if it did not, as if the sheer power of the drow magic would consume her.

She half-turned, half-fell, and in that movement saw Ambergris lying off to the side, propped on one elbow, staring at her dumbfounded, and had Dahlia been able to see her reflection in the eyes of that dwarf, she would have understood, for she seemed more a creature of lightning then than anything resembling an elf, with powerful arcs of magical energy streaming along her sides and limbs.

And Dahlia saw the female drider, staring back at her, lifting a club as if to throw it at her.

Dahlia threw first, desperately, Kozah’s Needle flying like a spear.

It went in short, landing at the drider’s spidery legs, but it didn’t matter. The blast launched the abomination into the air, and sent a shock wave through the ground that made the street seem as malleable as a pool of water.

Ambergris went flying. The porch of the building rolled and buckled, and then the building itself collapsed as the wave rolled under it.

Dahlia felt herself lifted into the air. She saw the drider descending as she rose, legs curling under it as if melting under the sheer heat of the blast, face locked in the mask of a dying scream.

Out rolled the wave, up the hill to scatter the drow wizards and throw Entreri and Tiago into the air as they battled on the street before Stonecutter’s Solace. It rolled across the street to send Yerrininae bouncing-and screaming all the while for his beloved Flavvar.

Dahlia came down awkwardly, twisting her ankles and knee, then falling hard to her face in the road. She managed to prop herself up enough to see Ambergris sitting in the road, dazed and battered. And it was Amber’s expression of sudden shock and terror that told Dahlia that the other drider, the huge male, had come up behind her-an instant before she felt a blinding explosion around her head and went flying away into the darkness.

The sheerest denial drove Artemis Entreri. Up on the rooftop, turning and twisting with Tiago Baenre, stuck to the drow noble’s shield, the wider world spun around. And in that panorama, Entreri saw Dahlia fall. The elf woman lay in the street before the towering drider.

Ambergris would fare no better, the assassin knew in that instant. The dwarf sat there, clearly dazed, the monstrous abomination closing in.

And so denial and anger drove Entreri. He managed to plant his feet and regain a measure of balance, and with a defiant roar, he rose quickly, taking Tiago with him, and spun around powerfully, throwing the drow aside. The stubborn shield let him go then and he staggered behind the falling Tiago.

But he caught himself quickly and reversed direction, sprinting for the far end of the rooftop.

Another dart hit him, then another, then a barrage, sticking him and stinging him and filling him with poison. His arms felt heavy, his vision and other senses suddenly dull, and he knew the drow noble would be close behind.

He dived down to the edge of the rooftop, or perhaps he fell, for his legs grew numb beneath him. He reached over, making as if to pull himself forward to drop to the ground.

But that wasn’t the point. He hadn’t run off with any thought of escaping, because he knew that he couldn’t possibly escape. But his dagger could.

He reached under the eaves of the roof, hooking his arm down and around, and tucked his dagger neatly in place, and then he did pull himself over and simply let go, crashing down to the ground.

He rose stubbornly and staggered away, cutting between other buildings, around corners, the drow’s taunting laughter following him every step. Finally, thinking that he had done enough to throw them off the track of his prized weapon, Entreri stopped and turned to face the pursuit of Tiago Baenre.

The assassin was falling into darkness before the drow noble even caught up to him, the drow poison taking his strength and sensibilities.

He heard Tiago Baenre call to him-by name! — and that seemed a curious thing, a ridiculous thing, but he couldn’t quite figure out why.

Dahlia felt the heat all around her, and the constant ring of metal on metal. She sensed that she was standing, but couldn’t be certain, and she couldn’t understand how that might be in any case, for she had no strength in her legs.

She felt something pressing against her cheek, like the flat of a sword blade, perhaps.

The elf woman opened her eyes and recognized the place at once, or at least realized that she knew this place, though she couldn’t quite sort it out. She remembered the explosion in the street, Kozah’s Needle releasing a tremendous burst of magical lightning. She saw again the drider female, curling up in charred death.

She winced as she remembered the explosion in her own head, then wailed loudly as she thought of Effron, her son, melting beside her. She had tried to save him, but to no avail.

“Welcome back,” she heard, a familiar voice that brought Dahlia more fully into the present and the scene around her.

Never lifting her check from the metal strap on which it rested, she glanced to the side at the speaker, Artemis Entreri.

He was hanging in a metal cage, almost a coffin of banded straps, it seemed, pressing him tightly, holding him upright.

As was Dahlia’s own cage.

“Caught again,” she heard Entreri say, his voice hopeless and helpless, too far removed from caring to express any real concern.

They were in Gauntlgrym, Dahlia realized, in the Forge itself, strung up just a few feet from the floor. Goblin slaves moved around the various forges, carting wheelbarrows of scrap metal, carrying solid bars yet to be worked, while drow craftsmen stood by the trays and anvils, going about their work.

Dahlia tried to turn to face Entreri, but so tightly was she held in the cage that she really couldn’t manage it. Her effort did cause the cage to swing and rotate just a bit, though, and before it turned back, she noted a third cage in the line, beyond Entreri’s.

“Effron,” she whispered, hoping against reality.

“Afafrenfere,” Entreri corrected. “Though I expect that he’s already long dead. He hasn’t moved or made a sound in the hours I’ve been awake.”

“They brought him here,” Dahlia argued.

“To torment us, no doubt,” said Entreri, and he finished with a grunt when a drow moved up behind his hanging cage and prodded him with a hot poker shoved between the slats. That same drow walked over to Dahlia’s prison as well, and very casually laid the poker against her ankle.

How she screamed.

And none in the room, not goblin or drow, seemed to care. When the pain had ended, she glanced back at Entreri, and managed to swing her cage once more. He just shook his head.

He had been in a situation akin to this before, Dahlia recalled, a prisoner of the drow in their dark city of Menzoberranzan. He had told her some of the tale, and had hinted at parts far worse. He had told her that he would rather be dead than fall into the clutches of the dark elves ever again.