R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

And beat them, and stabbed them, and threw them into the oven, one by one.

Entreri did well to keep a wry smile off his face as he watched the unfolding massacre. It had been a good night’s work.

“Take her and flee!” Entreri heard a drow call out to another.

The assassin’s thoughts whirled, for they were speaking of Dahlia, obviously, and the nearest two drow, a male soldier and a priestess, rushed for her. Entreri rolled his lockpick around in his mouth, thinking he might need to put it to quick use. Something was happening, some excitement, some tension.

Might he use this sudden distraction to break free and be away?

He looked at Dahlia and winced. She seemed hardly aware of the rising tensions. She just sat there, her expression void. He didn’t think he could convince her to flee beside him, and if he had to drag her along, he knew he could never escape the drow.

His eyes scanned upward to the approaching dark elves, and he steeled his resolve. Perhaps he wouldn’t escape, but he’d surely take a few drow to the grave beside him.

His confusion increased a moment later, when the source of the tumult came into view, in the form of a huge drider.

“You are supposed to be with Priestess Saribel!” one drow screamed at him.

“Silence!” the drider-Entreri had heard this one called Yerrininae before-growled back. “Where is the vile darthiir ?”

“She is not your concern!” said the priestess then standing over Dahlia. “On the word of Priestess Berellip!”

Obviously spotting Dahlia, the drider approached, eight spider legs scratching the stone floor, a heavy mace swinging easily at the end of one of his huge, muscled arms.

Entreri knew that mace, Skullcrusher, was the weapon of Ambergris, and he allowed himself just a heartbeat of grief at the loss of the fine dwarf.

Just a heartbeat, though, as he tried to sort out his movements. He would exit that cage and rush to the nearest forge to secure a weapon, then …

“Yerrininae!” he heard, and he knew the voice.

As did the drider, obviously, for the behemoth stopped and swung around to face the speaker, Priestess Berellip, as she rushed to stand before him-before him and between him and the captive Dahlia.

“The darthiir lives at the suffrage of Archmage Gromph,” Berellip said.

Yerrininae offered a low growl in response.

“You know what he will do to you,” Berellip warned, and when Yerrininae continued to lean forward aggressively, she added, “You have met his companion!”

It struck Entreri profoundly that the mere mention of a mind flayer could so diminish a creature as obviously powerful as this one. The drider backed off, the blood draining from its drow face.

“I have not forgotten you, murderess!” the drider roared at Dahlia, and it lifted its club, and as Berellip yelled for him to halt, Yerrininae swung anyway.

But not at Dahlia.

Skullcrusher slammed the side of Entreri’s cage with bone-rattling force, stinging the surprised man profoundly and sending his prison into a wild, spinning swing. Before Entreri could even register the hit-and the sheer power of it awed him-the cage was struck again.

And Berellip was cheering, along with all the other drow and goblins in the room.

“Take this one out, that I might feast upon his beating heart before the eyes of the darthiir !” the vile drider begged.

“Do not kill him,” Berellip intervened. “Not yet.”

“I will pull off his arms, then, and just eat those!”

Berellip began to laugh, and Entreri thought the hour of his doom was surely upon him, and once more his thoughts began focusing on how he could cause the most devastation before his inevitable demise.

“I do want his arms intact,” Berellip replied to Yerrininae. “Maybe just one leg …”

And Dahlia began to laugh.

Entreri looked at her incredulously as each spin of his cage flashed her into his view, and he noted that he wasn’t the only one gawking at her.

“Yes, a leg,” Dahlia said giddily. “Like a farmer’s plucked chicken!”

A long while passed and the cage settled back to its original position, leaving Entreri to stare at Dahlia, and at the stupefied Yerrininae, who stood perfectly still, mace held sidelong as if he meant to hit the cage again.

“Well, that is an interesting turn,” Berellip whispered.

“I promise you that I will avenge Flavvar,” the drider said, moving its sneering face very close to Dahlia, who stared back at him blankly, as if she had no idea what he might be speaking of.

Berellip motioned to the drow soldier and priestess who had been first on the scene. “Take her,” she instructed, and her fingers flashed some message to them that Entreri could not make out, likely the location she had in mind.

The assassin did share a parting gaze with Dahlia, but he could not tell if her expression was one of sympathy, antipathy, or utter disinterest.

The dark elves hustled her away, the male carting the metal ball, the female all but holding up the unsteady Dahlia, and Berellip waved the other onlookers back to their duties.

“If it was my choice …” she lamented to Yerrininae.

The drider nodded and turned its angry glare back over Entreri.

“One more,” Berellip offered, and the drider took up Skullcrusher in both arms and rattled Entreri’s cage, and rattled Entreri’s bones. The assassin had been hit by the club of a giant before, almost squarely, but this was something even beyond that experience.

By the time the cage had stopped its wild swings and spins, Berellip and Yerrininae had moved away.

The cage settled fully again, but Entreri could not.

His side ached, his hips seemed as if on fire, and he could only hope that there were no serious wounds.

He would have to get out of this cage very soon.

"Too much!” Regis lamented. In the commotion, he had inadvertently dumped the whole vial onto the mithral head of Aegis-fang.

“Too much?” Wulfgar asked frantically when the room’s opposite door banged open, a host of goblinkin appearing.

“Just throw it!” the halfling cried, and Wulfgar was already moving to do just that.

“Tempus!” the barbarian bellowed, spinning the warhammer end-over-end at the far wall, the open door, and the bugbear standing within its frame.

The hammer struck with the power of an Elminster-inspired evocation, the halfling’s bath of oil of impact exploding in a great and concussive fireball. The bugbear flew away, as did its companions huddling in the shadows behind it, as did the door itself, blown from its hinges to somersault off to the side of the room, trailing flames with every bouncing tumble.

The door frame collapsed, stone crumbling and bouncing down. The floor groaned, the ceiling groaned.

“Get out!” Regis cried, pushing Wulfgar back to the door through which they had entered.

“My hammer!” he yelled back, and on cue, Aegis-fang reappeared in his grasp, undamaged, indeed unmarked, by the blast.

Out into the hall the pair scrambled, the room collapsing behind them with a thunderous tremor and roar, and blasts of dust and small stones flying to pelt them.

“What did you do?” a startled Wulfgar asked.

“I want to make crossbow bolts like the ones Cadderly used to use,” Regis explained. “Do you recall? They would collapse on themselves as they hit …”

Wulfgar just sighed, for before he could answer, a door farther along the corridor burst open and more goblins spilled out. Side-by-side, Wulfgar and Regis met their charge, the barbarian a half-step before the halfling, sweeping monsters aside with every great swipe of Aegis-fang, while Regis darted in behind each stroke, his rapier flashing against the disoriented and staggering goblins.