R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

“Treasure and slaves, let us hope,” Tiago started to say, but did not finish, for halfway through his sentence, the corridor began to shake and rumble, dust and stones falling from the ceiling. It became so violent that at one point, Ravel began casting a contingency spell to transport him far away. The shaking stopped before he cast the spell, though, and he and Tiago both understood that some other nearby tunnel had likely collapsed.

Side-by-side, Tiago on his subterranean lizard and Ravel on a created floating disc, the two nobles moved ahead to join up with their defensive line, but they were met after only a few steps by a frantic young drow female.

“The ceiling has fallen upon them!” she cried, pointing frantically to a side tunnel, and one with a cloud of dust and debris billowing out. “Oh, these devil dwarves!”

The noble drow picked up their pace and swept into the side tunnel, crossing just a short distance before coming to the intersection with a tunnel that ran parallel to the one in which they had been standing. Piles of rock blocked their way, and a swarm of dark elves and goblins dug at the stones frantically.

Ravel tapped Tiago on the shoulder and guided his glance across the way, to where a drider leg protruded from the collapsed mound, twitching in the crushed creature’s death throes.

“How many?” Tiago yelled at the dark elves scrambling around the rubble.

“Several at least, Lord Baenre,” one answered.

“A trio of driders,” another added.

“And a host of goblin fodder,” said a third from far across the way.

“Rigged to collapse,” Ravel remarked. “This is a formidable enemy, and they know we’ve come now. We will battle for every room and corridor.”

“No,” Tiago replied. “Find a way. You and your mages. Find a way. We must be done with this, and quickly.”

Ravel started to argue, but remembered his own predicament here and knew that Tiago’s advice was doubly important for his own standing, and perhaps for his own health. He went to confer with the wizards he had brought along on this expedition.

Within an hour, a dozen magical constructs, disembodied giant eyeballs, floated along the corridors of the dwarven complex, as the drow mages took a full reconnoiter of the complex.

They had come in here without proper respect for the dwarves’ resilience and readiness, but they would not make that mistake again.

“Word’s out to Lonelywood,” a dwarf runner reported to Stokely Silverstream. “Her boats’re out, though, and it’ll be a bit to bring ’em back in.”

“Same with other lake towns,” another dwarf remarked.

“It’s all on Bryn Shander,” Stokely told them, and they nodded their agreement. Bryn Shander wasn’t built on the banks of any of the lakes and so her garrison was always at the ready. Still, it would be many hours before any sizable force of reinforcements could arrive.

“We’ll need to hold stronger, then hold strong some more when them Bryn Shander boys get here,” Stokely explained. “The boys from the lakes’ll be coming in later, and here’s hopin’ that them boys out in Easthaven can find a barbarian tribe or two to tow along for the fight.”

“Heigh-ho to that!” a dwarf cheered.

“Not takin’ much to convince a barbarian to fight, eh?” said another. “That’s why I’m liking them tall boys!”

Many fists began to pump at that proclamation, and Stokely even offered a nod of encouragement. The battle had started as a rout that morning, but the heroic run of Junky and the brave sacrifices of those dwarves who stood behind him and held back the drow line had given the dwarves a fighting chance.

These were Battlehammers, and to a dwarf they had seen years of combat. Construction of the bulk of the tunnels of the complex had been overseen by King Bruenor himself, along with his most trusted and veteran shield dwarves, and so had been built for defense above all else.

The drow had come on quickly, but Stokely’s boys had been ready to meet that charge, and more important, Stokely’s tunnels had been ready to drop in the face of that advance.

“We keep ’em locked down below and we’ll turn ’em back, don’t ye doubt,” he told the dwarves around him.

“Aye, and might that we then chase ’em back, all the way to Gauntlgrym!” said another. “Huzzah!”

“Huzzah!” cheered the others, and Stokely nodded.

And then five of the dwarves near the wall to Stokely’s left fell away suddenly, as the floor beneath their feet simply vanished.

And the wall across the room disappeared and huge javelins came flying into the gathering, and huge driders charged in behind the volley, a horde of goblins close behind.

“Breach!” Stokely and several others all cried out together, and the dwarves began to scramble, forming defensive lines. The room’s conventional doors banged open and more Battlehammers charged into the fray.

The audience chamber’s walls echoed with the cries of battle, the ring of metal on metal.

Stokely ran to the unexpected pit and slid down to his knees beside its edge, other dwarves joining him, including several with ropes and grapnels. The sheer walls-so sheer and smooth it was as if the stone had simply vanished-fell away for more than twenty feet, to a lower tunnel running beneath the audience chamber, and there lay the broken dwarves, two looking dead, two crawling, and one pulling himself back to his feet, having survived the fall.

Stokely started to call down to him, but the poor fellow began to jerk this way and that, and it took a moment for Stokely to register that the dwarf was being hit with missiles, hand crossbow bolts, likely.

A brilliant flash of sizzling light defeated Stokely’s next attempt to call out, as a lightning bolt stole the darkness. And when it passed, only one dwarf was still trying to crawl, and none were standing.

Over went the ropes, dwarves leaping onto them to rappel down to their kin. Stokely, too, took a rope in hand.

“No, no!” cried another dwarf, a priestess named Brimble who was one of Stokely’s most trusted advisers. Stokely paused and looked to her for an explanation, while others began their descent.

“It is a magical passwall!” Brimble cried. “They can dispel-”

Before she even finished, Stokely felt the weight of the rope disappear, and as he stumbled back a step, overbalanced by the suddenly diminished weight. He looked to the pit that wasn’t a pit any longer, but simply the floor, as it had been.

And dwarves had started down there!

Several of those brave dwarves lay on the floor now right near to Stokely, having been ejected from the tunnel that was not a tunnel.

“Where’s McGrits? He was on the rope ahead o’ me!” one cried, leaping up to his feet, and two others expressed similar concerns for dwarves ahead on their respective ropes, as well.

“In the tunnel below, then,” Brimble replied.

Stokely threw down his rope and drew out his battle-axe from over his shoulder. “Plenty to hit here, then!” he cried, and led the charge into the side of the drider-goblin line.

More dwarves poured in from the side tunnels.

But so, too, came the drow, and the dwarves hacking through the goblin ranks soon found more formidable foes, quicker and more deadly, and far more skilled with the blade.

The advance bogged down, the lines dissipated, and the room became a tumble of confusion, with battles in every corner.

“A blade wins a duel, but magic wins a battle,” Ravel said to Tiago as they neared the battle.

“How long will our tunnel remain?” Tiago asked.

“The better part of the night, unless we choose to remove it,” the confident mage replied.

No sooner had the words left his mouth, though, than the last expanse of that magically created tunnel became stone once more, and in the corridor not far from the two drow nobles, several other drow, ejected by the lapsing magic, pulled themselves to their feet.