R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

Roving her eye out to the left and across the floor, Catti-brie noted an altar, black and shot with veins of red, as if carrying blood throughout the solid stone. Just past it loomed the ledge and a large pile of broken lava rock, steaming feverishly. Just past it lay the pit, with water raining down from above and steam billowing up from below, and Catti-brie felt herself drawn to the lip, to gaze in.

She saw the swirling cyclone of living water, and saw the fiery eye far below-and knew that fiery eye to be the source of the whispers in her head.

She closed her eyes tight and concentrated, trying to hear the call, and saw in her mind’s eye this very room, and her focus moved down along the ledge, to a bridge, an anteroom, a lever …

Catti-brie opened her eyes, shaking her head for she could make no sense of this.

She heard the call of the fiery primordial again, and saw again the small room under an archway, with a lever.

The fiery beast wanted her to go to it, to pull it. She could feel its plea, its heavy heart, like a panther trapped in a small cage, or an eagle with its wings tied.

She started along the ledge, past the altar, and through the swirling fog, she saw a bridge crossing the chasm. Then she was upon it, halfway and more. And she saw a surge of water within the small room, rising up like a wave, and rushing out suddenly at her, a great breaker rolling over itself, barreling toward her to throw her from her precarious perch.

Catti-brie turned away and cast a spell, just in time to magically jump back the way she had come. The water crashed against her, hastening her journey, sending her into a flight that nearly flung her into the webbing as the water broke all around her.

Broke but did not dissipate. It flew together past her and rose up like some thick bear, watery arms outstretched and ready to batter her.

Catti-brie felt its animosity, saw its rage, and as it rolled in at her, she lifted her hands, thumbs touching, and burst a fan of flames into it. That minor spell hardly slowed the great water elemental, of course, but in its hiss and the resulting gout of steam, Catti-brie managed a retreat. She ran to the altar and skidded around it, using it as a shield so that if the elemental tried to break upon her and wash her away, the altar stone would serve as a small seawall and breakwater.

Her mind raced. She pulled Taulmaril from her shoulder, but shook her head and dropped it to the floor immediately, realizing that using lightning energy against a water elemental might not be a good idea. Indeed, the only clear notion that cut through the jumble of her thoughts was the need for the opposing element, the need for fire.

And so she began spellcasting and the elemental charged, and she threw a fireball at her own feet as it swept upon her. Clenching her fist with her protective ring, she rushed away through the blinding flames, water battering her and crashing into her, and throwing her to the floor back near where she had entered the room. Instinctively she started for the tunnel, but scolded herself for her foolishness before she had taken her second step, for surely the malleable water elemental could rush along that narrow passage and even drown her against the door at the far end.

The elemental rose up around the altar, but not quite as huge, it seemed. The fireball had stolen some of its watery composition, turning part of the being to harmless drifting steam.

Catti-brie was already deep into her next spellcasting as the primal watery monster stalked in, rolling toward her like a giant ocean swell. Fires burned around her hands, sparkling and sizzling, and she punched them out, but not at the water elemental.

Instead she threw her last fiery spell, another wall of fire, running it the length of the ledge, splitting the bare area of the chamber in half and with the hot side of the wall burning back toward her and toward the door and the wall and the webbing.

When the water elemental didn’t come through, Catti-brie leaped through her fire wall and taunted it.

How she could feel its seething hatred, as if she were a creature of the opposing plane of existence, as if she were a fire elemental instead of a flesh-and-bones human.

Despite her towering wall of burning fire, the watery beast threw itself at her, roaring like a wave, breaking like the ocean surf.

She jumped back through the wall of fire, into the inferno, and the elemental, so full of irrational hatred, followed. The water break swept her from her feet, but did not wash her aside, and she scrambled along, just inside the fire wall, and the elemental pursued. The water rushed in around her, roiling and boiling and bubbling, those bubbles popping and spraying the woman. But she did not feel the heat of the boiling water, as she did not feel the flames.

Steam mixed with rolling, angry fires, and she stumbled on, and when she felt no water around her any longer, she turned aside and dived back through the wall, into the clear and just past the altar stone.

And there back the other way stood the water elemental, much smaller now, but no less angry.

Catti-brie taunted it and held her ground, and again it charged, rolling in with the anger of a hurricane-driven tide determined to smash a wharf to kindling.

At the last moment, Catti-brie dived back through the wall, and more blue mist came from her sleeves, though it could not be seen in the swirl of fire. This spell was divine in source, calling to the stone beneath her hand, and she melded in with it, sinking her arm into it just as the water elemental fell over her.

She could feel the anger in the sloshing waves. The beast roared in her ears, hating her, needing to destroy her. It tried to pull her back to the cool side of the wall, but the woman held her ground, her arm literally rooted to the stone floor.

The elemental could not pull her free, could not take her away, and so it fell over her completely, holding its form around her, drowning her where she kneeled!

She could not draw breath. She swatted with her free hand, but the water would not wipe aside, would not leave its press on her nose and mouth.

She could not breathe, could not cast a spell. She felt as if a mountain giant was pressing a wet pillow over her face, and so she thrashed but she could not budge the giant.

Desperation drove her on-she felt as if her lungs would explode.

And then she was moving at least, back and forth in her jerking action, for now the mountain giant seemed more like an ogre.

Her enemy had diminished.

Catti-brie calmed immediately with that realization, conserved what little breath she had remaining. Darkness rose up around her, at the edges of her vision, as if the floor itself was swallowing her.

With that troubling thought, the woman reflexively retracted her enchanted arm, breaking her meld, and now the water elemental could pull her from the flames that bit at it and bubbled it to harmless gas.

But no, it could not, and the watery gag was gone, and even the steam diminished now.

Catti-brie rolled through her fire wall and lay on her back, gasping for breath. She feared that the elemental, too, had come through to the cool side, and would now fall over her once more, but no, it was not there.

It was gone, destroyed, melted to steam and flown away.

And the voice in her head returned, cheering, and she could understand it now and knew it to be the primordial.

It spoke in the tongue of the Plane of Fire, and Catti-brie understood that tongue, though she should not.

Images filled her mind-an explanation from the primordial? She imagined a humanoid that seemed made of magma leap from the pit and rumble down the tunnel. That magma elemental had opened the door, but the water elemental had pursued it, and had battered it to pieces back along the corridor and had broken it fully, over there, by the altar, where the steaming rubble remained.