R. Salvatore: Night of the Hunter

Hissing and steam came from the pit and a burst of fiery magma leaped up over the ledge to crash down in a pile behind Dahlia and the altar, between the elf woman and the second of her spiders.

And not just normal, insentient lava rock-she heard its throaty grumble. She reached out to it through her ring, and it heard her call and rose up on two rocky legs. The jade spider nearby reared on its back legs and shrieked in angry protest and the magma elemental came on, unafraid.

“Brilliant,” Dahlia congratulated, but seemed hardly concerned. Again she put her flail into a spin and now began advancing slowly on the woman with the bow.

“Drizzt is with me,” Catti-brie said. “He is here, in Gauntlgrym-”

“Q’Xorlarrin,” Dahlia corrected, and kept coming.

“You don’t have to do this,” Catti-brie pleaded with her. Looking past her, Catti-brie saw the jade spider go up into the air, its eight legs slapping and kicking at the elemental, mandibles biting in and breaking stone.

“Dahlia, I am not your enemy.”

The elf woman laughed at her and continued her advance, now only a few short steps away. And from behind, Catti-brie heard the first spider’s return along the small tunnel behind her to the right.

Dahlia charged and Catti-brie let fly, the arrow aimed for the woman’s belly, center mass. Catti-brie winced, thinking she had surely slain this poor elf, yet the arrow did not strike home but simply disappeared.

And Dahlia’s flail sparked with crawling, arcing sparks of energy all the more.

Catti-brie turned Taulmaril out defensively, like a staff, parrying the first strike. But Dahlia came in at her in a blur, spinning left and right, one flying weapon going out left, the other right. Desperately, Catti-brie worked her bow in a circle, creating a spinning wall to block, but it could not hold, and she was not surprised when a flail slipped through her defenses and smacked her painfully across the thigh, nearly laying her low.

And then she was surprised when Dahlia released the lightning energy collected by her weapon, the jarring bolt throwing Catti-brie back through the air, to crash in hard against the wall-and only the wall was holding her up.

Her mind spun as the elf stalked in for the kill. She tried to sort out her remaining spells, but they were few indeed, and none to lash out quickly or to properly defend.

“A ghost once more!” Dahlia cried triumphantly and rushed in, and Catti-brie dropped her bow and brought her hands up, at first defensively, but hardly thinking, she touched her thumbs together in a familiar pose and met the elf woman’s charge with another fan of flame from burning hands.

Dahlia screamed and fell back, batting her arms at the biting fires, and Catti-brie looked at her hands, confused. She had no such spells remaining in her repertoire that day.

“The ring,” she breathed, but before she could consider it, she saw movement from the side, from a charging, rearing spider, its mandibles dripping with deadly poison, and she fell to the floor desperately.

The rumbling belch of the primordial reverberated in the stone foundations of Gauntlgrym and into the Underdark tunnels below.

Drizzt, Entreri, Ambergris, and the three rescued humans felt it keenly, the tunnel around them growling with vibrations.

Drizzt and Entreri exchanged concerned looks, understanding the implications both for their companions back in the Forge and, for Entreri, the possibility that he would never get out of this dark place alive. They started ahead more swiftly, but Drizzt paused and turned to Ambergris.

“Turn left at the end of this passage and follow the right-hand wall of the next into the Forge,” he instructed and the dwarf nodded.

And Drizzt and Entreri sprinted ahead, the assassin still laboring a bit on his wounded knee.

The companions in the Forge felt the growling, too, and knowing that Catti-brie had gone into that primordial chamber-and with Bruenor knowing exactly what was in that place-they pressed on furiously with their work on the door. Bruenor in particular threw himself against it, trying to wedge his fingers in between the door and the jamb that he might tug it open.

“Girl!” he cried. “Oh, me girl!” and he fought furiously with the metal portal. And he yelled for Clangeddin to give him strength, and sought the god in his thoughts and memories of the throne above.

“No, dwarf,” came a call from the side, the weak voice of Afafrenfere. All the others turned to regard the monk, who was sitting up now, and even that with great effort, obviously.

“Not that god,” Afafrenfere advised. “You’ll not muscle the door.”

“Eh?” a confused Bruenor asked.

“Three gods for the dwarves, yes?” the monk asked.

Bruenor started to argue, but stopped short and looked at Afafrenfere curiously, hands on his hips.

“Eh?” he asked again, but this time he was speaking more to himself than to the monk.

The snapping mandibles were barely a hand’s breadth from her face when Catti-brie leveled Taulmaril and fired an arrow into the face of the jade monstrosity. The spider’s shrill screech echoed off the walls of the chamber and it staggered back a shuffle of steps.

Catti-brie shot it again.

She turned to Dahlia and let fly another arrow, but low, to slam into the ground before the elf woman, the force and jolt sending Dahlia scrambling backward.

Catti-brie spun back on the spider and charged, drawing closer, and shot it again, and again. It tried to run away, but the woman pursued, pouring a line of lightning arrows into it, breaking it apart. One leg fell free, then a second and finally, with a great shriek, the spider rolled over and shuddered in its death throes.

And Catti-brie whirled back and shot the ground at Dahlia’s feet as the stubborn woman came on. The elf warrior was holding a staff now, though, and not her flail, and she drove it down to the stone, and though she shuddered, it seemed to Catti-brie that her magical weapon had eaten the brunt of the blow. Indeed, it crackled once more with lightning energy, and Dahlia strained, it seemed, to hold on.

Catti-brie had no choice, and so she let fly another stream of lightning missiles, at the ground before the woman and at the woman, an explosive barrage that sent sparks flying wildly all around the center of the chamber. Catti-brie advanced, arrows flying, and Dahlia staggered under every blow, grunting and growling.

Sparks flew off and dived into the primordial pit. Sparks showered the webbing, burning into the flammable material and sending spiders scurrying all around.

Beyond Dahlia, through the crackling volley, Catti-brie noted the magma elemental standing tall, holding the thrashing jade spider up over its head as it stomped for the pit. She entertained the notion of bringing the elemental in against Dahlia, to catch her, perhaps, and hold her, for she did not want to kill this elf woman.

The elemental threw the spider into the pit and swung around to Catti-brie’s call. It took a long stride at Dahlia, heading to Catti-brie’s defense, but before it put its foot down to the stone, it hesitated weirdly, and seemed as if stuck in place, struggling mightily.

And Catti-brie understood and winced.

For in its dying fall, the jade spider had spat its webbing back at the elemental, the filaments grabbing hold well enough to tug it suddenly and violently.

The elemental pitched backward over the ledge, tumbling from sight and from the battle.

And Catti-brie shot Dahlia again, and the elf trembled violently as the energy of the staff crackled and jerked her around.

But Dahlia settled and screamed and charged, planting the pole and vaulting high just as Catti-brie shot the stone beneath her.

And Catti-brie also charged, fortunately so, for she slid down and crossed under the leaping Dahlia, and skidded up to her feet and ran off the other way, calling to the primordial, calling to her ring.