Ed Greenwood: Elminster Enraged

Looking up into the sky, with the bloodstained sward of the manor grounds stretching out on all sides, he threw back his head and furiously called Manshoon to battle.

He did not have to wait long.

Rising into the sky above bustling Suzail came six, seven … nine spherical hulks the size of small coaches, gaping-mawed flying spheres that looked dead and rotting, covered with snowy and sickly green furred molds-yet moving, their dangling eyestalks lifting and writhing as folk shouted and ran, on the streets below.

As one, they drifted purposefully toward Delcastle Manor.

The only man standing in the Delcastle gardens watched them come, his lip curling. Manshoon had sent his beholders rather than coming in person. Of course.

Elminster raised his hands, murmured a spell that smote undead with silver fire-and blasted them down.

In an instant, every last death tyrant burst into drifting dust, like so many puffs of smoke.

More came, rising up into the sky in slow menace. War horns sounded from the palace and the royal court, horn calls that were answered from the city gates and the harbor tower.

El waited until all the menacing eye tyrants were close enough to reach with one casting, then served them the same way he had the first wave.

Four out of this dozen did not fall into dust, but kept coming. So Manshoon did command some living beholders, after all …

El lashed them with a net of lightnings that would feed on magic sent against it, and watched the beholders shoot forth rays and beams that only strengthened the crackling bolts that seared them. One fell from the sky, another burst like a raw egg, and the last two burned as they came, spinning and shrieking in their ongoing agonies.

El greeted them with a spell of many fireballs, blasts of flame he tried to send inside their many-fanged mouths. His aim was true, and flaming gobbets of beholder hurtled across the city sky.

Men in robes appeared by the gates and past the fountain at the far end of the Delcastle gardens: war wizards, with wands in their hands, intent on Elminster.

He ignored them, reaching forth with his mind, trying to reach Manshoon. Who had to be nearby, who was probably lurking somewhere just yonder, beneath where the beholders had risen.

El had his silver fire, but there was no Weave everywhere around him that he could call on or wrap himself in or ride elsewhere on an instant’s whim. There was just him, and the dwindling spells he had ready, against a foe obviously prepared for the day.

“Saer!” a stern voice called, from the gardens behind him. “Surrender! Have done! This unlawful mage duel-”

Elminster ignored the rest. If these converging war wizards were that foolish, if they could not see the peril to their city and their kingdom-or were already subverted by Manshoon-Suzail might well be doomed. He needed their aid, not their attempts to arrest or oppose him. Another beholder came, a much smaller one, and it was trailing something that looked like a tiny cloud …

The first volley of wand blasts clawed at the mantle spell El had cast around himself, and reduced it to shimmering, snarling fury.

He translocated himself to the fountain, felled one of the war wizards there with a sharp chop to the back of the neck, snatched the wand from the fool’s failing hand, and subsumed its power to invigorate and steady his failing mantle.

All around him, shouting Crown mages hurled spells and fired wands and-

He was elsewhere again, at the gates this time, punching another wizard of war and seizing another wand.

It exploded in El’s grasp, the flash almost blinding and deafening him, even as his mantle drank it and kept his hand from destruction. Then he was caught in a barrage of twenty wand blasts, thirty …

In searing agony he took himself back to where he’d first been standing, arriving in a stagger, his mantle gone and his contingency melting spell after spell out of his mind to meet and counter what the Crown mages were hurling at him. Some of them were showing battle cunning, firing their wands even before he reappeared, anticipating where he’d …

The beholder, utterly unscathed, ignored by the war wizards in their eagerness to smite a lone man within easy reach, was close now, descending as it neared the Delcastle walls.

And here he was, magic giving out, beset by these young fools .

“Ganrahast,” he snarled, “don’t you train your wizards any more? Can’t they see? And think ?”

Spells flashed down from the sky, fireballs that hurled war wizards into the air, burned and broken, and lightning bolts that stabbed across the garden, spearing Crown mage after Crown mage.

They were coming from the air behind the lone beholder … Blood of Bane, Manshoon had devised eyeball beholderkin that could unleash spells! A swarm of them!

A spell winked forth from one, then another, lashing down …

Well, at least some war wizards had finally discovered wits enough to look up and see where the slayings that sought them were coming from. They fired their wands into the sky, casting spells at the beholder, too, in a quickening inferno above El’s head that rent the sky like storm thunder.

That beholder exploded.

Wild lightning stabbed down, blazing beholderkin were flung in all directions like embers from an erupting volcano, the gardens rocked as its trees blazed up into one great bonfire, and … sudden silence fell.

The sky was empty, fires burned everywhere in the gardens as charred tree trunks spat sparks, and … bodies were everywhere.

More war wizards arrived, stalking warily forward in a slowly tightening ring around one man.

Who was on his knees, just two spells left in his weary mind and his body shrieking with silent pain. His skin crackled like brittle parchment paper and fell away as he tried to rise, the seared flesh beneath stinking like roast boar.

So this was how it was all going to end, after all these centuries. Blasted apart by young fools lashing out at the wrong target.

Fitting, somehow.

“Mystra,” he whispered. “Alassra. I loved you both.”

They were moving in for the kill, somber and wary, wands aimed and fists thrust forth with awakened rings aglow on their knuckles.

“ Now ,” someone commanded sternly-and the barrage began.

“Idiots,” El spat, as darkness claimed him.

The wizards of war fired carefully, concentrating on the mouth and hands of the man on his knees, trying to make sure there’d be no sudden flurry of spells coming back at them.

“No closer,” one warned his fellows. “Contingencies. Blast him from right where you’re standing.”

They lashed the dying man with spell after spell. Magics that raged and snarled, but seemed suddenly not to be touching their target. Instead, they were rising up around him, in a bright and climbing spiral that licked the sky like a great tongue of flame. Blue flame.

A flame that suddenly sank down into a fury of raging fire, fiery tongues of eye-searing-bright silver and of that same rich blue, that became … a tall and furious woman aglow with raging blueflame and silver fire.

“Fools! Ungrateful wretches!” she howled, her silver hair suddenly stabbing out in all directions around her. “Have your miscast magic back !” Deadly spells howled out from her in all directions across the gardens, hurling war wizards out over the walls and against the manor and its gates with shattering, splattering force. When none were left standing, she spun around, fell to her knees, and embraced her Elminster.

“My love,” she gasped, between kisses, “have me again, now-and forever!”