R. Salvatore - The Companions

“Your spellcasting,” Penelope started to explain, but Kipper cut her short.

“You drew your power from the old ways,” he said. “Is this how you were trained?”

Catti-brie didn’t know how to respond. It was how she had been trained, but in another life. In this one, not so. “What does it mean?” she asked, deflecting the other’s question.

“The Weave, girl,” Kipper asked, “do you feel it?”

Catti-brie thought back to the moment when her spellscar magic had failed, that flash in the sky, like an eclipse, like a web. Like the Weave of Magic.

She looked at Penelope, her expression quite dumbfounded. “Your celebration,” she managed to whisper, and she put it all together. “Has the effect of the Spellplague ended?”

Penelope hugged her suddenly and unexpectedly. “So we pray,” she whispered. “So we pray.”

Catti-brie glanced out the window of her room at the Ivy Mansion months later, looking back to the east, toward Netheril. Her spellscar powers, the shapeshifting and storm-calling, like those of the other marked wizards at the Ivy Mansion, had not returned, and by all indications, the Spellplague was indeed no more. At long last.

But what did that mean for Niraj and Kavita? Or, Catti-brie wondered, for Avelyere and the Coven?

The Harpells seemed quite overjoyed by the news, even though they had all begun retraining. The library of the Ivy Mansion dated far back before the Spellplague, of course, and so they were well-equipped for this strange shift of magic. And when she thought about it, Catti-brie realized that she was better equipped than almost any! For she had been trained in the old ways initially, after all, and could any other mages in the Realms, other than elves and drow, say the same?

A few, she realized, for the Harpells had not fully abandoned their previous ways.

There were other differences of note between herself and the other wizards around her, and Catti-brie could only attribute it to the special days she had spent in Iruladoon. When asked, and Catti-brie nodded. bpa"› expect she called upon her magic, her spellscars reacted, but that was not true for Penelope or the few others similarly scarred. Even for Catti-brie, the reaction seemed a cosmetic thing only, for her magic was not exceptionally potent-indeed, were she to engage in a spell battle against Penelope, Catti-brie was certain that she would be obliterated in short order.

Still, Catti-brie had a lot to teach the Harpells, even as they invited her to stay on and train under their masters. She was more adept at converting the spells back to the old ways than any, and Kipper and the others truly appreciated her efforts in that regard, and shared some of their best dweomers with her in return.

So for the fourth time since Catti-brie had moved from her warrior ways to that of a wizard, she had found a new school. First she had trained with the great Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon, then with Niraj and Kavita, then at the Coven, and now here at the Ivy Mansion. What student of the arcane arts could ever ask for more? She had been fortunate indeed!

“No, the fifth time,” she said aloud, correcting the thought as she recass="indent" ai

The Year of the Tasked Weasel (1483 DR) Gauntlgrym

With all the stubbornness of a dwarf, Bruenor ignored the reaching monsters and fought against the press of the boot, driving himself with every ounce of his strength toward the many-notched axe. If he could just get his hand around it …

But he could not, and he let out a little grunt as the boot crushed down harder, pressing him with supernatural strength, grinding his arm into the stone. Clawed hands tore at his clothing and skin, and the otherworldly shrieks of hungry undead dark elves echoed off the cavern walls.

“Get ye back!” Bruenor heard, and the gruff voice and accent gave him pause. The hands stopped clawing at him then, but the boot held him fast. He managed to turn enough to get a glimpse of his captor, and he gasped in shock and was too numb from that shock to resist as a thick hand{font-size: 0.75rem;Ieshis opponent no less reached down and grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him roughly, and so very easily, to his feet.

“Ye’re breathin’ still only because ye’re a dwarf, thief, but know that ye’re not long to be breathin’!” the vampire, an undead dwarf in ridged armor, said. “I’m wantin’ ye to know the grave ye’re robbing afore I break yer neck.”

“The cairn of King Bruenor,” Bruenor breathed, and he added, his voice thin from absolute shock, “Pwent.”

The vampire gave him a quick shake, so roughly that it rattled his bones. “What’d ye call me?”

“Pwent … oh, me Pwent, what’ve ye become then?”

The vampire dwarf, Thibbledorf Pwent, stared hard at this young dwarf, looking him up and down, then settling on his eyes. They locked gazes and stared silently through many heartbeats-heartbeats from Bruenor, and not from the dead battlerager.

“Me king?” Thibbledorf Pwent asked. He let go of Bruenor’s collar then, his hand visibly trembling as he retracted it. “Me king?”

All around, the drow vampires hissed and shuffled uneasily, clearly wanting to leap back in at the living dwarf and tear him apart.

“Bah! Get ye gone!” Pwent demanded, shouting at them and waving his arm menacingly. The group retreated into the darkness, falling back, hissing in protest, and soon falling on Bruenor’s three companions to feast on their still-warm blood.

“What are ye doing?” Bruenor asked incredulously, looking around in obvious horror. “Pwent, what-?”

“Ye died pulling the lever,” Pwent replied, and there seemed to Bruenor to be a bit of resentment in his tone. “Meself did’no. Aye, but that damned vampire friend o’ Dahlia’s got me on the neck and put his curse into me.”

“A vampire,” Bruenor muttered, trying to piece it all together, trying to make some sense of this craziness. Pwent was a vampire haunting the halls of Gauntlgrym, and with a drow troupe in support? “Pwent,” he said with sympathy and concern and clear confusion, “what are ye doing?”

“A pack of damned drow took home in this place,” the battlerager answered. His face turned into a fierce scowl and he issued a feral snarl, and Bruenor feared for a moment that Pwent would fall over him in murderous rage-and Bruenor knew in his heart that such fear was not unfounded. Thibbledorf Pwent was on the edge; the struggle showed clearly in his dead eyes.

“I’m holdin’ ’em. I’m fightin’ ’em!” Pwent said. “Aye, but that’s all I got left, me king. All that’s left o’ Pwent. And suren that it’s a sweet taste when I get me fangs in their skinny necks, don’t ye doubt. Aye, but that’s the joy, me king!”

As he said it, he advanced a step and flashed his elongated canines, and for a moment, Bruenor again expected him to leap for his king’s throat!

But Pwent pulled back, obviously with great effort.

“I’m yer king,” Bruenor stated. “I’m yer friend. E’er been yer friend, and yerself me own.”

The vampire managed a nod. “If ye was me friend, ye’d kill me, looked at her curiously. o holding im” he said. “Ah, but ye cannot, and I’m not about to let ye.” He glanced down at the cairn and kicked at it, and with his great strength sent a pile of large stones bouncing away.

Bruenor looked upon his own corpse, upon his many-notched axe, surviving the decades intact as if nary a day had passed. He noted his old armor, fit for a king, and a buckler set with the foaming mug of Clan Battlehammer, a shield that had turned the blows of a thousand enemies. He stared at the skull, at his skull, grayish white with flecks of discolored dried skin, and so shocking was the realization that he was looking at his own rotting head that it took Bruenor a long while to realize that his one-horned helm was missing. He tried to remember where he had lost it. Had it fallen into the primordial pit when he and Pwent had dragged themselves across the chasm, perhaps?