R. Salvatore - Charon's claw

“You cannot know that,” Effron replied, even as Ambergris nodded her agreement with Alegni.

Alegni’s glare came as a clear warning to the twisted warlock. “The sword calls to me. Press on with all speed. We must find the beast quickly and secure the area around it. They will come to us, or they will flee and the threat to the sword will be diminished.”

“There are other drow about,” Glorfathel reminded him.

“If we encounter them, and they have captured or allied with our enemies, let us tell them what they have and who they have,” Alegni replied. “If they cooperate, then the fighting in the tunnels above will be forgiven. If not, then let us pay them back for those we lost. In the aftermath of such a battle, so will be declared war between Netheril and the drow, and the Empire will send us an endless line of soldiers.”

“I can find the primordial,” Glorfathel assured him. “Its magic resonates all around us.”

Alegni nodded and motioned to his nearby commanders to tighten up the ranks, that they could press on with all speed.

The giant crow swooped down from on high, one end of a fine elven rope in her beak. She alighted atop the highest remaining stair, near the hinge that had allowed the clever denizens below to fold half the stairwell down over the lower half. It was a marvelous design, but Dahlia had no time to consider it at length then. She reverted to her elf form and tied off the rope as tightly as she could, then waited as the two up on the landing pulled it even tighter and tied it securely above.

Drizzt went first, sliding down under the line, a leather belt pouch looped over the cord as a makeshift handle. Entreri came close behind, and even as he started, and before Drizzt had set down on the stairs, Dahlia became a crow again and flew back up.

She understood Entreri’s impatience when she arrived at the landing, given the unmistakable sounds of an approaching force. She didn’t even revert from the crow form, using her beak to pull free the knots.

And quickly she was gone, swooping again from on high, soaring past her two friends as they scrambled along the stair, and down to the bottom to ensure that the large chamber was indeed empty.

The three companions entered the tunnels quickly and made for the forge, and for the pit of the great beast. Dahlia couldn’t help but notice that Drizzt grew quite agitated. He kept dropping his hand into his belt pouch-where he kept the panther figurine, she knew.

“What is it?” she quietly asked him as Entreri moved out ahead.

He looked at her curiously, but she grabbed his wrist, for his hand was again in that pouch.

Drizzt winced, his expression full of anger. “She is worth the lives of fifty Artemis Entreris,” he stated.

“What?”

He muttered something undecipherable and pushed past her to catch up to the assassin.

Hustling to be done with Entreri, once and for all, Dahlia presumed, and it struck her then how greatly, how viciously, her drow lover wanted Entreri to die. Perhaps it was the call of the sword again, or maybe, she mused, Drizzt simply hated Entreri that much.

Brack’thal breathed a sigh of relief that his invisibility spell lasted long enough for him to get through the small tunnel from the forge room and into the primordial’s chamber. He had lost his elemental pet, sending it down a corridor after some Shadovar, he believed, though he had not seen them. Without it, the drow wizard felt naked indeed.

So he had quietly slipped back to the forge room, and had entered invisibly, but to his dismay, had found no ongoing breaches, no little fiery creatures rushing around. The one forge that had not yet been repaired had been fully shut down.

Even worse, during his invisible creeping around, Brack’thal overheard Tiago Baenre telling his blacksmith friend that all of the drow would be retreating from the forge and into the deeper tunnels in light of the Netherese advance.

They would surrender this hall and the primordial, and Brack’thal couldn’t allow that.

This was his source of power. Through his ruby ring, the wizard felt the primal murmurs of ancient magic resonating powerfully within him. It was not a sensation he was about to let lapse.

He stood on the edge of the deep pit, cursing the water elementals swirling around its sides, trapping this godly creature of such beautiful power. He couldn’t dismiss those water elementals. His magic couldn’t touch them in any effective way. Because of his affinity with the Plane of Fire, those creatures from the Plane of Water were even farther from his influence, and even more dangerous foes to him.

Brack’thal could hear the beast below. Its whispers flitted around his mind, promising him all that he had lost and more. He had been formidable in the tunnels against the corbies and dwarf ghosts, formidable in his work on the stairwell, and formidable in his dealings with his wretched little brother. All because of this godlike primordial.

The old drow mage heard the call clearly. The primordial demanded release. But Ravel and his band had properly secured the mechanisms for controlled releases only, allowing a bit of the primordial to fire the furnaces. The ancient traps would keep the beast under control.

The primordial wanted release. Brack’thal could hear that lament most clearly of all.

And in that release, Brack’thal alone among his kin would find any gain, would rise in power above Ravel.

Brack’thal crossed the mushroom-stalk bridge to the anteroom and stood before the lever. This was the key, he believed, and if he pulled it, the primordial would be free. On a different and more pragmatic emotional level, the wizard surely understood the danger in such a scenario. Would he even be able to survive and escape the cataclysm sure to follow? The voice through his ring told him to trust, and he found himself reaching for the lever.

His hand didn’t quite get there, though, for a multitude of images came to him then-imparted from the primordial, he knew. He saw a glittering throne set with magnificent gems, a dwarven throne for dwarf kings.

Only a dwarf could pull this lever, Brack’thal understood then, and only one who had sat on that throne. This was a typical failsafe for dwarves, as it was for the drow, for both races elevated their own above all others. Only a Delzoun dwarf could pull this lever, and only one who sat on that powerfully enchanted throne, thus, only one of royal lineage.

With a growl, Brack’thal grasped the lever anyway and began to tug. When it wouldn’t budge, the wizard moved behind it and put his shoulder to it, pushing with all of his strength. When it still wouldn’t move at all, Brack’thal cast a spell of strength upon himself, his thin arms bulging with magical muscle.

He might as well have been trying to move a mountain.

Sometime later, the mage stood on the edge of the pit back across the bridge once more, but he didn’t look down to the primordial any longer, his eyes focused back on the narrow hallway that had led him there. His mind’s eye was looking past that corridor, too, to a forge that was not really a forge.

Perhaps there was another way.

Tiago Baenre’s eyes sparkled in fiery reflections and in clear intrigue as he looked at the strange items lying on the tray before Gol’fanin. He focused first on the delicate and narrow sword blade that seemed as much the stuff of magic as metal, silvery but nearly translucent, and with shining little points of light sparkling back at him from within their glow.

“Diamond dust,” he whispered.

“Mingled with the glassteel,” Gol’fanin confirmed. “Both creations are thick with the stuff, lending the metal its hardness and edge. You’ll not break this sword, nor dull its deadly cut, and that shield will deflect the cudgel of a mountain giant.”