Troy Denning - The Siege

Keya's eyes shifted past his shoulder and suddenly widened in surprise, as did Dexon's, and Khelben heard a familiar "ahem" behind him. He turned to find Laeral standing there, tapping the tip of a smoking wand against her crimson-streaked armor.

She cocked her brow, then shifted her gaze to Keya. "Tell me, young lady-what does a girl need to kill to get a kiss around here?"

21 Mirtul, the Year of Wild Magic

Vala hung motionless in the ceiling spider webs, watching in silence as Corineus spun around the sanctum below, slashing eyestalks from beholder heads and cratering illithid chests with bolts of golden magic, somersaulting under bugbears and diving over kobolds. All the while, he somehow kept himself between his enemies and the four spellbooks resting on a dusty oak table in the corner, amidst a pile of crowns, scepters, rings, bracers, and other magic relics recovered from the lairs of the phaerimm they had slain so far. The monster bodies were beginning to pile up, slowing the baelnorn's bladedance to the point that he began to take hits. It hardly mattered. Steel weapons only bounced off his white flesh, and he absorbed disintegration rays and mind blasts the way leaves drank sunlight. Even antimagic beams had no effect. The beholders casting them never lived long enough for their blade-wielding comrades to take advantage.

Finally, there were just too many bodies for Corineus to continue his bladedance. He stumbled spinning in for a kill, and two kobolds bounced across the carnage into the corner, each grabbing for one of the spellbooks on the desk. Though they were no more than twelve feet below Vala, close enough that she could smell their musky odor even over the charnel stench that filled the room, she continued to hang under the ceiling, her arms and legs aching from the strain of holding herself in such an unaccustomed position. This time, Corineus had told her to be a spider, to let the prey twist itself into their web before striking.

As Corineus struggled to regain his balance, a pair of bugbears leaped onto his back and bowled him over. He started to throw them off, and more started to squeeze through the doors one after the other, adding their weight to the heap. The pile continued to rise, but more slowly, then finally sank back toward the floor. The baelnorn’s muffled voice called out an incantation, and a brilliant spark flashed somewhere under the tangle of hairy limbs.

A sheet of silver lightning fanned across the room, momentarily blinding Vala. There was a single communal death-growl, then the room fell silent. The reek of scorched flesh pervaded her nostrils, and her chill-numbed flesh began to prickle as the baelnorn's cold aura suddenly vanished. She blinked the dazzle from her eyes to find the sanctum piled three layers deep in scorched body halves, many pouring smoke into the air and some still twitching.

Corineus was encased in a shimmering sphere of force, his withered face twisted into a mask of agony as he struggled to his feet. He was moving only slowly and with great effort, with his eyes bulging out of their sockets and lines of black blood running from his ears and nostrils. The sphere was contracting visibly, crushing the baelnorn in its inexorable grasp.

Vala remained where she was, all too conscious of the shiny red diamonds starting to peer at her from the corners of the web-strewn ceiling. The giant spiders had vanished through their hidden bolt holes the instant Corineus entered the sanctum, but with his chill aura gone, they were eager to return and reclaim their webs. Her goose bumps rose again, though this time they had nothing to do with being cold.

Finally, the object of her ambush appeared, the largest phaerimm yet, with amber scales and a tail-barb as long as the blade of her darksword. The creature paused a moment in the door, then floated over to the sphere in which Corineus was imprisoned and stopped. The baelnorn turned his head in its direction. His eyes were bulging so badly they were about to pop their sockets, and the black stuff running from his nose and ears had fanned across his entire lower face. The undead elf began to fumble through the gestures of an enchantment.

So clumsy were his efforts that even Vala knew the spell would never go off. The phaerimm simply floated there before him, and eventually Corineus stopped trying. The pair simply stood beside each other and did nothing. Vala was confused for the first several moments, until the baelnorn's gaze shifted to the captured spellbooks, and she recalled that phaerimm communicated with their captives telepathically. The thing was interrogating him, no doubt trying to learn how he had been slipping past the wards designed to keep him at bay.

Vala prayed to Tempus to give Corineus strength- then remembered herself and asked Corellon Larethian, the elf god of war, for the same thing. They had taken care to leave behind no trace of her presence in the lairs they had broken so far. If the baelnorn betrayed the secret, she would not survive long enough to realize their plan had failed.

A tremble in the web drew Vala's gaze to the opposite corner of the ceiling, where a wolf-sized spider was creeping out of its bolt hole. She fixed it in place with a glare but did not dare do more. Corineus had warned her not to move until the instant she attacked. Her only camouflage was spider silk and darkness; any magic that the baelnorn might have used to hide her would have drawn the phaerimm's attention as surely as a flame.

Emboldened by the first, a second spider crept out onto the web, this one only half a dozen yards from Vala's feet. She glanced toward the phaerimm, trying to gauge her chances of making the leap. Not good. The thornback was over by the main door with the baelnorn; she was in the opposite corner, above the spellbooks. Corineus had said the thing would not be able to resist such a treasure. So far, it seemed to be withstanding the temptation all too well.

A third spider crept onto the web, this one in the corner above Corineus, who was enduring long past the point when a living elf would have been crushed. His eyes were hanging out of their sockets, flattened against his cheeks, while his arms and legs were bent at impossible angles and pressed back against his body. Vala wanted to yell at the baelnorn to give up and let himself be destroyed already, but she didn't even know if that was possible. Besides, he had to make it look real. If he gave up too easily, his tormentor would grow suspicious-and few things were more dangerous than a suspicious phaerimm.

The web began to tremble violently as the first spider darted for Vala, fangs dripping venom and pedipalps reaching out. The second made a dash for her legs but stopped to face the other one when it changed its direction.

Vala started to throw her sword in desperation-then had a better idea and looked back to the spiders. She ran her blade through the spider web, cutting a huge crescent around the bottom of her feet. The web came free with a series of brittle pops, and she swung down from the ceiling, descending toward her target in a swift-moving arc. The phaerimm swung its huge mouth toward her.

Vala leaped straight at it, whipping the darksword around for a vicious, two-handed down strike. She heard scales cracking and felt the blade splitting flesh. A pair of phaerimm hands caught her by the throat and began to squeeze. She turned the blade and began to drag it through the thing's body. The barbed tail arced up, clanked off her backplate, and drew back to try again.

Vala knocked a phaerimm hand from her throat-only to have it replaced by two more. Her vision began to fade, and her right leg erupted into fiery pain as the tail barb penetrated her armor and began to pump its poison into her body. She pried her darksword free, swinging the blade up through two feet of tendon and flesh. Her vision darkened to something darker than black, and Vala's stomach suddenly rose into her chest. A bitter chill stung her flesh, and there was an endless eternity of falling. She grew queasy and weak and heard nothing but the pounding of her own heart, slowing with each beat, then even that was gone.