R Salvatore - Neverwinter

A second zealot dashed in at her from the side, but Dahlia noted the movement and merely flipped her wrist over, her right-hand weapon cracking against the thrusting scepter, driving it back behind her. And she turned as it did, her left hand coming around to crack the zealot in the head. Unlike the mummified opponent in front of her, this one wasn’t so well-armored, and the heavy blow opened his skull and sent him flying away.

Knowing the strange one to be coming fast in pursuit, Dahlia finished her spin, her hands working furiously as she did. She came to face him once more, and held not a pair of flails, but a single eight-foot staff.

“Drizzt!” she called, fending off the Ashmadai’s attacks. “Drow! Lend me an arrow!”

“Entreri!” Drizzt called to his nearest companion.

But even as he spoke the name, the assassin yelled back, “Go! Go!”

Entreri rushed in front of him, sword and dagger working in a blur to drive back the attackers, giving Drizzt the room to disengage just long enough to draw Taulmaril once more and set an arrow. He leveled and let fly, the lightning missile speeding just past Dahlia’s shoulder, aiming for her opponent’s face.

It never got there, intercepted by the power of Kozah’s Needle, drawn into the staff, which was already tingling with energy.

Dahlia wasted no time, spinning the staff up above her head and around, and promptly thrusting it into the chest of the mummified zealot. That physical blow did little damage, of course, but Dahlia cried out in victory, the win all but assured, as she let loose the tremendous lightning energy pent up in the weapon.

Drizzt nodded grimly as crackling arcs rushed along the length of the staff, diving into the zealot, cascading along his form with sharp crackles. All around him the lightning danced, gradually coalescing down his right arm and at his right hand-more specifically, at a ring he wore on his right hand. The lightning sparked and snapped and rolled around the circle.

And turned around.

Scimitars back in his hands, Drizzt’s eyes widened with surprise and shock as Dahlia went flying backward, arms and legs flailing, staff flying from her smoking grasp.

“Go! Go!” the drow yelled at Entreri.

Drizzt stepped in front of the assassin, his scimitars intercepting the scepters of the two Ashmadai pressing in, opening just enough of an avenue for Entreri to run free to the cave.

He heard Sylora above him, but pressed from every side now, Drizzt could only grimace against the implications of her chant. His hands worked in a blur, over and around, as he spun to drive back the two he’d been fighting. Drizzt dropped low and kicked out to painfully straighten the leg of one of Entreri’s foes as the woman tried to come at him from behind.

Up Drizzt sprang, his blades spinning horizontal circles up high and out wide, working down to block, working back up high to drive one or another of the four back yet again. He found his rhythm and when one of the frustrated zealots threw his scepter at Drizzt, the drow’s blade was in line, not to block, but to deflect the weapon. It flew into the face of the zealot behind him.

That one fell away and the one who threw the spear followed it by leaping wildly at Drizzt, trying to tackle him to the ground. That zealot did indeed hit the ground, face first, clutching at the five stab wounds the drow had expertly inflicted before nimbly ducking aside-and doing so with such control that he used the falling Ashmadai to block the view of the zealot opposite. He came over that descending form so quickly and so furiously that the surprised zealot never got her weapon up to block the scimitar thrusting true for her throat.

She did manage to scream, at least, but that was abruptly cut short.

As more Ashmadai rushed to crowd in around him, Drizzt found a moment to glance at Dahlia. She was on her feet again, her braid dancing like a living serpent atop her head. She’d retrieved her staff, but was obviously shaken and confused. The strange Ashmadai bore down on her with great advantage.

And Entreri had not gone to her!

Drizzt spied the assassin scrambling off to the side, along the rocks at the base of the tower, apparently seeking a way in. The dark elf called out to him, but didn’t finish the thought before the ground around him roiled suddenly, turning black and with a strange smoky ash wafting from it. The Ashmadai nearest Drizzt cried out first from the burning pain.

And Drizzt felt it too, acutely, such a sting as if his pants had been lit on fire. Only his bracers saved him then, his feet working fast enough to extract him from the devilish black ring of ashen energy.

Hardly thinking of the movement, the drow had simply leaped out of the ring of woe as efficiently as possible, and that moved him farther from Dahlia, back out from the cave entrance and the rocky hill. He got a better view of Sylora Salm at least, standing above him, twenty feet above on the balcony.

She held a strange wand, a broken branch, it seemed, and she smiled wickedly. In that moment, Drizzt felt as if all of this had surely been for naught, as if he and his companions had been fools indeed to think they could go against the magnificence that was Sylora Salm.

Back at the smoking ashen ring, a pair of zealots burst from the growing cloud of withering blackness, reaching for Drizzt.

Their faces were no more than skinless skulls, their reaching hands skeletal, and both crumpled dead to the ground before they ever got near.

But Sylora kept smiling.

Dahlia’s skills and warrior instincts superseded her surprise and got her back to her feet and back in a fighting pose before the mummified champion could truly exploit the explosive turnaround.

But it was worse than mere surprise. The blow had hurt her, and her muscles trembled so violently she could hardly hold onto her long staff. Dahlia wanted to break her weapon back into flails, or perhaps into a tri-staff, that she might pry the zealot’s weapon away, but she didn’t dare, for fear of dropping Kozah’s Needle altogether.

The wound inflicted by the zealot’s scepter had not abated, either, her gut muscles tightening painfully. She didn’t know how long she could fend off this ferocious opponent. She was beginning to understand that she was beaten.

That understanding only got worse when, in one parry and dodge, she looked past her opponent to the back of the cave and saw a grinning Valindra Shadowmantle looking back at her. The lich held her larger, redder scepter, and more than once pointed it Dahlia’s way. But she didn’t enact any of its powers, or her own. She simply seemed to be enjoying the show.

Valindra didn’t intervene because she knew she didn’t have to, Dahlia thought, for even though her sensations were returning, her grasp growing steadier on the long staff, she could hardly hope to defeat this strange Ashmadai.

In a single fluid movement, Drizzt sheathed his blades, took up his bow, and sent a stream of arrows at Sylora Salm.

They struck that strange shield in front of her and burst into myriad multi-colored sparks, one after another. The drow could only hope he was doing some damage to that magical defense, at least, wearing it thinner with each explosive strike.

He caught sight of Sylora moving her hand, her wand, behind that barrage, and he fell back as the two Ashmadai who’d fallen dead at his feet leaped up suddenly, animated by the sorceress.

Drizzt turned his bow at them, but before he could fire off an arrow, the two leaned toward the balcony and seemed to elongate, then to fly off as they became insubstantial black smoke.

Drizzt spun his bow up and let fly, filling the area in front of Sylora with yet more sparks. From that field of explosion, though, came a responding missile, black and large and flying fast at Drizzt. Again the magical speed of his anklets saved him as he threw himself aside, both from the missile and from yet another Ashmadai coming in at him from behind.