R Salvatore - Neverwinter

The assassin tested it, but backed off again as the smoke bit at him painfully.

“The other way,” he told Dahlia, nodding to the stair across the second level.

“She’s up there?” Dahlia asked, not moving other than to reform her singular long staff.

Entreri looked at her curiously, and tried to push her toward the stair.

But Dahlia avoided him and moved toward the balcony instead, though she motioned for him to continue across the room.

The assassin glanced back as he reached the stair, and smiled wide. Dahlia rushed to the edge of the smoking area, planted her staff against the base of the wall opposite the short stair, and leaped forward, twisting and pushing off as she came even with the opening. With great agility and strength, the elf woman hung there, her momentum lost, and as she started to descend, she lifted her legs higher to the side and pushed off with all her strength, lifting herself up the side stair.

Entreri sprinted up the short stairwell and burst through the door, to find himself facing Sylora Salm and her crooked wand.

Dahlia was there, too, having cleared the blackened area.

“All my enemies in one place,” Sylora said. “How convenient.”

Dahlia responded by thrusting the end of her staff at the woman’s mouth. The attack seemed true, but the weapon hit a barrier, a brown semicircle glowing in front of her at the impact.

Sylora laughed and whipped her small wand in front of her, and from that wand came a series of black darts, spinning through the room.

Both Dahlia and Entreri curled defensively, but both got hit. Many darts flew, and those small missiles brought forth painful bites indeed.

“Go!” Entreri demanded of Dahlia. He leaped at Sylora, as did Dahlia, sword, knife, and staff stabbing hard.

And all, weapons and attackers, were easily repelled by the barrier.

Down below, from the balcony, they heard a different cadence of explosive missiles.

“The barrier can be broken!” Dahlia surmised, and though Sylora hit them again with a rain of darts, on they came, their only defense a brutal forward assault.

Indeed, behind the globe, Sylora appeared genuinely concerned, and a bit disoriented by the sheer ferocity of their attacks.

The strikes didn’t diminish until something flew past Dahlia, making her instinctively duck. She called out to Entreri as she did, and he, too, had to dive aside, his dagger not quite catching up to the small fiend as it fluttered past him. The devil’s strike, however, did score, its whiplike tail lashing out at the assassin and cutting him painfully across the shoulder.

Up into the air went the creature, above the next rain of Sylora’s darts-and that barrage had Dahlia and Entreri staggering back under the weight and sting of the assault.

But Arunika’s imp hadn’t been hit. Its skin hanging in burned strands from Sylora’s earlier encasing ash, it understood the sorceress’s defenses more keenly than the others.

Sylora hardly even seemed aware of the creature as it flipped over the top of the bubble and dropped down upon her extended arm. With clawed feet and hands, it grabbed at her forearm and hand, at the wand, and when she pulled back against it and slapped at it with her other hand, the imp bared its fangs and bit down hard on her weapon hand.

It lifted its head, two severed fingers hanging from its mouth, and tore the Dread Ring wand from Sylora’s weakened grasp. Away it leaped, stinging her with its tail as it flew free of her desperate grabs.

Time seemed to stop then, a sudden, shocked pause from the three remaining in the tower room.

“Oh, now you die,” Artemis Entreri promised, rising from his knees against the far wall, Dahlia beside him.

But Sylora Salm wasn’t out of tricks. She threw her cloak up over her head, and as it descended, she transformed into the likeness of a giant raven.

Dahlia yelled in protest and struck at her. Entreri, too, managed a stab.

But neither scored a mortal, or even a serious hit, and the raven dived from the room, down the short stair, and out the tower balcony.

Drizzt leaped high, clearing the last line of still-smoking rings, on his way to the cave.

As he landed, though, he heard a sound from above, a peculiar sound given the circumstance and location: the whinnying of an angry horse.

That noise turned his attention back the other way, where he saw a large crow, a human-sized bird, fly out from the balcony, soaring into the night.

Drizzt leaped back the other way, drawing an arrow in mid-flight, and he landed and dropped to one knee, leveling his bow and letting fly.

The lightning arrow streaked off into the dark night, and sparks flew along with feathers as it struck home. But the crow kept gliding, disappearing over the wall and into the night beyond the strange fortress.

A second form came out from the balcony, and Drizzt nearly shot it, until he recognized it as Entreri’s nightmare steed, the assassin and Dahlia astride it.

The amazing hell horse dropped down gracefully from twenty feet, and somehow landed gently enough so that its two riders weren’t launched from its back.

Drizzt’s jaw hung open, his stunned expression reflected on the faces of a pair of Ashmadai watching from the wall, as the nightmare thundered away in pursuit, flames flying from its hooves. It ran along the wall to the open gate then charged across the outer ring, Drizzt following its progress by the shouts of the defenders still out there.

Drizzt started back toward that wall, but noticed Dahlia’s wide-brimmed leather hat and paused just long enough to scoop it up and put it on. Then, blowing his whistle loudly, the drow leaped the next ring, and sprinted around a third. He lined himself up with Andahar’s approach, and waved the mighty unicorn past him. He leaped up and grabbed Andahar’s mane as the galloping steed charged on.

In a few heartbeats, Drizzt was out of the fortress, with no pursuit apparent other than a growling panther leaping over the wall down to his right. He spotted Entreri’s steed, the flaming hooves bright in the night, and bent low over Andahar’s strong neck, urging his mount along, and gaining ground with every stride.

As he neared, it became apparent to Drizzt that Dahlia was guiding the mount in front of him. Entreri sat in the saddle, but she whispered into his ear continually. Entreri’s nightmare ran with conviction, as if they knew where they were going, though the raven was nowhere to be seen.

Drizzt didn’t question it. He put Andahar in line behind Entreri’s nightmare and instructed the unicorn to follow.

Dahlia glanced back at him and nodded. When the trail cleared a bit and allowed for it, she held her staff out wide and up high, and again motioned to Drizzt.

The drow ranger grinned as he figured it out. He clamped his legs tight around Andahar’s flanks, stood tall, and took up Taulmaril.

Kozah’s Needle swallowed his first lightning arrow. Dahlia nodded, and kept the staff up high and out wide.

Drizzt let fly again, then a third time, the powerful staff feasting on the lightning energy. Drizzt could see little arcs of power jumping along its length, and Dahlia grasped it with her other hand as well.

Still she kept the staff up high, though, and pumped it emphatically. Drizzt let fly again, then a fifth time, and sparks leaped higher and thicker along the weapon’s length. Dahlia’s mostly-unwound braid once more began to dance with residual energy.

But she called for one more, and so Drizzt let fly again.

The trees thickened around them and Dahlia wisely brought the staff in closer, and lower. Drizzt settled in his seat, placed his bow across his lap, and urged Andahar on.

Valindra Shadowmantle slipped out of the crack in the stone at the back of the shallow cave and reverted to her normal three-dimensional form. The drow and his shining white unicorn were out of sight by then, but Valindra followed their progress out of Ashenglade by the tumult of Ashmadai zealots calling out their locations.