R.A. Salvatore - Maestro

“When you’re done talking …” Drizzt said from the side of the small oval chamber, where he held the door against the press of several demons, a mixed group of thick-limbed balgura, manes, and some other fiends Drizzt did not know: slender and with tentacle-like arms that they effectively used as stinging whips. Those tentacles, coming at him from behind a wall of allies, kept him moving and threatened to drive him back, which he did not want. He had the incoming monsters bottlenecked at the narrow entryway. One step back and the beasts would fan out to either side and the chamber would become a wild melee.

Drizzt ducked a snapping tentacle, but moved forward from a crouch, his scimitars working furiously to poke at a balgura, one, two, three, as he tried to drive the brute into a retreat.

But then it was Drizzt who was backstepping, and covering his head with his cloak. Out of nowhere, it seemed, a whipping wind came up, and stinging sleet pelted down all around him.

“Magic!” he warned, thinking it a trick of the demons, and unaware at that moment that they were taking the brunt of the ice storm.

“Left!” Jarlaxle called, and Drizzt slid that way-and just in time.

A glob of viscous goo from Jarlaxle’s wand shot past him. It struck the floor right at the feet of the closest demons, but it didn’t hold securely there. The floor was already a sheet of ice. The glob did stick to the front demons, though, who stumbled in futile attempts to maintain their balance. The momentum of the glob sent them skidding back into their allies.

A second glob came forth, hitting the ice again right in front of the first row of enemies and sliding in with great weight and force, taking the whole ball of demons back to the far wall of the corridor, where they struggled against the goo, stuck together as one.

Drizzt slid away his blades and let his left hand come to the belt buckle, his right to the small quiver, pulling forth Taulmaril and setting an arrow so fluidly that an observer might still be wondering where the scimitars went. The chamber and corridor filled with streaks of silver as the drow let fly. Drizzt’s barrage pummeled the helpless demons as they rent and tore at the unyielding magical globs, and at each other. They were, after all, demons.

The ice storm had ended, and Drizzt battered the group in relative comfort, explosive arrows pounding home, every shot boring into demon flesh. But a sudden buzzing in the air was his only warning, before a swarm of horrid demons soared past the trapped group: chasme, like great houseflies with the head and face of a bloated human.

Drizzt managed to alter the angle of his bow enough to shoot the first of the flying demons from the air, but the second dived upon him, and a host of others were close behind, entering the chamber.

Or trying to.

A wall of ice appeared in that opening. It resounded with the impact of the third of the chasme, which collided with it full force. It shook again and again as the others crashed in behind.

The one in the room had Drizzt diving for the floor though, his bow flung aside and desperately going for his scimitars. Before he ever drew them, barely an eye-blink of time, he found he didn’t need them. A red blade swept down in front of him, tearing the edge off the chasme’s fly-like wings. As the demon spun and crashed, the great Netherese sword slashed in again, scraping the grotesque human face right off.

Entreri didn’t remain in place to accept Drizzt’s thanks, leaping away for the wall of ice. He stabbed Charon’s Claw through one of the spider-web cracks, the shriek of a chasme telling them all that he had struck true.

“Well played,” Drizzt congratulated Jarlaxle, thinking it he who had brought forth the ice storm and the wall.

But Jarlaxle shook his head and shrugged, his smile wide.

He turned away from Drizzt, and from Entreri, who was stabbing through the ice wall yet again, scoring another hit on a second of the flying beasts.

“Quite the hero,” Jarlaxle said, addressing another dark elf who had come into the small chamber, though from where, Drizzt could not guess. He seemed about Drizzt’s age and wore the robes of a wizard and the House emblem of Xorlarrin. A small silver chain closed the collar of his fabulous piwafwi , showing him to be a master of Sorcere, the drow school of magic.

“Be quick with your spell and remove us from this place,” Jarlaxle instructed.

“Yes, do,” Entreri added, speaking perfect drow, and looking very much like a Menzoberranyr soldier behind the magical disguise of Agatha’s Mask.

A quick look at the assassin revealed the source of the urgency in Entreri’s voice. The ice wall was cracking more and more, pressed by the vicious and unyielding demons behind it.

“I cannot,” the newcomer replied to Jarlaxle.

“Help our friend hold the door,” Jarlaxle said to Drizzt, his tone for the first time less than calm. The mercenary pulled the newcomer aside and conversed silently in the hand code of the drow, shielding his fingers from Drizzt and Entreri.

Drizzt and Entreri met the onslaught side-by-side as the ice wall crumbled bit by bit and the demons pressed in. With Entreri beside him, Drizzt gave the beasts more leeway into the room. The pair were not afraid of being flanked.

Drizzt double-stabbed a balgura right in front of him, but quickly retracted the blades. He knew Entreri was coming by him, right to left. Drizzt rolled behind that rush, back to the right, coming in cleanly at a tentacle-armed demon distracted by Entreri’s sudden departure, its confusion leaving Drizzt an opening he would not miss.

Icingdeath he buried nearly to the hilt into the fiend, the magic of the sword hungrily eating the demon’s Abyssal force.

Twinkle Drizzt brought to the side, prodding the elbow of the balgura he’d just stabbed, preventing the brute from coming forward with its overhead chop. The demon let go with that hand, thinking to complete its attack with just one hand on the heavy hammer, but its other arm fell off-Charon’s Claw swept across, above the crumbling demon Entreri had already dispatched.

Now they had room to maneuver again, and Entreri went forward, closing the bottleneck, and Drizzt fell back and gathered up Taulmaril once more. His first shot went over Entreri and the beast he battled, blasting another chasme from the sky. He called to his companion, directing Entreri’s movements to provide openings through which the Heartseeker’s deadly barrage could continue.

Soon enough, all that remained were the least of the demons, the zombie-like manes, and Drizzt brought his bow across, the item shrinking once more and becoming diamond as he set it in place on the mithral buckle. He drew his blades, and waded through the archway beside Entreri, out into the adjacent corridor and right into the midst of the mob of manes. Grasping, clawed hands never got near either of the two sword-masters, their speed and coordination too much for these least of demonkind to comprehend, let alone fight.

But in the midst of that slaughter, the companions noted a greater presence coming fast to the fray, a pack of gigantic and hulking four-armed, dog-faced glabrezu, each with two arms ending in giant pincers that could cut a drow in half. These beasts knew no fear and hunted as cleverly as a pack of wolves. Their claws snapped eagerly.

Drizzt and Entreri gasped and fell back, to be confronted by a shouting Jarlaxle. As one, they turned to protest, to tell Jarlaxle that they could not hold the door.

But their protests were lost in their throats. A third drow had joined Jarlaxle and the Xorlarrin wizard.

The diviners escaped the room more easily this time, their hands joined in the stoup, their thoughts entwined through the magic of the room and the powers of K’yorl’s discipline.