R.A. Salvatore - Maestro

A great wind sent them flying, floating out from Yvonnel and the matron mother.

Drizzt could see them standing there, staring back, but only for a moment.

Only until every priest, every wizard, every archer in the city of Menzoberranzan let loose their most powerfully destructive spells and bolts at him and this aged and battered woman.

“No,” Dahlia gasped in a rare moment of perfect clarity. She came forward in the magical cage, which Yvonnel had placed on a rooftop not so far away so that the three prisoners could witness the spectacle.

“After all that trouble, they simply use him to lure in the beast and then sacrifice him to gain favor with their wretched demon goddess,” Entreri spat with disgust.

But Jarlaxle shook his head, grinning. He knew better. He had seen this trick before, only on a scale miniscule compared to this grand display.

“Do you remember, long ago, before the Spellplague even, your last true fight against Drizzt, in the tower I constructed for just that occasion?” Jarlaxle asked.

Entreri looked at him curiously, then turned his eyes again to the conflagration and explosions filling the air in front of the entry from the Masterways, fully obscuring Drizzt in fire and lightning and swarms of missiles.

He winced as a great spinning web of lightning flew forth and fell over that spot, and exploded in brilliance that stole his vision.

“It cannot be,” he breathed.

“I have come to doubt nothing anymore,” Jarlaxle said.

Drizzt held onto Vidrinath for all his life, that focal point was the only thing that lay between him and utter insanity as a thousand spells exploded around him. He didn’t know what to think or why he was alive or how he could be anything more than splattered dead across the floor. Lightning bolts rained upon him. Fireballs roiled over one another or filled the air, flame strikes slashing down amid them, spinning their flames into somersaulting dances in front of his eyes. A meteor swarm pounded around him, compliments of the new Archmage of Menzoberranzan. A thousand arrows struck him, and bounced off of him.

But their killing energy did not bounce away. It spread about the drow, caught by the great kinetic barrier an illithid hive-mind had raised around him.

He trembled under the press of power, under the containment of more energy, more destruction than he had ever before witnessed, all at once. The bared power of Menzoberranzan, the thousands of dark elves, the minions of Lolth, acting in unison, sending all their hate and power at him.

And then it was over and Drizzt was back on the roof, and the old drow woman holding his hand smiled at him, her eyes wide and wild. She let go, and shrieked and gasped and simply exploded, but so fully that she became nothingness, her final expression a bright burst of ultimate ecstasy.

She was gone, and Drizzt stood there, holding Vidrinath, trembling under the power, increasingly uncomfortable as it demanded release.

Across from him stood Yvonnel. To the side, and not so far away, the matron mother scowled both at Drizzt and at the other woman.

And behind them, Demogorgon approached.

“Now is your moment, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Yvonnel said. “Now you prove yourself. There is the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, Quenthel Baenre.” She pointed at Quenthel, whose eyes went wide indeed.

“You feel your power,” Yvonnel said. “One strike and she will be obliterated, and you will have dealt a great blow against Lolth and against this city.”

She paused and bowed. “Now is your moment.”

Drizzt stared at the matron mother, stupefied, and trembling so hard he could barely stand. He could feel the power-of every spell and every arrow-beginning to eat through the strange shield that held it at bay.

Heartbeats, no longer than mere heartbeats, and he would be obliterated, like the woman who had served as a conduit, who had let go of his hand.

He saw the fear in the matron mother’s eyes. She knew she was doomed.

And he didn’t know … anything.

He looked down and drew out Icingdeath with his free hand. He fell within himself and became, again, the Hunter.

This was his moment.

He heard the approach behind him-how could he not?

Slowly, Drizzt’s eyes scanned upward. He saw the robes of the unusual young drow. He followed up her shapely body to that pretty neck and rainbow hair, to that beautiful face, staring back at him and smiling knowingly.

So close, but not afraid.

Because she knew.

This was his moment.

Drizzt roared and spun, his blades going high. And he ran-how he ran!-and he leaped with all his strength and all his might, falling, flying from on high at the approaching prince of demons.

And Demogorgon screamed, and all the city screamed, and Drizzt plummeted between the biting ape-heads, too close for the winding tentacles to deflect him, and he drove his blades down together in a singular, magnificent strike, plunging them into the massive chest of the gigantic demon beast.

And the destructive power of every arrow and every spell coursed through him in that strike, and he felt the monster melting beneath him. He continued to fall, right through the giant body of the beast, never slowing until he plunged into the stone floor.

Tons of blood and guts and shattered bone and two giant, orange-haired ape heads, tumbled atop him.

Gromph and Kimmuriel walked side-by-side through the passageways of Gauntlgrym, a host of dwarf guards directing them. King Bruenor hadn’t been pleased to see them, but at least they had come to see him properly, in accordance with Catti-brie’s wishes.

Gromph hadn’t much noticed or cared. He had only come to this place now because of Kimmuriel’s insistence. Since he had accepted Kimmuriel as the official ambassador of the illithid hive-mind in the rebuilding of the tower, Kimmuriel’s wishes were no small thing.

“It is an amazing insight, perhaps,” Kimmuriel offered as the party descended the long circular stair to the main chamber of the lower levels.

“It is idiocy,” Gromph replied with calm confidence. The only thing preventing him from a complete explosion of outrage here were his most recent memories. Never had he felt such power flowing through him as when the illithid collective had sent the kinetic barrier to the waiting K’yorl. That had felt to Gromph to be the purest and most intense expression of intangible power he had ever experienced. In those moments of flowing perfection, he believed that he had come to know what it was like to be a god.

But now this.

In the few short days Gromph had been away, the infernal human woman had strengthened her hold on the others-and they had wasted not a moment in coming to this place to meet with King Bruenor.

And now the work had apparently already begun.

“One thing I have learned in my years with the illithids, Archmage, is to never underestimate the power of viewing the world through a glass bowed. The truths we know are solid paradigms only in our wider expression of the world as a whole.”

Gromph looked at him curiously for a moment, but then grumbled, “Her glass isn’t bowed. It is painted with pretty flowers.” He stopped as the pair neared the Forge Room, noting some dwarves moving along a corridor off the side, towing carts loaded with stone.

Gromph shook his head and turned to face Kimmuriel directly.

“Only those flowers are dragons, and they will melt us all,” he said.

They went into the Forge Room then, to the incredulous and suspicious stares of the dwarf craftsmen. Over on the far wall were large tables covered with parchments. The dragon sisters were there, along with Caecilia, Lord Parise, and Penelope Harpell, all discussing some image splayed in front of them and pointing and nodding.