Drizzt understood his companion’s strategy, and knew that the fiend Dahlia’s lightning magic had thrown to the ground wouldn’t be out of the fight for long. He couldn’t get a clear shot at that one, though, so he turned his bow to her current opponent.
Again the drow felt that invincibility, that sense of living on the edge and the confidence that he wouldn’t tumble over that edge. By any reasonable measure, he should not dare this shot with Dahlia engaged in such close and furious combat.
But he knew he wouldn’t hit her.
He let fly his well-aimed shot, skipping an arrow beneath the legion devil’s shield to blast and burrow into its leg. How it howled!
Somehow, though, the stubborn creature held its balance and its battle posture.
No matter, though, for Dahlia’s spinning weapon hit it again, even harder.
Drizzt changed his focus immediately, going back to the first devil he’d shot. He calmly walked forward, missile after missile flying forth from his enchanted bow, sizzling darts blasting into the devil’s shield, burning devil flesh and driving the fiend ever backward.
Drizzt sensed a powerful presence at his side. He kept walking forward, kept firing, though he knew his target to be fast-dying by then.
Only when Hadencourt leaped out at him did Drizzt drop Taulmaril and respond, drawing his blades as he turned.
Hadencourt’s arm swept across, his bracer throwing forth a volley of explosive shuriken.
And Drizzt’s scimitars swept across to counter, blades very near the devil’s arm, very near the source of the shuriken, thus blocking each as they spun forth, and before they could gain any separation. Each of those missiles exploded almost halfway between Hadencourt and Drizzt, thus inflicting as much damage and disorientation on the devil as on the drow.
With a snarl of rage, Hadencourt brought forth his great trident, swinging it across like a slashing sword to drive Drizzt back a couple of strides, then turning it deftly in mid-swing so that he could stab it straight out.
Drizzt dodged left, the trident just missing. Then left again he went as the spearlike weapon thrust forth a second time, then back to the right to avoid a third stab.
He slapped at the trident with each pass, his blades sparking as they connected with the hellish metal.
Growling with rage, wild with fury, Hadencourt, like Dahlia had done across the way, came on.
But Drizzt Do’Urden was no legion devil, no foot soldier, and he kept one step ahead of the devil’s thrusts, dodging and parrying, letting the malebranche’s rage play out. And all the while, the warrior Drizzt waited patiently for an opening. The drow knew he was winning, and his smile reflected that confidence.
But the malebranche was gone in an instant, and in its place stood the legion devil Dahlia had knocked aside with the lightning powers of Kozah’s Needle.
Drizzt wasn’t ready for this magical trick, but the legion devil surely was—yet another testament to the coordinating telepathy and battlefield acuity of the malebranche. Suddenly facing a different manner of opponent entirely, Drizzt hadn’t the time to reorient his defenses. A shield swept aside the drow’s scimitars and the legion devil stabbed for the drow’s heart.
Dahlia scored a clean hit against the side of her battered opponent’s head, staggering it. She glanced at the one behind her, writhing on the ground in its death throes, defeated by the barrage of Drizzt’s magical arrows. She noted the devil she’d shocked … then gasped in surprise as it disappeared, to be replaced by Hadencourt himself.
Her surprise cost her the initiative against her opponent, and the legion devil, wounded and stunned as it was, came on ferociously, sword slashing back and forth and driving Dahlia backward. She watched it, she measured its attacks and stayed just ahead, and she watched Hadencourt, as well, so near, and truly she feared that the malebranche would soon join in.
She fell away, back and left, as Hadencourt charged … right past her.
Drizzt turned aside, the devil’s sword grazing his mithral shirt—and had he been wearing anything less than that, he surely would have been skewered. The fiend reacted to the failed attack and retracted its blade quickly, but not fast enough as the quick-stepping drow slid forward.
Drizzt ducked low, dropping into a deep crouch. He knew the devil had but one counter: a desperate backhanded swipe. The sword went over his head harmlessly, leaving him a perfect opening to stab the devil under the ribs, perhaps even to score a complete victory over his resolute foe.
But he didn’t take it. Noting movement ahead, Drizzt instead rushed back farther, the legion devil turning desperately to keep up … oblivious to Hadencourt’s swinging forearm a few strides behind it.
Using that lesser opponent as a shield, Drizzt avoided the shuriken barrage. The legion devil jerked spasmodically as the spinning missiles invaded its back and exploded. Under that brutal assault, the fiend couldn’t hold any measure of its defensive posture, and the drow struck hard.
The fiend stood dead on its feet, tilting and about to fall over, its face locked in a hateful stare at Drizzt, when the malebranche arrived right behind it, swatting it aside with no regard whatsoever for its condition.
On came Hadencourt, his great trident stabbing hard and slashing viciously, forcing Drizzt back and to the side. The furious malebranche pressed on relentlessly, driving the drow ever backward, and with attacks too forceful and potentially devastating for Drizzt to even think of countering.
“Where are you running, fool?” Hadencourt taunted.
Drizzt had no verbal jab to counter that. As he’d known his advantage previous, so he recognized Hadencourt’s now. He thought of the trees, the higher branches, and he let his gaze slip up there once or twice, trying to get Hadencourt to believe that he meant to add another dimension to the battlefield. His retreat was more than a ruse, however, for he could hardly believe the ferocity of the malebranche, and he found it hard to achieve any counters against Hadencourt’s great trident, let alone any effective ones.
So he backed and Hadencourt came on. Drizzt managed a last glance at Dahlia, who had not yet regained even footing against her legion devil opponent.
Suddenly, things were not going well.
Drizzt stumbled back against a thick tree and managed to roll around it just in time to put it between himself and the thrusting trident. He came right back out, hoping the weapon might have gotten snagged on the tree.
But Hadencourt was ready for him, and Drizzt had to dodge back to the other side as the devil filled in the space where he’d been standing.
Drizzt darted out to his right, back the way they’d come, then reversed to the left with great speed.
Hadencourt kept up, though, and more dangerously, so did the malebranche’s deadly trident, putting Drizzt on the very edge of absolute catastrophe.
The fiend slipped up, trying too fast for a kill, and as Dahlia knocked aside that awkward thrust, she turned the tide of the battle yet again. Now back in balance and with the shock of Hadencourt fading, she had only the one legion devil standing in front of her, and standing uncertainly, with a hole blown into one leg from Drizzt’s magical arrow. The battered fiend somehow managed a modicum of balance, but even so, had one arm drooping from the beating Dahlia had given it.
Dahlia knew she would win here, knew that this foe was nearing its end. But as she worked her way around, turning the devil with her so that she could witness Hadencourt’s charge, she didn’t feel nearly as confident regarding her companion’s chances. She watched the other legion devil fall under Hadencourt’s barrage, thanks to a clever turn by Drizzt, but her hopes lasted only the moment it took the mighty malebranche to close the gap to Drizzt, immediately putting him on the defensive, and with no sign of Hadencourt’s overwhelming advantage easing. Dahlia gasped aloud as Drizzt went around the tree, and Hadencourt stabbed the trunk so powerfully the elm nearly broke and fell over.
That gasp, that distraction, cost her, and almost dearly, for the legion devil was not similarly distracted and came on with a slash, which Dahlia blocked, but then with a shield rush, too sudden and too near for Dahlia to dodge.
Wisely, the elf didn’t try to brace against the battering shield, but instead gave ground willingly, even flying to her back, but in a controlled manner that allowed her to complete the roll and come back to her feet.
The legion devil never slowed, though, and so paced her.
But Dahlia had expected that, and in her roll, she rejoined her staff into a singular unit, and when she came over, rolling only to her knees, she planted the end of that eight-foot staff in the ground beside her and held on tightly.
The legion devil’s breath blasted out as it collided with the other end of that metal pole, the tip catching it right in mid-chest. It was not a fatal blow, surely, and nothing from which the legion devil couldn’t quickly recover and still hold the advantage over the kneeling female.
Except that Kozah’s Needle wasn’t a simple metal pole, and the lightning energy that Dahlia had built up after her first release mostly remained, and the cloud that Dahlia had summoned was still above her head, teeming with energy.
A lightning bolt came down to her call, blasting into Kozah’s Needle, transferring through the metal staff and taking the weapon’s pent up energy with it. A great arc of power burst out the staff’s other end into the unwitting legion devil’s chest.
The beast flew away, ten strides or more. It landed feet first, but only for a brief moment as it continued to soar backward, crashing to the ground, sword flying from its grasp.
Dahlia leaped up and charged across. When she arrived, the legion devil was still on the ground, still jolting wildly from residual energy. In full stride, she planted the tip of Kozah’s Needle under the fiend’s chin and threw herself fully behind it, even lifting off the ground as she drove the weapon home.
She heard the crack of bone and felt the fiend go limp, though one limb or the other still twitched from the lightning.
Dahlia spun around and recognized immediately that she couldn’t get to Drizzt in time to help him.
Hadencourt had his back to the tree, and both the malebranche and Drizzt knew that the drow couldn’t exploit that to begin any type of offensive counter to the stabbing and slashing of the huge trident.
Drizzt, though, did use Hadencourt’s position to his advantage. He had one trick remaining, and now he executed it, calling upon his magical anklets to speed him. He leaped and spun to his left, daringly going right past Hadencourt, whose slash with the cumbersome trident couldn’t quite catch up to the sprinting drow. Out Drizzt went farther, and Hadencourt kept going in his turn, trident continuing its pursuit as the devil let go with his left hand and opened wide with his right, reaching far to the side like a hunting bird circling from on high.
He might have continued that turn, rolling off the tree, might have kept up to Drizzt and maintained his advantage.
But Drizzt knew better and his sly smile showed it, showed Hadencourt as surely as the thunder of hooves revealed the truth of the drow’s long and seemingly desperate dodge.
Hadencourt turned his gaze just in time to see the last speeding stride of Andahar, head down, horn in line.
The unicorn hit the malebranche at full speed and with tremendous force, rattling the tree behind Hadencourt, pinning the devil and puncturing him, the horn driving right through to hit the tree bark behind him.
Drizzt leaped forward and caught the trident’s shaft, preventing the devil from bringing it back to wound his beloved steed, but he needn’t have bothered, he realized, for there was no strength left in Hadencourt’s grip. Indeed, the malebranche simply dropped his weapon. Hadencourt stood there transfixed, arms out wide, fingers splayed open and twitching as if trying to grasp the empty air.
Andahar’s hooves continued to pound, the unicorn driving in even harder, twisting and thrashing its horned head around. The malebranche’s mouth hung open wide in a silent scream, and his eyes showed the hatred in his black heart, showed a promise to Drizzt that the battle might be over, but the war between them had just become eternal.
But to that, Drizzt, who felt more alive than he had in centuries, only returned a wide and sincere smile and taunted, “I know a balor who would join your vendetta. If you could bring yourself to align with such a creature as Errtu, I mean.”
Staring hatefully, Hadencourt melted away from the Prime Material Plane, back to his haunt in the Nine Hells.
JELVUS GRINCH WAS NOT A MAN TO SHY FROM A CHALLENGE. He’d risen to become one of the leading voices in Neverwinter through his toughness, his courage, and his indomitable will. But he shied away now, flinching and all but covering his head with his strong arms, for the angry reaction had caught him by surprise, a complete inversion of what he’d expected. And Herzgo Alegni was not one even stout Jelvus Grinch wanted as an enemy.
Nor did the other citizen leaders of Neverwinter, all sitting behind Jelvus, as Herzgo Alegni had commanded them.
“The Walk of Barrabus?” Alegni repeated over and over again, shaking his head and moving from a helpless grin to an outraged grimace with every syllable.
“We thought it fitting,” Jelvus Grinch dared to reply.
“I think it idiotic,” Alegni snapped back.
“Barrabus the Gray’s work in the assault inspired us,” Jelvus said.
“And all of it was choreographed by … me,” said Alegni, poking his finger against his own massive chest. “Have you so soon forgotten the role I played? Go out,” he bade the man, pointing to Neverwinter’s gate. “Go among the scar of battle and view the many bodies cleaved fully in half. Only one blade on that field was mighty enough to do that, and only one arm strong enough to wield that blade.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Jelvus Grinch. “And your actions are neither unknown nor unappreciated.”
“I will find my name attached to some great structure in Neverwinter?”
“If you wish, of course. A market square, perhaps.”
“That bridge,” Alegni insisted.
“Bridge? The Walk of Barrabus?”
“Never speak that name again,” Alegni replied, calmly, too calmly, the threat obvious and undeniable. “Once it was called the Winged Wyvern Bridge, then, too briefly in the days before the cataclysm, the Herzgo Alegni Bridge.”
Jelvus Grinch’s face screwed up with surprise. Few alive knew of that brief moment of Neverwinter lore.
“Yes,” Alegni explained, “because the Lord of Neverwinter in the day of the cataclysm knew well the friendship and alliance of Herzgo Alegni, and he was so grateful for my service to his city that he changed the name of Neverwinter’s most notable and famous structure. I didn’t immediately explain this indiscretion to you. It’s a new day in Neverwinter, and so I decided to show my value to you who have come here to rebuild. Barrabus the Gray is my man, who serves at my pleasure and my suffrage. A man I can kill with merely a thought. He came to you because I sent him to you, and of no accord of his own. Do you understand that?”
Jelvus Grinch swallowed hard and nodded.
“He’s my man, not his own,” said Alegni. “If I tell him to kill himself, he will kill himself. If I tell him to kill you, you will be dead. Do you understand?”
Another hard swallow preceded the next nod.
“I command a sizable Shadovar force,” the tiefling said, lifting his gaze from poor Jelvus Grinch to address all of the gathering. “You have met our wretched enemies, these Thayans and their ghoulish minions with ghoulish designs. I alone can protect you from the withering fingers of Szass Tam, and I will do so.”
He paused and turned his glare back to Jelvus Grinch directly, and finished with a simple edict, “The Herzgo Alegni Bridge.”
“A bright day will dawn for this land in a time of darkness,” came a voice from the gathering, and all eyes turned to see a disarmingly comely woman with curly red hair and a warm and open face.
Several others whispered, “The Forest Sentinel,” with great reverence, prompting Alegni to regard this innocuous-looking woman more carefully.
“We have hoped and prayed that one would stand above, and lead us to banish the old evil and open a path to new horizons,” the woman, Arunika, went on. “Are you that one, Herzgo Alegni?”
Herzgo Alegni straightened and his massive chest swelled with confidence that he was indeed, or surely could be.
“The Herzgo Alegni Bridge!” another man from the gallery shouted, and many others chimed in their agreement.
Alegni looked to Jelvus Grinch, who eagerly nodded.
The Netherese lord paced around, basking in the glow of approval, then assured them all, “Szass Tam’s agents will be driven from this land at the end of my sword. Your city will thrive again. I’ll see to that, but on your lives, you will not forget my role.”
It started as a small clap, a single set of hands—the red-haired woman’s hands, Alegni noted, this one they had called the Forest Sentinel—then joined by a second, and within a few heartbeats, the leaders of Neverwinter called out for Herzgo Alegni with a full-throated “huzzah!”
Jestry stood in the firelit chamber, naked and sweating, covered in hot oil. He didn’t cry out in pain, for the aboleth was in his mind and wouldn’t allow him to feel that pain. The creature chased down every sensation of pain before it could come to fruition, numbing Jestry, distracting him, keeping him in a state of emptiness.
These mental bindings were much easier, after all.
Not far from Jestry, a cauldron hissed and bubbled. A pair of gray dwarves hustled around it, stoking the flames, pouring in more oil. A third dwarf slave, wearing thick gloves and carrying long tongs, scrambled up and down a small ladder near the cauldron, reaching in to pull forth the treated, leathery strips.
Whenever the dwarf caught one, he jumped down from the ladder and ran to Jestry—there was no time to tarry and let the umber hulk hide cool. He set one end of the long strip against the naked man, right where the last one had ended, and tightly wrapped it around his body, pulling hard with each turn.
The oil beneath the treated strap sizzled, Jestry’s skin bubbled and burst as he melded with the enchanted and magically treated leather.
“It will heighten his resistance to lightning energy,” the slimy servitor who stood nearby quietly whispered to Valindra, who watched with great amusement.
And turn the blades and dull the thud of Dahlia’s staff, Valindra telepathically replied. She didn’t specifically impart, but was thinking that they should do this to all of the Ashmadai.
Through his servitor, the aboleth disavowed her of that notion, filling her ear with watery whispers explaining the realities of such an unusual ceremony as this. “Five hulks must die for one human to be armored, and in any typical situation, those five would be more valuable by far. Your human champion will not live long, and will never again know a moment without great pain. Were my master to release him from possession now, the agony would kill him. He will be Sylora Salm’s champion only through his zealotry, his willingness, his happiness to die for his cause.”
“But he will hate her for this,” Valindra reasoned as the dwarf’s wrapping reached Jestry’s crotch. “For never again will he know Sylora’s touch, her kiss and her charms.” She gasped, giggled, and blurted, “He is neutered!”
“His focus is singular now,” the servitor explained. “He’s Sylora Salm’s champion and will fight for her until his death. Nothing else will matter to him.”
“How long can he live in this state?”
“A few moons, perhaps a year.”
Valindra continued to marvel at the process as she watched this Ashmadai warrior become something more, something unique and dangerous. The wrappings went tight around his belly, circling up to his chest, to his neck. She wondered about his head and face—how complete would the skin armor suit be?
The smell of burning hair as the treated umber hulk hide wrapped around him showed her, for when the slave dwarves were done, only Jestry’s eyes, nostrils, ears, and mouth remained uncovered.
The servitor moved away from her, moving up to the transformed warrior, for now the aboleth had to focus completely on Jestry, she realized, had to deceive the man so that he could shrug through the agony and hold to his purpose.
One of the dwarves came up to the lich and motioned for her to leave. “Ye best go in the other cave for a bit,” he explained. “It’s to get loud in here, don’t ye doubt.”
Valindra looked at him with disdain, even disgust, but she heeded his words and glided out into the antechamber, where several other Ashmadai guards waited.
“Where is Jestry?” one woman asked.
In reply, a shriek of agony came from the other room. It went on and on, changing in tone from a high-pitched, pain-filled wail to an angry cry to a roar of utter defiance.
“What have you done to him?” another Ashmadai asked angrily.
Valindra stared at him and said nothing for many heartbeats. The zealot, for all his rage, shrank back from that withering glare.
“Would you like to learn first-hand the answer to that question?” Valindra calmly replied, and the man, for all his dedication, for all his willingness to die for his cause, shrank back even more.
After a long, long while, the screaming in the other room at last abated, and the servitor arrived at the door to inform them that the “dressing” was complete. Soon after, Jestry shambled out of the room, walking stiffly, rolling his hips to throw one leg out in front of him. His breathing came in gasps, and his eyes showed more red than white, for in his agony and screaming he’d exploded many blood vessels.
“It’s done?” Valindra asked him.
He grunted a response that sounded affirmative.
“And you are?” the lich pressed.
“Jestry, Slave of Asmodeus, Champion of Sylora Salm,” the living mummy recited.
“And you’re tasked with?”
“Killing Lady Dahlia,” came the simple response, and the man-beast paused as if considering the words, then clarified with simply, “Killing.”
Behind Valindra, that same obstinate Ashmadai sighed in apparent disapproval.
“Show me,” Valindra bade Jestry. “You claim to be a champion. I would see proof.”
Jestry tilted his head, curious.
Valindra motioned to the Ashmadai.
“He questions the judgment of Lady Sylora,” Valindra explained. She smiled widely when she saw the Ashmadai’s eyes pop open as he realized the game she was playing. “He thinks you have done her a disservice by becoming such a warrior.”
Jestry grunted and faced the Ashmadai directly.
“I don’t question Jestry!” the man pleaded. “I questioned the source of his pain-wracked—”
“He thinks you too weak to suffer the torment of the transformation,” Valindra taunted.
The man started to argue that point as well, distancing himself from any criticism of Jestry, but he needn’t have bothered, for when Valindra, the confidante of Sylora, added, “Show him,” Jestry pounced.
The Ashmadai was ready for the charge, setting his spear-staff tight on his hip to intercept the leaping Jestry—and indeed, Jestry’s chest slammed into that sharp tip full force. Against cloth armor, leather armor, even sturdy chain mail, such a defensive maneuver would have ended the fight before it began, with the spear tip plunging into the attacker’s chest. Against Jestry, though, against the umber hulk hide that had been treated by artisans and wizards alike, the spear couldn’t penetrate. The force of Jestry’s charge fully overwhelmed the strong Ashmadai, barreling him backward and to the floor.
Jestry had been a strong man before the application of his new “skin,” the strongest of the Ashmadai in Neverwinter Wood. Now he was stronger by far, and much heavier than a normal human, and he had little trouble subduing the man, using just his weight and one arm. His other hand grasped the Ashmadai’s head and yanked it to the side, pressing down on the man’s cheek.
The mummified warrior had no idea why he did what happened next. Never would he have considered such an action prior to that day.
He didn’t even realize what he’d done, hardly even heard the screams, until he was standing again, the Ashmadai thrashing on the floor in front of him, holding his ear—or at least, holding the spot where his ear had once been.
That ear was in Jestry’s mouth, and the champion chewed it, savoring the taste.
Across the way, Valindra laughed.
Jestry had been given mighty armor, and greater strength. But it was the internal gift of the aboleth ambassador, Valindra realized even if Jestry had not, that would prove the most important. For now he was something beyond a mere warrior.
Now he was without inhibition.
Now he was bound by nothing but the need to gain victory.
Now he was possessed of a hunger that could not be sated.
Now he was feral.