Drizzt knew that he was going to get hit; there was no way to avoid it, and so he had to choose a glancing blow from the greatsword or the wight’s clawing hand. With great agility, the drow set his feet and scrambled forward past the wight, inside the sweep of the sword.
He felt the icy cold claw dig into his shoulder and he threw himself forward and to the side, desperate to disengage quickly.
He got free and out of range just in time to square up against another ghoul, his spinning blades lopping off clawing fingers, then stabbing the creature under the chin and lifting it up and back. The drow fast retracted, and let the destroyed ghoul fall to the ground.
Again, just in time, as Drizzt spun around and parried the sword of the pursuing wight.
Now he was back to even footing, working furiously, trying to get in close and be done with this undead swordsman.
But this fight had already gone on too long, Drizzt feared when he noted the approach of another, the three-skulled, wraith-like monster.
He batted aside the greatsword and leaped forward to stab at the wraith, but behind it and to the side, the skull lord waved its bone staff across before it, the deep blue energy wafting forth like a living serpent, purple and black crackling flames sweeping at the warrior wight and Drizzt.
The drow leaped back and to the side, falling into another roll, and a second tumble beyond that, and sheathing his scimitars as he went.
When he came up again, he had Taulmaril in hand, already leveled, and he let fly, straight and true, the lightning arrow slamming the three-skulled creature squarely in the chest.
It staggered backward, but did not fall, and responded immediately with another, larger wave of necromantic flames, and by calling to its minions, ghoul and wight, and swarming them at the lone drow.
The silver flash of a lightning-infused arrow showed Effron the way.
“Hold fast!” he told the four fighting around him, and to Ambergris, he added, “Be ready, on my call, to reach for the power of your god once more.”
Even as he addressed the dwarf, Ambergris launched an over-the-shoulder smash with her mace that evoked its name, Skullbreaker. A ghoul’s head exploded under the weight of the blow, brain matter and powdered bone flying all around.
“More fun this way,” she said with a laugh, and she swept two others away as they foolishly charged in behind their destroyed comrade.
Effron couldn’t deny the dwarf’s physical exclamation point, but he turned away from the fierce spectacle and enacted his wraith-form dweomer.
“Hold fast!” he told the four again, his voice as thin as his two-dimensional form, and he slid down into the ground and off in the direction of the flash.
He came up from the ground in the crack of an old, rotted tree, surveying the situation at hand. As he’d hoped, Drizzt had encountered the leader of the undead gang, and Effron’s eyes sparkled indeed when he looked upon the skull lord’s bone staff, crackling with necromantic power.
Drizzt rushed all around, diving and rolling, coming around and letting fly, one missile after another. He obviously wanted to take out the skull lord, but the immediate press of ghouls and other minions, including a warrior wight, forced him to blast back those nearest him time and time again.
And ever was he dodging as the three-skulled monster swept forth its staff, weaving sheets of crackling flames chasing Drizzt from spot to spot. Only the drow’s speed and agility kept him ahead of the attacks, and then only barely.
Effron knew he couldn’t keep it up for long.
The warlock slipped out of the tree and became three-dimensional, and immediately launched an insidious attack, whispering to the distant skull lord in the tongue of the nether world, pitting his willpower against that of the undead monstrosity.
The creature turned on him, three skulls hissing in unified protest, and started to wave its staff his way. But Effron stopped it with a command, exerting his will.
“Clear them!” he shouted to Drizzt, and the skilled drow was already using the distraction of the skull lord to great advantage.
Effron watched a sizzling arrow blast through the warrior wight, then a second, the missiles boring holes right through the creature, and leaving the jagged edges of the exit wounds glowing with crackling lightning.
A ghoul went flying away, then a second, and the drow swung back and drove another missile, point blank, into the warrior wight, and it staggered backward. Its head exploded under the next point blank shot, and the drow crashed through it, knocking it aside, and fell to one knee, bow leveled and readied immediately, taking a bead on the prime enemy.
“The skulls!” Effron explained.
But the bone staff wave and a ripple of necromantic fire rolled out at the young tiefling. He growled and steeled himself against the onslaught, negative energies biting at him and stinging him profoundly, and tried through chattering teeth to issue the words of his next spell.
The undead creature’s right-most skull exploded in the flash of a silver arrow.
The skull lord staggered and swung back at Drizzt, just in time catch the next arrow in the chest. Still, it managed to send forth another powerful burst.
Effron found the mystic energies of the Feywild, weaving them into a white flame, and used his telepathic connection to the skull lord to insert that fire inside the undead creature’s mind. Immediately the four remaining eye sockets of the now two-headed monstrosity began to glow with that white fire, and rivulets of argent fire streamed from every orifice of those skulls, lifting into the night air and framing the skull lord in a fiery halo.
Which only aided Drizzt’s aim.
Arrows flew at the creature in rapid succession. A second skull exploded, the monster’s crown falling to the swampy ground.
Effron shifted his magical attack, cold starlight lancing down from above to bite at the staggering creature.
“Now, Ambergris!” he managed to yell between assaults. Back at the camp, he heard the dwarf invoke again the name of Dumathoin, and now, with the countervailing force of the skull lord destroyed, to even greater effect. So powerful was the dwarf’s call that several ghouls before her were reduced to dust, and even the wights could not stand in the face of her divine call.
Before Effron, the skull lord crumbled to the muck.
More explosions turned him to see Drizzt fending a group of ravenous ghouls. Only then did Effron truly see the beauty of Drizzt’s dance, for the drow dropped his bow and drew his blades so quickly that Effron could barely follow the movement.
Drizzt leaped forward, double-stabbing the ghoul before him, then tore his blades out to the side, reversed momentum, and brought them scissoring across to decapitate the creature. Hardly slowing, the drow flipped his grip on the hilts and stabbed out to either side with devastating backhanded thrusts, skewering a pair of ghouls simultaneously. He retracted almost as fast as he had stabbed, and back-flipped into a fast retreat, but landed leaning forward and in a sudden rush that brought him in against the wounded ghouls for a devastating finishing barrage.
Hardly slowing, the drow leaped upon the felled warrior wight, blades pounding away, ensuring that it would not rise again.
Seeing the battle ended, the warlock rushed to claim his prizes, lifting the crown in trembling hands. He wouldn’t dare wield it, or wear it, until further study, of course, but he took no such precautions with the staff, eagerly scooping it into his grasp. It was as tall as he, fashioned of three leg bones fused as one, and with a tiny humanoid skull up near its tip. The blue lightning was gone now, but the young warlock easily recovered it, finding a magical communion with the powerful item, and by the time Drizzt joined him, bluish-black flashes had begun anew, flickering from the eyes of the staff’s skull-headed top.
Drizzt looked at him suspiciously.
“Magic is neither good nor evil,” Effron explained in response to that curious expression. “It merely is.”
Drizzt’s expression didn’t shift much, retaining his edge of skepticism, but he said nothing and followed Effron back to the others. The fight there had ended as well, bodies piled before the four companions. Afafrenfere was the worst off, obviously, and Ambergris tended to his wounded shoulder and bloodied hands.
“Well fought,” Drizzt said.
“Better if one of us hadn’t run off,” Dahlia scolded, staring at him, “and another hadn’t followed.”
Drizzt laughed and shook his head, owing no apologies, and even Artemis Entreri chuckled at the absurdity of Dahlia’s remarks.
“Were these enemies directed against us?” Entreri asked. “By Draygo Quick?”
Effron shook his head. “Such roving bands are not uncommon in the marshes around Gloomwrought,” he explained. “Though this one was particularly powerful.” He looked at his new weapon as he spoke, and smiled, feeling the powers contained within the bone staff.
If undead monsters came at them again the next day, he knew, more than a few of them would be fighting on his side.