Charon's claw

HOPE FROM THE DAYS OF OLD

The ball of living fire charged at the trio of goblins, knocking one of the creatures flat and rolling over him, muffling his screams with the crackle of biting flames. The other two goblins shrieked and fell back. One threw its arms up in front of its face and the sleeve of its shirt burst into flame.

Cries echoed through the great forge area, and heightened when more of the little elementals appeared.

The first came off the goblin, unfolding, and rose upright, standing about half the height of the scrambling goblins, but with wide, flaming shoulders and arms that left a trail of flames in the air whenever it swung around. It focused on one of the standing goblins and charged, and with a scream, the goblin rushed away.

The elemental left a line of fire in its wake as it glided across the stone floor, angry little living and yapping flames sparking and biting at the air. Other elementals crisscrossed the path, creating a pattern of burning lines.

Goblins ran every which way and drow nimbly leaped atop the various forges, reacting far more calmly and reasonably in the face of this otherworldly threat.

For this was not the first time over the last few days that such outbursts of raging, free-running elementals had swarmed the forge area.

It was expected-this was the power of a primordial, after all, and the forges and supporting lines were old and often in need of repair, in ways that visual inspections could not reveal. The breaches revealed them, but only when pipes and joints had deteriorated enough to let the little beasts free. And in those instances, the elementals poured forth in a frenzy. The thing’s chaotic power strenuously resisted any attempts to harness it. From that fiery chaos of primordial belching came forth these pseudo-elementals, these fire-kin, unthinking, raging little expressions of freed fire.

“Spellspinners!” more than one drow craftsman yelled. These artisans were all more than capable of defending themselves, and whenever a fire-kin ventured too near, it was swatted away with a finely crafted, heavily enchanted weapon.

But the artisans didn’t prefer such tactics, for those elemental-kin were a part of the magic and pure energy of the primordial beast, and to strike at them was to assault the essence of creation itself.

“Spellspinners!” The call echoed throughout the large hall and down the myriad nearby tunnels and the main drow camps.

In one such camp, farther into the Underdark the way the expedition had come, Ravel Xorlarrin took note.

“Not again,” he muttered.

“Again,” Jearth remarked, coming up beside him.

“Where is Tiago?”

“In the upper halls, pressing to the top level.”

Ravel didn’t hide his disappointment in that news, giving a harsh snort and slapping a fist against the side of his leg. When he composed himself and regarded Jearth, and the weapons master’s amused grin, he realized that he was showing a bit too much petulance.

“I will need the two of you beside me to resolve this,” he explained.

“They are elementals, and stinging fiery little wretches,” Jearth replied. “More a play for the spellspinners than warriors.”

“For mages, you mean,” Ravel replied with obvious, unhidden frustration, and he let his sour expression remain for some time, that the other spellspinners, too, could view it.

They all understood the truth of it anyway: The breakdown of the forges and the multitude of dangerous elementals running free had come as a blessing for Elderboy Brack’thal, whose pre-Spellplague techniques were proving far more effective in dealing with the fire creatures than anything Ravel and his spellspinners could offer.

Berellip was taking note, they all knew, and Ravel, particularly, knew.

“I have put my trust in you and in Tiago,” Ravel remarked.

Jearth shrugged noncommittally.

Ravel’s expression became more sly as he continued to look at this drow he considered a friend, as he reminded himself that while Jearth might be exactly that, he was also drow, and also a weapons master. Jearth’s primary concern was Jearth, of course, else he would have long ago felt the bite of a drow blade as some younger warrior tried to steal his position in the House hierarchy.

Among the Xorlarrin, spellspinners were held in higher regard than warriors, many higher even than the weapons master, but they were all merely males. The priestesses, the sisters of Xorlarrin, still were held in the highest regard. So if Brack’thal climbed above Ravel in Berellip’s eyes, would it not follow that Jearth would make a new friend in Brack’thal at the earliest opportunity?

The thought unsettled Ravel for just a moment, then reminded him of who he was and to what he aspired.

Brack’thal’s outdated magical repertoire had served Ravel’s rise in status quite well, but Brack’thal was the Elderboy of House Xorlarrin, the first-born son of Matron Zeerith, and it was said that in the days before the Spellplague, he was held in highest regard throughout Menzoberranzan, even in the eyes of Archmage Gromph.

If Brack’thal could prove valuable, even heroic, along this most important mission, what might that mean for Ravel?

Nothing good.

“You cannot do it,” Jearth said, and Ravel looked at him with confusion.

“Goad your brother into an open battle,” Jearth clarified. “You cannot do it. Berellip would not tolerate it.”

“Berellip walks with great care around me,” the spellspinner countered. “She knows that I have the allegiance of Tiago Baenre. She understands the power of House Baenre.”

Jearth’s annoying chuckle scraped at Ravel’s sensibilities.

“You doubt…?” Ravel started to ask.

“Sometimes I doubt that you understand the play,” Jearth interrupted. “Tiago is your ally because he sees you as in the favor of Matron Zeerith, even though you are not in the favor of Berellip or Saribel.”

Ravel puffed up a bit at that spoken truth.

“Do not believe for a heartbeat that it follows, therefore, that Matron Zeerith favors you over either of the females, or above your other sisters. I have seen that folly many times within Menzoberranzan.”

“You just said-”

“In favoring you, Matron Zeerith irks her daughters,” Jearth explained. “They are older, and remember well the glory of Brack’thal, and the glory he and his minions brought to House Xorlarrin. Most of those minions died in the Spellplague, that is true, but if you’re not careful, and thus give Berellip-particularly that one! — the kindling she needs to brighten Brack’thal’s fire in the eyes of Matron Zeerith, you will find the fleeting truth regarding the loyalty of your people.”

“This is my expedition, and so far it has been successful beyond all expectations,” Ravel argued. “We have restarted the forges. We have harnessed the power of the primordial, as has not been done since the days of Gauntlgrym!”

“For the glory of Matron Zeerith and the hopes of House Xorlarrin,” Jearth reminded. “Not for the glory and hopes of Ravel Xorlarrin. If Brack’thal proves the better play going forward, your sister, with your mother’s blessing, will use that play and quickly discard Ravel, do not doubt.”

“Because of me, Gol’fanin brings forth and executes the ancient recipes, long regarded as artifacts of a lost age.”

“Because of Brack’thal, he can continue his work,” Jearth quickly countered. “Which do you suppose is more important to those who would cast you aside at this time, your initial contributions or those current actions that move the dreams of House Xorlarrin forward?”

Ravel licked his lips and nervously stepped from foot to foot. “Tiago Baenre has made of me his ally, and works House Baenre’s desires here through me.”

“You are more important to Tiago Baenre than those weapons Gol’fanin now crafts for him?” Jearth asked, his knowing grin revealing the sarcasm masked within the rhetorical question.

“He has already bought the simmering anger of Berellip,” Ravel replied.

“While he twines with her, and she, willingly and often, with him,” came the response. “Imagine were she to become thick with Tiago’s child.”

The thought hit Ravel so powerfully that the wind from a small bellows would have knocked him from his unsteady feet! He wanted to lash out at Jearth then, to scream at the warrior and even strike at him.

But he calmed, wisely telling himself that Jearth had done him a great service by starkly reminding him of the true nature of kin and kind.

“ Abbil, ” he said, the drow word for friend, though in drow culture, that concept of friendship typically meant little more than an affirmation of a temporary alliance, as Jearth had just reminded him regarding Tiago.

“We need to make a plan,” Jearth said quietly.

“Brack’thal grows more powerful with every breach of the forges, with the appearance of every fiery elemental,” Ravel agreed. “I cannot deny his proficiency in dealing with the creatures.”

“It is a lost art rediscovered, like Gol’fanin’s recipes.”

“What else might be rediscovered along with it?” Ravel remarked, referring to his brother’s former status among the Xorlarrin clan.

By the time they, leading Ravel’s loyal spellspinners, reached the forge room, a huge and hulking beast of living fire stood back from the main forge. It appeared quite agitated, armlike appendages out wide as if wanting to engulf someone or something, anyone or anything, and with clawing fingers of fire clenching repeatedly, little bursts of flame puffing out of either side.

Several drow near the beast, however, revealed the truth of the moment. They milled around, ducking low and peering behind this forge or that in search of more of the smaller fiery creatures. This large elemental was fully under control- under Brack’thal’s control. Ravel understood at once that this monstrosity was a creation of his older brother. As Ravel watched with concern, Brack’thal flushed out another of the smaller fire creatures and sent it rushing toward his behemoth. A line of fire burned behind the speeding creature, and like a wizard’s fireworks lifting into a night sky, the small elemental sprang away, flying up, throwing itself into the torso of Brack’thal’s monster.

Great fiery arms closed around the smaller creature, engulfing it, hugging it, absorbing it.

Then it was gone, and Brack’thal’s elemental stood a little taller and a bit wider. Ravel looked over at Jearth, who could only hold up his hands, unable, obviously, to deny the beauty of the magical display.

Ravel, though, was not so resigned. He stared at his brother. He knew of the old spells, even though he had not mastered them-what would be the point of that painstaking practice, after all, given the reduction of their power? Yet in this particular endeavor, with this particular challenge, Brack’thal seemed to be not reduced in the least. Confident and smooth in his movements, almost casual in his mannerisms as he contained yet another of these increasingly frequent breaches, the mage soon enough swept out of the room, heading for his assigned corner of the complex, and now with a formidable fire elemental in tow to help him in clearing the pesky previous inhabitants aside. For rats and goblins alike, and even the annoying dwarf ghosts, were not faring well against Brack’thal’s continuing assortment of pets.

Ravel watched him depart, and the light in the room diminished greatly as soon as the drow mage and his pet had gone, which was a good thing for the sensitive drow eyes. Ravel swung his gaze back to see his sisters Berellip and Saribel standing side by side, both looking at him with obvious scrutiny and obvious judgment.

“Shut down the outer four forges on either end,” Ravel said to Jearth.

Jearth looked at him with surprise. “That will slow our progress. Many doors must be created, and blockades and stairwells and locking bolts, to say nothing of the armor and arms.”

“We lose more time and workers with these disruptions,” Ravel added, motioning with his chin toward a trio of dead goblins lying on the floor, their clothing still smoking. “Let us proceed more cautiously for a while, until we can properly understand and repair the feed systems that fire the forge.”

As Ravel looked away, he heard Jearth’s knowing chuckle. Ravel wasn’t trying to reduce the interruptions or the minor inconvenience of a few dead slaves. His order was meant to slow the momentum of Brack’thal’s ascent.

“Your sisters will not be fooled,” the weapons master quietly warned as he walked by to execute Ravel’s order.

True enough, the spellspinner knew, but he had to do something to buy some time until he could figure out Brack’thal’s secret.

Brack’thal hustled down the corridor in the halls above the forge room, the region brightening because of the presence of the mage’s new pet. The large fire elemental eagerly followed the mage, hungered by Brack’thal’s promise that it would find fuel, living fuel, for its hungry fires.

The wizard had a lot on his mind. He knew that he was caught in a desperate game. His brother had been forced to bring him along on this expedition, but Brack’thal held no illusions about the level of control his sisters, or even Matron Zeerith, could hold over the young spellspinner. Ravel had no intention of allowing Brack’thal to survive this journey.

But good fortune was on Brack’thal’s side, in the form of an item he possessed from that time before the Spellplague. On his finger, he wore a ruby band, a ring that allowed him to communicate with, and exert tremendous influence over, the very creatures spawned by the power of the primordial. That item, a ring controlling fire elementals, more than anything in his own spell repertoire, had given him the edge now-a critical edge if he hoped to outmaneuver and survive his dangerous younger brother.

The mage slowed his pace, noting a decrepit doorway on the right side of the hallway, another of many he had investigated over the last few days.

Brack’thal waved his hands and whispered a spell, summoning a floating orb, a wizardly eye, which he sent toward the door with merely a thought.

He saw through that eye as it came up on the broken door, peering through openings of missing, rotted planks.

In the room beyond the door, he noted a movement. The chamber beyond wasn’t very wide, but it went deep into the stone. The first part was crafted with smooth walls and bricks still tightly mortared as a testament to dwarven crafting. The back half, though, seemed a more natural cavern, and it occurred to Brack’thal that the tumult here in Gauntlgrym, the earthquakes and eruptions caused by the primordial, might have toppled the chamber’s back wall, thus connecting it to a natural cavern beyond.

He had seen this before in this part of the complex, and this only reinforced his respect for the primordial.

A second movement caught his eye, a smallish humanoid scrambling behind some makeshift barrier.

“Kobolds,” he whispered, and he wondered whether he should try to enslave this group-the notion of creating his own counter army flashed in his mind-or whether he should simply obliterate them.

The magical eye moved through the broken doorway but it dissipated almost immediately, and Brack’thal recognized that he had waited too long while pondering the possibilities.

He focused on his magical ring instead and sent forth the elemental. Eagerly, it swept down the corridor and blasted through the flimsy doorway, sending splinters of burning wood and embers flying all around. An instant later came a second cacophony, this time one of kobolds crying out in alarm before the obvious power of this mighty foe.

Brack’thal began rolling his fingers, deliberately sorting through the verbal component of a dweomer he believed might soon prove important. Pragmatism told him to abandon the attempt, to simply use the fiery evocation his ring could bring forth to protect him if need be.

The mage overruled that commonsense notion, for in his gut he felt up to the task at hand without the aid of the ring.

In the room, the sounds of battle grew: flames sweeping over the kobold barricades; kobolds screeching as deadly fires bit at them; crashing stones and other missiles as the diminutive kobolds tried to battle the mighty creature of fire; footfalls, so many rushing footfalls!

Predictably, a bevy of kobolds scrambled out of the destroyed portal, tumbling into the hall, falling all over each other in a desperate effort to get away. Some charged toward the mage, others ran the opposite way.

Brack’thal lifted a small metal bar before him and completed the spell, trying to remain confident that something, some magical energy would come forth.

The lightning bolt filled the hall with a blinding burst of white light, and Brack’thal, surprised by the intensity, surprised even that he had accomplished the evocation, fell back with a shriek of his own.

He composed himself quickly, but kept shaking his head, for the level of power that had flowed through him in that spellcasting reminded him of a time long lost. Was it his work with the ring, he wondered?

As his eyes readjusted to the darkness, Brack’thal noted the image of the corridor before him, and mostly, the stillness of that hallway. More than a dozen kobolds lay dead before him, not a writhe or whimper to be found among them. He had thrown a lightning bolt that would have made him proud in the days before the Spellplague, a burst of magic that had fully overwhelmed the kobolds, taking their lives instantly.

Another pair of the creatures came out into the hall, and a quick glance had them fleeing the other way down the corridor. A third emerged and similarly ran away.

Brack’thal, too intrigued by his surprising show of magical strength, paid them no heed. It wasn’t until the fire elemental returned, until he sensed the beast’s wild and unsatisfied hunger, that the mage realized he would do well to put his thoughts aside and focus on the situation at hand. Indeed, the beast was advancing toward him, ill intent clear in its brightening, excited flaming coat.

Brack’thal reached through the ring, calmly reminding the beast that it was better served with him as its ally, and when that line of thought showed only a moderate slowing of the charging fiery humanoid, the mage got more insistent and demanding, willing the creature to stop, willing it to turn around that they could resume their hunt.

The mage constantly reminded himself to focus on the task at hand, to keep a tight hold on his dangerous companion as they moved deeper into the unexplored reaches of the vast complex.

The fire elemental demanded no less than that level of attention, even with the powerful ring aiding him.

It proved a difficult task, though, for Brack’thal could not ignore the implications of his lightning bolt, perhaps the most powerful evocation of magic he had achieved since the Spellplague a century before.

He tempered his elation, rightly so. He had thrown lightning bolts, magic of the old and diminished schools, in the last decades, of course, and had sometimes surprised himself by the intensity of other dweomers he had achieved. The fall of magic as they had known it was not complete, nor was it consistent. This lightning bolt in this corridor might well be no more than a result of Brack’thal’s elevated state of urgency, or of his repeated usage of the ring, itself an artifact from another time.

How grand would it be if that were not the case. How wonderful if the mage’s lost powers returned to him.

In that event, Brack’thal would be rid of his troublesome little brother in short order.