Charon's claw

FIRE GOD

Brack’thal breathed a sigh of relief that his invisibility spell lasted long enough for him to get through the small tunnel from the forge room and into the primordial’s chamber. He had lost his elemental pet, sending it down a corridor after some Shadovar, he believed, though he had not seen them. Without it, the drow wizard felt naked indeed.

So he had quietly slipped back to the forge room, and had entered invisibly, but to his dismay, had found no ongoing breaches, no little fiery creatures rushing around. The one forge that had not yet been repaired had been fully shut down.

Even worse, during his invisible creeping around, Brack’thal overheard Tiago Baenre telling his blacksmith friend that all of the drow would be retreating from the forge and into the deeper tunnels in light of the Netherese advance.

They would surrender this hall and the primordial, and Brack’thal couldn’t allow that.

This was his source of power. Through his ruby ring, the wizard felt the primal murmurs of ancient magic resonating powerfully within him. It was not a sensation he was about to let lapse.

He stood on the edge of the deep pit, cursing the water elementals swirling around its sides, trapping this godly creature of such beautiful power. He couldn’t dismiss those water elementals. His magic couldn’t touch them in any effective way. Because of his affinity with the Plane of Fire, those creatures from the Plane of Water were even farther from his influence, and even more dangerous foes to him.

Brack’thal could hear the beast below. Its whispers flitted around his mind, promising him all that he had lost and more. He had been formidable in the tunnels against the corbies and dwarf ghosts, formidable in his work on the stairwell, and formidable in his dealings with his wretched little brother. All because of this godlike primordial.

The old drow mage heard the call clearly. The primordial demanded release. But Ravel and his band had properly secured the mechanisms for controlled releases only, allowing a bit of the primordial to fire the furnaces. The ancient traps would keep the beast under control.

The primordial wanted release. Brack’thal could hear that lament most clearly of all.

And in that release, Brack’thal alone among his kin would find any gain, would rise in power above Ravel.

Brack’thal crossed the mushroom-stalk bridge to the anteroom and stood before the lever. This was the key, he believed, and if he pulled it, the primordial would be free. On a different and more pragmatic emotional level, the wizard surely understood the danger in such a scenario. Would he even be able to survive and escape the cataclysm sure to follow? The voice through his ring told him to trust, and he found himself reaching for the lever.

His hand didn’t quite get there, though, for a multitude of images came to him then-imparted from the primordial, he knew. He saw a glittering throne set with magnificent gems, a dwarven throne for dwarf kings.

Only a dwarf could pull this lever, Brack’thal understood then, and only one who had sat on that throne. This was a typical failsafe for dwarves, as it was for the drow, for both races elevated their own above all others. Only a Delzoun dwarf could pull this lever, and only one who sat on that powerfully enchanted throne, thus, only one of royal lineage.

With a growl, Brack’thal grasped the lever anyway and began to tug. When it wouldn’t budge, the wizard moved behind it and put his shoulder to it, pushing with all of his strength. When it still wouldn’t move at all, Brack’thal cast a spell of strength upon himself, his thin arms bulging with magical muscle.

He might as well have been trying to move a mountain.

Sometime later, the mage stood on the edge of the pit back across the bridge once more, but he didn’t look down to the primordial any longer, his eyes focused back on the narrow hallway that had led him there. His mind’s eye was looking past that corridor, too, to a forge that was not really a forge.

Perhaps there was another way.

Tiago Baenre’s eyes sparkled in fiery reflections and in clear intrigue as he looked at the strange items lying on the tray before Gol’fanin. He focused first on the delicate and narrow sword blade that seemed as much the stuff of magic as metal, silvery but nearly translucent, and with shining little points of light sparkling back at him from within their glow.

“Diamond dust,” he whispered.

“Mingled with the glassteel,” Gol’fanin confirmed. “Both creations are thick with the stuff, lending the metal its hardness and edge. You’ll not break this sword, nor dull its deadly cut, and that shield will deflect the cudgel of a mountain giant.”

“Magnificent,” Tiago breathed. His gaze moved lower on the sword, to the unfinished hilt and the quillon and guard, and truly they were nothing like Tiago had ever seen before, a conical cage of black metal crisscrossing into the likeness of a spider web and fanning out away from the blade to cover the wielder’s hand.

“If that was the extent of their powers, I’d agree,” the blacksmith replied, and he was grinning slyly when Tiago glanced at him.

“How strong?” Tiago asked, indicating the sword’s seemingly delicate quillon.

“Strong enough to block the blow of a giant’s cudgel,” Gol’fanin assured him. “And to defeat a considerable amount of magical energy thrown your way. A lightning bolt striking the blade will dissipate into a shower of harmless sparks when it runs across that quillon. If one even gets near the blade, for that shield can easily defeat such magic.”

Tiago almost giggled at that point. He had known that these would be exceptional implements, but now that he saw them in person, the extent of their magnificence was just beginning to dawn on him.

He looked from the sword and shield to the side of the tray, where the sword grip and matching shield grip and straps waited for the blacksmith’s expert hands. They, too, were black, gleaming like polished onyx. Each was shaped like an arachnid, with its legs pulled in tight, creating ridges to better secure grasping fingers.

Gol’fanin picked the sword grip up and handed it to Tiago, who grasped it as if the weapon was attached. Never had he felt such a secure grip on any sword! It seemed to him as if the handles were grabbing back, tightening and securing his hold. He brought the item up before his eyes, marveling at the fine detail, for indeed it seemed the perfect likeness of a beautiful spider, the pommel resembling the arachnid’s head and set with a pair of dull emeralds, little spider eyes. The other two for the shield were identical, except that their eyes were blue sapphires.

“How long?” the eager young warrior asked.

“There is much yet to do,” Gol’fanin replied, and he took the handle back and gently replaced it on the tray. “More enchantments and more hardening, and then I must, of course, properly attach the handles.”

“How long?” Tiago asked more insistently.

“Another tenday.”

The Baenre warrior slumped at that news. A tenday if they remained in the forge, but alas, it was not to be.

“Could you finish your work in Menzoberranzan?” Tiago had to ask.

Gol’fanin looked at him incredulously, his expression full of horror, and that alone provided all the answer the young Baenre needed. He looked over his shoulder to the room’s main exit, trying to formulate some defensive plans to secure and hold this particular room that would convince the Xorlarrins to stand their ground.

But it was a fool’s errand, he knew. The room was too open. It would favor their enemies if those enemies managed to get in. The losses would prove too great to the drow expedition, even if they ultimately held the forge.

Tiago looked back to the implements, the sword and shield that would make him the envy of every weapons master in Menzoberranzan. Items that would strike terror into the heart of Andzrel, the pretender who held that coveted rank within the hierarchy of House Baenre. Tiago would replace him. With these weapons in his hands, he would cast Andzrel aside and take his rightful place.

But not quite yet.

Gol’fanin smiled at him and took up a handle. With a grin, he moved for the sword blade.

Brack’thal couldn’t begin to sort out the many valves and blocking pins and pipes lining the small chamber beneath the false forge. “Dwarven idiocy,” he muttered, trying to follow this line or that, trying to figure out which piping might lead him to the one furnace that had been shut down because the goblins hadn’t yet repaired the feeds.

He moved to a wall where a throng of pipes exited through the stone, the image making him think of a great organ lying sideways. Which forge in line was the broken one, he asked himself?

“Which forge?”

The mage tried to envision the room above him, counting back to the broken forge… or should he be counting forward?

He did not know whether the top pipe or the bottom connected to the next forge in line. He couldn’t even remember which forge in the line he had just climbed through to get there!

“The script,” he said, growing desperate, and he found some lettering-ancient Dwarvish lettering. He couldn’t begin to decipher it, but there were spells for such things.

Brack’thal stepped back and took a deep breath, trying to recall the spell for comprehending such languages. A heartbeat later, he gave a little whimper as he realized that he had not memorized that particular dweomer this day, nor did he have any such scrolls in his possession.

“By the gods,” the frustrated wizard said, and he slapped his hand against the pipe in pure exasperation.

And the fire within the pipe began to talk to him.

He held his hand in place, staring at the ruby band, his connection to the Plane of Fire, and to the primordial godlike being in the nearby pit. He didn’t need to understand the ancient Dwarvish language, he realized, and he didn’t need to count the pipes. For the god-beast understood the design, its living fiery tendrils weaving their way through the maze. Now it spoke to Brack’thal. Now it showed him the controls, the valves, the plugs… the plug sealing off the broken forge.

He saw it all, so clearly, all the channels and controls, all the valves to dampen the flow of pure fiery power. He rushed around, spinning those valves wide, freeing the beast!

So giddy with power was he that Brack’thal sang as he danced, and laughed as he twirled the valves. He could feel the energy mounting all around, the primal scream of a primal god.

The pipes clanged and banged as if tiny gnomes were within them, rapping metal hammers. Valves groaned and hissed in protest as too much energy pressed at their huge screw mechanisms.

And the building roar of the flames sounded to Brack’thal as a chant to the greatness that was magic before the Spellplague. Pure magic. Unblemished magic.

Power.

The pipes glowed angrily, bluish metal turning orange, but Brack’thal did not remove his hands from them. Had he not been wearing his ring, the skin would have melted from his fingers and palms, would have dripped to the floor as melted goo.

But this god-beast would not harm him. He understood and could trust in this most ancient power.

He felt the energy growing. Deeper along the channels, past the wall, a great roar began to mount, preternatural, like the scream of a world being born in fire.

“Be easy,” Gol’fanin warned. “It is not yet properly set.”

As he lifted the scimitar, Tiago Baenre hardly heard the blacksmith. The handle was loose but the grip superb, and even though it was not yet solidly set, Tiago could feel the perfect balance-perfect balance because it seemed to him that no blade was attached to the handle! He could see the translucent lines of the glowing scimitar, the sparkles of the diamond dust, but if he closed his eyes, his mind would tell him that he held an empty metal hilt and nothing more. With a slight twist of his wrist, the blade changed its angle, a wake of silvery blur behind it, and it took all the discipline Tiago could manage to stop from swinging it around-which would have likely launched the blade from the handle to fly across the room.

“What magic?” he asked.

“That remains to be seen,” said the blacksmith. “The djinni will imbue them.”

“You must know more than that!”

“ Vidrinath, ” Gol’fanin said, nodding to the weapon Tiago held, the one with the emerald eyes. He looked to the shield. “ Orbbcress. ”

Tiago rolled Vidrinath over in his hand and spoke the name, the drow word for the songs priestesses would sing to the young students at the Academy when they went into their Reverie repose. He understood then the power of this blade, so akin to that of the hand crossbow bolts, and spoke the name again, “Lullaby.”

And for the shield, “Spiderweb.”

He considered the potential. He let his mind wander down the paths hinted at by those particular names-names hardly chosen at random, he knew. “Tell me more,” he bade Gol’fanin, or started to, for his words were lost in a rumbling deep within the cavern stone, and a cacophony of sharp metallic rapping sounds.

Tiago looked curiously at the blacksmith, who could only shrug. Together, they turned back to the main forge. Inside the oven, the fires danced wildly, forming angry faces and spitting sparks at them.

For a moment, the young Baenre wondered if this was expected, but Gol’fanin’s expression dispelled that notion. “What is it?” he asked.

A half-dozen structures down to their left sat the darkened forge, the forge of the last breach which had not yet been repaired or refired, and from that oven came a tremendous bang. Suddenly, it teemed with fire, so fully that an angry orange glow emanated from its stones. Other dark elves cried out in warning, goblins scrambled, falling all over each other. Tiago and Gol’fanin ducked behind the main forge for protection.

The broken forge exploded, a giant fireball reaching across the cavern. Spurts of lava and lines of fire blasted from the wreckage of the forge. Amid the rubble, where the oven used to be, stood a mighty fire elemental, roaring and crackling and swinging its torchlike arms all around.

Other forges, too thick with primordial fuel, began to vomit, spewing forth jets of white-hot flames, and from those flames leaped more elementals, smaller ones, darting in frenzy, chasing down goblins and biting at them, dragging them down and swarming over them, lighting their clothes and hair aflame, shriveling their pallid green skin.

Screams mixed with the roaring flames and the continued throaty rumbling within the stones, and above that symphony of insanity, Tiago could not be heard. He shouted anyway, “Flee! Flee!” for the room was lost, the fight over before it had even begun. They could do nothing before the bared might of the primordial.

Nothing but burn.

A barrage of fire and lava came forth from the main forge, tossing aside the trays and the unfinished shield, and the implements: the tools, the scroll tube, the djinni bottle.

Tiago’s eyes widened with horror and he started forward. “Orbbcress,” he whispered as if he was speaking of his child. Gol’fanin tried to hold him back, but he broke free and rushed amid the flames, ignoring the heat and the stings. He would not lose these items, even at the cost of his own life.

He came out of the sub-chamber unafraid of the firestorm engulfing the forge room. Torrents of flames whipped around, elementals leaping to and fro, consuming the flesh of those creatures, goblinkin and drow alike, who had not escaped the conflagration.

Brack’thal did not care. The smell of burning flesh hung thick around him, but that only meant that his god-beast was feasting well this day. The wizard stepped right through the deep fires, his ring protecting him fully. Even more, he heard the song of the elementals, reveling in their freedom and calling to him, who had freed them.

He imagined himself as the Chosen of this primordial-did these ancient god-beasts even have such minions? He could be the first, a being of great power, with deadly fire at his easy disposal, ever ready to smite his enemies.

Or to melt his brother.

He continued across the room, moving for the small tunnel to the primordial pit. It was calling him, then, he believed, likely to congratulate him.

Brack’thal slowed his steps as the primordial voice rang out loudly, and once again, the room began to resonate with elemental power.

The forge of Gauntlgrym was not merely a dwarven contraption, was not simply a clever clockwork of levers and pins and valves and piping. It was a magical construct, full of energy as old as the fabled Hosttower of the Arcane of Luskan. And as such and given its role in containing such a beast as a primordial of fire, it had been carefully imbued with magical contingencies.

Brack’thal started again for the tunnel at a swift pace, then a trot, then a sprint. Just before he reached the entrance, though, his nostrils filled with a new odor, salty and pungent.

“Brine?” he asked, puzzled.

He looked up at the corner where the wall met the ceiling, to those curious green rootlike tendrils running like veins through the lower complex. Small knots, like tiny corks, popped from a thousand places at once, and water sprayed like rain across the room. Salt water. Brack’thal couldn’t begin to sort it out, for he did not understand that those tendrils ran to the harbor in distant Luskan, out into the dark and cold waters of the Sword Coast.

The fire elementals roared and fought back, reaching up to throw flames at the tendrils, and so great and pure was their fury that it seemed to Brack’thal as if they would surely win out against the clever irrigation.

But a greater rumbling came forth again, from the primordial’s room. Knowing that it wasn’t his god-beast speaking, knowing the sound to be ominous, the wizard ran again for the small archway.

But he fell back with a cry as the river rushed forth from that corridor, pouring into the forge room. And no normal river this, for as it spread into the room, giant humanoid forms broke free of it and charged to challenge the fire elementals. The water elementals fearlessly attacked their foes, extinguishing the small fiery mites with a single splashing stomp.

Brack’thal watched as one great water elemental faced a gigantic fire beast. Without fear or hesitation, the watery beast threw itself against the creature of fire, which roared in protest-Brack’thal felt its agony clearly.

A tremendous burst of steam replaced them both, the two bodies mingling to disastrous results. More so for the fire elemental, the wizard realized. The joining wrought steam, and from the steam would come anew the magic of the Plane of Water.

Brack’thal cried out and threw himself against the wall just beside the archway. More and more watery beasts came forth, sloshing and splashing and rushing into the fire.

Finally it let up, the battle raging throughout the forge room, and Brack’thal heard again the voice of his god-beast, and this time it was a cry of pain.

The wizard ran into the corridor and stumbled out into the chamber beyond, right to the edge of the primordial’s pit.

He noted immediately that the swirl of water around the sides of that deep well had diminished greatly, and he glanced back to the forge room, understanding then that many of the elementals previously holding back the primordial had come forth to meet the great challenge.

Water poured down from the ceiling above, raining into the pit, and steam obscured his view.

“Now,” he bade the primordial. “You must come forth now.”

He reached his thoughts through his ruby band, sending them to the primordial, bidding it to leap from its captivity.

He heard the bubbling below, and he fell back with a cry, and just in time, for the primordial leaped, or tried to, as the remaining elementals reached their watery limbs out to block it.

A small burst of rock and lava got through, lifting up over the edge of the pit to splash down on the floor right where Brack’thal had been standing.

For a few heartbeats, the wizard believed he had been betrayed. His ring might have protected him from the heat of that stony vomit, but the weight of it would surely have crushed him. Had this god-beast spat at him to pound the life out of him?

His confusion became curiosity a moment later, though, when that splattered lava reformed and regrouped, and stood up on thick rock legs, thrice his height. The drow wizard’s eyes sparkled in reflections of the monstrosity, the lava elemental, a creature of tremendous strength and magical power.

It stalked over to stand towering above the wizard, and how small and vulnerable Brack’thal felt at that terrifying moment. He sucked in his breath, fearing it to be the last he would ever draw.

Tiago and Gol’fanin sat against the corridor wall many twists and turns away from the forge room. Other drow milled around, most gasping for breath, or grimacing against the sting of multiple burns.

Tiago pulled back the hood of his piwafwi, a very powerful cloak indeed, as it had been enchanted in the magical chambers of House Baenre. The young Baenre had not a mark on him, and thanks to his quick actions and the blacksmith’s own enchanted garments, Gol’fanin had come through unscathed, as well.

More important to both of them, Orbbcress and Vidrinath, the scroll, and the djinni bottle had survived and now lay at Gol’fanin’s side, covered in a thick blanket.

“We were to abandon the forge anyway,” he said to his companion. “Let the Shadovar deal with this new intrusion.”

“If the primordial has broken free, the entire power of Netheril will not put it back,” the old crafter replied. “The forge of Gauntlgrym is lost to us.”

Calls of “Steam!” filled the area, echoing from the corridors leading back to the forge room.

“Perhaps Gauntlgrym has awakened to the threat,” Gol’fanin offered, and he and Tiago stood up and started away.

“What has happened?” came a cry from the other way, from Berellip Xorlarrin as she and the other House nobles rushed down the hallway, many other drow beside them, and a few of Yerrininae’s driders marching in rear guard behind them.

“A major breach,” Tiago replied. “The forge room was overwhelmed by flames and lava and creatures of the Plane of Fire.”

Jearth rode his lizard right past the young Baenre and down the corridor leading back to the forge room, rushing out of sight.

“Where is Brack’thal?” Ravel asked, and the look he tossed at Tiago made it clear that he hoped his brother was still in the room, preferably dead.

“You tell me,” Tiago replied, his voice thick with intrigue, for all of them were surely thinking that Brack’thal, broken and angry, might have had a hand in this disaster. “I’ve not seen him.”

“Find him!” Berellip snapped at the nearby commoner drow, and they nearly fell over each other as they started scrambling away.

“We lost a small group of bugbears, all of the goblins in the room, and a few drow as well, I fear,” said the young Baenre, but his casual tone belied his claim that he feared any such thing. In fact, he didn’t care. Gol’fanin had survived, the recipe had survived, and all the pieces and ingredients needed to finish Lullaby and Spiderweb had survived. Did anything else really matter?

All eyes turned back behind the Xorlarrin nobles, where Yerrininae moved past his drider rear guard and up to join the conversation. “The Shadovar approach in great numbers,” he warned.

Berellip nodded and started to speak, but Ravel beat her to it.

“Let us fade back to the deeper tunnels,” he said. “Let them deal with the danger in the forge room, and then deal with our magic and our blades as we see fit.”

“And our negotiations,” Berellip said.

“It would not do well for House Xorlarrin to begin a war between Menzoberranzan and the Netherese Empire,” Tiago warned in support of the priestess.

Berellip gave him a quick glance and a nod-a nod of appreciation for his support, Tiago realized.

Nothing could eliminate drow infighting quicker than an external enemy.

Ravel took the lead then, ordering and arranging his forces so they could begin their quick retreat from the area. As that ensued, Berellip moved near to Tiago, and she had just reached him when Jearth returned with news that a great battle was underway in the forge room, water against fire.

“This is a most marvelous design,” Ravel declared loudly. “Do not underestimate the skill of dwarves and the ancient magic their allies employed.”

He reminds us that it was he who led us to this place we will soon call our home, Berellip’s fingers flashed to Tiago.

Tiago’s hand subtly replied with a single question: Saribel?

Berellip looked at her sister-at her sister who had schemed against her. Saribel was hard at work issuing commands to those around her, seemingly oblivious to Berellip’s hateful glare.

Tiago saw the sting on Berellip’s face, and understood where the necessity of the desperate situation was forcing her even before she answered, Stand down.

She couldn’t let Tiago kill Saribel at that time, not until they knew the extent of Brack’thal’s role in this great breach. Saribel had double-crossed Berellip with her intent to side with Ravel over Brack’thal, but if their suspicions about the Xorlarrin Elderboy proved true and Matron Zeerith learned of Brack’thal’s ultimate treachery, how strong would Berellip’s claim against Saribel sound?

Indeed, given the victory by Ravel, Tiago had held no intention of killing Saribel in any case, not that he would have told Berellip that little truth.

Besides, Berellip might be the more important priestess, but Saribel was by far the better lover. A minor detail in the greater scheme of things, perhaps, but those minor details often allowed Tiago greater enjoyment in life, and to him, that, after all, was the whole point of… everything.

Brack’thal instinctively tried to make himself smaller, curling down and defensively bringing his arms in tightly. He almost laughed at that reflexive movement, for it would do him little good when this mighty elemental decided to crush him into a smoldering pile of gore.

The blow did not fall.

Gradually, Brack’thal summoned the courage to peek out at the beast, which stood towering above him, very near. But it made no move against him, and so the mage slowly unwound himself to stand up straight before it.

Only then did he hear the voice of the lava beast, calling him through the power of his ring.

“Master.”

The primordial had given this gift to him, the mage thought, and he nearly squealed with glee.

His giddiness proved short-lived, though, as a rumble from without, from the forge room, told him that the creatures of water had won out and were now fast returning. At that same time, a huge spray of water began from above the primordial pit, the magical tendrils bringing even more water into the complex in response to the primordial’s attempt to break free.

And among that falling water came more than one new water elemental, diving into the pit and once more strengthening the swirl of containing waters around its walls.

Brack’thal looked through the mounting steam toward the room across the way, where the lever remained fully engaged. He could never free his god-beast as long as that lever kept open the connection between Gauntlgrym’s devices and the power of the sea.

He had to find a way to throw that lever! He would need a dwarf…

A rush of water in the corridor to the forge room broke him from his contemplation, and he realized that he had to get out of that chamber at once.

And as he realized it, so too did his lava elemental. The mighty creature moved with incredible grace, the joints of its rocky appendages molten and fluid. It rushed to the wall beside the corridor, and there it seemed to flatten and widen as it pressed into the stone. Whether it was some powerful magic, like the dweomer known as passwall, or simply the intense heat, or perhaps a bit of both, Brack’thal could not tell, but the stone hissed and melted. Even as the returning water elementals began to pour in from the other corridor, the lava elemental departed, burrowing through the stone as easily as Brack’thal might move through water. Lava streamed behind the beast and dripped all around, and the stone seemed to simply part, leaving a sizable glowing corridor in its wake.

Given the protective magic of his ring, the dripping molten stone would not bother him, and so the mage ran off after his pet, winding its way from the room in a tunnel of its own making.