Gauntlgrym

PRIMORDIAL POWER

ATHROGATE KEPT UP HIS GREAT PACE FOR ONLY A SHORT WHILE, AND soon enough he came to a spot where he stopped cold, staring hesitantly. The walls of the stairway to either side simply stopped, and the narrow circular stairway continued to loop treacherously below him, absent even a handrail, in a wide-open chamber of many crisscrossing bridges and rail lines. The chamber was deep, the walls black with shadow, and far, far below, the floor glowed with orange and red streaks of lava. The air shimmered and waved from the rising heat.

It was loud, too, with the clanking of chains, grinding of stones, and the rumbling of massive fires.

“The stairs ain’t wet, at least,” the dwarf said to himself.

He wiped the considerable sweat from his face and started down more slowly, knowing that any misstep would lead to a long, long fall.

It seemed to go on forever, stair after stair after a hundred more stairs. Athrogate, and the others who soon followed, felt vulnerable enough on the open stairway. Then, having gone hundreds of feet below the walled section, they discovered that they were not alone.

Humanoid creatures scrambled along the lower, parallel passageways, certainly aware of the intruders. It took a while for the group to realize that the creatures moved in a coordinated manner, as if a defense was being set against them. Many of the other walkways were near enough for an archer or a spearman to be brought to bear, and many were above them, too, which left them in a terrible fix.

“Keep moving,” Jarlaxle implored the dwarf. It was rare to hear concern in the voice of Jarlaxle Baenre, but there it was.

The net around them was closing, and they all knew it-all except for Valindra, of course, who picked that moment to begin singing again.

The unknown creatures responded to that song with sharp calls of their own, birdlike but guttural, as if someone had bred a blue jay with a growling mastiff.

“Dire corbies,” Jarlaxle muttered.

“Eh?” asked Athrogate.

“Bird-men,” the drow explained. “Rare in the Underdark, but not unknown. Half-civilized, afraid of nothing, and incredibly territorial.”

“At least it ain’t orcs,” said Athrogate.

“Better that it were,” Jarlaxle replied. “Hustle, good dwarf.”

Athrogate hadn’t even touched his lead foot to the next stair when a sharp crack sounded just above them, as a stone thrown from high above clipped the metal stair.

Down they went, as more cracks of stones sounded. Valindra’s song hit an unexpected note as one rock bounced off her shoulder, though she otherwise seemed not to notice

Athrogate stopped again. Just below their position, several stone walkways crowded near the central stair, and they were not empty. Man-sized, black-bodied, bird-footed and bird-headed, the dire corbies rushed along the narrow walkways with ease and speed, and obviously without fear of missteps and deadly falls. Some glanced up at the intruders and squawked, holding wide their arms, which showed webbing from forearm to ribs, as if the appendages were caught halfway between a human’s arm and a bird’s wing.

“So, we fight,” said Jarlaxle. He snapped his wrists, his magic bracers bringing a throwing dagger into each hand. “Find the weak spots in their line, Dor’crae, and drive them from the ledges.”

“Wait,” Dahlia said before either could act. “They’re not just animals?”

“No,” the drow explained, “but close: tribal, barbaric.”

“Superstitious?”

“I would expect.”

“Keep your position here,” Dahlia bade them, and with a wry grin, she fell off the side of the stair, throwing her cloak over her head as she went.

She came out of the fall as a great crow, and uttered a series of loud, echoing cries to announce her flight. Dahlia swooped down near the dire corbies below, and when they didn’t throw their stones at her, she dared alight on the walkway in the midst of one group.

The birdmen fell to their knees and averted their eyes. Dahlia cawed again, more loudly, trying to sound angry, and succeeding, they all realized, when the dire corbies scampered away.

“Go,” Jarlaxle implored Athrogate.

And the dwarf went, with all the speed he would dare on the dizzying open stair. Dahlia flew around them, darting toward any dire corbies who ventured too near. They crossed by the area of converging walkways and came to a lower landing, where Dor’crae instructed the dwarf to turn left along an open, flat stone walkway.

Finally they came out of the vast open chamber and into another complex of ancient shops and chambers. Barely in, though, and with Dahlia still flying around outside, they ran headlong into a group of the vicious birdmen.

A pair leaped at Athrogate, who took up a battle song and a hearty “Bwahaha!” and swatted them aside with his spinning morningstars. He charged on recklessly, shouldering through another doorway, the impact knocking still more of the dire corbies aside.

“Out! Out! Ye damned freaks!” the dwarf yelled, his devastating weapons swinging fast and hard to shatter bone and throw the bird-men aside. “This is not yer place!”

Jarlaxle ran off behind Athrogate, out to the dwarf’s left, a stream of spinning daggers leading the way and driving back a group of dire corbies. He stopped throwing as he neared, double-snapping his wrists to elongate his latest pair into swords once more and leaping at the stung and dodging birdmen with a dramatic flourish. He stabbed and spun, swept one blade about in front of him then quick-stepped and thrust hard with his other blade behind the sidelong cut.

But more dire corbies rushed into the room, from a multitude of dark doorways.

“Ara… Arabeth!” Valindra cried. “Oh, watch me Arabeth, oh do. I am strong, you know.”

The lich stamped her foot and a burst of fire rolled out in every direction across the floor, beneath the feet of the drow and the dwarf, to roll up in front of them in a circle of scalding flames. Jarlaxle and Athrogate fell back in surprise, and the dire corbies shrieked and fell away, but their cries were drowned by the magically heightened song of the lich. “Ara… Arabeth! Did you see? Are you afraid? Ara… Arabeth!”

Dahlia, still in the form of a huge crow, set down in front of the group of burned dire corbies and cawed her displeasure.

The birdmen ran away.

And the expedition pressed onward.

The second group to move down the circular stair had no such protection as Dahlia had against the agitated and ferocious bird-men.

Stones flew at the dozens of Ashmadai and the red-gowned Thayan wizard as they made their cautious way in pursuit of Dahlia.

The cult warriors replied in kind, with crossbows instead of stones, and while most were shooting at distant, fleeting shadows, more than a few dire corbies screamed out in pain as barbed bolts invaded their black flesh. Sylora held her magic until the situation grew more dangerous, where the many walkways converged below the stairs.

She dropped a fireball in the middle of the convergence, warding the dire corbies away, and when she came level with the walkways, she sent bolts of lightning flashing along each. She snapped her fingers and Ashmadai warriors leaped out from the stairway above, landing on the various walkways, firing off the last of their missiles and rushing eagerly to meet the bird-men in melee, red scepters in hand.

As the battle was joined, Ashmadai and dire corbie alike tumbled to their deaths. Sylora and her main group continued down, at last coming to the tunnels. A few broken bird-men and a room scarred by flames marked their path, and whenever a choice lay before them, Sylora held aloft the skull gem in her open palm and let it point the way toward Dor’crae.

She could even sense how far ahead the vampire might be, for the multi-magical gem had attuned to him well.

A finger to her pursed lips reminded the eager Ashmadai to be silent, and on they went.

Through several sets of broken doors and under a low arch, the five adventurers came upon the remains of varied creatures, most recently those of dire corbies, and when they glanced around the wide, long, pillared corridor before them, they saw the ghosts of Gauntlgrym, watching them.

At the other end of the hall, through another arch and a barred portcullis, came the glow of furnaces, and despite the ghosts, or perhaps in part because of them, Athrogate was compelled to move forward. The others huddled close behind him, warily watching the spirits that mirrored their every step.

But the ward of a Delzoun dwarf proved effective yet again.

No cranking mechanism could be found near the heavy gate, so Athrogate tried his poem a third time.

Nothing happened.

Before Jarlaxle or Dahlia could offer a suggestion, the dwarf growled and leaned against the grate, grabbing a crossbar in both hands. He could clearly see the ultimate goal of his expedition in front of him: a line of furnaces and forges, the great Forge of Gauntlgrym itself, and the heat on his face as he peered through that portcullis surely warmed an old dwarf’s heart.

With a growl and a heave, Athrogate tugged hard at the portcullis. At first, nothing happened, but then the dwarf broke through an old lock, it seemed, and the gate inched upward.

“There must be a lever,” Jarlaxle offered, but Athrogate wasn’t listening, not with the Forge of Gauntlgrym so near at hand.

A fog rolled past him and Dor’crae rematerialized on the other side of the portcullis.

“No ghosts in here,” the vampire reported. “Shall I look for a way to open the gate?”

The sight of the vampire within the Forge of Gauntlgrym only drove the dwarf on harder. He growled and groaned, and lifted with all his tremendous strength, his magical girdle lending the power of a giant to his thick limbs. Up inched the portcullis. He grabbed lower, the next bar down, and heaved again, lifting it to his waist. With a sudden jerk and a roll of his hands, he dropped down into a crouch under it, and straining and groaning with every inch, Athrogate stood up straight once more.

Jarlaxle went under, Dahlia right after him, and she coaxed the distracted Valindra in behind her.

“I’ll try to help,” Jarlaxle offered, moving up in front of Athrogate and grabbing at the bars, “but I haven’t your strength.”

Even as he finished talking, a clicking sound came from the stone surrounding the heavy portcullis, and both drow and dwarf backed off just enough to realize that the heavy grate had been set in place.

“A room to the side,” Dahlia explained, tipping her chin toward a door through which Dor’crae passed.

Athrogate hustled into the forge, stumbling as he moved near the central furnace, the largest of the many within. It had a wide, thick tray in front of the grate of the furnace, and in looking at that, Athrogate felt as if he was peering through the faceplate of the helmet of some great fire god.

Little did he know how close to right he was.

“Ye ever seen such power, elf?” he asked Jarlaxle when the drow moved up beside him.

“How can it still be fueled, after all these centuries?” Jarlaxle asked. On a whim, the drow brought forth a throwing dagger and flipped it through the grate.

It never even seemed to land against anything, just turned to liquid and fell away, dispersing into the flames.

“ ‘To bake the dragon,’ ” Athrogate muttered.

“Incredible,” the drow agreed.

They finally managed to move aside from the blinding image to study the decorated anvil on the other side of the tray, and to note a mithral door set against the wall at the side of the main forge.

“There is more to see back there,” Dor’crae explained, “but I couldn’t open that door when I was here before. I had to slip in around the hatch using other means.”

Athrogate was already at the door. He started his rhyme once more, but paused and just pushed on the hatch, which swung in easily, revealing a short passageway to another gleaming door.

Doubting eyes fixed on the vampire, who merely shrugged.

Dahlia led the way to the next door, but found that it would not open no matter how hard she shoved against it. Until Athrogate came up, that is, and merely touched it, and like the one before, it swung open easily.

“It would seem that these old dwarves were possessed of great magic, if their doors recognize one of their blood,” Jarlaxle remarked.

“And can tell a king from a peasant,” Athrogate added, remembering the throne above.

Athrogate led the way through another doorway then a fourth, and as that one opened, the group heard the sounds of a tremendous rush of water, like a waterfall, and the air grew moist and thick. The tunnel wound for a fair distance before emptying onto a ledge that ringed a steamy oblong chamber, centered by a very wide, very deep, deep pit. And there the riddle of Gauntlgrym took away the breath of dwarf, drow, elf, vampire, and lich alike.

Looking down that great shaft, they could hardly see the pit’s walls. A rushing swirl of water spun continuously, like the breaking wave of a hurricane’s tide, or a perpetual sidelong waterfall. All the way down the water spun, giving way at the bottom to a bubbling lake of lava. Water hissed loudly in the heat, steam forming and rushing up into chimneys far above.

And somehow, that orange-red glow seemed more than just molten rock, more than inanimate magma. It appeared almost like a great eye staring back at them… with hate.

“We’re below them steamy rooms,” Athrogate noted. “A chimney must be plugged up there.”

“Over there,” Dor’crae remarked, pointing to a narrow metal walkway, thankfully with railings, that spanned the pit and ended at a ledge across the way, with a wide, decorated archway leading to a small room, barely visible, beyond. “There’s more.”

Sylora and the Ashmadai could feel the hatred of the dwarf ghosts all around them, but the Thayan wizard held aloft the skull gem, shining with power, and it was great enough to keep the ancient defenders of Gauntlgrym at bay.

They passed by the foolish and eager Ashmadai woman who had entered the room before consulting with Sylora. She had been quickly and horribly torn limb from limb by the ghosts right before their eyes.

But so be it. They were Ashmadai, and the tiefling female had died in the service of her god. Each uttered a prayer to Asmodeus for their lost sister as they stepped over various severed body parts.

“I can’t touch it,” Dor’crae explained, standing in front of a large lever set in the floor of the room, barely more than an alcove, beyond the archway from the water-encircled lava pit. “When I tried, it threw me back. Some great magic wards it.”

“Only a dwarf could pull it, ye fool. Like them doors.”

“And don’t you dare,” said Jarlaxle, who stood a few steps away, studying the old runes inscribed on the archway’s curving top. He enacted one of the powers of his enchanted eyepatch, which could allow him to comprehend almost any known language, even many magical ones, but this writing was beyond even the eyepatch’s power. “We know not what it would unleash.”

He continued studying the runes-he understood that they were very ancient, some in an old Elvish tongue that had more than a little connection to Jarlaxle’s own drow tongue, and some in ancient Dwarvish. He couldn’t make out the exact wording, but thought it was a memoriam of sorts, a tribute, perhaps a celebratory accounting of something grand represented by this chamber.

As the moments passed by, Athrogate inevitably slid toward the lever, licking his lips in anticipation. He was right in front of the thing when Jarlaxle put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Glancing up at the drow, the dwarf followed his gaze to the walls and ceiling of the chamber, which were heavily veined with the tendrils of the Hosttower.

“What is it?” Athrogate asked.

“I believe it’s the lever to power all of Gauntlgrym,” Dor’crae replied. “Magical lights and rail carts that move of their own power-magic to give the city life once more!”

Athrogate started forward eagerly, but again Jarlaxle held him back. The drow turned to Dahlia with a questioning expression.

“Dor’crae… knows the place better than I,” the woman explained.

Jarlaxle let go of Athrogate, who leaned toward the lever, but the drow kept staring at Dahlia and made no move to stop him.

“What is it?” Jarlaxle asked her, for there was something in Dahlia’s voice then, some great uncertainty, some hesitation, that Jarlaxle had never heard from her before.

“I… agree with Dor’crae that it will bring Gauntlgrym back to life,” Dahlia remarked, aiming the words at Athrogate.

“Or set loose the power of the fallen Hosttower upon us all,” the drow argued. He knew she was lying, and knew that she was struggling with those lies.

“So we should just leave it and seek out the treasury?” Dahlia asked, waving her hand as if the thought was absurd-waving her hand a bit too dismissively.

“A fine idea,” Jarlaxle agreed. “I am ever in favor of baubles.”

Behind the drow, though, Dor’crae whispered to Athrogate, “Pull the lever, dwarf.”

Jarlaxle knew then that there was more to that request, that the vampire was trying to exert his undead willpower over the dwarf. That, of course, came as a clear warning to Jarlaxle. He stepped toward Athrogate, but stopped abruptly as Valindra materialized right in front of him, staring at the drow with hunger, her fingers waggling in the air between them.

“What do you know?” the drow demanded of Dahlia.

“I like you, Jarlaxle,” Dahlia replied. “I might even allow you to live.”

“Athrogate, no!” Jarlaxle cried, but Dor’crae kept whispering and the strong dwarf moved to grasp the lever.

In her thoughts, she was a girl again, barely a teenager, standing on the edge of a cliff, her baby in her hands.

Herzgo Alegni’s child.

She threw it. She killed it.

Dahlia proudly wore nine diamond studs in her left ear, one for every lover she had defeated in mortal combat. She always counted her kills as nine.

But what of the baby?

Why didn’t she wear ten studs in her left ear?

Because she was not proud of that kill. Because, among everything that she had done in her flawed life, that moment struck Dahlia as the most wrong, the most wicked. It was Alegni’s child, but it had not deserved its fate. Alegni the Shadovar barbarian, the rapist, the murderer, had deserved its fate, had deserved to witness that long fall, but not the child, never the child.

She knew what the lever would do. She had enlisted the drow because of the dwarf. Only a Delzoun dwarf could close that lever. And that was the point after all, to close the lever, to initiate the cataclysm, to free the power that fueled Gauntlgrym, to create the Dread Ring.

The circle of devastation would not be built on the soul of Herzgo Alegni, or even on those of a few wicked lovers deserving their doom. It would be built on innocents, on children, like the one she had thrown from the cliff.

“Athrogate, stop!” Dahlia heard herself saying, though she could hardly believe the words as they came forth.

All eyes turned to her-the confused dwarf, the suspicious drow, the surprised vampire, and the obviously amused lich.

“Do not touch it,” Dahlia said, with strength seeping back into her voice.

Athrogate turned to her and put his hands on his hips.

“What do you know?” Jarlaxle asked her.

The image in front of Athrogate blurred, replaced by visions of Delzoun ghosts. They gathered before him, and begged him to pull the lever.

Free us! they implored him in his mind.

Give to us, and to Gauntlgrym, life anew! one pleaded.

The elf fears it! said another. She fears us, and the return of the greatest dwarf kingdom!

Athrogate stared with hatred at Dahlia, and turned back to the lever.

“Dahlia?” Jarlaxle asked.

The elf was stricken as she stared into the eyes of the drow. “It frees… the beast,” she whispered.

Jarlaxle glanced back at Athrogate and Dahlia followed his gaze. Both looked on in alarm as the dwarf grabbed the lever in both hands.

“Athrogate, no!” they yelled together, but the dwarf was listening to other voices then, voices he thought belonged to the ghosts of his ancestors.

“He cannot hear you,” Sylora assured the pair from the anteroom. As one, they spun to regard her, and her contingent of fierce Ashmadai warriors, standing just outside the archway, crowded on that side of the pit room.

Behind them came a grinding sound as Athrogate pulled the heavy lever.

“Tell him, Dahlia,” Sylora said, tilting her chin at Jarlaxle.

The ground beneath them rumbled. Out past the anteroom came the sound of a great rush of water, like a tremendous waterfall rushing over the stones, then a hiss that sounded like a million giant vipers.

Looking past Sylora, Dahlia witnessed the rise of billowing steam, and within it, she noted living, watery forms-elementals, she presumed.

“What have we done?” Jarlaxle asked.

Sylora laughed at him. “Come Dor’crae,” she bade the vampire. “Leave them to their doom.”

“You betrayed me!” Dahlia shouted at the vampire. She noted just a hint of regret on his face, then she took up her staff and leaped at him, determined to destroy him first.

But Dor’crae was a human one blink and a bat the next. He fluttered past her, and past Jarlaxle into the anteroom, where Sylora had opened a magical gate once more, through which she and most of her prized Ashmadai zealots took their leave.

Valindra laughed hysterically then and blinked away, appearing at Sylora’s side.

“Yes, you, too, my sweet,” Sylora said to her, and showed her the skull gem, her phylactery, and bade her to enter the portal. “Tell him,” Sylora called to Dahlia right before she too stepped through the portal, which would take her to Neverwinter Wood, where she could witness the carnage and glory of her triumph. “Tell your dark elf stooge of the end of the world.” She laughed and disappeared, but closed the portal behind her, leaving a dozen Ashmadai behind.

“Occupy them, so they cannot leave,” Sylora’s disembodied voice instructed her warriors.

“Elf?” Athrogate asked from near the lever. “The ghosts told me to!”

“Sylora Salm told you to pull that lever,” Dahlia explained, her voice full of rage and of regret, full of guilt and venomous spit.

“Tell me,” Jarlaxle insisted.

The floor bucked again beneath them. From the pit came more hissing, more billowing steam, and a guttural roar that sounded as if Faer?n itself had been uncomfortably awakened.

“We’ve not the time,” Dahlia replied. She took up her staff, snapping it open to its eight-foot length.

The Ashmadai charged.

Jarlaxle drove them back with a sudden barrage of thrown daggers that appeared as if from nowhere, then Athrogate drove them back further, bursting between the elf and the drow, morningstars in hand, his heart full of absolute outrage. “Defiled it!” he wailed. “Ruined it!”

Tiefling and human warriors came at him front, left, and right, swinging and stabbing their crimson scepters. But Athrogate didn’t even try to stop the weapons, his focus purely on the offense. A morningstar head crushed the skull of the human on the left, a second swatted the half-elf on the right, and he met the head-butt of the tiefling in the center with his own armored skull.

And he bulled forward, undaunted. The dazed tiefling fell in front of him and Athrogate ran right over the half-blood thing to get to the next in line, his morningstars spinning furiously.

A stream of daggers flew over the dwarf’s right shoulder, clearing that flank, then over his left to similar effect.

Then came Dahlia, running, planting the end of her staff and using it to vault right past Athrogate. By the time she’d landed, she had pulled the staff in and broken it into the twin flails. Around and over they went, out to the side and straight head, clipping scepter and clipping arms and cracking skulls when any got too near.

Not to be outdone, Athrogate paced her, though her fury was truly no less than his own.

The ground bucked, the floor rolled and cracked. The wall split on one side of the anteroom, and dust and stones fell from the ceiling.

As they neared the edge of the pit, the Ashmadai broke ranks and fled across the walkway, Dahlia and Athrogate giving chase, for that was the only way to go.

Jarlaxle came last, and he stubbornly paused and waited for the hot, billowing steam to clear enough so that he could see down to the lava.

So that he could stare into the face of the fire primordial.

He understood then the source of the power for Gauntlgrym’s famed forge. He understood then the magic of the Hosttower, bringing in great elementals of water from the ocean to serve as a harness for that godlike beast. That magic had been gradually dissipating since the tower’s fall, obviously, given the earthquakes that had wracked the region for so many years.

And Athrogate had shut the magic down entirely.

The elementals were fleeing, and the beast would be free.

Jarlaxle glanced back toward the lever, though he couldn’t see it through the steam. They could reverse it, perhaps, and put the beast back in its harness.

He yelled out to Athrogate, but his voice couldn’t rise above the wind and hiss of the rushing steam.

Then flames mixed with steam, rising up all around the walkway and the drow, and Jarlaxle had to run away, pulling tight his piwafwi and cowl to shield his eyes and skin.

He caught up to Dahlia and Athrogate in the forge room, facing off against the half-dozen remaining Ashmadai, who had no choice but to stand their ground before the portcullis, which was closed again. Beyond that gate huddled the angry ghosts of Gauntlgrym.

“If you surrender, we can guide you out of here!” Jarlaxle yelled to them, putting a sword in one hand as he took his place flanking Athrogate.

“They’re Ashmadai,” Dahlia explained. “Zealots of Asmodeus. They do not fear death, they welcome it.”

“Then let’s oblige ’em,” Athrogate growled, and charged.

It struck Jarlaxle profoundly that the dwarf made no rhyme there, with battle so clear before him. But indeed, the dwarf was trembling with outrage at that point, and channeling all of his power to those devastating morningstars.

The Ashmadai howled and met the dwarf’s charge with glee. Dahlia flanked out to the left, her twin weapons spinning to match Athrogate’s morningstars, and Jarlaxle rushed up from the right. One against two, and two to each, they engaged.

Jarlaxle’s free left hand snapped out a line of spinning daggers, down low at first as he neared the closest opponent, a tiefling bearing a strange symbol branded into his dusky flesh. But then he switched them up high with the last throw, forcing the cultist to lift his forearm to deflect the missile. And in that evasive movement, the tiefling lost sight of the drow for just a heartbeat.

A heartbeat too long.

Jarlaxle slid past on one knee, using the tiefling to block his own companion.

A stab to the back of the leg left that Ashmadai stumbling and skidding down, hamstrung.

Across came the other, stabbing his spear-staff for the drow’s head.

But a second sword appeared in Jarlaxle’s grasp, and swept up and around, parrying perfectly. And when the first followed behind that parry, the cultist had no defense.

Athrogate waded in, disregarding again the stab of one cultist and the heavy swing of the other. He took hits to trade the hits, and his weapons were better by far. A human Ashmadai stabbed him deep in the front of his shoulder as he brought his arm around, but that didn’t deter the blow, for the dwarf was beyond feeling pain at that terrible moment, at the realization that he had destroyed the most sacred and ancient of dwarven homelands.

He felt his muscles tearing, but didn’t care, and completed the rotation. The morningstar crashed down upon the human’s lowered, leading shoulder with such force that it threw the cultist face down to the floor.

Athrogate stomped on the back of the Ashmadai’s neck as he turned to face the second, and accepted a crack on the hand holding his other morningstar, the price of a missed block. Normally such a hit would have taken the weapon from his grasp, but not with Gauntlgrym exploding around him.

He plowed on with fury, both weapons swinging, driving the cultist back toward the lowered portcullis.

The Ashmadai ran out of room to retreat, so he worked his staff furiously to deflect and block. But a blow got through, crunching him in the side, driving him into a lurch. A second blow from the other side straightened him again, only to be hit again on the first side, higher up.

Then from the second side again, battering him, crushing his bones to dust, tearing his skin and sending his blood and brains flying wide to one side, then the other.

He crumpled to his knees and Athrogate kept hitting him-the only thing holding the dead cultist up were the dwarf’s blows.

Dahlia was far more cautious. She worked her weapons defensively, picking off every thrust and swing, still fighting two enemies-a human woman and a male half-orc-long after Athrogate began to bull his remaining opponent backward.

She played for her opponents’ mistakes, and as good as they were, Dahlia was better.

The Ashmadai to her left, the half-orc, moved to flank her, and the woman to her right predictably used her turn to come ahead boldly with a stab for Dahlia’s turning hip.

But Dahlia reversed, and her swing indicated that she would send her left weapon all the way across to try to hook the spear aside.

The half-orc braced for the ruse, and was caught by surprise as Dahlia’s right-hand weapon came up and under instead, yanking the spear-staff nearly from his grasp-and indeed, it would have taken that weapon away had that been Dahlia’s intent. She disengaged with a subtle twist instead, and allowed herself to overbalance and fall to her leading, right knee, where she reversed the spin of that weapon and swept it low, taking the human’s legs out from under her.

Dahlia rotated fully to bring her second weapon to bear, though she had no angle for such a spinning flail to do any real damage.

Except it was no longer a flail in her left hand, but a four-foot length of spear, and a slight twist stabbed it down hard into the woman’s face, driving right into her opened mouth as she tried to scream. A burst of lightning exploded with the impact, and it seemed to jolt Dahlia back to her feet, where she broke the staff once more into twin flails, and waded into her remaining opponent.

She had the half-orc cultist backing up, though the ugly brute was skilled and managed to hold his ground well as Dahlia played out her momentum.

A flicker of silver flashed over Dahlia’s shoulder and she dodged away and glanced back at the same time. She turned right back to her opponent, though, when she realized the flash was from one of Jarlaxle’s endless daggers, which he’d buried deep into the half-orc Ashmadai’s left eye.

Dahlia spun back as her last opponent fell aside, to see Jarlaxle rushing for the portcullis. Athrogate had amazingly hoisted the gate up to his shoulders once more.

Under went Jarlaxle, and Dahlia was quick to follow, fearing that those two would drop the gate and leave her to die-and who could blame them?

Jarlaxle rushed to brace his shoulder under one end, Dahlia the other, and Athrogate managed to scramble through.

The floor rumbled, the walls shook. The ghosts of Gauntlgrym were all on their knees, eyes and hands lifted in prayer to Moradin.

The trio ran on.

By the time they reached the circular stair, the complex was shaking violently. As they climbed back into the vast open cavern, they saw dire corbies falling and flailing. Bridges of stone that had survived the millennia cracked apart and tumbled down into oblivion.

“What have I done?” Athrogate wailed. “Oh, but a cursed creature I am!”

“Fly away!” Jarlaxle yelled at Dahlia. “Become a crow and be gone, you fool.”

Dahlia tugged at her cloak, but not to enact its magic. She pulled it off and threw it into Jarlaxle’s face. “Go!” she yelled at him.

The drow could hardly believe it, but he didn’t don the cloak and flee. He urged Athrogate on instead, and tugged at Dahlia to keep up.

They reached the top of the stair exhausted, but they couldn’t rest. The quaking diminished in violence as they ascended, but arches cracked and tumbled, and jambs tilted, sealing doors, perhaps forever.

But still they ran on, and kept running until they again came to the circular chamber with the jeweled throne, and kept running through the tunnel and out the gates, and kept running to the edge of the underground pool.

Jarlaxle threw the cloak back at Dahlia. “Make your way,” he told her. “And we’ll make ours.”

“How will you cross?” she asked.

Jarlaxle looked at her as if she was mad. “I am Jarlaxle,” he said. “I will find my way.”

Dahlia donned the cloak and became a great bird. She flew away, across the lake and down the tunnels.

A mere two days later, she emerged into the dirty streets of Luskan, surprised to see that the city was still standing, and that life there seemed normal. She looked to the southeast, to the sky above Gauntlgrym.

There was nothing.

Perhaps she had overestimated the power of the trapped primordial. Perhaps they had merely shut down the forge, and had not loosed a cataclysm.

“Say nothing of our adventure,” Jarlaxle bade Athrogate when they, too, made it back to Luskan, later that same day, having ridden their summoned mounts-hell boar and nightmare-all the way from Gauntlgrym. They had crossed the underground pond on the back of a giant, flightless bird, created from the feather on Jarlaxle’s hat, for thankfully, the pond was quite shallow.

“Ye should’ve left me to die there,” the sorely wounded Athrogate replied.

“We’ll find a way to fix it,” Jarlaxle promised. “If it even needs fixing,” he added, for he, too, was somewhat surprised to see the normalcy of life in Luskan.

Soon after, though, the very next dawn, he realized that it would indeed need to be fixed, for in the distant southwest, Athrogate spotted a plume of black smoke rising lazily into the air.

“Elf,” he said, his voice somber.

“I see it.”

“What is it?”

“Catastrophe,” Jarlaxle answered.

“Ye said we’d fix it,” Athrogate reminded him.

“At the very least, we’ll repay those who did this.”

“Was meself!” Athrogate said, but Jarlaxle shook his head, knowing better.

For surely the worldly drow had recognized the distinctive garb of the woman who had arrived in the anteroom to mock Dahlia and steal away with Valindra and Dor’crae. She was Thayan, a disciple of Szass Tam, no doubt.

As he considered that, Jarlaxle looked back at the plume of black smoke, so many miles distant, but still visible in the morning sky. He didn’t know much about the archlich of Thay, but from what he did know, he thought, perhaps, that they might be better off facing the primordial.

From her room at the inn halfway across the city, Dahlia, too, plotted her revenge, and she, too, spotted the plume.

She had done her research well, though, and harbored no hope that the smoke would be the end of it. And no hope of averting the catastrophe.

The primordial would shake off the last remaining elementals-great creatures of water put in place by the ancient wizards of the Hosttower to harness the power of the fiery, godlike being for the benefit of the dwarven forge.

It would have broken free eventually, Dahlia knew, for the fall of the Hosttower had begun the erosion of that harnessing magic.

But not so soon. Not without some warning for the wizards and scribes of the Sword Coast.

Disaster, swift and complete, would come, and nothing she or anyone else could do could stop it, even slow it, now.