Gauntlgrym

Drizzt glanced back to see a dark form rolling out to the side of the demon, then bursting into flames, and he caught his breath and had to steady himself.

For all his life and in all the world, nothing had seemed more eternal yet reliably unreliable to Drizzt than that strange and strangely endearing fellow drow.

And there stood the pit fiend, triumphant, straddling the still and flaming form and staring hatefully and eagerly for its next victim.

Chapter 24 - Old Kings and Ancient Gods

BRUENOR SALUTED DRIZZT AND RUSHED THROUGH THE FIRST OF A SERIES of doors down the small tunnel, Athrogate right behind him.

Drizzt didn’t see it, and had to just trust in his friend. His glance back at Jarlaxle, his shock at seeing the drow’s demise, had cost him precious seconds, and he sprinted to catch up to Dahlia, who was already furiously working her tri-staff to hold back the rush of Ashmadai. He drew out his onyx figurine as he went and called for Guenhwyvar, but he didn’t keep the cat at his side as she appeared, instead ordering her to bring chaos to the ranks of their enemies.

Off Guenhwyvar leaped, and in came Drizzt, hard. Afraid for his dwarf friend and surprisingly outraged at the loss of his other … friend, the drow charged into the nearest Ashmadai warrior with his scimitars spinning. He hit the cultist’s scepter four times before the Ashmadai man, an ugly half-orc, even knew what hit him. Batting the scepter left and right, not even bothering to work it out to one side or the other, Drizzt had the overmatched warrior confused and off balance. He struck again with a fifth parry, batting the scepter to the right, then hit it with an unexpected uppercut, lifting it away. Even as it cleared the Ashmadai’s torso, Twinkle, in Drizzt’s left hand, slashed across, slicing open the half-orc’s belly. As the Ashmadai lurched forward, the same blade struck a backhand against the half-orc’s temple, sending him tumbling to the side.

Up came Icingdeath in a powerful horizontal presentation as Drizzt stepped ahead to meet the next enemy in line. But before he could strike through the opening with his left-hand blade, he had to launch Twinkle out wide to parry a thrusting staff-spear.

Drizzt missed the opening, but Dahlia didn’t. Under his upraised blade came her staff, a single long pole once more, to stab into the Ashmadai’s chest. When it hit, it threw forth a burst of lightning, launching their opponent through the air and backward. He flew several feet, and several feet high, but he never came back to the floor. A long-bladed sword drove through his chest, impaling him in mid air.

The legion devil easily held the dead Ashmadai aloft with just that one sword arm, and let him hang there for a few heartbeats, arms and legs out wide, lifeblood pouring from the wound. Looking around its macabre human shield, the devil grinned at the drow and the elf, even laughed a bit. Then it jerked its great sword powerfully back and forth and the dead cultist fell to the floor at the devil’s feet in two pieces.

Drizzt presented Twinkle horizontally in front of him, left arm out straight, his right hand tucked at the side of his face, Icingdeath atop the left-hand blade. He stood in a crouch, right foot dropped back and holding most of his weight. Beside him, Dahlia broke her staff again into three parts, pointed one end toward the fiend, and set the pole hanging from that end into a lazy, measured swing.

The great devil’s three hellish companions stepped out beside it.

“You should have kept the cat with you,” Dahlia whispered.

Drizzt shook his head. “We have to fade back to protect the tunnel.”

But they were already too late. The pit fiend appeared there, sliding through another dimensional gate to the entrance to the tunnel. With a mocking laugh, it went in pursuit of the dwarves.

Drizzt turned to give chase, but the lesser devils could also teleport, and two of them did, blocking his way so that the four devils surrounded them. In unison, the fiends began banging their black-bladed swords against their iron shields.

Dahlia glanced at Drizzt, and the hopelessness washed from the drow in the wake of an impish, mischievous, exuberant grin.

“You know they’re devils, right?” the drow asked her.

“We know what they are, but they have no idea who we are,” Dahlia replied.

She exploded into motion, leaping at the nearest fiend, her front pole spinning wildly. Up came the devil’s shield to block that spin, but it was merely a distraction. Dahlia prodded ahead with the center piece of her tri-staff as if it were a spear, clipping the devil’s cheek as it frantically dodged back.

The elf had the staff presented more conventionally in front of her in the blink of an eye, both ends spinning, and she worked her hands up and down expertly to block the second devil’s thrust. The second creature reached far enough ahead to allow the spinning pole to painfully crack against its forearm.

As Dahlia went forward, Drizzt rolled behind her, back to back, his scimitars working in a blur, sweeping side-to-side strokes that picked off the thrusting sword of the legion devil rushing in pursuit. He hit that blade several times in rapid succession, then launched his own attack from on high, forcing the devil to lift its shield to block, once then again. Before the devil could bring its sword back in for a countering stab, Drizzt rushed under that upraised arm as if he meant to run right past the fiend.

The devil turned and so did Drizzt, cutting back the other way, inside the devil’s reach. Up went Twinkle, taking the devil’s sword arm with it, and as Drizzt stepped back under that uplifted arm to rejoin Dahlia, a backhand from Icingdeath sank deep into the hellspawn’s flesh. The frostbrand drank hot devil blood, and the fiend howled in agony.

Drizzt faded fast to the side as a second legion devil came in swift pursuit, and so intent was the creature that it didn’t comprehend the “switch” executed by the two elves. Drizzt stepped in to spin his blades against the rush of the two pursuing Dahlia, and Dahlia confidently turned her back on them, trusting fully in Drizzt as she focused on the third. Her flail worked in a blur, over and around, angle after angle, that got them around the blocking shield. The fiend tried to counter with a sudden and overreaching slash, but Dahlia easily slipped out of reach, then came right in behind the cut. Her right-hand flail spun over to connect solidly with a blocking shield, and Dahlia released a powerful jolt of energy at that, shocking the legion devil. Because of that, the hellspawn could not realign its shield in time, nor bring its sword back to fend her off. That gave two-handed Dahlia a clear strike with her left flail.

The metal pole cracked hard against the devil’s skull, staggering it backward, off balance and dazed—not a proper defense against the likes of merciless Dahlia.

In short order, the elves had gained the upper hand, but that brought no thought of victory to Drizzt. Ashmadai swarmed around them, and the pit fiend must have been close on Bruenor’s heels.

Purely by luck, Drizzt noted Valindra, her eyes and smile wide, reaching toward him and throwing … a flaming pea?

Sweat dripping, heat stinging their eyes, Bruenor and Athrogate came through the last door, gaining the ledge around the primordial’s pit. Athrogate turned fast to close the door behind them, as he had done to all the various portals. Only a Delzoun dwarf reciting the proper rhyme could get through, after all.

Or so he believed.

Even as he swung the last mithral door closed, Athrogate saw the one behind it burst in, flying from its hinge and tumbling into the corridor, bent and scarred by the mace of the pit fiend. Beealtimatuche stared at him and laughed.

Athrogate slammed the door.

“Across the way, o’er the bridge!” he shouted at Bruenor, trying to hustle the king along.

But Bruenor heard the commotion in the tunnel behind them, and he stopped and turned.

The mithral door went flying from its hinge, up sidelong and spinning in the air right over the ledge of the deep fire pit.

Onto the ledge stepped Beealtimatuche.

“Go! Get ye gone!” Athrogate yelled at Bruenor as he shoved the dwarf toward the small bridge spanning the pit, then rushed back the other way, morningstars spinning, to battle the devil.

Bruenor stumbled a few steps, but stopped fast and turned. His vision blurred, his muscles swelled, and memories of a long-ago time filled his thoughts. He heard the voices of long-dead kings inside him. He felt the strength of the dwarf gods inside him.

As if in a dream, Bruenor watched the scene unfold before him, Athrogate striking with fearless fury, his morningstars flashing in against the blocking forearm of the pit fiend. And the devil winced, but nothing more, and wasn’t lurching or off balance as Athrogate’s second weapon crashed in, connecting with the devil’s mace.

Hooked and tugged, the morningstar was torn from the dwarf’s grip and thrown back to clatter to the floor near the door.

Still boring in, undaunted, Athrogate took up his remaining weapon in both hands and set it in a great and mighty spin, up high.

Then Athrogate, seasoned by centuries of battle—Athrogate, possessed of the strength of a giant—Athrogate, as tough a dwarf as ever lived, was simply slapped aside like a child, sent skipping and spinning across the floor, right to the edge of the pit and rolling over. He came around, in control, to his great credit, and managed to hook his free hand on the ledge, holding his place.

“Run, ye fool!” he yelled at Bruenor. “Bah, but get to the lever, or all’s lost!” he finished with one last act of stubborn defiance, grunting and throwing his shoulder over the ledge to gain the leverage he needed to launch his remaining weapon at the pit fiend, which stalked in at Bruenor.

The morningstar connected but Beealtimatuche didn’t flinch, and the movement cost Athrogate his balance.

He gave a yell at Bruenor, telling the dwarf to “Run!” once more, but his voice grew more distant as he fell away.

But Bruenor didn’t hear him, and wasn’t running anyway. It wasn’t just Bruenor in the body of the dwarf king then. Within his mortal coil loomed the kings of old, the blood of Delzoun. Within him loomed the ancient gods of the dwarves—Moradin, Clangeddin, Dumathoin—demanding of him that he champion their most hallowed hall.

Bruenor wasn’t running. He wasn’t scared.

He swelled with a titan’s strength, from the potion his enchanted shield had given him, from the infusion of the throne of the kings, from the glory of Gauntlgrym itself. Anyone looking at him wouldn’t even have thought him a dwarf, so swollen was he with power. And even that larger form could hardly contain the might within, muscles knotting and bulging.

He banged his axe against his shield and waded in for battle.

The drow spun and threw himself over Dahlia, taking them both to the ground the instant before Valindra’s mighty fireball exploded in the air just above them. Even with that feat of acrobatics, both would have surely been consumed had Drizzt not been holding Icingdeath in his right hand. The frostbrand glowed an angry blue, and its magic fended off the flames to such an extent that Drizzt and Dahlia felt only minimal discomfort.

He rolled off her, terrified that the three surviving legion devils would simply fall over them where they lay. But the three fiends did not advance, obviously caught by surprise by the fireball as well. While the flames did no harm to the hellspawn, the surprise of the blast gave Drizzt and Dahlia the time they needed to get back into a defensive position.