Everyone except a certain flying ghostly form, who smiled a crooked smile at him and hurled a glowing blue blade through the air.
Point-first it slashed across the room, humming as it went, and Shar saw Milhvar's lips working in frantic haste.
Abruptly he was gone in a cloud of sweat, and another body was in his place. The Malaugrym mage Iyritar screamed as the sword of Mystra tore into him.
Impaled on the blade, Iyritar flailed his hands about vainly, clawing at the air in his agony.
From the wall where Iyritar had been, Milhvar stepped forth, weaving another spell as the three rangers tore free of his fading bindings and launched themselves from the walls with silver blades raised.
Sylune abruptly winked out. Shar stared up at where she'd been in astonished horror, slowing in her run. Itharr's shout of alarm dragged her eyes down to see what Milhvar's magic had wrought.
Iyritar's gore was on fire, blazing with scarlet flames as it sprayed from the dying Malaugrym's body and spread out to form a sphere of blood around the sorcerer's limp form, with the blade of Mystra lodged in it. In seconds the sphere was complete. Milhvar wiped sweat from his brow with one hand and visibly relaxed.
A smile crept slowly onto his face as he stepped forward and held up a hand to slow the charging Harpers with a magical wall. From behind its invisible safety he told them, 'Without your precious blade, you're trapped here, to become our playthings or slaves-or carrion, if you prefer. Like all humans, your fates will befall you swiftly.'
Behind Milhvar, a faint ghostly form faded into view, lit by the red radiance of the blood-sphere. Sylune was frowning in concentration as she thrust a hand into the red flames.
The three rangers saw her spectral body arch in agony, but it was the sphere that moaned.
'Stop trying to get at the blade, Argast,' Milhvar said sharply, without turning to look. 'You'll get badly hurt if you persist. The blood-sphere works against Malaugrym just as well as mortals.'
The Shadowmaster elder strode toward the rangers, and the invisible wall moved with him, forcing them back. The sphere moaned again as Sylune, her face twisted in pain, thrust herself through it and held herself there. The sword burst free, trailing blood in a long arc of droplets as it soared high into the air.
The ghostly Witch of Shadowdale fell away from the blood-sphere, face pinched with pain, but managed to raise one trembling arm to point at Milhvar.
In silent obedience the blade leapt across the chamber and burst through the heart of Milhvar of the Malaugrym.
'No! No! Not… when I have… the cloak…' he sobbed, doubling over and flickering in and out of visibility. Sylune's eyes narrowed, and she whispered a soft word of power.
Blue flames rolled out of the blade from end to end, licking swiftly up the Shadowmaster's body. He faded from view, but the flames could still be seen. He faded back into visibility, bent over and staggering, trying vainly to reach something only he could see across the chamber, but moving only inches.
He faded from view once more, so that only the blue flames could be seen-flames that rose and rose hungrily, outlining an upright human form at the last as they roared up into a hungry pillar that parted the shadows and ate through the ceiling and kept on burning away shadows, like mist parting before the hot sun.
In a place of chiming shadows, a stream of white fire that gave off no heat faltered, flickered-and ended, leaving a disembodied, white-bearded head floating alone.
The head chuckled and said, 'Done, then? Well done, I should say!' and faded slowly away.
'Are you whole?' Sylune asked softly, standing barefoot in the air before them.
Belkram grinned up at her. 'I could ask you the same question,' he replied. 'I can see through you!'
She put her hands on her hips and said tartly, 'But I am the lady of us two, and I asked first… so answer, sirrah!'
Shar and Itharr chuckled at that, and fell into each other's arms weak with relief. 'Yes… we're whole,' Shar gasped, 'I think…'
'Good,' Sylune said crisply. 'Then have the sense for once to sit still. I've work to do yet.'
She raised her hands and cast a spell they'd all seen worked before: a simple telekinesis magic. The blade thrummed happily as it took the spell, and again when the ghostly witch cast an extension spell on top of her first magic.
Then she sank down onto Belkram's shoulder, crossed her legs gracefully, and closed her eyes. Driven by her will, the sword of Mystra spun about and shot to the wall, in the direction of the Hall of Stars.
It struck the wall and hung quivering there, and the shadows around it began to melt and run, flowing away from it.
When the wall was gone, the blade leapt on to the next barrier.
'Gods!' Itharr swore suddenly. 'She's burning away the castle!'
They scrambled up, and a look of annoyance crossed Sylune's ghostly face. 'Don't let me fall, you great lout,' she told Belkram, opening her eyes. 'I may weigh nothing, but I don't appreciate being bounced on my head on floors made of shadow. To me, they seem very solid.'
'It's all right if we move about, then?' the Harper asked her.
She frowned. 'Yes, it's better if you do, I suppose. Follow the sword. If any Malaugrym show up to do battle, it can drink their spells and shield you.'
And that is what befell. As the Hall of Stars boiled away into the black emptiness of distant shifting shadows that is Shadowhome, the three rangers saw a tower beyond it topple soundlessly down into the Well of Shadows.
'Don't destroy it all,' Shar said to the ghostly form riding on Belkram's shoulder.
'I haven't the time to do so if I wanted to,' Sylune told her. 'I am going to ruin the Great Hall of the Throne, though, and carve up the Shadow Throne. I want the Malaugrym to know they were defeated this day, not just that some lucky humans got loose and managed to do a bit of damage while escaping.'
There were a lot of walls between the Well and the Great Hall, and the adventurers soon caught up to the blue blade. It melted away one last wall and then flew down a long corridor into the Chamber of the Veils, the last antechamber before the Great Hall.
As the veils blazed up around the sword, Malaugrym melted out of invisibility all over the chamber. Ahorga, Bheloris, and several others faced them, Malaugrym the rangers knew by sight if not by name. They saw grim determination, and fear, on the shapeshifters' faces.
Sylune spread her hands an instant before forty or more spells crashed down upon them. The room rang with her high, wild laugh of exultation as the spells all flashed back against those who'd hurled them.
The chamber rocked; balconies broke off and crashed to the tiles below. All over the chamber, Malaugrym bodies collapsed, slain by their own spells, or sagged back in pain and flickered out of sight as contingencies and rings took them elsewhere.
Amid the veils, the blue blade began a sudden spiral. Sylune looked up at it and said a very unladylike word.
As they all looked up at her in amazement-and Belkram almost dropped her-the entire chamber shook, pulsed under their feet, and grated into life, joining the spiral. The shadows moved slowly at first, then faster and faster, a whistling drone around them rising slowly toward a scream.
'Sylune! What's happening?' Itharr shouted.
'The blade struck a gate and is taking us all with it in a vortex,' the Witch of Shadowdale announced calmly. 'Watch this closely… you'll probably never be in one again. They're often fatal.'
'Thanks,' Belkram told her feelingly as they began to whirl around faster and faster. 'Are you going to do something about it?'
'I am doing something about it, overly muscled one,' Sylune told him crisply. 'I'm calling on the sword's powers to make sure the vortex takes us to Faerun and not into the fires of Dis, say, or a plane of endless fire or antimatter.'
'What part of Faerun?' Belkram called back over the mounting shriek of the vortex. She turned blazing eyes on him until she saw his teasing grin, then she punched him instead.
And the world fell apart.
