broken sword. She watched it as it sank its fangs into her flesh.
She felt no pain, but a coldness suffused her being. The venom entered her veins, and as it spread through her body it brought-
Halisstra arched her back and screamed as the spells that Eilistraee had stripped from her mind were restored by Lolth. Tears flowed again, but at least she knew why.
Overflowing with power, she wiped her face dry and hurried to the lip of the ledge.
A battle raged below her between demons, yugoloths, and drow. Lolth's city beckoned in the distance, an infinite web shimmered over a bottomless gulf, and Lolth's damned burned in violet fire in the sky above the plains.
Halisstra paid little heed to any of it. She had eyes only for Danifae Yauntyrr, who fought
Quenthel Baenre on a narrow path that led down from the ledge.
Holding her holy symbol in her hand, Halisstra chanted a prayer to Lolth. When she completed the spell, she felt her strength increase. She smiled at the feel of again casting spells in
Lolth's name.
She sang the words to a bae'qeshel spell-song and turned herself invisible.
Ready, she drew Seyll's sword from the scabbard on her back and hurried down the path toward her former battle-captive.
Pharaun hovered in the air and watched the nycaloths bearing down on him. He pulled a small glass flask of alchemist's fire from his piwafwi, coated his fingers in the sticky, flammable substance, and hurriedly recited the words to a powerful incantation. When he finished, he mentally selected several points in the air next to the nycaloths flying toward him, beside the nycaloths flying toward the priestesses, and a few points at random amidst the mezzoloths on the ground.
Little balls of fire appeared at the loci he had selected and exploded into small but incredibly intense bursts of flame and heat. The nycaloths roared. The explosion sent them all spiraling off course. One of the four coming at him fell smoking to the ground, trailing its mirror images.
Yugoloths were resistant to fire but not fire of the intensity that Pharaun could summon.
The mezzoloths below answered Pharaun's spell as three score balls of flame exploded in the air around him. His protective spells partially shielded him, but his non-magical clothing burst into flame and his skin charred.
The explosion spun him around, and he struggled to recapture his bearings. At last he found the three nycaloths as they streaked toward him. Just as he prepared another spell, all three of the nycaloths winked out.
Teleportation, Pharaun realized with a curse.
Before he could respond, they appeared beside him.
He caught only a chaotic glimpse of muscular, scaled bodies, fanged muzzles, black horns,
beating wings, armor, claws, and axes.
Steel and claws rained down on him. His enchanted piwafwi, as hard to penetrate as plate armor, turned most of the attacks, but a claw rake opened his shoulder, and the wound poured blood.
He went straight up into the air and spun a long, vertical loop-his field of vision went from ground, to mountains, to sky and back again. The nycaloths and their illusionary duplicates pursued, harrying him the while, but he was more agile in the air than they.
While he flew, he spoke the arcane words to his next spell. Midway through the incantation,
he produced a small glass mirror and held it in his palm.
One of the nycaloths flew past him and caught him by his ankle. Another crashed into him from the other side. The three of them went into a mad, twirling spin. Centrifugal force stripped the grip of the nycaloth on his ankle.
Pharaun could not tell up from down. He turned from ground to sky, ground to sky, ground to sky.
A lightning bolt from the ultroloth ripped into him. It had no effect on the nycaloths-
yugoloths were immune to lightning, he knew-but its power sliced through his protective wards,
burned holes in his skin, and set his hair on end. He gritted his teeth and continued his casting.
The nycaloth grappling him growled in his ear, its wings and claws beating frantically.
Pharaun held it off as best he could while holding the rhythm of his spell.
Claws tore through Pharaun's piwafwi, ripped the skin of his mid-section. Blood leaked from the wound, but Pharaun managed to mouth the final word of his spell while simultaneously slamming the mirror against the flesh of the nycaloth holding him. Green energy flared, and the nycaloth's roar was cut abruptly short as the magic took effect.
The creature's entire body turned to clear glass.
It started to fall, along with its illusionary doubles, dragging Pharaun with it.
Pharaun wriggled free of its stiff grasp and watched with satisfaction as the transformed creature shattered on the rocky ground below. The other two nycaloths and their illusionary duplicates circled back at him, roaring.
Pharaun turned and flew away from them, speeding around a series of burning drow souls,
gathering for another spell.
He spared a glance to his right, over at the ultroloth. Already, a shimmering globe of magical energy surrounded the yugoloth wizard, and the creature was in the midst of casting yet another spell. Pharaun knew the globe would make the ultroloth invulnerable to a whole host of
Pharaun's less powerful spells.
Pharaun pulled up hard and wheeled to his right. The clumsy nycaloths flew past him,
cursing.
Hoping to disrupt the ultroloth's casting, Pharaun pulled a crystal cone from his piwafwi and hurried through an incantation.
The ultroloth finished first and pointed his open palm at Pharaun.
Almost all of the protective spells on Pharaun's person winked out at the same time, dispelled by the yugoloth's counterspell.
Pharaun cursed. The ultroloth must have been powerful to have so disposed of Pharaun's protective magic.
Pharaun put his vulnerability out of his mind and finished his own spell. He flew at the ultroloth, pronounced the final word, put the cone to his lips, and blew.
An expanding blast of ice and freezing air erupted outward and engulfed the ultroloth. The creature spun backward, coated in a sheath of freezing cold.
Pharaun could see that his spell had harmed the ultroloth, but far from mortally.
He rotated a circle in the air, looking back for the nycaloths.
He saw them nowhere. Either they had abandoned the field or they had turned invisible.
He accelerated upward, anticipating an axe blow with every breath, and at the same time triggered his ability to see invisible creatures. The power took effect just in time for him to see the nycaloths swooping in from either side, axes high.
He veered aside but too slow. An axe sank deeply into his shoulder. The other would have split his skull but he managed to duck under it at the last moment, so it only tore his scalp.
Wings beat in his face. The nycaloths grabbed at his piwafwi, clawed at his flesh. Their weight dragged him downward. He used the ring of flying to resist their pull, but he was slowly drifting down.
Below, hundreds of mezzoloths waited.
Bleeding, mildly dazed, Pharaun voiced the single word to one of his more powerful spells.
The incantation used sound as a weapon, and Pharaun thought it unlikely that the yugoloths would have protected themselves against sonic energy.
When the magic took effect, he felt it gather in his throat. He let it build, then exhaled it in a high-pitched scream that resounded over the battlefield. The magic of the scream tore into and through the nycaloths, killing them both, and continued downward in an invisible wave until it smashed into the waiting mezzoloths and killed fully half of them where they stood.
