she looked across the peaceful lake toward the fields and forest beyond. She saw nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, the idea that some horrific beast was out there seemed unthinkable.
Nevertheless, minutes later the small company of permanent-duty guards, silver speartips gleaming in the sun, followed Myra's orders and filed out the gates and over one of the long causeways connecting the island city to the shore.
Here the elven warriors deployed in a three-rank line of pikes, blocking the most direct route into Chrysalis.
Myra watched them go, telling herself that they were just a precaution. Nothing seemed unusual about the forest as she looked to the west, but the hysteria of the trout farm workers dispelled any sense of security she might have felt. And still she wondered: Where was Brigit? The captain of the sister knights held overall command of Synnoria's troops; Myra was a mere substitute, and she longed for the older elf's guidance.
Meanwhile, the citizens of Synnoria mobilized for their own defense. The young and the old, the pregnant and the infirm Llewyrr, all fled from the far side of the city in an orderly column. Myra would have liked to send them toward the Fey-Alamtine and, if necessary, the ultimate sanctuary of Evermeet. However, the monster's approach precluded that course. Indeed, it was perhaps fortunate that she had no way of knowing that the Synnorian Gate lay in a heap of crumbled rock, shattered by the beast's violent arrival.
Now these refugees would take shelter in the wooded valleys opposite the monster's reported avenue of approach. The adults, meanwhile, gathered any weapons that they could find and began to assemble in the City's park-like grand plaza.
The warriors of the Thy-Tach tribe made haste to join in the defense force, offering nearly four dozen powerfully muscled spearmen. These trotted swiftly along the causeway behind the pikes, ready to form a backup of that formation.
Then, as Myra stared at the bright woods, she sensed that something was horribly wrong. Treetops shivered and fell away one after the other in a clearly defined path-a path that led straight toward the elven city! Myra thought of a field of tall grass where a small dog bounds through, unseen, except these were great trees, many of them centuries old. Whatever crushed them aside possessed unspeakable strength.
Finally the Elf-Eater came into sight on the wooded shore, a looming form pressing the lush pines to either side in a waste of splinters and great, muddy footprints. It rumbled forward in its awkward gait, appearing to roll along like a top reaching the end of its spin. Yet in the case of the Elf-Eater, this clumsiness was completely misleading. Clear of the trees, it leaped forward to race across the grassy field on the shore.
Silver pike tips gleamed in the sun, the same sun that had witnessed the arrival of this beast barely three hours before. The Llewyrr of the guard company stood firm, those in the fore kneeling, the second rank standing with pikes held at the waist, and the third rank with their long weapons held at shoulder height. The effect, to the front, was an array of razor-sharp steel tips, bristling like the spines of a cactus in tightly packed array.
Quickly the Elf-Eater broke from the confines of the forest, advancing across the grassy meadow in broad strides. Mutters of apprehension shook the elves as they got their first good look at the monster. Its broad snout was drawn in, gaping wide below the rim of the domed carapace, revealing its nest of churning appendages, surrounded by the web of flailing tentacles. The creature ran with one leg in front, the two others side by side to the rear.
The massive form rumbled forward, breaking into a rolling gallop on the broad field. The ground shook with each pounding step, and the monster's charge took it straight toward the wall of pikes. The elves in the path of the charge stood firm. Few of them had ever faced a real opponent before, but all of them had trained and prepared for decades-or centuries, in many cases. Now they met the test of that training and passed with fortitude.
Myra held her breath as she watched from the tower. Many more Llewyrr gathered in the streets below. The city's heavy silver gates stood closed, firmly barred. She could do nothing more except pray that the courageous pikemen and the spear-throwers of the Thy-Tach would turn the monster away.
The longest of the beast's tentacles stretched outward as it reached the Llewyrr, grasping pikes below the heads. Some sharp edges met the tendrils with their blades, but even the keen elven steel rarely pierced a leathery limb. The monster tugged against the pikes it still held firmly, jerking them to the sides and disrupting the precision of the steady line.
Not that precision mattered. The elves held their weapons braced with every muscle in their bodies, often with the butts of the weapons planted into the ground. The razor-edged pike heads, crafted of the hardest elven alloys, bore enchantments powerful enough to penetrate the hardest armor, the toughest scaly skin. But the Elf- Eater tucked its body as it rolled into the pikes, so that the bulk of the weapons met the hard carapace. The poles of a dozen pikes snapped simultaneously, the preciously crafted steel falling useless to the ground.
A few of the elves, their pikes held very low, angled the weapons below the carapace and met the skin around the creature's mouth. The weapons plunged in, and the Elf-Eater recoiled for a moment. Then a nest of tentacles converged, plucking the weapons from the wounds and casting them aside. The tentacles descended, and elf after struggling elf was plucked up and cast into the gaping maw.
On her tower-top vantage, Myra felt sick to her stomach. She saw that soon the monster would reach the city gates, and she knew that she would have to be there as well.
'Summon the clerics!' shouted the sister knight. 'All the priests and priestesses of the city! Gather here at the wall!'
She cast a last despairing glance for Brigit, but she could see no sign of any white horse or rider in the splintered path of the Elf-Eater's trail. Finally she raced down the spiraling stair, quickly reaching the street, where hundreds of armed but undirected Llewyrr mingled around in growing confusion. Through apertures in the white marble wall they could see the progress of the battle.
Within a few moments of the first impact, the beast's irresistible momentum carried it through all three ranks of the pikemen, scattering the hopelessly courageous Llewyrr in all directions. A dozen vanished into the dripping mouth, and as many more lay on the ground, crushed and broken by the monster's trampling feet.
The line of pikes recoiled, fatally ruptured by the breach through its center. Individual weapons prodded and stabbed the monster, but most of these it ignored. Those pikes that attracted the Elf-Eater's attention were pulled from their wielders' hands and snapped, with the Llewyrr warriors as likely as not to immediately follow their weapons to ruin.
'Flee! Run for your lives!' Panic-an uncommon characteristic among elven warriors-spread rapidly through the rank. Some of the Llewyrr threw down their pikes and raced for the causeway into the city, only to be blocked by the company of Thy-Tach spearmen, still standing firm. Others fled across the field while a small band, perhaps a third of the original company, retained their pikes and formed a bristling square. They moved away from the Elf- Eater toward the trees, and the monster seemed content to let them go.
The Thy-Tach spearmen, standing at the very end of the causeway at the lakeshore, cast their weapons as the Elf-Eater rose above them. Several of the missiles found targets in the gaping mouth, but this did little more than inflame the monster.
The terrifying creature swept tentacles low along the ground, sweeping a half-dozen Thy-Tach from their feet. In the next moment, the monstrous beast rolled over them, muffling their screams with its huge size. When it moved past, these elves had vanished.
Next Ityak-Ortheel turned its attentions to the lake itself, moving toward the white stone causeway that led to the gleaming gates of Chrysalis. As a result of Myra's orders, many Synnorian clerics stood along the wall above the silver-steel gates. Now these clerics called upon Corellon Larethian, Solonar Thelandira, and the other multitudinous gods of the elves, praying in their hour of need for powerful spells.
As the Elf-Eater started across the causeway, leaving crushing footprints in the white stone surface, the waters of the lake responded to the clerical spell-casting and began to rise. First they washed against the banks of the causeway, and then in several places wavelets crossed the road itself. Swiftly the footprints behind the monster filled with water, and in another few moments, the entire causeway vanished under several inches of the steadily rising lake.
Waves tossed and surged over the road, rising into an unnatural mound. The monster continued its advance as water surged upward, several feet higher than the causeway. The effect of the spell was local. The lake didn't flood beyond its banks onto the field or into the streets of the city, but it continued to grow, frothing like a rushing stream, climbing into a higher and higher barrier along the length of the stone roadway, forming a long ridge of turbulence.
