They hurried to catch up to the others—and at that moment, their pursuer attacked. Striding up out of the shadows behind them loomed a tremendous figure composed of pure darkness, a black, faceless giant towering more than twenty feet in height. Despite its great size, the thing moved swiftly and silently toward them, strangely graceful. Two shining ovals of silver marked its eyes, and long, spidery talons reached for Halisstra and Valas. Its sibilant whispers filled their minds with awful things, like fat pale worms crawling through rotten meat.
“Pharaun, wait!” Halisstra cried.
She fumbled for her mace as the dark giant approached. Beside her, Valas swore and swept out his curved blades, crouching in a fighting stance. A nauseating, tangible chill radiated from the creature, like the cold that seeped through the entire plane but far more concentrated and malevolent in the presence of the monster. The dark giant shimmered, acquiring an almost oily appearance, and it sprang forward in a sudden burst of motion.
Before Halisstra could cry out another warning, one blow of its massive taloned fist knocked her sprawling to the ground. It turned to fix its pale and terrible gaze upon Valas. The Bregan D’aerthe scout screamed in terror and averted his eyes, dropping one kukri and allowing the second to droop limply from his hand. Jeggred roared a challenge and bounded toward the monster, talons extended. The dark giant slammed the half-demon to the ground with one blow of its long black hand. The draegloth scrambled back to his feet and leaped up to rake deep, black furrows across the giant’s thighs and abdomen, seeking to eviscerate the creature, but the wounds closed after the draegloth’s claws passed through the thing’s flesh. Jeggred howled in frustration and redoubled his futile assault.
“Stand back, you fool!” Pharaun cried from nearby. “It is a nightwalker. You need powerful magic to harm it.”
The wizard chanted a dire spell, and a bright bolt of green lightning shot out to smite the creature high in its torso—but the pernicious energy just flowed away from the monster’s featureless black hide, leaving it unharmed.
Your spells are useless, whispered a dark and terrible voice in Halisstra’s mind. Your weapons are useless. You are mine, foolish drow.
“We will see about that,” Halisstra snarled.
She picked herself up and dashed forward, raising her mace. The weapon was enchanted, and she hoped it would prove powerful enough to harm the creature. A long arm with deadly talons raked at her, but Halisstra tumbled beneath the monster’s grasp and hammered at the nightwalker’s knee. With a sharp crack of sound and a flash of actinic light, the weapon detonated with the force of a thunderclap. The nightwalker made no sound, but its knee buckled, and it staggered.
Quenthel’s whip hissed through the air, flaying at the creature’s face. The vipers tore and snapped through dark flesh, leaving great gory wounds, but the monster seemed unaffected by the deadly venom coursing through the weapon. Apparently even the most virulent poison did not discomfit its shadowstuff. Ryld, wheeling and spinning, slashed at the monster with his gleaming greatsword. The nightwalker reached out to wrest away his weapon, but the Master of Melee-Magthere danced back and sheared off half the creature’s hand with one savage blow. The nightwalker screamed soundlessly, its anguished cry stabbing through their very minds. Ignoring the others, the creature fastened its baleful gaze on Ryld, and conjured up from the black soil underfoot a dreadful, dark vapor that blotted out all sight.
Halisstra groped her way into the black mist, seeking the monster. The vapor seared her nose like vitriol and ate at her eyes, burning like fire. She persevered, and felt the giant looming over her. She raised her mace and struck again, hammering at the creature’s legs. From beside her she heard the hiss of Quenthel’s whip, tearing into dark flesh. Great black talons raked through the vapor, ripping at Halisstra’s shield, driving her to the ground.
“It’s here!” she called, hoping to lead someone else to the battle, but the acidic mists burned like fire in her throat.
She narrowed her eyes to nothing more than bare slits, and flailed back at the monster. The nightwalker’s venomous will settled over her like a blanket of madness, seeking to rend away her reason, but she endured the new assault, lashing out again and again.
Ryld’s sword lanced through the murk like a white razor, opening dreadful wounds in the shadow creature’s body. Black fluid splattered like droplets of poison, and the mind-whispers of the nightwalker rose into a hellish mental shriek that dragged Halisstra to the very edge of madness—and there was silence.
She felt the thing abruptly discorporate around her, its body exploding into black, stinking mist that dissipated into the shadows.
Still gagging on the poisonous black vapors the creature had raised, Halisstra stumbled out of the dark cloud and fell to all fours, gasping for breath. Her chest burned as if she’d drunk molten sulfur. When at last she could open her eyes and take notice of her surroundings again, she found that most of the rest of the party had fared little better than she.
Ryld slumped against a stone, his greatsword point down before him. He was leaning on the blade, exhausted. Quenthel stood close by, her hands on her knees, coughing wretchedly.
When at last she could draw breath, the high priestess looked up at Pharaun and said, “That is what you encountered before?”
The wizard nodded and said, “Nightwalkers. They roam the Fringe. Creatures of undead darkness, evil personified. As you saw, they can be . . . formidable.”
The Mistress of the Academy drew herself up and returned her whip to her belt.
“I think I understand why you hesitated to volunteer this method of travel until now,” she said.
Despite his exhaustion, the wizard preened.
“Careful, Quenthel,” he said in a mocking voice, “you almost acknowledged my usefulness.”
The high priestess’s eyes narrowed, and she straightened proudly. She obviously didn’t care to be the subject of the wizard’s humor. Seemingly ignorant of the smoldering glare Quenthel fixed on him, Pharaun made a grand gesture indicating the formless dark ahead of them.
“Our path leads now into the shadow of our own Underdark,” he said. “I suggest we redouble our efforts and finish our march quickly, as there may be more nightwalkers about.”
“That’s a damned cheerful thought,” grumbled Ryld. “How much farther now?”
“Not more than an hour, perhaps two,” Pharaun answered.
The wizard waited while the dark elves stood and fell in behind him again. Ryld and Valas, the two who had borne the virulence of the nightwalker’s dread gaze, seemed gray with weariness, hardly able to keep their feet.
“Come,” said Pharaun. “Mantol-Derith is no Menzoberranzan, but it will be the most civilized place we’ve seen in days, and no one is likely to want to kill us.”
“Not right away, at least.”
5
Nothing more troubled them for the rest of the shadow walk, and they emerged from the Fringe not long after the nightwalker’s attack, returning to the mundane world on the floor of a narrow, subterranean gorge. The walls were marked with various trail signs and messages from previous travelers who had stopped there. It was obviously a commonly used campsite near the trade cavern. The company rested there for hours, warming up from the insidious chill of the Shadow Fringe. After resting, they left the gorge and found their way out into a long, smooth-sided tunnel that bored for miles through the dark, broken by occasional open caverns along the way.
Valas led the company, as he was familiar with their arrival point and the route they found themselves traveling. After the burning skies of the daylit surface and the miserable gloom of the Plane of Shadow, the routine perils of the Underdark felt like old friends. This was their world, the place where they belonged, even those of their number who had rarely journeyed outside their home cities.