Heartbeats, no longer than mere heartbeats, and he would be obliterated, like the woman who had served as a conduit, who had let go of his hand.
He saw the fear in the matron mother’s eyes. She knew she was doomed.
And he didn’t know … anything.
He looked down and drew out Icingdeath with his free hand. He fell within himself and became, again, the Hunter.
This was his moment.
He heard the approach behind him-how could he not?
Slowly, Drizzt’s eyes scanned upward. He saw the robes of the unusual young drow. He followed up her shapely body to that pretty neck and rainbow hair, to that beautiful face, staring back at him and smiling knowingly.
So close, but not afraid.
Because she knew.
This was his moment.
Drizzt roared and spun, his blades going high. And he ran-how he ran!-and he leaped with all his strength and all his might, falling, flying from on high at the approaching prince of demons.
And Demogorgon screamed, and all the city screamed, and Drizzt plummeted between the biting ape-heads, too close for the winding tentacles to deflect him, and he drove his blades down together in a singular, magnificent strike, plunging them into the massive chest of the gigantic demon beast.
And the destructive power of every arrow and every spell coursed through him in that strike, and he felt the monster melting beneath him. He continued to fall, right through the giant body of the beast, never slowing until he plunged into the stone floor.
Tons of blood and guts and shattered bone and two giant, orange-haired ape heads, tumbled atop him.
Epilogue
Gromph and Kimmuriel walked side-by-side through the passageways of Gauntlgrym, a host of dwarf guards directing them. King Bruenor hadn’t been pleased to see them, but at least they had come to see him properly, in accordance with Catti-brie’s wishes.
Gromph hadn’t much noticed or cared. He had only come to this place now because of Kimmuriel’s insistence. Since he had accepted Kimmuriel as the official ambassador of the illithid hive-mind in the rebuilding of the tower, Kimmuriel’s wishes were no small thing.
“It is an amazing insight, perhaps,” Kimmuriel offered as the party descended the long circular stair to the main chamber of the lower levels.
“It is idiocy,” Gromph replied with calm confidence. The only thing preventing him from a complete explosion of outrage here were his most recent memories. Never had he felt such power flowing through him as when the illithid collective had sent the kinetic barrier to the waiting K’yorl. That had felt to Gromph to be the purest and most intense expression of intangible power he had ever experienced. In those moments of flowing perfection, he believed that he had come to know what it was like to be a god.
But now this.
In the few short days Gromph had been away, the infernal human woman had strengthened her hold on the others-and they had wasted not a moment in coming to this place to meet with King Bruenor.
And now the work had apparently already begun.
“One thing I have learned in my years with the illithids, Archmage, is to never underestimate the power of viewing the world through a glass bowed. The truths we know are solid paradigms only in our wider expression of the world as a whole.”
Gromph looked at him curiously for a moment, but then grumbled, “Her glass isn’t bowed. It is painted with pretty flowers.” He stopped as the pair neared the Forge Room, noting some dwarves moving along a corridor off the side, towing carts loaded with stone.
Gromph shook his head and turned to face Kimmuriel directly.
“Only those flowers are dragons, and they will melt us all,” he said.
They went into the Forge Room then, to the incredulous and suspicious stares of the dwarf craftsmen. Over on the far wall were large tables covered with parchments. The dragon sisters were there, along with Caecilia, Lord Parise, and Penelope Harpell, all discussing some image splayed in front of them and pointing and nodding.
Kimmuriel started that way, but paused when he realized that Gromph wasn’t following him.
“You go,” the archmage said. “I’ve another I wish to speak with, and I know where to find her.”
He swept across the room then, veering left and never even looking back where the other architects of the new Hosttower had gathered.
A pair of dwarves stood blocking the door in front of him.
“Get out of my way,” he told them.
“He the one?” one asked the other.
“Aye, the stubborn one,” said the other, and they parted.
At the other end of the tunnel loomed the primordial chamber, and there, as expected, Gromph found Catti-brie. She stood at the edge of the pit, staring across at the area that held, beneath the cooled magma, the antechamber and the key lever.
Beside the woman lay several metal beams and cut stones, the ingredients for constructing a new bridge to the antechamber.
“You have wasted no time,” Gromph said.
“We have little to waste.” She didn’t seem surprised by his entrance, nor did she bother looking over at him as he approached.
“It seems that you have convinced the others.”
“They have decided nothing.”
“Good, then I will …”
Now Catti-brie did turn on him, her eyes narrowed, her face a mask of determination. “I will do this with or without them, and with or without you.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Once again, Drizzt awakened deep within himself, settled deeply into darkness. He wasn’t standing this time, he realized when the pain in his stretched joints began to register.
“At last,” he heard, the voice of a drow woman.
“You should have just left him for dead,” said another, whom he recognized as Matron Mother Quenthel.
“Oh shut up,” said the first, Yvonnel.
Drizzt felt something upon his belly then, square and solid. It was jostled about and he felt the bottom pulled out, then small feet and tiny claws moving back and forth excitedly. He opened his eyes, blinking repeatedly as he adjusted to the dim light of the room-of the dungeon, yet again, in House Baenre.
He groaned, in pain. While he wasn’t standing, neither was he actually lying down. He was on a rack, suspended by his ankles and wrists. He worked his shoulders, trying vainly to relieve some of the tension on his elbows, but the ties were simply too tight and his efforts only brought him more pain.
He did manage to lift his head a bit to see Yvonnel, Quenthel standing behind her, and to see the small box Yvonnel had placed upon his naked belly.
The bottomless one that held a rat.
“Ah, good, you have returned to us at last,” Yvonnel said to him and she moved up and leaned on the crank, and the rack pulled a tiny bit more.
Drizzt grimaced against the pain.
“I have your friends here,” she said happily. “Would you like to see?”
Drizzt closed his eyes and tried to send his thoughts far away.
“This is so much like the wheel of history returning to the same place anew, don’t you think?” Yvonnel said, and Drizzt was sure that he had no idea what she was babbling about. “As your actions doomed your father before, so now, one of your friends.”
Drizzt’s eyes popped open wide and he glared at her.
“But I will let you pick,” she said. “Which of your friends will satisfy my sacrifice? The human? He is an angry one, always so full of scowls. You’d be doing him a favor.”
“Damn you.”
“Of course,” she said. “Or the elf. She is quite crazy. She probably won’t even understand. Or shall I kill Jarlaxle? You would at least be repaying me, I expect, since that one is drow, and valuable to me. Do you have that in you, heretic, to turn my request against me?”