The ore term of respect was unlikely to mollify a merchant whose cart-top had just been ruined, but she was in a hurry. Up ahead, the beholder shook the air in a roaring frenzy that far outmatched the snarls of the ore behind her. Rays lashed out in all directions from its writhing, coiling eyestalks. Those that stabbed down met some sort of shield and faded away, and one that lashed out toward Mirt had a similar fate. The others were causing spectacular explosions, bursts of flame and lightning-and in one spot, the stone was melting like syrup and slumping down upon itself in a slow flood.
Magelight flashed and curled around the eye tyrant as it poured forth spells in a display that had the audience scrambling for cover. The shouted adjustments to wagers rang back hollowly from windows, balconies, and corners all around as the ground shook, stone shrieked, and the last of the ruin's blackened walls toppled, with slow majesty, down atop the struggling tavernmaster.
Dust rose slowly, the heaving underfoot subsided, and the ringing that had risen in Asper's ears was not enough to drown out Mirt's roar of challenge.
"About! Turn about, ye blasted lump of floating suet! I'll look ye in all yer eyes and stare ye down, and there'll be a blade-thrust into every one of 'em before ye'll have time to flee! Turn about, I say!"
Asper winced at her lord's imprudence, even as a rueful smile twisted her lips. This was her Mirt, all right.
Winded by his shouting, the fat old Lord of Waterdeep puffed and wheezed straight at the beholder. His old boots flopped as he scrambled up a shifting pile of rubble. At its top, he made a show of drawing his stout old sword and raising it in challenge. "Do ye hear me, ball of offal? I-"
"Hear you quite well enough," the beholder said with menacing silence, "Be silent forever, fat man." Beams of deadly radiance flashed from its eyes.
Something unseen in the air blocked the rays, which struck with such savage force that the very emptiness darkened. The fat moneylender staggered to keep his footing, thrust back under the weight of the magic that clawed and tore at his shields.
The eye tyrant screamed in fresh rage – was every puling human protected against all his powers? – and lashed out repeatedly with spells and thrusting eye beams. The ground shook anew, and Mirt disappeared down a sliding mound of rubble as stones broke free from buildings all around and plunged to the streets. As Asper crouched low and scrambled forward, a balcony broke off a large mansion to her left and crashed to its iron-gated forecourt, splitting paving stones.
A stone shard whirled out of nowhere and laid her cheek open with the ease of a slicing razor. Asper hissed at the close call and put a hand up to shield her face, spreading her fingers to see Mirt struggling along like a man battling his way into the face of a gale-force wind. Blackness sparked and roiled around him as his shields slowly melted away – soon they would surely fail, and he would be blasted to a rain of blood… and she would lose him, forever.
There was only one way she could help, and it might mean her life. Thrown away vainly, too, if she fouled up the lone chance she'd get. Asper swallowed, tossed her head to draw breath and blow errant hairs from her eyes, and slapped the hilt of her sword so that the rune carved there would be smeared with the gore still leaking from her torn fingers. She felt its familiar ridges, slick and sticky with her blood, and nodded in satisfaction. Turning herself carefully to face the raging eye tyrant, she firmly whispered two words aloud.
The sword shuddered in her hands and then bucked, and she clung to it grimly as the rune's power was unleashed. It blazed away into nothingness as the sword dragged her up into the air and flung her forward. Eerie silence fell.
She was invisible now, she knew, springing up into the air on a one-way vault that would end in a bone-shattering encounter with the cavern wall or a sickening plunge to the ground if she judged wrongly.
The beholder hadn't noticed her, it was still lashing her lord with futile gazes and hurled spells as she rose out of the flashing and trembling air, passing up and over the monster-now!
The rune's power winked out in obedience to her will, and Asper found herself falling, sword first, as Mirt's roars and the excited shouts of the watching Skulkans rushed back around her. Straight down at the curving, segmented body of the eye tyrant she plunged, headed for just behind the squirming forest of its eyestalks. Asper spread her legs and braced herself for the landing-she'd have only a bare breath to strike before it flung her away.
She'd mixed the stoneclaw sap and creeper gum herself, and spread it on the soles of her boots more thickly than most thieves, miners, and sailors would. It had seen her through more catwalk and rooftop landings on this foray than she cared to think about just now, and if it served her just once more…
With solid thumps, Asper's boots struck the beholder's body, and the blade in her hands flashed once and back again before she'd even caught her balance. Almost cut through, an eyestalk flopped and thrashed beside her, spattering her with stinging yellow-green gore as another eye turned her way. Her boots found purchase on the curving body plates, and Asper lunged desperately, putting her sword tip through the questing eye and shaking violently to drag the steel free before another orb could bathe her in its deadly gaze.
Three of the eyestalks were turning, like slow serpents, and the beholder was rolling over to fling her off. Asper kicked out at one eye, as her balance went, and flailed with her blade at another. She fell hard on the bony plates of the monster's body, arm wrapped around an eyestalk. She clung to it with one hand and drove the quillons of her blade into the questing orb that came curling at her. Milky fluid burst forth, drenching her. Spitting out the reeking slime, Asper grimly slashed at another eye. Then she was falling, the beholder's bony bulk no longer under her.
Stones rushed up to meet her, and Asper tucked herself around her sword, trying to roll. There was no time, and with numbing force, she crashed into what was left of a wall, and then reeled back helplessly. Mists swirled in front of her eyes, and a new wetness on her chin told where she'd bitten through her lip.
Mirt was roaring out her name and sprinting toward her, arms spread to embrace her. Would his failing shields protect them both?
Not from this death.
The beholder's large central eye was a rent, shriveled ruin, milky liquid dripping from a slash in the sightless bulge, but the smaller eyes on their stalks glittered with maddened rage. They stared at her, growing swiftly nearer. The charging monster would either ram her into the stones and crush the life from her, or roll over at the last instant to shred her with its fangs- teeth adorning a jagged mouth quite large enough to swallow her.
Asper shuddered, shook her head to clear it, and raised the gore-streaming blade she still held. Mirt came gasping up to her, stout sword raised-and the beholder's eyes vanished behind its own bulk. It rolled over to reveal the gaping maw that would devour her.
A giant among its own kind and armed with spells that they lacked, magic enough to overmatch many a human mage, Xuzoun had been contemptuously overconfident. It was always a mistake with humans, he vaguely remembered an older tyrant telling him once.
It would take many spells and long, long months in hiding to regain what had been lost in a few moments of red, reaving pain… but first to still the hands that had done this, forever!
Mirt fetched up against Asper, panting. "Are ye mad, lass? Yon-"