The dwarven wedge seemed unstoppable, but when the illithids turned their way and loosed their devastating mental barrage, the wedge wobbled and fell apart, stunned dwarves staggering aimlessly.
"Oh, there they are!" Harkle squealed from the third tier of the Undercity, more than sixty feet from the floor.
Bella don DelRoy's face crinkled with disgust as she looked at mind flayers for the first time. She and Harkle had expected the creatures; Drizzt had told them about Matron Baenre's "pet." Despite her disgust, Bella, like all Harpells, was more curious than afraid. The illithids had been expected—she just hadn't expected them to be so damned ugly!
"Are you sure of this?" the diminutive woman asked Harkle, who had devised the strategy for fighting the squishy-headed things. Her good eye revealed her true hopes, though, for while she talked to Harkle, it remained fixated on the ugly illithids.
"Would I have gone to all the trouble of learning to cast from the different perspective?" Harkle answered, seeming wounded by her doubts.
"Of course," Bella replied. "Well, those dwarves do need our help.»
"Indeed.»
A quick chant by the daughter of DelRoy brought a shimmering blue, door-shaped field right before the two wizards.
"After you," Bella said politely.
"Oh, rank before beauty," Harkle answered, waving his hand toward the door, indicating that Bella should load.
"No time for wasting!" came a clear voice behind them, and surprisingly strong hands pressed against both Bella and Harkle's hips, heaving them both for the door. They went through together, and Fret, the tidy dwarf, pushed in right behind them.
The second door appeared on the floor, between the illithids and their stunned dwarven prey, and out popped the three dimensional travelers. Fret skidded to the side, trying to round up the vulnerable dwarves, while Harkle and Bella don DelRoy mustered their nerve and faced the octopus-headed creatures.
"I understand your anger," Harkle began, and he and his companion shuddered as a wave of mental energy rolled across their chests and shoulders and heads, leaving a wake of tingles.
"If I were as ugly as you…" Harkle continued, and a second wave came through.
"… I would be mean, too!" Harkle finished, and a third blast of energy came forth, followed closely by the illithids. Bella screamed and Harkle nearly fainted as the monstrous things pushed in close, tentacles latching onto cheeks and chins. One went straight up
Harkle's nose, in search of brain matter to devour.
"You are sure?" Bella cried out.
But Harkle, deep in the throes of his latest spell, didn't hear her. He didn't struggle against the illithid, for he didn't want the thing to jostle him too severely. It was hard enough to concentrate with wriggling tentacles burrowing under the skin of his face!
Those tentacles swelled now, extracting their prize.
An unmistakably sour look crossed the normally expressionless features of both the creatures.
Harkle's hands came up slowly, palms down, his thumbs touching and his other fingers spread wide. A flash of fire erupted from his hands, searing the confused illithid, burning its robes. It tried to pull away, and Harkle's facial skin bulged weirdly as the tentacles began to slide free.
Harkle was already moving with his next spell. He reached into his robes and extracted a dart, a leaf that had been mushed to powder, and a stringy, slimy thing, a snake's intestine, and squashed them all together as he completed the chant.
From that hand came forth a small bolt, shooting across the two feet to stick into the still-burning illithid's belly.
The creature gurgled something indecipherable and finally fell away, stumbling, grasping at its newest wound, for while the fires still nipped at it in places, this newest attack hurt more.
The enchanted bolt pumped acid into its victim.
Down went the illithid, still clutching at the leaking bolt. It had underestimated its enemy, and it telepathically sent that very mesage to its immediate companion, who already understood their error, and to Methil, deep in the caverns beside Matron Baenre.
Bella couldn't concentrate. Though her spell of polymorph had been perfect, her brain safely tucked away where the illithid could not find it, she simply couldn't concentrate with the squiggly tentacles probing around her skull. She berated herself, told herself that the daughter of DelRoy should be more in control.
She heard a rumbling sound, a cart rolling near, and opened her eyes to see Fret push the cart right up behind the illithid, a host of drow in pursuit. Holding his nerve, the tidy dwarf leaped atop the cart and drew out a tiny silver hammer.
"Let her go!" Fret cried, bringing the nasty little weapon to bear. To the dwarf's surprise, and disgust, his hammer sank into the
engaged illithid's bulbous head and ichor spewed forth, spraying the dwarf and staining his white robes.
Fret knew the drow were bearing down on him; he had resolved to take one attack on the illithid, then turn in defense against the dark elves. But all plans flew away in the face of that gory mess, the one thing that could bring the tidy dwarf into full battle rage.
No woodpecker every hit a log as rapidly. Fret's hammer worked so as to seem a blur, and each hit sent more of the illithid's brain matter spraying, which only heightened the tidy dwarf's frenzy.
Still, that would have been the end of Fret, of all of them, had not Harkle quickly enacted his next spell. He focused on the area in front of the charging drow, threw a bit of lard into the air, and called out his next dweomer.
The floor became slick with grease, and the charge came to a stumbling, tumbling end.
Its head smashed to dripping pulp, the illithid slumped before Bella, the still-clinging tentacles bringing her low as well. She grabbed frantically at those tentacles and yanked them free, then stood straight and shuddered with pure revulsion.
"I told you that was the way to fight mind flayers!" Harkle said happily, for it had been his plan every step of the way.
"Shut up," Bella said to him, her stomach churning. She looked all about, seeing enemies closing in from many directions. "And get us out of here!" she said.
Harkle looked at her, confused and a bit wounded by her disdain. The plan had worked, after all!
A moment later, Harkle, too, became more than a little frightened, as he came to realize that he had forgotten that last little detail, and had no spells left that would transport them back to the higher tiers.
"Ummm," he stammered, trying to find the words to best explain their dilemma.
Relieved he was, and Bella, too, when the dwarven wedge reformed about them, Fret joining the ranks.
"We'll get ye back up," the leader of the grateful dwarves promised, and on they rolled, once more burying everything in their path.
Even more destructive now was their march, for every so often
a blast of lightning or a line of searing fire shot out from their ranks as Harkle and Bella joined in the fun.
Still, Bella remained uncomfortable and wanted this all to end so that she could return to her normal physiology. Harkle had studied illithids intently, and knew as much about them as perhaps any wizard in all the Realms. Their mentally debilitating blasts were conical, he had assured her, and so, if he and she could get close, only the top half of their bodies would be affected.
Thus they had enacted the physical transformation enchantment, wherein Harkle and Bella appeared the same, yet had transfigured two areas of their makeup, their brains and their buttocks.
Harkle smiled at his cleverness as the wedge rolled on. Such a transformation had been a delicate thing, requiring many hours of study and preparation. But it had been worth the trouble, every second, the Harpell believed, recalling the sour looks on the ugly illithid faces!