The friends had settled their mounts into a more comfortable, though still swift, pace. Free of their bonds, with the dawn breaking before them and no apparent pursuit behind them, they had eased up a bit. Bruenor fiddled with his helmet, trying to push the latest dent out far enough for him to get the thing back on his head. Even Wulfgar, so shaken a short time before when he had heard the chanting of the shaman, began to relax.
Only Drizzt, ever wary, was not so easily convinced of their escape. And it was the drow who first sensed the approach of danger.
In the dark cities, the black elves often dealt with otherworldly beings, and over the many centuries they had bred into their race a sensitivity for the magical emanations of such creatures. Drizzt stopped his horse suddenly and wheeled about.
“What do ye hear?” Bruenor asked him.
“I hear nothing,” Drizzt answered, his eyes darting about for some sign. “But something is there.”
Before they could respond, the gray cloud rushed down from the sky and was upon them. Their horses bucked and reared in uncontrollable terror and in the confusion none of the friends could sort out what was happening. The Pegasus then formed right in front of Regis and the halfling felt a deathly chill penetrate his bones. He screamed and dropped from his mount.
Bruenor, riding beside Regis, charged the ghostly form fearlessly. But his descending axe found only a cloud of smoke where the apparition had been. Then, just as suddenly, the ghost was back, and Bruenor, too, felt the icy cold of its touch. Tougher than the halfling, he managed to hold to his pony.
“What?” he cried out vainly to Drizzt and Wulfgar.
Aegis-fang whistled past him and continued on at the target. But the Pegasus was only smoke again and the magical warhammer passed unhindered through the swirling cloud.
In an instant, the spirit was back, swooping down upon Bruenor. The dwarf’s pony spun down to the ground in a frantic effort to scramble away from the thing.
“You cannot hit it!” Drizzt called after Wulfgar, who went rushing to the dwarf’s aid. “It does not exist fully on this plane!”
Wulfgar’s mighty legs locked his terrified horse straight and he struck as soon as Aegis-fang returned to his hands.
But again he found only smoke, before his blow.
“Then how?” he yelled to Drizzt, his eyes darting around to spot the first signs of the reforming spirit.
Drizzt searched his mind for answers. Regis was still down, lying pale and unmoving on the field, and Bruenor, though he had not been too badly injured in his pony’s fall, appeared dazed and shivering from the chill of unearthly cold. Drizzt grasped at a desperate plan. He pulled the onyx statue of the panther from his pouch and called for Guenhwyvar.
The ghost returned, attacking with renewed fury. It descended upon Bruenor first, mantling the dwarf with its cold wings. “Damn ye back to the Abyss!” Bruenor roared in brave defiance.
Rushing in, Wulfgar lost all sight of the dwarf, except for the head of his axe bursting harmlessly through the smoke.
Then the barbarian’s mount halted in its tracks, refusing, against all efforts, to move any closer to the unnatural beast. Wulfgar leaped from his saddle and charged in, crashing right through the cloud before the ghost could reform, his momentum carrying both him and Bruenor out the other side of the smoky mantle. They rolled away and looked back, only to find that the ghost had disappeared altogether again.
Bruenor’s eyelids drooped heavily and his skin held a ghastly hue of blue, and for the first time in his life, his indomitable spirit had no gumption for the fight. Wulfgar, too, had suffered the icy touch in his pass through the ghost, but he was still more than ready for another round with the thing.
“We can’t fight it!” Bruenor gasped through his chattering teeth. “Here for a strike, it is, but gone when we hit back!”
Wulfgar shook his head defiantly. “There is a way!” he demanded, though he had to concede the dwarf’s point. “But my hammer cannot destroy clouds!”
Guenhwyvar appeared beside its master and crouched low, seeking the nemesis that threatened the drow.
Drizzt understood the cat’s intentions. “No!” he commanded. “Not here.” The drow had recalled something that Guenhwyvar had done several months earlier. To save Regis from the falling stone of a crumbling tower, Guenhwyvar had taken the halfling on a journey through the planes of existence. Drizzt grabbed onto the panther’s thick coat.
“Take me to the land of the ghost,” he instructed. “To its own plane, where my weapons will bite deeply into its substantial being.”
The ghost appeared again as Drizzt and the cat faded into their own cloud.
“Keep swinging!” Bruenor told his companion. “Keep it as smoke so’s it can’t get at ye!”
“Drizzt and the cat have gone!” Wulfgar cried.
“To the land of the ghost,” Bruenor explained.
It took Drizzt a long moment to set his bearings. He had come into a place of different realities, a dimension where everything, even his own skin, assumed the same hue of gray, objects being distinguishable only by a thin waver of black that outlined them. His depth perception was useless, for there were no shadings, and no discernible light sources to use as a guide. And he found no footing, nothing tangible beneath him, nor could he even know which way was up or down. Such concepts didn’t seem to fit here.
He did make out the shifting outlines of the Pegasus as it jumped between planes, never fully in one place or the other. He tried to approach it and found propulsion to be an act of the mind, his body automatically following the instructions of his will. He stopped before the shifting lines, his magical scimitar poised to strike when the target fully appeared.
Then the outline of the Pegasus was complete and Drizzt plunged his blade into the black waver that marked its form. The line shifted and bent, and the outline of the scimitar shivered as well, for here even the properties of the steel blade took on a different composition. But the steel proved the stronger and the scimitar resumed its curved edge and punctured the line of the ghost. There came a sudden tingling in the grayness, as though Drizzt’s cut had disturbed the equilibrium of the plane, and the ghost’s line trembled in a shiver of agony.
Wulfgar saw the smoke cloud puff suddenly, almost reforming into the ghost shape. “Drizzt!” he called out to Bruenor. “He has met the ghost on even terms!”
“Get ye ready, then!” Bruenor replied anxiously, though he knew that his own part in the fight had ended. “The drow might bring it back to ye long enough for a hit!” Bruenor clutched at his sides, trying to hug the deathly cold out of his bones, and stumbled over to the halfling’s unmoving form.
The ghost turned on Drizzt, but the scimitar struck again. And Guenhwyvar jumped into the fray, the cat’s great claws tearing into the black outline of its enemy. The Pegasus reeled away from them, understanding that it held no advantage against foes on its own plane. Its only recourse was a retreat back to the material plane.
Where Wulfgar waited.
As soon as the cloud resumed its shape, Aegis-fang hammered into it. Wulfgar felt a solid strike for just a moment, and knew that he had hit his mark. Then the smoke blew away before him.
The ghost was back with Drizzt and Guenhwyvar, again facing their relentless stabs and rakes. It shifted back again, and Wulfgar struck quickly. Trapped with no retreat, the ghost took hits from both planes. Every time it materialized before Drizzt, the drow noted that its outline came thinner and less resistant to his thrusts. And every time the cloud reformed before Wulfgar, its density had diminished. The friends had won, and Drizzt watched in satisfaction as the essence of the Pegasus slipped free of the material form and floated away through the grayness.