“I-we-mislike the look of your magic,” Islif told him, pointing with her sword at the racing emerald glows. “If I stick a sword into that, what will befall me?”
“Ah. Well.” Whisper’s smile was colder this time. “You ask the wrong question, wench. Your words should be: If I fail to stick my sword into that, what will befall me?” He gestured.
The air in front of Whisper suddenly sang and shimmered. Though the Swords could still see him clearly, he now stood behind a wall of awakened magic.
“Know that I am less than pleased with you,” he announced, and calmly cast another spell. The three green glows brightened.
Agannor was pleading now, crying to the Swords for help. Bey and the Zhent in leathers were saving breath for their doomed struggles to win free of the magic that held them.
And was now drifting across the room, carrying them toward… the three paintings.
Tiny green lightning bolts crackled a greeting to the portraits, stabbing forth as each mantrapping radiance floated up to a painting… and into it.
The emerald webs melted away, and the painted monsters started moving, reaching forth hungrily for… Agannor, Bey, and the Zhent, who tumbled across the paintings as if rolling and running across a room, silently shouting in fear as they desperately swung swords and daggers.
The Swords watched them die bloodily, ravaged and battered. It took but a breath or two, as Whisper watched with his smile widening. “Eat, my guardians,” he murmured. “Eat, and be content. I promise you-”
At the sound of his voice, the three beasts turned, glared at him-and boiled forth from the paintings, emerging into the room.
Whisper’s jaw dropped, but he stammered out a swift incantation, his voice sharp with alarm.
The umber hulk, foremost of the three monsters heading for him, shook itself as his spell washed over it, and turned toward the Swords of Eveningstar.
And charged, the club-waving ettin and the chuul following it.
“Naed,” Islif whispered, hefting her sword. “We’re going to die.”
Jaw tightening, she raised her blade to launch a charge of her own-and the umber hulk stiffened, came to such an abrupt halt it tottered, and whirled around to face Whisper once more. And charged again.
Peering down at his scrying orb, Sarhthor of the Zhentarim smiled, and cast another spell.
Whisper the mage drew a wand from his belt and stood warily behind his shield, watching the monsters come for him.
As the umber hulk rushed closer, Whisper’s shield grew brighter, until it looked like a solid wall of spitting, snarling sparks. The umber hulk shuddered and slowed, as if wading on into the magic was both painful and took great effort. Whisper started to smile.
Then the shield abruptly vanished, and the umber hulk was reaching triumphantly for the horrified mage, who gaped at it in disbelief. Its claws had almost closed on his face when he scrambled back and triggered his wand.
Fire splashed over the monster, leaving it staggering and darkening. As it shuddered and slowed, the chuul opened its huge claws and rushed at Whisper from his other side.
He whirled and fed it a burst of flame, retreating quickly as the umber hulk pressed forward. The chuul shuddered but kept coming; only the ettin hung back with growls of malevolent fear.
Pennae watched the Zhent with narrowed eyes, hefting a dagger in her hand-and when Whisper turned once more to bathe the umber hulk in fire, she threw her knife hard and fast.
It flashed back firelight as it spun, and Whisper saw it and shied back. The umber hulk lunged forward, its great forearms reaching; Pennae’s dagger struck one of them and spun harmlessly away.
Whisper blasted the umber hulk again, a great burst of flame enveloping the beast-but even as he aimed his wand to unleash that fire, Pennae threw a second blade.
This one struck home, slicing Whisper’s hand and sending the wand tumbling away. Which was when the chuul’s claw caught at the mage’s other shoulder, plucking him into an awkward, hopping turn.
Its other claw thrust forward, but Whisper hissed a frantic incantation and flung himself back up the steps.
In his wake, bolts of chain lightning arced and played the length of the chuul’s body. It lurched sideways, wisps of smoke curling from its joints, its claws spasming with an eerie clattering. The umber hulk shouldered it aside-but Whisper was already fleeing.
He raced for three strides before the ettin’s hurled club took his feet out from under him, and he slammed hard into the wall.
The umber hulk reached for him again, roaring-and Whisper plucked something dark and tiny from his belt and threw it down the monster’s open mouth, throwing himself to one side.
The umber hulk exploded, spraying the reeling chuul with razor-sharp shards of brown body plates that tore it open in a dozen places, and snatching the ettin off its feet with the force of the explosion.
The ettin slammed into the floor, slid along stone twisting and roaring in pain, and when it skidded to a stop, staggered to its feet again and lurched forward.
By then the Swords were past it, trotting up the stairs with their weapons ready.
Whisper was on his feet, leaning on the wall and glaring at them.
Islif ran right at him, Pennae and a pale-faced Florin not far behind. The Zhentarim raised a bleeding hand to work a spell.
Snarling, Islif flung herself at him, waving her sword wildly, hoping to ruin his casting.
She landed just out of sword-reach, and threw herself forward again, her blade slashing viciously. Whisper’s body flickered, vanished-and even as she cursed and hacked the empty air where he’d been, reappeared just a stride away.
He saw her and started to scream. Her first slash was at his mouth, to spoil any spell.
Then Pennae arrived, driving home a dagger hilt-deep under the mage’s ribs, and following it with another into his throat.
Jhessail joined in the butchering, and the wizard reeled and slumped, fountaining blood in many places, to bounce once and lie still, his blood a pool of swift-spreading crimson around him.
Islif promptly sprang back across it to greet the ettin, Doust and Semoor whirling around with curses and ready maces to stand with her.
Frantic in their fear, the Swords swarmed the foul-smelling beast, thrusting, hacking, and clubbing it from all sides. It soon toppled like a felled tree, crashing down atop Whisper.
Who, forever staring, moved not a finger.
In Maglor’s dusty back room, far away in Eveningstar, a gasping, bleeding man staggered to a bench, clung to it long enough to catch his breath, snatched a dusty cloth off Maglor’s scrying orb, and passed his hand over it.
It awakened with a soft and silent glow, warming his face even as a scene from afar spun into sharp coherence in its depths.
Still breathing raggedly, Whisper the mage watched Maglor reel as blades struck ruthlessly home. He saw the screaming apothecary die in his place-and whispered fervent thanks to Bane and Mystra both for the long-prepared spell that switched his body with that of Maglor, and the even older spell that gave Maglor the face and appearance of Whisper.
As the Swords killed the ettin in the depths of the orb, Whisper turned his back on it and stumbled away, feeling sick and afraid. It was the first time he’d been truly frightened in… yes, years.
Pale, eerie radiance flared, banishing the gloom of the cold, dark tomb, as Old Ghost reared up, his eyes blazing in fury.
“ Now you go too far,” it whispered to the silence. “Maglor was a worm, yes, but he was my worm, his life mine to spend at a time and place of my choosing. Whisper, your life is forfeit.”
The wraith stormed out of the tomb, chill fire moving with swift purpose.
The war wizard finished casting, let his hands fall to his sides, and sighed.