Close to the top, she spotted a lamia that had completely encircled a fallen zombie, locked together in a twisted, lovers' embrace. She ignored them and tried to get past. The lamia, however, struck out with its tail and slashed Tazi's right leg, while it continued to constrict the corpse of the soldier. The venomous stinger cut through her leathers, and Tazi hissed in pain. She grabbed the spear with both her hands and drove it into the monster with a grunt of rage. The weapon not only impaled the lamia, but the zombie as well and pinned them both to the ground. The two squirmed there, caught like a strange multi-limbed bug on a dissecting table. She climbed on.
Tazi had to scale the last twenty feet of the nearly vertical face of the volcano. She struggled for handholds and could already feel her leg growing numb from the lamia's sting. She fleetingly thought of her climbing boots, abandoned somewhere back in Pyra-dos a thousand years ago. She wiped at her eyes to clear the sweat from them and rested her head against her outstretched arms for a brief pause. When she turned her head back, she could see the forces of Szass Tarn lined up across the field of battle like a hasty dyke before the floodwaters. She continued up the last few feet thinking that she might be Thay's last chance.
She pulled herself over the rim of the volcano and slid into it a few feet on her stomach, scratching her arms and face. Tazi scrambled to her feet as best she could with her game leg and looked directly into the face of hell. The volcano was framed by heavy clouds of smoke, glowing a dirty red from the fires. The heat was almost too much to bear and near the center of the fiery furnace, Eltab stood with his arms raised, great wings spread wide. In the heart of the tempest, he was speaking a strange language. To Tazi, it seemed older than time itself. But, judging from the way that the center of the volcano bubbled and boiled in time with his chants, Tazi believed he was trying to conjure up even more lava.
"Stop!" she shouted down to the tanar'ri lord, her voice almost lost in the maelstrom. But the demon-king heard her, and he slowly turned around.
His skin glistened like fresh blood, and his eyes were twin suns, blazing brightly. Tazi thought he had even grown taller, if such a thing was possible. His horns were longer and more gnarled, twisted high above his head. His huge wings flexed and twitched in excitement. Eltab gnashed his jaws and saliva hung like icicles from his huge canines.
"Ah," he rumbled at Tazi, "it is my savior."
"What?" Tazi demanded.
"I owe all of this," and he spread his arms even wider, "to you. I saw through that weakling's eyes that you were the one who brought the spells to the dark-haired woman. You gave her the key to my prison, and I am eternally grateful."
Tazi swayed as her leg started to fail her. She drew her sword and held it low at her side. "I'm here to put an end to this," she said gravely.
The demon looked at her through slitted eyes. "I should strike you dead," he told her, "but I see something in you, something familiar." He slowly strode up the slope of the volcano and stopped ten feet from where she stood. Since Tazi was closer to the rim of the crater, she was evenly sized with the tanar'ri lord. He passed his hand in the direction of her leg, and suddenly Tazi felt strength pour back into the limb.
"That is a small measure of my gratitude, woman. There is so much more than that in store for you if you want it," he promised her with the voice of a serpent.
"I don't want your gifts," she spat back at him.
"Are you so sure?" he asked her slyly. "I see you proudly bear the gifts from others such as myself." He gestured to Tarn's mark, and the crystal of Shar's she still wore about her neck. Steorf was right about the chain's strength, she thought absently.
"All I want is your head," she said in a low voice.
"Try and take it then."
Tazi charged at the beast as he waved his hand at her again. This time, however, there was no healing gift. Showers of fire streaked from his fingertips. Tazi realized there was no cover for her to use, and she raised her sword instinctively as a shield. To both their surprise, the eldritch weapon Tazi had stolen from Szass Tarn's armory absorbed most of the demon fire, though a spray of it skipped past the blade. She hissed in pain as her shoulder was scalded directly where the necromancer had left his sign, but she hardly felt it as she watched her sword glowing with Eltab's absorbed bolts. The glow diminished, and the blade was intact. She charged him again.
Eltab backed up, and he and Tazi began to circle around the rim of the volcano. Tazi was very aware that she could not move too close to the bubbling core for longer than a few moments because of the excruciating heat. The tanar'ri lord closed his eyes and flung out his right arm. He roared in pain as an extension of his bones burst through the webbing between his claws and grew to a length of four feet. He fashioned a sword of sorts from his own body, bits of marrow and tendon dangling from it, slick with his blood. Suitably armed, he advanced on Tazi.
They crossed swords, and Tazi knew immediately that she was outmatched in size and strength. When she blocked one of his thrusts, she felt the vibration of the force through her entire arm and shoulder. She realized that if she was going to stop him, she was going to have to find a way to outwit him. Tazi knew her life was forfeit regardless. With a cry of anger, she lunged forward and stabbed at him at every turn. The demon-king matched her stroke for stroke.
Keeping one eye on the bubbling core to her right, Tazi thought it was churning even more, and she realized she hadn't felt a tremor for several minutes.
It's building up, she thought to herself. The demon sliced her across the forearm, and the wound burned as if it had been doused in acid. As Eltab started to press the advantage, Tazi vaguely wondered why he only relied on his physical strength and didn't use more of his sorcerous powers against her. She didn't think Tarn's sword could protect her from much more of it. And as she backpedaled toward the core, Tazi started to wonder if she had been mistaken from the start. Had Eltab been strengthening the forces within the volcano, or had he been feeding off of them instead?
She dodged a gurgle of lava at her feet and managed to get behind the tanar'ri lord, away from the core.
"Do you wish to fight," he mocked her, "or do you prefer to dance?"
"I prefer for you to die," she replied, realizing how foolish she sounded.
As she engaged him again, Tazi saw that on the opposite side of the crater, several of the Blooded Ones were scrambling up. Eltab had not yet seen them. Tazi was caught unaware, though, and as a bit of the superheated rock crumbled under her, she tumbled down. Eltab leaned over, and for a bizarre moment Tazi was sure he was going to help her to her feet. Instead, he scooped up a §mall handful of lava and threw the molten stuff at her. She vainly tried to raise her sword against the assault with little success. The weapon stopped some of it, but most of the deadly slag caught Tazi along her right side and leg.
"What I give," the tanar'ri lord told her as he pointed to her now re-injured limb, "I take away."
Tazi lay still. In spite of everything, she held her sword more out of instinct than conscious thought. The lava flowed down the blade and though it emanated its eerie light, the sword could not absorb the heat a second time. The metal burned down as well, and Tazi dropped the blade before it could scald her. As the flaming sword fell to the ground, the initial, numbing shock Tazi suffered wore off. She howled in agonizing pain and writhed along the crater rim. Eltab raised his bone-sword for the killing stroke.