The drow kept up the roll and pressed the advantage, driving Athrogate ever backward, both combatants knowing that one slip by Drizzt would do no more than put them back at an even posture, but one slip by Athrogate would likely end the fight in short order.
The dwarf wasn’t laughing anymore.
Drizzt pressed him even harder, growling with every rolling swing, backing Athrogate back down the alley the way Drizzt had come, away from the palace.
Drizzt caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, a small form rolling limply off the roof. Without a whimper, without a cry of alarm, Regis, tumbled to the ground and lay still.
Athrogate seized the distraction for his advantage, and cut back and to his right, then smashed his morningstar across to bat the drow’s chopping scimitar out far to the side with such force—and an added magical explosion—that Drizzt had to disengage fully and scamper to the opposite wall to simply hold onto the blade.
Drizzt got a look at Regis, lying awkwardly twisted in the alleyway’s gutter. Not a sound, not a squirm, not a whimper of pain….
He was somewhere past pain; it seemed to Drizzt as if his spirit had already left his battered body.
And Drizzt couldn’t go to him. Drizzt, who had chosen to return to Luskan, to stand with Deudermont, couldn’t do anything but look at his dear friend.
At sea, it’s said that danger can be measured by the scurry of the rats, and if that model held true, then the battle between Robillard and Arklem Greeth in the hold of Sea Sprite ranked right up alongside beaching the boat on the back of a dragon turtle.
All manner of evocations flew out between the dueling wizards, fire and ice, magical energy of different colors and inventive shapes. Robillard tried to keep his spells more narrow in scope, aiming just for Arklem Greeth, but the lich was as full of hatred for Sea Sprite herself as he was for his old peer in the Hosttower. Robillard threw missiles of solid magic and acidic darts. Greeth responded with forked lightning bolts and fireballs, filling the hold with flame.
Robillard’s work on the hull with magical protections and wards, and all manner of alchemical mixtures, had been as complete and as brilliant as the work of any wizard or team of wizards had ever put on any ship, but he knew with every mighty explosion that Arklem Greeth tested those wards to their fullest and beyond.
With every fireball, a few more residual flames burned for just a few heartbeats longer. Every successive lightning bolt thumped the planking out a bit wider, and a little more water managed to seep in.
Soon enough, the wizards stood among a maelstrom of destruction, water up to their ankles, Sea Sprite rocking hard with every blast.
Robillard knew he had to get Arklem Greeth out of his ship. Whatever the cost, whatever else might happen, he had to move the spell duel to another place. He launched into a mighty spell, and as he cast it, he threw himself at Greeth, thinking that both he and his adversary would be projected into the Astral Plane to finish the insanity.
Nothing happened, for the archmage arcane had already applied a dimensional lock to the hold.
Robillard staggered as he realized that he was not flying on another plane of existence, as he had anticipated. He threw his arms up defensively as he righted himself, for Arklem Greeth brought in a gigantic disembodied fist that punched at him with the force of a titan.
The blow didn’t break through the stoneskin dweomer of mighty Robillard, but it did send him flying back to the other end of the hold. He hit the wall hard, but felt not a thing, landing lightly on his feet and launching immediately into another lightning bolt.
Arklem Greeth, too, was already into a new casting, and his spell went off right before Robillard’s, creating a summoned wall of stone halfway between the combatants.
Robillard’s lightning bolt hit that stone with such tremendous force that huge chunks flew, but the bolt also rebounded into the wizard’s face, throwing him again into the wall behind him.
And he had exhausted his wards. He felt that impact, and felt, too, the sizzle of his own lightning bolt. His heart palpitated, his hair stood on end. He kept his awareness just enough to realize that Sea Sprite was listing badly as a result of the tremendous weight of Arklem Greeth’s summoned wall. From up above he heard screaming, and he knew that more than one of Sea Sprite’s crew had fallen overboard as a result.
Across the way, beyond the wall, Arklem Greeth cackled with delight, and in looking at the wall, Robillard understood that the worst was yet to come. For Greeth had offset it on the floor and had lined it along with the length and not the breadth of the ship, but he had not anchored it!
So as Sea Sprite listed under the great weight, so too leaned the wall, and it was beginning to tip.
Robillard realized that he couldn’t stop it, so he found a moment of intense concentration instead and focused on his most-hated enemy. The wall fell, clearing the ground between the wizards, and Robillard let fly another devastating lightning blast.
So intent was he on his stone wall tumbling into Sea Sprite’s side planking, crashing through the wood, that Arklem Greeth never saw the bolt coming. He flew backward under the power of the stroke and hit the wall even as the side of the hull broke open and Luskan Harbor rushed in.
Robillard beat the rush of water, launching himself upon Arklem Greeth. Energy crackled through his hands, one electrical discharge after another.
Arklem Greeth fought back physically, tearing at Robillard with undead hands.
They held their death grip on each other as the sea turned Sea Sprite farther on her side, taking her down into the harbor. Spell after spell leaped from Robillard’s fingers into the lich, blasting away at his magical defenses, and when those were finally beaten, as was his very life-force, still Arklem Greeth merely held on.
The lich didn’t need to breathe, but Robillard surely did.
The pitch of the sinking ship sent them out through the hole in the hull, tumbling amidst the debris, rocks, and weeds of Luskan Harbor.
Robillard felt his ears pop under the pressure and knew his lungs wouldn’t be far behind. But he held on, determined to end the struggle at whatever cost. The sight of Sea Sprite, the wreckage of his beloved Sea Sprite, spurred him on and he resisted the urge to break free of Arklem Greeth and focused instead on continuing his electrical barrage on the lich—even though every powerful discharge stung him as well in the conducting water.
It seemed like a dozen, dozen spells. It seemed like his lungs would surely burst. It seemed like Arklem Greeth was mocking him.
But the lich simply let go, and the face the surprised Robillard looked into was dead, not undead.
Robillard shoved away and kicked off the bottom, determined not to die in the arms of the hideous Arklem Greeth. Instinctively he clawed for the surface, and saw the water growing lighter above him.
But he knew he wouldn’t make it.
“Sea Sprite!” more than one sailor of Thrice Lucky, and of every other ship moored in the area, cried out in astonishment. To those men and women, friend and enemy of Deudermont’s ship alike, the sight before them seemed impossible.
The waves took Sea Sprite and smashed her up on a line of rocks, just one rail of her glorious hull and her three distinctive masts protruding from the dark waters of Luskan Harbor.
It could not be. In the minds of those who knew the ship as friend or foe, the loss of Sea Sprite proved no less traumatic than the disintegration of the Hosttower of the Arcane, a sudden and unimaginable change in the landscape that had shaped their lives.