In the distance, roiling mists flickered ruby-red, and shone green for a moment longer. In that moment, two silent, dark-robed figures strode out of the emerald rift. The next moment the mists were white again, but the two newcomers were still there, striding toward the Knights.
"More liches," Merith said with disgust, seeing noseless faces that were half withered flesh and half yellowed bone. The two tall once-men loomed up and long, gaunt arms reached for him.
The elf hacked aside one arm with his thrumming long sword, and struck aside the clawlike reaching fingers of the other with his dagger. As the second lich leaned in to rake at his face, Florin's humming blade thrust over Merith's shoulder. Jhessail ducked down and out from between them, to shear off fingers and send their owner reeling away.
"They're not even trying to work spells," Jhess murmured, hefting her dagger and peering into the mists all around for signs of other attackers.
The two liches reached for Merith again with the dogged mindlessness the Knights usually saw in shuffling tomb-zombies. Baleful eyes glared out of their palms.
Jhessail drew a long stabbing-bodkin from its sheath down the back seam of one of her boots and put it through one of those eyes as Florin tangled the fingers of that lich's hand in his blade.
The eye of the other spat something at her that turned into flickering, short-lived silver flames.
She gave those wriggling tongues a brittle smile and said, "Well, at least it's not just me."
"Useful lore," Florin agreed, as his blade slashed one way and Merith's sliced another-and the head of a lich toppled and rolled through scudding mists.
The decapitated undead bent to retrieve its lost part- and Merith sprang into the air and kicked its bent-over shoulders with all his might, hurling it back into the other lich. They fell in a softly-thudding tangle together, and he and Florin pounced on them, hacking like butchers in a frantic hurry. Glancing only fleetingly at their viciousness, Jhessail stayed between the thickened strands that were Dove and Elminster, casting glances into the mist.
Almost immediately there came another bright red flash in the mists right behind Florin. Jhessail cried a warning, and the ranger whirled and drove his long sword into another lich, just as it stepped out of an emerald rent in the drifting mists.
It clawed the air, flung up a hand in which an eye was opening, and Florin's backswing cut that hand into ruin. Shards of dry flesh, dust, and tumbling fingers sprayed back into the lich's silently-snarling face.
Merith whirled from his completed butchery to chop Florin's lich down, muttering, "No spells, and not a word do they speak! This seems… unsubtle for Larloch. Too stumble-headed."
Florin nodded. They dismembered their silent foe, turned its remains over with their swordpoints to peer in vain for items of interest, and hastened back to Jhessail.
"Far more fumbling than Larloch's reputation suggests," Florin agreed, as they turned back-to-back once more. "And why offer themselves to our steel so? Without their spells, we can destroy them readily enough. Why attack us? If they're compelled, whoever commands them must be slow-witted indeed!"
There was another red flash to Jhessail's left, and another to her right-and two more liches strode forward. The more distant one winked out of sight again, even as another two appeared, not far from Merith.
"Huh," the elf grunted, "this is more what I'd been expecting. Perhaps he's just been testing us."
"Costly way to test a foe," Florin commented, lunging out from the cluster of Knights to hack at a startled lich's arm, and drawing smoothly back before it could even start to reel.
Jhessail frowned. "Perhaps that's just it. Impress our livers out of us, as we gasp at how many liches the foe sending them can afford to lose."
"That's minstrels' thinking," Merith said, holding off a glaring lich with his sword and kicking it hard in the belly-if it still had a belly-to send it stumbling away. "Taunt and gloat time. Why impress someone you're going to slay?"
More liches stepped out of rifts all around the Knights-a dozen or more-and they were joined by a baelnorn, tall, gaunt, and bewildered. It stared all around in seeming anger, and stumbled toward the Knights, shuffling reluctantly. As it came, it grimaced, convulsed, and trembled, murmuring something inaudible and visibly struggling.
"At war with itself," Jhessail murmured.
"Fighting Larloch or whoever's bidding it, you mean," Florin murmured. He raised his thrumming-anew blade and took a step to one side so he and Merith-who stayed right where he was-could flank the guardian.
The baelnorn halted and gazed at them sadly, well aware of the peril prepared for it. Then, with a sigh, it reached over its shoulder and from an unseen baldric reluctantly drew forth some sort of long, very slender, black-bladed sword that bent readily-and nickered, but did not start to hum. Runes flashed up and down the sable length of that strange sword as the guardian swung the supple steel around itself at shoulder-height, as if limbering up for a fray.
As it stepped forward, blade still whirling, four liches were flanking it, bearing long knives in their hands.
Florin thrust his sword up high to parry that black blade-and ducked his body low, hurling himself into a forward roll even as sparks showered him. His arm went numb, and his sword shrieked in protest overhead.
A moment later he was slamming into the baelnorn's shins, and it was toppling, black blade whipping wildly- into the nearest lich. Florin rode it to the ground, twisting himself to bring what was left of his own sword around in a slash at the closest lich that had stood on the baelnorn's other flank.
He caught a momentary glimpse of a malevolent eye glaring out of one of its palms. Then he bounced atop two struggling bodies and the twisted stub of his sword could no longer reach the lich he'd swung at-and it bent forward.
Jhessail hurled herself through the air like a thrusting sword, feet first. The lich folded up around her with a startled crunch, and fell, leaving the lich beyond them both to stare down in what would have been bewilderment if there'd been enough flesh left on its skull to express any emotion.
Jhessail bounced to her feet out of the writhing limbs of the lich she'd felled, slashed the throat of the staring undead with speed and savagery enough to send its skull whipping around on its shoulders in an unsteady, bobbing wobble, and hissed at it, "Shall we dance? If'tis my death you seek, care to try again?"
It glared at her and brought its hands up, its fingers lengthening like talons, so she sliced each of them off, wondering how soon her blade would grow dull-or one of them would loom out of the mists and serve her the same way.
Behind her, Merith finished dismembering the lich she'd first taken down, and murmured, "Ladylove mine, would the flames your spells become burn lich-flesh, d'you think?"
Florin hacked at liches' shoulders, thighs, and necks, ignoring the baelnorn. He was aware of Merith doing the same, off to his left, and… the last lich left standing faded away. The baelnorn sank into nothingness with its black blade writhing like a lashing-tailed snake, and there was another gods-blasting disturbance in the white mist. A rift of dark, raging red laced about with flickering green radiance spilled down for all Faerun as if it was a glowing green waterfall.
In its wake was a bright green gulf-out of which strode yet another pair of liches. These stalked purposefully, menacing, their hands up to cradle glimmering eyes that glared out of their palms as they came.
The moment Florin met the gaze of one of those palm-eyes, he felt a sudden deep iciness stab through him as if driven like a thrusting sword blade.
He staggered, and found himself shuddering-an uncontrollable shiver that wrenched at him more and more slowly, his spasms becoming slow driftings, his limbs heavy, his…