him.
The fighting beyond him was of no interest. And the room he used to his advantage. So swift, so agile, Drizzt accepted the rolling floor rather than try to fight against it. When the floor pitched left, left was the way he went. He rode it, his feet moving back and forth, sideways and sidelong, whichever way was necessary to keep him in perfect balance and speed him along. And if the fight called for him to go opposite the pitch of the floor, he used the roll of stone to grant him lift as he pitched back the other way in a leap or somersault.
His devilish opponent, no stranger to wild battle, did well to hold its footing in the shaking and trembling, but as Drizzt fell into the rhythms of the primordial’s angry gyrations, the legion devil could not keep up.
The drow began not only to react perfectly to the quake, but to anticipate its next movement. Confident that he was quick enough to correct if his guess proved wrong, Drizzt worked his scimitars up high in front of his face, rolling his wrists over each other to create a circle of angled downward slashes. As the fiend brought its shield to block, the drow just angled to the side a bit more, keeping the devil on its heels, forcing it to use both shield and sword defensively.
Further to his left Drizzt turned, bending the fiend, turning the fiend, and when the floor rolled under their feet, left to right, Drizzt used the momentum to step back fast to the right, then used the cresting wave of stone beneath his feet to launch himself. Flipping back to the left, even as the fiend, caught in the flow and expecting the reversal, the drow was fast turning the other way.
Right over the sweeping blade went Drizzt, landing in perfect balance on shaky ground, and with the devil’s side exposed, shield and sword back the other way. He struck deeply, but only once—it was Icingdeath that bit into the creature of fire. It only had to bite once.
Drizzt held his pose for several heartbeats, the devil immobilized by agony on the end of his blade, hot blood bubbling from the wound. The drow gave a few slight twists and tugs to tear at the fiend’s organs, then he yanked the blade out.
The legion devil crumbled to the floor and sizzled away into black smoke and a mist of boiling blood.
Drizzt spun away to help Dahlia, but stopped short and watched in admiration as the elf spun and struck, her advance coming in a series of turns, and through every one and from every angle came a whirling strike from a flail, some spouting lightning, others just smashing with crushing force. The legion devil couldn’t match her speed and precision.
She hit it again and again, and by the time she played out her spinning charge, that devil, too, crumbled to the floor.
She looked at Drizzt, and the two exchanged smiles and nods.
“Me king?” Drizzt heard behind him, and he spun, shaking his head in disbelief. He looked to the small tunnel before turning to the dwarf, and so by the time he did regard his old friend, that dwarf had already picked up on the cue and started away at full, rambling speed.
Drizzt and Dahlia started to follow, but hadn’t gone two steps before a host of Ashmadai descended upon them.
More to kill.
His shield clipped the mace, stealing some of its strength, but still it came across with enough force to take Bruenor’s one-horned helmet from his head, and to gash his scalp in the process.
But the dwarf got the better of that particular trade, his mighty axe crashing against the pit fiend’s ribs, opening a garish wound.
They came together, titans wrestling once more, head-butting, biting, and thrashing.
But the fiend had more weapons. Its tail, as if acting of its own volition, whipped about and banged repeatedly against the back of Bruenor’s armor, seeking a seam. Its bony, ridged arms ground in painfully against the dwarf, tearing the skin of his arms. And its mouth, so wide, so full of long teeth …
Bruenor looked up and into its open mouth and up farther to those wild eyes, as the fiend bit down at him. Instead of dodging, though, the dwarf responded with his own charge, his powerful legs driving him upward, his forehead snapping forward to meet the grasping jaws.
Blood poured over his face—his own blood, Bruenor realized, but he knew,