blow, surely, and nothing from which the legion devil couldn’t quickly recover and still hold the advantage over the kneeling female.
Except that Kozah’s Needle wasn’t a simple metal pole, and the lightning energy that Dahlia had built up after her first release mostly remained, and the cloud that Dahlia had summoned was still above her head, teeming with energy.
A lightning bolt came down to her call, blasting into Kozah’s Needle, transferring through the metal staff and taking the weapon’s pent up energy with it. A great arc of power burst out the staff’s other end into the unwitting legion devil’s chest.
The beast flew away, ten strides or more. It landed feet first, but only for a brief moment as it continued to soar backward, crashing to the ground, sword flying from its grasp.
Dahlia leaped up and charged across. When she arrived, the legion devil was still on the ground, still jolting wildly from residual energy. In full stride, she planted the tip of Kozah’s Needle under the fiend’s chin and threw herself fully behind it, even lifting off the ground as she drove the weapon home.
She heard the crack of bone and felt the fiend go limp, though one limb or the other still twitched from the lightning.
Dahlia spun around and recognized immediately that she couldn’t get to Drizzt in time to help him.
Hadencourt had his back to the tree, and both the malebranche and Drizzt knew that the drow couldn’t exploit that to begin any type of offensive counter to the stabbing and slashing of the huge trident.
Drizzt, though, did use Hadencourt’s position to his advantage. He had one trick remaining, and now he executed it, calling upon his magical anklets to speed him. He leaped and spun to his left, daringly going right past Hadencourt, whose slash with the cumbersome trident couldn’t quite catch up to the sprinting drow. Out Drizzt went farther, and Hadencourt kept going in his turn, trident continuing its pursuit as the devil let go with his left hand and opened wide with his right, reaching far to the side like a hunting bird circling from on high.
He might have continued that turn, rolling off the tree, might have kept up to Drizzt and maintained his advantage.
But Drizzt knew better and his sly smile showed it, showed Hadencourt as surely as the thunder of hooves revealed the truth of the drow’s long and seemingly desperate dodge.
Hadencourt turned his gaze just in time to see the last speeding stride of Andahar, head down, horn in line.
The unicorn hit the malebranche at full speed and with tremendous force, rattling the tree behind Hadencourt, pinning the devil and puncturing him, the horn driving right through to hit the tree bark behind him.
Drizzt leaped forward and caught the trident’s shaft, preventing the devil from bringing it back to wound his beloved steed, but he needn’t have bothered, he realized, for there was no strength left in Hadencourt’s grip. Indeed, the malebranche simply dropped his weapon. Hadencourt stood there transfixed, arms out wide, fingers splayed open and twitching as if trying to grasp the empty air.
Andahar’s hooves continued to pound, the unicorn driving in even harder, twisting and thrashing its horned head around. The malebranche’s mouth hung open wide in a silent scream, and his eyes showed the hatred in his black heart, showed a promise to Drizzt that the battle might be over, but the war between them had just become eternal.
But to that, Drizzt, who felt more alive than he had in centuries, only returned a wide and sincere smile and taunted, “I know a balor who would join your vendetta. If you could bring yourself to align with such a creature as Errtu, I mean.”
Staring hatefully, Hadencourt melted away from the Prime Material Plane, back to his haunt in the Nine Hells.
JELVUS GRINCH WAS NOT A MAN TO SHY FROM A CHALLENGE. He’d risen to become one of the leading voices in Neverwinter through his toughness, his courage, and his indomitable will. But he shied away now, flinching and all but covering his head with his strong arms, for the angry reaction had caught him by surprise, a complete inversion of what he’d expected. And Herzgo Alegni was not one even stout Jelvus Grinch wanted as an enemy.
Nor did the other citizen leaders of Neverwinter, all sitting behind Jelvus, as Herzgo Alegni had commanded them.
“The Walk of Barrabus?” Alegni repeated over and over again, shaking his head and moving from a helpless grin to an outraged