belonged to the ghosts of his ancestors.
“He cannot hear you,” Sylora assured the pair from the anteroom. As one, they spun to regard her, and her contingent of fierce Ashmadai warriors, standing just outside the archway, crowded on that side of the pit room.
Behind them came a grinding sound as Athrogate pulled the heavy lever.
“Tell him, Dahlia,” Sylora said, tilting her chin at Jarlaxle.
The ground beneath them rumbled. Out past the anteroom came the sound of a great rush of water, like a tremendous waterfall rushing over the stones, then a hiss that sounded like a million giant vipers.
Looking past Sylora, Dahlia witnessed the rise of billowing steam, and within it, she noted living, watery forms—elementals, she presumed.
“What have we done?” Jarlaxle asked.
Sylora laughed at him. “Come Dor’crae,” she bade the vampire. “Leave them to their doom.”
“You betrayed me!” Dahlia shouted at the vampire. She noted just a hint of regret on his face, then she took up her staff and leaped at him, determined to destroy him first.
But Dor’crae was a human one blink and a bat the next. He fluttered past her, and past Jarlaxle into the anteroom, where Sylora had opened a magical gate once more, through which she and most of her prized Ashmadai zealots took their leave.
Valindra laughed hysterically then and blinked away, appearing at Sylora’s side.
“Yes, you, too, my sweet,” Sylora said to her, and showed her the skull gem, her phylactery, and bade her to enter the portal. “Tell him,” Sylora called to Dahlia right before she too stepped through the portal, which would take her to Neverwinter Wood, where she could witness the carnage and glory of her triumph. “Tell your dark elf stooge of the end of the world.” She laughed and disappeared, but closed the portal behind her, leaving a dozen Ashmadai behind.
“Occupy them, so they cannot leave,” Sylora’s disembodied voice instructed her warriors.
“Elf?” Athrogate asked from near the lever. “The ghosts told me to!”
“Sylora Salm told you to pull that lever,” Dahlia explained, her voice full of rage and of regret, full of guilt and venomous spit.
“Tell me,” Jarlaxle insisted.
The floor bucked again beneath them. From the pit came more hissing, more billowing steam, and a guttural roar that sounded as if Faerûn itself had been uncomfortably awakened.
“We’ve not the time,” Dahlia replied. She took up her staff, snapping it open to its eight-foot length.
The Ashmadai charged.
Jarlaxle drove them back with a sudden barrage of thrown daggers that appeared as if from nowhere, then Athrogate drove them back further, bursting between the elf and the drow, morningstars in hand, his heart full of absolute outrage. “Defiled it!” he wailed. “Ruined it!”
Tiefling and human warriors came at him front, left, and right, swinging and stabbing their crimson scepters. But Athrogate didn’t even try to stop the weapons, his focus purely on the offense. A morningstar head crushed the skull of the human on the left, a second swatted the half-elf on the right, and he met the head-butt of the tiefling in the center with his own armored skull.
And he bulled forward, undaunted. The dazed tiefling fell in front of him and Athrogate ran right over the half-blood thing to get to the next in line, his morningstars spinning furiously.
A stream of daggers flew over the dwarf’s right shoulder, clearing that flank, then over his left to similar effect.
Then came Dahlia, running, planting the end of her staff and using it to vault right past Athrogate. By the time she’d landed, she had pulled the staff in and broken it into the twin flails. Around and over they went, out to the side and straight head, clipping scepter and clipping arms and cracking skulls when any got too near.
Not to be outdone, Athrogate paced her, though her fury was truly no less than his own.
The ground bucked, the floor rolled and cracked. The wall split on one side of the anteroom, and dust and stones fell from the ceiling.
As they neared the edge of the pit, the Ashmadai broke ranks and fled across the walkway, Dahlia and Athrogate giving chase, for that was the only way to go.
Jarlaxle came last, and he stubbornly paused and waited for the hot, billowing steam to clear enough so that he could see down to the lava.
So that he could stare into the face of the fire primordial.
He understood then the source of the power for Gauntlgrym’s famed forge. He understood then the magic of the Hosttower, bringing in great elementals of water from