They let the hods fall, and boiled up into things out of nightmare.
A small forest of tentacles reached for folk all around, and the street became a chaos of screaming, fleeing people, with armsmen trying to wade through them. Tentacles grew many-fanged mouths and bit down mercilessly.
"Malaugrym," the three rangers shouted, breaking into a run.
Laeral hurled a spell-and the two monsters were girt with an amber radiance, out of which darted dozens of butterflies.
Laeral stared in disgust at the clouds of insects, unbelted her robe, and let it fall to the turf behind her. Beneath it she wore a short kirtle bristling with daggers. Drawing one in either hand, she raced across the meadow toward the road, Khelben lumbering along beside her.
Horns were ringing out from the Tower of Ashaba, and armored men were streaming from its gates-men who wore the Purple Dragon of Cormyr.
The Malaugrym were undulating along the road toward the three rangers. As the three hefted their blades and eyed reaching tentacles, they heard the deep, bubbling voice of one tentacled monster ask, "Argast, what's that?"
They all stared at what was rising up from the road in front of the tower-a gigantic black dragon, clutching a wagon in its claws!
"By all the blinded, crawling gods…" Shar cursed in disbelief, watching the dragon spread its great wings. One beat sent it over the meadow, where it set the wagon down as tenderly as a newly laid egg. It banked and roared down at the crossroads, jaws gaping…
Jhessail looked up sharply as a roar split the air outside. "What was that?" she snapped.
Illistyl beat her to the window. "Gods!" she gasped. "A dragon!"
Jhessail thrust her head past her apprentice's shoulder and glared out. "Out of nowhere? Impossible!"
She snatched something out of her bodice and tugged. A fine gold chain parted, and Jhessail held up a pendant that was shaped like a sphere, with windows enclosing a smaller windowed sphere-and another, and yet another.
Illistyl stared at it. Elminster had given her that, and she'd never said what it was for…
Jhessail thrust it out the window and whispered a single word-and the pendant was gone in a flash of spreading light that all but blinded them both.
The swooping dragon flashed with that same light, and was suddenly no huge black scaled wyrm at all, but a small, manlike thing trailing tentacles as it fell from the sky.
Laeral leapt desperately out of the way as the twisting, changing thing crashed to earth.
Both Malaugrym hissed, "Lorgyn!"
Around the cursing lord mage of Waterdeep, spells were going awry in a continuous swirl of radiances and odd manifestations. Laeral scrambled through a shower of green lizards, the snapping fangs of Malaugrym tentacles close behind her.
"Gods," Sharantyr said, her face paling as the three rangers charged together, pounding along the road toward the two gigantic snake-things that were writhing and snapping in earnest now, crushing guards and sweeping horses and men into the air with their lashing tails, "Are we really going into that"?"
"Of course," Belkram shouted merrily. "We're reckless, crazed heroes, remember?"
"More than that," Itharr bellowed, "we're the Rangers Three!"
"The Rangers Three!" they shouted in chorus as their blades struck home.
The world rapidly became a place of constant slashing and hacking, with Malaugrym tentacles smashing and slapping from everywhere as armsmen shouted and died.
The lady mage of Waterdeep was stabbing with silver-bladed daggers, and Malaugrym tentacles were shriveling at their touch or cringing away before her. To avoid the bite of silver blades, the monsters began to hurl hapless armsmen and villagers at her, seeking to crush or suffocate her beneath broken bodies. Khelben stood over Laeral, the broken haft of a pike in his hands, trying to protect his lady against too many stabbing tentacles.
An armsman was flung through the air, his broken limbs flailing like smashed twigs. Sharantyr ducked under him, slashed aside one last tentacle, and drew back her blade to plunge it deep into one gigantic yellow Malaugrym eye.
Out of the eye burst Amdramnar's face, pleading: "Stay your blade, Sharantyr! Know that I love you-"
Shar gazed at the Malaugrym in astonished horror, blade raised. She never saw the scorpionlike tail that rose behind her, lifting from a broken thing that had once been a dragon.
The bony spur stabbed down-and burst out through the lady ranger's breast in a rain of blood.
Itharr and Belkram shrieked in horror and went mad with their blades, screaming and stabbing in all directions.
The lady ranger stiffened, and blood sprayed from her sagging lips.
A great roar of anguish rose over the fray as the monster that was Amdramnar cried, "No! Lorgyn, you fool! She was to be my mate! Sharantyr!"
Storm Silverhand was almost home from patrol now, and contentment welled up within her. The familiar woods rose green and deep around her. She did not hurry. Her boots followed trails she hadn't walked in a while, and chances to relax were few enough, these days.
A roaring sound rose into the air ahead, muffled by the trees. Storm frowned and stopped to listen. Were those shouts? Yes!
Shadowdale must be under attack! With a soft curse, the Bard of Shadowdale drew her blade and broke into a trot, weaving through the trees as quickly as she could.
Laeral darted through a dancing chaos of tentacles, desperately stammering a healing spell. Too late.
The rearing tail of the Malaugrym thrust the limp lady ranger high into the air, then smashed her into the dust of the road. Again it rose, Sharantyr dangling, and again flung her down.
Itharr and Belkram all but clawed their way through a forest of writhing tentacles to get at that tail.
A tentacle struck Laeral. She rolled in the dust herself, slashing her way free and scrambling up-to find the air in front of her shimmering! She drew back her hand to hurl a spell of searing destruction…
But two white-faced women in robes appeared-Knights of Myth Drannor. They raised their hands and snapped out incantations. Their magic twisted wild as they hurled it, and the tentacles swept down at them, too…
"Here!" Laeral called. She tossed two of her silver-bladed daggers to the Knights-who fielded them expertly, waved in thanks, and set to work.
The Malaugrym Amdramnar was writhing under the blades of the two furious Harper rangers, and the other one-the one he'd called Argast-was shrinking into a xornlike beast with many massive clawed arms instead of tentacles. The shifting body of Argast was flickering with strange magics as Khelben Blackstaff struggled to control spell after spell hurled at the shapeshifter.
Itharr was weeping incoherently now. He stood hip-deep in a gory hole he'd hacked in Amdramnar, and stabbed down endlessly.
None of the armsmen of Cormyr saw Storm Silverhand burst out of the trees, running hard, but they all saw her swarm up the scorpionlike third Malaugrym and plunge her sword deep into one of its eyes. It shuddered and convulsed madly under her, and she grimly clung to it as she tumbled to the ground, one arm around Sharantyr's broken body.
"Burn it! Burn the things with oil!" she bellowed at the armsmen. She found her feet amid writhing ropes of shapeshifting flesh-ropes that rose to fling Khelben and Belkram together in a helpless tangle into the gathered armsmen.
The soldiers stared at Storm; who was this woman? An old woman staring at the fray from the door of the Old Skull suddenly tossed away her tankard, plucked down one of the lanterns from beside the inn door, and flung it.
It shattered, spilling oil down the tentacled bulk of Amdramnar-and Illistyl murmured the simplest fire spell she knew.
Flames flared. The oil caught, boiling up with a roar. The Malaugrym convulsed and reared, shrieking, and the air was suddenly full of oil as every armsman scrambled to find and fling any lamps they could.