Tsarra stood up, her presence no longer a secret, and surveyed the scene. She stood not on Waterdeep's streets but inside a wrecked tavern, its thatched roof almost entirely blown away and its edges smoldering. She saw at least eight bodies. Khelben stood a few paces away, his back to her. The Blackstaff was the only person within the room, the rest standing on the periphery where the tavern's front wall used to be. Five local laborers or tavern patrons, and a dozen men in guards' livery, fought to shore up the creaking second floor with a fallen support beam, before it collapsed upon them.
Tables and chairs were tossed every which way, as were some unconscious or dead patrons. Among the wreckage the sharn's bulk hovered just above the floor and its skin stretched, as if other creatures pulsed inside its greasy amorphous flesh. Despite Tsarra's luck, the sharn produced a second arm from its form to replace the severed one. It kept one arm busy stretching to grab up fallen weapons while the other worked to cast spells. Eyes appeared and disappeared everywhere on its body, though a few always remained trained on anything that moved. Once it spotted Tsarra, the spellcasting hands twisted toward her with a sick wet crunch.
Khelben was doing some rather long and intricate casting, his attentions wholly focused on the sharn, so Tsarra worked the counterspell against whatever the creature was casting. She smiled, as she had never cast it so quickly before. Once she'd stopped the sharn's spell, Khelben completed his own, and Tsarra she felt it permeate the room and thicken the magic all around. The air crystallized slightly, and she sniffed the telltale smell of burnt rosehips and sulfur. She guessed that Khelben did something to affect teleporters in the area. She hadn't mastered any transmutation spells, but at least she knew their signs.
"That should prevent any additional headaches for the moment."
Khelben chuckled, and Tsarra realized he was enjoying himself.
Amazing he's lived this long, she thought as she threw off her cloak with one hand and pulled her bow off her back with the other.
Indeed. Khelben's sending startled her. I'm glad you're not one of those who gets ill from long-range teleports. The sharn is devilishly tough to affect without magical weapons.
And that's why I've been turning my studies toward arcane archery.
Tsarra pulled back on the bowstring and let an arrow fly, willing some of her sorcerous energies into the missile. It struck one of the eyes in the sharn's central mass, but the creature morphed a mouth around the arrow and bit it to pieces.
"A fine shot, but you'll run out of arrows before it runs out of patience, my dear," Khelben said. "Get Gamalon away from harm before you dive in to attack, Tsarra, but don't wander too far. Mind the danger of us straying too far apart. I'll take care of this." With that, Khelben turned his attentions to the sharn and began another long and complicated casting.
Tsarra still had many questions, but she stored them for later.
She returned to Gamalon's side and found his lone eye open and looking at her.
"Where is Mynda? Where is my wife?"
His voice was raspy, and he was in obvious pain. He tried to move to a sitting position, but his strength failed him and he fell unconscious again with a faltering groan.
Tsarra looked at the count and tears welled in her eyes. While Gamalon looked no older than his early fifties, his head wounds and body damage left him in no shape to cast spells or even move easily.
Tsarra cast a spell she often used to bear the fruits of her hunts home, interlacing her fingers together into a cup to materialize a russet-tinged floating disk beneath the stunned mage. She willed the disk to move slowly out onto the lawn, pushing it a slight distance ahead of her.
The familiar flew a loop around her and its snarls and purrs told her a little more. "Firemarkedoldmage and house got hit by skylanceburningbright, like you and darkmage and sunnybrighteyesgone.
We fight shiftshapemanysmelling thing, yes?"
Tsarra was glad the familiar was all right, but she shook her head. "No, we won't. You stay with him, and keep him safe. Let me know if anything other than his guards try to get near him."
"Wantfight, protect mistressfriend. Not afraid."
The tressym's loud yowls surprised the nearby men almost as much as when Tsarra meowed her response:
"Staysafehere until weknowfoeweakness." With that, she settled the disc and the count onto the grass, the tressym landing nearby with an angry rustle of his wings. Tsarra picked up her bow and turned to see where she could help Khelben.
The sharn howled, "Thievess! Sssscentssss mark you… Take what is oursssss!" and threw an axe and a long sword in Tsarra's direction.
"No!" Khelben yelled and leaped in front of the weapons, his arms glowing as if armored by magic.
The long sword glanced harmlessly off his left forearm and fell to the side. The axe, however, hit his right hand with a wet smack, and the Blackstaff grunted in pain.
"So messy. He'll never cast that crushing grasp now, will he?" a woman's voice sneered from empty air across the inn from Tsarra.
"Needs both hands, given the way you humans cast it."
"No, my dear, he can't. Imagine-us lending a hand to the Blackstaff. Such a strange day," a man's voice erupted from the same area over by the fireplace, and a form took shape as the man's arms waved in intricate spellcasting, dispelling his invisibility.
The lightly bearded man stood taller than Khelben by perhaps a handspan with long black hair pulled into a pony-tail trailing halfway down his back. His face was tanned, but that was the only healthy thing about him. His form was scrawny rather than lean. Rings glittered at least two per hand, and a heavy gold pendant hung on his chest atop his amber-colored tunic, richly embroidered but fraying at the cuffs and sleeves. His leather breeches were well made but looked as if they'd been worn overlong.
With great speed, the sharn launched a chunk of ruined table at the man, but other arcane words filled the air. A blast of flames engulfed the wooden implement and the arms that held it. The trailing end of the fires led to the recently visible hands of an elf woman.
She stood about Tsarra's height and wore traveling clothes of dark blue and gray leathers and linens-not protective so much as practical.
Her snow-blond hair, bound in multiple places by silver ties, nearly reached the floor and seemed white or gold, depending on how the light hit it.
Tsarra's surprise at the arrival of two other wizards ended when Khelben shouted at her, "Stand away, girl!"
He turned around and spoke to the other two wizards, and the three of them created a triangle around the sharn. The man's casting finally ended, and a hazy shimmer settled around the sharn, slowing down its movement to closer to normal speeds for a creature its size.
Khelben said, "Petrylloc's Gambit, now!" and started casting.
The other two, after a moment, took to casting similar spells-or at least they sounded similar to Tsarra's ears. She kept her bow ready but began a spell, happy she knew how to cast without movement. In her mind, she summoned magic and the sounds of a hummingbird's wing and the twang of a bow. Four glowing green energy pulses leaped from her hands into four open mouths on the sharn. When the sharn howled, its speech slowed so it sounded like a wounded bear with a human voice.
Tsarra and the assembled guards had their bows drawn, and the wizards were all occupied with their collective spellcasting. The sharn sprayed all of them with magical bolts. While the spell didn't disrupt the wizards' castings, Tsarra and eight others let arrows fly. Six of them hit the sharn, but only Tsarra's ensorcelled arrow appeared to do any damage. Despite that, the volley kept the creature suitably occupied.