True enough, the spellspinner knew, but he had to do something to buy some time until he could figure out Brack’thal’s secret.
Brack’thal hustled down the corridor in the halls above the forge room, the region brightening because of the presence of the mage’s new pet. The large fire elemental eagerly followed the mage, hungered by Brack’thal’s promise that it would find fuel, living fuel, for its hungry fires.
The wizard had a lot on his mind. He knew that he was caught in a desperate game. His brother had been forced to bring him along on this expedition, but Brack’thal held no illusions about the level of control his sisters, or even Matron Zeerith, could hold over the young spellspinner. Ravel had no intention of allowing Brack’thal to survive this journey.
But good fortune was on Brack’thal’s side, in the form of an item he possessed from that time before the Spellplague. On his finger, he wore a ruby band, a ring that allowed him to communicate with, and exert tremendous influence over, the very creatures spawned by the power of the primordial. That item, a ring controlling fire elementals, more than anything in his own spell repertoire, had given him the edge now-a critical edge if he hoped to outmaneuver and survive his dangerous younger brother.
The mage slowed his pace, noting a decrepit doorway on the right side of the hallway, another of many he had investigated over the last few days.
Brack’thal waved his hands and whispered a spell, summoning a floating orb, a wizardly eye, which he sent toward the door with merely a thought.
He saw through that eye as it came up on the broken door, peering through openings of missing, rotted planks.
In the room beyond the door, he noted a movement. The chamber beyond wasn’t very wide, but it went deep into the stone. The first part was crafted with smooth walls and bricks still tightly mortared as a testament to dwarven crafting. The back half, though, seemed a more natural cavern, and it occurred to Brack’thal that the tumult here in Gauntlgrym, the earthquakes and eruptions caused by the primordial, might have toppled the chamber’s back wall, thus connecting it to a natural cavern beyond.
He had seen this before in this part of the complex, and this only reinforced his respect for the primordial.
A second movement caught his eye, a smallish humanoid scrambling behind some makeshift barrier.
“Kobolds,” he whispered, and he wondered whether he should try to enslave this group-the notion of creating his own counter army flashed in his mind-or whether he should simply obliterate them.
The magical eye moved through the broken doorway but it dissipated almost immediately, and Brack’thal recognized that he had waited too long while pondering the possibilities.
He focused on his magical ring instead and sent forth the elemental. Eagerly, it swept down the corridor and blasted through the flimsy doorway, sending splinters of burning wood and embers flying all around. An instant later came a second cacophony, this time one of kobolds crying out in alarm before the obvious power of this mighty foe.
Brack’thal began rolling his fingers, deliberately sorting through the verbal component of a dweomer he believed might soon prove important. Pragmatism told him to abandon the attempt, to simply use the fiery evocation his ring could bring forth to protect him if need be.
The mage overruled that commonsense notion, for in his gut he felt up to the task at hand without the aid of the ring.
In the room, the sounds of battle grew: flames sweeping over the kobold barricades; kobolds screeching as deadly fires bit at them; crashing stones and other missiles as the diminutive kobolds tried to battle the mighty creature of fire; footfalls, so many rushing footfalls!
Predictably, a bevy of kobolds scrambled out of the destroyed portal, tumbling into the hall, falling all over each other in a desperate effort to get away. Some charged toward the mage, others ran the opposite way.
Brack’thal lifted a small metal bar before him and completed the spell, trying to remain confident that something, some magical energy would come forth.
The lightning bolt filled the hall with a blinding burst of white light, and Brack’thal, surprised by the intensity, surprised even that he had accomplished the evocation, fell back with a shriek of his own.
He composed himself quickly, but kept shaking his head, for the level of power that had flowed through him in that spellcasting reminded him of a time long lost. Was it his work with the ring, he wondered?
As his eyes readjusted to the darkness, Brack’thal noted the image of the corridor before him, and mostly, the stillness of that hallway. More than a dozen kobolds lay dead before him, not a writhe or whimper to be found among them. He had thrown a lightning bolt that would have made him proud in the days before the Spellplague, a burst of magic that had fully overwhelmed the kobolds, taking their lives instantly.
Another pair of the creatures came out into the hall, and a quick glance had them fleeing the other way down the corridor. A third emerged and similarly ran away.
Brack’thal, too intrigued by his surprising show of magical strength, paid them no heed. It wasn’t until the fire elemental returned, until he sensed the beast’s wild and unsatisfied hunger, that the mage realized he would do well to put his thoughts aside and focus on the situation at hand. Indeed, the beast was advancing toward him, ill intent clear in its brightening, excited flaming coat.
Brack’thal reached through the ring, calmly reminding the beast that it was better served with him as its ally, and when that line of thought showed only a moderate slowing of the charging fiery humanoid, the mage got more insistent and demanding, willing the creature to stop, willing it to turn around that they could resume their hunt.
The mage constantly reminded himself to focus on the task at hand, to keep a tight hold on his dangerous companion as they moved deeper into the unexplored reaches of the vast complex.
The fire elemental demanded no less than that level of attention, even with the powerful ring aiding him.
It proved a difficult task, though, for Brack’thal could not ignore the implications of his lightning bolt, perhaps the most powerful evocation of magic he had achieved since the Spellplague a century before.
He tempered his elation, rightly so. He had thrown lightning bolts, magic of the old and diminished schools, in the last decades, of course, and had sometimes surprised himself by the intensity of other dweomers he had achieved. The fall of magic as they had known it was not complete, nor was it consistent. This lightning bolt in this corridor might well be no more than a result of Brack’thal’s elevated state of urgency, or of his repeated usage of the ring, itself an artifact from another time.
How grand would it be if that were not the case. How wonderful if the mage’s lost powers returned to him.
In that event, Brack’thal would be rid of his troublesome little brother in short order.
HE KNEW
Three of the shades did not return through the portal with Herzgo Alegni. From a hilltop not so far away, Glorfathel stood before a scrying pool, the dwarf Ambergris and the monk Afafrenfere flanking him on either side. Neither dwarf nor monk looked much like denizens of the Shadowfell at that time, though, due to the magical dweomers of Ambergris’s black pearl necklace. “They are formidable,” Glorfathel remarked.
“Aye, I telled ye as much,” said the dwarf.
“I will kill the drow,” Afafrenfere vowed.
“I’m thinkin’ ye better find him sleeping,” Ambergris replied, and Glorfathel joined the dwarf in a bit of laughter at the monk’s expense.
“You were right,” Glorfathel admitted to the dwarf. “I would have expected them to remain in Neverwinter, or travel the open road, were they headed north or south.”