Take Demogorgon here, Champion of Lolth, to Menzoberranzan. Her people are ready!
Drizzt didn’t know what to think or believe at that moment. He sensed no anger from the voice in his head, though, and surely Yvonnel knew that her enchanted spiders had been obliterated.
He sped down the lighted tunnel instead, and noted as he turned into it that the priestess or her cohorts who were lighting the way for him were not shutting down those beacons in front of Demogorgon.
Perhaps they were ready.
He turned the last corner and saw the massive gates the drow had erected to fortify their defenses at the entrance from the Masterways. Those gates sat closed, but a small door at the bottom, large enough for Drizzt to slip through, did open at his approach.
Any hesitation Drizzt might have held blew away when he heard Demogorgon close behind him again.
He saw no other drow as he sprinted along the narrow tunnel through the thick gates, but that changed when Drizzt Do’Urden ran again into Menzoberranzan.
The whole of the city was there, it seemed, fanned out in a wide semicircle around and upon every building and every mound. House banners flew all around, propelled into wild and boastful flapping by magical spells.
Overwhelmed by the sight, Drizzt couldn’t help but slow, scanning for House Baenre, which was easy to find, and for Yvonnel, who was not to be found.
The gates behind him exploded then, great stones flying all around, sure to bury Drizzt where he stood.
But a hand reached out to him and grabbed him by the front of his armored tunic, and he was yanked into the air so forcefully he almost left one boot behind.
Space distorted around him, elongating in his mind-warping flight. He landed in a skid, barely stopping at the feet of Yvonnel and the matron mother, and came up to his knees to find himself face-to-face with the broken old hag that Yvonnel dragged around like a pet dog. They were at the center of the drow semicircle, atop a tall, flat-topped stalagmite mound.
Already the explosions of battle began behind him, and Drizzt glanced back to see a blinding display of magical power, lightning bolts and fireballs fully obscuring the form of the great prince of demons, as if every wizard and priestess in Menzoberranzan was hurling every bit of destructive magic at the fiend all at once.
“Constructs!” the matron mother cried, her voice magically amplified to echo all around the great cavern.
“Get up,” Yvonnel said to Drizzt, and he did. He glanced back to see a swarm of jade spiders rushing for the gates, and other unthinking instruments of war-iron golems, stone golems, animated gargoyles-charging right behind them.
“You fled,” Yvonnel accused.
“I … you said …”
She held up a sword in front of him, its glassteel blade slightly curving, and holding a universe of twinkling stars within.
He stood up and took Vidrinath.
Yvonnel’s pet also stood and clasped her hand over Drizzt’s. He looked at the old and clearly battered drow with confusion, then back to Yvonnel.
Gromph heard Yvonnel’s call at the same moment as Kimmuriel. And like Kimmuriel, the archmage understood that here lay his forgiveness, in this one great task. He looked at Kimmuriel, who nodded and led the way down the stairs swiftly to the hive-mind, where a host of illithids had gathered.
Gromph followed him to the fleshy brain, and, following the other’s lead, Gromph bent in and gently placed his hand on the communal brain of the illithid community.
So many illithids followed suit, and Gromph felt himself drawn into their collective thoughts, swirling about and becoming so powerfully one, singular in purpose.
And he giggled-he could not help it-as he felt the power coursing through him, through his mind, and he tried to help and strengthen it, though he understood that he was a miniscule psionicist next to these practiced giants.
He thought of Yvonnel’s promise of forgiveness, and knew that he hardly cared.
He needed no coaxing.
Not for this.
“Your glorious moment,” Yvonnel whispered to the woman. The young drow raised her hand, holding now a jewel-encrusted orb, and smashed it between the feet of the couple holding Vidrinath up high.
A great wind sent them flying, floating out from Yvonnel and the matron mother.
Drizzt could see them standing there, staring back, but only for a moment.
Only until every priest, every wizard, every archer in the city of Menzoberranzan let loose their most powerfully destructive spells and bolts at him and this aged and battered woman.
“No,” Dahlia gasped in a rare moment of perfect clarity. She came forward in the magical cage, which Yvonnel had placed on a rooftop not so far away so that the three prisoners could witness the spectacle.
“After all that trouble, they simply use him to lure in the beast and then sacrifice him to gain favor with their wretched demon goddess,” Entreri spat with disgust.
But Jarlaxle shook his head, grinning. He knew better. He had seen this trick before, only on a scale miniscule compared to this grand display.
“Do you remember, long ago, before the Spellplague even, your last true fight against Drizzt, in the tower I constructed for just that occasion?” Jarlaxle asked.
Entreri looked at him curiously, then turned his eyes again to the conflagration and explosions filling the air in front of the entry from the Masterways, fully obscuring Drizzt in fire and lightning and swarms of missiles.
He winced as a great spinning web of lightning flew forth and fell over that spot, and exploded in brilliance that stole his vision.
“It cannot be,” he breathed.
“I have come to doubt nothing anymore,” Jarlaxle said.
Drizzt held onto Vidrinath for all his life, that focal point was the only thing that lay between him and utter insanity as a thousand spells exploded around him. He didn’t know what to think or why he was alive or how he could be anything more than splattered dead across the floor. Lightning bolts rained upon him. Fireballs roiled over one another or filled the air, flame strikes slashing down amid them, spinning their flames into somersaulting dances in front of his eyes. A meteor swarm pounded around him, compliments of the new Archmage of Menzoberranzan. A thousand arrows struck him, and bounced off of him.
But their killing energy did not bounce away. It spread about the drow, caught by the great kinetic barrier an illithid hive-mind had raised around him.
He trembled under the press of power, under the containment of more energy, more destruction than he had ever before witnessed, all at once. The bared power of Menzoberranzan, the thousands of dark elves, the minions of Lolth, acting in unison, sending all their hate and power at him.
And then it was over and Drizzt was back on the roof, and the old drow woman holding his hand smiled at him, her eyes wide and wild. She let go, and shrieked and gasped and simply exploded, but so fully that she became nothingness, her final expression a bright burst of ultimate ecstasy.
She was gone, and Drizzt stood there, holding Vidrinath, trembling under the power, increasingly uncomfortable as it demanded release.
Across from him stood Yvonnel. To the side, and not so far away, the matron mother scowled both at Drizzt and at the other woman.
And behind them, Demogorgon approached.
“Now is your moment, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Yvonnel said. “Now you prove yourself. There is the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, Quenthel Baenre.” She pointed at Quenthel, whose eyes went wide indeed.
“You feel your power,” Yvonnel said. “One strike and she will be obliterated, and you will have dealt a great blow against Lolth and against this city.”
She paused and bowed. “Now is your moment.”
Drizzt stared at the matron mother, stupefied, and trembling so hard he could barely stand. He could feel the power-of every spell and every arrow-beginning to eat through the strange shield that held it at bay.