Entreri glanced at him, and back at Hephaestus, the great head swaying back and forth, back and forth. He glanced down at the Crystal Shard, wondering if it had betrayed them to the beast.
Indeed, Crenshinibon was sending forth its plea at that time, to the beast and against Cadderly's spellcasting, but it had not been the Crystal Shard that had warned Hephaestus of intruders. No, that distinction fell to a certain dark elf wizard-cleric, hiding in a tunnel across the way along with a handful of drow companions. Right before Cadderly and the others had wind-walked into the lair, Rai-guy had sent a magical whisper to Hephaestus, a warning of intruders and a suggestion that these thieves had come with magic designed to use the creature's own breath against it.
Now Rai-guy waited for the appearance of the Crystal Shard, for the moment when he and his companions, including Kammuriel, could strike hard and begone, their prize in hand.
"Thieves we are, and we'll have your treasure!" shouted Jarlaxle. He used a language that none of the others, save Hephaestus, understood, a tongue of the red dragons, and one that the great wyrms believed that few others could begin to master. Jarlaxle, using a whistle that he kept on a chain around his neck, spoke it with perfect inflection. Hephaestus's head snapped down in line with him, the wyrm's eyes going wide.
Entreri dived aside in a roll, coming right back to his feet.
"What did you say?" the assassin asked.
Jarlaxle's fingers worked furiously. He thinks that I am another red dragon.
There seemed a long, long moment of absolute quiet, of a gigantic hush before a more gigantic storm. Then everything exploded into motion, beginning with Cadderly's leap forward, his arm extended, finger pointing accusingly at the beast.
"Hephaestus!" the priest roared at the appropriate moment of spellcasting. "Burn me if you can!"
It was more than a dare, more than a challenge, and more than a threat. It was a magical compulsion, launched through a powerful spell. Though forewarned by some vague suggestions against the action, Hephaestus sucked in its tremendous breath, the force of the intake drawing Cadderly's curly brown locks forward onto his face.
Entreri dived ahead and pulled forth Crenshinibon, tossing it to the floor before the priest. Jarlaxle, even as Hephaestus tilted back its head, came forward with the great exhalation and produced his globe of darkness.
No! Crenshinibon screamed in Entreri's head, so powerful and angry a call that the assassin grabbed at his ears and stumbled aside, dazed.
The artifact's call was abruptly cut off.
Hephaestus's head came forward, a great line of fire roaring down, mocking Jarlaxle's globe, mocking Cadderly and all his spells.
Even as the globe of darkness came up over the Crystal Shard, Rai-guy grabbed at it with a spell of telekinesis, a sudden and powerful burst of snatching power that sent the item flying fast across the way, past Hephaestus, who was seemingly oblivious to it, and down the corridor to the hiding wizard-cleric's waiting hand.
Rai-guy's red-glowing eyes narrowed as he turned to regard Kimmuriel, for it had been Kimmuriel's task to so snatch the item-a task the psionicist had apparently neglected.
I was not fast enough, the psionicist's fingers waggled at his companion.
But Rai-guy knew better, and so did Crenshinibon, for the powers of the mind were among the quickest of magic to enact. Still staring hard at his companion, Rai-guy began spellcasting once more, aiming for the great chamber.
On and on went the fiery maelstrom, and in the middle of it stood Cadderly, his arms out wide, praying to Deneir to see him through.
Danica, Ivan, and Pikel stared at him intently, praying as well, but Jarlaxle was more concerned with his darkness, and Entreri was looking more to Jarlaxle.
"I hear not the continuing call of Crenshinibon!" Entreri cried hopefully above the fiery roar.
Jarlaxle was shaking his head. "The darkness should have been consumed by the artifact's destruction," he cried back, sensing that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
The fires ended, leaving a seething Hephaestus still staring at the unharmed priest of Deneir. The dragon's eyes narrowed to threatening slits.
Jarlaxle dispelled his darkness globe, and there remained no sign of Crenshinibon among the bubbling, molten stone.
"We done it!" Ivan cried.
"Home!" Pikel pleaded.
"No," insisted Jarlaxle.
Before he could explain, a low humming sound filled the chamber, a noise the dark elf had heard before and one that didn't strike him as overly pleasant at that dangerous moment.
"A magical dispel!" the dark elf warned. "Our enchantments are threatened!"
This left them, they all realized, in a room with an outraged, ancient, huge red dragon without many of their protections in place.
"What d' we do?" Ivan growled, slapping the handle of his battle axe across his open palm.
"Wee!" Pikel answered.
'Wee?" the perplexed yellow-bearded dwarf echoed, his face screwed up as he stared at his green-haired brother.
"Wee!" Pikel said again, and to accentuate his point, he grabbed Ivan by the collar and ran him a short distance to the side, to the edge of a crevice, and leaped off, taking Ivan on the dive with him.
Hephaestus's great wings beat the air, lifting the huge wyrm's front half high above the floor. Its hind legs clawed at the floor, digging deep gullies in the stone.
"Run away!" Cadderly cried, agreeing wholeheartedly with Pikel's choice. "All of you!"
Danica rushed forward, as did Jarlaxle, the woman rolling into a ready crouch before the wyrm. Hephaestus wasted not a second in snapping its great maw down at her. She scrambled aside, coming up from her roll in a crouch again, taunting the beast.
Cadderly couldn't watch it, reminding himself that he simply had to trust in her. She was buying him precious moments, he knew, that he might launch another magical attack or defensive spell, perhaps, at Hephaestus. He fell into the song of Deneir again and heard its notes more clearly this time, as he sorted through an array of spells to launch.
He heard a scream, Danica's scream, and he looked up to see Hephaestus's fiery breath drive down upon her, striking the stone floor and spraying up in an inverted fan of fires.
Cadderly, too, cried out, and reached desperately into the song of Deneir for the first spell he could find that would alter that horrible scene, the first enchantment he could think of to stop it.
He brought forth an earthquake.
Even as it started-a violent shudder and rumbling, like waves on a pond, lifting and rolling the floor-Jarlaxle drew the dragon's attention his way by hitting the beast with a stream of stinging daggers.
Entreri, too, moved-and surprised himself by going ahead instead of back, toward the spot where Hephaestus had just breathed.
There, too, there was only bubbling stone.
Cadderly called out for Danica, desperately, but his voice fell away as the floor collapsed beneath him.
"Let us begone, and quickly," Kimmuriel remarked, "before the great wyrm recognizes that there were more than those six intruders in its lair this day."
He and the other drow had already moved some distance down the tunnel, away from the main chamber. Leaving altogether seemed a prudent suggestion, one that had Berg'inyon Baenre and the other five drow soldiers nodding eagerly, but one that, for some reason, did not seem acceptable to the stern Rai-guy.
"No," he said firmly. "They must all die, here and now."
"As the dragon will likely kill them," Berg'inyon agreed, but Rai-guy was shaking his head, indicating that such a probability simply wasn't good enough for him.
Rai-guy and Crenshinibon were already fully into their bonding by then. The Crystal Shard demanded that Cadderly and the others, these infidels who understood the secret to its destruction, be killed immediately. It demanded that nothing concerning the group be left to chance. Besides, it telepathically coaxed Rai-guy, would not a red dragon be an enormous asset to add to Bregan D'aerthe?