And the world around Eirhaun briefly vanished.
His shielding flared into blinding radiance, searing whiteness that faded into rainbow hues. He was still struggling to peer through them when his legs started changing, bulging and flexing into amorphous bonelessness, all at once. The pain made him sob involuntarily, it was… so great, so horribly…
His shielding was going wild around him, as spells fought for supremacy within it. It was clawing at him, and he was still changing, barbed wings sprouting from his breast in a sickening struggling of knees and elbows that shouldn’t be there, but were bursting out of him, sliding through his ribs… it was agony, it was terrible…
As he sank to his knees, or rather collapsed into wriggling tentacles, his ribs and all twisting into snakelike things that he stared at with revulsion, Eirhaun became aware that one of his eyes was growing very large and thrusting forward out of his face, while the other stayed its usual self and stared in horror. He also became aware that someone was shrieking in agony, long and raw howls and wails of agony and terror.
Then, at last, he became aware that the shrieking someone was him.
Which crystal had chimed had told Sarhthor where the trouble was. He had teleported to his favorite tower in Halfhap, intending to use magic to locate the precise location of the summons, but one glance across Halfhap had told him the Oldcoats Inn was the place to be.
Or rather, not to be. Frowning, he’d teleported again, to a spot he knew, right behind the hotel desk. He’d taken care to arrive crouching, and that thoughtfulness had served him well.
It seemed his arrival hadn’t been detected, and his personal wardings had thus far passed unnoticed as he crouched in hiding behind the hotel desk-and warring Zhentarim blasted most of the Oldcoats Inn down into sagging, perilously hanging ruin in front of him.
He’d watched them, thrusting two tendrils of his shielding around the edges of the desk to serve him as eyes, and seen Eirhaun’s arrival-and their unison attack on him. He harbored no love for Eirhaun-no one in the Brotherhood did, not that any Zhentarim dared allow friendship or kindness to weaken their schemes for an instant-but this… this was madness.
Something was afflicting these magelings, who hitherto had smoldered in waiting maliciousness, not daring to hurl their every spell as they were doing now. Something was forcing them to dare this much.
Wherefore that something had to be hurled out of the Realms, to protect all mages everywhere. If it cost the Brotherhood every last one of these ambitious magelings, what of it? Faerun bred no shortage of ambitious magelings.
Frowning, Sarhthor spun a particular ring around on the middle finger of his left hand, until its customary display was beneath, and its band uppermost. He kissed that band, carefully murmured a word, and kissed it again.
Whereupon the ring spat itself off his finger, into his other (waiting) palm, and became a shield-shaped, rigid scroll. He touched two of its many runes in the right sequence to awaken it to life and make its words appear; when he could see them, he slowly and carefully cast the spell laid out before him.
Ere long his words boomed and rolled, forcing a hush over that battling room by the sheer weight of their power. Sarhthor spoke on, his body starting to shake from the power racing into and through it, streaming out into a roiling something that became a darkness in the air, a waiting, reaching darkness that plucked at the startled warring Zhentarim.
Then he finished the spell, completing the last gestures with nary a tremble. It was done, now, and the howling darkness of his creation snatched all of his fellow Zhentarim out of the shattered room before him.
The Abyss would take them; they would be whirled away into it, there to fend for themselves, hopefully taking that cursed something that was afflicting them with them.
The darkness was roaring now, hungrily, whirling away wild-eyed and shouting Zhentarim, and wispy wraiths that came clawing up out of the eyes and mouths of two of them too. Then Eirhaun, struggling to grow a tail and fins to go with his mismatched, feebly-flapping wings-was whirled up and away with a name on his lips.
“Sarhthor, curse you!” he cried. “ Ar auhammaunas dreth truarr! ”
And to his horrified and helpless fury, Sarhthor felt himself plucked up from behind the desk and snatched across empty, crackling air into his own waiting darkness.
The Abyss opened many-fanged jaws and hungrily swallowed them all.
Azuth, Mystra, and fire in the Weave!
It was the only curse Ghoruld Applethorn could remember in his blind agony.
His scrying crystal had burst in front of him, spraying his face with deadly shards.
He roared in pain, spewing out thick, choking blood as he reeled back, blinded and sliced open in a hundred places.
His limbs trembled uncontrollably; it was all he could do to stay on his feet. He shook from shock and pain, he knew, but also from fear.
Fear of the doom he’d so narrowly escaped. That awful pull of the Abyss… the bone-melting tugging that awakened yearnings he’d never thought he could feel, never dreamed of.
He could have been mind-ruined, or worse: snatched away to the Abyss forever, fair Cormyr and all his schemings lost to him in an instant, even the knowledge that he was Ghoruld Applethorn, and could work with the Art, torn from him.
He fumbled for the healing potions on their shelf, found them, and-wishing some of them were strong drink instead-started frantically uncorking and quaffing.
“What’s going on? ” Jhessail hissed, as the Knights cowered. Everything above them shook as if angry gods were beating on it with great clubs. Another shower of dust and small stones pelted down on and around them.
Florin shook his head, having no answer to give her. Pennae and Laspeera clung to his arms as he crouched over them, trying to shield them and knowing how useless his gallantry was. If the ceiling came down, they’d be entombed together, to gasp out their last breaths in the crushing dark…
The air around them felt alive. Crackling with unseen sparks, slithering and coiling restlessly.
“Magic,” Pennae muttered, sounding disgusted. “But whose? And what?”
“Orders, Lady?” Dauntless growled, as if seeking reassurance. Tight-lipped, Laspeera merely shook her head.
As they all felt a sudden, horrible tugging, a compulsion that clawed at them and awakened a yearning to rise and drift up, up-Doust arched his back under Islif’s hands, and groaned like a man lost in lust-a restlessness raged inside everyone, that made Jhessail whimper, and Pennae and the ornrion whisper soft curses.
All around the Knights, the darkness started to glow, radiances that outlined doors and formed great nets and curtains, like sparks frozen in the air.
“What-what is it?” Dauntless mumbled, eyes wide in wonder.
“Magic-all the magic that’s down here, old wards and preservations and portals, too-shining forth,” Laspeera said slowly. “But what could
…?”
She fell silent in startled awe as lights kindled deep in the stone walls around them, illuminations to match the Dragonfire illusion before them.
Nine swords, vertical with hilts uppermost, were glowing deep in the rock… and drifting soundlessly forward, through it, out into the air above them.
And from the illusory treasure, the nine glowing guardian swords drifted to meet them, right above the heads of the crouched and kneeling Knights.
Met, and then the illusions slowly faded into the nine swords that had come out of the stones. They promptly brightened into dazzling brilliance.
Laspeera, Dauntless, and the Knights of Myth Drannor all gaped up at this magnificence-deadly though it probably was-a mere handspan above their noses.
Then there came a great groan from overhead, a deep, thunderous complaint that heralded doom. As they tensed, huddled together, the Oldcoats Inn slowly, ponderously, and inescapably… collapsed onto their heads.