Then her eyes fell on what she’d been searching for, far ahead along the narrow alley that ran from beneath her catwalk to the ruins where the beholder danced. A familiar lurching form, portly where he wasn’t burly, shambling and wheezing along with that bluff, fearless unconcern she loved so well. Mirt the Moneylender, the man whose heart drove and carried the Lords of Waterdeep, was lumbering like an ungainly hopping hippo over heaped rubble where the alley emptied out into the general chaos of the ruin—trotting up to an enraged beholder to rescue his friend.
This was their fight, then. Asper frowned, quickly undid her belt, plucked something from behind its buckle, and set it down carefully on the boards beside her. It would not do to be touched by the sort of magic a beholder’s eyes could hurl while carrying that little bauble.
She buckled up her belt again, bit her lip in thought, then turned smoothly and ran a little way along the catwalk to where someone bolder than most had strung a line of washing from the high, hanging way to their own balcony. The cord was old and soft where the glowmold that infested these caverns had been washed away many times, but it held one hurrying, catlike woman in leathers long enough for her to reach the balcony. Asper got one boot on the balcony rail and kicked hard. The aging iron squealed in protest as she sprang away into darkness, fingers straining for the lantern-line she sought.
It was barbed to keep unscrupulous folk from winching down the iron basket of glowworms that served some fearful merchant as a back door lantern, and the gloves Asper wore ended in middle-finger rings, leaving her fingers and most of her palms bare to grip things unhampered, but she shed only a little blood as she caught hold, swung, and let go again, heading feet first for another catwalk. Her eyes were on the battle ahead.
The eye tyrant seemed to be trying to bite Durnan, who was ducking and rolling among stubby fingers of stone wall. As Asper’s feet found the catwalk boards, slid in something unpleasant, and shot her right across it into empty air beyond, she saw the beholder bite down. Blocks of stone crumbled and Durnan dived away, a dagger flashing in his hand. Mirt was getting close now, and beyond them all—as she brought her feet together to crash down through the rotting roof of a bone-cart—Asper could see a few warily-watching creatures, a minotaur and a kenku among them, pointing at him disgustedly and shouting to each other. Wagers were being changed, it seemed.
Then Asper’s feet plunged through silk that was gray with age, into brittle bones beyond. She shut her eyes against flying shards as she sank into a crouch, letting her legs take the force of her landing, as a rough male ore’s voice snarled, ” What by all the brain-boring tentacles of dripping Ilsenine’s sycophants was that?”
“Special delivery,” Asper told the unseen merchant as her sword flashed out. Silk fell away like cobwebs and she sprang past startled, furious eyes and gleaming tusks onto the street beyond.
“Grmnarrr!” The ore’s roar of rage echoed off the buildings around, and Asper dodged sharply toward one side of the alley, bringing her sword up and back behind her without looking or slowing. A heavy handaxe rang off its tip and rattled along an iron gate beside her. Asper ran on into the darkness, calling back, “Pleasant meeting, bloodtusks!”
The ore term of respect was unlikely to mollify a merchant whose cart-top had just been ruined, but she was in a hurry. Up ahead, the beholder seemed to be shaking the air in a roaring frenzy that far outmatched the snarls of the ore behind her—and rays were lashing out from its writhing, coiling eyestalks in all directions. Those stabbing down seemed to meet some sort of shield and fade away, and one that lashed out toward Mirt met a similar fate, but others were causing spectacular explosions, bursts of flame and lightning, and in one spot, the stone was melting like syrup and slumping down upon itself in a slow flood.
Magelight flashed and curled around the eye tyrant as it poured forth spells in a display that had the audience scrambling for cover. The shouted latest adjustments to their wagers rang back hollowly from windows, balconies, and behind walls all around as the ground shook. Stone shrieked as it was rent asunder and the last of the ruin’s blackened walls toppled, with slow majesty, down onto the struggling tavernmaster.
Dust rose slowly as the heaving underfoot subsided, and the ringing that had risen in Asper’s ears was not enough to drown out Mirt’s roar of challenge.
“About! Turn about, ye blasted lump of floating suet! I’ll look ye in all yer eyes and stare ye down, and there’ll be a blade-thrust into every one of ‘em before ye’ll have time to flee! Turn about, I say!”
Asper winced at her lord’s imprudence, even as a rueful smile twisted her lips. This was her Mirt, all right.
Winded by his shouting, the fat old Lord of Waterdeep puffed and wheezed straight at the beholder, old boots flopping as he scrambled up a shifting pile of rubble. At its top he made a show of drawing his stout old sword and raising it in challenge. “Do ye hear me, ball of offal? I—”
“Hear you quite well enough,” the beholder replied. “Be silent forever, fat man.” Beams of deadly radiance flashed from its eyes.
They struck something unseen in the air before Mirt with such savage force that the very emptiness darkened, and the fat moneylender staggered to keep his footing as he was thrust back under the weight of the magic that clawed and tore at his shields.
The eye tyrant screamed in rage—was every puling human protected against all his powers?—and lashed out repeatedly with spells and thrusting eye-beams. The ground shook anew and Mirt disappeared down a sliding mound of rubble as stones broke free from buildings all around and plunged to the streets. Asper crouched low to stay unseen and scrambled forward as a balcony broke off a large mansion off to her left and crashed to its iron-gated forecourt, splitting paving stones with cracks like the strikes of a dozen whips.
A stone shard whirled out of nowhere and laid her cheek open with the ease of a slicing razor. Asper hissed at the close call and put a hand up to shield her face, spreading her fingers to see Mirt struggling along like a man battling his way into the face of a gale. Blackness sparked and roiled around him as his shields slowly melted—soon they would surely fail, he’d be blasted to a rain of blood, and she’d lose him, forever.
There was only one way she could help, and it might mean her life. Thrown away vainly, too, if she fouled the lone chance she’d get. Asper swallowed, tossed her head to draw breath and blow errant hairs away from her eyes, and slapped the hilt of her sword so the rune carved there would be smeared with the gore still leaking from her torn fingers. She felt its familiar ridges slick and sticky with her blood and nodded in satisfaction. Turning herself carefully to face the raging eye tyrant, she firmly whispered two words aloud.
The sword shuddered in her hands, then bucked, and she clung to it grimly as the rune’s power was unleashed. It blazed away into nothingness as the sword dragged her up into the air and flung her forward, and eerie silence fell.
She was invisible now, she knew, springing up into the air on a one-way vault that would end in a bone-shattering meeting with the cavern wall or a sickening plunge to the ground if she judged wrongly.
The beholder hadn’t noticed her. It was still lashing her lord with futile gazes and hurled spells as she rose out of the flashings and trembling air, passing up and over the monster…
Now! The rune’s power winked out in obedience to her will and Asper found herself falling, sword first, as Mirt’s roars and the excited shouts of the watching Skulkans rushed back around her. Straight down at the curving, segmented body of the eye tyrant she plunged, headed for just behind the squirming forest of its eyestalks. Asper spread her legs and braced herself for the landing—she’d have only a bare breath to strike before it flung her away.