The circle of devastation would not be built on the soul of Herzgo Alegni, or even on those of a few wicked lovers deserving their doom. It would be built on innocents, on children, like the one she had thrown from the cliff.
“Athrogate, stop!” Dahlia heard herself saying, though she could hardly believe the words as they came forth.
All eyes turned to her—the confused dwarf, the suspicious drow, the surprised vampire, and the obviously amused lich.
“Do not touch it,” Dahlia said, with strength seeping back into her voice.
Athrogate turned to her and put his hands on his hips.
“What do you know?” Jarlaxle asked her.
The image in front of Athrogate blurred, replaced by visions of Delzoun ghosts. They gathered before him, and begged him to pull the lever.
Free us! they implored him in his mind.
Give to us, and to Gauntlgrym, life anew! one pleaded.
The elf fears it! said another. She fears us, and the return of the greatest dwarf kingdom!
Athrogate stared with hatred at Dahlia, and turned back to the lever.
“Dahlia?” Jarlaxle asked.
The elf was stricken as she stared into the eyes of the drow. “It frees … the beast,” she whispered.
Jarlaxle glanced back at Athrogate and Dahlia followed his gaze. Both looked on in alarm as the dwarf grabbed the lever in both hands.
“Athrogate, no!” they yelled together, but the dwarf was listening to other voices then, voices he thought belonged to the ghosts of his ancestors.
“He cannot hear you,” Sylora assured the pair from the anteroom. As one, they spun to regard her, and her contingent of fierce Ashmadai warriors, standing just outside the archway, crowded on that side of the pit room.
Behind them came a grinding sound as Athrogate pulled the heavy lever.
“Tell him, Dahlia,” Sylora said, tilting her chin at Jarlaxle.
The ground beneath them rumbled. Out past the anteroom came the sound of a great rush of water, like a tremendous waterfall rushing over the stones, then a hiss that sounded like a million giant vipers.
Looking past Sylora, Dahlia witnessed the rise of billowing steam, and within it, she noted living, watery forms—elementals, she presumed.
“What have we done?” Jarlaxle asked.
Sylora laughed at him. “Come Dor’crae,” she bade the vampire. “Leave them to their doom.”
“You betrayed me!” Dahlia shouted at the vampire. She noted just a hint of regret on his face, then she took up her staff and leaped at him, determined to destroy him first.
But Dor’crae was a human one blink and a bat the next. He fluttered past her, and past Jarlaxle into the anteroom, where Sylora had opened a magical gate once more, through which she and most of her prized Ashmadai zealots took their leave.
Valindra laughed hysterically then and blinked away, appearing at Sylora’s side.
“Yes, you, too, my sweet,” Sylora said to her, and showed her the skull gem, her phylactery, and bade her to enter the portal. “Tell him,” Sylora called to Dahlia right before she too stepped through the portal, which would take her to Neverwinter Wood, where she could witness the carnage and glory of her triumph. “Tell your dark elf stooge of the end of the world.” She laughed and disappeared, but closed the portal behind her, leaving a dozen Ashmadai behind.
“Occupy them, so they cannot leave,” Sylora’s disembodied voice instructed her warriors.
“Elf?” Athrogate asked from near the lever. “The ghosts told me to!”
“Sylora Salm told you to pull that lever,” Dahlia explained, her voice full of rage and of regret, full of guilt and venomous spit.
“Tell me,” Jarlaxle insisted.
The floor bucked again beneath them. From the pit came more hissing, more billowing steam, and a guttural roar that sounded as if Faerûn itself had been uncomfortably awakened.
“We’ve not the time,” Dahlia replied. She took up her staff, snapping it open to its eight-foot length.
The Ashmadai charged.
Jarlaxle drove them back with a sudden barrage of thrown daggers that appeared as if from nowhere, then Athrogate drove them back further, bursting between the elf and the drow, morningstars in hand, his heart full of absolute outrage. “Defiled it!” he wailed. “Ruined it!”
Tiefling and human warriors came at him front, left, and right, swinging and stabbing their crimson scepters. But Athrogate didn’t even try to stop the weapons, his focus purely on the offense. A morningstar head crushed the skull of the human on the left, a second swatted the half-elf on the right, and he met the head-butt of the tiefling in the center with his own armored skull.
And he bulled forward, undaunted. The dazed tiefling fell in front of him and Athrogate ran right over the half-blood thing to get to the next in line, his morningstars spinning furiously.
A stream of daggers flew over the dwarf’s right shoulder, clearing that flank, then over his left to similar effect.
Then came Dahlia, running, planting the end of her staff and using it to vault right past Athrogate. By the time she’d landed, she had pulled the staff in and broken it into the twin flails. Around and over they went, out to the side and straight head, clipping scepter and clipping arms and cracking skulls when any got too near.
Not to be outdone, Athrogate paced her, though her fury was truly no less than his own.
The ground bucked, the floor rolled and cracked. The wall split on one side of the anteroom, and dust and stones fell from the ceiling.
As they neared the edge of the pit, the Ashmadai broke ranks and fled across the walkway, Dahlia and Athrogate giving chase, for that was the only way to go.
Jarlaxle came last, and he stubbornly paused and waited for the hot, billowing steam to clear enough so that he could see down to the lava.
So that he could stare into the face of the fire primordial.
He understood then the source of the power for Gauntlgrym’s famed forge. He understood then the magic of the Hosttower, bringing in great elementals of water from the ocean to serve as a harness for that godlike beast. That magic had been gradually dissipating since the tower’s fall, obviously, given the earthquakes that had wracked the region for so many years.
And Athrogate had shut the magic down entirely.
The elementals were fleeing, and the beast would be free.
Jarlaxle glanced back toward the lever, though he couldn’t see it through the steam. They could reverse it, perhaps, and put the beast back in its harness.
He yelled out to Athrogate, but his voice couldn’t rise above the wind and hiss of the rushing steam.
Then flames mixed with steam, rising up all around the walkway and the drow, and Jarlaxle had to run away, pulling tight his piwafwi and cowl to shield his eyes and skin.
He caught up to Dahlia and Athrogate in the forge room, facing off against the half-dozen remaining Ashmadai, who had no choice but to stand their ground before the portcullis, which was closed again. Beyond that gate huddled the angry ghosts of Gauntlgrym.
“If you surrender, we can guide you out of here!” Jarlaxle yelled to them, putting a sword in one hand as he took his place flanking Athrogate.
“They’re Ashmadai,” Dahlia explained. “Zealots of Asmodeus. They do not fear death, they welcome it.”
“Then let’s oblige ’em,” Athrogate growled, and charged.
It struck Jarlaxle profoundly that the dwarf made no rhyme there, with battle so clear before him. But indeed, the dwarf was trembling with outrage at that point, and channeling all of his power to those devastating morningstars.
The Ashmadai howled and met the dwarf’s charge with glee. Dahlia flanked out to the left, her twin weapons spinning to match Athrogate’s morningstars, and Jarlaxle rushed up from the right. One against two, and two to each, they engaged.
Jarlaxle’s free left hand snapped out a line of spinning daggers, down low at first as he neared the closest opponent, a tiefling bearing a strange symbol branded into his dusky flesh. But then he switched them up high with the last throw, forcing the cultist to lift his forearm to deflect the missile. And in that evasive movement, the tiefling lost sight of the drow for just a heartbeat.
A heartbeat too long.
Jarlaxle slid past on one knee, using the tiefling to block his own companion.
A stab to the back of the leg left that Ashmadai stumbling and skidding down, hamstrung.
Across came the other, stabbing his spear-staff for the drow’s head.
But a second sword appeared in Jarlaxle’s grasp, and swept up and around, parrying perfectly. And when the first followed behind that parry, the cultist had no defense.
Athrogate waded in, disregarding again the stab of one cultist and the heavy swing of the other. He took hits to trade the hits, and his weapons were better by far. A human Ashmadai stabbed him deep in the front of his shoulder as he brought his arm around, but that didn’t deter the blow, for the dwarf was beyond feeling pain at that terrible moment, at the realization that he had destroyed the most sacred and ancient of dwarven homelands.
He felt his muscles tearing, but didn’t care, and completed the rotation. The morningstar crashed down upon the human’s lowered, leading shoulder with such force that it threw the cultist face down to the floor.
Athrogate stomped on the back of the Ashmadai’s neck as he turned to face the second, and accepted a crack on the hand holding his other morningstar, the price of a missed block. Normally such a hit would have taken the weapon from his grasp, but not with Gauntlgrym exploding around him.
He plowed on with fury, both weapons swinging, driving the cultist back toward the lowered portcullis.
The Ashmadai ran out of room to retreat, so he worked his staff furiously to deflect and block. But a blow got through, crunching him in the side, driving him into a lurch. A second blow from the other side straightened him again, only to be hit again on the first side, higher up.
Then from the second side again, battering him, crushing his bones to dust, tearing his skin and sending his blood and brains flying wide to one side, then the other.
He crumpled to his knees and Athrogate kept hitting him—the only thing holding the dead cultist up were the dwarf’s blows.
Dahlia was far more cautious. She worked her weapons defensively, picking off every thrust and swing, still fighting two enemies—a human woman and a male half-orc—long after Athrogate began to bull his remaining opponent backward.
She played for her opponents’ mistakes, and as good as they were, Dahlia was better.
The Ashmadai to her left, the half-orc, moved to flank her, and the woman to her right predictably used her turn to come ahead boldly with a stab for Dahlia’s turning hip.
But Dahlia reversed, and her swing indicated that she would send her left weapon all the way across to try to hook the spear aside.
The half-orc braced for the ruse, and was caught by surprise as Dahlia’s right-hand weapon came up and under instead, yanking the spear-staff nearly from his grasp—and indeed, it would have taken that weapon away had that been Dahlia’s intent. She disengaged with a subtle twist instead, and allowed herself to overbalance and fall to her leading, right knee, where she reversed the spin of that weapon and swept it low, taking the human’s legs out from under her.