Drizzt and Bruenor quickly came to understand the absolutely unfavorable conditions in which they had met Errtu. The fiend’s fires raged, turning the ice cave into a sloshing quagmire. Huge blocks fell from the ceiling, forcing the friends to dodge and twist, the cold water weighing them down.
Even worse, whenever the great balor moved away from the pair, taking away his fiendish heat, the water began to refreeze about Drizzt and Bruenor, slowing them.
Throughout the ordeal, they heard the taunting laughter of the mighty Errtu.
“What torment awaits you, Drizzt Do’Urden!” the fiend bellowed.
Drizzt heard the sudden splash behind him, felt the suddenly intense heat, and knew that the fiend had used his magic, had teleported to arrive right behind the drow. Drizzt started to turn, was quick enough to dodge, but the fiend merely stuck his lightning sword into the water behind the drow, and the energy released from the blade jolted Drizzt’s every muscle.
Drizzt spun, gritted his teeth to prevent himself from biting off his own tongue. Around came Twinkle, a perfect parry, catching Errtu’s second attack in mid-swing.
The fiend laughed all the louder as his devilish blade released another jolt, a burst of electrical energy that rushed through Drizzt’s scimitar and into the drow, coursing down his body and popping his knees so painfully that he lost his balance and nearly lost consciousness.
He heard Bruenor’s roar, and the sloshing as the dwarf pounded his way toward him. The dwarf couldn’t get there in time, Drizzt realized. Errtu’s sudden assault had beaten him.
But suddenly, the fiend was gone, simply gone. It took Drizzt only a moment to understand; Errtu was playing with them! The fiend had waited all these years to exact revenge on Drizzt, and now the wicked balor was truly enjoying himself.
Bruenor skidded by as Drizzt regained his footing. The pair heard the sound of Errtu’s taunting laughter once more, from across the way.
“Beware, for the fiend can appear wherever he chooses,” Drizzt warned, and even as he spoke the words, he heard the crack of a whip and the cry of the dwarf. Drizzt spun about as Bruenor was tugged from his feet.
“Ye don’t say?” the dwarf asked, scrambling furiously to get himself in line for a strike as Errtu jerked him backward, away from Drizzt.
Bruenor realized the depth of his troubles then, for in looking back, he saw a wall of fire looming before him, sizzling and sputtering as it turned the ice to steam. Behind it stood Errtu reeling him in with the whip, grinning wickedly.
Drizzt felt the strength drain from his body; he knew how Errtu meant to torment him now. Bruenor was doomed.
*****
Regis didn’t know it, but his presence alone in that small room at the top of Cryshal-Tirith saved Catti-brie. Stumpet was near to her, at the edge of the ice. To Catti-brie’s horror, the dwarf did not try to help her get her numbed form over the edge of the floe, but rather began pushing and kicking at her, trying to dislodge her and drop her back into the water.
Catti-brie fought back as fiercely as she could, but without firm footing and with her legs completely numb, she was losing the struggle.
But then Regis went into the tower, and the crystal shard had to release Stumpet from its domineering hold and concentrate on this newest threat.
Stumpet stopped fighting, went perfectly still. As soon as she realized the truth of the immobile dwarf, Catti-brie grabbed a hold on Stumpet’s sturdy leg, using the dwarf’s bulk to pull herself clear of the water.
After a considerable struggle, the woman managed to get shakily to her feet. Drizzt and Bruenor were gone by then, into the cave, but there remained manes to shoot, including a group that had leaped into the water and were thrashing about, gradually closing the gap to Catti-brie and Stumpet, the last remaining visible enemies.
Up came Taulmaril.
*****
Bruenor struggled with all his might. He grabbed on to the remaining stump of one destroyed stalagmite, but the icy thing was too slick for him to get a firm hold. It wouldn’t have helped anyway, not with Errtu-so huge and strong-pulling against him. The dwarf howled in pain as his feet went into the fiendish fire.
Drizzt scrambled so fast that his feet slipped out from under him. He kept moving, though, churning his knees, banging them hard. The drow hardly cared for his pain. Bruenor needed him, that was all that mattered. He rushed with all speed, found a proper foothold amidst the quagmire, and shoved off, diving straight out, his arm extended and holding straight the ice-forged scimitar, sliding its curving blade right beside his friend.
In that area, Errtu’s fires were extinguished, put out by the magic of the scimitar.
Both friends tried to rise, and both were blasted back to the wet ground as the balor plunged his lightning sword into the watery ice, taunting them all the while.
“Yes, a reprieve!” the fiend bellowed. “Well done, Drizzt Do’Urden, foolish drow. You have extended my pleasure, and for that-”
The fiend’s sentence ended with a grunt as Guenhwyvar soared in, slamming Errtu hard, knocking him off-balance on the slick floor.
Drizzt was up and charging. Bruenor worked fast to untangle himself from the binding thongs of the fiend’s whip. And Guenhwyvar raked wildly, biting and clawing.
Errtu knew the cat, had faced Guenhwyvar on that same occasion when Drizzt had banished him, and the balor felt the fool for not anticipating that the animal would soon arrive.
No matter, though, Errtu reasoned, and with a huge shrug of powerful muscles, the fiend launched the cat away.
In came Drizzt, his hungry scimitar thrusting for the fiend’s belly.
Errtu’s lightning sword swiped down in a parry, and that, too, was an attack, as the energy coursed from weapon to weapon, and subsequently into Drizzt, hurling him backward.
Bruenor was in fast and the dwarf’s axe chopped hard into Errtu’s leg. The fiend roared and swatted the dwarf, and Bruenor flew backwards. Out came the fiend’s leathery wings, up he rose, above the reach of the mighty friends. Guenhwyvar leaped again, but Errtu caught her in mid-flight, locked her with a telekinesis spell, as the glabrezu had done with Catti-brie.
Still, for Drizzt and Bruenor, shaking off their earlier wounds, Guenhwyvar was helping, was keeping the fiend’s considerable magical energies engaged.
“Let my father go!” Drizzt cried out.
Errtu laughed at him, and the reprieve was at its end. Errtu’s spell hurled the panther aside, and the fiend came on in all his wrath.
*****
It was a small room, perhaps a dozen feet in diameter and with a domed ceiling reaching up to the tower’s pinnacle. In the middle of the room, hanging in the empty air, loomed Crenshinibon, the crystal shard, the heart of the tower, pulsing with a pinkish-red color as though it were a living thing.
Regis glanced around quickly. He spotted the coffer lying on the floor-he knew it from somewhere, though he couldn’t immediately place it-and the gem-studded ring, but what significance they held, the halfling could not be sure.
And he didn’t have the time to figure it out. Regis had talked extensively with Drizzt after the fall of Kessel, and he knew well the technique the drow had used to defeat the tower on that occasion, simply by covering the pulsing shard with blocking flour. So it was with the halfling now as he pulled the small pack from his back and strode confidently in.
“Time to sleep,” Regis taunted. He was almost right, but not in the manner he meant, for he was almost knocked unconscious. The halfling and Drizzt had erred. In the tower on the plain outside of Bryn Shander those years ago, Drizzt had covered not Crenshinibon, but one of the shard’s countless images. On this occasion, it was the real crystal shard, the sentient and powerful artifact, serving as the tower’s heart. Such a meager attack was defeated by a pulse of energy that disintegrated the flour as it descended, burned the sack in the halfling’s hands, and hurled Regis hard against the far wall.
The dazed halfling groaned all the louder when the trap door in the room’s floor flew open. The stench of trolls wafted in, followed closely by a huge and wide hand with sharpened claws and rubbery, putrid green skin.
* * * * *
Catti-brie could hardly feel her extremities, her teeth chattered uncontrollably and she knew that her bowstring was cutting deeply into her fingers, though she felt no pain there. She had to continue, for the sake of her father and of Drizzt.
Using solid Stumpet as a support, the young woman steadied herself and let fly an arrow, taking down the fiend closest to the cave entrance. Again and again, Catti-brie let fly, her enchanted quiver providing her with endless ammunition. She decimated most of the manes remaining on the ice beach, and blew away those coming over the ridge. She nearly shot Guenhwyvar, too, before she recognized the speeding cat. Her heart was lifted with some hope as the mighty panther rushed into the cave.
Soon all that remained of the manes were the few in the water, swimming fast for Catti-brie. Catti-brie worked frantically- most of her shots hit the mark-but one did get up on the ice floe, and came rushing in.
Catti-brie looked to her sword, buried to the hilt in the ice, and knew that she could not get to it in time. Instead, she used her bow like a club, whacking the fiend hard across the face.
The wretched thing skidded in, off-balance, and even as the two connected, Catti-brie snapped her forehead right into the ugly fiend’s nose. Up came the tip of her bow, driving hard under the thing’s saggy chin, poking through the oozing skin. The creature exploded into noxious gas, but it had done its work. The momentum of its rush, combined with the sudden gaseous cloud, sent Catti-brie moving backward, past the dwarf and into the water.
Up she came, gasping for breath, flailing with arms that she could not feel. Her legs were useless to her now. She managed somehow to grab on to the very edge of the ice floe, locking her fingers into a small crevice, for she knew that her strength was already going away. She cried out for Stumpet, but even those muscles of her mouth would not respond to her mind’s command.
Catti-brie had survived the fiends, it seemed, only to be destroyed by the natural elements of Icewind Dale, the place she had called home for most of her life. That irony was not lost on her as all the world grew cold.
*****
Regis’s back skimmed the curving ceiling as the nine-foot troll, the larger of the two that had entered the room, lifted him high into the air to look into its ghastly face. “Now youses goes into me belly!” the horrid thing proclaimed, opening wide its considerable maw.
The mere fact that the troll could speak gave Regis an idea, a desperate glimmer of hope.
“Wait!” he bade the creature, reaching under his tunic. “I have treasure to offer.” Out came the halfling’s prized pendant, the magnificent, hypnotic ruby dancing on the end of the chain just inches from the startled, and suddenly intrigued, troll’s eyes.
“This is only the beginning,” Regis stammered, fighting hard to improvise for the consequences of failure were all too evident. “I have a mound of these-look at how wonderfully it spins, drawing your eyes . . .”
“Ere now, be ye to eats the thing or not?” the second troll demanded, shoving the first one hard. But that troll was caught fast by the charm, and was already thinking that it didn’t want to share the booty with its companion.
Thus, the horrid thing was more than open to Regis’s ensuing suggestion as the halfling casually glanced at the second troll and said, “Kill him.”
Regis dropped hard to the floor, and was nearly squashed as the two trolls fell into a wild wrestling match. The halfling had to move fast, but what was he to do? His rolling evasion took him to the gem-studded ring, which he promptly pocketed, and to the open and empty coffer, which he suddenly recognized.
It was the same coffer the glabrezu had been carrying when Regis and his companions had come upon evil Matron Baenre in the tunnels under Mithril Hall, the same coffer that had held the stone-the black sapphire that had stolen away all the magic.
Regis scooped up the thing and dashed past the rolling trolls, bearing down fast on the crystal shard. A flood of mental images assaulted him then, nearly buckling his legs. The sentient artifact, sensing the danger, entered the halfling’s mind, dominating poor Regis. Regis wanted to move forward, he really did, but his feet would not obey.
And then he wasn’t sure that he wanted to move forward at all. Suddenly Regis had to wonder why he had wanted to destroy the crystal tower, the beautiful and marvelous structure. And why would he desire the destruction of Crenshinibon, the creator, when he might use the artifact to his own benefit?
What did Drizzt know anyway?
Though he was a confused and nearly lost soul at that point, the halfling thought to lift his own ruby pendant up before his eyes.
Immediately Regis found himself swirling into the item’s depths, following the red flickers deeper and deeper. Most people got lost in that charm, but it was there, deep within the hypnosis of his gemstone, that Regis found himself.
He dropped the pendant chain and leaped forward, snapping the shielding coffer over Crenshinibon just as it released another pulse of deadly energy.
The coffer swallowed the item and its attack, and Regis plucked the shard out of the air.
Immediately the tower, the gigantic image of the crystal shard, began to shudder, the initial rumbles of its death throes.
“Oh, not again,” the halfling muttered, for he had been through this before, and had escaped only with aid of Guenhwyvar, while Drizzt had escaped by ...
Regis turned to the window, leaped up to its sill. He glanced back at the trolls, hugging instead of wrestling as their tower home shivered beneath them. In unison, they turned to regard the smiling halfling.
“Another day perhaps,” Regis said to them, and then, without looking down, he leaped out. Twenty feet down, he hit the side of the iceberg cone, bouncing and sliding wildly to come to a sudden, jolting stop in the icy snow. The crystal tower crumbled around him, huge blocks narrowly missing the stunned and bruised halfling.
*****
The earthquake on the iceberg brought a temporary halt to the fighting within the cave, a temporary reprieve for those being badly beaten by the powerful tanar’ri. But poor Bruenor, standing by the cave wall, fell down as a wide crack opened at his feet. Though the break wasn’t very deep, barely to Bruenor’s waist, when the shaking ended, the dwarf found himself wedged in tightly.
The loss of Crenshinibon did nothing to diminish Errtu’s powers, and the obvious fall of the tower only heightened the balor’s rage.
Guenhwyvar came flying back in at him, but the fiend skewered the cat in mid-flight with his mighty sword, holding Guenhwyvar aloft with one powerful hand.
Drizzt, on his knees in the slush, could only watch in horror as Errtu calmly stalked in, as the panther twitched and tried futilely to free herself, growling with agony.
It was over, Drizzt knew. All of it had come to a sudden, crashing end. He could not win out. He wished that Guenhwyvar could get off of that sword-if she did, Drizzt would send her over to Bruenor and then dismiss her. Hopefully she would take the dwarf with her to the relative safety of her astral home.
But that couldn’t happen. Guenhwyvar twitched again and slumped, and then dissipated into gray smoke, her corporeal form defeated and sent away from the Prime Material Plane.
Drizzt pulled out the figurine. He knew that he could not recall the cat, not for some days. He heard the hiss as the fiend’s fires neared him and were extinguished by his trusty blade, and he looked from the figurine to grinning Errtu, towering over him, barely five feet away.
“Are you ready to die, Drizzt Do’Urden?” the fiend asked. “Your father can see us, you know, and how pained he is that you will die slowly before me!”
Drizzt didn’t doubt the words, and his rage came up in full. But it wouldn’t help him, not this time. He was cold, weary, filled with sorrow, and defeated. He knew that.
*****
Errtu’s words were half true. The prisoner, behind a partially opaque wall of ice at the side of the cave’s upper landing, could indeed see the scene, highlighted by the blue glow of Drizzt’s scimitars and the orange flames near Errtu.
He clawed at the wall futilely. He cried as he had not cried in so many years.
*****
“And what a fine pet your cat will make for me,” Errtu teased.
“Never,” the drow growled, and purely on impulse, Drizzt threw the figurine with all his might, back through the cave entrance. He didn’t hear the splash, but he was confident that he had heaved it far enough to reach the sea.
“Well done, me friend,” a grim Bruenor said from the side.
Errtu’s grin became a grimace of outrage. Up came the deadly sword, hanging right over Drizzt’s vulnerable head. The drow lifted Twinkle to block.
And then a hammer twirled in end over end to slam hard into the balor, accompanied by the hearty call of “Tempus!”
Without fear, Kierstaad rushed into the cave, skidding right through the breach in Errtu’s flames caused by Drizzt’s scimitar, skidding right into the face of the tanar’ri, and howling for Aegis-fang all the way. Kierstaad knew the hammer’s legend, knew that it would return to his hands.
But it didn’t. It was gone from the ground near the fiend, but for some reason that Kierstaad did not understand, it had not materialized in his waiting hands.
“It should have come back!” he cried in protest, to Bruenor mostly, and then Kierstaad was flying, slapped away by the fiend. He smacked hard into an ice mound, rolled off the thing and fell heavily, groaning, to the slushy floor.
“It should have come back,” he said once more, before his consciousness drifted away.
*****
Aegis-fang couldn’t go back to Kierstaad, for it had returned to its rightful owner, to Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, watching the scene from behind an ice wall. Wulfgar had been Errtu’s prisoner for six long years.
The feel of the weapon transformed Wulfgar, gave him back a measure of himself along with the familiarity of this warhammer, forged for him by the dwarf who loved him. He remembered so much at that moment, so much that he had, by necessity, forced himself to forget in the years of hopelessness.
Truly the strong barbarian was overwhelmed, but not so much so that he didn’t think of the immediate need. He roared out to Tempus, his god-how good it felt to hear that name coming from his lips again!-and began taking down the wall with mighty chops of his powerful hammer.
* * * * *
Regis felt a call in his mind. At first he thought it to be the crystal shard, and then, when he convinced himself that the artifact was safely and completely locked away in the coffer, he guessed it to be the ruby pendant.
When that proved false, Regis finally discerned the source: the gemstone ring in his pocket. Regis took it out and stared hard at it. He feared that it was yet another manifestation of Crenshinibon and lifted his arm back to hurl it into the sea.
But then Regis recognized the little voice in his head.
“Stumpet?” he asked, curiously, peering hard into the stone. He moved as he spoke, coming to kneel right beside one of the broken tower blocks. Out came his little mace.
*****
The thunder of the barbarian’s hits shook the whole of the cave, so much so that a suddenly nervous Errtu could not help but look back. And when the balor did, Drizzt Do’Urden struck hard.
Twinkle gashed against the fiend’s calf, while Drizzt launched his other blade higher, aiming for Errtu’s groin. The scimitar’s pointy tip dug in, and how Errtu howled! Again came that welcomed throbbing along Drizzt’s arm as the scimitar fed on the fiend’s life force.
But the turn in the battle was temporary. Errtu quickly slapped Drizzt away, then disappeared, coming back into view high among the icy fingers that hung down from the ceiling.
“Up, Bruenor,” Drizzt called. “We have been given a reprieve, for Zaknafein will soon be among us.”
The drow looked to the red-bearded dwarf as he spoke, and Bruenor had nearly wriggled his way out of the hole.
Up Drizzt scrambled, up and ready, but something about the look that came over Bruenor’s face as the dwarf gazed to the side, weakened Drizzt’s knees. He followed the dwarf’s stare across the chamber, to the ice wall, where he expected to see Zaknafein.
He saw Wulfgar instead, with unkempt, wild hair and beard, but Wulfgar no doubt, hoisting Aegis-fang high and roaring with pure hatred.
“Me boy,” was all the dwarf could whisper, and Bruenor slumped back into the hole.
Errtu went at Wulfgar hard, swooping in, his whip cracking and his sword blazing.
A hurled Aegis-fang nearly knocked the fiend from the air. Still the balor swept by, entangling Wulfgar’s ankles with his whip and tugging the man from the ledge to send him bouncing among the ice mounds of the slushy floor.
“Wulfgar,” Drizzt called out, and he winced as the man tumbled. It would take more than a fall to stop the tormented Wulfgar, now that he was among his friends, now that he held his mighty hammer. Up he sprang, roaring like some animal, and Aegis-fang, beautiful and solid Aegis-fang, was back in his hand.
Errtu went into a frenzy, determined to squash this minor uprising, to destroy all of Drizzt’s friends, and then the drow himself. Balls of darkness appeared in the air, obscuring Wulfgar’s vision as he tried to line up another throw. The fiend cracked his whip and zipped all about the cave, sometimes in swift flight, other times calling upon magic to teleport himself from place to place.
The chaos was complete, and every time Drizzt tried to get to Bruenor, Wulfgar, or even to fallen Kierstaad, there was Errtu, smacking him away. Always the drow parried the lightning sword, but each hit jolted him and hurt him. And every time, before Drizzt could begin to counter, Errtu was gone, simply gone, to wreak havoc in another part of the cave with another of the drow’s friends.
*****
She wasn’t cold anymore, was far beyond that simple sensation. Catti-brie was walking in darkness, fleeing the realm of mortals.
A strong hand grabbed her by the shoulder, the physical shoulder, bringing her senses back in tune with her corporeal body, and then she felt herself being lifted from the water.
And then . . . the woman felt warmth, magical warmth, seeping through her body, returning life where there was barely any.
Catti-brie’s eyes fluttered open to see Stumpet Rakingclaw working furiously over her, calling upon the dwarven gods to breathe life back into this woman who had been as a daughter to Clan Battlehammer.
* * * * *
Lightning simmered every time Errtu used that mighty sword. The rumbling of thunder and the fiend’s victorious roars were matched by the beating of great leathery wings, the roars of Wulfgar to his battle god, and the cries of “Me boy!” from a wild-eyed, and still trapped Bruenor. Drizzt shouted, trying to bring some semblance of order to his companions, some common strategy that might corner and at last defeat wicked Errtu.
The fiend would have none of that. Errtu swooped and disappeared, struck fast and hard and was simply gone. Sometimes the balor hung up high amidst the stalactites, using his fires to loosen and drop the natural spikes at the companions scrambling below. Other times, Errtu had to come down to keep them apart, and even with the balor’s tremendous efforts, Drizzt wove his way stubbornly toward Bruenor.
Wherever the fiend chose to appear, he could not remain in place and visible for very long. Even though the quagmire continued to slow any moves the drow might try, and even though the dwarf remained stuck in the stubborn crevice, the tormented prisoner, and his mighty hammer were always quick to the call. On several occasions Errtu vanished just an instant before Aegis-fang slammed into the wall, marking the spot where the fiend had been.
And so Errtu retained the upper hand, but in that craziness, the fiend could score no decisive hits.
It was time to win.
Bruenor was almost out of the crack, stuck by a single leg, when the mighty balor appeared, right behind him.
Drizzt, yelled out a warning, and purely on instinct, the dwarf whipped about, throwing himself as far into the fiend as possible, grabbing the balor’s leg, wrenching his own knee in the process. Errtu’s sword came swishing down, but Bruenor was in too close for it to cleave him. Still the dwarf was battered hard, and the energy jolt nearly popped his knees out of joint, especially the twisted one.
Bruenor grabbed on all the harder, knowing he could not hurt the balor, but hoping he could keep the fiend in place long enough for his friends to strike. His hair singed and his eyes stung as the fiend’s fires came up, but they were gone in an instant and Bruenor knew that Drizzt was nearby.
Errtu’s whip cracked, slowing the drow’s approach. Drizzt went in a complete spin to dodge, skidding down to one knee, and he stumbled as he tried to get back to his feet.
The whip cracked again, but it could do little to slow the progress of twirling Aegis-fang. The hammer caught the balor on the side, slamming Errtu back against the ice wall, and the fiend’s respect for the man that had been his prisoner soared. Errtu had been hit by Aegis-fang once already, when Kierstaad had entered the fray, and so he understood the power of the weapon. But that first throw could not prepare Errtu for the power that was Wulfgar. Kierstaad’s throw had stung him; Wulfgar’s had truly hurt.
In came Drizzt, but the balor lashed out hard with his foot, tearing Bruenor from the crevice and launching the dwarf a dozen feet across the cave floor. The fiend used his magic to disappear immediately, and Drizzt went sliding into empty wall.
“Fools!” the balor bellowed from the cave’s exit. “I will retrieve the crystal shard and meet with you again before you leave this sea. Know that you are doomed!”
Drizzt scrambled, Wulfgar tried to line up a parting shot, and even Bruenor worked hard to stagger back to his feet, but none of them would get to Errtu in time.
The fiend turned away from them and started to fly off, but his surprise was complete, his momentum fully halted, by a silver-streaking arrow that hit him right in the face.
Errtu howled and Wulfgar threw, the hammer smashing hard into the fiend, crushing bones.
Catti-brie let fly again, putting one right into his chest. The balor howled again and stumbled backward into the cave.
Bruenor hobbled toward him, catching his axe as Drizzt tossed it to him. He reversed his grip to add to the momentum of the throw and buried the many-notched blade deep into the fiend’s backside.
Errtu howled and Catti-brie hit him again, right beside her last shot.
Drizzt was there, Twinkle striking hard. He plunged his other blade plunging deep into the fiend’s side, right under Errtu’s arm as the fiend tried to lift his own sword to fend off the drow. Then Wulfgar was there, pounding away beside his father. Catti-brie kept the exit blocked by a steady line of streaking arrows.
And Drizzt held on, leaving his gulping blade deep in the fiend’s flesh, while Twinkle worked furiously, cutting wound after wound.
With a last burst of energy, Errtu turned about, throwing off Bruenor and Wulfgar, but not Drizzt. The mighty balor looked right into the drow’s lavender eyes. Errtu was defeated-even then, the fiend could feel his corporeal form beginning to melt away-but this time, the balor meant to take Drizzt Do’Urden back to the abyss.
Up came the balor’s sword and his free hand came across, accepting the sting as it connected with Twinkle, moving the blocking weapon aside.
Drizzt had no defense. He let go of his embedded scimitar and tried to fall away. Too late.
The lightning flared along the blade’s edge as it slashed toward the drow’s head.
A strong hand shot out before the horrified drow’s eyes and caught the fiend by the wrist, somehow stopping the cut, somehow holding mighty Errtu at bay, the lightning weapon barely inches from the target. Errtu glanced across to see Wulfgar, mighty Wulfgar, teeth clenched and muscles standing out like steel cords. All the years of frustration were in that iron grip, all the horrors the young barbarian had known were transformed then into sheer hatred for the fiend.
There was no way that Wulfgar, or any man, could hold back Errtu, but Wulfgar denied that logic, that truth, with the stronger truth that he would not let Errtu hurt him anymore, would not let the fiend take Drizzt from his side.
Errtu shook his half-canine, half-ape head in disbelief. It could not be!
And yet it was. Wulfgar held him, and soon, the balor was gone, in a waft of smoke and a wail of protest.
The three friends fell together in a tearful hug, too overwhelmed to speak, to even stand, for many, many moments.