Each scimitar swipe brought a ring of metal, and each passing second gave Drizzt more understanding of his opponents’ abilities and attack strategies. Out in the Underdark, Drizzt had fought blindly many times, once even donning a hood against the basilisk he’d met.
Overwhelmed by the sheer speed of the drow’s attacks, the duergar could only work their swords back and forth and hope that a scimitar didn’t slide through.
The blades sang and rang as the two duergar frantically parried and dodged. Then came a sound that Drizzt had hoped for, the sound of a scimitar digging into flesh. A moment later, one sword clanged to the stone and its wounded wielder made the fatal mistake of crying out in pain.
Drizzt’s hunter-self rose to the surface at that moment and focused on that cry, and his scimitar shot straight ahead, smashing into the gray dwarf’s teeth and on through the back of its head.
The hunter turned on the remaining duergar in fury. Around and around his blades spun in swirling circular motions. Around and around, then one shot out in a sudden straightforward thrust, too quickly for a blocking response. It caught the duergar in the shoulder, gashing a deep wound.
“Give! Give!” the gray dwarf cried, not desiring the same fate as its companion. Drizzt heard another sword drop to the floor. “Please, drow elf!”
At the duergar’s words, the drow buried his instinctive urges. “I accept your surrender,” Drizzt replied, and he moved close to his opponent, putting the tip of his scimitar to the gray dwarf’s chest. Together, they walked out of the area darkened by Drizzt’s spell.
Searing agony ripped through Clacker’s head, every blow sending waves of pain. The hook horror gurgled out an animal’s growl and exploded into furious motion, heaving up from the crushed duergar and spinning over at the newest foes.
A duergar club smashed in again, but Clacker was beyond any sensation of pain. A heavy claw bashed through the purple outline, through the invisible duergar’s skull. The gray dwarf came back into view suddenly, the concentration needed to maintain a state of invisibility stolen by death, the greatest thief of all.
The remaining duergar turned to flee, but the enraged hook horror moved faster. Clacker caught the gray dwarf in a claw and hoisted him into the air. Screeching like a frenzied bird, the hook horror hurled the unseen opponent into the wall. The duergar came back into sight, broken and crumbled at the base of the stone wall.
No opponents stood to face the hook horror, but Clacker’s savage hunger was far from satiated. Drizzt and the wounded duergar emerged from the darkness then, and the hook horror barreled in.
With the specter of Belwar’s combat taking his attention, Drizzt did not realize Clacker’s intent until the duergar prisoner screamed in terror. By then, it was too late.
Drizzt watched his prisoner’s head go flying back into the globe of darkness.
“Clacker!” the drow screamed in protest. Then Drizzt ducked and dived backward for his own life as the other claw came viciously swinging across. Spotting new prey nearby, the hook horror didn’t follow the drow into the globe. Belwar and the dagger-wielding duergar were too engaged in their own struggles to notice the approaching crazed giant. Clacker bent low, collected the prone combatants in his huge arms, and heaved them both straight up into the air. The duergar had the misfortune of coming down first, and Clacker promptly batted it across the chamber. Belwar would have found a similar fate, but crossed scimitars intercepted the hook horror’s next blow.
The giant’s strength slid Drizzt back several feet, but the parry softened the blow enough for Belwar to fall by. Still, the burrow-warden crashed heavily into the floor and spent a long moment too dazed to react.
“Clacker!” Drizzt cried again, as a giant foot came up with the obvious intent of squashing Belwar flat. Needing all his speed and agility, Drizzt dived around to the back of the hook horror, dropped to the floor, and went for Clacker’s knees, as he had in their first encounter. Trying to stomp on the prone svirfneblin, Clacker was already a bit off balance, and Drizzt easily tripped him to the stone. In the blink of an eye, the drow warrior sprang atop the monster’s chest and slipped a scimitar tip between the armored folds of Clacker’s neck.
Drizzt dodged a clumsy swing as Clacker continued to struggle. The drow hated what he had to do, but then the hook horror calmed suddenly and looked up at him with sincere understanding.
“D-d-do… it,” came a garbled demand. Drizzt, horrified, glanced over to Belwar for support. Back on his feet, the burrow-warden just looked away.
“Clacker?” Drizzt asked the hook horror. “Are you Clacker once again?”
The monster hesitated, then the beaked head nodded slightly.
Drizzt sprang away and looked at the carnage in the chamber. “Let us leave,” he said.
Clacker remained prone a moment longer, considering the grim implications of his reprieve. With the battle’s conclusion, the hook horror side backed out of its full control of Clacker’s consciousness. Those savage instincts lurked, Clacker knew, not far from the surface, waiting for another opportunity to find a firm hold. How many times would the faltering pech side be able to fight those instincts?
Clacker slammed the stone, a mighty blow that sent cracks running through the chamber’s floor. With great effort, the weary giant climbed to his feet. In his embarrassment, Clacker didn’t look at his companions, but just stormed away down the tunnel, each banging footstep falling like a hammer on a nail in Drizzt Do’Urden’s heart.
“Perhaps you should have finished it, dark elf,” Belwar suggested, moving beside his drow friend.
“He saved my life in the illithid cavern,” Drizzt retorted sharply. “And has been a loyal friend.”
“He tried to kill me, and you,” the deep gnome said grimly. “Magga cammara!”
“I am his friend!” Drizzt growled, grabbing the svirfneblin’s shoulder. “You ask me to kill him?”
“I ask you to act as his friend,” retorted Belwar, and he pulled free of the grasp and started away down the tunnel after Clacker.
Drizzt grabbed the burrow-warden’s shoulder again and roughly spun him around.
“It will only get worse, dark elf,” Belwar said calmly into Drizzt’s grimace. “A firmer hold does the wizard’s spell gain with every passing day. Clacker will try to kill us again, I fear, and if he succeeds, the realization of the act will destroy him more fully than your blades ever could!”
“I cannot kill him,” Drizzt said, and he was no longer angry. “Nor can you.”
“Then we must leave him,” the deep gnome replied. “We must let Clacker go free in the Underdark, to live his life as a hook horror. That surely is what he will become, body and spirit.”
“No,” said Drizzt. “We must not leave him. We are his only chance. We must help him.”
“The wizard is dead,” Belwar reminded him, and the deep gnome turned away and started again after Clacker.
“There are other wizards,” Drizzt replied under his breath, this time making no move to impede the burrow-warden. The drow’s eyes narrowed and he snapped his scimitars back into their sheaths. Drizzt knew what he must do, what price his friendship with Clacker demanded, but he found the thought too disturbing to accept.
There were indeed other wizards in the Underdark, but chance meetings were far from common, and wizards capable of dispelling Clacker’s polymorphed state would be fewer still. Drizzt knew where such wizards could be found, though.
The thought of returning to his homeland haunted Drizzt with every step he and his companions took that day. Having viewed the consequences of his decision to leave Menzoberranzan, Drizzt never wanted to see the place again, never wanted to look upon the dark world that had so damned him.