“Wait here!” Drizzt called to him, and the drow was gone.

Bruenor held on as the creature thrashed in its death throes. It tried to turn around to snap at him, but Drizzt had completely disabled the once-formidable jaws’ ability to inflict any real damage. The mandibles flopped awkwardly and without coordination, most of the supporting muscles severed. Similarly, the creature’s tail and hind legs exhibited only the occasional spasmodic twitch, for Bruenor’s axe had cleaved its spine.

So the dwarf stayed at arms’ length, holding his axe out far from his torso to avoid any incidental contact.

“Hurry, elf!” Bruenor called after Drizzt when he glanced to the side and noted Thibble dorf’s boot lying on the stone floor. No longer willing to wait out the dying beast, Bruenor leaped atop its back and ripped through tendon and bone as he tugged and yanked his axe free. He thought to run off after Drizzt, but before he even had the weapon set in his hands, a movement to the side caught his eye.

The dwarf watched curiously as a darker patch of shadow coalesced near the side wall and the broken wagon, gradually taking shape—the shape of another of the strange beasts.

It came out hard and fast at him, and Bruenor wisely dropped down behind the fallen creature. On came the second beast, jaws snapping furiously, and the dwarf fell to the stone floor and heaved the fallen creature up as a meaty shield. The dwarf finally saw the damage those strange triangular jaws could inflict, for the ravenous newcomer tore through great chunks of flesh and bone in seconds.

Movement behind Bruenor had him half turning to his right.

“Just me!” Regis called to him before he came around, and the dwarf refocused on the beast before him.

Then Bruenor glanced left, to see Drizzt backing frantically out of the tunnel, his scimitars working fast and independently, each slashing quick lines to hold the snapping mouths of two more creatures at bay.

“Rumblebelly, ye help the elf!” Bruenor called, but when he glanced back, Regis was gone.

Bruenor’s foe plowed over its fallen comrade then, and the dwarf king had no time to look for his halfling companion.

Drizzt noticed Regis flattened against the wall as he, and the pair of monsters pursuing him, moved past the halfling.

Regis nodded and waited for a responding nod. As soon as Drizzt offered it, the halfling came out fast and slapped his small mace against the tail of the creature on the left. Predictably, the beast wheeled to snap at this newest foe, but anticipating that, Drizzt moved faster, bringing his right hand blade over and across, cutting a gash across the side of the turning beast’s neck.

With a roar of protest, the creature spun back, and the other, seeing the opening, came on suddenly.

But Drizzt was the quicker, and he managed to backstep fast enough to buy the time to realign his blades. He gave an approving nod to Regis as the halfling slipped down the tunnel.

Regis moved deliberately, but nervously, into the darkness, expecting a monster to spring out at him from every patch of shadow. Soon he heard the scraping of metal, and an occasional grumble and Dwarvish curse, and he could tell from the lack of bluster that Thibble dorf Pwent was in serious trouble.

Propelled by that, Regis moved with more speed, coming up to the edge of a side chamber from which issued the terrible, gnashing, metallic sounds. Regis summoned his courage and peeked around the rim of the opening. There in the room, silhouetted by the glow of lichen along the far wall, stood another creature, one larger than the others and easily more than ten feet from maw to tail tip. It stood perfectly still, except that it thrashed its head back and forth. Looking at it from the back, but on a slight angle, Regis could see why it did so. For out of the side of that mouth hung an armored dwarf leg with a dirty bare foot dangling limply at its end. Regis winced, thinking that his friend was being torn apart by that triangular maw. He could picture the black teeth crunching through Pwent’s armored shell, tearing his flesh with fangs and ripped metal.

And the dwarf wasn’t moving, other than the flailing caused by the limp limbs protruding from the thing’s mouth, and no further protests or groans came forth.

Trembling with anger and terror, Regis charged with abandon, leaping forward and lifting high his small mace. But where could he even hit the murderous beast to hurt it?

He got his answer as the creature noticed him, whipping its head around. It was then that the halfling first came to understand the strange head, with its three equidistant eyes set in the middle of each of the skin flaps that connected the mandibles. Purely on instinct, the halfling swung for the nearest eye, and the creature’s short forelimbs could not reach forward far enough to block.

The mace hit true, and the flap, taut about the knee and upper leg of the trapped dwarf, had no give that it might absorb the blow. With a sickening splat, the eye popped, gushing liquid all over the horrified halfling.

The creature hissed and whipped its head furiously—an attempt to throw the dwarf free.

But Pwent wasn’t dead. He had gone into a defensive curl, a “turtle” maneuver that tightened the set of his magnificent armor, strengthening its integrity and hiding its vulnerable seams. As the creature loosened its death grip on him, the dwarf came out of his curl with a defiant snarl. He had no room to punch, or to maneuver his head spike, so he simply thrashed, shaking like a wide-leafed bush in a gale.

The creature lost interest in Regis, and tried to clamp down on the dwarf instead. But too late, for Pwent was in a frenzy, insane with rage.

Finally the creature managed to open wide its maw and angle down, expelling the dwarf. When Pwent came free, Regis’s eyes widened to see the amount of damage—torn skin, broken teeth, and blood—the dwarf had inflicted on the beast.

And Pwent was far from done. He hit the ground in a turn that put his feet under him, and his little legs bent, then propelled him right back at the creature, head—and helmet spike—leading. He drove into and through the apex of the jaws, and the dwarf bored on, bending the creature backward. The dwarf punched out, both hands at the same time, launching twin roundhouse hooks that pounded the beast on opposite sides of its neck, fist-spikes digging in. Again and again, the dwarf retracted and punched back hard, both hands together, mashing the flesh.

And the dwarf’s legs ground on, pushing the beast backward, up against the side-chamber’s wall, and by the time they got there, the creature was not resisting at all, was not pushing back, and without the barrage it would have likely fallen over.

But Pwent kept hitting it, muttering profanities all the while.

Bruenor thrust his axe out horizontally before him, defeating the first attack. He turned the weapon and used it to angle the charging creature aside as he, too, ran ahead, sprinting by the beast to the remains of the wagon. All of the supply crates and sacks had been destroyed, either from the fall or torn apart thereafter, but Bruenor found what he was looking for in an intact portion of the side of the wagon, angling up to about waist height. Knowing the creature to be in full pursuit, the dwarf dived right over that, falling to the floor at its base and rolling to his back, axe up above his head along the ground.

The creature leaped over the planks, not realizing that Bruenor was so close to them until the dwarf’s axe hit it hard in the side, cutting a long gash just behind its small, twitching foreleg.

Bruenor fell back flat and continued the momentum to roll him right over, coming back up to his feet. He didn’t pause to look over his handiwork, but propelled himself forward, lifting his axe high over one shoulder as he went.