When he handed the crown to Regis and said, “Keep the helm safe. It’s the crown of the King of Mithral Hall,” his intent became all too clear.

The halfling protested, “Then it is yours,” and the same gripping fear that coursed through Catti-brie was evident in Regis’s voice.

“Nay, not by me right or me choice. Mithral Hall is no more, Rumble—Regis. Bruenor of Icewind Dale, I am, and have been for two hundred years, though me head’s too thick to know it!”

Catti-brie barely heard the next words as she gasped and understood all too clearly what Bruenor was about to do. Regis asked him something she couldn’t hear, but understood that it was the very same question whose awful answer screamed at her in her own thoughts.

Bruenor came into clear sight then, running out of the room and charging straight for the gorge. “Here’s one from yer tricks, boy!” heyelled, looking at the small side chamber concealing Catti-brie and Wulfgar. “But when me mind’s to jumping on the back of a worm, I ain’t about to miss!”

There it was, spoken openly, a declaration of the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the rest of them, trapped deep in the bowels of the caverns once known as Mithral Hall by a great dragon of shadow.

“Bruenor!” Catti-brie heard herself cry, though she was hardly conscious of speaking, so numbed was she by the realization that she was about to lose the dwarf, her beloved adoptive father, the great Bruenor who had served as the foundation of her entire life, the strength of Catti-brie Battlehammer.

The world moved in slow motion for the young woman at that terrible moment, as Bruenor sprinted across the floor to the gorge, reaching over his shoulder to set his cloak afire—and under it was a keg of oil!

The dwarf didn’t waver and didn’t slow as he reached the lip and went over, axe high, back aflame.

Compulsion and terror combined to drag Catti-brie over to that ledge, arriving at the same time as Regis, both gawking down at the burning dwarf, locked upon the back of the great shadow dragon.

Bruenor had not wavered, but his actions had taken all the strength from Catti-brie, to be sure! She could hardly hold herself upright as she watched her father die, giving his life so that she, Wulfgar, and Regis could cross the gorge and escape the darkness of Mithral Hall.

But she’d never find the strength to make it, she feared, and Bruenor would die in vain.

Wulfgar was beside her then, grimacing against the magical despair, fighting through it with the determination of a barbarian of Icewind Dale. Catti-brie could hardly comprehend his intent as he lifted his wondrous warhammer high and flung it down at the dragon.

“Are ye mad?” she cried, grabbing at him.

“Take up your bow,” he told her, and he was Wulfgar again, freed of the dragon’s insidious spell. “If a true friend of Bruenor’s you be, then let him not fall in vain!”

A true friend? The words hit Catti-brie hard, reminding her poignantly that she was so much more than a friend to that dwarf, her father, the anchor of her life.

She knew that Wulfgar was right, and took up her bow in shaking hands, and sighted her target through tear-filled eyes.

She couldn’t help Bruenor. She couldn’t save him from the choice he had made—the choice that had possibly saved the three of them. It was the toughest shot she had ever had to make, but she had to make it, for Bruenor’s sake.

The silver-flashing arrow streaked away from Taulmaril, its lightning flash filling Catti-brie’s wet eyes.

Someone grabbed her and pulled her arms down to her side. She heard the hiss of a distant whisper, but could make out no words, nor could she see the one whose touch she felt.

It was Drizzt, she knew from the tenderness and strength in those delicate hands.

But Drizzt was lost to her, to them all. It made no sense. And Bruenor….

But the gorge was gone, the dragon was gone, her father was gone, all the world was gone, replaced by that land of brown mists and crawling, shadowy beasts, coming at her, clawing at her.

They could not reach her, they could not hurt her, but Catti-brie found little comfort in the emptiness. She felt nothing, was aware of nothing but the crawling, misshapen, ugly forms in a land she did not recognize.

In a place where she was completely alone.

And worse than that, worst of all, a line of division between two realities so narrow and blurry that the sheer incongruence of it all stole from Catti-brie something much more personal than her friends and familiar surroundings.

She tried to resist, tried to focus on the feeling of those strong arms around her—it had to be Drizzt! — but she realized that she couldn’t even feel the grasp any longer, if it was there.

The huddled images began to blur. The two worlds competed with flashing scenes in her mind and a discordant cacophony of disconnected sounds, a clash of two realities from which there was no escape.

She fell within herself, trying to hold on to her memories, her reality, her individuality.

But there was nothing to hold onto, no grounding pole to remind her of anything, of Catti-brie, even.

She had no cogent thought and no clear memories, and no self-awareness. She was so utterly lost that she didn’t even know that she was utterly lost.

A speck of bright orange found its way past Danica’s closed eyelid, knifing through the blackness that had taken her senses. Wearily, she managed to crack open that eye, to be greeted by the sunrise, the brilliant orb just showing its upper edge in the east, in the V-shaped crook between two mountains. It almost seemed to Danica as if those distant mountains were guiding the light directly to her, to her eyes, to awaken her.

The events of the previous day played out in her thoughts, and she couldn’t begin to sort out where dreams had ended and awful reality had begun.

Or had it all been a dream?

But then why was she lying in a canyon beside a great cliff?

Slowly the woman started to unwind it all, and the darkness receded.

She pulled herself up to her elbows, or tried to until waves of agony in her shoulder laid her low once more. Wincing against the pain, her eyes tightly closed, Danica recalled the fall, the tumble through the trees, then she backtracked from there to the scene atop the cliff in the lair of the undead dragon.

Ivan was dead.

The weight of that hit Danica hard. She heard again the stomp of the dracolich and saw once more the splattering flesh flying about the cavern. She thought of all the times she had seen Ivan with her kids, the doting uncle offering the wisdom wrought of tough lessons, unlike the doting Pikel, who was so much softer-edged than his brother.

“Pikel,” she whispered into the grass, overwhelmed by the thought of telling him about Ivan.

The mention of Pikel brought Danica’s thoughts careening back to her own children, who were out, somewhere, with the dwarf.

She opened her eyes—the lower rim of the sun was visible, the morning moving along.

Her children were in trouble. That notion seemed inescapable. They were either in trouble or the danger had already found them and taken them, and that, Danica would not allow herself to accept.

With a growl of defiance, the monk pulled up to one arm and tucked her legs under her, then threw herself up and back into a kneeling position, her left arm hanging limp, not quite at her side but a bit behind her. She couldn’t turn her head against the pain to look at her shoulder, but she knew it was dislocated.

That wouldn’t do.

Danica scanned the area behind her, the stone of the cliff wall. With a determined nod, she leaped to her feet, and before the pain could slow her, she rushed toward the wall, jumped into the air, and turned as she descended, slamming the back of her injured shoulder against the stone.