Spell after spell came forth from the priest, in words none of them understood, and each of the defenders felt hardened against the deadly touch of the beast. On they went, marching right into the blinding roil of the Ghost King’s breath. Those fires parted around them and reformed behind them as the dracolich continued its long exhale, so that the group of seven was fully surrounded by opaque walls of streaming flames.
But they moved forward, and as soon as the Ghost King finished, Cadderly cried for a charge.
And charge they did, Bruenor lifting high his axe, Athrogate beside him and spinning his morningstars, and Thibbledorf Pwent darting right between them, leaping at the beast with abandon. The battlerager latched on to one of the dracolich’s great hind legs, dug his leg spikes in for support, and began whacking away with both hands, shaving skin and bone with his ridged armor as he thrashed.
Drizzt and Danica moved right behind the dwarves—Drizzt started to, but Cadderly grabbed him by the arm, then cupped his hand over Drizzt’s right fist as Drizzt held his scimitar.
“You are the agent of all that is good!” Cadderly charged the surprised drow. The priest spoke another few words that neither he nor Drizzt understood, and Icingdeath glowed more brightly with a divine white light, one that overwhelmed its normal bluish hue. “Vanquish the beast!” Cadderly demanded, except it wasn’t truly Cadderly, or only Cadderly talking, Drizzt realized to his hope and his horror. It was as if someone else, something else, some god or angel, had possessed the priest and placed that power and responsibility upon the drow.
Drizzt blinked but didn’t dare hesitate other than to call forth Guenhwyvar. He spun back with such fury that it left him stumbling at the dracolich. He moved beside Danica, who leaped and spun and kicked out wide, hitting the beast with rapid and heavy blows. The Ghost King bit down at her, but she was too quick to be caught like that, and she threw herself aside at the last moment.
The snapping jaws cracked in the empty air, and Drizzt rushed in, glowing weapon in hand. He stabbed with Twinkle, the fine blade knifing through some rotting skin to crack against bone, then he slashed with Icingdeath, with his scimitar Cadderly had somehow infused with the power of divine might.
The strike sounded like the drop of a gigantic boulder, a sudden and sharp retort that dwarfed the boom of a fireball and made Athrogate’s oil-soaked strikes seem like the tapping of a bird. The Ghost King’s head flew back, a great chunk of its cheekbone and upper jaw flying from its face to the courtyard below.
Flying, too, went Guenhwyvar, a great leap that brought the panther clawing at the beast’s ugly face.
Everyone else, even wild Pwent, paused a moment to stare in disbelief.
“Impressive,” Jarlaxle congratulated, standing beside the gawking Cadderly. The drow threw down his plume, bringing forth the giant diatryma bird. Then he lifted his arms, a wand in each hand. From one came thundering lightning, from the other a line of viscous globs of green goo that the drow aimed to splatter across the wyrm’s face, hoping to blind it or hinder its snapping jaws.
What a force they were!
But what an enemy they had found.
The Ghost King did not lift away and flee, did not shy even from Drizzt and that awful weapon. It stomped its leg, crushing through the support beams and driving straight down through the ceiling of the structure’s first floor. Poor Pwent was ground by the walls and fell away, all twisted, to the main level.
The Ghost King shook its head wildly and Guenhwyvar went flying away. Then the beast swung its head back with battering ram force at Drizzt, a blow that would have killed him had it hit him squarely. But no one ever hit Drizzt Do’Urden squarely. As the head swung in, Drizzt dived over sideways, just ahead of it. Still, the sheer weight of the glancing blow forced him to roll repeatedly in an attempt to absorb the force. He tumbled out of room, slamming hard into the wrecked chamber’s side wall, a burst of embers flying up behind him.
Stung and a bit dazed but hardly down, Drizzt rushed back at the beast. He watched Athrogate sail up in the air before him, caught by a foreleg. The dwarf’s oil-soaked morningstar crashed and exploded against the bone, splintering it, but still the Ghost King managed to throw the dwarf far.
“Me head to shake, me bones to break!” the indomitable Athrogate yelled out even as he flew across the room and crashed to the floor. “He flinged me, a flat stone across a still lake!” he finished as he skipped up from the floor and slammed the corner of the wall near the outer break—only the word “lake” came out “la-aa-aa-aa-ke” as he fell to the ground outside.
With the two dwarves and Guenhwyvar out of the fray, Danica and Bruenor were sorely pressed. Bruenor pushed back hits from under his shield, his legs bowing but not buckling, his axe ever ready to respond with a heavy chop. Danica leaped and spun, rolled and somersaulted through the air, always half a step ahead of claw or bite.
“We can’t hold it!” Jarlaxle said through gritted teeth. Even when Drizzt got back into the fight, his divinely weighted scimitar driving hard against the beast, the mercenary’s grim visage didn’t soften.
Jarlaxle spoke the painful truth. For all their power and gallant efforts, they were inflicting only minor wounds on the beast, and attrition was already working against them. Then cries went out that crawlers were swarming from the forest, and many on the periphery of the fight had to turn their attention outward.
In that awful moment of honesty, it seemed that all would end for Spirit Soaring and her defenders.
Cadderly reached up with his arms, and up further with his magic, and to all witnessing the event, it seemed as if the mighty priest had plucked a star or the sun itself from the sky and pulled it down over his own body.
Cadderly shone with such radiance that beams of his emanating light streamed through every crack in Spirit Soaring’s planking. Beyond the broken wall, the courtyard and the forest shone as though lit by a clear midday.
The night was completely gone, and so too were the wounds of all those near the priest. Pain and fatigue were replaced by warmth and invigoration, the likes of which they had never known.
The opposite effect jarred the Ghost King, and the beast recoiled in shock and torturous pain.
Beyond the wall, the approaching crawlers fell back on their flat feet, long arms flailing to try, futilely, to block the heavenly light. Wisps of smoke rose from their black skins. Those that could roll backward scrambled for the shadows of the trees.
The Ghost King’s roar shook the building to its foundation yet again. The beast did not fly away, but flailed all the more wildly, thumping Bruenor, who took every blow with a snarl and a swipe of retribution. The creature’s foreleg cut nothing but air as it swiped at Danica, whose acrobatics defied gravity as she lifted and twisted and turned. The dracolich’s great jaws snapped down on the diatryma and lifted the flailing bird into the air, where the massive head thrashed right and left and bit down, cutting the bird in half.
The creature tried to bite at the dodging woman, but there was Drizzt, rushing in, his blades rolling left and right and straight overhead, every swipe of the enchanted Icingdeath stabbing out a bit farther, slicing through dragon scale, melting dragon flesh, and exploding dragon bone.
The Ghost King slipped back from the ledge, its hind legs reaching to find footing on the ground. Barely had it stepped down before Thibbledorf Pwent hit it with a flying head butt, his helmet spike digging into the beast’s calf and securing his hold. From the other side came Athrogate, one morningstar in hand, the other lost in the fall. He spun the heavy ball above his head in both hands, brought forth its oily might, and struck the Ghost King’s other leg with such force that a red scale disintegrated beneath the blow and the beast’s desiccated flesh splintered and dissolved all the way to the bone, which cracked loudly.