Sputtering curses, the wizard blinked himself to the taffrail and blasted the second rope apart.
The first pieces of the shattered bridge expanse swept down at them. Robillard’s elemental deflected the bulk, but a few got through, chasingSea Sprite as she glided away toward the harbor.
Robillard ordered his elemental to rush up and push her along. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw his friend Deudermont get off the makeshift dock, right before a large piece of the fallen bridge slammed against it, shattering its planking and destroying its integrity, as it, too, became another piece of wreckage. Barrels and dock planks joined the sweep of debris.
Robillard had to stay with the ship, at least long enough for his summoned monster to assist Sea Sprite safely out of the river mouth and into quieter waters. He never took his eyes off of Deudermont, though, thinking that his dearest friend was surely doomed, trapped as he was on the northern bank with only a fraction of Brambleberry’s forces in support, and a host of angry wizards against them.
Drizzt saw it coming, a little burning ball of flame, enticing as a candlelight, gentle and benign.
He knew better, though, and knew, too, that he couldn’t hope to get out of its explosive range. So he threw his shoulders back violently and kicked his feet out in front of him, and didn’t even try to break his fall as he slammed down on his back. He even resisted the urge to throw his arms out wide to somehow mitigate the fall, instead curling them over his face, hands grasping his cloak to wrap it around him.
Even covered as he was with the wet clothing and cloak, the darkness flew away when the fireball exploded, and hot flames bit at Drizzt, igniting a thousand tiny fires in his body. It lasted only an instant, mercifully, and winked out as immediately as it had materialized. Drizzt knew he couldn’t hesitate—the wizard could strike at him again within the span of a few heartbeats, or if another wizard was inside the house, a second fireball might already be on its way.
He rolled sidelong away from his enemy to put out the little fires burning on his cloak and clothing, and even left the cloak smoldering on the ground when he leaped back to his feet. Again Drizzt ran full out, leaning forward in complete commitment to his goal, a tight strand of birch trees. He dived in headlong, rolling to a sitting position and curling up, expecting another blast.
Nothing happened.
Gradually, Drizzt uncoiled and looked back Regis’s way, to see the halfling still crouched in the muddied ground behind the damaged water trough.
Regis’s little hands flashed the rough letters of the drow silent alphabet, approximating the question, Is he gone?
His arsenal is depleted, perhaps, Drizzt’s fingers replied.
Regis shook his head—he didn’t understand.
Drizzt signaled again, more slowly, but the halfling still couldn’t make sense of the too-intricate movements.
“He may be out of spells,” the drow called quietly, and Regis nodded enthusiastically—until a rumble from inside the distant house turned them both that way.
Trailing a line of fire that charred the floorboards, it came through the open door, a great beast comprised entirely of flame: orange, red, yellow, and white when it swirled more tightly. It seemed vaguely bipedal, but had no real form, as the flames would commit to nothing but moving forward, and with purpose.
When it cleared the door, leaving smoking wood at every point of the jamb, it grew to its full, gigantic proportions, towering over the distant companions, mocking them with its intensity and its size.
A fiery monstrosity from the Elemental Plane of Fire.
Drizzt sucked in his breath and lifted Taulmaril, not even thinking to go to his more trusted scimitars. He couldn’t fight the creature in close; of all the four primary elemental beasts, fire was the type any melee warrior was least capable of battling. Its flames burned with skin-curling intensity, and the strike of a scimitar, though it could hurt the beast, would heat the weapon as well.
Drizzt drew back and let fly, and the arrow disappeared into the swirl of flames.
The fire elemental swung around toward him and roared, the sound of a thousand trees crackling, then spat forth a line of flames that immediately set the birch stand aflame.
“How do we fight it?” Regis cried, and yelped as the elemental scorched the trough he hid behind, filling the air with thick steam.
Drizzt didn’t have an answer. He shot off another arrow, and again had no way of knowing if it scored any damage on the creature or not.
Then, on instinct, the drow angled his bow to the side and let fly a third, right past the elemental to slam into, and punch through, the wall of the structure housing the wizard.
A cry from inside told him that he had startled the mage, and the sudden and angry turn of the fire elemental, back toward the house, confirmed what the drow had hoped.
He fired off a continual stream, then, a volley placed all around the wooden structure, blasting hole after hole and without discernable pattern. He judged his effect by the motions of the elemental, gliding one stride toward him, then one back at the wizard. For controlling such a beast was no easy feat, and one that required absolute concentration. And if that control was lost, Drizzt knew, the summoned creature would almost always take out its rage upon the summoner.
More arrows flashed into the house but to less effect; Drizzt needed to actually score a hit on the mage to turn the elemental fully.
But he didn’t, and he soon recognized that the creature was inevitably edging his way. The wizard had adjusted.
Drizzt kept up the barrage anyway, and began moving away as he fired, confident that he could turn and outdistance the creature, or at least get to the water’s edge, where the Mirar would protect him from the elemental’s fury. He turned and glanced to the water trough, thinking to tell Regis to run.
But the halfling was already gone.
The wizard was protected from the arrows, Drizzt realized as the elemental bore down on him with renewed enthusiasm. The drow fired off a pair of shots into it for good measure then turned and sprinted back the way he’d come, around the edge of the building hit by the same fireball that had nearly melted him, which was burning furiously.
“Clever wizard,” he heard himself muttering as he almost ran headlong into a giant web that stretched from building to building in the alleyway. He spun to see the elemental blocking the exit, its flames licking the structures to either side.
“Have at it, then,” Drizzt said to the beast and drew his scimitars.
He couldn’t really speak to a creature from an elemental plane, of course, but it seemed to Drizzt as if the monster heard him, for as he finished, the elemental rushed forward, its fiery arms sweeping ferociously.
Drizzt ducked the first swing then leaped out to his right just ahead of the second, running up the wall—and feeling that its integrity was diminished by the fires roaring within—and spinning into a back somersault. He came down in a spin, scimitars slashing across, backhand leading forehand, and both sent puffs of flame into the air as they slashed against the life-force that held those flames together into a physical, solid creature.
That second weapon, Icingdeath, sent a surge of hope through Drizzt, for its properties were not only affording him some substantial protection from flames, as it had done against the wizard’s fireball, but the frostbrand scimitar took a particular pleasure in inflicting cold pain upon creatures with affinity to fire. The fire elemental shook off Twinkle’s backhand hit, as it had all but ignored the shots from Taulmaril, but when Icingdeath connected, the creature seemed to burn less bright. The elemental whirled away and seemed to shrink in on itself, spinning around tightly.