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On and on it went, the thunder and fire, the falling fireballs, the ultimate devastation of an entire city.
Then, as instantly as the first wave of sound had roared in his ears, there was silence.
A dead, muted silence.
Not a scream, not a groan, not a wail. A bit of wind, but nothing more.
After a long while, an hour or more, Barrabus the Gray dared crawl out from under the Herzgo Alegni Bridge. He had to put his cloak over his face as a filter against the burning ash that permeated the air.
Everything was gray and deep, and dead.
Neverwinter was dead.
Part II - The King’s Minions
The fights are increasing and it pleases me.
The world around me has grown darker, more dangerous … and it pleases me.
I have just passed a period of my life most adventurous and yet, strangely, most peaceful, where Bruenor and I have climbed through a hundred hundred tunnels and traveled as deep into the Underdark as I have been since my last return to Menzoberranzan. We found our battles of course, mostly with the oversized vermin that inhabit such places, a few skirmishes with goblins and orcs, a trio of trolls here, a clan of ogres there. Never was there any sustained battle, though, never anything to truly test my blades, and indeed, the most perilous day I have known since our departure from Mithral Hall those many years ago was when an earthquake threatened to bury us in some tunnels.
But no more is that the case, I find, and it pleases me. Since that day of cataclysm, a decade ago, when the volcano roared forth and painted a line of devastation from the mountain all the way to the sea, burying Neverwinter in its devastating run, the tone of the region has changed. It is almost as if that one event had sent forth a call for conflict, a clarion call for sinister beings.
In a sense, it did just that. The loss of Neverwinter in essence severed the North from the more civilized regions along the Sword Coast, where Waterdeep has now become the vanguard against the wilderness. Traders no longer travel through the region, except by sea, and the lure of Neverwinter’s former treasures has pulled adventurers—often unsavory, often unprincipled—in great numbers to the devastated city.
Some are trying to rebuild, desperate to restore the busy port and the order it once imposed upon these inhospitable lands. But they battle as much as they build. They carry a carpenter’s hammer in one hand, a warhammer in the other.
Enemies abound: Shadovar, those strange cultists sworn to a devil god, opportunistic highwaymen, goblinkin, giants, and monsters alive and undead. And other things, darker things from deeper holes.
In the years since the cataclysm, the northern Sword Coast has grown darker by far.
And it pleases me.
When I am in battle, I am free. When my blades cut low a scion of evil, only then do I feel as if there is purpose to my life. Many times have I wondered if this rage within is just a reflection of a heritage I have never truly shaken. The focus of battle, the intensity of the fight, the satisfaction of victory … are they all merely an admission that I am, after all, drow?
And if that is the truth, then what did I actually know about my homeland and my people, and what did I merely paste onto a caricature I had created of a society whose roots lay in passion and lust I had not yet begun to understand or experience?
Was there, I wonder—and I fear—some deeper wisdom to the Matron Mothers of Menzoberranzan, some understanding of drow joy and need that perpetuated the state of conflict in the drow city?
It seems a ridiculous thought, and yet only through battle have I endured the pain. Only through battle have I found again a sense of accomplishment, of forward movement, of bettering community.
This truth surprises me, angers me, and paradoxically, even as it offers me hope to continue, it hints at some notion that perhaps I should not, that this existence is only a futile thing, after all, a mirage, a self-delusion.
Like Bruenor’s quest.
I doubt he’ll find Gauntlgrym, I doubt it exists and I doubt that he believes he’ll find it, either, or that he ever believed he would find it. And yet every day he pores over his collection of maps and clues, and leaves no hole unexplored. It is his purpose. The search gives meaning to the life of Bruenor Battlehammer. Indeed, it seems the nature of the dwarf, and of the dwarves in general, who are always talking of things gone by and reclaiming the glory that once was.
What is the nature of the drow, then?
Even before I lost her, my love Catti-brie, and my dear halfling friend, I knew that I was no creature of calm and respite. I knew my nature was that of the warrior. I knew I was happiest when adventure and battle summoned me forth, demanding of those skills I had spent my entire life perfecting.
I relish it more now—is that because of my pain and loss, or is it merely a truer reflection of my heritage?
And if that is the case, will the cause of battle widen, will the code that guides my scimitars weaken to accommodate more moments of joy? At what point, I wonder—and I fear—does my desire for battle, that which is in my heart, interfere with that which is in my conscience? Is it easier now to justify drawing my blades?
That is my true fear, that this rage within me will come forth in all its madness—explosively, randomly, murderously.
My fear?
Or my hope?
—Drizzt Do’Urden
Chapter 10 - Battling the Darkness
The Year of the Elves’ Weeping (1462 DR)
HERE THEY COME! OH, BE BRAVE BOYS AND HOLD THE TEAMS!” THE CARAVAN boss cried out to the men and women crouched in and around the wagons, weapons in hand. Off to the side of the road, the thicket shook with the approaching storm of enemies.
“Scrabblers,” one man said, his nickname for the agile and swift undead humanoids that had infested the region.
“Dustwalkers,” corrected another, and that name seemed equally fitting, for those marauders, undead monsters, left rails of gray powder in their wake, as if every step they took was their first out of the ashes of a burned out hearth—and indeed, the rumors said that the monsters were the animated corpses of those who had been buried beneath the volcanic ash a decade before.
“Guard!” the boss called out after a few more tense moments passed, without any clear sight of the enemy. “Go and scout the tree line. ”
The hired guard, a stocky old dwarf with a beard of silver and orange, a shield emblazoned with the crest of the foaming mug, a many-notched axe, and a one-horned helmet, turned a wary eye on the leader.
The man swallowed hard under that withering gaze, but to his credit, managed to summon enough courage to once again motion toward the trees.
“I telled ye when ye hired me,” the dwarf warned. “Ye might be telling me what to fight, but ye ain’t telling me how to fight. ”
“We cannot just sit here while they plot!”
“Plot?” the dwarf echoed with a belly laugh. “They’re dumb dead, ye dolt. They ain’t plottin’. ”
“Then where are they?” another man cried, who seemed on the verge of desperation.
“Maybe they aren’t out there. Maybe it’s just the wind,” said a woman from a wagon near the back.
“Ye all ready for a fight?” the dwarf asked. “Ye got yer weapons in hand?” He looked at the boss, who stood tall, scanned the five wagons, and nodded.
Bruenor stood up, stuck his thumbs in this mouth, and blew a loud whistle.
Everyone but the dwarf reflexively ducked then as a shot of lightning creased the air to the side of the caravan, emanating from somewhere behind and streaking horizontally across the way to disappear into the trees. A horrid shriek came back, and a rustle of branches.
A second bolt knifed into the trees.
The branches began to rustle again.
“Here they come now,” the dwarf said, loud enough for all to hear. “Ye fight well and die better!”
Across the way, the scrabblers, the dustwalk
ers, the ash zombies—whatever name anyone wanted to put on the small, shriveled gray humanoids—came forth in a sudden rush, leaping from branches or running out of the tree line, some upright and swaying back and forth as if they might tip over with every stride, others hunched and scrambling on all fours.
And the other way, behind the crouching drivers and caravanners, came the sound of bells singing sweetly, and the pounding of hooves.
Another streaking arrow shot past from a magical bow, blinding and devastating as it exploded into the head of the nearest monster, blasting it apart in a puff of gray ash.
The caravan’s horses neighed as mighty Andahar approached, and one team reared when the magnificent unicorn cleared a wagon in one great leap, landing clean on the other side with Drizzt already readying another arrow.
He shot dead a pair of zombies, the bolt blasting through one and into the other, and in one fluid motion he shouldered the bow, drew out his scimitars, and rolled off the side of the galloping mount.
Andahar continued on, lowered his head, and plowed through the nearest monsters, impaling one on his spiral horn and blasting aside the other.
Drizzt hit the ground in a controlled roll, turning right back up to his feet and charging along as smoothly as if he’d been running the whole time. He rushed between a pair of zombies, scimitars slashing out to either side, cutting them down. He skidded to a stop before a third, bringing his blades up in a circling maneuver over his head, back to front, the blades sliding past each other above and in front of him as he brought them forward. He drove his left arm out straight, blade horizontal and at eye level to block the wild overhead swings of a charging zombie—and the creature showed no sign of pain at all as its forearms dived into a solid defensive block, as its ashen skin gashed on the fine edge of Twinkle.
In the same movement Drizzt executed the block with Twinkle, he cocked his right elbow back behind him, and as he turned his leading blade off to the side, further skinning the zombie’s arms, he stepped forward and thrust Icingdeath hard into the monster’s chest. The scimitar blasted through with such force that Drizzt noted a puff of ash behind the zombie.
That hole seemed barely to affect the monster, but it was hardly a surprise to the seasoned drow ranger. Even as he retracted Icingdeath, he brought Twinkle in with a downward slash, one that got tangled with the zombie’s arms and kept it off-balance and defenseless as Icingdeath went down, under and around and back in from the other side, connecting solidly across the monster’s neck and chopping it down.
All of it—the block, the stab, the two slashes—happened so quickly that Drizzt hardly slowed his forward progress, and he simply ran up and over the zombie as it tumbled backward. He managed to glance back, to see his mighty steed lift its hind quarters in a double kick and explode a zombie into a cloud of ash. Most of the other monsters chased after Andahar, with only a few continuing for the caravan.
Creatures turned in for Drizzt from left and right, moving with startling agility and speed for undead, and yet still not quickly enough to catch up to the blur that was Drizzt Do’Urden, his legs speeded by magical anklets, his balance always perfect, his strategy three steps ahead.
He veered left, blasting right into a group of zombies—so many that the caravan crew and Bruenor collectively gasped as he disappeared into a sea of gray ash. But so fast and perfect were his slashes, driving aside impediments, and so fast his stabs, to the side, in front of him, even a backhand to defeat pursuit, that he didn’t slow, and the collective gasp became a collective cheer when he reappeared out the other side, seemingly in the clear, but with a horde of zombies still in pursuit.