Dahlia rotated fully to bring her second weapon to bear, though she had no angle for such a spinning flail to do any real damage.

Except it was no longer a flail in her left hand, but a four-foot length of spear, and a slight twist stabbed it down hard into the woman’s face, driving right into her opened mouth as she tried to scream. A burst of lightning exploded with the impact, and it seemed to jolt Dahlia back to her feet, where she broke the staff once more into twin flails, and waded into her remaining opponent.

She had the half-orc cultist backing up, though the ugly brute was skilled and managed to hold his ground well as Dahlia played out her momentum.

A flicker of silver flashed over Dahlia’s shoulder and she dodged away and glanced back at the same time. She turned right back to her opponent, though, when she realized the flash was from one of Jarlaxle’s endless daggers, which he’d buried deep into the half-orc Ashmadai’s left eye.

Dahlia spun back as her last opponent fell aside, to see Jarlaxle rushing for the portcullis. Athrogate had amazingly hoisted the gate up to his shoulders once more.

Under went Jarlaxle, and Dahlia was quick to follow, fearing that those two would drop the gate and leave her to die—and who could blame them?

Jarlaxle rushed to brace his shoulder under one end, Dahlia the other, and Athrogate managed to scramble through.

The floor rumbled, the walls shook. The ghosts of Gauntlgrym were all on their knees, eyes and hands lifted in prayer to Moradin.

The trio ran on.

By the time they reached the circular stair, the complex was shaking violently. As they climbed back into the vast open cavern, they saw dire corbies falling and flailing. Bridges of stone that had survived the millennia cracked apart and tumbled down into oblivion.

“What have I done?” Athrogate wailed. “Oh, but a cursed creature I am!”

“Fly away!” Jarlaxle yelled at Dahlia. “Become a crow and be gone, you fool.”

Dahlia tugged at her cloak, but not to enact its magic. She pulled it off and threw it into Jarlaxle’s face. “Go!” she yelled at him.

The drow could hardly believe it, but he didn’t don the cloak and flee. He urged Athrogate on instead, and tugged at Dahlia to keep up.

They reached the top of the stair exhausted, but they couldn’t rest. The quaking diminished in violence as they ascended, but arches cracked and tumbled, and jambs tilted, sealing doors, perhaps forever.

But still they ran on, and kept running until they again came to the circular chamber with the jeweled throne, and kept running through the tunnel and out the gates, and kept running to the edge of the underground pool.

Jarlaxle threw the cloak back at Dahlia. “Make your way,” he told her. “And we’ll make ours.”

“How will you cross?” she asked.

Jarlaxle looked at her as if she was mad. “I am Jarlaxle,” he said. “I will find my way.”

Dahlia donned the cloak and became a great bird. She flew away, across the lake and down the tunnels.

A mere two days later, she emerged into the dirty streets of Luskan, surprised to see that the city was still standing, and that life there seemed normal. She looked to the southeast, to the sky above Gauntlgrym.

There was nothing.

Perhaps she had overestimated the power of the trapped primordial. Perhaps they had merely shut down the forge, and had not loosed a cataclysm.

“Say nothing of our adventure,” Jarlaxle bade Athrogate when they, too, made it back to Luskan, later that same day, having ridden their summoned mounts—hell boar and nightmare—all the way from Gauntlgrym. They had crossed the underground pond on the back of a giant, flightless bird, created from the feather on Jarlaxle’s hat, for thankfully, the pond was quite shallow.

“Ye should’ve left me to die there,” the sorely wounded Athrogate replied.

“We’ll find a way to fix it,” Jarlaxle promised. “If it even needs fixing,” he added, for he, too, was somewhat surprised to see the normalcy of life in Luskan.

Soon after, though, the very next dawn, he realized that it would indeed need to be fixed, for in the distant southwest, Athrogate spotted a plume of black smoke rising lazily into the air.

“Elf,” he said, his voice somber.

“I see it.”

“What is it?”

“Catastrophe,” Jarlaxle answered.

“Ye said we’d fix it,” Athrogate reminded him.

“At the very least, we’ll repay those who did this.”

“Was meself!” Athrogate said, but Jarlaxle shook his head, knowing better.

For surely the worldly drow had recognized the distinctive garb of the woman who had arrived in the anteroom to mock Dahlia and steal away with Valindra and Dor’crae. She was Thayan, a disciple of Szass Tam, no doubt.

As he considered that, Jarlaxle looked back at the plume of black smoke, so many miles distant, but still visible in the morning sky. He didn’t know much about the archlich of Thay, but from what he did know, he thought, perhaps, that they might be better off facing the primordial.

From her room at the inn halfway across the city, Dahlia, too, plotted her revenge, and she, too, spotted the plume.

She had done her research well, though, and harbored no hope that the smoke would be the end of it. And no hope of averting the catastrophe.

The primordial would shake off the last remaining elementals—great creatures of water put in place by the ancient wizards of the Hosttower to harness the power of the fiery, godlike being for the benefit of the dwarven forge.

It would have broken free eventually, Dahlia knew, for the fall of the Hosttower had begun the erosion of that harnessing magic.

But not so soon. Not without some warning for the wizards and scribes of the Sword Coast.

Disaster, swift and complete, would come, and nothing she or anyone else could do could stop it, even slow it, now.

Chapter 9 - When the World Blew Up

SHE KNEW SHE WAS BEING FOLLOWED. FOR A LONG WHILE, SHE HAD THOUGHT it her imagination, her very real fear that she had made some powerful enemies down there in Gauntlgrym, who would not so easily allow her to escape their wrath.

But how had they found her? Wouldn’t they have presumed her killed in the ancient dwarven city?

Sylora would have assumed the deaths of the Ashmadai she’d left behind, but then Dahlia reached up and felt the brooch she still wore, the brooch that gave her some power over the undead, the brooch that tied her to Szass Tam. Horrified, she yanked it from her blouse and threw it into the next open sewer hole she passed.

She wound a zigzagging course through the city, taking every available alley, vaulting to a roof at one point, and running on with all speed. But still they followed her, she sensed when weariness slowed her some time later.

Dahlia turned down the next alleyway, determined to double back so that she could get a better look at her pursuers. A wooden fence blocked the far end, but Dahlia knew she could scale it easily enough. A few strides short of it, she picked up her pace to leap but skidded to a quick stop as two large men—tieflings—stepped out from behind some piled crates to block her way.

“Sister Dahlia,” one said. “Why do you run?”

The elf glanced back, and was hardly surprised to see three more of the burly half-devils moving down the alleyway toward her. They were all dressed in the typical garb of a Luskar, but she knew the truth of who they were, confirmed by the speaker’s referral to her as “sister.”

Sylora had moved quickly to the chase.

Dahlia stood up straight and replaced her concerned expression with one of amusement. That was her way. When no option for flight presented itself, there remained the joy of battle.

She snapped her staff to its eight-foot length and presented it horizontally in front of her, dropping the two-foot length off either end to form her tri-staff.

“Would any challenge me directly, or must I kill all five of you at once?” she asked, starting the ends spinning in slow, end-over-end loops.

None of the Ashmadai moved toward her, fell into a defensive crouch, or even drew a weapon, and that unnerved the elf.

What did they know?

“You will continue this course?” a woman’s voice said in front of her while Dahlia was glancing over her shoulder at the three Ashmadai behind her. She turned to see Sylora standing between the two tieflings, looking magnificent as always in her red, low-cut gown, with that stiff, high collar framing her hairless head. “You would turn your failure into betrayal? I had thought you wiser than that.”

Dahlia took her time digesting those words, unsure how to respond.

“When the moment of glory came, Dahlia failed,” Sylora explained. “Do you think we, who are truer servants of Szass Tam, were surprised that our brash young sister could not execute the initiation of the Dread Ring? Do you believe that we, that I, ever expected anything better of you? And so I intervened to ensure that Szass Tam would not be disappointed. You did so much fine work in locating the primordial, after all, even if you then—”

“Then you tried to kill me,” Dahlia interrupted.

Sylora shrugged. “I couldn’t trust you to come with us, not when you had such powerful allies, that dwarf and his dark elf patron. You left me little choice, and even tried to stop what had to be done.”

“And now you’ve come to kill me,” Dahlia stated instead of asked, and her pretty blue eyes flashed with excitement. “Will you hide behind your zealot lackeys again, or will you join in the fight this time?”

“Were it up to me, you would be dead already,” Sylora replied, and she tossed something at Dahlia’s feet. The elf warrior dodged and braced, expecting a fireball or some other disaster to erupt, but when nothing happened and she got a good look at the item Sylora had tossed, she recognized her recently discarded brooch and nothing more.

“Our master sees potential in you still,” Sylora explained. “He bade me take you under my wing, as my servant.”

“Never!”

Sylora held up a finger. “You have a chance to get through this alive, Dahlia, and again serve in the ranks of the lich-lord. Perhaps you might even redeem yourself in his eyes, perhaps even in mine. And it’s that or die. Would you forfeit your life so easily?”

Dahlia mulled on the offer for a few heartbeats. She knew Sylora would make her life miserable, of course, but at least she might have a chance.

“Come,” Sylora bade her. “Reconsider. There is heated battle joined in the south. With the Netherese, no less. You would enjoy killing Shadovar, would you not?”

Dahlia felt the defiance draining out of her so completely she wondered if Sylora had enacted an enchantment upon her. The worry was fleeting, though, for she knew the source of her melting resolve. Was there anything in the world Dahlia hated more than the Netherese?

She looked at Sylora, hardly trusting the Thayan.

“My dear, if I wanted you dead, you would be dead already,” Sylora replied to that suspicious expression. “I could have filled this alley with killing magic, or with murderous Ashmadai.” She held out her hand. “Our road is to the south, to battle the Netherese. I will count you among my lieutenants, and as long as you fight well, I will trouble you little.”