Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [25]
In the air they drifted, a blue-white star high above Athalantar; El caught a glimpse of its flickering lantern fires far below, as they rolled together.
"Your defiant tenderness, El-aahh, I could drink of it forever. Give, Chosen of mine. Give unto Mystra."
"Gladly," Elminster growled, young and shining-eyed and supple.
As they surged amid the fire, memories that were not his own flooded into his mind. Images whirled, crashed, and raced in a welter of toppling towers and dragons locked in biting battle. Earth trembled. Rock shivered and rose into lofty peaks. Haughty mages brightened the sky with spells…
So, her remembrances leak into you when your minds are joined? She must mean to so shark, or you serve a weak goddess indeed…
[weeping, falling from light into darkness, lost and alone]
Oh, stop that! You may have loved a goddess and lived, but if you defy me yor are going to die! Show me more of the silver fire, flowing into you! Yes! Yesss!
[mental probes lancing forth brutally, transfixing bright memory]
[weeping, shimmering tears, yielding]
Soft summer stars shone above Myth Drannor. El drifted thoughtfully beneath, looking down on magnificent, glowing spires. They were soon to fall, if Starym deceit and o'erreaching pride and dangerous meddling went unchecked. All this beauty to be lost…
As Netheril before it, said the thrilling voice in the depths of his mind. Blue-white fire kindled in the air around him. It is the way of things, most precious Chosen.
"Holy Mystra," Elminster whispered. The fire deepened and darkened to a blue-black scattering of countless tiny stars-her most private self. "I am most glad to see ye. I have been mournful and lonely."
I, too. Those eyes he could fall into, forever, opened in the air before him, dragging him in. Let us comfort each other, bodies and minds.
Silver fire coiled within the floating man, leaping up in quickening excitement to meet the greater flame that had birched it. Stars shaped slender arms and lips, trailing away in dark glory as the flow of images began. Mind met mind. Silver fire rose and rushed back and forth, swifter and swifter. With a gladsome cry like a proud trumpet, Elminster Aumar shouted his own name aloud to cling to himself… Aye, aye, it came…
[fire, white and furious, overwhelming all, soaring up to bright, blinding glory]
Abruptly the fire was gone, and Elminster was wincing on rocks beneath a blood-red sky. A raw, wordless scream shredded the air of Hell behind him.
Lesser devils whirled up into the sky like bats flooding out of a cave at dusk. They winged toward the sound of shrieking agony, eager to see the mighty fallen.
Weak and sick, the one-armed old man rolled himself into a crevice. He pulled the ashen bones of some long-fallen devil over him. Its grotesque horned skull grinned at him with its eternal stare. If fair fortune or the grace of Mystra were with him, he'd now have no Nergal to protect him against the talons of passing baatezu.
Aye, it had come to that-rejoicing at the possibility of lying unprotected and alone in Avernus.
Closing his eyes, Elminster wrapped himself in that wry thought and descended again into the dark vaults of memory, seeking Nergal in his mind. The outcast devil had already shown himself to be a brute, with wits scarce swifter than a cunning sellsword of Faerun. If a mere memory of Mystra's mind-touch caused him such pain, perhaps he was weak enough that a Chosen of Mystra-even a weak and exhausted one-might wrest free of him.
Cautiously El skulked through his mind, seeking the place that was a purple ruin-the part of his mind that was forever gone. The ruin was spreading-
There, amid a blood-red glow, and riven shards of memories, he found Nergal. Hulking shoulders, barbed and mottled gray, tentacles