Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [75]
"A spell-twisted human, if I'm not mistaken… transformed why? I'd best see just who you are before I cook you for dinner or remake you into a more pleasant shape for my own amuse-"
The serpent-devil stiffened and hissed, rustling her wings with a single, convulsive shudder. She sent a mind-lance into Elminster… and found Nergal.
[ruby sun, blossoming and widening, serpentine awareness questing forth]
[tentacled giant turning to face the intrusion, gathering ominous strength]
"Ho-ho, a wizard of great power… memories aplenty here, both entertainment and something I could use, if I can but find the right remembrance… but hold: Here's a taint that's somehow famili-"
Malachladra!
"Nergal!"
Die, serpent-bitch!
"Your turn to feed worms, Lord Most High of Nothing!”
[mind bolt, turned aside, raw agony, Elminster screaming as walls smash down, ceilings fall, chambers collapse… mental arrows, leaping one two three, struck aside and hurled back in bright array… El still screaming]
"Human, I am Malachlabra, Duchess of Hell and daughter of Dispater! Cleave to me, and I'll rid your mind of this tentacled brute!"
[mind bolt strikes mind bolt, great flash, long despairing shriek of agony, El writhing as fires are hurled back and it forth in his burning mind]
"Human, I… ah, your name is-Elminster! Elmins Aumar, cleave to me!”
Abishai veered away, spitting and shouting, as the serpent-devil reared up and spat ribbons of fire far across Avernus. She drove one long, cruel talon into the ungainly creature at her feet. His raw screams died into frothy barking, and even maggots shrank away from the thing of churning flesh, erupting limbs, and wetly jetting gases.
Far away, the ground shook. Malachlabra shouted in triumph. She was still laughing, raised upright into a sky she; was raking with her talons, when Nergal's reply came down upon her.
The red air shimmered, bled purple, and rolled back for an instant. It vomited huge purple spheres of roaring, trembling flame on all sides of the serpent-devil.
Then, of course, they exploded.
Convulsing talons whipped and cartwheeled past' the ropy thing that was Elminster. Stones lashed at him, and he was drenched with she-devil gore. Torn and \ gutted lengths of serpent danced in macabre trembling long after they'd fallen among far stones. Where Malachlabra had been there was nothing but smoking, fresh-tumbled rocks-and black and crimson slime spattered on the stones.
All at once, as Nergal's laughter thundered through Elminster's mind, the thing of teeth and odd-shaped limbs and lumpy bodies shuddered. It ceased its shape-shifting chaos. Arching and snuffling, the transformed wizard writhed on blood-spattered rocks. Maggots reared up hungrily, yellow-white and glistening with slime. El, adrift in blood-shadows of suffering, never felt their gnawing.
So you can change shape at will, little man? Well, well. another secret it's time you yeilded to me. I'll Have All of them in the end, you know-but by the freezing styx, you make it hard work, tearing every last one out of you!
[Through rivers of blood, the tentacled creature shoulders fearlessly forward. Through many dark and shattered rooms, he seeks bright memories of shapeshifting.]
Silver fire threaded out, oh-so-subtly-mere droplets where rushing floods were needed. Face twisted in pain, Elminster Aumar writhed on the ground, slapping at maggots. As Nergal's thought bored on, probing ever deeper into El, the long and fissured torso dwindled. Its limbs became human arms again.
El groaned and let a little wash of silver fire sear the maggots gnawing him. They fell away, slain instantly. He collapsed again with a groan. Let Nergal think the shape-shifting was my doing and not Malacblabra's. Anything to keep him from noticing the fire…
[A great horned head looks sharply this way and that as it presses on through