Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [84]
In the green depths of Myth Drannor, a lone and leaning tower collapsed with a roar.
In Waterdeep, a young girl staring up at Ahghairon's Tower walked through the hitherto-impenetrable barriers around it. Its door swung open at her approach. Eagerly she stepped inside and came not forth again.
In Luskan, one of the overwizards of the Arcane Brotherhood, in the midst of ordering a cruel fate for a clumsy apprentice, suddenly acquired the head of a lion in place of his own. In baffled horror, he commenced to roar helplessly, his means of working magic and of conversing both snatched from him in an instant.
In Suzail, while stepping curtly past a barely concealed Harper spy in a little-known passage in the palace of the Purple Dragon, Vangerdahast stiffened. The lady almost stepped out of hiding to steady him as he reeled, but the gruff old wizard strode on, slamming a door hastily behind him. In the chamber beyond was a chair, a writing-desk, a cloak stand, and a mirror. He leaned on the desk, wondering why his blood was afire, and happened to look into the mirror. The face that looked back was not his own, but female, with eyes both wise and beautifully young. Breathing heavily, Vangerdahast blinked-and the mirror shattered. He turned away grimly, knowing that at last it was time.
In Avernus, a ball of fire raced down to burst amid scorched pinnacles. It suddenly veered aside. Out of the air before it stepped a tall, slender female form, as bright as a beacon.
In a hundred gorges and on a thousand mountainsides below, devils lifted their heads, stiffening. They took wing in great hosts and saw a human woman standing alone in midair, as tall as a dozen devils and cloaked in her own blue-black hair.
" Where is he?" her voice rolled out across all Avernus.
Pit fiend generals winced and growled. Lesser devils cringed. Those flying against her faltered. Black whips lashed them on. The intruder watched them come and did nothing.
Forks and lances and fire-daggers plunged into her as if into nothing, tearing her bright raiment. Where bared flesh should have leaked blood, there was only darkness in the air, shot through with rushing stars. The eyes of the floating lady flared silver.
"Where is he?" she said, more urgently." What have you done with him?"
Dragons came, flying hard and fast, jaws agape in hunger. They were goaded by archdevils whose hosts mounted the skies in their thousands and tens of thousands, blotting out die bloody vault with their bodies.
Mystra glared at those who thrust their weapons into her. They blazed away in wisps of silver smoke. Magic snarled and spat at her. She twisted it and struck back through it. More devils died.
Died forever, seared away as though they'd never been, gone in their hundreds. Beneath the converging hosts. Avernus trembled as archdevils deeper in the Hells looked up in real alarm and gave orders. From the very rocks of Avernus, pit fiends erupted, leading armies of winged devils.
Hell was aroused. The sky split with lightning and the smoking mountains roared fire. In the heart of a million devils and more, Mystra glared and slew, glared and slew, until those flying three ranks back of the vanished were singed. They fell from the skies onto Avernus in a dark, wet rain of broken bodies, cloaking the peaks and choking the blood rivers.
Terrible trumpets sounded. Dark chariots ascended the skies. From their fanged maws poured hordes of winged monsters, horrible hydras seldom seen in Avernus.
Mystra slew and slew, a bright silver flame against a tightening sphere of black bloody death. The air itself began to shatter and fall away around her like smashed glass. Rifts opened around the embattled goddess. When she saw Faerun bright and fair through them, below and behind her, Mystra knew that she must go or lose Toril in her trying. The harrowing of Hell-and the snatching of Elminster-must wait for another day and another way.
Like her faithful Chosen before her, she bent her attention to closing rifts between Toril and Avernus. Unlike Elminster, she passed through