Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [85]
The blood-red sky of Avernus flashed silver and then blue-white. All over that tortured land, every flying devil fell, torn apart in an instant.
Black, smoking blood drenched and drowned the land. Mystra never knew that she almost drowned the man she'd come to save. An erinyes had swooped out of the slaughter moments earlier to embrace and shield a blindly crawling Elminster… and when she fell away from him, torn apart and dying, he was unscathed. He staggered to his feet to see the last silver glow fade.
"Mystra," he whispered. "Great Lady… all this, for me?"
Weeping, he fell back among the dead. The air for as far as the eye could see was filled with dark explosions. Countless pit fiends arrived from Nessus, full of the fury of Asmodeus to slay the lone intruder who no longer stood in the sky. Hell shook with dark rage from below. The flames rose high. The sky became blood-red for another eternity.
***
Azuth.
In the drifting darkness of a space that was not a plane, formed by the magics of all the enchantments of Candlekeep, the Lord of Spells glided like a bright serpent from one rune to another. They stood like sculptures in a void. He restored the fire of this one, and subtly reshaped that one, shifting its powers and meaning slightly to safeguard the fabric of Toril and to guide mages in slightly new directions, thus…
The voice in his blood, as he drifted as a thing of fire and risen magic, was so soft that it might have been an imagined thing.
High One, I have need of you. This time the mind-voice was dear and strong. Mystra, near at hand, sought him.
"Great Lady, I hear. How may I serve?"
The void suddenly blazed with silver fire. A blue-white glow rolled to the horizon like a wave seeking a far shore. Two eyes, as dark and star-shot as a warm summer night, regarded him from a spot within easy reach of his hand.
Azuth restrained his sudden desire to embrace the goddess and taste of her love; it was a feeling that washed over him at their every meeting, the call of her power to his.
"Great guide," she said softly, "our most mighty Chosen is fallen into Avernus, and Hell is risen against me. We must take him back. How?"
Startled, Azuth shaped himself into a tall, young mage with robes of shimmering white and eyes both large and dark. "You're sure-but of course." There was a flash as Mystra shared with him what had befallen her, her mind-touch with Elminster… and how feeble the mightiest of her Chosen had been. The Lord of Spells frowned.
"Well?"
Azuth winced. "Great Lady," he murmured, "with Hell roused, force is not the way. Stealth, too, is doomed for a time. If he survives, a small, swift rescue might succeed- but know, and forget not, that whomever we send, we shall be throwing away. Even those who escape Hell physically are often driven mad."
***
So your mystra has missed you and wants her little lapdog returned. Yet even goddesses find hell too warm in its welcome and flee empty-handed, she'll never have you now.
You're mine, little chained wizard.
Mine, while your sniveling ruin of a mind still Totters along, vainly trying to hide things from me. There's not much of you left to resist me, is there?
Let's see if we can uncover your memories of control over magic by seeing you teach novices, hmmm?
Glass burst into the room in a thousand sparkling shards. Sighing, Elminster put one hand over his teacup.
"Die, cursed mageling!" The mage in the window thrust her hands forward in claws, and lightning burst from her long fingers.
They snarled across the room amid the customary blinding flashes and spitting sparks, and struck something unseen a foot or so shy of the Old Mage's nose. He calmly watched them rebound and waved cheerily to the Red Wizardess as her own spell smashed into her and drove her-shrieking-back out of the room.
"Lhaeo," Elminster announced calmly, "the window. Again. An ambitious Thayan, as usual."
"I know," a sour voice floated in from the gardens outside. "My roses-why must they always land in my roses? Half an acre