Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [174]
"Is it guarded?" Elminster asked warily, as they dismounted amid the trees.
"Of course it is, fool mageling!" someone snarled from behind him.
Elminster whirled around-in time to see the rearing body of his horse flow and twist… into the familiar shape of Undarl, mage royal of Athalantar. Myrjala's mount screamed in terror, and they heard the frantic drumming of hooves as it fled.
Elminster gulped and plucked at his belt for the things he'd need to cast what paltry battle-spells he had left. Undarl's gloating grin told him he was not going to be in time. The master of the magelords raised his hand and began to murmur something, but Myrjala sprang between them, skirts swirling. The lightning that cracked forth from Undarl split before her upraised hands and splashed harmlessly off to either side.
The mage royal screamed in anger. When he could find words through his fury, he snarled at her, "You! Always, it is you! Die, then!" His next words were a hissed incantation, and streams of fire burst from his fingertips in a crimson web that crackled and clawed the air, but was turned back by Myrjala's conjured shield. Elminster had no spells left to match such magics; he could only stand anxiously in the lee of Myrjala's barrier.
The web of fire Undarl had spun began to glow a dull, angry red. The mage royal lashed at the shield with his fading flames, and called out a name that echoed among the stones of the shrine.
His call was answered by a vast bestial roar. Something huge and dark rose up from behind the trees behind the mage royal… a red dragon! It unfurled batlike wings and hissed, eyes glinting with cruelty. Then its shoulders surged and it leapt through the air toward the prince and the dark-eyed sorceress. It breathed fire as it came, a roaring torrent of flame that poured over Myrjala's shield… but could not consume it.
The sorceress said something long and awkward, and the dragon's flame doubled back on itself, coiling and turning from red to an eerie bright blue before it became white-hot. To El-minster's mage-sight it seemed even brighter; Myrjala had transformed it into something awesome. It rushed back at the dragon like a hungry wind. El glimpsed dark wings beating frantically amid the roiling flames for a moment, and then, in an explosion that rocked the knoll and hurled him from his feet, the dragon burst part.
Scales and blackened scraps of flesh flew past the last prince of Athalantar as he struggled to his feet and saw Undarl snarling and lashing at the sorceress with his whip of flames, seeking to pierce the shield. Fire roared and rumbled.
Myrjala stood unmoving against the fury of the flames, and spoke a single calm word. The edges of her shield began to grow, lengthening into long, lancelike tips that reached toward Undarl, pulsing with power.
The wizard laughed contemptuously. His arms were growing longer, too, stretching into tentacles. The tips of his snakelike limbs hardened into sharp, red, long-taloned claws. The lance-tips of the shield reached him and passed harmlessly through. Undarl's laughter grew more shrill, and his face had begun to stretch forward horribly into a snout. The talons of his hands ended in small bulbous things, now, each with its own snapping mouth.
"My spell can't touch him!" Myrjala exclaimed, amazed.
The mage threw back his head, and his ever-wilder laughter echoed back from the stone plinth behind him. "Of course not! I am no puny mortal of Faerun, to be mastered by your magic-I walk the shadows where I will on many worlds. Many think themselves mightier than me, only to learn the depths of their folly in the moments before they perish!"
Undarl's ever-larger tentacle-heads suddenly swooped around the shield and were upon her, darting and biting like writhing snakes.