Elminster_ The Making of a Mage - Ed Greenwood [94]
"Up, Blades!" the priest hissed urgently, and then stiffened as the voice of Elmara sounded inside his head.
"Hurl everything that can pierce or slash at the tyrant's eyes, as soon as the gods make ye able!"
Asglyn hefted his heavy hammer, his favorite weapon borne through a hundred battles or more, and hurled it with all his might, end over end, in a careful, climbing arc, so that it might fall into the great central eye of the beholder. It spun through the air but he never saw if it struck home; he had turned to scramble about the balcony, shaking and slapping his dazed and groaning companions and hoping somehow they'd escape with their lives.
Elmara's next spell brought whirling blades into being from nothingness. They flashed and spun about the waving eyestalks of the beholder like so many fireflies. El saw more than one eye spurt gore or milky liquid and go dark before the madly spinning eye tyrant blasted the shards into drifting smoke with a ray that leapt on to stab at a certain young mage.
Leapt-and rebounded, slicing silently back into the roiling tangle of dragon wings and scaled shoulders and claws, and the darting, spinning, snarling eye tyrant. The dragon roared in pain, but El could see none harm the beholder.
The dragon spat fire again. As before, the gout of flames seemed to splash away over an invisible shield held in front the eye tyrant. Yet that shield was no barrier to the dragon's claws and tail. As Elmara watched, the tail slapped the beholder end-over-end across the chamber, its eyestalks curling and struggling vainly. It passed near the balcony where the Blades stood, and more than a few of them hurled daggers, darts, and blades just above and before it so it rushed helplessly into the stream of whirling steel. The monster squalled in pain and fury as it tumbled to a halt. What eyes it had left turned toward the nearby balcony.
Bright beams and flickering rays of feebler radiance flashed, and the Blades cried out and ran vainly about the balcony in terror. It shook and shuddered under them, and most of the rail was suddenly gone, melted away in the fury of the eye tyrant's attack.
Yet no searing spells tore into the men, though the crash and flicker of variegated lights was almost blinding. Magic spat and crawled all along the balcony before rebounding back at the struggling spherical monster; Elmara's last spell was doing its work.
Those Blades who could see well enough hurled more daggers, but in the fury of roiling magic around the balcony, most of these vanished in sparks and fragments or simply sighed into nothingness. Through the hail of blades, the furious dragon clapped its wings and rushed down at the beholder, seeking to slay the thing that had caused it such pain. As it came, it breathed fire again. The blackened eye tyrant rolled over in the streaming storm of flame so all its remaining eyestalks pointed straight at the great wyrm. Rays of magic leapt and thrust, and the oncoming dragon began to scream. The beholder rose a little to get out of the way as the dragon hurtled helplessly past. The wyrm crashed into the wall so hard that the Blades were hurled from their feet. The eye tyrant's eye-rays stabbed mercilessly at the thrashing dragon.
The beast seemed much smaller by the time it managed to flap free of the wall again, smoke rising from its body. Crushed balconies fell away in rubble as the dragon moved, its scream a raw and terrible sound of agony. Then its cries began to fade. The awestruck Blades saw bits of the dragon's straining body vanish as if it were just so much ice melting in the heart of a fire. It dwindled swiftly, lifeblood boiling away into nothing in the face of the cruel powers bent upon it. Beyond the fury of flashing magic, the Blades could see the floating figure of Elmara, arms waving in careful haste as she cast another spell.
When the dragon vanished in a last puff of dark scales and boiling