Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [44]
He was close to his foe now, stones rolling underfoot in his haste as he burst through a doorway into a room that had been blasted away, and saw the mind flayer beyond the crumbling wall ahead. Its glistening, slime-covered hands dived to its belt and plucked forth a broad-bladed hooked sword. A blade? Usually they were too eager to flail at one's head with those brain-sucking tentacles to bother with steel.
The squidlike growths around the thing's mauve mouth were writhing in excitement, Durnan saw, as he came around one last jagged end of wall and rushed down on his foe.
A boot coming down wrongly on loose rubble now could mean his swift death, he reminded himself grimly, and hunkered down as he ran to keep his balance, skidding deliberately when he reached a knob of stone he could hook one boot around.
Eagerly, the mind flayer pounced on the seemingly off-balance human, its four tentacles stabbing greedily out. Durnan raised one arm to fend them aside, hooked the edge of his knife around the nearest one, and slashed viciously at their roots.
The mind flayer's sword came up rather clumsily to clang against his blade, and he used the speed he'd built to smash it aside with one shoulder and dive past the thing, lashing out with one boot to kick it in the chest.
There were shouts from the watching crowd, and the fast-paced chatter of changing bets as Durnan rolled to his feet, bounced off a spar of stone, and charged back at the thing. He dare not turn his back on it and try to run for the street-not only would it have time to hurl a spell at his back, but the crowd might well draw steel on him, or bar his way for its own amusement, to force him to turn and fight.
The mind flayer's body seemed misshapen; it wavered as it rose from the rubble where it had fallen- just in time to quail and hiss under the bite of Durnan's sword. Once, twice, the true steel slashed, hacking tentacles away… and the blood that splattered forth was not the milky ichor it should have been, but a dark, reddish-green gore!
Frowning, Durnan cut away the last tentacle and drew back his blade for a final thrust through one of those furiously glaring white eyes. It melted away before him, slumping down into something like a long, reddish worm or clump of worms that slithered and flapped its wet, fast-sprouting wings in haste to escape. He hacked at the glistening thing in disgust, backing away to keep an eye out for tentacles heading for his ankles.
There was angry shouting from the crowd: the shapeshift had told them the thing Durnan faced was no mind flayer, but something else… and who could bet on an unknown shapeshifting thing that was swiftly being hacked apart by this hard-breathing human?
Amid curses, & tankard flew through the air to rattle among the tumbled stones not far away. It was shortly followed by another. Enraged bettors were venting their feelings. Luckily, the state of things in Skullport was such that few would dare throw daggers when a ready knife might be needed nearer to hand.
"Well, thank the gods for such grand favors," Durnan muttered aloud at that grim thought as he ducked away from a part of the worm-thing that had suddenly grown bony spurs and was flailing at him.
He took one numbing gash high on his arm, near his left shoulder-and then he and his foe both staggered. Someone in the crowd had hurled at them both a blasting spell strong enough to rock the ruins around them-and the dragon rune's dome had flung it straight back at its source.
The packed throng of spectators was suddenly a screaming, fleeing mob generously sprayed with blood; pulped, boneless things struggled weakly on the slick stones around a ring of cleared space at the center of the lane.
Durnan lunged under his foe's bony, flailing arm and caught hold of the wormlike coils, lifting them with a sudden grunt of effort. There was a horrible shifting and wriggling in his hands as slashing teeth and talons struggled to be born, and then the tavernmaster