Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [51]
The sword shuddered in her hands and then bucked, and she clung to it grimly as the rune's power was unleashed. It blazed away into nothingness as the sword dragged her up into the air and flung her forward. Eerie silence fell.
She was invisible now, she knew, springing up into the air on a one-way vault that would end in a bone-shattering encounter with the cavern wall or a sickening plunge to the ground if she judged wrongly.
The beholder hadn't noticed her; it was still lashing her lord with futile gazes and hurled spells as she rose out of the flashing and trembling air, passing up and over the monster-now!
The rune's power winked out in obedience to her will, and Asper found herself falling, sword first, as Mirt's roars and the excited shouts of the watching Skulkans rushed back around her. Straight down at the curving, segmented body of the eye tyrant she plunged, headed for just behind the squirming forest of its eyestalks. Asper spread her legs and braced herself for the landing-she'd have only a bare breath to strike before it flung her away.
She'd mixed the stoneclaw sap and creeper gum herself, and spread it on the soles of her boots more thickly than most thieves, miners, and sailors would. It had seen her through more catwalk and rooftop landings on this foray than she cared to think about just now, and if it served her just once more…
With solid thumps, Asper's boots struck the beholder's body, and the blade in her hands flashed once and back again before she'd even caught her balance. Almost cut through, an eyestalk flopped and thrashed beside her, spattering her with stinging yellow-green gore as another eye turned her way. Her boots found purchase on the curving body plates, and Asper lunged desperately, putting her sword tip through the questing eye and shaking violently to drag the steel free before another orb could bathe her in its deadly gaze.
Three of the eyestalks were turning, like slow serpents, and the beholder was rolling over to fling her off. Asper kicked out at one eye, as her balance went, and flailed with her blade at another. She fell hard on the bony plates of the monster's body, arm wrapped around an eyestalk. She clung to it with one hand and drove the quillons of her blade into the questing orb that came curling at her. Milky fluid burst forth, drenching her. Spitting out the reeking slime, Asper grimly slashed at another eye. Then she was falling, the beholder's bony bulk no longer under her.
Stones rushed up to meet her, and Asper tucked herself around her sword, trying to roll. There was no time, and with numbing force, she crashed into what was left of a wall, and then reeled back helplessly. Mists swirled in front of her eyes, and a new wetness on her chin told where she'd bitten through her lip.
Mirt was roaring out her name and sprinting toward her, arms spread to embrace her. Would his failing shields protect them both?
Not from this death.
The beholder's large central eye was a rent, shriveled ruin, milky liquid dripping from a slash in the sightless bulge, but the smaller eyes on their stalks glittered with maddened rage. They stared at her, growing swiftly nearer. The charging monster would either ram her into the stones and crush the life from her, or roll over at the last instant to shred her with its fangs- teeth adorning a jagged mouth quite large enough to swallow her.
Asper shuddered, shook her head to clear it, and raised the gore-streaming blade she still held. Mirt came gasping up to her, stout sword raised-and the beholder's eyes vanished behind its own bulk. It rolled over to reveal the gaping maw that would devour her.
A giant among its own kind and armed with spells that they lacked, magic enough to overmatch many a human mage, Xuzoun had been contemptuously