Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [61]
For its part, the slender monstrosity continued to heave its way up the vertical shaft. As it moved, it shed streamers of gray flesh, like dead scales, revealing a larger, appalling bulk beneath. Silvered now, and sleek rather than stringy, the entity bounded an entire body length upward with a single leap, slapping onto the wall only fifteen or so paces beneath Delphe's protruding toes.
As it gathered itself for another, stronger jump, Delphe hurtled the spellscythe down the Well shaft, directing her weapon's motions with an outstretched hand. The aberration scuttled sideways. The spellscythe just missed the fleeing creature, and smashed instead into the Well's glossy side. Oh, shards!
An explosion hurtled up the Well's shaft, expanding as it breached the lip. The abjurer was battered, but kept her feet. Her ears rang in the aftermath, but through the cacophony she heard snuffling and growling down in the well. A terrible, hacking cough, chillingly similar to how a man might clear his throat of phlegm. Something was straining to speak, perhaps, ot more likely seeking to sing forth dark sorceries all its own.
She rushed back to the edge, gazed down through the explosion's residual haze, and saw the remnants of her spell-scythe untaveling. Near it was the entity, tent and smoking from the near miss, but already scabbing over with nacreous flesh even tougher and more spell-resistant than that which had burned off.
One of the rents remained, a gap which protruded greenish fangs even as Delphe watched. The flesh around the opening flexed, elongating to become an obscene organ. From this orifice echoed the coughing. Soon it would be capable of uttering terrible words of power, if it could evolve the capacity before Delphe eliminated it.
The abjuter desperately clutched at the threads of the dissipating spellscythe. Quicker to salvage its energy than attempt to summon a new tool.
Words floated up from below, stinging the elPs flesh with their magical import. "I… call… call upon the Final Pact of-"
Delphe jerked her spellscythe to the left, despite her lack of complete control. It sliced into the creature's roiling skin. Where it touched, the entity hazed away like mist, and its words collapsed into a basso scream of transcendent pain.
Three pseudopods burst from the creature's sides, each tipped with an ebony spike. Two of these scrabbled for a better hold on the Well's side. From the last emerged a cloudy green beam aimed at the spellscythe. Whete it struck, portions of the abjurer's weapon boiled and failed, as if touched by the putridity of rot.
Delphe palmed her amulet with her right hand. Lifting it high, she chanted hoary words older than some races that now walked Toril. Her amulet took on the hue of the limitless sky. In its glow, the spellscythe was fortified.
The creature was only moments from cresting the lip.
"Delphe! Delphe!" Cynosure's voice, strident with alarm, blared suddenly from overhead. "Category two breach in effect, on the cusp of category one!"
The idol, attached horizontally to the ceiling, took on the hue of Delphe's amulet. The idol's eyes snapped open, revealing a vista of shining sapphire. As if windows to a world apart where storms raged, a blast of howling wind poured forth.
A spindle of madly spinning air extended, its tip reaching down the shaft, growling with pure, elemental fury. A heartbeat later, the lengthening funnel stabbed the creature, even as Delphe's spellscythe cut at it with waning strength. Cynosure's vortex caught the aberration, snapping its tendrils away from the walls. It screamed, a booming moan that caused ice to crystallize from the air throughout the Inner Bastion. Then it plummeted, spinning and flailing, back through the boundary layer.
The ensuing splash of boundary fire rose high in the shaft, burning so fiercely Delphe's eyelashes were singed. She didn't care. She continued to gaze down the Well, anxiety clutching at her lungs. When the disturbance