Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(58)

“Oh, but the gods are with us!” Sylora cried as the mountain flew high, and she noted the angle of the blast. “If I had aimed it myself …”

The fall of the mountain seemed perfectly aimed at the city of Neverwinter—and indeed it was. Mount Hotenow had not simply erupted. The angry primordial sought carnage as hungrily as did Szass Tam.

Sylora dropped her arm across Dahlia’s shoulders and shook the elf with familiarity.

“We must take cover, quickly!” Sylora instructed her charges, and they were not unprepared. “The beast, our beast, has roared!”

All around Dahlia, Ashmadai rushed to and fro, gathering their belongings and running for the cave they had chosen as their shelter. Dor’crae and Valindra were already in there, shielded from the stinging daylight.

Dahlia didn’t move. She couldn’t move, frozen in awe, in horror, at the spectacle of the freed primordial, of the exploding volcano.

What had she done?



Drizzt watched the lower peak of the mountain as it seemed to simply come apart and leap skyward. He thought of a long-ago day on a beach outside of Waterdeep, a hot summer day. He and Catti-brie had been serving with Deudermont aboard Sea Sprite, and had put into port for supplies and respite. The couple had wandered down to the shore to spend a quiet afternoon.

He thought of that peaceful time in that most terrifying of moments, for he had played a game that day, burying Catti-brie’s legs under the wet beach sand.

Watching the mountain break apart reminded him of when Catti-brie had lifted her sand-covered legs. The stones in the distance seemed to come apart like beach sand, but revealing lines of angry red lava instead of the smooth flesh of Catti-brie’s calf.

Strangely silent for many heartbeats, the lifting mountain expanded and stretched, twisting and blending with the heavy cloud into a weird shape, like the neck and head of a bird.

Only then did Drizzt realize that the silence was only because the shockwave, the devastating wall of sound, hadn’t yet reached him. He saw trees in the far distance falling over toward him, falling over away from the mountain.

Then the ground beneath his feet lurched and rolled, and the sound of a hundred roaring dragons had him falling aside and covering his ears. He caught one last glimpse of the volcano as the mountain stone tumbled down, a wall of stone and ash many times taller than the tallest tree, running madly for the ocean, burying and burning everything in its path.



“By the gods,” Herzgo Alegni whispered.

The mountain leaped, tumbled, and had begun to roll at tremendous speed, devouring everything in its path.

And its path led directly for Neverwinter.

“The end of the world,” Barrabus the Gray whispered, and those words from that man, so out of place, so hyperbolic and yet so … inadequate, spoke volumes to them both.

“I go,” Alegni announced just moments later. He looked at Barrabus and shrugged. “Farewell.”

And Herzgo Alegni stepped into the Shadow Fringe, leaving Barrabus alone on the bridge.

Alone, but not for long, for the folk of Neverwinter saw their doom then and took to the streets, running and screaming, crying and calling for loved ones.

Barrabus watched people rush into buildings, but one look at the coming avalanche of fiery rock and it was clear the waddle and daub buildings of Neverwinter would provide no shelter.

Where could he run? How could he possibly escape?

The assassin looked to the water, naturally, and thought for just a moment of leaping into the river to swim for the sea. But when he glanced back the other way, he saw that the mountain was almost upon him, and there, in the river, lay certain doom.

Huge, fiery stones began raining down around him, splashing into the river, shattering houses.

What could survive?

Barrabus the Gray went over the side of the bridge, but didn’t jump or fall. He climbed right under it and tucked himself into the iron substructure.

Around him the screams of the Neverwintan increased in pitch and magnitude, until the roar of a hundred dragons drowned them out. Then came the crunching explosions of more buildings being shattered, the splash of water, and the hiss of protest as the hot flow swept over the river.

Barrabus shielded himself as much as he could, not even daring to look as the flow rushed beneath him, nearly reaching him. He felt the intense heat, as if he was sitting with his face inches from the hot fires of a blacksmith’s oven. The bridge shook, and he thought it would surely crumble to pieces and drop him to his death.

On and on it went, the thunder and fire, the falling fireballs, the ultimate devastation of an entire city.

Then, as instantly as the first wave of sound had roared in his ears, there was silence.

A dead, muted silence.

Not a scream, not a groan, not a wail. A bit of wind, but nothing more.

After a long while, an hour or more, Barrabus the Gray dared crawl out from under the Herzgo Alegni Bridge. He had to put his cloak over his face as a filter against the burning ash that permeated the air.

Everything was gray and deep, and dead.

Neverwinter was dead.





The fights are increasing and it pleases me.

The world around me has grown darker, more dangerous … and it pleases me.

I have just passed a period of my life most adventurous and yet, strangely, most peaceful, where Bruenor and I have climbed through a hundred hundred tunnels and traveled as deep into the Underdark as I have been since my last return to Menzoberranzan. We found our battles of course, mostly with the oversized vermin that inhabit such places, a few skirmishes with goblins and orcs, a trio of trolls here, a clan of ogres there. Never was there any sustained battle, though, never anything to truly test my blades, and indeed, the most perilous day I have known since our departure from Mithral Hall those many years ago was when an earthquake threatened to bury us in some tunnels.