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.“Father!” Effron screamed, seeing it all before him, seeing her drop upon the unsuspecting tiefling from behind, her muscles snapping in perfect coordination and timing to lead with a tremendous chop of her magical staff.Herzgo Alegni glanced at Effron, his twisted son, his expression revealing a deep lament.The explosion of Dahlia’s staff, the release of lightning, the momentum of her wild charge as she crashed down upon him, sent horn and bone and smoking hair and flesh flying aside and drove the mighty tiefling to his knees.“Father!” Effron cried again, tears streaming from his strange eyes, red and blue.“Get over here, ye little rat!” Ambergris yelled at him, and the ferocious dwarf closed furiously, mace ready to split his skull.IDIOCY OR HOPE?Why Drizzt, how very clever and immoral of you,” Artemis Entreri said, walking up beside the drow, who stood very still with Claw held vertically before him, locked in telepathic combat with the dangerous sentient sword.“I do believe there’s hope for you,” Entreri added.Those words, from that man, reached right through the drow’s telepathic connection to stab Drizzt in his soul.In an instinctive moment of anger and denial, Drizzt gave in to the demands of the sword then, sending a shot of pain at Entreri.The instant the man began to lurch, however, the drow fought back against the vile and torturous impulses of the evil sword.Entreri turned on him hatefully, eyes threatening retribution, and Claw warned Drizzt to press the attack, to lay this dangerous enemy low.But Drizzt growled and slid the sword away, and he continued to growl in protest as he stared at Entreri.Entreri wanted to leap at him—he recognized that clearly enough on the angry assassin’s face.But Drizzt didn’t draw his weapons.A cry from the other direction, beyond the assassin, broke the moment of tension.It was Dahlia’s cry.After crashing into Alegni and driving him to his knees, she had bounced violently and rolled away, but any injuries or pain from the punishing descent obviously mattered not at all to her, for she went right back at the warlord, who seemed already dead, breaking her staff into flails and launching a tirade, a barrage, upon Alegni.Her spinning poles crashed against his head and face repeatedly, viciously, the woman spitting curses at him with every blow, issuing words and feral sounds that seemed to come from a place far removed from her consciousness.Artemis Entreri’s sudden expression revealed to Drizzt that he understood that place and those sounds, and the drow had to admit that such recognition from Entreri stung him.The assassin spun away from Drizzt and charged into the room, falling over Dahlia, hugging her arms in close to her sides as he dragged her away—and even then, in her thrashing, she managed to lift her foot and kick the tiefling warlord in what was left of his face.Drizzt moved to the edge of the chamber and tried to sort out the curious sights before him.Alegni was dead, of that there could be no doubt.He knelt upright, but only because in the barrage of blows left and right, he simply hadn’t fallen over.His head had been mashed to pulp, there was no life showing in his remaining eye, just the dull haze of death.Entreri continued to drag Dahlia aside, to Drizzt’s left.Beyond them, a familiar female dwarf rushed about, laughing crazily and beating at the stone floor with a large mace.She rushed past another shade, one Drizzt recognized from an earlier fight in the forest.This one just stood perfectly still, magically immobilized.And another shade, the twisted warlock, appeared not far from Drizzt.The drow grabbed for his scimitars, but the broken tiefling paid him no heed and staggered to fall over Alegni in a desperate hug as he screamed, “Father!”At the sound of that, Dahlia gave a sudden cry, and Drizzt watched her melt into Entreri’s arms, as if all the strength had just been yanked out from within her.She just went limp, shaking and crying and gasping for breath.The suddenness of that moment took Drizzt’s breath away, as if a gigantic thunderclap had just stunned them all.Even the crazed dwarf skidded to a stop and simply stared.“Curse you!” the twisted warlock shouted at Dahlia.“Murderess! Damn you and curse you! Once you tried to kill me and now you killed him!”If his every word had instead been a punch into Dahlia’s face, she would not have been more staggered or wounded
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