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.Abishai exploded into shreds and gobbets before the guardians of the whorl knew what it had brought them.Their slayer was away, flying low across the trembling, rocky ground in a conjured shroud of smoke.Behind her, abishai remains began to spatter back down on the rocks amid the flaming remnants of a few banners.El! My love, where are you?[wordless reply, warning of being devil-ridden, diabolic awareness catching fire and sweeping around to look, contact broken]Somewhere in that direction! Stealth was for others.Even the Simbul would find the whelmed armies of Hell a little warm for her liking.After all, she was but an ember blown from the inferno that was Mystra, and even the Lady had been forced to retreat.Strike swift and hard was both the Simbul's best road and the one that suited her.Balls of flame flashed and arced in the distance, bright sparks against a red and starless sky.Something that might have been a dragon fluttered clumsily down behind one peak as she shot a glance in its direction.The ground fell away into a vast, sharp-walled chasm.Into that gorge, spinagons flew as last as their tattered wings could bear them, fleeing a hunting pack of black abishai.Sinuous tails snaked, wings beat, and talons snatched.The Simbul crashed through the heart of them without slowing, blasting anything in her path into writhing, cartwheeling agony.The wake of seared and sizzling fiends was promptly torn apart by other devils.The vinegar tang of abishai bodies and the sulfurous reek of devil-blood were strong around her as she stormed up and over a line of clawlike crags.larger devils stood on a pinnacle above the tortured land-tall and terrible baatezu with their folded bat-wings arching high above diem.They took wing as they saw her, grinning and hooting in anticipation.The mightiest of them surged to make the first and most satisfying strike against her.The Witch-Queen never slowed, racing on as the pit fiend soared to meet her.Its great wings blotted out the sky ahead.Its mighty arms spread, and its fangs bared in delighted laughter.She hurled a spell in front of her-a bright burst of lightning that raked its chest like the tails of a whip-and let it bellow mirth at her feeble magic.It was still laughing when the claws of her will tore it apart, flinging its jawbone into the face of one startled cor-nugon and its skull into the snarling maw of another."I'd love to stay" the Simbul snarled to the winds as she plunged on, the hot blood of her foe settling on her in a stinging cloud, "but I'm busy just now.Perhaps another time.soon."She sent forth another mind-touch.and found both her beloved and the dark fury of an archdevil awaiting her.She broke the contact before his mind bolt could do more than leap toward her.Twisting in the air, the Simbul flung herself over on her back in a sharp turn that would bring her to where Elminster was being held.If she tore through the smoking stink of Hell just a little faster, she might even reach him in time…***NOT GOOD!Nergal broke his hold on Elminster's mind, leaving his captive to blink and whimper in the sudden din and reek of Avernus.He lifted his head to peer across the blood-red sky."She comes" he snarled, "and Orochal didn't even slow her.What manner of woman d'you lie with, wizard, that she can tear apart pit fiends without even slowing?"The wormlike thing that was Elminster made no reply but a wet, bubbling moan.Nergal glared down at it for a moment, and then back up at a small darkness that was streaking across the sky, racing nearer.and nearer.Cursing, Nergal lifted taloned hands and wove a spell mighty enough to leave him trembling-or rather, several spells spun together.It cost him a lot of his strength and something precious that he'd been saving for a long time-a sphere of fused rock crystal that held a drop of blood from a certain other devil.Yet Nergal was smiling through the brimstone burst.His magic snatched him away to another comer of Avernus
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