Only Pharaun's enchanted piwafwi prevented the claws from disemboweling him, but he still felt blood flowing down his torso, and the impacts to his head nearly knocked him senseless.
He tried to fend off the blows with his hands and feet and roll out from under the chwidencha,
but it was too heavy and too determined to hang on. Unable to fly, he mentally summoned his rapier from his ring, remembering too late that he had lost the ring to Belshazu. The chwidencha's fangs ground against his magically armored cloak again and again, trying but failing to penetrate the garment and open his gut.
Pharaun struggled to regather his senses and his breath.
The chwidencha raised one of its claws high and drove it toward Pharaun's face. He tried to squirm aside, failed, and the claw hit him with enough force to split rock. His protective enchantments prevented his face and skull from splitting open but the impact still exploded his nose and drove his head hard against the rocky ground. For a horrifying moment, consciousness started to slip from him. He grabbed at it and reeled it in with the entire force of his will.
Dazed and increasingly angry, he realized that he still clutched in his right hand the ball of bat guano.
"Here's a treat," he mumbled through a blood-filled mouth.
He mouthed the words to a spell that would turn the chwidencha and the entire area into cinders. He swallowed down the blood leaking into his mouth from his ruined nose and spoke the words clearly. He would have to hope that the inherent drow resistance to magic would shield him and his companions; that, or he would have to hope they could take more punishment than the chwidencha.
Just as he was about to utter the final syllables of the spell, the creature's fangs penetrated his piwafwi and sank into the skin of his chest. A bolt of pain caused his body to spasm but Pharaun did not lose the cadence of his spell. He had trained in Sorcere, cast spells as an apprentice while his Masters had held candle flames to his bare flesh. A bite from one of Lolth's failures could not break his iron concentration.
He finished the spell as the chwidencha reared back to take another bite of his flesh. Gritting his teeth, Pharaun closed his fist around the tiny ball of guano and shoved it into the chwidencha's open maw.
Reflexively, it clamped down on his hand.
Pharaun closed his eyes just as his universe exploded in orange light and searing heat. He felt some of his hair melt, felt the flesh of his arm, chest, and face char. He could not contain a scream.
The force of the blast blew apart the chwidencha atop him, reducing it instantly to ash.
Hisses, growls, and screams sounded all around him, audible above the explosion. He smelled the stink of burning flesh. His own, no doubt.
It was over in one agonizing heartbeat.
He opened his eyes and found himself staring up into the dark sky above. For a moment, he had the absurd thought that his spell had charred the clouds, but then he realized that the storm was gathering above them.
Blinking, dazed, he shook the charred chwidencha pieces from his body-they were little more than chunks of seared flesh-and slowly sat up. He wiped the blackened blood from his face and nose and blinked until his blurry vision cleared. His hand was a blackened, seared piece of meat.
It did not yet pain him, but it soon would.
He looked around and saw that the fireball had wrought a perfect sphere of devastation. A
circular swath of blackened and partially melted rock denoted its boundaries. He had not burned the sky, but he had nicely burned the earth. He took a professional's pride in the damage it had done.
Within the circle, Jeggred sat on his four hands and knees, chest heaving, eyes blinking. A
seared chwidencha corpse lay in pieces under his claws, and chwidencha legs dangled from his mouth. Bleeding but only mildly burned, the draegloth eyed Pharaun coldly as he spat the legs to the ground and climbed to his feet.
"You'll need to do better than fire, mage," the draegloth said, his voice raspy.
To Pharaun's surprise, Danifae and Quenthel both had survived too. They were burned and smoking, and minor cuts and bruises covered them both, but they lived. Quenthel stood on the far side of the blast radius, returned to normal size. Her serpents, covered in ash, hissed at Pharaun.
He frowned, wishing he had at least put them down.
Danifae stood on the other side of the blast, leaning on her morningstar for support. She must have regained her feet and her weapon during the combat.
A score or so chwidencha carcasses, charred, smoking, and stinking, lay scattered about the battlefield.
"What in the Abyss did you do?" Danifae demanded, then she coughed. Claw scratches crisscrossed the fireball-pinked flesh of her face.
Saved your hide, unfortunately, Pharaun thought but did not say.
Instead, he replied, "A spell went awry, Mistress Danifae."
