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the wand. It blasted past the second insect creature, who ducked away from
    the blast and snatched up an iron trident, but it caught the winged demon-elfin the midst of his spell and hammered him into the other wall. Bookshelves splintered and heavy tomes cascaded down on the creature.
     
    “Taksha! Erthog! Slay them!” the winged one cried out.
     
    The insect fiend took two steps and hurled its heavy iron trident at Araevin, who yelped despite himself and twisted to one side. He stumbled out of the doorway as the weapon thudded into the door with enough force to
    bring all three of its points clear through the thick oak. Araevin scrambled to his feet to cast a spell, sending five streaking missiles into the hellborn monster attacking him. The creature came on undeterred, its great talons
    raking inch-deep furrows in the wall behind him.
     
    “Araevin! What are these things?” Ilsevele called. She darted into the room herself, circling behind a table and loosing more arrows at the hellspawn. One arrow shattered on the thick plates of the creature’s shoulder, but another sank into the eye of the monster who already had two in its throat, and a third punched a hole through the membranous wing of the red-scaled sorcerer, just
    then picking himself up from the ground after Araevin’s disrupting bolt.
     
    “Mezzoloths!” Araevin answered.
     
    He’d never encountered the things himself, but he had read oftheminhis researches-mercenaries ofthe lower planes, powerful fiends who served any master who could meet their price. The monster Ilsevele had shot crumpled
    to the ground and abruptly discorporated into black, stinking mist, returning back to whatever foul plane it had been summoned from.
     
    Araevin danced back from his own adversary to gain himself room to use another spell. Having observed the damage wreaked in the library by his first disrupting bolt, he didn’t want to use the wand again unless he had
    to. He started on a spell ofdismissal, but the winged demon-elf beat him to the punch, hurling a brilliant white orb into the fray. The spinning white disk exploded into a blast of unearthly cold and razor-sharp splinters ofice,
    peppering both Araevin and Ilsevele, as well as the pursuing mezzoloth. Araevin grunted in pain, but he kept his feet.
     
    Enough of this, he thought. No sense saving my spells if I let these creatures claw Ilsevele or me to death.
     
    He allowed himself to slide away from the mezzoloth raking at him while carefully focusing his attention on a deadly spell. The insectile monster surged forward, seeking to overwhelm him before he could finish, but Araevin snapped out the last word just as the fiend’s beak descended toward him. From his outstretched finger a brilliant emerald ray sprang, taking the mezzoloth full
    in the chest. The creature seemed to glow bright green, screeching in agony, and it discorporated into sparkling dust and streaming, foul smoke.
     
    Araevin shifted his attention to the bat-winged sorcerer across the room. The demonspawn, hobbled by arrows in its hip and thigh, snarled out a vicious curse that wove a wall of darkness behind it as it ducked through the opposite
    door.
     
    “Araevin! I can’t see it!” Ilsevele cried.
     
    “It fled,” Araevin said.
     
    He quickly dispelled the darkness, and glanced at his betrothed. Ilsevele had an arrow on her string. Patches of frostburn gleamed along one arm and the side ofher face, but her eyes were bright and hard.
     
    “Are you hurt?” he asked her.
     
    “It’s nothing, just a touch ofthat ice spell the one with the wings threw,” she replied. “You?”
     
    “The same,”Araevin said, then nodded at the other end of the library. “Come on, we’d better see if more of these things are still roaming around.”
     
    They hurried out ofthe library, buttheir adversary was nowhere in sight. This corridor was a grand hall, wide and tall, leading to the great hall itself, where Araevin had met with the high