Forsaken House Read Online Free PDF

mages a tenday-and-a-half before. A furious
    battle had been fought in the corridor. The walls were scorched by fiery blasts and broken by lightning bolts, and a dozen more elf guards lay dead alongside three of the sinister winged sorcerers.
     
    Araevin halted and stared at the scene in horror. He had known many of the dead guards for decades. “By the Seldarine,” he whispered. “What happened here?” Violet light flared at the end of the hall, and an earsplitting
    thunderbolt shook the Tower.
     
    “Whatever it is, it is not over yet,” Ilsevele said. She and Araevin picked their way through the shattered corridor to the great doors at the end, splintered
    and hanging crookedly from their hinges. The great hall of Reilloch Domayr lay on the other side of the doorway. The two elves glided up to the smoking oaken doors and peered inside.
     
    In the center of the room, a fierce band of mezzoloths and other hellborn monsters stood around a large iron hoop or ring lying on the marble floor. Elfmages and warriors sheltered behind the tall columns ringing the room,
    surrounding the creatures. The Tower’s defenders hurled spell and arrow at the invaders, even as the yugoloths and their winged sorcerers blasted back at the elves with their own infernal magic, filling the great hall with scathing
    rays offire and glowing magical darts. Dead and wounded elves littered the chamber. The iron ring glowed with a ruddy light, and half a dozen of the attackers who had been standing within its confines-including, Araevin
    noted, the wounded sorcerer who had escaped him in the library, as well as another mezzoloth bearing a large iron coffer-ghosted into nothingness.
     
    “They’re teleporting away!” cried several of the elf defenders.
     
    The last of the infernal attackers stepped back into the hoop. Araevin broke from his cover and hurled a blazing sphere of lightning into their midst, while Ilsevele followed, her bow thrumming like a deadly harp as she sent arrow after arrow into the band. Two skeletal demons with swords of blazing bone crumpled under her deadly rain, but one ofthe winged sorcerers mothered Araevin’s lightning orb with a quick countering spell of its own. The demon had a shirt offine golden scale mail, and wore its long black hair in thick braids laced with gold wire. A jeweled eye patch covered one eye. The creature fixed its good eye on Araevin and grinned maliciously.
     
    “You’ll have to do better than that,” it rasped.
     
    “As you wishl” Araevin growled. He gestured and snapped out the words ofthe deadliest spell he could manage, hurling a scything blast of rainbow-colored doom at the invaders. Each glittering ray carried its own deadly energy, and the great hall crackled with the power of Araevin’s attack. But the demons within the iron ring were already fading into nothingness, vanishing away from the great hall. Araevin’s prismatic blast scoured the space where they had stood only a moment before.
     
    Araevin swore and started forward to see if he could decipher the workings of the teleporting ring, but at that instant an enormous blast of green fire xploded out from the device. Agonizing heat seared Araevin as he hurled himself to the ground, and all around him he heard the screams and cries ofthose other elves who were too close. The chamber fell silent, save for the low crackle of guttering fires and the pelting ofthe rain, falling through a gap blasted in the great hall’s dome. The emerald blast had seemingly contained a spell that carried away the bodies ofthe winged sorcerers that had fallen, since none of the creatures remained in the great hall. The iron hoop on the floor was nothing but a twisted band of scorched metal, its magic gone. Araevin slowly picked himself up, wincing with pain. I should have prepared a spell against fire, he thought. But then, how could I have known that I would become embroiled in a spell battle such as this? He turned and looked for Ilsevele,