"Douglas Niles - Druidhome 2 - The Coral Kingdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niles Douglas)

elves were the churning plates of cartilage that thrashed, like giant tongues, within that horrid maw.
With a grotesque bellow, the monster roared through the village, crushing buildings, smashing the
priceless totems, seizing elves with its snakelike tentacles. Cookfires sizzled and died, squashed by the
beast's clublike feet. Great works of art, created from patterns of leaf and crystal, shattered beneath
uncaring blows.
Some of the elves tried to fight. The bravest of them, males and females alike, took up bows or spears
tipped with enchanted iron heads. The Thy-Tach fired these in courageous futility, watching as the sharp
metal bounced harmlessly from the monster's rough carapace. Most of the attackers quickly felt the lashing
of a tentacle around the ankle, precursor to a sudden and gruesome death.
Elven clerics, spiritual leaders of the tribe, struggled to gather the surviving Thy-Tach, fleeing into the
darkness that settled over the forest. Stragglers fled the ruin of their town, gaining a precious few moments
of time while Ityak-Ortheel searched the rubble for survivorsтАФa few of which it found and quickly
devoured. But within minutes, the monster knew that the village was empty and turned toward the forest in
pursuit of the fleeing survivors.
The chief cleric, a matriarch nearly a thousand years old, led her people up the steep slopes of the valley
toward a notched hilltop that had long been a place of honor and meditation among the Thy-Tach. Now, she
knew, that place provided their only hope of escape. The cleric held before her a gleaming shape, like a
platinum triangle balanced on its point, crossed by a spiderweb of silver threads. Now these threads glowed,
and the cleric followed the direction indicated by their emanations.
The horrendous roars of the monster followed them, growing closer by the moment, as the stronger
elves helped the weakest, both very young and very old, to make the difficult ascent. Trees splintered
behind them, clearly marking the path of the pursuing beast. Seizing vegetation with its tentacles, the bulky
monster barged up the slope, uprooting huge trees with the force of its enraged pursuit.
Reaching the hilltop, the priestess raised a powerful prayer to the elven gods, protectors of her race
even as elven numbers dwindled across the Realms. The platinum talisman flared into light, and the deities
of elvendom heard and granted their favor.
The hilltop surged into brilliant illumination, casting golden light across the darkened hills, opening as a
shining passageway before the desperate elves. A broad path appeared, leading upward into the night sky,
framed by a silvery arch of gleaming, translucent brilliance. In a single column, the Thy-Tach passed
through this gate as the roars of the Elf-Eater grew louder. Infuriated, the creature watched in frustration
as its prey slipped from its grasp.
The venerable priestess stood at the rear of the file as the monster loomed out of the darkness, and as
the last of her people fled, she passed the gleaming triangle to a younger priest, the last elf to pass through
the gate.
Finally the priestess stood alone before the mountainous presence of the Ityak-Ortheel. Serenely she
turned to face the hideous form. As bloody tentacles enwrapped her, dragging her to inevitable doom within
the monster's cavernous maw, the cleric's face relaxed into an expression of quiet bliss. Then the gate
behind her faded, slowly replaced by the star-speckled vista of the night sky.
The monster flailed madly, thrusting its tentacles into the closing aperture. The young priest recoiled as
he disappeared from view, but one grasping tendril actually touched the platinum icon before the male cleric
stumbled away. Then, as the priestess perished, the light paled and the magical gate shrank into nothing.
The rage of the Elf-Eater was a thing that shook the world to its roots. The monster flailed about the
mountaintop, knowing from past experience that its quarry was gone, for this was not the first time the
monster had witnessed that hated triangle, had watched a tribe of elves escape through such a magical
aperture.
Finally Malar called his pet back to the Lower Planes, where it could wallow in its filth and digest the
victims who had failed to reach the glowing gate.
And while the Elf-Eater seethed in hatred, Malar pondered the elven escape. Too often had he been
thwarted thus, and frustration was not a pleasurable sensation to a chaotic and vengeful god. He roiled and
festered in his rage, trying to focus his fury into a grim determination.