Bregan D'aerthe left little to chance.

To the head, Jarlaxle's fingers flashed, and his small, elite band slipped away.

Knellict was more angry than afraid. He didn't have time to be afraid.

Screams of alarm and pain chased him and his three guards down the misty hallway and into his private chambers. The guards slammed the door shut and moved to bolt it, but Knellict held them back.

"One lock only," he explained. "Let them try to get through once. The ashes of their leading intruders will warn others away." As he finished, he began casting, uttering the activation words for the many magically explosive glyphs and wards that protected his private abode.

"We should consider leaving," said one of his guards, a young and promising wizard.

"Not yet, but hold the spell on the tip of your tongue." He drew out a slender wand, metal-tipped black shot through with lines of dark blue.

An especially shrill scream rent the air. The sound of men running moved past the door, followed at once by the sound of a couple of small crossbows firing and of one man, at least, tumbling to the floor.

"Be ready now," Knellict said. "If they breach the door, the explosions will destroy them. Those in front, at least, but you must be quick to close it again and drop the locking bars into place."

His guards nodded, knowing well their duties here.

They all focused on the door, but nothing happened and the sounds moved away.

Still, they all focused intently on the door.

So much so that when the wall to the next room in line, more than half a dozen feet of solid stone, simply vanished, none of them even noticed at first.

Jarlaxle's five warriors fell to one knee and fired the poison-tipped bolts from their hand crossbows. One of the wizards amplified the shots with a spell that turned each dart into two, so that each of Knellict's two guards was struck five times in rapid succession. For the wizard sentry, there came a missile of another sort: a flying green glob of goo, popping out from the end of a slender wand Jarlaxle held.

It hit the man, engulfed him, and drove him back hard into the wall where he stuck fast, fully engulfed, and he could move nothing beyond the fingers of one hand that was flattened out to the side, could not even draw in air through the gooey mask.

Knellict reacted with typical and practiced efficiency, turning his lightning wand to the side. The trigger phrase was "By Talos!" and so Knellict cried it out, or tried to.

His words hiccupped in his mind and in his larynx, and he said "B-by Thooo."

Nothing happened.

Knellict called to the wand again, and again, his brain blinked in mid-phrase. For as fast as Knellict was with his wand and his words, Kimmuriel Oblodra was faster with his thoughts.

The wizard plastered on the wall continued to helplessly waggle his fingers and feet. The two warriors slumped down to the ground, fast asleep under the spell of the powerful drow poison.

And Knellict could only sputter. He threw the wand down in outrage and launched into spellcasting, a quick dweomer that would get him far enough away to enact a proper teleportation spell and be gone from there.

A burst of psionic energy broke the chant.

The eight dark elves confidently strode into the room, four of the warriors taking up guard positions at either side of the main door and either side of the magically opened wall. The fifth warrior, on a nod from Jarlaxle, crossed the room and cut the goo from in front of the trapped wizard's nose, so that the man could breathe and watch in terror, and little else. One of the drow wizards began casting a series of detection spells, to better loot any hidden treasures.

Jarlaxle, Kimmuriel, and the other wizard calmly walked over to stand before Knellict.

"For all of your preparations, archmage, you simply do not have the understanding of the magic of the mind," Jarlaxle said.

Knellict stubbornly lifted one hand Jarlaxle's way, and with a determined sneer, spat out a quick spell.

Or tried to, but was again mentally flicked by Kimmuriel.

Knellict widened his eyes in outrage.

"I am trying to be reasonable here," Jarlaxle said.

Knellict trembled with rage. But within his boiling anger, he was still the archmage, still the seasoned and powerful leader of a great band of killers. He didn't betray the soldiers who were quietly coming to his aid from the other room.

But his enemies were drow. He didn't have to.

Even as the dark elf warriors flanking the open wall prepped their twin swords to intercede, Jarlaxle spun on his heel to face the soldiers.

They yelled, realizing that they were discovered. A priest and a wizard launched into spellcasting, three warriors howled and charged, and one lightly armored halfling slipped into the shadows.

Jarlaxle's hands worked in a blur, spinning circles over each other before him. And as each came around, the drow's magical bracers deposited into it a throwing knife, which was sent spinning away immediately.

The drow warriors at either side of the opening didn't dare move as the hail of missiles spun between them. A human warrior dropped his sword, his hands clutching a blade planted firmly in his throat, and he stumbled into the room and to the floor. A second fighter came in spinning—and took three daggers in rapid succession in his back, to match the three, including a mortal heart wound, that had taken him in the front.

He, too, fell.

The wizard tumbled away, a knife stuck into the back of his opened mouth. The priest never even got his hands up as blades drove through both of his eyes successively.

"Damn you!" the remaining warrior managed to growl, forcing himself forward despite several blades protruding from various seams in his armor. Two more hit him, one two, and he fell backward.

Almost as an afterthought, Jarlaxle spun one to the side, and it wasn't until it hit something soft and not the hard wall or floor that Knellict and the others realized that the halfling wasn't quite as good at hiding as he apparently believed.

At least, not in the eyes of Jarlaxle, one of which was covered, as always, by an enchanted eye patch—a covering that enhanced rather than limited his vision.

"Now, are you ready to talk?" Jarlaxle asked.

It had all taken only a matter of a few heartbeats, and Knellict's entire rescue squad lay dead.

Not quite dead, for one at least, as the stubborn fighter regained his feet, growled again, and stepped forward. Without even looking that way, Jarlaxle flicked his wrist.

Right in the eye.

He collapsed in a heap, straight down, and was dead before he hit the floor.

The drow fighters stared at Jarlaxle, reminded, for the first time in a long time, of who he truly was.

"Such a waste," the calm Jarlaxle lamented, never taking his eyes off of Knellict. "And we have come in the spirit of mutually beneficial bargaining."

"You are murdering my soldiers," Knellict said through gritted teeth, but even that determined grimace didn't prevent another mental jolt from Kimmuriel.

"A few," Jarlaxle admitted. "Fewer if you would simply let us be done with this."

"Do you know who I am?" the imperious archmage declared, leaning forward.

But Jarlaxle, too, came forward, and suddenly, whether it was magic or simple inner might, the drow seemed the taller of the two. "I remember all too well your treatment," he said. "If I was not such a merciful soul, I would now hold your heart in my hand—before your eyes that you might see its last beats."

Knellict growled and started a spell—and got about a half a word out before a dagger tip prodded in at his throat, drawing a pinprick of blood. That made Knellict's eyes go wide.

"Your personal wards, your stoneskin, all of them, were long ago stripped from you, fool," said Jarlaxle. "I do not need my master of the mind's magic here to kill you. In fact, it would please me to do it personally."