Disclaimer: I do not own Forgotten Realms or any names, ideas, or characters associated with it. Nor do I own Harry Potter or any names, ideas, or characters associated with it. However, I do own the actual content of this piece of fiction and any made up characters or things or whatever, so please don't steal them.
Author's Notes: Here's the first chapter of this fanfiction. As I stated in my "chapter entitled Author's Notes, this is a crossover fanfiction, but do please read it and tell me what you think. Enjoy!
Chapter 1: Worlds Collide
"What is that thing?" Wulfgar shouted over the tremendous, bone-shattering roar that issued from the colossal beast before him. He hoisted his magical war-hammer, Aegis-Fang, onto his broad, muscled shoulder, ready to strike the monster again.
"Not sure," Bruenor yelled back as the monster calmed slightly and began to search for easier prey. "Oh no ye don't, ye orc-lovin' hog's ass!" Bruenor growled. "Ye're not gettin' Rumblebelly!" He swung his many-notched axe back and flung it forcefully into the monster's skeletal leg, causing it to roar again, louder.
Drizzt Do'Urden watched the battle from his perch in a nearby tree, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. His lavender eyes sought his friends below, making them out clearly in the infrared spectrum as all drow eyes can do. His black skin concealed him quite well. Slowly, one-by-one, he found them all; Cattie-brie, her long auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail as she sent arrow after magical arrow into the beast. He saw Bruenor Battlehammer, the dwarf king of Mithral Hall, hacking away at the thing's legs and making little progress. Wulfgar, the barbarian from Icewind Dale, threw that magical war-hammer—a gift from Bruenor—straight at the beast's eye-less face, making little more progress than Bruenor. The war-hammer suddenly reappeared in his large hands, ready to go to work again. Finally, Drizzt found Regis—also called "Rumblebelly" or his enormous appetite—the halfling cowering away from the battle as usual. He was even more shaken than normal, his hand clutching his tiny mace so tightly that his knuckles were white, since he'd just nearly been attacked by the monster. Only Bruenor's quick thinking and heavy swing had saved him.
The monster in question reminded Drizzt of a fifty foot tall skeleton of a dragon, with no flesh or muscles, standing upright on its rear legs. However, he could see a heart that gave off no heat of any kind that was detectable in the infrared spectrum. Greatly concerned by this, he had reached into the pouch at his waist, clasping the small, black figurine of a panther. He rolled it in his hand slowly for a few moments before noticing something else about this foe. From his current position, he could see that which was invisible from the ground. On the ground, the monster's breast plates obscured one's view, but Drizzt could see clearly the swirling of what seemed to be images of places long gone from the world and people dead for centuries as well as those that had not come yet. His breath stopped and his heart seized momentarily as recognition sank in. Drizzt was gazing upon a Time Pool. He had heard of them before, but he had never seen one. Time Pools had the ability to transport anyone who was able to jump into them to any point in time, past or future. They controlled the very ebb and flow of the Space-Time Continuum.
Unconsciously, Drizzt drew his twin scimitars quickly, hardly noticing his own movements as the perfectly balanced blades came into his hands in the blink of an eye. He wanted to warn the others about his discovery, but he couldn't give away his position to the monster. However, if his suspicions proved true, then this beast had the power to manipulate time at any moment. All their lives were in grave danger. He couldn't—he wouldn't—let his friends die because he hadn't wanted to let the enemy know of his presence. Shaking his thick mane of white hair away from his face, Drizzt opened his mouth to shout a warning, but Cattie-brie beat him to it.
"Drizzt, feel free to join in any time now," called out the girl's sweet, light, melodic voice. "It's not like we haven't got the need fer yer help or anything!"
"Yeah, ye damned elf!" Bruenor bellowed his agreement with his adopted human daughter. "Get yer ass out here or I'll cut ye down next!" Drizzt smiled at the dwarf's threat, knowing fully well that Bruenor meant every word. He silently slid his scimitars into their sheaths and reached into his belt pouch again, withdrawing the panther figurine. He set it on the tree limb beside him and called out to his best friend in the entire world. Immediately smoke began to swirl around the small statue and a great, black panther appeared from it. Guenhwyvar's muscles tensed as her yellow eyes searched for any threats to her master. She noted the giant beast and Drizzt's companions battling with it. Quickly she moved to pounce on the unknown foe, but Drizzt stopped her with a hand pressed firmly on her back.
"Guenhwyvar, stay here," Drizzt whispered urgently to the tremendous feline. "Be ready to jump into the battle at my signal." Guenhwyvar sat back on her haunches and regarded him stoically as Wulfgar roared out to Tempus, his god of battle, for strength and victory. Drizzt knew she was eager to fight—he could feel it—but he was confident that she would obey his order.
"I meant what I said, elf! Ye'll be the next notch on me axe if ye don't get yer ass out here now!" Bruenor screamed again over another of Wulfgar's fury-filled shouts to Tempus as he heaved Aegis-Fang at the monster again, attempting to knock its feet from under it. This only served to anger the thing more and it flung Wulfgar from his feet with a backhanded swipe and an earth-shaking roar. Drizzt scratched Guen's ear once and his scimitars flew into his hands again as a flame began to dance within his lavender eyes. His drow instincts began to surface as they did so often in the heat of battle and before he knew what was happening he was plummeting toward the forest floor, his cloak and hair flying around his wildly.
Once on the ground, Drizzt was forced into a sidelong roll to avoid a fierce sweep of the monster's tail, coming up with scimitars flashing. He quickly put the blades to work in a mad frenzy of slashes at the monster's tail as it moved away from him around the clearing. He did no damage to the beast that he could see, but he gained its attention. Forced into another diving roll as the monster's clawed hand shot down at him, Drizzt came up at once again ready to strike at the monster. His eyes flitted quickly to Bruenor who was edging slowly toward Wulfgar as he struggled with his body to regain his feet. Then he glanced to Cattie-brie who—having followed Drizzt's lead—was rolling to her feet, bow at the ready, after having dived to avoid the monster's tail as well. Finally his lavender orbs came back to rest upon the monster and he saw the opening he knew he needed desperately.
Leaping into the air, Drizzt landed gracefully on the back of the thing's hand and sprinted the length of its arm—his drow instincts and litheness the only things keeping him from being throw off. He was thinking to get a few nice blows in on its neck in hopes that it might cause damage in fairly substantial amounts, what with the neck being a rather vulnerable spot on the body, and dropped a globe of darkness that not even his drow eyes could penetrate over the monster's head to confuse it. In fact, he did manage to land a few blows with Twinkle and Icingdeath, but it was to no avail. His eyes darted frantically as a silver-shafted arrow thunked into the head of the monster not two inches from Drizzt. Glancing down at Cattie-brie, who had already nocked and let fly two more of those magical arrows, he noticed the monster's one weak spot. One could very easily get at the heart of the thing from above, were it not for that Time Pool. An attempt from Drizzt's current position would likely find him sucked into the Pool and whisked away to another time. However, the fact that he could strike the heart from here was not what had caught his eye. He had noticed a small crack between the breastplates of the monster. It was not very large, but there was just enough room for something very slight to get through…something like a silver-shafted arrow. Just as this dawned on Drizzt, the monster decided that it had had enough of him and flung its head about wildly, throwing him to the ground. He regained his feet rather slowly and spotted Regis edging his way toward the gigantic creature, his eyes wide with terror and his little mace clutched tightly in his right hand. Drizzt knew that Regis felt he had to protect his friends, but his sacrifice would be useless if this did not end soon.
"Cattie-brie," Drizzt shouted across the clearing tot he auburn-haired girl, "that thing had a heart behind those breastplates! Aim for that crack in its chest!" He pointed to the crack and Cattie-brie paused momentarily with an arrow drawn fully back to her cheek. She nodded and turned back to the beast, beginning to aim for the spot Drizzt had indicated, but was forced to jump backward to avoid being bowled over by a sweep of the thing's clawed hand. This, in turn, caused her to trip over a tree root protruding from the ground and fall, hitting her head on a rock and falling unconscious. As this happened, she let the arrow fly uselessly into the air to embed itself with a solid thunk into a tree branch above her.
Drizzt felt his heart sink as the impending doom closed in on him. He saw Cattie-brie laying on the forest floor, unconscious and Regis now standing awestruck at what had happened to Cattie-brie. His hand drooped at his sides, the scimitars sliding from his grip as the monster gave yet another roar, this tie one of triumph. This was it for the adventurous friends. They had finally come up against an enemy they could not fell. With Cattie-brie's arrow went their only hope of beating this monster. He was about to send Guenhwyvar back to her Astral home so that she wouldn't have to die as well, when he saw movement in the outer edge of his vision. Spinning on the balls of his feet, Drizzt found Wulfgar now struggling to his feet—with the help of Bruenor—and he felt a surge of renewed hope course through him at his friend's determination to fight on.
Suddenly Drizzt became brazenly aware that Regis still stood not ten feet from the monster, unnoticed and immobilized by fear, but for how long the situation remain that way, Drizzt could not tell. Throwing a second globe of darkness over the thing's head, he took off around the clearing, leaping agilely over logs and roots, trying to get to Regis before the beast realized what was going on. He was nearly there when the globe dissipated and the monster realized what was happening. It brought its house-sized foot up to stomp Regis into the ground and Drizzt dived, taking Regis to the ground and out of the way at the last second. Immediately thereafter a great roar to Tempus issued from Wulfgar as he gathered all of his strength into one last, tremendous throw, heaving Aegis-Fang at the crack in the monster's breastplates. Drizzt glanced up and noticed with horror a black streak flying across the sky.
"Guen! No!" Drizzt screamed, but it was too late. The feline had already begun her descent. She arrived at the monster, latching onto its heart a mere fraction of a second before Wulfgar's magical war-hammer slammed home into the monster so forcefully that it shattered the bone of it chest and pushed the heart and Guenhwyvar with it into the Time Pool.
"Guenhwyvar!" Drizzt screamed again, but this time he couldn't hear himself for the ear-splitting, earth-shattering explosion that erupted from the Time Pool. For a few moments all Drizzt could see was an intense light, so bright that he thought it would burn his eyes from their sockets. Then came the absolute, total darkness. A darkness sot thick that not even his drow eyes, made for such a thing, could penetrate it.