She looked at the Old Mage's pipe, still floating beside his head where he'd left it, and saw that the flames bent around it.

They seemed to be avoiding it! Sylune stared at the spell-flames narrowly for a time; they boiled up out of nowhere on one side of the ruins, arced over her frozen companions, and then returned in an endless rush to nowhere on the far side of the broken walls. It was some sort of stasis field that avoided Elminster's small, curved, ever-smoking pipe.

So, the pipe yet radiated its own magic-and floated on its own, not frozen by the flames. She frowned. He'd once been able to teleport with it, hadn't he?

She drifted nearer, noticing faint wisps of smoke curling up out of the pipe bowl ever so slowly and rising to mingle with the onrushing flames.

She eyed it. This was probably going to hurt.

Mystra, if any part of you is still around to hear, she thought firmly, aid me now. And with the resolve still strong in her, she surged forward, thinning a part of her essence into the pipe.

Magics swirled and tore at her, defenses against tampering that bore Elminster's trademark spell-upon-spell interlacing. Gods, the pain!

Whirling around in a silent scream, Sylune found that the pipe could teleport vapor in and away, in an endless cycle-giving her an escape whenever she wished-and could also transport anyone who touched it and willed it, thus, from place to place.

Elminster sat frozen, but perhaps she could guide the pipe to him… yes! That very movement was a direction he'd given the pipe several times recently, so how to do it was displayed right in front of her!

Sylune swirled around the pipe and moved it down toward the Old Mage's mouth. The flames bent away from her, and grim satisfaction rose within her as she made the slow, drifting journey. This was going to work!