off of the main body of the golem. But he could do only so much and in moments was covered in them, their weight so heavy that he could hardly move.
He tried to trigger the levitation power of his House Baenre brooch but the weight of the golems crawling over him was too much. He could not get airborne.
Their fangs and claws ripped through his defensive spells and into his flesh. He screamed with rage, pain, and frustration. His ring struggled to heal the wounds inflicted by the spiders, but there were too many. For every spider that he jerked from his body or threw down from atop the golem, another three took its place. He shook them from his hands, pried them from his face,
pulled them from his legs. Agony lit him. He roared as he fought. If not for the regenerative magic of his ring, he would have been dead.
With the suddenness of a whipdagger strike, his transformative spell ended.
Knowledge returned to him in a rush. Physical strength drained out of him, and he sagged under the burden of the golems. His understanding of combat-swings, feints, and footwork-faded out of his memory like a half- remembered dream. His normal understanding of the Weave-the necessary gestures, component admixtures, the language of the arcane-refilled his mind.
Gromph was himself again, and he was in agony. A hundred holes pockmarked his flesh.
Blood soaked his robe. In theory he could again cast spells, but the pain was too much.
Thinking fast, he did the only thing he could. He leaped from atop the golem and hit the ground in a roll. The impact jarred many of the spiders loose. With fewer attached to him, he triggered the levitation magic inherent in his brooch and went airborne.
He shook free the remaining spiders and hung in the air, gasping and breathing, dripping blood.
Below him, a thousand eyes stared upward, tiny mandibles clicking, tiny pedipalps waving.
His broach allowed him only vertical movement, so he took a feather-a spell component difficult for him to procure in the Underdark-and spoke the words to a spell of flying. When he finished,
he floated to his right.
As one, the swarm of spiders followed him, eyes turned upward. An idea occurred to him-
A sizzling sound from above and behind turned Gromph around. Green veins of magical energy arced along his wall of force. The Dyrr wizards were attempting to dispel it but their first attempt had failed.
Gromph had to move fast. He flew farther to his right, drawing the swarm of golems away from the body of their destroyed parent. He took from his robe a finger-shaped lodestone, one end of which was covered in iron shavings.
Hovering above the swarm of golems, he incanted the words to a powerful transmutation.
When he finished the casting, the shavings moved from one end of the lodestone to the other and within a cylindrical area that ran from floor to ceiling and included Gromph and all of the spider golems, up became down.
Under the effect of his flying spell, Gromph simply adjusted his internal bearings, flipped over, and remained hovering in the air. The golems, however, fell up toward the ceiling, just as if they had stepped off a cliff. Gromph dodged them as they fell past. Two latched onto him, but he shook them free, and they too fell upward. All of them crashed into the ceiling, but it damaged them little.
With the entire swarm treating the ceiling as if it was the floor, Gromph spoke the words to another wall of force and ringed the area of effect in which he had reversed gravity. The golems would not be able to walk out of the affected area of his spell and fall to the floor. They were hedged in.
Gromph allowed himself no time to enjoy his victory. He flew down, flipped again when he left the affected area of his spell, landed atop the body of the parent golem, and looked down at the prismatic sphere, at the twine of the master ward that fed into it. He could have used one of his more powerful spells to disjoin the magic but doing so would negate all magic within the temple, triggering the master ward, freeing the golems, forcing his soul back into his body, and negating his walls of force.
Instead, he would cancel the sphere with the methodical application of specific spells. Each of the seven colors of the sphere was negated by casting a certain spell on the sphere when the appropriately colored layer appeared.
In his mind, Gromph thought through the spells he would need to eliminate the sphere's layers. Some of them would require material components. He reached into his robes and withdrew the materials he would need: a tiny cone of glass, his lodestone, and a pinch of dried mushroom spores.
He stared at the prismatic sphere as it cycled through its colors. He had to down the colors in sequence, starting with red and moving to violet. The master ward complicated things potentially, but Gromph had no more time to worry about it.
He readied his spells.
The sphere showed red. Gromph incanted a couplet, put the glass cone to his lips, and exhaled a cone of freezing cold that slicked the floor in ice. The prismatic sphere froze in the ice.
Gromph tapped it with his finger, and the red layer shattered and disappeared, revealing the orange layer.
Another assault on the wall of force. The angry clicking of the golem swarm from above.
Gromph ignored both.
He spoke another series of arcane words and summoned a powerful gust of wind. The magic of the spell whipped his hair into his face and tore the orange layer from the sphere, where it dissipated into nothingness. The yellow layer was revealed.
He picked up his lodestone, gathered some of the dust from the floor, and spoke the words to the same spell that he had used to disintegrate Geremis. The spell annihilated the yellow layer,
exposing the green.
Gromph heard voices from outside the window. The screech of something powerful and predatory.
Yasraena must have brought the vrocks, he thought, recalling the shapechanged demons that had stood on the walls.
He picked up the mushroom spores and spoke aloud the words to a spell that ordinarily would have opened a hole through solid walls. Instead, the magic opened a tiny hole in the green layer,
which rapidly expanded until the layer was consumed. The blue layer lay open to him.
Almost there.
The vrocks screeched again.
He whispered the words to a simple evocation, pointed his finger, and discharged a bolt of magical energy. It struck the blue layer and consumed it, revealing a scarlet layer.
He was nearly done.
Behind and above him, another assault on his wall of force brought it down. A shower of sparks announced its fall. A victorious cry sounded from outside the window. Gromph could not halt his attack on the sphere to erect another defense.
Looking at the next layer, he closed his eyes and pronounced the words to the next spell.
When it took effect, light as bright as the sun in the World Above illuminated the temple.
Gromph's eyes watered even through his closed lids.
Shouts of dismay sounded from outside the window. House Dyrr's forces no more liked light than did Gromph.
Darkness spells quickly countered the light, but the spell's work was done. The light had burned away the scarlet layer. Only one remained-violet.
Gromph uttered the words to the spell he had used so many times over recent hours, the spell that dispelled other magic. When he pronounced the final syllable, the violet layer disappeared.
He held his breath.
There, exposed but for the twisting embrace of the master ward, lay the lichdrow's phylactery.
It glowed so brightly in his magic-attuned vision that he had to again blink away tears.
The phylactery looked like nothing more than a sparkling, fist-sized beljuril, a hard green gemstone. Tiny runes covered it.
Within it, Gromph knew, was the lichdrow's essence.
Gromph hefted the duergar axe. Not only would a blow from the axe destroy the gem, it would drink the
