lichdrow's soul, such as it was. The thought pleased Gromph.
Behind him, the vrocks streaked through the window and into the temple. Gromph spared a look back. The demons had assumed their natural form: that of muscular, giant, bipedal vultures.
Vicious talons ended their legs, and large, tearing beaks jutted from their twisted faces. The beat of their enormous wings carried the stench of carrion.
'She is here!' they shouted back out the window, and Gromph heard exclamations of excitement from outside the temple.
Yasraena appeared in the window, levitating high and stepping onto the sill. For a moment,
she stared down with a confused expression at the ruined temple and Gromph-he still wore the body of her daughter-but her expression quickly changed to one of rage.
She guessed who he was.
'Archmage!' she screamed.
Gromph shot her a smile and raised the axe high.
The vrocks flew toward him as fast as arrows, mouths open wide and shrieking. Yasraena voiced the words to a spell.
'Good-bye, Dyrr,' he said, and drove the axe into the beljuril.
The gem shattered into countless glittering fragments, emitting a foul puff of smoke. A vague,
distant howl sounded somewhere deep in Gromph's mind, and the axe shook in his hands. The lichdrow's soul rushed into the metal. It glowed, vibrated, and displaced the previous souls that the axe had claimed. A score or more spirits exploded from the axe head, exclaimed with joy at their freedom, and vanished into the aether. Henceforth, the axe would house only the lichdrow.
'No!' Yasraena screamed and lost the thread of her spell.
The vein of the master ward turned a burning orange.
Before Gromph could reason out the meaning of the change in the master ward, before he could turn to face the onrushing vrocks, a tremor shook the temple, shook all of House Agrach
Dyrr. The force of it knocked Gromph off of the remains of the golem, and the vrocks shrieked past him overhead.
Speaking as quickly as he could, Gromph uttered the incantation to one of his most powerful spells.
Time stopped for everyone but Gromph.
Silence fell. Motion ceased.
The vrocks hung frozen in mid-air, mouths agape. Yasraena stood in the window, frozen in the middle of another casting.
Gromph studied the vein of the master ward. A bubble of power distorted its otherwise straight line, just where it passed through the temple doors.
It took Gromph a moment to determine what had happened. He cast a series of divinations to confirm his suspicions. When he saw the results, he almost laughed.
The lichdrow's defenses never ended. And it appeared he would have his revenge, after all.
The master ward had reset the wards behind Gromph not to prevent a second intruder from entering but to provide a power source for its real purpose. The destruction of the phylactery had triggered the lichdrow's final spell, a cyclic reaction that fed on the reset wards.
Power would race back along the vein of the master ward, absorbing the energy of all of the wards in its path. When it reached the start of the spell network, it would rebound back to its place of origin-the location of the phylactery, the temple-bringing with it all of the pent-up power of the absorbed wards.
The explosion would be enormous, perhaps large enough to level the entire stalagmite fortress complex of House Agrach Dyrr.
Gromph could not flee. The dimensional lock prevented magical travel, and he could never get out on foot in time.
The lichdrow had ensured that he would not go alone into oblivion.
'Well done,' Gromph said to the axe, though he knew the lichdrow could not hear him.
The archmage smiled at the symmetry. He had destroyed the lichdrow's body by breaking and exploding his staff of power. The lichdrow would destroy Gromph's body by breaking and exploding all of House Agrach Dyrr.
There was nothing else for it. Gromph's timestop spell was about to end. He decided that he would rather die in his own body than that of some Dyrr priestess. He decided too that he would die amused. The battle of spells and wits, of moves and countermoves, had been as good as any sava game he'd ever played.
He spoke the words to a minor transmutation and transformed Larikal's body to look more like his own- shorter, slimmer, with shorter hair and sharper features. The likeness was rough but probably good enough.
Despite his timestop spell, he sensed the master ward collecting power.
With an exercise of will, he returned his soul to the ocular, forcing Larikal back into her own form. Once inside the gem, he quickly moved back into his own shrunken, invisible body. He came back to himself outside the temple, small and unseen, awaiting his death.
Yasraena blinked in surprise but managed to hold onto the thread of her spell. For a moment,
Gromph Baenre had appeared cloaked in an illusion as her daughter Larikal, but the illusion had expired, and the Archmage of Menzoberranzan stood revealed.
The vrocks streaked in, biting with their beaks and tearing with their claws. The archmage appeared disoriented, reaching for weapons at his waist that did not exist, lashing out with fists rather than spells. His screams sounded like those of a woman. He found the axe he had used to destroy the lichdrow's phylactery and swung it awkwardly at the circling vrocks.
Yasraena continued her spell. She would annihilate the archmage. A bottomless ocean of pent up anger flowed into the casting, powering it-rage at Gromph for his deception, rage at the lichdrow for the foolish, short- sighted plotting that had brought her House down.
Another tremor nearly shook her from the window perch, but still she continued the chant.
Flecks of stone rained from the temple dome. Glass cracked. The entirety of House Agrach Dyrr was shaking.
She saw it then.
With a sense of certainty that opened a hole in her stomach, she knew that House Agrach Dyrr was destroyed. The archmage had destroyed the phylactery, and the fool lichdrow had triggered some retaliative magic that would bring the entire complex down.
No matter, she thought. She would kill the archmage. Matron Mother Yasraena would die with at least that satisfaction.
The words poured out of her, and power gathered with every syllable. The vrocks continued to attack, harrying Gromph from either side. He comported himself well with the axe. He fought back the vrocks and looked up at Yasraena. His expression went wide-eyed.
He shouted something but she could not hear it over the shaking temple, over the boom of her own voice.
She finished the spell, pointed her holy symbol at the archmage, and let its energy take root in his body. She knew he would be warded, but she also knew his wards would fail him. She had put all of her power into the spell. No one could resist it.
Still staring at her, the archmage began to shake. His entire body quaked as much as the temple and the rest of the fortress. Sounds poured from his mouth but Yasraena could not understand them. The vrocks backed off, unsure of what had occurred. Yasraena touched her
House brooch and used its levitation magic to lower herself to the shaking temple floor. She wanted to watch Gromph die up close.
'You are but a male, Archmage,' she said. 'And I will watch you did before Lolth claims me.'
The magic took deeper root. Gromph struggled to say something to her but could not control his body. His tongue flopped between his lips. He gagged, bit down on his tongue, and sprayed spit and blood. A horrible gargling noise escaped his lips as his body began to shrink in on itself.
For a moment, as the body collapsed, Yasraena saw Gromph's features contort to reveal. .
'Larikal?' Yasraena rushed forward and took the archmage's imploding body in her hands.
