Annihilation

Chapter Fourteen

They hadn't managed to kill each other yet.

Gromph floated in the still darkness above the Clawrift surrounded by a globe of magical energy. He'd conjured it from his staff, draining some of the item's magical essence in the process. The cost was worth it to keep out even the rudimentary spells the globe protected him from. Gromph knew the lich was capable of much more powerful castings—spells that would pass through the globe without the slightest degradation in power—but at least it would limit Dyrr's options.

Regardless of the globe, no matter what he tried, Gromph couldn't get within sixty yards of the lich.

The repulsion effect is coming from Dyrr's staff, Nauzhror whispered into Gromph's mind. We are studying possible solutions.

The repulsion was another petty defense, another meager drain on a powerful item, and in that way Gromph and Dyrr were even—again.

"What are you afraid of, lich?" the archmage called to his opponent. "I won't try to kiss you."

Dyrr, who was also floating above the black depths of the Clawrift, actually laughed.

"We could simply float here," Dyrr replied, "waiting for one of the defenses to go down—your globe, my repulsion. . but where's the sport in that?"

"Good question," Gromph whispered, not caring if the lich could hear him or not.

The archmage began to cast a spell, and the lich pressed his fingertips together, waiting to defend against it. Gromph set himself moving through the air toward the lich the second he finished his incantation and knew it was successful when the distance between them abruptly closed. The repulsion effect successfully dispelled, Gromph swooped in quickly to get into range for a more damaging spell.

Dyrr, who didn't seem the least bit surprised, dropped out of the air. Gromph knew he'd dispelled the repulsion effect, not Dyrr's ability to fly. The lich was trying to escape into the black abyss of the Clawrift.

Gromph dropped after him. The air, moving fast over the surface of the magical globe that still surrounded him, made a curious humming sound that Gromph found distracting. Still, he managed to cast another spell as he flew and succeeded in closing the distance between them even more.

A bead of pulsing orange light appeared in Gromph's right hand. He looked up at Dyrr, brought his arm back to throw the bead, and hesitated. Dyrr, a cold light in his dead eyes, was coming at him. The distance between the two mages was closing faster and faster—and the lichdrow was casting a spell.

The words of Dyrr's spell—a series of almost nonsensical quatrains in an obscure dialect of Draconic—echoed around them both. Gromph drew his right arm back farther still, aiming the bead at his opponent's face while holding his staff in his left hand. Dyrr had something cupped in his own left hand and his own staff in his right. It was as if they were both looking in a mirror.

Dyrr threw his first. A cloud of sparkling red dust—Crushed rubies, Grendan reported—burst into the air around the lich. The dust swirled on some twist of wind for half a heartbeat then was gone. As the last grain of the powdered gemstone disappeared, Gromph threw the bead.

The archmage came to a sudden stop in the air. The breath was forced from his lungs, and he grunted loudly. His own staff hit him in the face, numbing his bottom lip and making his eyes water. His joints went limp for a few seconds, and his arms and legs flapped out of control.

The bead of compressed fire should have hit the lich in the face and exploded in a ball of flame six paces wide. It should have burned the lich's face off—but it didn't.

Gromph, as he finally gained control of his body and came to rest once again hovering in midair, could see the tiny speck of orange light fly true toward the lich's face then curve in the air and dive into the garish crown the Agrach Dyrr wizard had the audacity to wear. The bead blazed briefly to life in a splash of orange and yellow luminescence that lit the lichdrow's face but didn't come close to burning it off.

The crown, Gromph thought. I should have remembered.

The fireball has been absorbed by the crown, Nauzhror hissed into Gromph's mind.

Gromph was certain he'd see it again.

The item will allow him to redirect the fireball at you, Grendan warned.

Yes, gentlemen, Gromph replied. Thank you.

Dyrr drew to an abrupt stop and hung in the air, bouncing ever so slightly. He looked like a mushroom cap bobbing on the surface of Donigarten Lake. Gromph, on the other hand, was frozen in air, standing on what felt like a solid surface but looked like a dim, phosphorescent glow.

Gromph's globe was still up, but it wasn't the only thing that surrounded him.

An impressive spell, Nauzhror said. Difficult to cast and expensive what with the ruby dust and all. It's nothing you can't handle, Archmage.

"A forcecage?" Gromph asked.

The lichdrow didn't bother answering. Instead, he began to cast another spell. Clearly he thought he had Gromph trapped, so of course he would take advantage of the situation. The archmage brought a spell to mind and rushed through the casting of it, racing the lich, though he would likely still have to suffer through whatever Dyrr was throwing at him. He needed to get the forcecage off him. Being trapped in a magical box was hardly convenient at that moment.

Dyrr's spell took effect half a heartbeat before Gromph's. As the lich finished the last gestures and the final complex verbalization and crunched a lodestone and a pinch of dust in his right hand, something opened under the archmage's feet.

Gromph's spell went off, and his own globe fell victim to it—but so did the forcecage—and Gromph was falling into whatever it was Dyrr had conjured underneath him.

The archmage touched his brooch and made himself stop quickly, well before he contacted Dyrr's dramatic magical effect. As he drew himself up, moving farther and farther away from it, Gromph looked down—and into a whole other universe. The lichdrow had opened a gate beneath him, and a blinding, eye-searing light poured out of it. Gromph had seen light like it only a few times in his long life. It was sunlight, and the Archmage of Menzoberranzan didn't like it at all.

"Where are you trying to send me?" Gromph asked his opponent.

The World Above? Prath mused, though only Gromph could hear him.

Dyrr didn't answer but busied himself gathering some spell component or perhaps another magic item.

"You've imprisoned me more than once already," Gromph went on, "though they seem to hold me less time each attempt. Now you want to send me away? For pity's sake, Dyrr, why not simply kill me and get it over with? Or is it that you can't kill me?"

Gromph certainly wished that were the case—and maybe by some bizarre twist of fate it was—but Dyrr seemed to have something else in mind. The lich finished casting his spell. The immediate effect was that Gromph's stomach lifted in his gut. He caught his breath in a hissing gasp and started to fall.

He couldn't levitate—Dyrr had dispelled the magic that was keeping him aloft—and Gromph fell toward the rotating pool of daylight beneath him. Knowing Dyrr, it would be a worse fate than simply splattering at the bottom of the Clawrift. It was a fate Gromph would do anything to avoid.

The archmage extended himself, wiping more stored energy, more access to the Weave from his mind than he normally would have had to, but he needed the spell to take effect faster and couldn't spare the time for complicated incantations. The effect felt the same as Dyrr's dispelling of his levitation, but instead of falling down, Gromph drifted to a stop then started falling upward. The source of gravity, with enough magic, could be moved.

Gromph twisted in the air as he accelerated toward the roof of the cavern that housed Menzoberranzan. As the lich crossed his field of vision, Gromph could see him grimace in frustration. The archmage didn't waste time gloating. His brooch was useless to him—at least for the time being—Gromph would continue to fall upward toward the new source of gravity until he was dashed against the ceiling. He would have to stop himself.

The command word, Gromph sent to the masters of Sorcere. Quickly.

The staff that he'd used to surround himself in the globe of protective magic had been charged with more than one effect. He'd never used it, but the staff would grant him the same power of levitation as his brooch.

Sshivex,Nauzhror provided.

"Sshivex,"Gromph repeated and immediately began to levitate «up» and away from the ceiling.

In a fraction of a second—before he «landed» on the ceiling—Gromph once again drew to a halt in midair. The pool of blinding sunlight was far below him. The light made it difficult, but Gromph finally managed to spot the lichdrow, who was flying slowly, well away from the gate, and casting another spell.

"That was close, Dyrr," Gromph called out. "You almost—"

The words caught in Gromph's throat. His vision blurred. For a few seconds he couldn't breathe.

"You al—" Gromph started again, but the words were pinched off when his throat clamped shut.

Tears welled up in the archmage's eyes, and a wave of overwhelming despair passed through him, leaving his skin clammy, and his head spinning.

It's an enchantment, Grendan told him.

He was going to die. Gromph knew that with absolute certainty, but what was worse, Menzoberranzan would die soon after him. Everything he'd built over a life spent in the corridors of power had come to nothing. Menzoberranzan was eating itself alive. Everything Gromph had considered a strength—in himself, and in his race—had proven a weakness.

A compulsion, added Prath.

The hate and mistrust, the vendettas and animosities, had finally come home to roost. The once great City of Spiders had been reduced to a besieged, ragged, self-destructing ruin of its former glory—glory that was proving with every dead drow to have been a lie all along.

Fight it, Archmage, Nauzhror urged.

Lolth was dead, and Gromph would be dead soon too. Lolth was dead, and so was House Baenre. So was Sorcere. So was Menzoberranzan. It had all come to nothing, as he himself had come to nothing.

Archmage. . Nauzhror prodded.

Gromph's body shuddered through an alien sensation: a sob. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand and tried to blink away the tears, but more came. Through the tears he saw that Dyrr had moved and was floating above him.

"That's it, young Baenre," the lichdrow said. "Lament. Cry for fallen Menzoberranzan. Cry for House Baenre."

Cry? Gromph thought. Am I crying?

"Slow," Dyrr said, his voice like a gentle caress against Gromph's pain-ravaged brow. "Stop, young mage."

No,a voice in Gromph's mind all but shouted.

Gromph hadn't realized he was moving—levitating slowly «down» toward the ceiling, moving away from the blinding light pouring from Dyrr's gate. The archmage slowed his descent and came to a stop, hanging only a few yards from the jagged stalactites that hung from the ceiling like fangs ready to puncture the neck of Menzoberranzan the Mighty, ready to punish them all for their weakness.

"There. ." the lichdrow murmured, his voice sending a quivering chill down Gromph's spine. "There. ."

The lich was holding something.

How did he get so close?

Archmage,the voice in his head asked, shall I come help you?

No,he thought back at the voice.

Gromph tried to flinch away, but the lichdrow touched him with a long, thin wand of gem-inlaid silver. The touch of it sent a wave of blinding agony ripping through the archmage's body. Every muscle tensed, joints popped, and the wizard clenched his teeth against the pain. His eyes watered more, and Gromph could feel tears streaming down his tingling black cheeks.

He turned away from the lich, rolling in the air, and faced down toward the gate. His eyes closed against the light, but he blinked them open and saw the briefest flash of a silhouette: Dyrr in shadow against the sunlight. The lichdrow was below him but had been above him. Gromph wasn't sure at that instant what he was seeing. Dyrr had fooled him, or he was disoriented … or he was dying.

Am I dying? Gromph thought.

"Am I?" he said aloud then clamped a hand over his face, closing his eyes and mouth.

No, Archmage, said the voice in his head. You are under the effect of a powerful enchantment.

In that moment, Gromph lost all memory of any plan, of any determination, of any purpose for the ruin of a life he'd been cursed with. He wanted to get away. He needed to run, but he was still the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, so he cast a spell that would get him away a little faster, a little farther. With a few words and gestures he'd repeated so many times that even in his confused, despairing state of mind he managed to get right, Gromph brought forth the magic to open a doorway through the dimensions—a break in space and time.

Gromph levitated toward it, but something hit him and hit him hard. It was Dyrr. The lichdrow had put away his wand. The slim magical weapon caused physical damage and pain, but it didn't cause an impact—not like that. The air was forced from Gromph's lungs again, and he found himself pinwheeling through the air.

The light from the gate grew brighter and brighter, and Gromph was only dimly aware that he was moving toward it. The pain was everywhere, still burning from the wand and joined by whatever it was that had hit him to send him falling toward the light. The pain turned to numbness in spots then was gone, and Gromph took a deep, shuddering breath.

The ring, he thought. I have a ring that will. .

Yes, Archmage, the voice said, the ring. The ring will keep you alive but not forever.

Gromph closed his eyes tight again and let his body relax. The ring he'd slipped on at Sorcere before meeting Dyrr at the Clawrift would regenerate injuries: knit broken bones back together, seal cuts, even re-grow severed limbs. He remembered putting the ring on but couldn't for the life of him remember why. What could possibly have been the point? To live? To live in the shattered ruins of a Menzoberranzan ruled by the traitorous Dyrr and an army of stinking gray dwarves?

Gromph touched the ring, grabbed it with the opposite hand, and was about to rip it from his finger so it would let him die, when he saw the lichdrow swooping down at him, cackling. Laughing at him.

"Take it off," Dyrr chuckled. "It won't help with burns anyway."

Archmage!another voice shouted into his mind.

The lich blinked and jerked forward with his head and shoulders. From the grotesque crown on his head came a tiny ball of undulating orange light. It spiraled through the air, riding a sort of wave, and drew a long, curved trajectory directly at Gromph.

Your fireball, the voice in his head warned.

"My fireball. ." the archmage whispered, as he instinctively tucked himself into a fetal position, wrapping his body around his staff and closing his eyes tightly.

Even with his eyes closed the flare of hot orange light burned his retinas. The fireball warmed his skin but didn't burn him. He and the other Masters of Sorcere had thought, of course, to protect him against fire.

"A little longer. ." the archmage murmured.

"Gromph," the lichdrow spat back. "You live!"

"For now," was the archmage's shaking, muttered reply.

Dyrr didn't wait for Gromph to elaborate. He began to work another spell.

The fireball had broken Gromph's concentration on the levitation effect, and once again his stomach lurched up as he began to fall. Gravity was still upside down, and his fall took him away from the gate and toward the ceiling.

While Dyrr finished his spell, Gromph began to list in his own mind the many reasons he should simply let himself fall into the ceiling and die.

Before the troubled archmage could reach a conclusion, shards of jagged, half-molten rock burst into existence, flying with extraordinary speed toward the falling archmage. There were too many of them to count, and Gromph, mumbling to himself of his lost position and the bleak fate of his House, didn't bother trying.

When the meteors entered the area in which Gromph had affected gravity, their courses radically changed. They went everywhere, scattering, dipping, curving, colliding with each other, some even curving back at Dyrr.

One of the burning projectiles struck Gromph a glancing blow, sending him spinning as he fell. Pain blazed in his side, and without thinking he cast a spell. With only a few words and a quick gesture, Gromph's skin tightened, stretched—painfully—and took on the gleam, and the hardness, of cold black iron.

Very good, Master, the voice … it was Nauzhror. . said.

Gromph watched one of the meteors come right at him. He might have twisted out of the way, but he didn't care. The rock hit him square in the chest, exploding in a shower of yellow-orange sparks and sending a deafening clang rippling away from him in the air. He started to spin in a different direction and began to wonder why he hadn't hit the ceiling. As he whirled around he saw Dyrr slip through a dark hole in the sky that was rimmed with purple light like faerie fire. The lichdrow was passing through a dimension door of his own to avoid the meteors that had come careening back at him.

Spinning, falling, Gromph saw the jagged, stalagmite-cluttered ceiling racing toward him, closer and closer—only inches from oblivion, from the sweet release of death—

— and the spell effect ended.

Gromph hadn't made it permanent after all. Gravity went back to its normal place, and once again Gromph hung in midair for a second—less than a second maybe—his stomach feeling as if it were rotating in his belly. He started to fall again but toward the floor—toward the Clawrift, toward the light, toward the gate, toward wherever it was that Dyrr was trying to send him.

Gromph didn't care. He'd go, then. He'd go anywhere as long as he could get out of Menzoberranzan, where every stone, every stalactite and stalagmite, every glow of faerie fire, reminded him of his failure and despair.

Archmage,Nauzhror said. Gromph. . no.

Closing his eyes against the blinding sunlight, Gromph fell through the gate. Squinting, able only to see a vague play of shadow and light, he watched the gate close behind him. He was enveloped, enclosed in blinding light.

He hit the ground hard enough to break a leg, more than a few ribs, his left arm, and very nearly his neck. Quivering from pain and shock, blinded by the relentless sunlight, Gromph lay in a heap on a bed of what felt like some kind of moss. Blood roared in his ears, which were still ringing from the whine of the meteors and the rush of wind. Something in his chest popped, and his leg twitched out from under him, rolling him over onto his back.

Gromph put a hand over his face and realized that his broken arm was obeying his commands with only a little pain. His leg was numb and tingling, and he could actually feel his ribs popping back into place.

The ring, he thought again.

He almost wanted to laugh. It was his own fault after all, for insisting on wearing that cursed ring. He'd wanted to save his own life when he'd put it on, and it hadn't occurred to him then that all it would end up doing was keeping him alive in whatever blazing hell Dyrr had banished him to.

Gromph blinked his eyes open and found that he could actually see. The light was still uncomfortably bright, but something had moved between the brightest part of it and himself. The archmage blinked again, rubbed his eyes, and struggled to sit up. His face was still wet with tears, and he was breathing hard—panting like a slave at hard labor.

"Are you keerjaan?" a voice asked.

Gromph held out a hand, fending off the voice, and blinked some more.

It was all at once that he realized the thing that had come between him and the source of the light was a creature of some kind, and it was speaking to him.

"Am I. .?" the archmage started to answer.

He paused, rubbed his eyes, and found himself concentrating on a spell he'd long ago made permanent. It was a spell that allowed him to understand and be understood by anyone.

"Are you all right?" the strange creature asked, and Gromph understood.

He looked up and saw that he was surrounded by tiny, drowlike creatures—drowlike in that they were roughly the same shape, with two arms, two legs, and a head. There the similarity ended. The creatures that surrounded him had pale skin that was almost pink. Their hair was curly and an unsightly shade of brown-orange. Their skin was spattered with tiny brown spots. Plastered on their faces were the most childlike expressions of delighted curiosity. They hovered around him in a circle, several feet off the plant-covered ground, each of them borne aloft on a set of short feathered wings of the most garish colors.

Most of them were naked, though some wore robes of flowing white silk, and a couple wore breeches and fine silk blouses. They were no more than three feet tall.

"By all the howling expanse of the Abyss, Dyrr," Gromph murmured, curling his legs under him and resting his face in his hands, "where have you dropped me?"

Words began to pop into his mind like soap bubbles bursting:

Halflings.

Spells.

Crushing …

Crushing despair.

"Damn you," Gromph breathed, his body relaxing, his eyes drying, his mood lifting as if by magic.

It wasn't magic that was lifting it, he realized. It was magic that sank it in the first pace.

"Well played, traitor," Gromph said, looking up into the bright blue sky of the. . where was he? The World Above?

"Who are you talking to?" one of the winged halflings asked, tipping its head to one side like a confused pack lizard.

"Where am I?" Gromph asked the strange creature.

The archmage, not waiting for an answer, stood, brushing soot, dust, and pieces of the odd, needle-like plant life from his piwafwi. He leaned on his staff, but thanks to the ring he was feeling stronger with each breath.

"You don't know where you are?" one of the winged halflings—a female—asked.

"Tell me where I am, or I'll kill you and ask someone else," Gromph growled.

The halflings reacted, maybe with fear—Gromph couldn't be sure. They bobbed up and down and quivered.

"Are you a cambion?" one of them asked.

"I am a drow," Gromph replied, "and I asked you a question."

The winged halflings all looked at each other. Some smiled, some nodded—some smiled andnodded.

"How did you get here?" the female asked.

"I asked you a question," Gromph repeated.

The female smiled at him, and Gromph had to squint from the brightness of her perfect white teeth.

"How could you come here from. . where did you come from?" one of the males said.

"I am from Menzoberranzan," replied Gromph.

"Where's that?" asked another of the males.

"The Underdark," Gromph said, his crushing despair gone, being replaced by burning impatience. "Faerun. . Toril?"

"Faerun," one of the males gasped. The others looked at him and he said, "I was from there. From Luiren. Faerun is a continent, and Toril is a world. On the Prime."

The other winged halflings nodded and shrugged.

"So," the one who'd asked the question before repeated, "how could you come here from Menzoberranzan, the Underdark, Faerun, Toril, and not know where you are?"

"You're not even on the Prime anymore, drow," said the halfling who'd claimed to be from Faerun. Gromph could see contempt starting to manifest in that halfling's beady brown eyes. "You've come to the Green Fields, and you don't belong here."

"That's all right," Gromph said. "I'm not staying."

Looking over the vast landscape of gently rolling hills covered in a blanket of the tiny green, needle-like plants and punctuated with a scattering of rainbow-colored blossoms like delicate, paper-thin mushrooms, Gromph almost sank into despair again.

Dyrr had sent him far—sent him to another plane of existence altogether.

"The Green Fields," Gromph repeated. "Halfling Heaven. .»

Nauzhror,he thought, sending the name out into the Weave. Grendan? Can you hear me?

Nothing.

Gromph sighed. It was going to take him a while to get home.