Resurrection

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 a

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.

"Larikal!"

She could see the archmage-no, her daughter-trying to nod through her spasms. The quaking grew more and more intense.

Yasraena could not stop the spell. It was too late.

Mother, Larikal croaked through the co

Yasraena could not respond before her daughter's mental voice became a prolonged scream,

then turned into an incoherent, pain-riddled gobbling. With a wet, tearing sound, her body folded in on itself over and over and over again until it was nothing more than a densely packed ball of flesh at Yasraena's feet.

Yasraena stared down at her daughter's remains and clenched her fists in rage. The archmage had deceived her again.

Above her, the dome began to crack. She stared up and looked into Lolth's eyes.

Blood-spattered and gasping for breath, Halisstra stood on the landing outside the doors of

Lolth's pyramidal tabernacle. To her left and right lay the corpses of Danifae and Quenthel.

Halisstra had killed them both, cut them nearly to shreds with the Crescent Blade. In her rage,

she had left Danifae little more than a pile of bloody, shapeless flesh.

She had stopped them both from entering the tabernacle. Neither would be Lolth's Yor'thae.

She unstrapped her shield and cast it to the stone landing. The rattle sounded loud in the silence. Except for the occasional sigh of the violet fires on the Planes of Soulfire behind and below her, the entirety of the Demonweb Pits seemed to be holding its breath. Even Lolth's wind had died down.

She looked up at the massive, pyramidal structure before her-Lolth's tabernacle, composed of black metal and acrawl with spiders. At its base, the towering double doors stood open and beckoning. Violet light leaked from within. Halisstra saw arachnid silhouettes in the light-huge,

predatory forms.

Now she would do what she had come to do.

She paused.

What had she come to do?

She shook her head-her thoughts were confused-and stepped across the threshold.

Webs covered the slanting walls of the temple's interior, their collective pattern suggestive of something disquieting but indiscernible. Spiders of all shapes and sizes skittered through the webs.

Columns dotted the structure, slender spires fashioned of hardened, twisted web strands. She could not see the source of the violet light.

At the far end of the web-strewn temple, standing on a raised dais of polished, black granite,

stood the eight bodies of the Spider Queen.

Seeing her former patron goddess in the flesh, Halisstra found it difficult to breathe.

Lolth was in her arachnid forms and appeared as eight giant widows, graceful and deadly-one goddess, eight aspects.

Seven of the widows crawled over each other, hissed at each other, as though fighting for position. But all of them stood behind the eighth, the largest, who sat quiescent in her web. The eyes of the eighth impaled her.

A yochlol stood to either side of the dais, their forms like melted wax, their waving arms like ropes.

Creatures that Halisstra had never before seen lined a processional directly between Halisstra and Lolth. Their tall, graceful forms-nude drow females sprouting long spider legs from their torsos-loomed over Halisstra. Halisstra felt their eyes on her too, and the weight of their expectations. She marveled at the grace of their forms.

"I am not the one!" she shouted, and the webs swallowed her voice.

The eighth spider stirred.

A rustle ran through the ranks of the temple.