There was no visible effect when the lich finished his spell, no trail of light or clap of thunder, but Gromph could feel the magic wrap itself around him. The protective globe did nothing to keep the spell out, but other defenses came into play, and Gromph concentrated on those. Still, his body began to stiffen. The archmage could feel the moisture being drawn from his skin. He found it difficult to bend his elbows. It was as if he were being turned to stone.
He started to drop, and before he could take control of his levitation again, the centipede turned and bit at him. One of the insect's pincers caught the archmage on the thigh as he dropped past. It might have bitten his leg off, but it had the wrong angle, so instead it ripped his skin open and dragged its serrated edge deep into the muscle until it vibrated against Gromph's thighbone.
The archmage ground his teeth against the pain. Even with his muscles stiff and his breath coming in slow, shallow gulps, he used the staff to pull up into the air away from the centipede, which came at him again.
Blood oozed like thick mud out of the deep gash in his leg, and Gromph found it ironic that it was Dyrr's spell that seemed to be saving his life. The ring Gromph had been depending on didn't seem to be functioning.
Nimor hit him again, and the cold of the magic rapier made Gromph stiffen even more. A breath caught in his throat, and his stomach convulsed until he was wrapped in a ball in the air. He tried to blink, but he had to close his eyes, pause, then slowly open them again.
He tried to turn you to stone, Nauzhror said, his voice clear in Gromph's groggy mind. You've resisted it thus far, Archmage. Don't let it in.
Gromph turned his head slowly to the right—all he managed from an attempt to shake his head. The globe of protective magic that enveloped him disappeared, its energy spent. Gromph saw Dyrr draw himself up, only a few yards away. The lich cast a quick spell, and a flurry of green and red sparks, each as long as an arrow, streaked at him. Gromph managed to move his leg and extend his arm but couldn't get his jaw to open fast enough to utter the command word. The bolts of Weave energy smashed into him, burning him, shocking him, making him twitch, making his muscles extend then contract. The archmage's skin rippled, and his joints popped.
It was painful, and he was bleeding in wide, hot sheets across his thigh, which was open to the bone. He could move again but not fast enough to avoid the centipede.
The insect reared up, its massive pincers wide open, and closed on him in a lunge. Gromph hung in the air barely within its reach. The pincers came down and came together over his already wounded thigh.
Gromph felt himself tugged down by the centipede, then something gave and he bobbed back up. Before taking stock of his new wound, he levitated farther up, dimly aware that he was trailing something. He cast a spell even as Nauzhror and Prath shouted into his head. Something was wrong, but he needed to finish the spell before he could do anything else. He had to get rid of the centipede or it would eat him piece by piece while the damned lich stood by safely watching.
Gromph looked down and saw a spray of blood play across the centipede's wide, flat head, then fall through it as it faded. The spell took full effect, and the centipede was gone, but the blood still fell in a grisly rain onto the floor of the Bazaar far below.
Gromph reached down to his leg and felt something hard and jagged. He cut his finger on a sharp edge—the sharp edge of his own thigh bone. His leg was gone. The centipede had bitten it off. Gromph clenched his fists in anger and looked down. He could see his severed leg lying amid a shower of blood that still rained from his open wound.
Sparkles of light off to one side caught Gromph's attention. Nimor threw something, and Gromph instinctively blocked his face, fearing a spell. Instead, he saw the hilt of the winged assassin's enchanted rapier spinning to the ground far below. The trail of sparkling light was what was left of the freezing blade. Gromph's spell had done more than banish the centipede.
Nimor, to say the least, was not happy.
As the assassin launched a string of invectives his way, Gromph flexed his muscles and found that the stiffening effect was gone. He was in pain but not as much as he would have imagined. His ring was already starting to fight against the grievous wounds the archmage had suffered. Gromph knew that he'd survive, but there was still the matter of the leg.
Nimor swooped over him then disappeared into the darkness. Gromph couldn't see the lichdrow. He dropped slowly to the floor, coming to rest in a pool of his own blood. When weight started to return to him, he staggered and had to reactivate the staff's levitating power before he fell in a sprawl into the puddle of cooling gore. He hadn't thought about trying to stand on one foot. Instead, he let himself hover an inch off the ground, bent, and picked up his own leg.
It was a curious feeling, holding his leg in his hand, but the archmage brushed it off. The assassin and the lich were obviously regrouping after Gromph's powerful spell had disjoined the magic all around him—all the magic save his own—but they would be back.
Gromph felt the bone on his stump again and was pleased that the skin hadn't yet begun to grow over it. He turned the leg in his hand and—
A blast of cold air surrounded him, engulfed him, pushed him back and down, grinding him into the stone floor of the Bazaar and dragging him along. Gromph's head smashed into something that broke, splintered, and fell all around him.
He shook his head, and bits of giant mushroom stem and glass fell from his white hair. He was half buried in a shattered merchant's stall, but all Gromph could think about was how relieved he was to still be holding his leg. His body was covered in a thin layer of chilling frost that was already starting to melt in the cool damp air of the Bazaar.
The lich, Nauzhror said into Gromph's mind, was outside the disjunction.
I see that, the archmage answered, letting a wave of frustration follow the thought.
Gromph looked up and around. Dyrr was casting, while Nimor arrowed fast through the air at the archmage. He set another protective globe around himself, briefly worrying that the staff's power was being too quickly drained. It couldn't keep protecting him and levitating him forever.
The lich finished his spell, and Gromph smiled when a bolt of blinding yellow lighting crackled from Dyrr's hands, arcing through the air and splattering in a shower of sparks against Gromph's protective globe. Even as the lightning spent itself on his defenses, not even making Gromph's hair stand on end, the archmage cast another defensive spell on himself. Flames flickered almost invisibly along his body.
I see, Prath said. It worked on the huecuva, but. .
Nimor was upon him, and Gromph tucked his body into a ball against the assassin's attack. The half-dragon's hands were bigger than they were in his drow guise, and each of this fingers ended in a thick, sharp talon of jet-black ivory. Nimor raked Gromph's shoulder with those formidable claws, but they skipped harmlessly along the sparking surface of the archmage's fire shield. Bright orange flames blazed up from Gromph's shoulder, covering the assassin's face. Nimor roared in pain and beat his wings once so hard that stinging shards of glass from the ruined merchant's stall whirled around the archmage. Each time one of the little shards of glass hit him, a spark of fire burst out in answer. The spell never burned Gromph, but for a few unnerving seconds he was surrounded in a cascade of roiling flame.
Nimor disappeared into the shadows in the cavern's vault.
The flurry of glass and fire subsided, and Gromph worked his way out of the wreckage of the merchant's stall. When his stump was clear, blood still oozing from it, the pain reduced by his ring to a dull, annoying throb, Gromph took a second to make sure his foot was pointing in the right direction and stuck his leg back on.