It did not appear in his hand, but not because he wasn’t trying hard enough. The spellcaster could sense the staff attempting to draw near, but some other greater force held it back.
“Damn!” Tyranos gritted his teeth. After a moment, he murmured a spell.
The strands lit up as if electrified. The wizard continued to grit his teeth as his body also suffered some from the spell. He stared into the sightless sockets of one of the High Ogre dead.
After several seconds, the electrical illumination ceased. The odor of something having been burned wafted under Tyranos’s nose, although whether it was the strands or himself that was the source of the odor was a question he could not answer.
Taking a breath, he tugged as hard as he could on the strands holding his left hand.
Nothing happened.
A lengthy epithet escaped the wizard.
“So,” he snarled to himself. “Only one choice, Tyranos. Only one choice damn it.”
He set his chin against his chest and concentrated.
A heat arose just over his heart. Something radiated there, casting a vague, circular shape even though, had anyone looked, they would have seen no medallion, no tattoo.
To find the truth, they would have had to look much deeper into the wizard.
Tyranos let out a sudden roar of agony. The circular shape grew more evident beneath his robes, almost as if it were burning its way through to the outer world.
And as the circular shape glowed bright, the wizard’s form began to alter. His mouth and nose stretched forward, becoming part of one unusual feature. His clean-shaven face sprouted dark hair, even on the forehead and around the eyes.
With a furious cry, Tyranos threw the power that he had summoned into destroying the strands. He heard them burn with a satisfying sizzle, but at the same time felt the changing of his body worsen.
“I-will-not-revert!” he shouted to the darkness. “I-am-no longer-that!”
His left arm suddenly tore free of the snare. His right arm followed suit a breath later.
Struggling hard, the wizard tumbled forward with such force that he collided with the nearest corpse. Tyranos instinctively pushed himself back for fear he would become entangled in the dead figure’s trap.
His legs weakened. He collapsed on the floor. As he did, his face began to shrink again, finally returning to normalcy.
The glow over his chest faded. The wizard lay there, shivering.
His strength gradually returned enough to enable him to push himself to a sitting position. Yet Tyranos still shivered.
“Too damned close. But you knew that’d happen, didn’t you?”
Neither he nor any invisible voice answered the question. The wizard shoved himself up onto his feet. He was free of the strands, yet hardly free of the trap itself.
“Where are you?” he asked the missing staff. “Close by, but how close by? Ah.”
Gingerly stepping past the gargoyle corpse, Tyranos followed the sensation he felt. The staff was in some ways as bound to him as Chasm.
A faint glow emanated ahead. The muscular spellcaster grinned. “So, there you are! I’ve missed you.”
He reached for the staff, which was also snared by strands. The wizard gave a good pull-
A tremendous hiss from above was all the warning that he received. The bone white form dropped down on him, its long, sinewy body quickly coiling around the wizard from chest to ankle.
A ghostly head snapped at him. It was huge snake-a viper-with fangs as long as Tyranos’s fingers.
He used one powerful hand to grab the beast just under the jaw and thus keep it from sinking those fangs into his arm.
The snake pulled back its head. Tyranos immediately twisted the creature’s head just to the side of his own.
A spray of venom shot forth, a spray that only barely grazed his cheek thanks to his swift reaction. Still, the slight touch was enough to make the area burn like the coldest ice.
At the same time, the coils tightened painfully. The spell-caster felt his rib cage being squeezed impossibly hard. The viper was also a great constrictor, a double threat.
But Tyranos squeezed back. “There are things in the sea my people have fought that are far worse than you could ever be, worm!”
The wizard crushed its throat.
The viper stiffened. The head cracked off and fell near his feet.
Twisting, Tyranos broke free of the rest of its body. Fragments of the viper went flying in different directions, some of them landing in the strands.
Studying the pieces still in his hand, the wizard saw that the creature had indeed turned to stone upon dying, much as it was said certain draconians did. Of course, draconians-the dragon men who had once served the dread goddess Takhisis-were living creatures, whereas the serpent had more likely been an animated carving brought to life by some magical trigger.
Tyranos discarded the pieces and tried to free the staff again. It worked after he had pulled as hard as he could. The wizard inspected his staff for damage, and satisfied, looked around in order to consider his next move.
The most logical one came to mind. Tyranos raised the staff and concentrated.
A moment later, he lowered the staff in disgust. “So. Not so easy to escape, eh? Let’s see what else we can find.” He glanced over his shoulder at the representatives of the dead, adding with a mocking tone, “You’ll wait, won’t you?”
Holding the staff before him, the wizard muttered. The crystal point shone, albeit not nearly so bright as times in the past. Grunting in frustration, Tyranos studied the area around him.
There was a passage beyond the webbed area, which surprised the wizard. Shrugging, he headed to the passage.
It was narrow, but passable. The walls were absolutely smooth, even where the stone blocks met. The builders had been craftsmen and-so Tyranos discovered as he held the staff close to one wall-masters of magic. Latent forces swirled within the walls, their purpose undecipherable, and therefore potentially deadly.
The passage veered at a sharp angle to the right. Tyranos turned the corner and confronted a wall.
He also encountered another skeleton clad in the robes he was increasingly certain represented some generation of the High Ogres.
The poor fool had been crushed to death by something. Every bone was broken, the skull in several unattractive pieces.
But the dead were already familiar and only of mild interest. The wizard stepped gingerly over the remains and used the staff to tap against the wall at the end.
It sounded very solid.
“Blasted tricks.” Tyranos turned back.
There was a wall where the passage had been.
He was trapped.
A grinding noise sounded. The wall that had appeared behind him began moving in his direction.
The tall spellcaster was not amused. He stretched the staff forth and tapped the moving wall. Like the one he had just investigated, it sounded very solid. It continued toward him.
“And so I’m to be squeezed to a pulp am I?” It was an old kind of trap, Tyranos knew, a favorite of tomb builders who had some access to magic or very clever mechanics.
However, Tyranos had no desire to end up like the unfortunate under his feet or any of the many others he had come across in his searches. He gazed up at the ceiling, studying the point where the moving wall and the ceiling met a side wall.
Tyranos stabbed the staff’s head into the point of convergence. “Tivak!”
The silver strands of energy burst forth and struck the area.
Hot stone pelted him as the area exploded. Tyranos kept his head covered by the hood of his robe.
When he dared look up again, it was to find that the ceiling and the walls had all been scorched black and badly damaged. More importantly, the wall had ceased advancing.
“And that’s that done.” Tyranos turned to deal with the wall at the other end.