"Where did Edward disappear to?" asked Lina, semi-rhetorically. She had a suspicion that the paladin had teleported himself to a safe location for removing the chaotic damage that he too had suffered from the black slaad.
"Let’s wait a while and see if he comes back," suggested Green Arrow. "I expect he’ll be back before long. In any event, I don’t want to go any further without his sword ahead of me!"
After about half an hour, the mighty paladin suddenly re-appeared. "Well, you look none the worse for wear," observed Lina. "So how are things back in Greyhawk? That is where you ran off to, isn’t it?"
"Indeed it is," answered Edward. "I had to find some way to remove the effects of that slaad. A few more minutes and it would have done me it."
"Well, we managed to survive without you," observed Green Arrow. "And here I thought everybody had a ring of three wishes!"
Lina and Green Arrow informed Edward of the final events in their battle against the mummies. "I don’t think we can carry all these weapons and armor," he replied. The others nodded. "Just take the stuff that’s easy to carry. Leave the rest," said Green Arrow.
The adventurers searched the chamber and found nothing more of value. At the far side of the room, they noted a dark passage, twenty feet high, fifteen feet wide at the bottom and tapering upward to ten feet wide. It appeared, as they best could tell, to slope steeply upward. "This gallery is even bigger than the last one," noted Lina. "Could call it a "grand" gallery."
"Looks like it’s the way forward," said Edward. Green Arrow agreed. Seeing the darkness of the ascending gallery, the elven archer cast light on Edward’s sword. "We’ll need that," he noted. "Not everybody has darkvision," he added, chuckling.
And so the party approached the entrance to the Grand Gallery. They could see that the walls of the gallery were of polished granite, and that the gallery sloped upward at about a thirty degree angle–much steeper than the previous galleries and passages. The adventurers entered, Edward leading, Aloysius trailing.
They had advanced about twenty feet into the gallery when they were suddenly driven back by a blast of wind. "A wind tunnel," said Lina. "Must be trapped with gust of wind." In response, Edward cast enlarge on himself, assuming large size. "Won’t blow me around now," he declared. Green Arrow held on to Edward, while Aloysius held on to Lina, who was still in solar form. They again proceeded upward into the gallery, still moving into the wind.
Until at thirty feet, Edward suddenly shrunk back to normal size, and the entire party was again driven back by heavy winds. "What just happened?" demanded the paladin. Lina thought for a moment, then answered, "Something must have dispelled your enlarge. Obviously, this gallery is heavily trapped." The sorcerer again pondered her next move. "Let’s try this," she then suggested. "Link up together. I’ll cast dimension door and move us up the gallery. With any luck, we’ll get past these traps."
"Or land in another one," said Aloysius gloomily, from behind the sorcerer.
"Confidence, Aloysius, confidence!" said Edward. With that, the party joined together, and Lina cast her spell. The adventurers suddenly advanced about sixty feet up the gallery. Immediately, Lina cast detect magic to determine if any other defensive spells or other problems were in place. What she found was disturbing.
"There are walls of dispel magic every thirty feet along this gallery," she reported. "And at the far end, there’s a prismatic wall!"
"Oh, that’s great," said Edward. "How are we going to get through that?
"Let me think," said Lina. In solar form, she was immune to some of the damaging effects of a prismatic wall. The others would have to be accounted for.
Quickly, the sorcerer cast dimensional anchor on herself. She next quaffed a potion of neutralize poison. Then she turned to Aloysius. "Can you cast protection from energy on me?" she asked. "Electricity version?" The cleric was ready and able to do so. Lina was now suitably protected against the prismatic wall.
Unfortunately, that protection did not extend to the rest of the party. Another answer was needed.
Lina again thought about the problem. This time, her spellcraft provided the answer.
"We can dimension door through a prismatic wall!" she declared.
"You’re sure of that?" asked Edward, skeptically. "I’d rather not end up on another plane and dead four different ways, thank you very much!"
"I’m sure," replied Lina. After some discussion, the rest of the adventurers agreed to risk her plan. They gathered together, arms linked. Lina cast her spell . . . .
And the party was transported past the prismatic wall, and into a totally dark room, and apparently a large one.
Edward cast daylight, then touched the nearest wall. The room lit up to reveal an ominous sight.
Two gigantic statues, about thirty feet tall, guarded the room. They were in the form of jackal-headed humanoids, shiny black, with waist wraps of gold and blue and similarly-patterened nemes headdresses.
Without hesitation, Edward rushed at the second statue, swinging with full power. His mighty sword clanged against the statue, doing superficial damage. Green Arrow loosed a barrage of arrows at the same statue. Four arrows struck the statue, but bounced off and fell to the ground, doing no damage.
The statues suddenly animated. The first statue slammed Lina with a mighty blow that almost killed the sorcerer due to massive damage, even in her solar form! The second struck back at Edward. Two slams almost crippled the paladin.
Lina thought desperately, trying to identify their foes. The knowledge came to her.
"We’ve got trouble!" she called out to the party. "These are adamantium golems! They’re incredibly strong! And hard to hit!" She then cast mirror image on herself. Ten more Linas appeared. "Safety in numbers!" she cried. Behind her, Aloysius tried to hide.
Edward realized that these foes were beyond their current abilities. He returned to the group. The second golem slammed him as he fled, dealing incredible damage that, again, almost killed the paladin outright. "Let’s get out of here!" he shouted. He linked up with the rest of the group and teleported the party out of the pyramid. They re-appeared back at the Enterprise’s headquarters in Greyhawk, thwarted for the time being.
At headquarters, Edward and Lina rested and recovered from their wounds. All the adventurers realized that they needed more powerful spells, and improved weapons, to have any chance against two adamantium golems. It took a week of searching, and expenditure of almost one million gold pieces, to complete their upgrades and acquire the necessary spells.
The adventurers were ready. Lina made use of newly-acquired scrolls of the ironguard spell to protect all of the party. She also cast greater invisibility on the adventurers and herself. Edward cast daylight on a rock and pocketed it. "Are we ready?" he asked. The other party members indicated they were ready to go. Again, they linked arms, and Edward teleported the group back into the chamber at the top of the Grand Gallery.
This time, the jackal-headed statues were unprepared for the adventurers’ arrival. Immediately on arrival, Edward threw the rock into the center of the room, illuminating the chamber, then rushed toward the nearer of the two golems. He swung at the statue, then swung again, and again. Five times he swung, and five times he struck metal, doing incredible damage. The statue fell to pieces under the fury of the paladin’s attack.
The other golem moved to attack Edward, but amazingly, its attack failed to make contact as the mighty paladin avoided its slam.
As the rest of the party stood back and watched, Edward turned his attention to the remaining golem. Another storm of blows demolished the second golem as well. It crashed to ruin with a heavy clang.
"I think I made a worthwhile investment in upgrading this sword," observed Edward as he examined the scrap metal that just a moment before constituted two adamantium golems.
"But now what do we do?" asked Green Arrow. "Look around this room. Do you see any exits, other than the way we came in?" And it was true: no second exit was apparent. No secret doors could be found, even by the keen eyes of the elven archer.
"If there are no exits in these walls, then maybe one has to go through a wall," said Lina. With that, she shapechanged again, now taking the form of a greater earth elemental. The elemental’s earthglide power she put to immediate use. She chose a spot on the wall opposite that through which the adventurers had previously entered the chamber from the Grand Gallery.
As the rest of the party watched, the clever sorcerer passed through the wall at the selected spot. Briefly, she saw a small hallway that connected to a large, dark room. Then there was a sudden flash.
When her vision cleared, Lina saw herself in a snowy mountain valley in the midst of a blizzard!
"What . . . ?" the sorcerer cried out, suddenly shivering in the intense cold of the blizzard. Obviously, some trap had transported her somewhere far away from the desert of Himm. But where?
Lina took a few moments to formulate a plan of action. First, she tried to banish herself. To no effect. "So, that rules out an alternate plane. I must still be on my home plane," she said to herself. She promptly shapechanged again, back to solar form. Then she teleported back to the chamber where the rest of the party awaited her return. Only a short time had elapsed.
"There’s a hallway on the other side of this wall," said Lina, pointing to the wall at the spot where she had first passed through. "It’s clobbering time!" replied Edward. Drawing his hammer of thunderbolts, he began to pound on the wall. After about a minute, the wall had yielded sufficiently to his assault that a passageway wide enough to enter was created. "There’s a teleportation trap in that hallway," warned Lina. "At least one teleportation circle, I think." She attempted to dispose of the circles using a greater dispel magic spell, but the traps proved resistant. It was only by recourse to another dimension door spell that the party were able to pass through the hallway.
The adventurers found themselves in a huge room, about sixty feet square and thirty feet high. Edward’s stone cast sufficient light to partially illuminate the room. The party could see that the walls of the room were lined with polished marble carved with scenes from what appeared to be the history of the land of Khemri. Against the western wall of the room, opposite their point of entry, was a carved granite throne, on which was seated a granite sculpture of a beautiful woman, royally garbed.
But the party’s attention was quickly drawn to the center of the room. A huge granite sarcophagus, elaborately carved, stood alone. Its lid was open. Inside the sarcophagus was a mummy’s coffin, heavily adorned with gold, jewels, lapis, onyx and other precious materials. Its lid too was open.
The adventurers cautiously approached the open sarcophagus. Edward reached the structure first, and looked in carefully.
"It’s empty!" he cried out.
From behind the party, a voice rang out. "Welcome," the voice intoned in Old Oeridian, in a voice like a graveyard. "You have defeated my guardians. Now let us see if you can defeat me!"
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