hold for no more than a few heartbeats. Bending swiftly, he picked up the battle-axe.
After a slight tug - inertia made the weapon feel as though it was stuck in mud - Gromph grasped the axe firmly in both hands and swung. Its blade bit cleanly through the illithid's neck, severing it with a single stroke. Pulled by the blade, blood bulged at the exit wound, but the head itself remained on the shoulders.
As Gromph laid the weapon on his desk, the spell ended and time lurched forward again. Blood sprayed against the wall, Sluu-guth's head flew from his body, and the illithid crumpled in a heap. An instant later, the thought bottle thumped against the wall and clattered to the floor.
Looking down into the blade of the axe, Gromph saw a frenzied swirling as the enchanted blade added Sluuguth's soul to those it had already stolen. The illithid's face stared out in horror from the flat of the blade, tentacles lashing. Eventually it turned transparent and was gone.
"What a useful weapon," Gromph said, setting the duergar battle-axe down again. He chuckled. "Perhaps I should hang it on the wall as a souvenir."
Kneeling, he chanted the words to a spell and passed his hands over the corpse of the illithid. His palms tingled when they passed over the illithid's out-flung hand. The gold signet ring on Sluuguth's middle finger was magical, imbued with protective enchantments. He slipped it off the illithid's finger and laid it on his desk.
His hands tingled a second time as they passed over an elon-gated leather carrying case that hung at Sluuguth's belt. Opening it, Gromph saw a tube inside. He eased out the tube - a length of hollow bone with a plug of wood at either end - and shook it. He heard the rustle of paper. Scrolls, perhaps? He would study them later, after taking the appropriate precautions.
Laying the tube down beside the ring, he completed his pass over the illithid's body. One of the pockets in Sluuguth's robe made his palms tingle a third time. Reaching inside it, Gromph pulled out a finger-length piece of quartz that had been cut into a prism. Tiny yellow sparks danced in its depths.
Gromph had seen similar devices before. They were magical constructs of the surface elves, who needed light to find their way through the Underdark. He spoke a word in their tongue - the sur-face elves were so predictable and almost always used the same com-mand words - and the prism reacted as he expected it to, shedding a pale cone of candle-bright light. A second command word shaped the light into an eye-hurting, wand-thin beam of intensely white light. Had it not struck the wall of Gromph's office, it would have shone for some distance.
Squeezing his eyes shut against the glare, Gromph spoke a third command word, and the harsh light disappeared. The prism was as it had been before, still cool asstone against Gromph's palm.
"A useful trinket," he said, slipping it into a pocket of hispiwafwi. "Handy to read scrolls by, if nothing else."
He almost ended his search there, but when he passed his hands a final time over the illithid's corpse he felt the tingle once more.
Something was tucked deep into the pocket he'd just pulled the prism from. Digging into it, he pulled out a silver chain with a flat oval of green jade hanging from it. He recognized it at once.
"Sothat's where the jade spiders disappeared to," he muttered, slipping it into his own pocket.
Standing again, Gromph used magic to levitate the illithid's head - no sense touching those limp, foul-smelling tentacles if he didn't have to - and positioned it on the chest of the corpse. Then he pulled a pinch of dust from a pocket of hispiwafwi and sprinkled it over Sluuguth's body. He chanted a brief spell and pointed a finger. A harsh sizzling filled the air as a beam of green energy sprang from its tip. It washed over the corpse, illuminating it in a blaze of crackling light. An instant later, all that was left of Sluuguth was a thin smudge of dust on the floor.
Crossing the room, Gromph picked up the empty thought bottle. One of its sides was dented slightly, but the sigil-shaped pane of glass was still intact. It could be reused. He removed the dent with a mending spell, then set it on the table beside the second bottle and cast a minor spell that caused the spray of blood