Annihilation

by Athans, Philip

  The lakebed was covered in a fine silt that felt oddly alluring to the touch. Pharaun let himself sink into it up to his neck and closed his eyes to mere slits so that all anyone might be able to see would be his black face against the uniformly black silt.

  Something brushed past his leg, but Pharaun didn’t move.

  The deep water and the stirred-up silt taxed Pharaun’s dark-vision to its limits, but he saw two uridezu dive into the water above him. Secure in his hiding place, ignoring another … something … slipping past his side, Pharaun watched the rat-demons swim with surprising agility, their heads waving back and forth as they searched the lake bed for the drow wizard. Pharaun waited for them to draw closer … closer … close enough. He threw an aura of faerie fire around them both.

  The demons reacted to the magic with twitching confusion. The purple light not only outlined their silhouettes in the dark water, making them painfully obvious, it also picked out details of the folds of their skin, their whiskers, and the knitting of their worried brows.

  Pharaun kicked once and rose slowly from the silt, already casting a spell. The uridezu looked over at him and swished their tails in the water. They swam quickly away from each other, smart enough not to both be caught in the same spell. Pharaun picked one at random and froze the water around it.

  The Master of Sorcere knew that the ice would have no wounding effect on the demon, but it was thick enough to stop it. Pharaun smiled briefly at his handiwork. The uridezu, frozen solid in a thick block of ice, slowly sank to the lakebed, leaving a trail of bubbles in its path.

  The second uridezu swam in fast, a stream of glowing purple maggots fanning out behind it. The tiny worms came from its ruined left eye, an old wound that had evidently festered for a very long time.

  Pharaun tried to swim away from it, but the rat-demon was faster. It whirled in the water and brought its leathery pink tail to bear on the wizard. Pharaun took the hit with a grimace. It hurt.

  As the uridezu twisted around, obviously meaning to shred Pharaun with its ragged claws, the Master of Sorcere touched his steel ring. The rapier appeared before him, and Pharaun set it against the demon with a thought. The dancing sword scored a deep slash, and the uridezu’s attention—as Pharaun had planned—was drawn entirely to defending itself against the magically animated blade.

  Content to let the rapier keep the demon busy, Pharaun kicked away from the duel, pulling his hand crossbow and a quarrel from his belt at the same time. When the bolt was set and cocked, Pharaun called on the power of his brooch to levitate quickly up and out of the lake. The second his face broke the surface he coughed out lungfuls of fluid. He shot into the air a dozen feet above the water and hung there, black droplets pattering off him to rain back down onto the rippling surface of the Lake of Shadows.

  The wizard turned his attention to the ship of chaos. Never had the vessel seemed so aptly named. Quenthel and the draegloth fought for their lives against the rat-demon boarding party. Before Pharaun could get the whole situation sorted, Jeggred ripped a gash in the belly of one uridezu that was deep enough to spill its bowels onto the deck. It crumpled in a heap of steaming entrails at the blood-soaked draegloth’s feet.

  Pharaun counted four more of the demons, in addition to Raashub. The captain had gathered seven of his kind.

  The wizard looked down, checking on the progress of the dancing rapier. The animated blade slit the swimming uridezu’s throat. The demon shivered then went limp in the water, slowly floating to the surface. Its scalding blood sent coppery-smelling steam rising into the air below the hovering mage.

  Pharaun recalled his rapier. Leveling his hand crossbow, he looked back at the ship of chaos. Quenthel held one uridezu at bay with her whip while another rushed her from behind. Pharaun couldn’t get a clear shot, so he paused, and that was all the time it took for the uridezu behind her to bite Quenthel in the neck.

  Blood welled up around the deep wound, and the high priestess gnashed her teeth in pain. With a hard, sharp jerk of her shoulder, Quenthel knocked the demon away. From a distance it was difficult for Pharaun to see, but he was sure the uridezu left a few teeth in the mistress’s neck.

  Movement from Jeggred caught Pharaun’s eye. The draegloth advanced on Raashub. A wave of panic coursed through the Master of Sorcere. Attack or no attack, they needed Raashub to pilot the ship. Jeggred had been itching to kill the captain since they’d first claimed the vessel, and the boarding action was excuse enough for him to finally make good on his many threats.

  Pharaun, fully aware of the irony of the situation, threw a spell that set a wall of invisible force between the uridezu captain and the advancing draegloth. Jeggred hit the wall hard, setting him back on his heels for a moment. Raashub cowered away from the draegloth then started to sniff the air in front of him, as puzzled by his unexplained, last-second reprieve as was Jeggred.

  Quenthel threw an elbow at the uridezu that had bitten her, but the demon was able to avoid the blow. Quenthel’s attacks were spasmodic and haphazard, and Pharaun knew it was only a matter of time before the two uridezu she faced managed to kill her.

  The Master of Sorcere made his way quickly through a spell and sent its energy flowing out from him to the uridezu that had bitten Quenthel.

  An enormous, disembodied black hand faded into existence from the thin air, and Pharaun took control over it with a thought. The uridezu that were harrying Quenthel stepped back from the hand but too slowly for the demon that had bitten her. The hand closed around the creature and began to squeeze.

  Taking stock of the situation again, Pharaun saw that Jeggred had moved on to another uridezu, leaving Raashub to grovel behind the wall of force.

  The wizard had only to will the spell-hand to squeeze as hard as it could and he could leave it to its own devices. As the uridezu trapped in the hand started gasping for air, Pharaun tightened his finger around the trigger of his hand crossbow and sent the bolt whizzing through the air. The missile slammed into the other demon’s chest. It paused and turned to look at the source of the projectile.

  The uridezu in the hand had its mouth wide open, but no sound came out. All the air had been squeezed from its lungs. Pharaun reloaded his hand crossbow, and the conjured hand squeezed even tighter. The demon’s eyes bulged, and Pharaun couldn’t help but watch.

  The wizard launched another bolt at the demon that was still managing to dodge the high priestess’s whip. The missile slammed home, pushing the uridezu toward Quenthel. The rat-man was staggered but far from dead—which was more than Pharaun could say for the creature in the hand. Its body bulged past the breaking point then burst in a torrent of blood and tissue. A few agonizing seconds later and it was dead.

  Pharaun reloaded his hand crossbow again and watched the uridezu his last bolt had pushed toward Quenthel. The high priestess advanced quickly, scourge in one hand, the other wrapped into a tight fist.

  The Mistress of the Academy hit the uridezu that faced her so hard its head burst into several large pieces that fell completely away from its shoulders. The rat-demon’s glistening gray-and-yellow brain came free and went skipping out across the still surface of the lake. Pharaun knew that her strength was coming from a magic item, and he made a mental note to stop being surprised by feats of strength from the priestess.

  Movement and light from below him caught Pharaun’s attention. The uridezu he’d frozen in place had finally managed to break free, and it was moving with great whips of its ratlike tail. It swam up and toward Pharaun, who was still hovering and dripping above the water.

  Pharaun cast a spell that let him push the advancing demon back down into the water. The Master of Sorcere continued pushing until the uridezu slipped beneath the layer of silt. He pushed harder until the creature finally hit the rocky lake bed, four feet under the drifting sediment. He pressed, crushing the monster into the lake bed. He could feel the thing’s back break but kept pressing still.

  Aliisza held her breath watching the drow fight off the
uridezu. The rat-demons weren’t necessarily the most impressive foes, but all things considered the dark elves made a fine show of it. Pharaun was especially alluring, hanging in midair over the water, so wet and intense. It made Aliisza all tingly.

  The invisible alu-fiend drifted in the air over the regal female drow, who had been paralyzed by the bite of the uridezu she’d dispatched in a messy and uncreative way.

  Another of the rat-demons swayed before the paralyzed priestess, its fangs bared and dripping with toxic spittle. It giggled in a shrill, excited way as it inched ever closer to the helpless drow female.

  A low rumble drew Aliisza’s attention to the draegloth. The half-demon growled in the face of another rat-demon then slashed the thing across the midsection with the razor claws of one hand. The demon bounced back on its heels only barely far enough to avoid having its guts opened onto the deck. A hiss exploded from the uridezu’s quivering lips, and its tail lashed around at the draegloth. The half-drow, half-demon behemoth avoided the appendage with surprising agility.

  The captain of the ship of chaos rattled his chain but remained bound to the deck. Aliisza sensed the presence of an invisible wall separating the captain from the rest of them. It was as if the air had turned solid there. She could see the magic shimmering in her Weave-sensitive eyesight.

  Aliisza didn’t particularly care what became of the uridezu captain or the uncouth, unappealing draegloth, but she couldn’t stand the thought of the attractive, impressive drow priestess being eaten alive while paralyzed by a creature as lowly as an uridezu. The alu-fiend began to drain the life-force from that particular rat-creature while still hanging invisible in the air.

  The uridezu looked around. It could feel that something bad was happening to it. Maybe it felt cold, or weak, dizzy, sick. Aliisza was killing it, and it had to know it was dying. The rat-demon drew its arms around itself, and Aliisza sensed that it was on its way back to the Abyss—but something kept it there on the ship. Aliisza could see that magic too, binding it to the very air around them. Only Pharaun could have been responsible for that.

  The fact that the dark elf wizard had that power made Aliisza uneasy.

  She wondered where the invisible wall had come from when she heard a horrid ripping sound and had to dodge an arc of dark-red blood. The draegloth ripped the arm off the uridezu that was stupid enough to stand up to him. Aliisza didn’t like the smell of the rat-demon’s blood … at least not as much as the draegloth seemed to.

  The half-demon picked up the uridezu’s arm and lifted it behind him until it bounced off the invisible wall. That startled the draegloth—no, not startled, annoyed him. Aliisza realized someone was trying to separate the uridezu captain and the draegloth.

  That had to be Pharaun’s handiwork. As the draegloth beat the rat-demon to death with its own arm, Aliisza sorted out why the wizard might be trying to protect the captain.

  She whispered a quick spell and rose higher into the air so that no one but Pharaun would be able to hear her. She had to stop draining the life-force from the last survivor of the demonic boarding party, but the draegloth had already begun stalking toward it.

  “Pharaun,” she whispered over the intervening yards, her voice coming to the drow wizard as a whisper in his ear.

  She saw the mage react and continued, “Yes, it’s me. You’re protecting the captain from your own draegloth?”

  “What of it?” the wizard asked, his voice sounding as a whisper in her ear too.

  “You don’t need him,” she said.

  “Yes, I do,” replied the mage. “It’s a ship of chaos, Aliisza, and I’m a drow who isn’t much for boats. I’ve never piloted one of these things before. Probably no drow in history ever has.”

  “It’s not that hard,” she explained. “The ship is alive. You simply will it to go where you want.”

  “It’s that easy?” Pharaun asked, skeptical.

  Aliisza watched the draegloth shred the weakened uridezu with a flurry of claws and fangs and said, “After a fashion, yes.”

  Barely missing a beat, the half-demon turned on the invisible wall and went at it with claw and fang, wild and feral. The sight made Aliisza’s heart race.

  The uridezu captain was cowering behind the wall. He didn’t bother trying to pretend he didn’t know what the draegloth was going to do to him if he got through the invisible barrier.

  “Let the draegloth have him, darling,” Aliisza said as her spell began to fade. “We can pilot the ship together.”

  Pharaun opened a dimensional rift and stepped through. In an instant he was standing on the deck of the ship of chaos next to the paralyzed priestess and directly under the hovering, unseen alu-fiend. She began to sink toward him.

  “Jeggred,” the drow wizard said to the draegloth, “stop it. Stop it, now. We need him.”

  The wizard turned to the high priestess, who stood, her hand dripping with uridezu gore. The snakes at the end of her whip hissed at Pharaun, warning him away.

  “Mistress,” he said to her, “tell him to stop it.”

  “She’s paralyzed,” Aliisza whispered in his ear, close enough then to do it without a spell.

  Pharaun didn’t flinch but smiled and said, “He won’t listen to me.”

  “I told you it’s all right, Pharaun,” whispered the alu-fiend, “we don’t need him.”

  “We?” he asked.

  Aliisza blushed, though Pharaun still couldn’t see her.

  “If Raashub can pilot this vessel,” she asked, “why can’t we? Could it be that hard?”

  Pharaun drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

  “He’s only going to keep defying me anyway, isn’t he?” Pharaun asked.

  “Who are you …” Quenthel said, her joints jerking as she recovered from the uridezu’s paralyzing bite, “… talking to?”

  “Wouldn’t you, in his place?” Aliisza whispered, ignoring the high priestess.

  Pharaun turned to her and looked her in the eyes, though she was sure he wasn’t able to see her. He winked at her then turned back to the priestess.

  “Jeggred means to kill the captain,” he said.

  “Let him,” the priestess replied as she scanned the deck apparently looking for something with which to clean the blood off her.

  “Well,” Aliisza whispered into the wizard’s ear, “it’s her idea now, isn’t it?”

  Pharaun waved a hand and dropped the wall.

  The draegloth leaped onto the uridezu captain. They both went over the rail. The chain that bound the uridezu to the deck—and to the material plane—snapped as if it were made of mushroom stem. There was a huge, echoing splash that sent lake water rolling onto the deck to mingle with the spilled demon blood.

  Aliisza hovered over them as Pharaun and Quenthel ran to the rail and looked over into the black water. Bubbles peppered the surface, and there were ripples that made it obvious that some violence was occurring below the surface.

  Then the bubbles stopped. The ripples played themselves out, and there was nothing.

  “Go after them,” the priestess said to Pharaun.

  Aliisza caught herself before she laughed out loud.

  Pharaun raised an eyebrow, looked at the priestess, and said, “I’m afraid I had to cancel the spell that allowed me to breathe underwater.”

  The priestess turned on him angrily, but any further discussion was stopped by the sound of another splash. Something arced out of the water and thumped onto the deck. The uridezu captain’s head rolled to the other side of the ship and came to rest looking blankly up at nothing.

  “Well,” Quenthel breathed, glancing at Pharaun, “never mind.”

  The draegloth climbed slowly onto the deck behind the two dark elves. The half-demon shook himself hard, spraying water all over Pharaun and Quenthel. The two dark elves turned to regard the draegloth.

  “That,” the half-demon rumbled, “was almost worth the wait.”

  Danifae wanted them to meet her in a ruined temple on
the edge of a swamp, on the east bank of which a wide river emptied into a sea. Halisstra spent the first night’s walk explaining to Ryld what most of those words meant. By sunrise the first day, they had made the coast. The sight of the seemingly endless expanse of cold gray water took Halisstra’s breath away. Like most of the rest of the World Above, it had made Ryld uncomfortable, even nervous. Halisstra was confident that he’d eventually get used to it, even grow to like it. He had to.

  They followed the western shore of what the surface dwellers called the Dragon Reach for two long nights’ march, using Ryld’s keen senses, Halisstra’s bae’qeshel, and Eilistraeen magic to avoid fellow travelers and unexpected dangers. In the hours before sunrise of the third day they stood at the bank of the wide Lis river delta, the Dragon Reach spreading out in angry, windswept white and gray to their right. To their left—north—was the river and intermittent woods and rolling, snowy hills. The weather was dark and bitterly cold, and Halisstra had to use spells to keep them from losing fingers and toes.

  “We have to cross that?” Ryld asked, though he knew the answer.

  They were concealed in a copse of sparse, leafless trees. The river delta crawled with boats of all sizes. Halisstra had never seen such vessels. Most bobbed on the angry waves, lanterns on their decks swaying in the chill wind. The drow caught the occasional glimpse of an armed human pacing the decks, wary of what, Halisstra couldn’t imagine.

  “It’s an abandoned temple,” Halisstra told him again. “An old temple to the filthy orc god Gruumsh. Danifae said it sits at the western edge of a vast swamp … a flooded place where water covers the vegetation, and many dangerous things hunt. The swamp is on the other side of the river.”

  Ryld nodded and continued to study the water as the sun’s glow began to kiss the horizon.

  “Would you know how to work one of those boats?” Halisstra asked.