He took hold of the silver compact. Its touch dried his mouth with anticipation. Trying not to think about its contents, he popped it open and administered a dose of traveler's dust to one eye. It occurred to him this would be the first test of his new pact. How well would it protect him from the symptoms of his addiction when tested?
He blinked at the irritation. Too late now.
Before the red haze completely overtook his perception, he unstoppered the vial of crushed dragon scales and poured them over the stone orb. Its harsh odor burned his nostrils.
Even as the oceanic surge of the dust washed over Japheth, he unrolled the scroll, twin to the one he'd used last time, and laid it out on the cold floor. It tried to curl back into a cylinder, so he used the Dreamheart to weigh down the top and the toes of his boots the bottom. Its tip was broken off, but it was still serviceable. He picked up the jade rod blessed in a temple of Kelemvor. He bent forward, so he could both read the text and touch the end of the rod to the Dreamheart's mottled side.
The eye in the relic blinked. The sphere rotated until it aimed its gaze at him.
He shuddered, but spoke the words of the ritual, doing his best to ignore the distracting, blissful detachment the dust leaked into his blood. He judged the dust's ability to pierce veils was necessary, just in case his new spell that granted him the ability to see things unseen failed. He just had to make certain he wasn't borne away in the initial rush it produced.
Blasts, shouts, and explosions resounded through the chamber. He thought he heard a yell of victory, followed by a woman's shriek of pain. Not Anusha's, though, Japheth didn't stop chanting his ritual. He couldn't afford losing even another moment. There was no time to help his friends. Better not to even look.
His only silver lining was that the passivity the traveler's dust lent made it easier for him to ignore everything but the words on the curled page at his feet.
*****
Raidon attempted to trace a great ring on the floor, one underlying the circle of aboleths flying above him. The Sign showed him the designs he must carve, one sigil at a time, with blasts of cerulean fire supplied by Angul.
The ring was an integral ingredient required to wreck the aboleth's waking ritual so violently that the Eldest would not only fail to rouse, but be snuffed out while it was at its most vulnerable.
In order to complete his counterritual circle, Raidon killed aboleths. All of which were simultaneously trying to kill him.
Every few moments, five or six tried to seize Raidon's mind with formless psychic clamps. Angul and the Sign shattered each domination attempt without the monk being aware of them.
It required a larger fraction of his attention to dodge the constant barrage of slime, lightning, and whoknew what else. He spun beyond the periphery of an exploding sphere of green energy, flipped over a bolt of another as he skewered an aboleth, and ducked a tentacle slap. All was wild motion as he whittled away at the press of nonstop attacks.
When a lucky tentacle or body slam hit him, or a ravening bolt of energy, he staggered and sometimes even fell down. But Angul's balm instantly turned flaring pain into so much fading warmth, and his own trained reflexes righted him after each fall. Those lucky hits required only a minuscule portion of his awareness, but he had to reset his position each time he was pushed or knocked over. It was important he not lose his place on the floor.
Were he facing nearly any other enemy in such a multitude, Raidon would have long since been pulled under.
Neither Angul nor the Sign promised unending vitality. However, these creatures were the nemesis of the Keepers and their implements. Both sword and seal sapped some portion of their permanent strength to feed the monk what he required to keep standing amid the storm of death that struggled to pull him under. But the energy Angul and the Sign used to heal him was dwarfed by the power he channeled in a brief burst toward the floor every time he stepped forward.
Raidon wondered if all three of them-sword, seal, and himself-would be drained to their final end as they finished. If providence were kind, it would be so.
A muscled, boneless arm smashed Raidon in the face, bursting some sort of cyst encrusting its end. The smelly, fatty material that sprayed across Raidon burned like acid. Even before he could grit his teeth to endure the pain, Angul purged the damaged tissue and grew new skin cross his face, neck, and left shoulder. Raidon bit his lip against the agony of the healing wave.
The Blade Cerulean's repair was nearly as painful as the attack that caused the damage.
My reserves falter, the blade warned.
Raidon grunted and moved another step.
He swept the sword through an advancing aboleth, then pointed Angul down to scribe another quick sigil in cerulean fire on the floor.
He weaved beneath a blast of green energy, whirled, and leaned forward to thrust Angul up through the mouth of an encroaching aboleth. This put his left leg in position to snap a devastating back kick at another foe. He advanced another step into the momentary clearing he'd created, and dashed off the next symbol with Angul.
If not for the press of lashing aboleths, Raidon's curving path across the floor would have been far more apparent. He realized he'd completed more than half the circuit mirroring the route of the chanting aboleths swimming through the air overhead, counter-current to their direction. Ironic, the monk reflected, that the mass of squalid bodies trying to smother him obscured what he was doing.
A tentacle grabbed his leg and pulled him facedown onto the stone. He felt bones in his face break. The Blade Cerulean roughly set the bones an instant later. But not completely.
Angul's healing surges were no longer completely erasing his wounds. The pain of each wound was eased, true, but blood ran down one of his arms, and now from his nose as well. Each alone wasn't enough to slow him, but the incomplete recoveries were adding up. It would be a close thing, whether he could finish his circle of binding before the swarm finished him.
It didn't matter. He would finish the circle, or he would fail.
If he failed, the Eldest would fully wake.
If he succeeded, then the aboleth's ritual would fail instead. One or the other. The fate of Faerun depended on what happened. Not that he cared. Even as he fought forward another step to draw the next sigil in the sequence, he wondered at his persistence. Faerun hadn't been particularly kind to Raidon over the last dozen years. Or, now that he thought about it, for most of his life. Yet there he was, striving for all he was worth, to save the world.
Perhaps some shred of honor yet motivated him, finding one last opportunity to shine amid the fused jumble of his personality.
Or perhaps it was merely Angul.
Raidon noticed that the number of attacks he had defended against over the last span of heartbeats had dropped off. He spared a moment to glance up from his last scribed glyph.
He was astounded to see that, indeed, only about a dozen aboleths-at least of the original number that had sleeted down the walls of the throne chamber-remained to contest him. And half of those were receiving attacks on their flanks, even as they tried to squirm toward Raidon. Some unseen force was alternately carving into and dazzling these outlier aboleths, even as wizard fire rained down upon the creatures from afar.
It was Seren! And… Captain Thoster too. The wizard unleashed a volley of fire into one of the aboleths advancing upon Raidon. By the spread of smoking, twitching, and nearly cleaved in twain aboleth bodies that spread out from the wizard and pirate, they had obviously been at it for some time. The two had achieved quite a tally, nearly equal to his own. It was almost as if they'd received help-
An acidic slime wave buffeted him, drawing his face into a rictus. Angul burned off the excess goo even as Raidon leaped into the air. As he reached the zenith of his jump, he pulled his elbow up next to his face, then slashed down with it in tandem with his own descending weight, channeling all the force of his body into an aboleth's brow. The creature stopped moving. It was dazed, stunned, or dead, it
didn't matter. He scribed another glyph.
But curiosity made him scan the room again before he pressed ahead. Japheth was nowhere to be seen. Good.
Seren and Thoster must have stopped the warlock and his tainted cargo after all.
In another few moments, his binding circle would be complete. A Seal of Slaying would lance the Eldest, strong enough to end its stony vigil forever.
*****
Japheth uttered the final words of the ceremony. A jolt of energy transfixed him. Purple sparks burst from the Dreamheart, traveled along the rod, and grounded themselves in his drugged brain.
His vantage literally flashed upward, as he was bodily snatched into the air. Like a rag doll yanked by an angry toddler, he was borne to the chamber's zenith. The sudden acceleration followed by the jerking stop nearly snapped his neck.
He'd avoided meeting the Eldest's many-eyed gaze before. Now his ritual and the immediacy of the ancient aboleth compelled him to do so.
His proximity and drug-addled perspective showed the Eldest's skin to be something other than stone. It was a luminous expanse of chaos that churned and seethed. Indescribable forms entwined within that inconstant flesh, surging, billowing, and changing their shape. It was as if the skin was an interface between the world and something terrible. So close, awful sounds scraped at Japheth's ears too. Keening, bleating, and altogether atrocious.
But the eyes were what dazed Japheth and nearly struck him dead before he could conclude his purpose.
Though most were shuttered, the few that caught him in their alien regard burned him with a cosmic malignancy that brought gorge to his throat. The star pact, that terrible oath he'd sworn in Xxiphu's spawning halls, was the only thing that saved his mind from being instantly blasted. The pact had inoculated him. Though he might later gouge out his eyes in a fit of lunacy, for the moment he retained the barest ability to think.
Japheth averted his vision. He wanted to stop up his ears too, but he had to extend one hand and lay it upon the Eldest.
"Relinquish she whose dream is here with us," said Japheth, his voice brittle but strong, "she who is called Anusha Marhana. Relinquish Anusha Marhana, and her companion named Yeva." Japheth wished he still had the strand of hair he'd used before.
"By the power of the natural world, I beseech you. By the power of arcane formulas, I ask you. By the power of your own flesh, the Dreamheart, through which you have allowed your influence into the world, I command you!"
An indefinable period of time passed. Japheth kept his palm pressed against the roiling, repellent flesh. His hand sizzled.
Something tickled the back of his mind. At first he thought it was a passing fancy, perhaps due to remnants of the traveler's dust not burnt out of his system by the ritual. Then he realized the feeling came from outside.
It was the Eldest. Or actually, a tiny fraction of the Eldest's still slumbering attention.
The knowledge of what he must do to secure Anusha's final release bloomed across the warlock's brain.
He sighed. So it was to be one final bargain?
Yes. Of course.
The warlock's life was one great tapestry of oaths, pacts, and deals, each balancing him on the knife-edge between achieving his ends and utter ruin.
Despite what it would mean for the world, Japheth nodded his head in agreement. He accepted the arrangement.
At least the Eldest didn't require he swear another pact! That last thought gave him an idea. Even in the face of a creature whose wrath could well equal a god's fury, Japheth designed one last deceit.
*****
Anusha thrust her dream sword into the heart of the last aboleth threatening the monk-or at least where she hoped its heart was located. She hit something vital, it leaned over and died.
She stepped away and raised her blade in triumph, though it wavered under the onslaught of her headache.
Raidon glanced in her general direction. The half-elfs face didn't betray his thoughts, though Anusha assumed the monk wondered how the creature had suddenly perished. She would have smiled, but with the pain pounding through her, it was all she could do to retain her form.
She'd felt the onset of similar distress once before when she had overextended herself. It seemed the pain had come quicker this time, and more intensely. Was it because she also maintained Yeva's form too, dreaming the woman real?
The monk didn't waste any more time looking for invisible allies. With his burning sword, he continued to cut glyphs into the floor, one after the other, and faster now that aboleths didn't contest his every step. Without the swarming aboleths to obscure the floor, the shape he scribed in bkte fire was clearly visible to every creature in the chamber. Raidon swiftly approached the end of this task.
The tone of the chanting creatures overhead warbled and broke, then resumed in a more frantic tone. The aboleths seemed torn between finishing their ritual and abandoning it in order to descend upon the monk.
Then the decision was no longer theirs. Raidon completed the circuit.
The circle of glyphs took fire. A shock wave of force blew the monk away from his own creation. The shock wave expanded in all directions and caught the soaring aboleths underneath. The force tumbled the creatures, great and small, in uncontrolled arcs through the air. Their chant, already on the hysterical edge of failure, collapsed.
The inscribed circle flamed so brightly, Anusha looked away.
A sound came from above. A booming, creaking noise like mountains make when they settle into their foundations. She glanced up.
The few eyes open on the great petrified belly began to squint and close, as if the fire of Raidon's circle was too bright for them. The Eldest was not rousing. It was falling back into slumber, perhaps even the sleep of true death!
Raidon Kane had killed the Eldest! Could it really be?
Harsh exclamations of fury echoed through the chamber. The aboleths buffeted from their ritual by the monk's counterworking cried out as one. They lashed their tentacles and writhed in a paroxysm of rage. Their beady eyes found Raidon, Seren, and Thoster, and a few even fixed on Anusha and Yeva.
"Back to the ship!" screamed Seren. "This way!" She turned toward a different passage than the one by which they had entered the throne chamber.
Anusha saw Raidon glance up. She followed his gaze to the screeching, gargantuan aboleths. The creatures were regaining control of their single-minded fury. Malicious red light burst from one of the massive, dark-hued elders. Another gesticulated with its tentacles in wide spirals, from which a green haze began to spread.
Yeva and Thoster darted after the retreating wizard. But Raidon wasn't moving. He just stood and stared at the great creatures flitting overhead. They no longer flew in their ritual formation, but instead prepared a revenge stroke on the tiny half-elf below, apparently unconcerned with the cerulean fire he wielded.
Anusha looked for Japheth. Still nowhere to be seen.
"Let's go, Raidon!" she yelled at the monk. He glanced in her general direction and shook his head. Was he crying?
"Is that… Anusha?" said Raidon, his voice raised above the clamor of the remaining aboleths. "So the captain was right. Well, it doesn't matter. I fulfilled my oath. I tried to kill the Eldest. For some reason, I failed. I put it back to sleep, but I did not kill it as I intended."
She gasped. "Will it wake again?"
"No. At least not fully, and not soon. But it is not dead. I shall stay here and kill as many of the elder aboleths as I can before they consume me." He shrugged. The half-elf had lost his bearings. She hastened to him, letting go her dream blade as she did so. Her headache instantly eased.
Anusha grabbed one of Raidon's wrists, making certain her hand was solid enough to do so. "Come. We need you, Raidon. You've bound it, it was bound for millennia before. Perhaps you've given us another few thousand years. If so, I call that success!"
She gave a light tug. The monk sighed. "A half measure."
"Come with me!" she yelled, and pulled.
"Very well." His voice was not that of a man who'd just potentially saved Toril an age of grief. What was wrong with him?
"This way," said Anusha, pulling the monk along toward the tunnel exit Seren had departed through.
After a few steps, it was all she could do, even using her dream-twisting advantage, to keep up with him. The man could run when he decided to.
As they left the chamber, Anusha glanced back one last time, searching for the telltale black cloak. Still nothing.
But…
A shiver tickled at the nape of her neck. The feeling plunged down her spine into the small of her back. She stumbled, losing her grip on Raidon's arm. "Go on!" she said, and spun around to see what had grazed her.
The elder aboleths pursued them. But… none were close enough to have grazed her. She summoned her dream blade anyhow.
It was as if a thousand tiny ants with warm feet ran up and down her body. "What's happening? Was this the end? Was she-"
Darkness engulfed her. The screams of the livid aboleths, the smell of rotting fish, the agony in her temples-all of it went away.
Anusha blinked.
Wan light from the porthole revealed a small room.
The woman gasped and sat up in her open travel chest. With eyes that felt wide as saucers, she soaked in the beautiful, wonderful, cramped cabin on Green Siren.
Tears slid down her cheek. She hugged herself, feeling her own warm, if noticeably skinny, self. A dog whined, then barked. A wagging tail thumped repeatedly against wooden planking. Lucky!
Japheth had done it. She was free.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Leaving Xxiphu
City of Torment as-2 Page 25
