Five shapes dropped onto the deck from a barely perceptible discontinuity in the air above Green Siren. The one closest to her was a hulking, blue-skinned humanoid larger than an ogre. It had almost no neck and a massive, fiat head. Wicked swordlike hooks emerged from the back of its balled fists. It uttered a croaking roar in the wizard's face.
Finding her voice, the wizard screamed, u 'Ware the steads!"
She backed up, trying to get a mast between her and the blue-scaled horror. Not for the first time she was reminded that sandals, no matter how stylish, were more liability than asset.
The monster reached across the wide space separating them. Its wrist claws caught on but were not entirely stopped by her protective ward. They raked her stomach and face, and the impact flung her backward. A crewman's hammock strung along the railing broke her trajectory, but her head whipped painfully back. She collapsed to the deck, blood oozing from the scratches.
Seren heard more croaking roars and fearful shouts. She pulled herself upright on the railing.
The great blue slaad hadn't pursued her-instead, it was gutting a crewman who'd been standing too close.
Behind them, four other slaads rampaged across Green Siren.
One was red and nearly as big as the blue. Belying its exceptional size, it moved like a cheetah-bunching up, then bounding forward with flippered feet and claws, covering tens of feet across the deck with each stride. It jumped to the edge of the hold and loosed a croak into the opening so horrid Seren's stomach fluttered. Screams of terror issued from below.
The other three slaads were dull gray and only human sized. One was already chasing a pirate up the rigging, clambering and chuffing like an enraged ape.
"Die, beast!" screamed Captain Thoster, darting suddenly into the fray. He buried his poisonous sword in the breast of one gray slaad.
The slaad shrieked. In a flash of putrid air, it disappeared- only to reappear next to Seren. Blood poured from the wound Thoster had scored. Its electric smell stung her nose.
The wizard cursed the captain and raised her wand. The slaad bled so freely its ichor spattered her face and clothing. But the wound the captain had given it hardly dimmed its fervor. The damned beast eyed her with voracious delight.
She jabbed her wand at it. A pulse of concussive energy thundered from the wand's tip, blasting the slaad in the face. The creature's shriek was lost in the basso echoes and disarray of the broken railing as it was hurled off the ship and into the surrounding sea.
She turned just in time to see another gray muzzle descend upon her, with a wide mouth so large it could encompass her head.
*****
Silky hair slid away from his touch, leaving his fingers tingling. A child's laugh was cut short by a man's death scream.
Raidon startled free from his waking reverie.
Monsters ran amok on Green Siren. Crew jumped overboard to escape the onslaught of vicious teeth and claws.
Only Thoster, bawling orders to his fleeing crew, was putting up any kind of fight. The man engaged a blue- skinned, frog-headed monster, but a red one slipped up behind the captain even as Raidon grasped the tactical situation.
The monk charged the blue beast, leaving behind regrets and sorrows, if only for the moment. He called out, "Thoster, watch your flank!" not only to warn the captain but to draw the attention of the blue creature away from the overwhelmed man.
As he hoped, the massive beast whirled just as Raidon leaped straight upward. He jerked his right elbow up and connected with the monster's lower jaw. The momentum of the leap combined with the elbow strike snapped the creature's head back, shattered several of its teeth, and turned its roar into a bellow of pain. The sword sheathed on Raidon's back twisted, as if to remind the monk of its presence. The movement threw off Raidon's balance. Instead of kicking away from the creature at the top of his leap, his legs found empty air. He fell at the monster's feet, losing just enough time that one of the creature's flailing hands clipped him. A rivulet of his own blood tickled his leg.
Raidon crabbed backward the moment he fell, away from the monster as it tried to stomp him into paste. He would censure Angul later, when time permitted, for twisting in its sheath at such an inopportune moment. He only had to get a few feet away from the creature to make room…
Raidon rolled up on his shoulders. At the very moment he started rolling back, he jackknifed his legs down to the deck, flipping himself back to his feet. He came face to face with the blue. The monk raised his arms and snaked them to either side of the creature's massive head. Its head was too big for him to trap it, so he made do by gripping big handfuls of the creature's puffy throat sac.
He yanked out and down with all his strength.
The monster's fierce bellow warbled into a plaintive whistle. Raidon disengaged as it slapped its hands up to plug the wounds beneath its chin. While it was distracted, he bent one leg into his chest as if compressing a spring, then kicked straight out. The heel of his foot smashed into the creature's knee. The crack of breaking bone ricocheted down the deck.
The beast convulsed and dropped sideways like a felled pine. Planking splintered beneath its weight.
Raidon took a moment to scan the deck as his foe twitched. Thoster remained upright, trading blows with another monster-the red one. He didn't see Seren anywhere, but a shimmering school of gleamtail jacks swam like stars in a life-size astrolabe around the boat. That was encouraging. But he worried at Seren's apparent absence.
A couple of the crew, more doughty than their fellows hiding in the rigging, pulled themselves up from below deck, daggers, axes, and scimitars in hand.
Another slaad leaped down at Raidon, so quickly it didn't seem to occupy any of the space between where it started and ended its charge. A handy trick! Apparently it was tired of chasing crew around the mainmast. This one's skin was gray and its size was equal to the monk's. It locked eyes with Raidon. Something in its gaze sparkled, and it leaped at him.
The world blinked. He found himself hanging unsupported over the open hatch to the hold. Crewmen on the ladder to one side gaped at him.
Unprepared for the fall, he still managed to utilize the first-year lesson of Xiang Temple, a skill monks were taught before nearly any other: how to fall.
Raidon tucked into a spin and slapped onto his back at the hold's bottom, taking the impact of the descent so perfectly that despite falling an incredible distance, he hardly felt a thing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Leaving Darroch Castle, Feywild
Mapathious swept a sword of fire through reality, opening a rent as if cutting through tissue paper. Beyond was a tunnel walled in whirling vapor, shadow, and half-seen silhouettes. A constant roar like a waterfall's poured from it. The spinning hollow extended to the vanishing point. The tunnel promised a turbulent passage.
In its other hand, Mapathious clutched an iron chain from which dangled a rune-scribed bell. The bell's weight would have staggered any lesser being of the same size. But Mapathious was an angel of exploration. In pursuit of its task, strength more potent than its frame pumped from its heart and swept through its semidivine limbs.
The bell was ensorcelled to protect those within it from the ravages of travel in dangerous climes. Mapathious disdained the need for such protections. It preferred to explore alone, swooping into unfamiliar territory as a solitary scout, then reporting back to shining commanders. Were foes massed in ambush? Did demon lords ride forth? Was there truly an adamantine fortress lying across the path, and who had the power to build it in a tenday? These were the kinds of quests the angel usually accepted.
Thus, it gave fleeting consideration to dropping the trek bell into Avernus as a way to forcibly demonstrate its objection to the enterprise. The travelers would be treated to the unique vision of red smoke streaming past their view port in the floor as they plummeted toward a desert pocked with lava seas and iron cities. Even if the enchantment of the trek bell preserved its passengers from the f
all, Avernus's residents would soon be upon them. But Mapathious was bound to preserve the bell and serve the one who had summoned him. So it would essay this journey with passengers in tow and not drop them into the Nine Hells.
In truth, once its destination was described, the angel was intrigued. Though loath to admit it, the angel might well have embarked on the journey even without being sworn to find Xxiphu. The angel's nature was to locate, to travel, and to explore. Never before had it visited a city of aboleths, let alone the oldest one in the world.
The mere description of an ancient aboleth city hidden deep in the world's mantle wasn't enough direction for even an angel of exploration. But Mapathious had a guide. It wore an iron ring. Wound around the ring was a strand of dark hair-the hair of a human female whose spirit the angel of exploration could dimly feel through the connection.
It wondered, as it lowered the trek bell into the tornadic passage between space and dimensional walls, what relationship Xxiphu had with another place it had recently heard rumor of. A place called the Citadel of the Outer Void. It hoped no relationship whatever.
Then it was in the roaring passage, surfing the discontinuities of unraveled planes and stretched reality. All its conjectures burned away. Its entire concentration was turned to survival.
*****
Japheth rearranged himself on a curved bench that ran along the bell's interior edge. The surface was wide, padded with dark brown leather, and rose to a comfortable backrest that even included neck support. A very cozy seat, if it weren't for the floor. Because there didn't seem to be one.
The trek bell's interior was divided by a straight metallic wall. He claimed one side, and the Lord of Bats occupied the other.
The warlock had considered asking Neifion to remove the partition. He worried the Lord of Bats might get up to no good, unsupervised. Then he imagined himself and the insidious creature sitting across from each other on a journey of who knew how long. The silence. Those red eyes filled with hate. The veiled threats.
No, he was happy to let the Lords of Bats keep to himself. Japheth would have to trust that the oath of alliance Neifion had sworn would prevent fatal mischief.
The warlock's gaze fell to what would have been the floor in any normal conveyance. However, just like normal, far smaller bells, the trek bell had no floor. As with each previous glance, he blanched as his gaze fell into the snaky, howling tunnel. It was like looking down a tornado's throat, he imagined.
Instead of the earsplitting scream he imagined such a violent scene would generate, he heard only a low, constant roar. The noise was somehow muted by the trek bell, he supposed.
Over this narrow abyss, Japheth's boots dangled. A quiver passed up his spine as he imagined what might happen if the trek bell jolted, knocking him off his seat. Was that possible? Handles on the wall offered at least a semblance of security. He grabbed one. He took a breath and leaned farther over the bench's side.
The cavity walled in swirling mist seemed to stretch down to infinity. It reminded him of something. He didn't have to think long, of course. It was like the terminus of the crimson road, toward which addicts to traveler's dust trudged*Japheth had learned the crimson road was more than metaphor.
He sat back and closed his eyes. His fear of the vortex beneath his feet lost its impact in comparison. He wondered, idly, what it would look like after a pinch of dust in each eye.
No.
Not yet, anyhow. He decided to have a bite to eat to distract himself. He produced a pack from the folds of his cloak, the one he'd liberated from Darroch Castle before they'd embarked. He opened it-
"By Caiphon!" he exclaimed as something inside shuddered and shifted. He overrode his instinct to toss the pack into the chasm.
A creature chittered and pulled itself forth-a tiny wrinkled man, one of Neifion's homunculi. It had stowed away inside the voluminous pack.
Once free of the pack it stood, no more than two feet tall, and regarded Japheth expectantly, as if awaiting its next command.
"What… Why did you hide yourself inside this pack, creature?"
The homunculus made high-pitched noises, from which Japheth could only pick out broken word fragments. It pointed at the partition, where the Lord of Bats resided.
"Neifion told you to do it?"
The creature nodded. Japheth snarled. Was the Lord of Bats spying on him? "You take your direction from me, beast, no longer Neifion. I-"
The creature leaped at Japheth. It fastened its mouth on his neck. Pain lanced through him. A bitter stench wafted from the wound.
Japheth seized the homunculus's scruff and tried to pull it away. The creature held to him like a leech, biting and scratching. His fingers tingled with sudden numbness. The bitter smell was poison!
"Assassin, let go your master!" Japheth boomed. Almost without conscious direction, the Lord of Bats's cloak plucked him out of the trek bell. A mere blink of darkness and he was back inside the vehicle, three feet from his former position.
Even as the homunculus was still turning around to find its relocated target, Japheth backhanded it with a tingling arm. The homunculus dropped through the bottom of the bell trailing a forlorn wail.
"That answers one question," he muttered. It was possible to fall out of the trek bell.
Japheth grabbed a handle and leaned to watch the homunculus's progress. Its flailing form dropped two or three long seconds before the twisting wall of vapor bowed inward. When the creature struck the wall, it was instantly pulled out of sight. Gone.
The tingling in Japheth's fingers progressed to his arms. The damned thing had bitten him deep enough to get some of its spittle into his blood. It was a familiar feeling. When Japheth first took control of Neifion's domain, a few of the homunculi had bitten him. This one hadn't got enough venom in him for the tingling to lead to numbness and trouble breathing. He'd be fine.
Far more troubling was what the attack portended. It was more than coincidence that a homunculus would attack Japheth now. Its old master was just across the bulkhead. He wondered if Neifion had sensed the conflict and was even now laughing at the warlock's discomfiture.
His thoughts veered wildly. He was fooling himself that he had any control over the unfolding situation. All his many worries ganged up and pounced as one. The concern leading the pack: Anusha's welfare. Was she even still alive?
And if she was alive, would she ever deign to speak with him again?
It was all too much! His hands moved of their own accord. They plucked the silver compact of traveler's dust from a fold in his cloak. Internal conflict died before it was half begun as he dropped a red crystal into his right eye.
A scarlet curtain washed across his vision.
His roaring thoughts drowned, one by one, beneath an oceanic feeling of oneness.
"Better," he mumbled. What had he been so worked up about?
Anusha, of course. She was on his mind nearly constantly. Her face, her hair, the way she used to smile, the faint hint of her perfume, and her pale skin…
She'd become an obsession, perhaps one nearly as powerful as the traveler's dust. He smiled as crimson currents rocked him.
Safely on the road, he allowed himself to wonder how she regarded him. Their last interaction, when he'd pulled her spirit briefly free of its captivity, suggested the infatuation she'd first shown for him had seen its day.
A vacancy in his chest made itself known.
It was the oddest feeling. A sucking, forlorn sensation of anticipated loss. His breath came harsher for a moment. He wondered if anguish over pending rejection was an emotion fit for a curse-spewing warlock whose powers could pierce the very walls of the world.
Apparently, yes.
His dust-hazed mind tried to spin him away from the pain, but his surroundings were too novel to completely ignore. He directed his gaze back into the vortex. He imagined all his worry being sucked down that roaring throat, leaving him free to act without emotional attachment.
He was on his way to
save a woman who had trusted him. A woman who, if events would pause long enough, he might forge a bond with that could last a lifetime. He could mentally deny it all he liked, list all the reasons why it could never be, but his body had already decided.
He loved her. "Anusha," he called, his voice taking on an odd timbre that reverberated through the bell, through his dust — charged mind, and out into the swirling space between spaces. "Anusha, I'm coming to set you free."
*****
The yellow aboleth repeated, What is it?
Anusha hissed in surprise. The yellow monster could speak! More than that, speak from its mind into hers.
She'd heard stories of such marvels. The words seemed to crawl around her brain before each one became intelligible. The sensation sickened her.
The many eyes of the aboleth pulsed. Then all five looked at her.
The insidious voice continued, Is it a stray dream, a failed memory jarred loose from the Elder's wakening?
Unknown. Disperse it, lest it rise to the apex and disrupt the ritual of rousing. Nothing must disrupt the ritual of rousing.
The aboleth's "speech" was harsh and odd. It didn't seem to have a sense of its own identity…
Something like a cobweb seemed to brush Anusha's face. It tickled, then fell away.
"The aboleth has noticed us," Yeva said.
"Yes."
"Can you get us away?" Yeva asked, her voice calm as glass.
Anusha followed the woman's suggestion. She and Yeva jerked backward, directly away from the beast.
The voice called after them, no softer or louder than before and just as devoid of identity, It resists dispersion. It ignores the aura of catching. Dispatch sleepers to eat it. Dispatch dreamcatchers to clutch it Summon overseers to enslave it.
Anusha blinked and everything was different. Instead of Yeva and a threatening aboleth, she saw a roiling tornado of infinite length. Something descended that whirling tunnel-a bell being lowered by a fire-winged angel.
"Anusha!" came Yeva's voice, as loud as if she were right next to Anusha. "We must retreat!"
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