“Your sword!” yelled Seren, pointing at the burning blade.
“Angul is not yet required,” the monk replied.
The kuo-toa’s forward progress paused a moment as they launched a flight of spears. Japheth’s cloak wrapped about one that tried to enter his skull through his eye, diverting it elsewhere. Another spear struck Seren’s whirling shield, splintering it.
“If your weapon is as powerful as it looks, we need it now!” the wizard returned, her voice cracking.
Raidon retrieved the spear that had shattered Seren’s shield. He hurtled it back into the advancing mob, skewering a kuo-toa in the throat. He replied, “The sword’s ego is overwhelming. I prefer not to subject myself to him until absolutely necessary.”
The pirate captain’s eyes narrowed, his eyes suddenly avaricious. “Him?” asked Thoster. Raidon didn’t respond or seem to notice the pirate’s expression. Instead, he charged the phalanx, his feet slapping small craters in the water with each step. The monk’s sword blazed brighter as if petulant at being ignored. For all its light, it burned impotently, point first in coral.
Captain Thoster glanced once at Angul, then lit out after Raidon, unsheathing his golemwork blade. Water beaded up and ran off Thoster’s sword as if the weapon were forged of mallard feathers instead of iron.
The kuo-toa phalanx, down three from the dozen or more that first appeared, tensed against the monk’s charge, drawing new spears from those strapped to their backs. They extended them, intent on skewering the man.
Raidon leaped, and his trajectory became an arc. He rose neatly over the highest spear tip. He landed in the midst of the phalanx. Their formation broke apart, as all instantly attempted to turn inward. The monk’s hands were like water wheel pistons, a blur of motion Japheth could barely discern. The cerulean tattoo on his chest seemed to gleam brighter with each creature he slew.
Thoster crashed into the outer circle of distracted kuo-toa. He struck down two instantly with his envenomed mechanical blade, opening a hole in the already crumbling formation.
“This is too easy,” muttered Japheth. He scanned the periphery of the vault and glimpsed movement.
“Over there!” he yelled, pointing. At least three more groups of kuo-toa spearwielders materialized through the mist. With them came other creatures, some recognizable as squidlike beasts the size of hounds, a few so misshapen he couldn’t immediately classify them.
The warlock uttered a series of arcane words and directed a beam of dire radiance into one of the groups, dazzling their eyes and disrupting their forward progress.
“And above us, Japheth!” Anusha’s voice yelled in his ear. He looked up.
The kraken was back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)
Taunissik, Sea of Fallen Stars
Icy warnings blared from the Cerulean Sign on Raidon’s chest, a new pulse with each heartbeat. As if he didn’t already know all these fish-men were touched by corruption.
Still in a guarding stance, Raidon palmed a slashing spear haft with his left hand. He jerked, pulling the kuo-toa forward, directly into a rising right knee. The kuo-toa’s head crunched, and the creature fell away. The monk retained his grip on the spear, spinning it like a staff. He spun it around one-handed, landing a resounding blow along another kuo-toa’s head. He leaned into the rebound to clip a second foe, then put his other hand on the shaft so he could thrust the butt end of the spear into a third foe’s throat. The kuo-toa tried to scream but choked instead. The staff lengthened Raidon’s reach, but the blows it delivered were not as powerful as his Sign-enhanced fists.
The choking kuo-toa cried out, tried to turn, but fell into a bloody heap instead. The ship captain stood behind the corpse, his strangely clicking sword beaded with water and blood, a manic expression making his face a strange mask. Something in that expression and the shape of the man’s head reminded Raidon of the kuo-toa themselves.
“More’s coming, my Shou friend,” panted the captain. He pointed the tip of his blade at the scurrying fish-men drawing nearer through the artificial rain. The captain’s grin expanded. “More for us to kill.”
Raidon’s symbol suddenly turned as cold as a blizzard. He looked up. Just visible through the water streaming down from the ceiling he glimpsed … a great flock of bats? No. A single creature, one with vast arms of squalid black muscle. It was the very beast Cynosure had revealed to him. Gethshemeth.
The great kraken clutched a head-sized orb in one tentacle, and in another, a humanoid figure carved of stone, a mere doll in Gethshemeth’s tentacles. It hunched over the tableau, its arms flickering and weaving overhead as if it cast a spell requiring all its gesturing arms.
As if being waved forward, a half dozen more kuo-toa formations rushed across the flooding vault. Before they reached Raidon, Gethshemeth reached down and set its doll down not far from the monk. He saw it was actually about twice his height. Another stone behemoth, like the one he’d dispatched on first arriving in the chamber.
The statue shuddered forward, its arms rising.
Raidon charged it. From his focus of concentration he projected stone-shattering force into the heel of his right hand. Threads of coolness reached from his chest, down his arm, and interlaced themselves with his focus. His spellscar, its shape that of the Cerulean Sign, aided him all on its own.
The lobster-clawed humanoid sprayed him with crimson fluid.
“Raidon, no!” he heard someone shout, perhaps the invisible girl, or maybe the panicked wizard. Then silence claimed him.
When a coral dome sealed the monk away, Anusha’s fear returned like a thick gag threatening to choke off her breath. She’d expected Raidon Kane would rise to this final challenge, as she’d seen him do against the threats they’d faced on the surface. Instead, the kraken neutralized him with its first move.
Close by, the wizard Seren seemed to be crying, even as she launched a wave of lightning at the closest kuo-toa phalanx. A crack of thunder knocked six or seven fish-men backward, head over flippers, to land in a heap, dazed and hurt. But more kuo-toa continued to pour into the area. Seren’s lament grew louder even as she prepared another blast. She sobbed, “We’re all going to die!”
Anusha stood near Japheth. His eyes were locked on the kraken, or perhaps the orb the kraken wielded. Her fear crystallized. “Wait!” she counseled him, thinking he was about to engage Gethshemeth himself. “Wait for Raidon’s help! I can free the half-elf as I did you!”
Without a backward glance she dashed through the press of scaly bodies. She called up her dream blade and lay around her with it as she passed. She imagined her blade’s edges as real and sharp as Angul’s steely edge.
Anusha’s passage was a bloody furrow through the kraken’s advancing minions. Composed as it was of dream matter, no blood stained her armor or even her sword. That’s how she dreamed it should be, and that’s how it was. The creatures only sensed her by her bloody deeds. Kuo-toa squealed and died.
She reached the lobster-clawed statue where Raidon was entombed. Captain Thoster had so far avoided a similar fate, but what was he doing? Thoster was on his knees in the pooling water facing the eidolon, his sword sheathed and his arms outstretched as if in entreaty or worship. The man chanted something in a singsong tone, perhaps a prayer.
His strangely liquid vowels were having some sort of effect. The statue wavered, tried to step, paused, vibrated, then shuffled sideways.
“Whatever you’re doing, keep it up,” she murmured, and plunged into the stone that imprisoned Raidon. She had just trawled three similar stone shrouds, so she knew what to look for. Almost immediately she located Raidon’s form. She grabbed the rigid monk beneath his arms and heaved, but her hands slipped free. She tried again, remembering to will his flesh to be as her dream body, like smoke flowing through air. She heaved once more, and a moment later the man was free of the clutching stone.
Raidon resumed his charge as if nothing had detoured him.
Even as Thoster retained the eidolon’s attention, the monk jumped at the end of his trajectory and smashed the statue in the chest with the heel of his palm.
The crack of rending stone echoed through the chamber. Fine lines burning with cerulean fire suddenly spidered the statue, thickest at the point of impact.
Anusha came up behind Raidon and brought down her dream blade. Jarring impact surprised her.
“No!” said Thoster suddenly “Don’t attack her!”
Her? Anusha wondered why the pirate would suddenly refer to the animated statue as a “she,” and wish to protect it. Had his mind been suborned by Gethshemeth?
Raidon spared a puzzled glance at the captain’s insane plea but didn’t cease his assault on the stone figure. Even as stone claws snapped toward the monk, he evaded them by slipping to one side and around the statue. From there, the monk launched into a fury of stinging blows. The sound of crunching stone, like Anusha imagined might issue from a mine shaft, accompanied Raidon’s unstoppable onslaught. The half-elf’s hands and feet had somehow become harder than stone.
The kuo-toa swarming into the cavern paused to watch, their eyes fixed on Raidon. Moments later, the statue’s swift demolition was complete. Raidon stood on a pile of slick, wet rubble above the rising water line. His hair was molded to his head in the constant drizzle and his clothes sopped, but in that moment he seemed unstoppable. The monk’s eyes lifted and focused on the kraken itself as if in challenge.
The immense, slime-slick monstrosity didn’t fall upon the man with its tree-thick arms, as Anusha had guessed it would. Instead Gethshemeth writhed its tentacles over them like baleful clouds. As if in response, every single kuo-toa in the vault screamed with a single voice. It was the sound of unquenchable madness. A madness that threatened to infect Anusha’s mind with its awful atonal volume.
The screaming kuo-toa charged, forgetting formation, forgetting discipline, and forgetting their fear of death.
The wizard cried with such anguish, Anusha heard her over the roar of the kuo-toa. Her shoulders shaking, Seren managed to call up a perimeter of burning fire, as if to mark the site of her last stand.
Raidon leaped from the pile of stone, grabbed Captain Thoster by the lapels of his flapping coat, and dashed back toward Japheth, Seren, and Angul. The pirate allowed himself to be pulled, but his eyes remained fixed on the rubble pile. He had already slipped into insanity, Anusha judged. Or perhaps not. Despite his limp posture, Thoster retained his grip on his blade.
The monk used his free hand to bat away the swarming kuo-toa between him and his goal. Their screams hardly changed pitch even after a solid blow knocked them prone. Anusha moved with them, helping Raidon ward off stray claws, spear thrusts, and bites.
A fish-man, bigger than the others, appeared suddenly in Raidon’s path. The large kuo-toa brandished a harpoon with cord attached to it. It carried a wide, slime-slick shield. Several additional harpoons were lashed to its back.
The monk instantly transferred all his forward momentum into his arms. Even as he stopped dead, he released Thoster in a high arc that cleared the harpooner’s reach by a couple of feet. The pirate captain crashed down with a great splash within the protective circle of fire that burned despite the cold seawater still pouring down from above.
Watching the captain’s flight distracted Anusha, and perhaps the same was true of Raidon. Even as Thoster came down hard, the harpooner loosed its broad-bladed spear. It caught Raidon in his left leg. Blood sprayed from the wound, black in the witchlight-illuminated cavern.
Raidon jerked away, too late. The point broke off in the wound with the cord still attached. The harpooner gave a terrific yank. The slick, water-covered ground betrayed the monk, and he went down. The swarming, screaming kuo-toa were on him in an instant.
Japheth was entranced by the sinuous movements of the great kraken that, unaccountably, failed to help its slaves kill them. A single slap of one of its ten-foot-thick tentacles would crush two or three of them at once. Why did it hold back?
The warlock guessed it was playing with them, like a cat toying with a mouse. How often did such sport offer itself to the beast?
Not that its thronging, screaming servitors required any help. Out of the corner of his eye, Japheth saw the Shou fall beneath on onslaught of writhing, scaled bodies.
I’ll be next, he predicted.
Three kuo-toa near the perimeter fire hissed, sounding more like snakes than Japheth imagined fish could, then leaped over the barrier into the ring. The fire blazed up, crisping each one instantly.
Seren whispered, “I can only keep out four or five more—if more than that rush us, the perimeter will collapse.” Her eyes were red with grief, and she looked at Japheth as if for answers.
He felt as drained and exhausted as she looked. He had no hope to offer the wizard. The kraken’s mere proximity was sufficient to extinguish heroism and squash the aspirations of the boldest.
Japheth glanced around, hoping to glimpse Anusha. She was nowhere to be seen, of course. She might even have retreated to her physical body once more. He wouldn’t blame her if she had. In fact, he hoped she had fled.
He didn’t want her to see him die.
The mass of writhing kuo-toa where Raidon had fallen continued to shake and writhe. The monk was still fighting under the shroud of scaled flesh. Amazing.
Japheth forced himself to look up again at the nightmare hovering over them.
The Dreamheart was so close! He could see it, clutched at the tapering end of one of Gethshemeth’s many arms. The stone seemed to glow with an anti-light all its own. It was too close for Japheth to ignore any longer.
He glanced at Angul. Should he take up the weapon Raidon said was forged to kill aberrations? He released a short grunt of derision. No, he’d never so much as held a sword before, not even in play as a child.
He’d have to rely on the Lord of Bats’s gifts.
Claws raked Raidon’s back, face, and exposed forearms. Teeth bit at his calves, exposed chest, and even his ears. A hundred mouths screamed their unending, insane paean, even as they strove to smother Raidon under the press of their bodies and drown him by holding his head beneath the rising water.
The sheer number of wrestling forms was the only reason Raidon hadn’t already succumbed to the onslaught. Far more claw rakes and bites scored bleeding gashes and gaping wounds on other kuo-toa than were visited on the monk.
But he couldn’t take much more. He was dribbling blood from the wound given him by the harpooner, and his thinking was growing fuzzier by the moment, thanks to the incessant scream. He managed to get his head above water long enough to suck in another desperate breath. One of his foes pulled the harpoon head out of his thigh. More blood flowed.
His vision narrowed, and the screams around him deepened, as if he entered a tunnel mouth. He knew his perceptions were skewing, not reality.
A sweet, curious voice out of time asked, “Papa? Are you hurt?”
“No, Ailyn,” he responded automatically. “Just taking a little rest.”
“Can we play, Papa?”
“No, Papa has something he must finish first …”
Raidon blinked away the waking vision. He didn’t want to be seen a liar, even if it was a lie told to his daughter’s trusting memory.
The spellscar fire on his chest guttered, as if in danger of failing. He’d forgotten it. He was growing addled indeed. He put Ailyn from his mind and concentrated his focus through the Sign, and it blazed bright and cold once more, illuminating the cavities of the dark, living heap he struggled beneath.
Wide kuo-toa eyes shuttered in pain as the sudden purifying radiance dazzled them. Raidon took his opportunity and struggled upward through the press like a man swimming upstream through rapids. Rapids composed of cold, scaled, wet fish-men. He couldn’t seem to draw the same vigor from his Sign he’d used moments earlier to render the statue to a pile of broken rock. He sensed he hadn’t given the spellscar time to recuperate. It was tir
ed, just as he was. The jolt of vigor he’d managed to pull from the Sign was already running its course, and his limbs burned again with overexertion.
A clawed hand clamped down on his left bicep. Hampered by his position, Raidon couldn’t simply tear it away. It held Raidon fast and began to squeeze.
Then a kuo-toa below him bit his foot, the same foot the plaguechanged ghoul in Starmantle had nearly bitten off.
A shriek of pain burst from him as a stream of bubbles. That old ghoul-bite had never healed right, and all the pain it had given him returned threefold.
The monk thrust his free hand straight up past wriggling bodies, a desperate gesture, his hand working spasmodically, looking for purchase.
Someone took his hand and pulled. The hand was small, but it was strong. Strong enough to lift him up and pull him out of the scrabbling kuo-toa. It pulled him higher still, until he was ten feet above water. It had to be Anusha who’d saved him. Again. With the help of his savior, he kicked free of the tumult, save for two fish-men that retained their grips.
One dangled from his bicep, the other continued to bite down on his foot.
Raidon breathed freely in great heaving gasps. With his body finally unimpeded by dozens of clawing foes, he was able to torque his free leg upward to deliver a vicious knee to the crown of the kuo-toa holding his arm. A crunch of bone and it stopped its scream and limply fell away.
The one on his other leg was scrabbling for a better hold, but its mouth remained clamped tight on his foot.
The big kuo-toa with the harpoons chose that moment to loose another spear. Raidon saw him this time. He pulled up both legs and twisted, interposing the kuo-toa on his leg between himself and the harpooner. The spear buried itself in the creature’s back. It gurgled and dropped.
The hand holding his began to shake. The girl was tiring, Raidon guessed. He couldn’t imagine how she was holding him up in the first place. Before she could drop him, he swung his legs back, then forward in a violent jerk, releasing Anusha’s invisible hand as he did so.
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