whips were blind. Always decisive, Nogah committed to the exploratory dive despite the consensus building against her, and before that consensus solidified into official directive. She used up the last of her favors to gain the use of this fabulous sea coach, its harnessed beast, and a leave from her duties in the city of Olleth.
Now here she was, miles below the seafloor in the vent she'd first glimpsed in dreams. The strange flavor of the water all around her seemed to promise grim consequences to those who failed to heed its warning. The odd scent seemed to go hand in fin with the interference that made communion with the Sea Mother difficult. Nogah took it as further evidence the Sea Mother wanted her here, to investigate that which lay at the shaft's nadir.
Nogah's translucent, third eyelids snapped open. She decreed, 'No, we shall push on. Time grows short. The… taint? The… hindrance grows stronger each day we fail to discover its source!'
Curampah merely nodded. Perhaps her junior whip did not share Nogah's sense of urgency. She guessed Curampah preferred the majority opinion in the kuo-toa ruled city of Olleth. Not that what he thought mattered. The beliefs junior whips harbored in their secret hearts were unimportant. Their duty was only to obey. Curampah would do as she commanded.
Nogah twitched the reins, and the great catfish surged straight downward once more, jolting the coach. The immense nautilus shell descended through a sudden rush of silvery bubbles born in the thrashing wake of the fish's wide tail.
Nogah woke to her name voiced in air. Splinters of the dream faded, the same dream she always had, of the Sea Mother beckoning to her from across a vast gulf of sea-fine particulates and rushing water, warning her, warning…
She lay in her creche within the inmost chamber of the spiral nautilus.
A voice, Curampah's, said again, 'Nogah, Daughter of the Sea, wake!'
Blinking toward full awareness, but not yet stirring her limbs, she said, 'I am awake. I…' She could still hear the groaning water from her dream. The walls of the shell moaned and vibrated, as if being squeezed. Had they struck the vent wall? Nogah mentally checked the status of all the divine rituals she'd applied to the sea coach.
The subsidiary rituals of maintenance and protection lacing the nautilus's shell were intact. The bubble of air trapped within the coiled corridors of the shell was stable and fresh. The magic that maintained the equilibrium between air and water was firm. She mentally expanded her examination of the ritual prayers underlying the sea coach and was relieved to find the enchantments holding the catfish also remained active. The protective prayers warding off crushing pressure seemed intact, but…
'Mother preserve!' The linchpin charm was half unraveled! The groaning noise was precursor to the nautilus shell's collapse.
She lurched upright, her webbed hands already tracing the runes necessary to renew the prayer. She worked quickly, invigorating the lines of divine force required. A heartbeat later, the frayed linchpin was repaired. But how could it have failed so precipitously?
She looked at Curampah. 'Explain,' she commanded.
'Daughter of the Sea,' he said, 'I found a side cavity in the vent. As I slowed the coach to study the hollow space, the nautilus began to buckle and shudder. So I woke you.'
'What lies within this cavity?'
'Crumbled and blasted dwellings, Daughter. Ruins of structures unable to withstand the crushing weight of water this deep.'
'A drow city caught in the backlash of Mystra's demise?' Nogah half smiled to think of a city of their old tormentors so overcome.
Curampah's silver-black eyes blinked rapidly. 'No. It is illithid.'
Nogah grabbed her staff and arrowed past Curampah.
The cavity was riddled with half-exposed, winding passages striated with the cryptic textures of illithid text carved in stone. The crust's split that created the vent a decade ago broke this deep dwelling mind flayer cyst wide open. The illithids likely hadn't even picked themselves up from where the quaking earth had thrown them before a weight of seawater had smashed through the breach, a quantity too great for even the wizened entity at the community's hub to deal with. The elder brain's basin was split asunder. All that remained of this illithid community's nascent proto-deity were fragments of flash-petrified cerebral tissue. Dried husks of larval illithids floated here and there throughout the ruin. Remnants of mind flayer garb, implements, and unidentifiable trash were everywhere, but of the adult illithids themselves, no sign remained.
'Did any survive?' wondered Curampah, as he stared over the side. Nogah had maneuvered the sea coach into the side cavity.
She replied, 'The Spellplague's hunger did not spare those who derive their power from mind. Of course, it seems this community was destroyed as an indirect consequence of the catastrophe. We would have been attacked already, if any mind flayers remained in this drowned cyst.'
Curampah inclined his head.
Despite her words, an irrational fear tightened her scales. She was a competent whip, but she couldn't hope to stand before a mind flayers vicious brain blast. She didn't want to end up a meal, or worse, a mind-dead thrall. But she was being foolish, of course; how could that happen? The cyst was obviously long bereft of its former dwellers.
The senior whip urged the catfish deeper into the demolished community. It could be that which drew her into the depths below Faerыn would be found in this very space! The far wall of the hollow remained obscured in haze, and she wanted to be sure of the cavity's bounds.
The sea coach was drawn inward. It passed only feet over crumbling edges of unspecified structures without roofs, now only unmarked crypts where many monstrosities had met a sudden, moist end.
A new structure began to resolve from the swirling water. Its architectural style was different from the foregoing ruins. It retained most of its walls and many of its roofs. It was several stories high, unlike any of the other structures in the cyst, and it had no windows. Something about the new structure reminded Nogah of how the linchpin prayer had almost failed. Was it coincidence the divine ritual most vital to their foray would show instability just as they descended to the depths of the dead illithid community?
Perhaps the charm's collapse and the ruined cyst's proximity were no accident.
Nogah pulled back on the reins. 'Curampah-'
The catfish screamed, a scale-shivering sound so intense Nogah dropped the reins. A region of free-floating detritus whirled in on itself, becoming a tight column of spinning water. Nogah scrambled for the reins. A moment later the whirling column expanded into a humanoid shape. Violet slime glistened over its rubbery skin. It’s awful head riveted Nogah's attention. Four long tendrils writhed there, muscular tentacles with bloodstained tips. Its eyes were darkened hollows, empty save for seawater.
'It's undead!' croaked Curampah, bubbles escaping his mouth in two exclamatory clusters. His pincer staff quivered in his unsteady grasp. 'Mind flayer undead!'
Nogah forgot the reins. She yelled, 'Curampah! Think!' If Curampah would stop panicking, they could-
Malign influence burst upon Nogah's brain, trying to insinuate alien desires into her core awareness. The catfish's scream burbled away. Curampah gasped and let his pincer staff float free.
The vacant-eyed mind flayer drifted toward them, making no movement yet accelerating. It had gained a facility in the water in undeath that its kind did not possess in life. What hoary god empowered this husk? It should have rotted to nothing like all its compatriots.
The very fact she could still formulate questions meant she had avoided the brunt of the blast that had left Curampah drooling. But without her fellow whip, she couldn't co-generate an answering stroke strong enough to offer salvation.
She tried to think through the terror. Curampah wasn't dead. It should still be possible…
She slapped Curampah's limp shoulder with her empty palm. Instantly, the tingle that alerted fellow whips to each other's presence intensified into a full-fledged connection. An electric spark burned between them, an eel of chaotic, fluctuating light.
The contact literally jolted Curampah from his mind-numbed haze. The junior whip blinked witlessness from his eyes.
