'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 tired, 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
