He would be dead in a day, perhaps two. And the one who had captured his heart would be left to fend for herself in an impossible situation. She would likely perish not long after he succumbed to the dust. Her soul would become food for the Eldest.
It was intolerable.
Everything had taken on a shade of crimson through the lenses of his permanently dust — hued eyes.
'By the Fangs of Neifion,' Japheth swore. He was near to the precipice. If he closed his eyes, the scarlet plain was already waiting. A road slashed across the plain, and he could feel the bone cobbles through his boots.
From where he stood along its length, he could just glimpse the road's awful terminus.
The scene had blotted out his senses years earlier. That time, he'd seen the road even when his eyes were wide open.
That time, he'd been pushed to the crimson road's precipitous end. He'd witnessed the space beyond: a tooth- lined gullet where all dust users were finally consumed, mind and soul. Demons winged through that hungry hole, culling souls at their leisure.
A desperate addict will shout all manner of promises to the empty air when all his debts are finally called due.
No one was more surprised than Japheth when his desperate pleas were answered by a great bat that sailed down from the burning sky. Neifion, the Lord of Bats, had heard his promises and responded.
In the urgency of his need, Japheth pledged his soul to the Lord of Bats if only the creature would save him.
Only later did he learn he'd offered Neifion far too much-but the Lord of Bats took him at his word. And so Japheth was saved from his lethal addiction to crimson dust by swearing a pact to an archfey.
He'd lived several years since then, his dust-promised death sentence stayed by the pact. But now the agreement was shattered. Japheth's powers were fled, and Neifion no longer shielded him from the poor choices of his youth.
'I doubt,' he whispered, 'my old patron will take me back. I need a new one. Ha! Down in this hellhole, that's so likely.'
In that moment, a scheme slithered into his mind.
It was an awful idea, and dangerous in equal measure. But he already knew it was his only option.
'Wait,' he protested.
The logic was inescapable. He needed a new patron. He needed a new pact. Death was certain for him and Anusha otherwise.
'It's nonsense, it's insane!' he whispered.
But was it really? He had pledged a pact to Neifion, a creature of bloodlust and dubious ethics. If he hadn't gone overboard in what he'd initially sworn, things would have been far different, he rationalized. He could have gone about his own purposes, and the Lord of Bats wouldn't have taken such an overweening interest in Japheth's activities.
Probably.
Of course he wasn't sure, but what was. certain in his life? His own gruesome death and Anusha's soon thereafter if he didn't try to save them, that was what.
He'd worked at cross-purposes to Neifion's goals. He could do the same to a new entity to whom he swore the pacts of a warlock, right?
Uncertainty coiled in his stomach.
Another thought occurred to him, this one almost comforting. He was an old hand at swearing pacts. He'd learned in the school of hard knocks how not to craft one. He had a pretty good idea, now, how to go about devising a pact that would not only grant him power but also avoid promising his soul away to a new master.
He took an unsteady breath.
The decision was already made the moment he thought of it. All the rest was just delay.
He reached into the folds of his cloak and produced the Dreamheart.
The eye in the stone was half lidded. Sitting with his legs folded and his cloak spread behind him, Japheth placed the Dreamheart so its gaze faced the damp cavity's far wall. He wasn't ready to look into that awful pupil quite yet. Touching the stone calmed his shaking hands, but its slick warmth wound his nerves more tightly.
The warlock glanced around one last time. Still no sign of Anusha. Good. He took a deep breath and then placed both hands back on the object. Its mere presence was an affront to the natural order of Toril, and touching it felt like touching a dragon's oily scales.
The stone attempted to twist the mind of any creature that remained too long in its presence, even as it offered the promise of real power. It opened new vistas of perception and possibility with skin-on-stone contact, but they were only reflexive responses, part and parcel of the Dreamheart's alien nature.
Japheth's task required that he reach deeper and And a spark of sentience with whom he could bargain. Taking advantage of the surface energy that boiled off the Dreamheart would grant potent abilities, as the kuo-toa Nogah had demonstrated. But without the strictures of a pact to protect the wielder, such power would eventually corrupt and control the holder of the stone. And the stone would always be required in order to call upon the abilities so gained.
Japheth knew how to avoid that outcome for himself. He hoped.
He turned the relic around and looked into its eye.
The lid slowly pulled back to the accompaniment of grating stone. The unmasked pupil revealed an unblinking regard. Within its darkness, Japheth discerned tiny, dancing shapes.
He squinted, trying to understand what he was seeing. Little diamonds shining amid blackness… were they stars?
Yes. He observed a swathe of stars burning in unthinkable multitudes beyond the world.
Japheth had thought the world vast, but the stars he saw in the Dreamheart reached as far beyond the sky's illusory vault as a millennium stretched beyond an hour.
His gaze was absorbed by the delicate, twinkling points. His mind flashed out into the emptiness between them.
First euphoria washed through him. The stars were like jewels. Many of them shone in costly colors, and he floated in their treasury. Existence stretched away past all imagination, yet he felt-at least in that instant-as if he might have some inkling of its vastness.
Then he noticed a few stars were not like their sisters. They wavered and danced, as if their place in the heavens was unfixed. Seeing the inconstant lamps reminded Japheth of his purpose.
When he realized the irregular pinpricks of light were less like stars and more like windows piercing the sky, a tendril of nausea touched him. A fell radiance leaked from the portholes, and behind them, dread silhouettes huddled close, peering down into reality.
Somehow, perhaps by mediation of the Dreamheart, he knew the names of the stars.
There was Acamar the corpse star whose immense size sent other stars spiraling to their doom. Caiphon was the purple star, appearing in the guise of a guide point, but he viscerally knew it was capable of betraying those who relied upon it too much.
There was Delban with its ice white glare, cruel and bitter.
Khirad was a star of piercing blue light that burned over apocalypses wherever they occurred.
These stars and many more Japheth saw and recognized.
The warlock blanched. He saw where he had to go if he was to swear a new pact to the nameless entities whose lineage included the Eldest, though he was unclear of the hierarchy. If his broken pact with the Lord of Bats could be called a fey pact because of Neifion's home in Faerie, then he supposed the one he contemplated now could be called a star pact because the entities he courted lived far beyond the world.
He would have to steel his mind against the journey lest he emerge more a servant to his new patrons than he ever was to Neifion, even when the Lord of Bats had briefly possessed Japheth's pact stone. It would all be for nothing if he toppled, glare-eyed and drool-speckled, into the clutch of mad gods. That outcome would be as bad as or worse than letting the crimson dust have him.
But even should the worst come to pass, he told himself it would be worth it if he could at least help
