smelly, fatty material that sprayed across Raidon burned like acid. Even before he could grit his teeth to endure the pain, Angul purged the damaged tissue and grew new skin cross his face, neck, and left shoulder. Raidon bit his lip against the agony of the healing wave.
The Blade Cerulean's repair was nearly as painful as the attack that caused the damage.
My reserves falter, the blade warned.
Raidon grunted and moved another step.
He swept the sword through an advancing aboleth, then pointed Angul down to scribe another quick sigil in cerulean fire on the floor.
He weaved beneath a blast of green energy, whirled, and leaned forward to thrust Angul up through the mouth of an encroaching aboleth. This put his left leg in position to snap a devastating back kick at another foe. He advanced another step into the momentary clearing he'd created, and dashed off the next symbol with Angul.
If not for the press of lashing aboleths, Raidon's curving path across the floor would have been far more apparent. He realized he'd completed more than half the circuit mirroring the route of the chanting aboleths swimming through the air overhead, counter-current to their direction. Ironic, the monk reflected, that the mass of squalid bodies trying to smother him obscured what he was doing.
A tentacle grabbed his leg and pulled him facedown onto the stone. He felt bones in his face break. The Blade Cerulean roughly set the bones an instant later. But not completely.
Angul's healing surges were no longer completely erasing his wounds. The pain of each wound was eased, true, but blood ran down one of his arms, and now from his nose as well. Each alone wasn't enough to slow him, but the incomplete recoveries were adding up. It would be a close thing, whether he could finish his circle of binding before the swarm finished him.
It didn't matter. He would finish the circle, or he would fail.
If he failed, the Eldest would fully wake.
If he succeeded, then the aboleth's ritual would fail instead. One or the other. The fate of Faerun depended on what happened. Not that he cared. Even as he fought forward another step to draw the next sigil in the sequence, he wondered at his persistence. Faerun hadn't been particularly kind to Raidon over the last dozen years. Or, now that he thought about it, for most of his life. Yet there he was, striving for all he was worth, to save the world.
Perhaps some shred of honor yet motivated him, finding one last opportunity to shine amid the fused jumble of his personality.
Or perhaps it was merely Angul.
Raidon noticed that the number of attacks he had defended against over the last span of heartbeats had dropped off. He spared a moment to glance up from his last scribed glyph.
He was astounded to see that, indeed, only about a dozen aboleths-at least of the original number that had sleeted down the walls of the throne chamber-remained to contest him. And half of those were receiving attacks on their flanks, even as they tried to squirm toward Raidon. Some unseen force was alternately carving into and dazzling these outlier aboleths, even as wizard fire rained down upon the creatures from afar.
It was Seren! And… Captain Thoster too. The wizard unleashed a volley of fire into one of the aboleths advancing upon Raidon. By the spread of smoking, twitching, and nearly cleaved in twain aboleth bodies that spread out from the wizard and pirate, they had obviously been at it for some time. The two had achieved quite a tally, nearly equal to his own. It was almost as if they'd received help-
An acidic slime wave buffeted him, drawing his face into a rictus. Angul burned off the excess goo even as Raidon leaped into the air. As he reached the zenith of his jump, he pulled his elbow up next to his face, then slashed down with it in tandem with his own descending weight, channeling all the force of his body into an aboleth's brow. The creature stopped moving. It was dazed, stunned, or dead, it didn't matter. He scribed another glyph.
But curiosity made him scan the room again before he pressed ahead. Japheth was nowhere to be seen. Good.
Seren and Thoster must have stopped the warlock and his tainted cargo after all.
In another few moments, his binding circle would be complete. A Seal of Slaying would lance the Eldest, strong enough to end its stony vigil forever.
*****
Japheth uttered the final words of the ceremony. A jolt of energy transfixed him. Purple sparks burst from the Dreamheart, traveled along the rod, and grounded themselves in his drugged brain.
His vantage literally flashed upward, as he was bodily snatched into the air. Like a rag doll yanked by an angry toddler, he was borne to the chamber's zenith. The sudden acceleration followed by the jerking stop nearly snapped his neck.
He'd avoided meeting the Eldest's many-eyed gaze before. Now his ritual and the immediacy of the ancient aboleth compelled him to do so.
His proximity and drug-addled perspective showed the Eldest's skin to be something other than stone. It was a luminous expanse of chaos that churned and seethed. Indescribable forms entwined within that inconstant flesh, surging, billowing, and changing their shape. It was as if the skin was an interface between the world and something terrible. So close, awful sounds scraped at Japheth's ears too. Keening, bleating, and altogether atrocious.
But the eyes were what dazed Japheth and nearly struck him dead before he could conclude his purpose.
Though most were shuttered, the few that caught him in their alien regard burned him with a cosmic malignancy that brought gorge to his throat. The star pact, that terrible oath he'd sworn in Xxiphu's spawning halls, was the only thing that saved his mind from being instantly blasted. The pact had inoculated him. Though he might later gouge out his eyes in a fit of lunacy, for the moment he retained the barest ability to think.
Japheth averted his vision. He wanted to stop up his ears too, but he had to extend one hand and lay it upon the Eldest.
'Relinquish she whose dream is here with us,' said Japheth, his voice brittle but strong, 'she who is called Anusha Marhana. Relinquish Anusha Marhana, and her companion named Yeva.' Japheth wished he still had the strand of hair he'd used before.
'By the power of the natural world, I beseech you. By the power of arcane formulas, I ask you. By the power of your own flesh, the Dreamheart, through which you have allowed your influence into the world, I command you!'
An indefinable period of time passed. Japheth kept his palm pressed against the roiling, repellent flesh. His hand sizzled.
Something tickled the back of his mind. At first he thought it was a passing fancy, perhaps due to remnants of the traveler's dust not burnt out of his system by the ritual. Then he realized the feeling came from outside.
It was the Eldest. Or actually, a tiny fraction of the Eldest's still slumbering attention.
The knowledge of what he must do to secure Anusha's final release bloomed across the warlock's brain.
He sighed. So it was to be one final bargain?
Yes. Of course.
The warlock's life was one great tapestry of oaths, pacts, and deals, each balancing him on the knife-edge between achieving his ends and utter ruin.
Despite what it would mean for the world, Japheth nodded his head in agreement. He accepted the arrangement.
At least the Eldest didn't require he swear another pact! That last thought gave him an idea. Even in the face of a creature whose wrath could well equal a god's fury, Japheth designed one last deceit.
*****
Anusha thrust her dream sword into the heart of the last aboleth threatening the monk-or at least where she hoped its heart was located. She hit something vital, it leaned over and died.
She stepped away and raised her blade in triumph, though it wavered under the onslaught of her headache.
Raidon glanced in her general direction. The half-elfs face didn't betray his thoughts, though Anusha assumed the monk wondered how the creature had suddenly perished. She would have smiled, but with the pain pounding
