through her, it was all she could do to retain her form.
She'd felt the onset of similar distress once before when she had overextended herself. It seemed the pain had come quicker this time, and more intensely. Was it because she also maintained Yeva's form too, dreaming the woman real?
The monk didn't waste any more time looking for invisible allies. With his burning sword, he continued to cut glyphs into the floor, one after the other, and faster now that aboleths didn't contest his every step. Without the swarming aboleths to obscure the floor, the shape he scribed in bkte fire was clearly visible to every creature in the chamber. Raidon swiftly approached the end of this task.
The tone of the chanting creatures overhead warbled and broke, then resumed in a more frantic tone. The aboleths seemed torn between finishing their ritual and abandoning it in order to descend upon the monk.
Then the decision was no longer theirs. Raidon completed the circuit.
The circle of glyphs took fire. A shock wave of force blew the monk away from his own creation. The shock wave expanded in all directions and caught the soaring aboleths underneath. The force tumbled the creatures, great and small, in uncontrolled arcs through the air. Their chant, already on the hysterical edge of failure, collapsed.
The inscribed circle flamed so brightly, Anusha looked away.
A sound came from above. A booming, creaking noise like mountains make when they settle into their foundations. She glanced up.
The few eyes open on the great petrified belly began to squint and close, as if the fire of Raidon's circle was too bright for them. The Eldest was not rousing. It was falling back into slumber, perhaps even the sleep of true death!
Raidon Kane had killed the Eldest! Could it really be?
Harsh exclamations of fury echoed through the chamber. The aboleths buffeted from their ritual by the monk's counterworking cried out as one. They lashed their tentacles and writhed in a paroxysm of rage. Their beady eyes found Raidon, Seren, and Thoster, and a few even fixed on Anusha and Yeva.
'Back to the ship!' screamed Seren. 'This way!' She turned toward a different passage than the one by which they had entered the throne chamber.
Anusha saw Raidon glance up. She followed his gaze to the screeching, gargantuan aboleths. The creatures were regaining control of their single-minded fury. Malicious red light burst from one of the massive, dark-hued elders. Another gesticulated with its tentacles in wide spirals, from which a green haze began to spread.
Yeva and Thoster darted after the retreating wizard. But Raidon wasn't moving. He just stood and stared at the great creatures flitting overhead. They no longer flew in their ritual formation, but instead prepared a revenge stroke on the tiny half-elf below, apparently unconcerned with the cerulean fire he wielded.
Anusha looked for Japheth. Still nowhere to be seen.
'Let's go, Raidon!' she yelled at the monk. He glanced in her general direction and shook his head. Was he crying?
'Is that… Anusha?' said Raidon, his voice raised above the clamor of the remaining aboleths. 'So the captain was right. Well, it doesn't matter. I fulfilled my oath. I tried to kill the Eldest. For some reason, I failed. I put it back to sleep, but I did not kill it as I intended.'
She gasped. 'Will it wake again?'
'No. At least not fully, and not soon. But it is not dead. I shall stay here and kill as many of the elder aboleths as I can before they consume me.' He shrugged. The half-elf had lost his bearings. She hastened to him, letting go her dream blade as she did so. Her headache instantly eased.
Anusha grabbed one of Raidon's wrists, making certain her hand was solid enough to do so. 'Come. We need you, Raidon. You've bound it, it was bound for millennia before. Perhaps you've given us another few thousand years. If so, I call that success!'
She gave a light tug. The monk sighed. 'A half measure.'
'Come with me!' she yelled, and pulled.
'Very well.' His voice was not that of a man who'd just potentially saved Toril an age of grief. What was wrong with him?
'This way,' said Anusha, pulling the monk along toward the tunnel exit Seren had departed through.
After a few steps, it was all she could do, even using her dream-twisting advantage, to keep up with him. The man could run when he decided to.
As they left the chamber, Anusha glanced back one last time, searching for the telltale black cloak. Still nothing.
But…
A shiver tickled at the nape of her neck. The feeling plunged down her spine into the small of her back. She stumbled, losing her grip on Raidon's arm. 'Go on!' she said, and spun around to see what had grazed her.
The elder aboleths pursued them. But… none were close enough to have grazed her. She summoned her dream blade anyhow.
It was as if a thousand tiny ants with warm feet ran up and down her body. 'What's happening? Was this the end? Was she-'
Darkness engulfed her. The screams of the livid aboleths, the smell of rotting fish, the agony in her temples- all of it went away.
Anusha blinked.
Wan light from the porthole revealed a small room.
The woman gasped and sat up in her open travel chest. With eyes that felt wide as saucers, she soaked in the beautiful, wonderful, cramped cabin on Green Siren.
Tears slid down her cheek. She hugged herself, feeling her own warm, if noticeably skinny, self. A dog whined, then barked. A wagging tail thumped repeatedly against wooden planking. Lucky!
Japheth had done it. She was free.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Leaving Xxiphu
Japheth witnessed Raidon Kane complete the binding. He perceived the great shock of negation expanding up from the freshly scribed hundred foot-diameter seal and penetrating the Eldest. The beast groaned, even in its petrified slumber, as if crying out against the injustice of the world.
But the tendril of awareness that dealt with Japheth insisted the warlock stick to his deal.
Japheth agreed and continued to hold the personality fragment to its end of the bargain, even as the elder servitors of Xxiphu swirling below Japheth's feet raged at their failure. He maintained his position and shouted, over and over again, even as his voice cracked, 'Release Anusha Marhana! Release her!'
And just like that, Japheth felt Anusha's focus slip free. Yeva's too! 'Yes!'
Anusha's focus sped away, seeking its rightful mooring. Yeva's foundered. He'd expected that and offered the homeless spirit a temporary roost in the dark confines of his rod. Though he couldn't see it, he felt the spirit of the strange woman take up residence within it.
The ritual concluded. He plunged toward the floor.
He instinctively reached out to grasp for a support where none existed. Wasting time clawing at empty air almost proved his death. But a moment before his brains were dashed out upon the floor of the throne chamber, he plunged into the gaping discontinuity of his cloak.
And stepped out into a rounded tunnel dripping with phosphorescent slime.
A sprinting man avoided colliding with him with a spectacular leap that cleared Japheth's head by inches.
The man rolled into a landing, was back on his feet a moment later, and turned to regard the warlock. 'Japheth,' he said, 'you should not have come here.'
'Raidon Kane,' said Japheth. 'We can argue that later. Right now about twenty-odd aboleths, each the size of a dragon, are coming down this corridor. We must go!' The monk regarded the warlock a heartbeat longer, then said, 'The woman, your friend, was with me a moment ago in her intangible shape. She seems-'
