Venom in Her Veins

only to die in avenging her, but now you’ve given me hope that she might be alive after all.”

“Indeed,” Krailash said, reluctantly putting his heavy second skin back on. “Of course, as a professional soldier, I expect failure, death, and tragedy, but I begin to think another outcome is possible. Perhaps this will even end happily. We might be able to rescue whatever remnants of Zaltys’s people remain enslaved and get them back to the surface. The derro are dangerous, but they won’t expect us to strike in their home settlement, and their madness makes them vulnerable to superior tactics.”

Alaia frowned, as if thinking intensely. “If we find any humans among the slaves,” she said finally, “or for that matter dwarves, or dragonborn, or even elves, improbable as that seems in this region, then we should certainly do our best to rescue them. But don’t expect too much. Life in the Underdark as slaves to the derro … I don’t expect there are many survivors from Zaltys’s family.”

Something in her tone troubled Krailash. Was she jealous of Zaltys’s devotion to a family she’d never met? Troubled by her daughter’s willingness to flee the family she’d grown up with to save a family she didn’t even know? Alaia had taught Zaltys that nothing mattered more than family. She was just doing what she believed, all the way through herself, was right. Krailash wasn’t sure she was wrong, either. You had to be devoted to something, or else, what was life for?

“Let’s go and find out, then,” he said, buckling on the last of his armor.

The water of the pool began to froth-it almost looked like it was boiling-and a large group of kuo-toa rose to the surface, clambering over the edge of the pool, armed with harpoons, eerily silent except for the sound of water dripping from their shiny, scaled bodies. More of them began to rise to the surface, too many for Krailash to count.

Krailash groaned and lifted his great axe, weary at the thought of another pointless battle with a race he didn’t even have a quarrel with.

“Enough!” Alaia shouted. “I don’t have time for this!” She chanted, and the kuo-toa slowed down, frozen in place.

Krailash was also unable to move-or, rather, he could move, but he was moving very slowly, the flow of time itself rendered the consistency of cold syrup. Some figure, or force, seemed to enter the cavern, sidling around the edges of the space, something made of cold and spines and shadow and ice wind and emptiness.

“Kill one of them,” Alaia said, her voice cold, her eyes black, icy vapor rising from the totem of carved bone she held in her hands. “Open a door for death, Krailash. Let death in.”

Time slammed back into motion, and Krailash swung Thunder’s Edge at the nearest kuo-toa, nearly severing its neckless fish head from its body. The kuo-toa nearest it screamed and fell back as if he’d struck them as well. Dark spots opened in their scaly skin, as if their flesh were rotting from within, and death moved outward in a circular wave from the point of Krailash’s single strike, fish people falling and gasping, spontaneous wounds gaping in scaled flesh, as the ring of death widened. Weapons fell from slimy hands, and the kuo-toa farthest back fled from the dark magic, diving back into the water and swimming away. Something seemed to flit among the kuo-toa, a figure of shadowy presence composed of hollow spaces and rot and loss.

When the last of the kuo-toa were dead or fled, the presence receded.

Alaia dropped the totem from her hands. Her eyes remained black for a moment, only gradually clearing.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Krailash said, awed. “It was like … contagious death.”

“The death spirit,” Alaia said, her voice hoarse, her hands trembling. “A powerful summoning. I wasn’t sure I could bring it, or control it once I did. It’s a dangerous thing to call upon, because it is both patient and insatiable. But well suited to this place. The primal forces in the Underdark are merciless, Krailash. And angry. Something down here is wrong. Unnatural. Not just the grell, or other aberrations. Something more profound, a deeper wound, a more profound threat. The natural world is twisted, and the source is not far from here.”

“Some say the derro were a great race once,” Krailash said. “That they had cities, and an empire, and lived above ground, but they dabbled with unnatural things, and brought about their own downfall. Perhaps they continue such works here in the depths?”

“Almost certainly.” Alaia sounded nearly like herself again after a drink from her canteen. She looked bleakly at the dead creatures surrounding them. “There’s a story shamans know, about the World Serpent. They say the derro opened portals to the Far Realm, a plane of madness, when the world was young. Their actions risked destroying the integrity of reality itself, and so the World Serpent, the great primal force that encircles the world, made itself manifest and dragged the cities of the derro underground, consigning them to live in the depths of the Underdark, among things almost as horrible as themselves.”

“So the World Serpent is an enemy of the derro?” Krailash said. “Then perhaps the thing I thought was a god was an emissary of-”

“No.” Alaia shook her head. “Ouroboros the World Serpent is an ancient primal spirit. It shifts its coils and the earth shakes-it doesn’t appear in a cloak and make jokes and threats and send little snakes to lead us places. That’s the sort of thing gods do, you’re right. But serpents are complicated, Krailash. They can be ancient, wise creatures. Or they can be poisonous, unexpected death in the night. Some shamans revere the World Serpent, but there are darker forces that assume the form of snakes.”

“You mean the serpent god Zehir?” Krailash said. “But Zehir is a god of the yuan-ti, and a few mad human cultists-what would it care about Zaltys? Why would it help us find her? Why would an evil god want to make trouble for the derro, an evil race?”

Alaia opened her mouth, then closed it, and shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t care to find out.”

“But-” Krailash said.

“Please. Let’s just go, and bring Zaltys and Julen out of this place, and hope we’re never troubled by gods or unnatural things again.” She stormed off toward the cavern’s only obvious exit, kicking the arm of a dead kuo-toa out of her path, and Krailash had to hurry to keep up.

“You’re from my village?” Zaltys said, staring at Iraska’s teeth. Her fangs. Had the derro experimented on her too? Given her the bite of a serpent, the way the derro savant she saw earlier had given himself a tentacle for an arm?

“I am. Well, I grew up there. I lived far away for most of my adult life.” The Slime King had stopped smiling, which was reassuring, and walked over to a low cabinet and lined up three carved wooden cups. She lifted a ceramic jug-looked like Delzimmer manufacture in the classic style, blue glazed, with a handle meant to look like a frozen stream of flowing water-and filled the cups, offering them to Zaltys and Julen.

“I don’t suppose she’d bother poisoning us,” Julen said, as if to himself, “when she has armed guards standing by.”

Iraska sipped from the cup. “Actually, once upon a time, I preferred poison over more obvious approaches to murder. I was a devotee of a certain god with a fondness for venoms and toxins and treachery. But these days, I have other allegiances. I’d like to propose a toast.” She raised her cup. “To family reunited.”

Zaltys and Julen raised their cups and murmured something vaguely affirmative. The water was icy cold, almost as pure and delicious as the water that poured from Julen’s magical crystal bottle.

Iraska strolled over to the edge of the pool, her back turned to them. Julen leaned in close to Zaltys and whispered fiercely, “Did you see her teeth? Do you think the derro did that to her? Do you think she wanted them to?”

“I don’t know,” Zaltys said. “I don’t understand this at all.”

“Don’t worry,” Iraska said, gazing at the still water at her feet. “I don’t dip my drinking water out of the pool. It’s from a private spring, very clean. This water … Well, I can’t confirm that aboleths shit as other creatures do, but if so, this pool must assuredly be filled with it.”

“I’m sorry,” Zaltys said, putting her cup down. “I’m not very good at talking in circles and implying things and letting silences speak louder than words. My mother-ah, my adopted mother-says it’s a good thing I’m not part of the Traders, or I’d be demoted to swineherd, because only pigs are as tactless as I am. So I’m just going to say, I don’t understand what’s happening here. I came to save my people from slavers-and now I find out they’re your people too, but you’re the king of the slavers.”

Iraska turned. She had moved farther from the torches, and the light reflecting off the pool of water cast her in additional flickering shadows, making her look older and younger by turns. “Did you really? Come on a mission of