Krailash realized what Alaia was going to do an instant before she did it, and squeezed his eyes shut. Still, the light was bright enough to make his eyelids glow red, just a flash, there and gone, and he opened his eyes, knowing the advantage wouldn’t last for long.
“I may have lost my powers, but at least I still have this nice robe,” Alaia said, smoothing the fabric of her robe of stars. The magic in the gown allowed it to create a sudden flash of light, blinding one’s enemies-and for the light-sensitive denizens of the Underdark, it was be even more debilitating. The charging woman-a human? how strange-wearing tattered shreds of vines pressed her hands to her eyes and howled, while the derro and their monstrous followers stumbled around in a daze. Only two of the derro were unaffected, hulking figures with blindfolds wrapped around their eyes, and Krailash decided to kill them first, but an arrow and a throwing knife steaked past him, striking them both down courtesy of Zaltys and Julen pressing the advantage. Krailash lunged into action, swinging his great axe and bellowing, attacking any derro who came close.
The fight was going well-truly, it was more of a massacre-but then something insubstantial but impossibly strong, like the tentacles of a ghostly kraken, wrapped around his chest and lifted him into the air, hurling him at the cavern wall. He struck with enough force to knock all the wind out of him, and slid down. Dazed, unable to get his breath, he stared up at the twisting portals that hovered over the field. They were moving, drifting like clouds, but coming together, forming into a larger sphere that crackled with lightning in colors he didn’t know the names for-colors that made his head ache and his eyes burn. Only the portal on the wall, where the terazul flowers emerged, didn’t move-otherwise all the spheres floating in the cavern drew together, like iron filings drawn to a magnet.
He didn’t know what it meant. Probably it was important. Possibly even deadly. He should do something about it, if only he could remember how to stand up, and how to move.
Zaltys was impressed by her mother’s light show, but a bit disappointed it didn’t flash-fry the derro where they were standing-she’d expected something more powerful, but her mother’s journey had probably been arduous, to judge by the bloody scratches on her face. Zaltys felt guilty about Alaia’s presence, since now she was in danger too. Zaltys had only wanted to help her family; she hadn’t meant to endanger her
She’d had some hope that, once she freed them, the yuan-ti might wade into battle spitting venom and flashing fangs, but they seemed content to stand back and see how things developed. Hardly surprising, given that they’d been enslaved for nearly twenty years, but disappointing nonetheless.
While their enemies were blind, Zaltys and Julen did their best to pick them off, starting with the two blindfolded derro and then focusing on Iraska. Julen threw his green knife, but by bad luck it just missed Iraska and instead struck the quaggoth with the beholder eyes, which went down in a mass of crawling greenery. Julen swore and threw ordinary daggers at Iraska, but her phantom tentacles batted them away, so he shifted his attention, hurling more knives and felling other derro-including Bug-eater, who said, very clearly, “Not fair!” before dropping to the ground with a hilt growing out of his chest.
Zaltys stared at Iraska, and willed all other distractions to drop away. She lifted her beautiful bow, and reached behind her for an arrow: one of the special ones Quelamia had given her. The arrowhead glittered like a diamond. The wizard had told Zaltys it was a shard of crystal from something called the Living Gate, a potent weapon against aberrations and Iraska was at least part aberration with her spectral tentacles lashing.
The distractions of the battlefield fell away. Krailash was charging in with an axe, Julen was throwing knives, and her mother was handing the yuan-ti long shafts of bone and urging them-futilely-to use them as clubs, but Zaltys only let herself see Iraska, a terrible apparition in shreds of greenery. She settled into her stance, nocked the arrow, and drew smoothly, pulling back until her fingers touched the corner of her mouth. She sighted a little low and to the side to account for paradox-the strange way an arrow curved out and around when it left a bow-but she needn’t have bothered. With a bow like that, she couldn’t miss.
Just before she loosed, Zaltys saw Iraska take notice of Krailash, who was rapidly laying waste to her warriors-who were, after all, mostly savants and mad chirurgeons, not even proper derro fighters. Her terrible tentacles lashed out and grabbed Krailash, flinging him against the wall.
Zaltys gasped, and her fingers let go of the bowstring without her volition. The shot was spoiled, she was sure, but the arrow flew straight, flickering out of sight when an armless derro spurting blood from his wounds stumbled into its path, and reappearing on the other side of the obstruction. The crystalline arrowhead hit Iraska dead in the center of her chest, knocking the old yuan-ti onto her back among the mushrooms. The moment the arrow struck the Slime King, the phantasmal bahannoth that surrounded her like a foul aura writhed wildly, screamed, and disappeared.
Zaltys rapidly used up the rest of her arrows, loosing them almost casually at the surviving derro. She used the two with magical arrowheads too, and so one of the derro burned, and one turned to stone, but she didn’t pay much attention. Her great-great-grandmother or aunt or whatever she might have been was dead. The rest was just mopping up. The last few derro broke and tried to run back to the settlement, but the yuan-ti slaves chose that moment to act, surging forward with their clubs and taking them from behind, swinging wildly but effectively. Zaltys winced. They were taking out the frustrations of long captivity on their oppressors, she understood that, but still, attacking fleeing enemies seemed like poor form.
Julen touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?” he said.
“I am. I don’t know about Krailash.” Alaia was kneeling beside the fallen dragonborn, and Julen and Zaltys hurried to her side.
“I can’t understand you,” Alaia was saying. “Krailash, I’m sorry, I’m trying, but your jaw, it was broken on the wall, I can’t-”
“Voo. Geen. Ortals.” Krailash’s face was smashed, and he was trying to stand up, with Alaia doing her best to hold him down. The fact that she, a hundred-and-ten-pound human, managed to hold a three-hundred-pound dragonborn down suggested his injuries were grave.
“Mother, heal him, please,” Zaltys said, “he’s suffering.”
She shook her head. “I can’t, Zaltys, I wish I could. My powers have, ah … It’s complicated. If we can get him to the surface-”
“Ortals!” Krailash tried to shout, and blood spurted from the remains of his mouth. His eyes were wide and intent.
“Is he saying ‘portals’?” Julen said.
“Probably,” the Slime King said. Zaltys turned, and Iraska was there, holding the arrow that should have killed her in her hand. All the portals above the field and over the settlement had somehow formed together into a single vast orb, which hovered just behind her, big as a manor house. The yuan-ti in the field were cowering and covering their heads, hiding from its terrible blue-green light.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Iraska snapped the crystalline head off the arrow and slipped it into her sleeve, then broke the arrowshaft in her hands, dropping the pieces. “You shot me with a shard of the Living Gate, which once formed a wall between the realms of madness and the Astral Sea. Impressive. But that crystal kills aberrations-not necessarily mortals. All you did was banish my balhannoth. Which was a bit like halfway dying myself. I hadn’t realized how deep into my body and my being its tendrils had extended. But that’s the Far Realm for you. So subtle and insidious it makes the cunning of Zehir seem like a brass band falling down the stairs in comparison. Shame you wasted the arrow, Zaltys. If you’d loosed it into my portal, I bet it would have closed up.” She walked closer, the gate hovering behind her, and Julen threw a knife, but the portal flared bluer, and a rosy pink tentacle lashed out of the portal and dashed the blade aside. Even with her balhannoth dead, Iraska still had the support of creatures in the Far Realm.
“That was my last dagger,” Julen said quietly. “Oh, well. Good effort, everyone.”
“You can still join me, Zaltys. Turn on these fools. You can be a hero, the sole survivor of the massacre that killed the rest of the Travelers. I can show you the pathways of power. I don’t want to let my friends from the Far Realm come through this portal just yet. We haven’t quite come to terms, and they’d much rather emerge in a more populated place anyway, like Delzimmer. Especially since your family has been preparing the way all these years by poisoning so many citizens with terazul flowers, turning the addicts into unwitting pawns of the realm of madness, just waiting to be activated. When we invade, the taint in their blood will transform them into aberrations.”
Zaltys looked at her mother, eyes wide-the terazul were connected to the Far Realm? Alaia wouldn’t meet
