Plague of Spells as-1 Read online

  The warlock guessed it was playing with them, like a cat toying with a mouse. How often did such sport offer itself to the beast?

  Not that its thronging, screaming servitors required any help. Out of the corner of his eye, Japheth saw the Shou fall beneath on onslaught of writhing, scaled bodies.

  I'll be next, he predicted.

  Three kuo-toa near the perimeter fire hissed, sounding more like snakes than Japheth imagined fish could, then leaped over the barrier into the ring. The fire blazed up, crisping each one instantly.

  Seren whispered, "I can only keep out four or five more- if more than that rush us, the perimeter will collapse." Her eyes were red with grief, and she looked at Japheth as if for answers.

  He felt as drained and exhausted as she looked. He had no hope to offer the wizard. The kraken's mere proximity was sufficient to extinguish heroism and squash the aspirations of the boldest.

  Japheth glanced around, hoping to glimpse Anusha. She was nowhere to be seen, of course. She might even have retreated to her physical body once more. He wouldn't blame her if she had. In fact, he hoped she had fled.

  He didn't want her to see him die.

  The mass of writhing kuo-toa where Raidon had fallen continued to shake and writhe. The monk was still fighting under the shroud of scaled flesh. Amazing.

  Japheth forced himself to look up again at the nightmare hovering over them.

  The Dreamheart was so close! He could see it, clutched at the tapering end of one of Gethshemeth's many arms. The stone seemed to glow with an anti-light all its own. It was too close for Japheth to ignore any longer.

  He glanced at Angul. Should he take up the weapon Raidon said was forged to kill aberrations? He released a short grunt of derision. No, he'd never so much as held a sword before, not even in play as a child.

  He'd have to rely on the Lord of Bats's gifts.

  Claws raked Raidon's back, face, and exposed forearms. Teeth bit at his calves, exposed chest, and even his ears. A hundred mouths screamed their unending, insane paean, even as they strove to smother Raidon under the press of their bodies and drown him by holding his head beneath the rising water.

  The sheer number of wrestling forms was the only reason Raidon hadn't already succumbed to the onslaught. Far more claw rakes and bites scored bleeding gashes and gaping wounds on other kuo-toa than were visited on the monk.

  But he couldn't take much more. He was dribbling blood from the wound given him by the harpooner, and his thinking was growing fuzzier by the moment, thanks to the incessant scream. He managed to get his head above water long enough to suck in another desperate breath. One of his foes pulled the harpoon head out of his thigh. More blood flowed.

  His vision narrowed, and the screams around him deepened, as if he entered a tunnel mouth. He knew his perceptions were skewing, not reality.

  A sweet, curious voice out of time asked, "Papa? Are you hurt?"

  "No, Ailyn," he responded automatically. "Just taking a little rest."

  "Can we play, Papa?"

  "No, Papa has something he must finish first…"

  Raidon blinked away the waking vision. He didn't want to be seen a liar, even if it was a lie told to his daughter's trusting memory.

  The spellscar fire on his chest guttered, as if in danger of failing. He'd forgotten it. He was growing addled indeed. He put Ailyn from his mind and concentrated his focus through the Sign, and it blazed bright and cold once more, illuminating the cavities of the dark, living heap he struggled beneath.

  Wide kuo-toa eyes shuttered in pain as the sudden purifying radiance dazzled them. Raidon took his opportunity and struggled upward through the press like a man swimming upstream through rapids. Rapids composed of cold, scaled, wet fish-men. He couldn't seem to draw the same vigor from his Sign he'd used moments earlier to render the statue to a pile of broken rock. He sensed he hadn't given the spellscar time to recuperate. It was tired, just as he was. The jolt of vigor he'd managed to pull from the Sign was already running its course, and his limbs burned again with overexertion.

  A clawed hand clamped down on his left bicep. Hampered by his position, Raidon couldn't simply tear it away. It held Raidon fast and began to squeeze.

  Then a kuo-toa below him bit his foot, the same foot the plaguechanged ghoul in Starmantle had nearly bitten off.

  A shriek of pain burst from him as a stream of bubbles. That old ghoul-bite had never healed right, and all the pain it had given him returned threefold.

  The monk thrust his free hand straight up past wriggling bodies, a desperate gesture, his hand working spasmodically, looking for purchase.

  Someone took his hand and pulled. The hand was small, but it was strong. Strong enough to lift him up and pull him out of the scrabbling kuo-toa. It pulled him higher still, until he was ten feet above water. It had to be Anusha who'd saved him. Again. With the help of his savior, he kicked free of the tumult, save for two fish-men that retained their grips.

  One dangled from his bicep, the other continued to bite down on his foot.

  Raidon breathed freely in great heaving gasps. With his body finally unimpeded by dozens of clawing foes, he was able to torque his free leg upward to deliver a vicious knee to the crown of the kuo-toa holding his arm. A crunch of bone and it stopped its scream and limply fell away.

  The one on his other leg was scrabbling for a better hold, but its mouth remained clamped tight on his foot.

  The big kuo-toa with the harpoons chose that moment to loose another spear. Raidon saw him this time. He pulled up both legs and twisted, interposing the kuo-toa on his leg between himself and the harpooner. The spear buried itself in the creature's back. It gurgled and dropped.

  The hand holding his began to shake. The girl was tiring, Raidon guessed. He couldn't imagine how she was holding him up in the first place. Before she could drop him, he swung his legs back, then forward in a violent jerk, releasing Anusha's invisible hand as he did so.

  Raidon somersaulted through the air and landed just inside the wizard's fiery, water-defying perimeter.

  His wounded leg and bad foot buckled, as he'd suspected they would. He managed to save himself from falling face first into the cold water by dropping into a seated posture. The jolt on his tailbone traveled up his spine and rattled his teeth.

  The jet of water forming a solid column of water suddenly ceased, stoppered as if by Gethshemeth's mere wish. And it was likely so.

  The raw-throated screaming of the kuo-toa fell to nothing, as did the background roar of jetting water. The deluge of cold water splashing and dripping off the ceiling diminished to a sprinkle. The mist encompassing the vault began to clear. The thousands of ripples across the surface of the water filling the vault to a depth of a foot or more died away.

  Without the constant pattering rain, the surface of the water calmed to become a perfectly reflective surface. Raidon saw reflected the monoliths, domes, kuo-toa, and the shadowed, menacing shape of the great kraken over all.

  He saw his own weary reflection in the surrounding water, and that of his compatriots, including an image of a woman in golden armor standing midway between where he sat and Japheth. She stood on the water's surface as if it were solid ground.

  Japheth's gaze followed Raidon's, and his eyes widened. "Anusha, flee!"

  "Flee?" responded the girl, incredulous. "I'm not running again! I-"

  A voice pealed from a chitinous beak that protruded from an orifice beneath Gethshemeth's enormous bulk. "I see you, ghost. Enough of your interference."

  Seren clapped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.

  The warlock yelled a desperate garble of arcane syllables and pointed a finger at the behemoth. A shimmering emerald coil of eldritch power projected from Japheth's finger, higher and higher. When it reached the soft, sinful flesh of the great kraken, it began to coil around the creature, round and round, as if to restrain the great beast. Where the green energy touched the kraken, its skin blistered and grew scorched. An
odor akin to fried meat and dog excrement blew wetly through the vault.

  Gethshemeth shrugged its colossal tentacles. The green coils shattered into so many disconnected links in an eye-blink, and faded to nothing.

  A lone tentacle extruded from Gethshemeth's mass, the one enwrapping the round stone. It dropped down toward Anusha's reflection.

  Raidon's heart froze. He lunged for Angul's hilt and felt a tearing pop in his leg.

  His fingers grazed the cool, smooth metal of Angul's hilt. Even that brief contact was enough to erase the harpoon pain in his leg and lessen the burning fire in his foot. He dragged himself another few inches closer and grasped the hilt in both hands.

  A portion of his anxiety melted. A hint of new strength rippled through his muscles, starting in his hands and spreading quickly through his body. When the energy reached his chest, his Sign responded with a pulse of illumination nearly equal to the blade's pure fire. With the energy of his own Sign, he was able to shield his thoughts from the sword's overweening ego.

  Raidon freed the blade from the stone with a jerk and turned, raising the sword over his head.

  The Dreamheart in Gethshemeth's too large tentacle hovered only about ten feet over Anusha's reflection in the water. Raidon heard her yelling to herself, "Wake up! Wake up!"

  But she didn't wake up. She looked at Japheth and said, "I… took the potion of sleep!"

  Anusha's image warped, stretched, and elongated upward. Her words became a scream of horrified agony. Like water spiraling down a drain, her taffy-stretched image corkscrewed once around the black stone before being viciously sucked in.

  The image of the chamber reflected in the water no longer showed the least trace of Anusha.

  Japheth's anguished cry was drowned in the explosive renewal of the raw-throated screams of the mad kuo-toa. The mass began to press closer to the ring of Seren's protective fire.

  A hint of grief at Anusha's fate tugged at Raidon. But he and Angul were agreed; nothing else mattered other than plunging the burning blade into Gethshemeth's corrupt bulk.

  Apparently Gethshemeth decided the same. The monster, a hundred feet of squirming monstrosity, simultaneously lashed forward with all its arms save the one holding the Dreamheart high.

  One tentacle snapped through the moist air like a ballista. It flicked Thoster's body full on, accelerating the pirate captain in an instant to the same speed. The man's body whirled through the air, arcing out of sight on the vault's far side.

  Another ten-foot-wide tentacle punched down like a falling redwood, smashing on the spot where the warlock Japheth stood. An instant before impact, Raidon glimpsed Japheth step sidewise into his cloak and disappear.

  The horde of kuo-toa chose that moment to break the perimeter, sacrificing a few of their number to the guarding flame. The insane creatures were beyond caring. The survivors' scaly hands grabbed Seren.

  The wizard shouted out a spell that electrified two creatures that touched her. Four more took their place and bore the wizard out of the snuffed perimeter circle. Seren's terrified cries were inaudible over the victorious kuo-toa's endless shriek.

  Three of Gethshemeth's tentacles converged on Raidon. His training lent him grace to sideslip two. The third clipped him, so hard that he was knocked out of his guarding stance, and indeed, so hard he nearly dropped Angul.

  Use me, Angul's silent plea echoed in the monk's consciousness, before you are slain.

  "I shall," pledged Raidon. He managed to clamp both hands back around the hilt.

  He dissolved the mental blockade he'd devised, opening himself fully to the blade's influence. The pain, even in his foot, dissolved, and concern for Anusha and the others was forgotten. A single thought seared into his mind: death to Gethshemeth. The Blade Cerulean flamed triumphantly in his suddenly glad grip, its star blue fire burning and boiling the stagnant, moist air of the vault.

  Then a tentacle had him around the waist. He was lofted into the air and shaken like a terrier shakes a rat to break its neck. But Angul was like an anchor, and Raidon drew equilibrium from the sword even as blood surged back and forth between his feet and head. He brought the sword down on the tentacle.

  A pulse of loathsome energy from the tentacle holding the Dreamheart preceded his slash by the barest moment, briefly limning Gethshemeth in a greenish black radiance.

  Instead of cutting, Angul bounced off the slick flesh as if it were adamantine. For the second time he almost dropped the sword.

  Angul raged. Raidon felt the blade reach into itself, and perhaps into the monk's Sign too, for extra strength. Raidon allowed the blade every iota of energy it demanded.

  He raised Angul and the sword's blue-white light redoubled, a blue-tinged sunrise dawning in the vault for the first and last time. Together he and Angul said, "All abominations will be vanquished."

  He cut, and the tentacle holding him fell free. He and it fell.

  Raidon dropped fifty feet and rolled into the impact, requiring none of the Cerulean Blade's aid. He rolled out of the path of the severed tentacle, lest it crush him as it hammered down. In an eye-blink he was moving again, charging the suddenly frenzied blot of flesh, jumping the one that spewed purple-black blood.

  He somersaulted one lashing limb and severed another. He was determined to shove Angul's length directly into Gethshemeth's brain.

  The creature coughed out three arcane syllables. Raidon's perceptions wavered-no, it wasn't his perceptions-the great kraken's outline turned fuzzy and uncertain. Raidon had suffered through enough instantaneous travel recently to recognize the effect. Gethshemeth was on the verge of escape!

  The only thing that mattered more than killing the great kraken was destroying its artifact. It was why he'd suffered so much to retrieve Angul.

  Raidon crouched, coiling his muscles, infusing them with Cerulean fire from his Sign and Angul. He leaped.

  The monk raced upward as if invisible wings bore him, leaving a sky blue trail. The tentacle holding the Dreamheart was fuzzing into nothingness with the rest of the cowardly great kraken.

  Raidon rose to meet it. Even as the limb blurred to nothing, Angul lopped it off. The severed tentacle and what it held snapped back into focus.

  Gethshemeth flashed away. With the full fury of a thunderclap, air rushed in to fill the space the creature's great bulk had filled.

  The wave of sound brushed the monk's serene arc through the air, sending him tumbling. The expanding wave blew through the vault, knocking every single kuo-toa flat into the water, ending their screaming fit.

  Raidon fell, rolling in the air to regain control over his descent. The severed tentacle fell next to him. Unlike the previous one he'd cut, this one whipped and spasmed like an enraged python. Indeed, the Dreamheart it still clutched at one end was like a tiny head. Unable to evade, the monk received a smashing, full-body blow that hammered him into the flooded vault floor.

  Pain seized him when he lost his hold on Angul. His foot, the same damn one, felt like it had a spike driven all the way through it. He gulped a lungful of water.

  His body betrayed him in a sudden series of desperate coughs. Raidon managed to lever his head out of the water, but he couldn't see anything through his body's frenzied attempts to clear fluid from its lungs.

  Zai zi, get a hold on yourself, Raidon thought. Xiang taught you better-you don't need a magic sword to heal your hurts!

  Finding his focus, he stopped coughing and looked around.

  The masses of kuo-toa that had flooded into the vault with the water lay mostly unmoving, like puppets with cut strings. He saw Angul's sputtering glow beneath the water, some ten feet from him. Even from this distance, he could discern the blade's fury at being dropped.

  Neither the pirate captain nor the wizard was anywhere to be seen, at least from his current vantage. But he saw Japheth, standing over the tentacle that had clutched the Dreamheart.

  Raidon stood, took a limping step toward the warlock. "Be careful," he advised. "Don't touch the…
"

  The monk trailed off as Japheth slowly turned. The warlock held the dark, circular object in both hands.

  "Drop it, now!" Raidon commanded, his voice shocked. "We must destroy it!"

  "No," came Japheth's voice, drenched in sorrow. "No, not yet. It has Anusha's dream. I must wake her. It is my fault she can't wake up!"

  "If you don't release the stone, it will claim you too," replied Raidon. He sidled toward Angul's flickering length.

  Japheth ignored the monk. All his attention was on the stone. He gazed into it as if it were a scrying ball. He began to chant words slippery with magic.

  "What are you doing? Stop, lest you disturb it further," Raidon urged.

  Japheth ignored him. The warlock yelled into the stone with a voice augmented with magical tremolo, "Wake up! Wake up! Anusha, if you're in there, wake up! Ignore the thrice-damned elixir!"

  The Sign on Raidon's chest fell in temperature so precipitously the monk's breath began to steam.

  "Wake up!" Japheth yelled again with all the force of an invocation.

  The Dreamheart bucked in the warlock's hand. It woke up.

  A seam on the stone parted, an eyelid shuttering open. Raidon met the eye's primordial stare.

  It was like looking down on the clouds of some distant, storm-tossed world, clouds that ringed a pupil empty as death.

  Japheth gasped.

  Raidon took two more steps, plunged his arm into the water, and came up with the Blade Cerulean. It was the only tool capable of destroying the relic. He whirled, charged, yelling, "Release it!"

  "No," replied Japheth. "I'll not abandon Anusha so easily."

  The great eye blinked. The darkness in the pupil's center rushed out, seemed to billow and inflate the warlock's cloak with a malign influence all its own.

  Japheth stepped backward into the darkness and was gone.

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  Document ID: fbd-47924b-fed2-de49-c985-a3a7-00bf-ce4e0e

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  Document creation date: 15.01.2012

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